oops

Well not the Rick Perry kind of Oops.

I just forgot about this blog for awhile. Blogging about doing stuff is sometime harder than actually doing stuff.

I've done alot since my last post in June.

It started when Sheryl donated to this guy's cause, an AIDS benefit ride from Boston to NYC. That guy ended up being Marcus, and I donated too. Along with my donation I said to him something along the lines of 'Wow, that's amazing, I wish I could do it too.'

And then I thought, 'Why don't I?'

I had never before done a century, the most I had done before was 60 for the 5-boro, and this ride was THREE centuries in three days. (well, the last day was 75 but still, nothing to sneeze at.)

So I joined. I spent 3 months fundraising and training, riding all around the boros, and by the time the ride rolled around in September, I was intimidated but determined.

The hardest part was getting up on the 2nd morning. After the first 100 miles my knees were killing me. But I figured I wasn't the only one and life could be alot worse. I just took it as it came and went slower. I walked up the big hills. (and in northern Connecticut, there are alot of them.)

But I finished, and I had an amazing time.

And I also went on kindof a bike binge. Buying parts, buying more bikes, I had the intention of fixing them up and selling them affordably to friends.

I had a small problem, I let the dumb overpriced ads on Craigslist get to me.

I was trying to fight what I thought was greedy injustice. Then again I could find what I needed on Craigslist as well. It's a mixed bag and I just have to resign myself to the fact I need to do my own thing. That and stay off Craigslist.

I think what sealed it for me was going into a bike shop in Greenpoint Brooklyn one day, and seeing an entire rack of those crappy garbage bikes, barely fixed up but with price tags in the $300 range. The guy told me yes they do sell.

That was hard for me to swallow. You really can't stop ignorance. Hey, we had a stupid Republican president for 8 years that way. Whaddya gonna do, you know?

I'm not the person who is going to change the world. I don't even like getting up on weekends. I'm just one of billions of people on the internet, biking around, taking photos, and fixing things.

realities of urban bike riding

Today I rode 50 miles to Hicksville, LI and back. I've never ridden to Long Island before.

I regularly ride in the city so I'm not just used to traffic but comfortable with it. Almost jaded.

But this was a new perspective for me.

The routes I took, Northern Blvd, and the service road of the Long Island Expressway are major routes, and cars move much faster than they do in the city. On my way back I was biking during rush hour, and although only one car actually honked at me, for the most part if there wasn't a buffer zone, they didn't exactly give me any room when they passed me at high speed. Sometimes there was NO buffer between the cars and curb. I was looking in my rear-view mirror the entire time.

These are drivers rushing to get home, hating being stuck in traffic, hating their jobs, hating their lives, hating bikers or anyone else for being 'in their way.'

Now, there's a law that says bicyclists are not supposed to ride on the sidewalk. But riding along, I see plenty of bikers doing just that.

And honestly? I can't blame them.

I saw a lady in her 50's with a front basket full of laundry, riding on the sidewalk going about 5 MPH.

How can you tell her to ride in the street with the cars?

I honestly wouldn't recommend it. I CAN'T recommend it. This isn't like Europe where biking is part of the culture. The driving mentality here is one of a sense of entitlement.

Car drivers honestly believe to the bottom of their deepest fiber that the road is for them, to the exclusion of all others.

This is NOT a bike-friendly nation.

Before this ride, I was asking around for other biking destinations. I asked a friend in White Plains, and she tried to discourage me saying "Not a bike-friendly ride here."

At first I thought to myself, "I'm experienced, I could handle it."

But after today, I know what she means now.

Car drivers need to be re-programmed to realize the road does not belong to them.

At the same time there also needs to be biker education: Not riding the wrong way down streets, in bike lanes, and to yield to pedestrians. Bikers are not innocent in this either.

And neither are city pedestrians. Jaywalking, walking against the light...

There needs to be a top-down re-education of everyone that uses public roads.

Whether this is possible in my lifetime, I don't know.

my cycling philosophy

Out of all the capitalistic endeavors in this world, I believe one of the few things people are entitled to are affordable transportation. If nothing else in this world, you should be able to get where you need to go without having to rely on limited and sometimes expensive public transportation.

I believe it's up there below freedom of speech. An inalienable right.

Yes, naive of me I know.

