more messenger fashion and ranting

From SFGate, more messenger vs. hipster ranting with a slew of fashion pix.

I'm all over the board on this one. The goofiest thing I ever wore was in the rain/snow, a set of 'pep boys' coveralls. Totally warm and waterproof, not exactly aero, but I looked like a ditchdigger. I would not have made anyone's messenger fashion article. Also, in Boston winters, I wore a vintage 60's high school 'letterman' jacket. The leather sleeves were great for the accidental pavement slide, and the felt body kept me as warm I needed to be. Other than that, I've been basically form over fashion, mostly depending on the weather. Cargo pants if I'm riding the ss 'cross bike in the city, because what's the point of dressing aero if you're spinning out at 15 mph, maybe a couple of layered shirts if it's cold. Cutoff spandex (hate those grippy cuffs) and a homecut wifebeater if I'm riding the fastbike in the heat, mostly because I hate biker tan lines. I generally skip gloves unless it's cold, though the 'cross bike gets gloves offroad regardless of temp, because a hard hit riding on the hoods can scalp your palms.

This article points out the inherent silliness in messenger vs. non-messenger fashion. Lots of things reflect authenticity (if it matters), but in my opinion, you prove it with your legs and your line, not your threads. The funny thing is, a bunch of these messengers unload on the 'hipsters' and their trendy bikes, but judging from the pictures, half of them ride brakeless, which is just as trendy and comes up short in the performance department imho. But I've ranted on that elsewhere.

ss rider wins cyclocross A race

Sweet. Pat Schott won a cyclocross A race on a ss. Winning an A race is no small feat, and doing it on a ss is pretty badass.

Actually, if a ss rider were going to beat their geared compadres, CX racing is probably one of the only formats where the odds might be in their favor. About half of the CX races I've been in have been fairly consistent topographically...that is, flat or with a couple of short climbs. The (B) racers I've drafted often shift once per lap, or not at all, so it's not that surprising that a ss could hang on pretty well. Depends on the terrain of course, I know some organizers throw in some steep nasties for kicks.

write your elected officials: bike lanes are safer for everyone

It seems intuitive, but even obvious things ought to be measured.

The Center for Transportation Research at UT Austin discovered that bike lanes are safer for bikers. You might be saying "it took $114,00 of research money to figure that out?"

What's interesting is that it's safer for the cars as well. Without bike lanes, cars swerved out of their own lanes nine out of ten times. With bike lanes, they did so only six out of ten times, and they encroached only 40% as far. And to think it didn't even measure the number of drivers who yelled "get on the sidewalk."

So write your local elected officials asking for bike lanes, and back it up with a study. It's not just safer for cyclists, but safer for drivers as well. If you can work the phrase "think of the children" in there, you get bonus points.

nevermind x-country singlespeed rides, how about x-world?

In 2001, Yiming Liu decided to go for a bike ride with a couple of friends.

Around the world.

His companions have since retired, but he soldiers on, currently somewhere between Florida and California (does he know it's hurricane season?). Often finding accomodations by simply pulling into a Chinese restaurant, he seems to be playing it by ear. He recently saw his wife for the first time in 5 years. He's on his 19th bike, all of them single speeds. Interviewed in the St. Petersburg Times, he said "You have to be willing to die for this."

There is a fine line between craziness and greatness. I'm not sure which side this guy is on. Riding around the world: great. I've daydreamed of similar excursions, and it sounds like fun (except for getting hit by a bus, poisoning one's self, and drinking a cow's urine) but he's got a kid that hasn't seen him for over 1/3 of his life. That's crazy.

I tell you one thing, though, I'd sure as hell finish in less than 7 years. His first problem is that he's going East to West, so the rotation of the planet ensures he always has a headwind.

first epic ride

Ain't nobody dope like me, I'm dressed so fresh, so clean

Slow ss/fg/mess news day, so I dug this up from the framebuilder's mailing list. Alex Meade set out to create the most maintenance-free bike possible:



Scavenging key parts from a "chainless" or shaft-drive bike, he got the drive/chainstay from a Taiwanese supplier, and being a framebuilder with loads of time and patience, ended up machining, brazing, cutting, or otherwise constructing the bike to fit the part. It's a 7-speed, so technically it doesn't belong 'round here, but it's so sleek (overlooking the commuter topend), so I'll make an exception. It looks like a single speed, and it would make a damn clean bike if you got rid of those pesky cables and brakes. If it could be built as a fixed gear, I might even suspend my front brake fanaticism, just to be able to ride the simplest bike ever.

Doubt I'll ever run across one though, since it was a serious pain to construct, and this is coming from a guy with a framebuilding jig, a lathe, and access to the engineer that designed the shaft. You can read some details from the thread of the framebuilder's list or better yet, go straight to the pictures.

fixed gear vs. single speed, pros and cons

Sheldon Brown's fixed gear page has lots of information, but he's kind of a crufty old bike nut and gets a little technical. Somebody on CL recently asked a few questions about city riding, and which is "better" - fg or ss. Since there doesn't seem to be any ss/fg/messr news today, I dug it out. Italic quotes are from the original poster.

Just to clarify, I'm really not anti-fg. Just anti-brakeless-fg (but not at the velodrome.)

