Only two of us rode with the club, though we did see ‘Coker Guy’ ride zip by on his 36 inch unicycle on the way to the ride. This year we were much better prepared. In the last year my brother and I both found deals on used unicycles, so instead of riding 26 inch wheels, I rode my 29 inch wheel and my brother rode his 36 inch wheel.

Cranks

Unlike on a bicycle where changing gears is just a matter of using different cogs, on a unicycle ‘gear’ is set only by the ratio of wheel radius to crank length. (Well, if you are rich, you could buy a Schlumpf hub.) I usually ride off-road on my 29 inch wheel with 165 mm cranks. A week before the Chilly Challenge, I swapped my 165 mm cranks for 125 mm cranks. This moved my gain ratio from 2.2 to 2.9. For comparison, I usually mountain bike at a gain ratio of 4, and the lowest gain ratio on my road bike is 3.3. The higher gain ratio theoretically makes it easier to ride faster on the road, but it also takes getting used to. To maintain the same riding posture, shortening the cranks by 40 mm means also raising the seat by 40 mm, which has a large effect on balance, particularly on cambers. The shorter cranks also mean you are moving your feet in smaller circles, slightly changing the muscles being used. With these changes, it took me two hours of riding to get mostly used to the shorter cranks.

The shorter cranks also make it even easier to out-spin my comfort level. Sitting so much higher also sligtly lowers my comfort level, especially on a day with strong winds. With 125 mm cranks on a 29 inch wheel, I fairly frequently think, ‘woah, I’m riding fast,’ then UPD. Since my brother was riding a 36 inch wheel with 150 mm cranks (giving him a gain ratio of 3.0) the limit on our speed was the point where I felt I was spinning to fast for a road ride. Fortunately, riding the Chilly Challenge helped me become much more comfortable with short cranks.

The ride

January 1 was a warm and dry day, but very windy. The winds were constant at around 25 mph, with much faster gusts. Because of the wind, this was by far the smallest group for the Chilly Challenge in the years I’ve ridden it; I’ve seen more riders on much colder years when it was wet out. Because the people who showed up this year were mostly serious club riders, we weren’t able to keep up on our unicycles as far as we did last year, so we took some shortcuts—and a long-cut—meeting the bike club at the site of the Polar Bear Plunge. The Polar Bears started a earlier than usual, so we arrived just as they were leaving the river. Since it was so warm out, I’d thought of joining the Polar Bears this year—it doesn’t seem so intimidating after the water on the HUFF course this year—but decided unicycling would be more fun. After the Polar Bear stop, we rode back to the starting point by a route slightly longer than the official short route. Even though we rode longer and farther than last year, the extra unicycling practice and better suited unicycles made it feel like a shorter ride.

After the ride is the traditional chili dinner at the park. There was a good variety if chilis to sample, but even the ones marked ‘Spicy’ were very mild. They tasted pretty good though.

Now that the Chilly Challenge and HUFF are over, I’m looking forward to the start of winter even more than I already was. Will winter ever come this year?

Yesterday was a good example of why it is important to always clean your car’s windshield completely before driving. I didn’t see the accident take place, but a car that was parked on the street was pushed about fifty feet down the road, onto the grass, and into a tree. This caused quite a bit of damage to both ends of the car. The driver that hit the parked car left the scene. A few minutes later another neighbor showed up with a smashed bumper. What I think happened was this:

(Using standard cryptography alphabetical stand-in names)

It was warm but snowing (‘slushing’) just enough that car windows needed to be cleaned before driving. Alice was in a hurry and didn’t clean her windshield. In the half block between Alice’s house and where Bob was parked, Alice accelerated too much. I can tell Alice was driving too fast for a neighborhood street by how far Bob’s car was pushed given the relative masses of the two cars. Alice must have not cleaned her windshield, preventing her from seeing Bob’s car, even though it is common for a car to be parked where Bob’s was. Alice then drove back up the block, cleaned the snow off the car, and came back.

Now, imagine that instead of a parked car, it was one of the many cyclists or joggers in the neighborhood. So, please, completely clean and defrost your car’s windows before driving.

Why is this important? The current law uses a subjective definition of safe passing separation. What a cyclist feels is a safe distance isn’t necessarily the same as what a driver or police officer feels is a safe distance. Drivers often believe the safe distance is much less than it is, and make dangerous passes. Since the safe distance is no less than three feet, and many people don’t realize this, we need the minimum separation to be explicit in the motor vehicle code.

You can help promote this important safety law by filling out this survey from Bicycle Indiana, and by writing your state representatives. And while you are at it and if you live in Allen County, fill out the City of Fort Wayne Trail Survey.

With or without an explicit legal definition, remember to only make safe passes:

Notice the steps of the safe pass:

1. Begin to move over well before reaching the cyclist.
2. Pass at a safe distance. Keep a minimum of three feet between the closest points of the car and the bicyclist. At high speeds and with large vehicles the minimum safe separation is larger. Don’t forget about your mirrors.
3. Move back into the lane well after passing the cyclist. Don’t forget to leave room for your trailer.