I have nothing against the exotic $5000 carbon fiber 13 lb racing bike. If you can afford it, more power to you. I still own my cool Italian racing bike I got 30 years ago, when I weighed 60 lbs less than I do now. I just find it uncomfortable and the whole class unnecessary for most people's needs. Mine has been collecting dust.

I believe in comfort. I believe that comfort trumps aerodynamics and speed. Being uncomfortable, being in pain is a horrible thing on a bicycle.

If you ride a racing bike with your head down, staring at the road because you can't lift your head (it's known as Shermer's Neck) then what fun is that? If your ass is killing you because your seat is too hard in the wrong places, if your naughty bits are numb, then how is that motivating you?

How does that encourage you to ride a bicycle more?

Alot of the snobs say, "You have to get used to it!" or "your seat needs to be broken in."

Nonsense.

I say, sit up and enjoy the ride. I ride cruisers for hours at a stretch that I retrofit with BMX bars (about 6" higher) and my choice of comfortable seat. My biggest problem is exhaustion, not pain.

There are two seat brands I am partial to: Specialized's 'Body Geometry' and Planet Bike's A.R.S.

Seat technology has evolved enormously in the past several years, and before that I didn't know seats could actually be pain-free.

A bike shop is invaluable in this respect, they should allow you to try seats so you find one that maximizes your comfort, making your biking experience enjoyable and not painful.

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Now if you've been biking for any length of time, you have no doubt encountered your share of bike snobs. Sometimes they're wearing the latest stretchy spandex and lycra and clipless shoes, secretly checking you out and judging you if you're not looking like them or if your bike doesn't have the latest gear.

I see them on the internet bike boards sometimes.

And all of them will thumb their noses at the dearth of bikes sold at what's commonly known as 'The Big-Box Stores.' Walmart, K-mart, Target.

These are the bikes that start at $100.

"They are made like shit," "They fall apart," "Made in China crap!"

Guess what? The corporation that makes the bikes sold in Walmart, known as Dorel, also makes most of the bikes sold in most bike shops. Cannondale? Schwinn? Mongoose? Pacific? All Dorel products.

Some of these companies are also made at the same company in China, known as Kinesis: Diamondback, Trek, GT, Kona, Giant, Schwinn, Jamis, K2, Felt, and Raleigh among them.

The major difference between the big-box store and a bike shop is ONE very important element: The bicycle mechanic.

Big-box stores don't employ one. The bikes are usually built by the employee who volunteers and has a modicum of mechanical aptitude. So your bike from Walmart will usually be in severe need of basic adjustment, and grease in most cases. Bearings will be too tight or too loose, wheels will not be trued, tires will be under-inflated, derailleurs and brakes will need adjusting.

Not to mention you as the rider would be needing to be sized properly. Your seat will need to be high enough and adjusted for your comfort and efficiency.

These are all things you pay for when you go to a bike shop. And well you should.

So my philosophy is this: By all means go to a bikeshop and pay for their services because they are, in fact, invaluable to your riding comfort as well as the longevity of your machine. Even if you can't afford to buy from a bike shop, buy one from one of the big-box stores and bring it to the bike shop of your choosing and pay them to tune it properly and size you correctly.

It will be well worth their expertise.

But just be aware, the big-box store bikes are NOT always the junk that the bike snobs claim they are.

I should know. I own several.

There are hidden gems amongst the bikes. They are the bikes with aluminum frames.

This is my K-mart bike, a Mongoose X:20:

It cost me $150.

The day before I'm writing this, I rode from Woodside Queens to City Island in the Bronx and back, about 32 miles.

Ok, full disclosure, it didn't start out looking like this. It came loaded down with lots of steel components like the handlebars, the cranks, the fork, the seatpost, and a 3 lb rack and fenders.

Apart from swapping out the above-mentioned parts for lighter aluminum components, I rebuilt the wheels. The bike weighs about 8-10 lbs less than when I started.

But the point being that if a bike-store bike is out of your price range, you can get a great 'starter' affordably at a box-store and upgrade as you go.

An aluminum frame ensures that you're not making a 'silk purse from a sow's ear.'

This is how it looked when I first bought it, price tag and all:

Not horrible. But that seat hurt.

But no matter what bike you own,

There are two other main points to biking efficiency:

1. Keep your chain properly lubricated

2. Keep your tires inflated to their MAXIMIUM rated pressure.

I always see people riding with rusty chains, you can even hear them squeak. You can actually feel the dramatic difference once you oil your chain.