--

I am sick and tired of my bikes breaking down.
Buy quality parts. Buying or building a single speed will enable you to buy fewer parts, so you can buy better ones, and there will be less to break.

What is diff b/t fixed and single?
I don't understand how you could have read sheldon brown's site on the subject and asked this question. A fixed gear means your pedals are always moving with the rear wheel, i.e. if you are flying down a hill, your feet will be spinning like a frog in a blender. You can use your legs to slow the bike, stop, and do wacky tricks like a track skid. Track racers skip the brakes altogether, and some hardcore messenger types and idiotic trendsters do so in traffic, though it has been scientifically proven that you are a moron if you don't put at least a front brake on your ride (unless it's only for the track). If you master the decelerating nose wheelie, you don't need a rear brake at all, fixed or otherwise, though if you need to do a bmx-style side-skid in the rain, a rear brake is indispensable, as the front wheel will wash out more catastrophically.

Not to get into this flamewar again, but a book called "Bicycling Science" mathematically proves that a front brake alone will stop your bike in at least half the time and half the distance (as a back brake). I've seen this discussed here before, so I expect this post will be followed by a flurry of CLers casting dissenting opinions, but you can either trust an MIT professor or a bunch of lurkers arguing about "breaks."

A fixed gear is technically a single speed (though sheldon mentions some old English 3 speed fixies) but saying "single speed fixed gear" is a little redundant, like a "two wheeled motorcycle." Generally a "single speed" is understood to have a freewheel, where you can stop pedaling and coast. Though you can say things like "I only ride single speed bikes; I have one fixed and one freewheel."

I would like to look into the idea of a single/fixed bike. Which will I want?
Nobody can tell you what you want, but if you get one with a flip flop hub, both options are open; it's fixed on one side and free on the other. I would recommend starting with a freewheel. Though fixed is fun, rewarding, and currently trendy, I wouldn't recommend it for a "newB" (as you call yourself).

freewheel:
Pros: forgiving of poor road conditions, simple, easier on your drivetrain (less breaking down if you're using cheaper parts), faster (if you consider you can ride far more aggressively: bunnyhopping curbs and road debris, superclose drafting, etc.)
Cons: mmmm, none that I can think of, though there is a certain joyous feeling you get from being unified with the road on a FG. Some inexperienced fg riders call this "terrifying."

fixed:
Pros: feels nice and pure, gives you remarkable road feel in the rain and snow (you can feel when and how your rear wheel is losing traction). If you're a badass messenger type with mad track skills like riding backwards, one leg over the handlebar track skids, one footed track stands, 180 "bmx style" skid outs, etc. then you look cooler than a polar bear's toenails. [Since I posted this, someone pointed out to me that for them, the workout is the best part of fg riding. oh yeah, Exercise, forgot about that one.]

Cons: unskilled riders can't easily pull off life saving maneuvers like: stopping on a dime, bunnyhopping glass and other road debris that you don't see until the last second, jumping curbs, etc. It beats the crap out of your knees long term if you choose to brake with your legs and not use at least a front brake (see above). If you try to look like a messenger and go to Handlebar with a brand new timbuk2 bag, a stock langster, and "messenger knickers"(tm), you will look like a complete tool and people will laugh at you. Also, unless you have some decent traffic skills (like 500+ hours on a fixed) riding in congested traffic you will ride slowly and look like a deer in the headlights.

Depending on how much you want to spend you have a few options. A $5-600 bianchi pista or specialized langster is actually not a bad place to start (note clothing tips above), especially if it comes with a flip-flop hub. I've seen them here for $3-400 from people who never quite got the hang of them. Three bills for one of those, and you'll be set as far as maintenance, compatibility, etc.

As far as "roll your own" single speed options, yes, you can build one for as little as $50-75, but there are so many things to look for. Of course, it needs to have horizontal dropouts so the rear wheel can move to take up chain slack (there are a couple pricey options to do this for vertical dropouts). Find a frame that used 700 cc wheels, not 27 inchers, or you might have brake reach issues. Then there are wheels: for older ones, can you spin the cluster off and put a $15 bmx freewheel on? (ideal). Newer ones needs spacers on the cassette. You can't just magically make an old beater into a fixie without a wheel/hub swap, and even then, you need a beefy drivetrain or you'll snap your chain or fold your chainring. Then there's chain alignment to think about. Redish the wheel, spacers, can you move the bottom bracket a few mm, or simply run the chainring on the inside/outside of the crank arm (assuming it doesn't graze the chainstay if you move it in)...you want anodized wheels (grey, surface hardened, squeak less), etc...

I've built chumbucket freewheel single speeds for $75 and totally bulletproof ones for $2-250, as well as a "sky's the limit" 14 pounder. I've heard that enterprising types have sold "messenger style" single speeds on eBay for double what they can get in the city, simply because lots of people don't know how to go about building them.

I don't want to call anyone in particular out on this board, but there's not a stellar crop here at the moment. But, for conversation's sake, san fran blows away chicago in this department. From the current sf board:

[dead links removed]
Single Speed Touring Road Bike - $230 mmm...this is what you want. Resprayed, custom 27in touring wheels, frame-up rebuild. There are currently "donor bikes" on Chicago CL for the same price, and they are still $200 away from looking like this one.

