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Jason Alexander hits cyclist

Jason Alexander, best known for his role as George Costanza on Seinfeld struck a 14 year old cyclist in Los Angeles.

Thankfully the cyclist was not seriously hurt.  Details about the incident are not clear right now, but Alexander was not cited.

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Schwinn TV Ad

Schwinn is now running this fun ad on T.V.  I like!

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Missing Cyclist Found!

In reference to my previous post about the missing cyclist, it turns out he is safe and sound! Thanks for keeping an eye out.

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First DNF

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, Real Life(tm) has a way of being a pest at times, I should be back to my regular schedule now though.

A few weeks ago I had to miss a 400k hosted by The Crescent City Randonneurs after crashing my bike a few days before.  This 400k would have been an indicator letting me know if I would be ready for the 600k in May.  Pat, the CCR RBA was nice enough to invite me to a 300k permanent followed by a 100k in order to get in the miles needed to prepare for the 600.

I woke up at 3:00am Saturday morning and was on the road by 3:30.  It’s funny how easy I can get up and ready to ride my bike an absurd distance while it takes incredible effort to get out of bed on a normal work morning, but I digress.  I arrived at Pat’s house right at 5:30 and we were on the road at 6.  From the very start you could tell it was going to be an amazing day to ride.  The route was more or less the same as the 300k brevet from March which caused me so much trouble.  Thankfully the winds were very mild on this day, smoke from a factory we passed was going straight up; a very good sign.

We arrived in Sorrento, about 60 miles in and stopped at our first control.  I was very optimistic at how good I felt.  I knew that barring anything drastic, I would hold up just fine and complete both rides.

Of course that something drastic did happen and an old knee injury flared up.  In 2002 I initially hurt it in martial arts.  The doctor I saw told me it was probably torn cartilage and there wasn’t much I could do about it.  Every now and again I will do something that makes it hurt again.  During my marathon training last year I (against some sage advice) used pain killers to mask it so I could continue to run.  This turned out to be the worst thing I could do and I was unable to run for a couple weeks while it healed.

With that in mind I decided to DNF rather than risk hurting it more.  Since I also depend on riding my bike to get to work, being completely unable to ride would be a very bad thing.  I told Pat who was nice enough to DNF and ride back to the start with me.  The pain gradually got worse although I was able to control it by not pressing down hard with my left leg.  An aleve I took along the way also did wonders.

I got home, iced it down, and took some ibuprofen.  The pain went away quickly and by the next day I felt fine, so I assume no harm was done.  I’m not certain why I hurt my knee just now, but I suspect it’s because I raise my saddle a little bit before this ride.  This would also explain why I was pretty sore in muscles that never really get sore.

I guess DNF’ing a ride is part of the randonneuring experience, but I don’t like it one bit, I hate quitting anything.  But I’m not letting it discourage me, I’m planning to do a century this weekend to see how I feel and hopefully I can catch the next 200k that comes along.

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Please help locate missing cyclist

Edit: Tim has been located safely.

A member of reddit.com has posted a plea for help.  His friend Tim Scafuro has been traveling cross-country and is now missing.

From the post:

His last known location was Charlestown, MD traveling to Keedysville, MD. 3 days ago he told a friend he would meet her in Keedysville because he happened to catch a ride with someone driving to Frederick. His phone has been on and will just ring through. We have filed a missing persons report and I know theres not much that can be done but I thought it was worth a shot to put the word out there.
Edit: This is his blog, if anyone can ascertain anything from it, maybe different places to look and research it’d be a great help. We’ve already called all the area hospitals and we know he hasn’t been arrested. Tomorrow i’m going to call the libraries and Cafes around Charlestown to see if anyone saw him there. Thank you all for your support.

This is the most recent picture of Tim:

Please contact cward508@gmail.com if you have any information.  Thank you.

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Pcych Commuter Bag

I saw this video over at BikeCommuters.Com,  it’s a bag that attaches to your top tube to hold water bladders, phone, tubes, and lots more.  It seems like your knees would hit it as you ride, but perhaps not.  Something like this would be awesome for randonneuring,  I want one!

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Movie Monday: Crazy Bike

I’ve seen a lot of videos of bike stunts/tricks, but I think this one tops them all.  This really isn’t helping me wanting to purchased a fixed gear bike…

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New gear on the way

After my little crash the other day, I had to replace my brake levers and front calipers. I decided to go with the same brake levers, the Tektro R200:

I debating putting back on my old Dia Compes or even getting a newer set of them to keep up the bikes classic looks. As this bike sees a lot of miles, I decided to go with comfort over looks. The large hoods are very comfortable; and after riding my wife’s 73 Peugeot with smaller classic-style levers recently, I decided I didn’t want to go back to that.

Calipers on the other hand, I wasn’t sure want to get. I found my choices here were limited as most brakes are designed for modern bikes which use a recessed nut inside the fork for mounting. Sheldon Brown’s site lists a couple ways to get around this, but I didn’t want to take a drill to my fork just yet. I searched ebay for some used brakes, older Shimano and Campy calipers as well as other brands. End the end I decided to go with Tektro as well, I found the R538’s, a long-reach caliper offered with standard bolt/nut mounting:

When buying components for older bikes there is always a desire to keep the bike looking classic, but the lure of newer and better components is always there. I suppose if I had an older bike that saw light weekend riding, I would go with the old stuff. On my Schwinn however, I’m voting anachronism for the sake of comfort.

What is your opinion on the matter?

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America’s Top 50 Bike-Friendly Cities

This month’s Bicycling Magazine had a list of the top 50 cities in the USA for cycling. They were only able to give detailed write-ups on a select few of those, but have a web page with more info.  Topping the list are the typical cities you expect to see on a list like this: Minneapolis, Portland and Boulder.  At #11 is my soon-to-be home of Austin TX.

The Southeast in general did not do so well.  Only a hand full of cities were listed,  and poor Birmingham was listed as the nations worst city for cyclists.

Why is the South so bad in this respect?  I think it has a lot to do with how cities were designed way back when.  I’ve had several friends from the North comment on how spread out everything is when visiting here.  Driving 20-30 minutes with no traffic to get somewhere “close” is considered normal.  This led to a situation where having a car is almost mandatory which leads to few people calling for alternative transportation infrastructure.  That’s my theory anyhow.

If your city didn’t make the list, how would you rank it among those that did?

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Ouch!

Yesterday afternoon as I was heading home from dinner, I managed to take a pretty nice spill.

The asphalt on this particular street was a good big higher than the gutter, close to two inches higher. I managed to veer a little far right which dropped me off and somehow also managed to turn my front wheel sharply enough to bring the bike to a stop with me taking a bit of a tumble over the front of the bike. I got a little bit of road rash and my left hand hurts pretty bad this morning, but all in all I’m fine.

The bike on the other hand…

Both brake levers were smashed up to the point where they can’t be repaired and the front caliper is bent pretty badly. But hey, broken parts are an excuse to upgrade! I’m probably going to get another set of the Tektro R200 levers as I really liked them, the large hoods made it comfortable to ride on them for long periods of time. I’m not sure where to go on the calipers though, I’ll be shopping around for a new pair today. Any suggestions would be welcome.

The good news is that I finally had a reason to try our local bus system, it’s not bad at all. The bad news is that this weekend’s 400k is out, and that’s really the worst part of the whole thing, so I guess I can’t complain really.