And tire pressure, almost everyone is ignorant on this subject. Higher pressure lowers rolling resistance, which means YOU GO FASTER.

When your tires have low pressure, more of the tire makes contact with the road surface, slowing you down. You are also way more susceptible to FLATS and severe rim damage (as in, when you hit a pothole.)

Low pressure is only effective in mud and sand.

Inflate them to the MAXIMUM pressure. Don't worry, they won't explode. (If they do, it's because of some other problem.)

Take proper care of your bike and it will return the favor exponentially.

This is me around 1993. The magic of social networking and the internet brings long-lost people and photos back from obscurity.

I must have been 40 or 50 lbs lighter here. I had just bought this bike, I rode it everywhere. I would hear

people scream out PEE WEE! or the song from that movie. It was a little annoying, but I knew it came with the territory. At the time I really believed I was on the cusp of a huge biking revolution with my recumbent. I thought once everyone tried it, they'd never want to go back to a regular bike. It's so comfortable and fast, you don't get any of the neck or hand pain from being hunched over.

I let quite a few people ride it and almost all of them did it wrong, and killed my handlebars. They'd instinctively YANK up on them trying to support themselves. I tried being patient, I figured revolution takes time.

Well 14 years later, obviously it never worked out like that. It still gets looks, I still hear 'PEE WEE.' At least people know what it's called now. I still love riding it.

The biggest problem is locking it up in the city. You can't. People will sit on it or abuse it somehow. SO now I can only ride it when I know I'll be riding all day. This is from the 5 boro bike tour 2011:

Years before I had a car I used to carry groceries home on it, cases of catfood, and at one point my first air conditioner. This bike grew up with me. The company that made it stopped making them 10 years ago. So thanks to Google I found several more online.

I'll be riding it in the Boston-to-NYC ride in September.

And then....

...On Saturday I bought yet another Cannondale. The price was about the same.

Photos to come at some point.

I must be friggin nuts.

sometimes....

Just to prove there's some sanity left on Craigslist, I needed to buy a bike.

When I was a kid my mom used to take me to garage sales and flea markets. She would spend friday night circling the ads in the local paper (we lived in Clifton NJ, a suburb 1/2 an hour west of NYC, which was firmly middle-class when I lived there in 1974 but has since become very upper middle class. When I lived there, we were literally down the hill from Montclair State College, which is now Montclair State University.)

Anyway in the mid 70s, there were no cookie-cutter furniture places like IKEA. People's houses were very unique and it was always interesting to go to other people's houses and see how they lived. It was always different and unusual, so when people had garage sales and sold their stuff, it was always an enormous range of tastes and eras and styles.

It was also a big influence on why I went into photography. When I worked in 1 hour labs, I thought I would get to see all these great places, unusual homes without even having to go inside.

But by the time I started working in 1-hour labs in the late 1980s, I quickly found out everyone's homes now look the same and so do people's pictures.

Anyway at these garage sales, my mom went for the really OLD crap. Remember this was the 70s, so 'old' meant 1920s and earlier. For years she was into daguerrotypes, these photos that were printed on metal plates and looked more like negatives than photos. Later she got into old photo albums, and when I say old I mean OLD, they were these 100-year-old velvet-covered affairs with THICK pages that weren't even paper, they were like solid laminated cardboard. The albums were as thick as Manhattan phone books.

The photos were so old the people weren't even smiling. It was like people were always depressed 100 years ago.

My mom ended up with literally hundreds of these albums, anonymous families and people she never even knew, stacked ten-high in the living room collecting dust and soot. The albums were so old and brittle the spines would crack when you opened them, so you really didn't want to look through them for fear of breaking them.

ANYWAY. I don't really know where I was going with this. Oh yeah. At these garage sales and flea markets of my youth, things were always plentiful and cheap and fun, and then the internet came along with eBay and Craigslist and I thought, 'what a great way to have these virtual flea markets 24 hours a day 365 days a year reaching millions of people instead of every weekend reaching a few dozen. '

But then I didn't account for crazy.

I browse the bike listings on Craigslist every so often and almost all I see are these horrible crappy bikes that weren't even sold in actual bike shops when I was a kid, they were sold in like, auto parts stores for $50 in the 1970's and 1980's. HEAVY steel bikes made with parts no one had used in 20 years combined with Chinese components that were probably rejected by the Chinese themselves.