Somec Track Bike - $375. This is a $1000 handbuilt steel frame. F*#^ing Brilliant bike for the price.

and here's what you don't want:
Bianchi Pista $625 This should be $350-400 max. This douchebag has tallied up almost every nickel he's spent on this 3 year old unridden bike, and wants it all back. I'm surprised he's not charging for the air in the tires. Newer models (from sheldon brown) come equipped much like this for about the same price.

That's all for fixie/ss 101. There may be a pop quiz.

fixed gear entering the mainstream...in SF?

Once again, there seem to be some "lifestyle" reporters with plenty of time on their hands. Only this article is from the the San Francisco Chronicle, where you'd assume it would be passé by now.

Let me just take a moment of silence over the fact that fixed gear riders are featured in a new Lincoln Navigator commercial. Because nothing says "you deserve a 6,000 pound GPS-equipped leather couch" like some extra riding by on a stripped down bike.

But really, it's the whole brakeless thing again. It just keeps coming around. A couple points from the article:

A 26-year-old is complaining about how her knees "aren't what they used to be" though she attributes this to riding up hills without gears. I've been riding single speeds for 15 years, up plenty of hills on a number of gear ratios, and the only time I've ever had knee pain was when I rode fixed gear and tried to brake with only my legs. Here's a tip: pain is your body telling you that you're a dumbass. It's worked for millions of years, and our forebears that ignored it found themselves wondering why they couldn't eat their own hands for lunch.

One rider admits that he won't ride with a brake, largely due to "a vanity thing." At least he's being honest. But he points out that he once popped his chain and had to grab the front wheel to stop. He burned through the glove, but didn't crash. Bravo, but I bet in reality it didn't look cool at all, he was probably crapping his pants.

A little tip for all of you who refuse to use a brake (especially if you don't wear gloves). Don't reach down and grab the front wheel. It's not efficient, you need those hands to, you know, steer the bike, pray to jebus, and cover up your melon when you go flying under a bus. A better option is to use the arch of your foot on the back wheel, at the spot where your back brake would go. Take your dominant foot off a pedal, and put it perpindicular to the back tire (at the rear brake bridge) and PUSH. If you have knobbyish tires, it might peel your shoes right off, but in general, it will get you home. When I rode with only a front brake on a freewheel ss bike, this was my preferred way of stopping in the rain, since a rear brake is more manageable in wet conditions. You can "skid out" sideways to keep from going under that bus, and other than the obvious delay, is a fairly effective way to slow down.

I will concede that it's possible a front brake won't do much going down an extremely steep (SF) hill. At some point, it's just not physically possible to put any additional downforce on the front wheel without tipping over the bars, though this is reserved for extreme grades, not your run-of-the-mill roads. I rode in SF a few years ago, and there are a couple of spots around Nob hill where the bike wouldn't stop. It wasn't life threatening, but the back wheel was locked and I was skidding downhill, ass off the back of the saddle, almost touching the rear wheel. Feathering the front brake slightly would tip me up into a nose wheelie, so I was doing this sort of maladroit low speed bike dance - endo, skid, endo, skid...I was definitely "playing with it" to see how the bike responded, but I could get the bike down to about 5 mph, and still skid an entire city block. Stopping required just unclipping and putting a foot down, but you could also avoid the steepest grades to avoid this.

I will say, that on some of those same hills, I saw a skateboarder flying down at better than 25-30 mph, and he was doing the sickest slides I've ever seen (both front and backside) to check his speed and full stop. Threading traffic at courier speeds, no pads, no helmet, just laying it out there like he was snowboarding at Mammoth. Sick.

dictionary settles fixie case

Criminy, this conflict has consumed a lot of space here lately, but at least there's an amusing twist. According to this Oregonian article:

Boyd, who represented himself, said he won over Circuit Court Judge Pro Tem Christopher Larsen by quoting the Merriam-Webster dictionary's second definition of brake: "Something designed or used to slow down or stop movement."

Several more brakeless cases are on the docket. It's like an episode of Law and Order...there's just no telling where this one will go!

In other news, Portland named the safest place on the planet, on account of the complete lack of crime, and the po-po have resorted to setting up dragnets for unruly architects and bike messengers.

fixed gear cluetrain: update

Stop the presses. I just read the section in Bicycling Science again, and while the previous post is a generally accurate estimate, math don't like to generalize. As a matter of fact, the page is question is a little vague. Suffice it to say that force = mass times acceleration. Mass is the weight of the rider, duh, and acceleration, on this planet, at least, is 1g, or 9.8 m/sec. However, the author decides that deceleration is about .5g. I don't dispute this, but it may have proven pages earlier. Another point of contention is that Force is calculated according to distribution...that is, the COM is slightly closer to the back wheels, so at a fixed speed 40% of the force (measured in Newtons) would be on the front wheel, and 60% on the back wheel. I certainly don't dispute this, but it gets a little muddy on exactly why this transfers when braking the front wheel. Not only that, but the calculations put 90% of the resulting N on the front wheel...lifting the back wheel ever so slightly and making it very easy to skid the back tire if both brakes are locked up simultaneously. What's unclear is how this 90% figure is derived, and exactly how he achieves the "twice as much downforce" on the front wheel. Apparently, the correlation between stopping time and stopping distance is fairly linear, so "half the time" equals "half the stopping distance" so that's one less thing to clear up. I will transcribe the pages soon (it requires all sorts of annoying markup like f_V,r) and get a certified Mathematical opinion to help sort it out in English.

