Here we go...

The new school year commenced here in Claremont today, and the boy (my son) who has ridden the half mile to grade school for the past four years, at least, was driven for his first day of intermediate school. He was planning to ride the 2 to 2.5 miles, but some things need to be sorted out first, notably in the minds of his parents. See, while I am confident of his abilities on the road, either of the two routes he would take have certain obstacles. One route would take him through the colleges and the Village with all the students coming and going. The other route would take him by first, the high school, and second, an elementary school. Mucho traffic in both cases. We all still plan on him riding at some point. Give it a week to see which of his friends are riding and arrange to ride as a group. He wants to get together with them over the long weekend and do a practice run, which is a good idea. The principal of the school is an avid cyclist and commuter who has made many infrastructure improvements, including convincing the city to realign bike lanes approaching the school, and installed a new secured bike parking facility there. So there is a lot of support at that end. It is just that first day of the unknown you have to get past.

Laurent Fignon (1960-2010)...

What a career. He will always be remembered for one of the greatest losses in the sport, the second place finish to Greg Lemond at the 1989 Tour de France. But, that should not overshadow his many victories, including Tour wins in 1983 and 1984, the 1989 Giro, and Milan-San Remo in 1988 and 1989. Wikipedia has a list of his victories, I am sure other places do as well. When on form, he was an amazing rider. It is always a bit of a shock when someone  well-known from your own generation passes; Rest In Peace. Cyclingnews.com has put together a nice little gallery of images.

Yes...

It was quite the bike weekend around here. First I picked up new parts for the vintage Bottecchia rebuild as previously posted, took a nice long Saturday ride as previously posted, and then Saturday I picked up my new bike:

Next year has been an all too familiar refrain around here ever since my son was born more than 12 years ago, as in "I am going to make my comeback to racing, next year". Well, this year when my son stated that he wanted to start racing, I took that as my opportunity to turn that perennial next year into this year. It did not quite work out the way I had hoped; yes I renewed my racing licence and increased my mileage, but the only racing bicycle in the stable has remained the yellow Basso, with which you may by now be familiar. While it may still be a sensational bike by most standards, in the fast paced world of criterium racing, it would leave me at a distinct disadvantage. With a big sale this weekend at my LBS along with my already substantial team member benefits, I plunged in and bought myself a brand new racing machine. It is a 2009 model KHS Flite 500, aluminum with carbon fork and stays. The components are not up to my standard, and I have already begun to replace them with Campy. This was only the second complete road bike I have ever bought; usually I buy just the frame and build as I want. But the price was right, and I can ride it as is, gradually changing components over the winter and having it ready to go by the spring. Don't fret for the Basso though, it will not be disassembled, and mothballed as has been typical in the past; it is too fun to ride and receives too many compliments for that fate.

Bottecchia rebuild, part 5: more parts...

Big thanks to Dale at the Velo for agreeing to sell some of the parts I needed for the rebuild effort. Saves me time having to search and bid on them elsewhere. Today I was able to pick up Cinelli stem and bars, Campag brake levers (minus hoods), and Campag rear derailleur. I put some Cinelli bar tape on, and only then realized I might need to adjust the levers; I kept the old blue tape on underneath, just for history's sake.

A day on the river, and a little rodeo...

Among the things I like about riding the San Gabriel River Trail is the ability to ride from the mountains to the sea in about 1.5 hours, how you can ride by yourself for a while, then hook on to one of the many groups always riding up or down the trail, or how riding along certain stretches it becomes easy to forget your are in the middle of a massive urban area.

And then there is the little Mexican rodeo arena in the Whittier Narrows area. Saturdays are when they seem to hold events there, and the place being right beside the bike path you can stop and see a little of the riding and roping; maybe listen to the mariachi band for a bit. It wasn't as colorful today; sometimes there will be a group all decked out in their finest duds, big black sombreros, crisp which shirts, black vests, red ties. Pretty sharp looking. Maybe today was a blue-collar rodeo.

Roads are for...?

Thanks to a link today over at Biking in LA I was required to read about another misguided assertion that "roads are for cars", this one by a college student who I assume at some point will learn about research. Truth be known I was not required to read this, but shaking my head from side to side, while muttering under my breath does lighten my coworkers' day, and so for them I read. Now then, let me just come right out and say it, roads are not now, nor ever have been solely for cars. Roads are for transportation, for moving people and goods between one place and another. Here is something you can look up, back in the olden days (I mean really old) people and goods moved via trails. Trails, however, generally tend to be rather narrow and ill-suited to moving large quantities. Therefore, trails were widened, they became Traces, and Tracks, and roads. Keep in mind, this was still well before cars came on the scene, and began to clutter up the roads. At this time roads were travelled by people on horses, people driving wagons with teams of oxen, mules. Pedestrians used them as well. Over time, generations, hundreds, even thousands of years passed from the time the earliest roads were developed. Eventually bicycles were invented. People suddenly had a fast, easy and inexpensive means of personal mobility that did not require stabling, feeding, grooming, and the popularity of bicycling exploded. Still no cars; roads yes, bicycles yes, cars no. A little more time passed, and bicyclists became a bit weary of the rough dirt or cobble roads and began to campaign for nicely paved, smooth roadways in their cities, and even in the country. This nationwide movement became known as the Good Roads Movement (1880-1916) and resulted in some of the road improvements that we appreciate today. Throughout this period of time no one claimed possession of the roads in the name of a sole form of transportation. Roads were for everyone, and everyone knew it. Then came the automobile, with apologies to Marx and Engles, the true opiate of the masses. And with the auto came a sense of privilege and entitlement, even loathing of any other, different form of transport. This has, in turn, led to the misconception that roads are for cars, when in fact, their purpose has remained unchanged over time; roads are for general transportation, and are not the hegemony of a single mode of transportation over others.