I swear, they were so crappy that given the choice, you would rather walk.

Criaglslist sellers use words like 'vintage' to describe them, and then have the gall to post prices like $175, $200 for this junk. It's not just a few either, it's like 70-80% of the postings.

It's driven me so crazy that I sometimes post ads with links to NEW bikes from Walmart and Target for $99 to try and drive the prices down.

I don't know why it bothers me so much. I just feel that out of all the capitalism and corporate greed in life, at least bicycles and inexpensive transportation should be accessible to the masses.

But then I realize another truth: Theres always going to be DUMB people in life.

Dumb is the reason Britney Spears, Black Eyed Peas and Miley Cyrus are popular. Dumb is the reason a show like 2 1/2 Men stays on the air while Fringe is about to be cancelled.

I spend my life trying to educate people, trying to help them help themselves. If their computer breaks, I try and teach them how to fix it. But then they don't want to. They would rather just pay me and let me do it.

I can't complain, it keeps me employed.

But I guess I have to break down and admit there's always going to be dumbasses that are going to buy overpriced crappy bikes. Even if it's 40 years old, weighs 40 lbs and has been stripped of all components to turn it into that detestable hipster trend known as a 'fixie.'

So anyway I saw a Cannondale on Craigslist for a reasonable price and I had to buy it, partly just to reassure myself that there's still rational people in the world and good bargains to be had.

Also to say to all the Craigslist idiot sellers, "LOOK, dumbasses, I can buy a REAL bike here for what you're trying to charge for shit."

Cannondales are reknown for their lightness and superior componentry.

Like an idiot, I drove up to Stamford CT to buy it too. What am I trying to prove by all this anyway?

Jeez I have 27 bikes, when am I going to open a bike shop already.

I read an article last week about how Kenyans, who previously had no electricity, are buying small solar panels to charge their cellphones (??) and light their huts using low-power LEDs.
In Kenya there is no grid to go off.

Think about that for a moment: Kenyans, who are literally dirt-poor, can afford solar panels for unlimited electricity, and have no dependence on power companies because there. are. no. power. companies.

Now translate that to our over-consumptive American terms. We as a nation are ridiculous shoppers, yet almost no one will make an investment in alternative energy sources such as solar panels, that will LITERALLY free them from a dependence of a massive, vulnerable and expensive power grid.

But can you imagine if even a fraction of the population got a clue and went off the grid using solar panels and installed low-power fluorescent and LED bulbs?

It's never going to happen. People are creatures of habit. Like using landline telephones. Of TALKING on telephones instead of texting. It took 15 years for people to learn to shop on the internet.

We as a nation are so far behind in terms of technology and progress it's laughable. Kenyans are now more advanced than we are.

This brings me to my bicycling point. This country is an auto-centric nation. Even I was raised on cars. The Batmobile, Speed Racer, the Monkeemobile, anything George Barris ever made, the musclecars of the late 60's and early 70's, (I actually own a 1972 Mercury Comet) and the culture that went with it.

We are raised on cars.

Do you know the company I work for prohibits me from bicycling to clients? I can drive one of the company vans if I want, but I can't bike. I've been told it's an 'insurance' issue.

When did it become more of a liability to drive a bicycle as opposed to a car?
What has this country devolved into when bicycling is DISCOURAGED?
As I write this, gas is $3.33 a gallon. Gasoline is subsidized on every level in the good ol' USA. And yet bicycling is an afterthought. A novelty.
Ask any car driver about bicycles, and they will complain that bikes should ride on sidewalks. (which is against the law for anyone over 14.) Drivers have a deluded sense of entitlement. Bikes are 'too slow' for them and are 'in the way.'
Meanwhile people drive enormous SUVs that waste gas like water, and the only way that will change is if the price of gas becomes prohibitively expensive.

THIS is the size of a typical Japanese pickup truck. That's because gasoline everywhere else is at market value, meaning DOUBLE what it costs here. And bicycling in every other country is accepted and encouraged.


Even though I also drive a car, I hope the price of gasoline hits $6 a gallon or higher. I would love nothing better than to see people bankrupted by their antiquated habits and lack of creativity, and hopefully forced to examine their lifestyle to consider alternative means of transportation.

Like bicycles.

Does that make me naive and idealistic?