When I leave the lab early enough, I occasionally ride with the racing group from the local bike store. The usual route is to take the greenway out of town and do laps around the reservoir. This is a 60 kilometer ride plus 16 km per extra lap. I usually just try to stay with them as long as I can. The last ride I was able to go on, we took an alternate route that goes south 35 km to the nearest hill, then zigzags across it several times before heading back. The whole ride is 110 km or so. About 25 km from the end, my saddle started squeaking. Two kilometers from the end, one of the rails broke.

I’m glad it didn’t break until I was almost back. I upshifted and finished the ride standing. I’m not sure why it broke. The split is just behind the clamp on the seatpost. This is probably the point where a seat rail is most likely to break. The break caused a burr along the end of the saddle clamp. I filed it down, then polished it so that it won’t damage my next saddle. This was the first time I removed the stock seatpost from my Cannondale CAAD8 bicycle. I was surprised at how light the shaft is, but how heavy the clamp is. With the closest hill being 35 km away, a few extra grams doesn’t matter.

Fortunately, I have an identical saddle on my commuter bike that I can put on my road bike, and a different saddle for my commuter. It is odd that it broke, but I’m glad I wasn’t further from home or in traffic.

Links:

• News-Sentinel: Koehlinger Cycling a casualty of slow U.S. economy
• Journal Gazette: Cycling, fitness shop closes Economy ‘part of it’; ‘ambitious’ strategy, loss of deals factors

[Update 2011-11-28] These statistics are a bit old, but I haven’t been able to locate good numbers that are more up to date. I’d greatly appreciate any pointers to more recent numbers.

(This is a re-post from last week. The original post disappeared in the server change.)

I saw a graph of car and bicycle production in The Economist. The article was On your bike: Obesity and high oil prices are good news for the world’s biggest bikemaker. This was one of the many recent stories on the increase in gas prices leading to more people riding bikes. The graph looks something like this:

Bicycle and car production (1950—2007)

Car production is increasing as expected, but bike production is even higher. But does this plot tell us anything useful? Doesn’t world population growth look similar? I found that world population looks like this:

World population (1950—2007)

This is a huge increase. To make the bicycle production plot more useful, I can find the per capita production. Just divide the production by population:

Per capita car and bicycle production (1950—2007)

This is a much more useful plot. Bicycle production is going up, but not as fast in the original graph. The current production is actually slightly lower per capita than in the late ’80s. The flatness of the car production line is surprising. I also added a five year moving average to the plot.

Since there are so many articles linking bicycling to gas prices, lets look at the price of gasoline. Because of inflation and other factors, the absolute price of gas isn’t very useful. I found the consumer price index adjusted gas price:

US CPI adjusted gasoline prices (1950—2007)

Hmm… that doesn’t look as bad as you would expect. This graph does make it really obvious that the data I am using stops in 2007. I can now add the gas price to the production plot. The production scale is on the left, the price scale is on the right:

CPI adjusted gas prices and global car and bicycle production (1950—2007)

Interesting. The gas price and bike production don’t match at all before the mid ’90s. The match for the past ten or so years is pretty good.

These are just some thoughts on getting useful information from graphs. I didn’t do any actual statistics, but this gives some ideas for how to make these plots more useful.

I highly recommend reading How to Lie with Statistics by Darrel Huff.

Sources:

• The Economist: On your bike: Obesity and high oil prices are good news for the world’s biggest bikemaker
• Earth Policy Institute: Economic Indicators: Bicycles
• U.S. Census Bureau: International Database
• U.S. DOE Energy Information Administration: Peal Petroleum Prices

For those who don’t know, the Sturmey-Archer AW is the classic three-speed hub. It is also one of the best mechanical designs of all time. The AW has been in production since 1936.

Another product I am looking forward to trying is Pedro’s Vise-Whip. The normal way of removing a cassette is to use a chain whip and a lockring tool. The Vise-Whip replaces the chain whip. It is basically a Vise-Grip with the jaws replaced with a special version to clamp on sprockets without damaging them. This should be easier to use than a chain whip. It is definitely better than my usual method of clamping an old chain in my large Vise-grip and using it as a chain whip.

(Found through Cyclingnews)

Saturday was my first ride of the year with the Delaware County Cycling Club. The schedule said the ride started at 8:00. Only four of us showed up, so we took an easy ride in town until 9:00. The delay was ok because it gave me a chance to pickup the banana I had forgotten. The ride leader and a bunch of others showed up around nine. Even riding in a group, the wind made a challenging 65 km ride. During the last section of the ride I talked to Dave Poole of AeroCat bikes. He was riding his ACR500 frame. It is a nice looking carbon road frame. After the ride, he showed me some prototypes, including a carbon mountain bike frame he is working on. It looks really good. After the club ride, I rode a bit extra for a total of 110 km.