Yannick Linke...

Meligrosa reminds that tonight is the memorial for Yannick Linke in San Francisco. Even it you can not be there, perhaps you can spend a moments thought for Mr. Linke and his family during your own ride. According to Michael at Bike NOPA, Yannick's family suggests donations be made to Doctors Without Borders.

Too much of a [good]sic thing...

China's massive traffic jam in it's ninth day now, a torture I would only wish on my worst enemies:

Meanwhile India's cities are also choked with the recent proliferation of automobiles:

I guess they should not have been so quick to give up on their humble, but efficient bicycles in order to worship at the feet of the false motorized savior. We are seeing the same cycle of more and more road building to accommodate more and more vehicles, that we have experienced in this country for so long. Can people/nations not learn from the mistakes of others?

To school...

One more week of summer for the kids in Claremont and then it is back to school. It is never to late to organize a walking school bus or bike train to your child's school. 

The Safe Routes to School website has a wealth of information and is a good place to start. For more, try Starting a Walking School Bus, or the Active Living Resources Guide to organizing a Walking or Riding School Bus (pdf brochure), and the downloadable Walking School Bus Training Guidebook available here, from Alta Planning + Design and the City of Santa Clarita.

From the archives...

Here is another photo from the 1993 Los Portales Whittier Grand Prix. If anyone knows who that is leading out, let me know please. The larger teams are represented up front - an L.A. Sheriff and two Saturn riders. But what I find more interesting are the prevalence of the Scott Drop-in bars. They were a classic example of something exploding onto the scene, enjoying widespread use for a handful of years, and then disappearing as quickly as it arrived. I am sure you can still find them at the bottom of parts bins in garages across the country; I, unfortunately have no recollection of where mine ended up.

Ghost bikes...

Michael Nine, 15 July

Jennifer Costlow, 13 August

Dan Crain, 15 August

Doug Caldwell, 20 August

After having posted a few of these earlier in the year, I decided not to do anymore - why create another reminder of a tragedy, the cold details of which are covered by other media, or other cycling community blogs. And then I realized that is why ghost bikes were created in the first place, as reminders - reminders of a human life, and of a human death, and of how quickly one can give way to the other. 

There will be a memorial ride for Dan Crain on Saturday, August 28. Contact the Orange County Rebel Riders, or see the OCRR website for additional information.

A trip to London, and a new addition to the library...

After more than a week in London visiting family, my wife returned home last night. Between the visiting, sightseeing, shopping and what-all she had a grand time. Of course she is aware of this other passion in my life and managed to take some cycling related photos, and I won't trouble you with the multitude of others.

London's cycle-hire was well in evidence around the city.

The younger sister's bike.

A randomly parked bike at the Princess Diana memorial.

These were pretty cool bike racks; they are called Plantlock, and are being marketed for home or at work. Quite attractive if the plantings could be maintained. I like how the simple graphic shows how to secure your bike.

You may have read one place or another, how London is experiencing a terrible bike theft problem. Even so, locked bikes are well in evidence around the city.

And now for my new book, straight off the plane.

Velo: Bicycle Culture and Design, published 2010 in Berlin, by Gestalten, is a real compendium of all things bicycle culture and design (hmmm, that's a coincidence, sort of like the title suggests). Quite interesting, it is mostly photos and captions, the kind of book you find yourself going back to time and again for inspiration, reference, or what have you. Reads well with a good homemade beer from a friend on a hot day.

Viva Raul Alcala...

Mexican National Time Trial Champion at age 46.

I was just reading about the 1987 Tour de France, the year Raul won the Best Young Rider Jersey, with 7-11, and was wondering whatever became of Raul. Still going strong apparently.

Bottecchia rebuild, part 4: progress...

is slow, and made slower by all the nicks and scratches in the paint I keep dwelling on. To repaint, or not to repaint, that is the question right now. It would mean a trip to the O.C. since that is where the powder-coat place that everyone swears by is located. And there is no point in continuing to install components until I decide. Never-the-less, here is how it looks so far, with parts going on, rather than coming off:

Quick ride...