hey clueless fixed riders, use a front brake. here's why:

I just can't let this pass anymore. Someone has to stop the madness. If you believe what you read, fixed gear riders (at least the ones that give a rat's) were all in a tizzy over the fact that a couple of Portland riders (and a Milwaukee one) got ticketed for not having a brake. It seems that one of the Portland riders had the ticket dismissed on appeal, so we can all go back to debating whether steel is real.

Except, nobody learned anything. How can I put this delicately? If you ride a brakeless fixed gear and you believe that you can stop as quickly as a rider with a front brake, you are a fool. A damned fool if you squawk about it to a reporter, because that shit's on the Internet and you can't take it back.

Before the young fixerati rise up and protest, I'm going to break this down so many ways that you will need to travel to another universe with alternate laws of gravity to disprove it. But first, I need to take issue with the legal definition that the Judge was trying to enforce. (I couldn't totally side with the Man.)

According to the statute in question: A bicycle must be equipped with a brake that enables the operator to make the braked wheels skid on dry, level, clean pavement. strong enough to skid tire.

I would just like to make two points:

1. A front brake is twice as effective as a rear brake (to be discussed below)


2. It's damn near impossible to make a front wheel (alone) skid on dry, level, clean, pavement. (This is part of what makes it so effective.)
   

So, in otherwords, to comply with this law, you'd have to put a back brake on a fixie, which, in the hands of a competent rider, is probably only safer by a negligible amount. If you were to put a front brake on a fixie, technically, you would be able to stop twice as fast, in half the time and distance (again, to be covered below), though you would be in violation of the law, since you'd be unable to prove the skid factor. Sure you could skid the front wheel if you stop the back one simultaneously, but that's splitting hairs, so let's get to the nut of the argument.

I had planned to get out the book and the calculator and have some supporting illustrations, but there are fixie kids out there that need to be schooled and I can't waste another moment.

I discovered the effectiveness of a front brake by accident...a couple times in traffic, a car in front of me stopped unexpectedly, and I locked up the back wheel, skidded up the bumper of the car, jammed the front brake in a panic, and immediately ended up in a nose wheelie. Out of control, almost over the bars, but STOPPED. I soon witnessed a couple badass messengers hurtling into impassable intersections at top speed, standing up off the saddle, doing a nose wheelie, and going from 25 mph to zero in about 5 feet. I now do it all the time...I find that if you make a spectacle of yourself riding (but you're not a total ass) you tend to get a little more space.

If you want to get technical, there's a book called Bicycling Science that does a decent job of discussing the math and physics. Basically (and again, forgive me for generalizing here) friction between the tire and the road stops the bike. If you put say, 100 pounds of force on a rear tire, and lock it up, you're just waiting around through a skid for friction to do its job. However, if you put say, 200 pounds of force on the front tire, the additional force keeps the tire from skidding, but it has the benefit of stopping you more quickly.

How is it that you can put 100 (theoretical) pounds of force on the back tire, but 200 on the front? It's because the downforce your tire exerts on the road is a component (cosine, sine, tan?) of your center of gravity (technically, center of momentum, since your weight has a rotational velocity). To totally water it down mathematically: some portion of your weight times the rotational force is transferred to your tire's contact patch, where the coefficient of friction does its job.

I'll take a step back from the math (since I'm doing a piss-poor job of it anyway) and illustrate. You're flying along and you want to skid your back wheel. Your center of gravity is somewhere between your cranks and saddle. You're generating a force that equals (a component of) weight times distance. Your center of momentum is ahead of the rear wheel, so the "component" factor is fairly low. That's why messenger comps have 500 foot track skids...they move the center of momentum waaaaay out ahead of the bike, so that component (which I really need to look up) is minimized. Still with me?

It's the equivalent of riding down the road and dropping a sandbag tied to a rope off the back off your bike. It will stop you, eventually. Imagine taking a stick, tying that sandbag onto it, and jamming it into the ground out in front of your bike. That rotational force is behind the point of force, making this goddamned nameless component much higher. It will make you want to flip over the bars, BUT lifting your bike off the ground will drive even more force down into the ground, slowing you down more quickly. Something to the tune of twice as fast, in half the time and distance.

Sorry I butchered it so, but Bicycling Science does a better job of explaining the numbers...so if you have a problem with it, take it up with the author (who's incidentally an MIT professor). I would also add that by throwing your center of gravity up and back BEFORE the move increases the effect, so I think you could get even better results with some skills. The book deals with the mathematics of keeping the back wheel from coming off the ground, but my gut tells me that if you can really ride your rotational center of momentum like a rodeo cowboy, you can magnify the effects. I have also noticed that by kicking the wheel out to the side, you get even MORE force and control, though I'm not sure why, perhaps because you can keep your center of gravity/momentum further back/down without feeling like you're going to endo. There's a whole other "dimension of components" there.

If you still don't believe me...go to youtube and look up 'nose wheelie' - you'll see motorcycles going from 80 mph to zero in a fraction of what you'd expect. Or watch indoor motocross and see how these guys keep from flying into the barriers after their tricks...skidding the back tire on loose dirt for 50 feet, or standing it up in a nose wheelie for 10?

Or go figure it out for yourself. Find a moderately skilled ten-year-old bmx kid and ask him to go as fast as he can, and stop asap in a nose wheelie. Ride alongside him wit yo badass fixie self and see if you can jam up the back wheel and stop as quickly. Now imagine someone's opening a door in front of you both, and see which skill you'd rather have.

Note: before trying to master this skill, remember that you should have your ass waaaay off the saddle before trying it the first time, and your legs should be reeeeally loose - I can't stress this enough. Your legs should be the shock absorbers that let your bike rotate up off the ground, and not eject you over the bars. Do it at your own risk, and start small, with quick little jabs on the brake, almost throwing the back wheel up, so you won't be surprised when it happens. It's possible to do it around corners (it can actually help you drive the front wheel into the ground forcefully and not skid out, bmx-style) but it's an extremely sketchy feel, to say the least. Not recommended for the inexperienced, though it can save your life, which is nice. It does give you nice feel on the back wheel when used with a fixed gear, you can easily unweight the back wheel and track skid with far less effort.

Insert scary anecdote here: I once knew a guy with unsurpassed skills, like riding a one-handed wheelie, fully crossing up the front wheel, for 50+ yards...often passing roadies and cops on bikes. Anyway, he was learning the nose wheelie thing, and was trying to master it on several levels: stopping as quickly as possible, riding it, in control, downhill for 40+ feet, etc. He was extremely inebriated one night and goofing off in front the messenger bar...he ended up going over and getting stitched up right on the sidewalk by the EMTs. If it could happen to him...

As an aside, there are serious legal implications of riding a brakeless FG, such as the legal definitions of negligence. There are several components of legal negligence that I won't get into, but one of them is "did the participant do all that could be reasonably expected" to prevent something from happening. How would you like to be paralyzed as a result of a bike accident, and instead of getting $10 million, the opposing lawyers said "According to the MIT professor who wrote this book, you could have stopped twice as fast...so technically you were partly negligent when that drunk driver flattened you running a red light. Here's $10 grand." I doubt insurance company lawyers are that savvy yet, but with the rise in FG riders, it's just a matter of time before someone tries it as a defense. I got hit, and I certainly didn't volunteer that I was on a FG, for just that reason (I didn't hide it either, but they were obviously sniffing around for signs that I "contributed" to the accident).

Besides, what if someone ran you over, and even though their car was "legal" it only had half as many brakes (and weaker ones) as it could have. Wouldn't you go after them for negligence?

ok, kids, school's out. There may be a pop quiz.

54x14 fixed rider wins 50 mile time trial

From the Eastern Daily Press (Norfolk, UK) comes this rather impressive bit of news: Brian Phillips won a 50 mile time trial on a carbon fiber monocoque fixed gear, in 1:56.32. (No pics.)

Perhaps critical to his feat were the high winds that had riders clocked at 14 and 44 mph on the out-and-back course. I guess a 44 mph wind-aided solo ride is one of the rare cases where a 54x14 pays off.

Until recently I've always ridden pretty steep gears (53/54 x 15/16) and I've pushed it into a headwind for 25 miles, and it sucked. As a matter of fact, most of my recent riding has me fighting winds above all else, and it pushed me to dig into the parts bin for a 54x20. A little spinny for me, so it adds a bit of time to my 50 mile daily, but keeps my heart rate up and I suspect the added aerobic effort has knocked a couple pounds off.

I never paid much attention to gear inches (since technically they depend on the tire height as well, and are completely different for mountain bikes), but just the ratio, since you can do them in your head or on paper if need be. To illustrate, I always rode a 16 cog, since it's a readily accessible BMX freewheel. It's wise to keep a similarly-toothed fixed, so you don't have to add/remove chainlinks, or adjust the rear brake if you have one. When I started building single speeds, most road bikes had 52/42 chainrings, so most people built 52x16. Some dug up bigger chainrings (like me) and some hunted for smaller ones. (I think that smaller ones are much easier to come by now, what with the Internet and the rise in FG and single speed bikes. You used to have to get track bolts through the mail for chrissakes, but that's another story.) In any event, I see a lot of 48s out there now, so some common ratios are:

chainring	cog	ratio	comment
54	20	2.7	spinny, but nice for quick starts and headwinds
48	16	3	common track/ss gear, good for mild hills
52	16	3.25	common ss gear, a little steep for hills and sustained headwinds
53	16	3.3125	if you like it a little steeper
54	16	3.375	steeper still, usually leads to a fairly slow, but strength-building "soloflex" whole-body climbing technique
54	15	3.6	my fg ratio, good for pack speed, not for quick starts
54	14	3.857143	the gear this guy was riding

I'll probably move up to a 3.0 ratio, using a 54x18, though I suspect I will be spinning high rpm trying to keep up on blistering group road rides. Clearly this guy has plenty of power to turn them over in a fierce headwind.

On a side note, rather than switching out chainrings all the time (since they require 5 bolt changes, and possibly adding/removing chain links) I just have 3 different cogs: 16, 18, and 20. I keep a 48 up front on the 'cross bike and a 54 on the ss/fg, so I always have a range to work with, and it only takes a freewheel bolt (or lockring tool for fg) to swap them out.

frame i'd trade a pinky for

Jon Kendziera makes Jonny Cycles, handmade steel goodness out of Madison, Wisconsin. Grab a pile of cash ($1575+ track, $1850+ road) and get on the list. He's also got brilliant lugged stems to tide you over, and everything has stunning detail to paint and stainless. This one, for his painter, won the "Best Track Frame" at the NA Handmade Bicycle Show 2006, which ain't no small accolade. In addition to stainless head tube, it's got three "vents" in the top tube, not unlike a Buick Skylark from the 50s. See more of it here.

Cool guy. He once emailed me loads of useful advice on fork trail for a kids' cyclocross bike, and I wasn't even buying anything from him. Plus he won the track skid comp at the first (fixedgeargallery) Fixed Gear Symposium, blowing a tire in his 500'+ run.

Seeing bikes like this make you want to learn how to braze frames, yet at the same time, you realize you need jigs, experience, and a stunning painter...so you're better off saving up for one.

Velocity Tour rundown and killer alt bike shots

Three North American velodromes. A bunch of messengers. No brakes. The top 3 male and female finishers won tickets to Sydney CMWC. A gazillion different heats...4 man chariot, match sprint, snowball, flying 200m...The heavily sponsored Puma crew was out in full force, but there was plenty of local talent.

Results here or do yourself a favor and see more of Amy Bolger's pics (LA, Chicago 1 or 2, NYC).

Amy Bolger's site is stellar. She is the Graham Watson of the alt.bike scene. World Championships, alley cats, what have you. Clear out your schedule, cuz there's plenty to look at.

alleycat with a twist

It's about time somebody came up with a twist on the "two-man" alleycat. From NYBMA (NY Bike Messenger Association):

The New Jack City Alleycat drew about 40 people out to King Kog last Friday. The point of the 90 minute race was to sell as much crack as you could to the dirty scumbag drug dealers in Williamsburg & Greenpoint. Whenever you ran out of crack, you could go back to the first checkpoint & get more. That sounds easy enough, but drug pushing is boring without the risk of your ass landing in jail. That's why two of the 40 racers were chosen at random to be "cops", who got to hide out at the checkpoints for 10 minutes at a time, and bust you. Whenever you got busted, you got no points for that drug sale. The cops though, got points for each bust they made. In the end, there would be two winners - the pusher who sold the most crack, and the cop who got the most busts. The best Crack dealer was Shawn (Cleveland), and the best cop was Tom (who played good cop to my bad cop. I found through this race that when presented with fake authority, the ability to abuse it is easily taken advantage of.) Check Messnyc.net for more results or details and pictures or something maybe, someday.

It's interesting that it took this long for some significant variety to bubble up in this space. The Boston Scrambler (2003) was a free-for-all delivery contest, in which the racers delivered packages, but chose their own route through the city, and unlike most races, could deliver the packages in any order. The Bobo Challenge (Atlanta) was a scavenger hunt, and there's always Poker runs, but this one has an "Assassin" element to it.

North America Cycle Courier Championships

The Philadelphia Inquirer has a story on last weekend's North American Cycle Courier Championship. They seemed genuinely shocked that the winner (Austin Horse) had a 20 speed road bike, no tattoos, and he wore spandex. Stop the presses: Courier breaks the mold.

Here's an article (10 pics) of the 2005 World's in NYC (ok, Jersey), and the 2006 Worlds are in Sydney in October. Crikey.

Once upon a time I raced in the first CMWC in Berlin, 1993, and won a prize for my ah, minimalist attire. One of these days I'll write it up and post some photos.

lookout, them college kids ain't got no brakes

Stop the presses. Athens, Georgia used to have two fixed gear riders...now they have 10 or 11. Riveting news.

Also, Austin, Texas discovers bike couriers. Welcome to 2006, Austin. Have you heard of the Internets, too?

Sorry, do these even count as fg/ss/bc news?

xc (as in 'cross-the-country) rides on FG

File this under "no seriously, you people are brain damaged." What is it about riding for charity that makes people act so bizarrely? I'm going to hop on one foot across Death Valley for charity. Pay up.

First we've got the cross country ride for Histiocytosis...a disease that could probably use some PR, since it's much harder to remember, than say, AIDS.

Diabetics can take their pin prick tests a little easier knowing these guys have duplicated the effort on their behalf.

I did a couple Randonneurs on a fixed, and it sucked. But let's see, it wasn't the fg that sucked, maybe it was...the boredom? the corduroy roads? my complete lack of physical preparation? (I'd done 50 miles in the previous 6 months.) the fact that my 'taint' got more numb than a botox patient, and didn't come back for days? I think it was the boredom. The taint part didn't help either.

urban fixie article

Dirt Rag has a surprisingly long and in-depth article about the NYC FG scene. Not a bad rundown, considering the article could easily descend into cliche and purple prose. Well, maybe it's a little purple at the end.

It got me thinking. When I was 16, I did a summer session at NYU, which quickly devolved into me hanging out in Washington Square park, where I discovered I could live on $5/day, in some combination of Marlboro Reds and Nathan's hot dogs. Killing time with the local teen riffraff, I ran into a messenger type, a tall skinny black guy from Brooklyn, who in retrospect, was looking the part, but not delivering any packages, and maybe just a bit too old to be scamming on the girls in the Square. Anyway, he was old skool track ten years before it was a site, and he rode an italian handmade bike with a suite of campy goodness. It may actually have been Lawrence Fishburne method acting for his role in Quicksilver (not really).

Most of which isn't noteworthy...but I asked him if I could take it for a ride, and he actually let me. Let me repeat that. A messenger-type from Brooklyn let some random 16-year-old kid take his rare italian track bike for a spin around the park in NYC. I am sure he considered me less dangerous than a mosquito (I still have a student ID from that summer, and I looked about 13) but still...I don't even know if I'd let my wife ride my fast bike, nevermind some kid in the park.

So this one's for you, old skool track dude. If you ever knew how many miles that jaunt kicked off.

Fixed Gear Gallery "Symposium"

Dennis at fixedgeargallery.com had his
second annual Fixed Gear Symposium.

I caught bits and pieces of the first one in 2005, which was...nice. It was a little like a small town messenger alley cat event, only without the ego and attitude...which is to say it was nothing like a messenger event. They had a group ride and everyone was too tired to do the alley cats, and it was like a cross between Woodstock and a Church retreat. This year it seemed bigger, but it was held from thursday-saturday, making it difficult to catch without burning valuable vacation time.

Once upon a time, he planned on having the 2007 event at the refurbished Vigorelli track outside of Milan. That would be worth catching.

so you wanna be a messenger? part I

Quite accidentally, I recently found myself in the role of "geezer" - giving advice on the subject of messengering and/or single speed bike setup. It takes little more than espresso and a curious post on Craigslist to get me started on some subjects, so I decided to codify them. (You know, these adsense links are really starting to pay, I'm up to eighty-five cents a month.) We'll start with the job itself and next time get into some bike specifics.

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So you've seen some twenty-something kid whiz by, carving through a red light smoother than canned peaches. Maybe they were bunny-hopping two sets of railroad tracks at speed, or decelerating from 25 mph in a heart-stopping nose wheelie. Maybe you're a student, or a barista, or waiting tables, and you think "that looks fun." It is. It's nice to have single-digit body fat and be a "professional" athlete. Some girls dig it while others find you stinky and dirty. Adrenaline and endorphins are quite addicting, and you may find yourself pulled into it, again and again.

Get a few things straight. Unless you're elite or you go independent, the pay sucks. Even when it's good, it still sucks if you plan on having things like a house or a vacation in your lifetime. If you're lucky, you'll buy the best gear, only to systematically destroy it. You'll get hit repeatedly, and bystanders, drivers, cops, judges...none of them really give a crap. If you work hard winters, you could spend a month's pay on clothes, and you'll still get wet and cold.

Still interested? You'll start off clueless, but if you last a couple months, you'll probably become a poser. You will ride like you own the city, and do stupid things like fly blind around corners, use the sidewalks as your own velobahn, thread every gap at top speed, and scrap with any driver that dares not premunize your line. The sooner you get over this, the better. The forementioned citizens of your city think that all messengers ride like this and would just as soon see you bleeding in the gutter; impressionable children will mimic you and get creamed. And you'll look like a tool. Advance yourself a little further down the evolutionary line and control your anger, among other things. Your skin will last longer, and so will your gear. The cooler, experienced guys ride the same bikes for a year and barely get a flat. The guys who ride like this get creamed, destroy their gear, or get locked up. Coming from one who's been both.

With that said, here are ten things I wish I knew back then:

1. Wear a helmet. It may not look cool, but you *will* get in lots of little accidents. You will feel really stupid when you finally hit your head, especially if you can't walk or talk. I've heard every line about it restricting your vision, being too heavy, making you sweat, disrupting your flow, but it's all BS. You wouldn't catch a motorcycle racer or an F1 driver not wearing one, so just deal with it.

2. Get health insurance. Make sure you either have worker's compensation through your employer (if you're an employee, you'll have it - if you're an independent contractor you will not) or get some basic health insurance. If you're in your 20s (and don't tell them you're a messenger, or that you smoke) it could be as little as $45/month. Actually, this should be #1 on the list. I had to pay $13,000 in old medical bills before I could buy a house, and I knew a guy who got hit and put off going to the doctor for so long that his hand had permanently curled up like a chicken foot. Seriously. You won't be able to get basic cable in ten years if you rack up hospital debt.

3. Assume all drivers are blind, angry, drunk, incompetent, or stupid. Control your anger, or you will be a raging asshole by 10:30 am. Let it all slide off you. If someone dicks you over in traffic, make sure they're not psycho before you go off on them. You'd be surprised what people will do when you disrespect them. I've had people drive up on the sidewalk after me, drive the wrong way on a one way, stop the car in traffic and chase me on foot with a stick, etc.

4. Don't ride like a pro wrestler on crack. You really don't look that cool. If you need to go fast, flow, don't force your line. Nobody, not dispatch, your client, _nobody_ really gives a shit if you're a minute quicker. These rules can be suspended if you have to get to the bank by 2 or court by 5. Those are the only exceptions. I'm not saying you have to go slowly, you just need to learn how to go fast without annoying the shit out of everyone.

I once had a truck driver pull up to me and say "Don't be an asshole" and it got me thinking...he was exactly right. Of all the things that have been yelled at me (get on the sidewalk, I'm gonna fucking run you over, it's against the law to do xyz, put some pants on faggot) he was exactly right, I was just being an asshole, grabbing my line and expecting people to give me the respect of not running me over. Later in my career I adopted a policy of not dicking over the same car (or clump of cars) twice. It paid off dividends; people would see me drafting in traffic, cutting lights, catching a tow off cars, and actually pull up and give me tows, slow down to let me draft them, or wave me through ahead of them. As long as I didn't hold up the same 2-3 cars for blocks on end, they'd give me more respect. When people told me to "Fuck off" I replied with "Thanks, Havagoodone!"

5. Start from the ground up. Do the long cheap runs, the dead-ends way out of town, etc. If you do this for a few months and there's someone newer than you, THEN you can start bitching to dispatch. This is a big duh, but it ought to be said.

6. This one deserves to stand alone: Dispatch will move you up the food chain much quicker if you get your ass downtown and call in before everyone else EVERY day. If you work with a lazy or hung over crew, and you call in at 7:30 (not still in bed, but juiced up and downtown) you can make $40 before 9, and dispatch will reward you for making their lives easier. Half of all messengers call in at 8:55, sitting in bed, loading the bong, telling dispatch they are "downtown and ready to roll." This one should be up at the top of the list with "get medical insurance."

7. You may do all these things and dispatch will feed your ego, telling you that you da man. Then they will give you a $2 run far out to nowhere and give a coworker 4 of them in the same block. Deal with it, but not forever. Almost every courier starts out a shitty company, making shitty runs for shitty money. Then you look around and get in with a better one. Working is the only way to find out where to go, and a decent company won't want to train your ass until you know what floor to go to to file something in state superior court vs. federal. Don't bother trying at an elite company with 3 guys that have been there for 10 years, but somewhere with some turnover. The better one have a guaranteed minimum or base pay - usually 2-300 a week just for showing up, then around 50% commission on your runs.

8. Kiss the asses of security guards. Call them sir and maam. If they work at court, bring 'em a soda or something. I have bypassed a line of 15 pissy lawyers waited to get patted down to enter the building, and impossibly gotten a case filed after 5 pm. Yes, they are probably felons and they get pushed around and will take it out on you, but you will not win this one. You can get banned from the building, and it can be damn near impossible to get back in. Try landing a spot at an elite company and telling them you can't get into the Federal courthouse. You may as well move to a new city.

9. I've heard that one of the sweetest messenger jobs are delivering sandwiches or the like. Fewer security hassles, lots of tips, taxes paid, health insurance, free food. Even though it's not the 'standard' messenger gig, look around for something like this.

10. While you're doing something, think about what's next. This may seem obvious, but it was a big epiphany at one time. I remember sitting outside the First Boston building with about a year's experience. I was pretty fast, and I had my routine: rack and lock the bike (and my helmet, since I hated wearing it inside), stuff the headphone in my bag, walk 50 yards to the building, check out some eye candy on my way in, dig out the package, look up where it went, what floor, find the right elevator bank, etc. I came out and was killing time, and saw a "lifer" - one of the guys who looked ice cold and didn't bother to even glance at you until you'd been out there for a year. He bypassed all the "good" places to lock up, right up the door, freelocked his bike, made a beeline for the right elevator bank, and was back out in a minute or so. I realized that riding fast was only part of it, and there was this completely clean routine that I was overlooking. Of course you think about where to go next and what streets to take, but it made me do that on a microscopic level. Keep my lock opened and keyed. Know my next stop, right down to what door and what elevator, leave my helmet and headphone on. Ask security for the right floor as you walk by, instead of looking it up on the board. Hit the "down" button on the elevator as soon as you get off. Keep a detailed map taped to the back of your manifest board, and save floor numbers for your most frequent drops. Think about where you can use a free phone (yep, not many radios back then). It seems obvious in retrospect, but I noticed that instead of delivering a package every ten minutes, I cut it down to 7, then 5. After that I noticed how other riders would burn up time doing nothing, then complain about getting half as many jobs at the end of the day.

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I did it for 8 year in 2 cities, plus some "freelance" runs in Europe. I started at about $200/week and by the end I was working for 2 companies simultaneously, plus a few personal clients on the side, and I was clearing $700-1,100 a week. I came away with a couple $1000 bikes, $200 in the bank, $30,000 in back taxes and medical bills, a criminal record, a lawyer, and a probation officer. But if I won the lottery, I would do it damn near forever.

Next time: bike tips.