Does everyone have a reliable stand-by ride that they can do when short on time? The type of route you know like the back of your hand, close to home, perhaps varied terrain, just enough to get a good amount of training done in an hour or so. This is mine; it is about an 11 mile loop, if you can call it a loop ( I used to call it a modified figure-eight, but now that I see it drawn out it doesn't even look like that), but at any point along the route I am never more than 3 miles from home. No major hills, but a lot of gradual climbing and descending. Relatively scenic. Excepting the stretch along Foothill Blvd it is all through residential areas. In fact it suffices as a passable tour of north Claremont, passing by the Colleges, Bernard Field Station, Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, Claremont High School, Thompson Creek Trail, Claremont Hills Wilderness Park, and numerous other city parks.

Heading north on Mills with Sunset Peak in the backgound

Mt. Baldy Road

South on Padua Avenue

South on Indian Hill Blvd.

South on Mills. Bernard Field Station along the right.

West on Foothill. Weird, the lack of traffic.

Claremont School of Theology on Foothill

There's Dale and Sam at the Velo, on Foothill. Can't seem to take photos to the side while moving.

North on Indian Hill

East on Baseline with one of the rock houses on the right.

Just realized, after looking at the photos one might get the impression that this area of Claremont is virtually car free. Granted it is not downtown 'Bigsburg', but... all in the timing I guess.

Absurd anti-bike quote of the day...

comes to us from London:


"A group of Bloomsbury residents claimed it would be a “violation of their human rights” if a docking station were to be built outside their mansion block."


access to bikes as a violation of human rights. As if Dan Maes and his U.N. plot in Denver, and Rob Ford in Toronto were not enough. What is it about the English-speaking countries lately? People seem to be increasingly fearful and intolerant of change, anything that might disrupt their comfortable obliviousness, and their reactions are becoming more and more far-fetched.

Leave it to the British to come up with a name...

Mamils. A few days ago the BBC news magazine published an article about the rise of the mamils (middle-aged men in lycra). If you have not seen it yet, it is a fun little read, good for a laugh during the day. Funny thing is, there is also a lot of truth in there. For instance, I can not recall seeing a whole lot of these 'mamils' during the 1980s and 1990s; maybe I was just too preoccupied with hanging-out with the racer crowd to notice, maybe I was still young enough to ignore them, perhaps I thought they were some sort of weird anomaly in the cycling universe, sort of like soft-ride, or Scott drop-in bars (more on that later). But now, you do see them all over on any day of the week, but especially on the weekends. They ride into the Claremont Village area from points both far and near. Buy their morning cup of Joe, relax for a bit, talk about how carbon is becoming out-dated, being replaced by old steel bikes, and then hit the road again; they are usually friendly creatures, having cast away pretenses and hang-ups years ago, and are therefore quite approachable and willing to talk about their latest passion.

I feel confident that I can distinguish the "them" from the "me" - even though I fall into the correct age category, I lack the other defining characteristics, to whit: (#1) no excess disposable income with which to spend on (#2) the latest high tech carbon fibre frame with professional grade componentry. Nor am I (#3) coming back to cycling after a period away from the activity. I believe that the mamilization of America needs to be encouraged - these fellow cyclists are doing something good for themselves, by leading more active, healthy lives, while showing the masses that, yes it is possible. In turn this is good for their families (the whole setting a good example for the kids thing), and good for the communities in which the mamils live and ride, for the same reasons. But, whatever you do, do not underestimate them - things like this (cycling) tends to turn into a passion, and in no short time they may end up kicking your rear on the weekly training ride.

From the archives: Olin Bakke...

Pictured here is Olin Bakke leading the Pro, 1, 2 field during the 1993 Los Portales Whittier Grand Prix. This race was held relatively late in the season, October, I believe. This was a not insignificant local race on the racing circuit as attested by the teams represented in this photo. For the life of me I can't remember the team kit of the rider immediately behind Bakke, but next in line comes a Chevrolet/LA Sheriff rider and just coming into the picture at the far left, a Saturn rider.

It was common to see Olin leading many of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley training rides through the 1990s, such as the Rose Bowl and Montrose rides, the Sunday La Tuna ride, the Simi Ride, he even did the old Bicycle Doctor ride a handful of times on Saturday mornings. He rode for a number of teams during this period, including Xcel-Mongoose, Los Portales, LA Wings, Shaklee, and Nutra Fig. His career was studded with top ten finishes, including a second place at the 1996 National Elite Road Race Championships. In 1997 he finished in fifth place in the National Professional Points standings, and highest placed U.S. amateur. The following year, while riding for the Australia Post squad, he captured the Sprints Jersey at the Herald Sun Tour, where he also wore the Most Aggressive Jersey and Leaders' Jersey for several days. Bakke stormed into the yellow jersey following a strong opening two stages: "This is going way better than I expected...I'm really pumped just to come out to Australia and race. This would be the highlight of my career." But it wasn't to be, he was taken down in a crash during the fifth stage and lost the yellow jersey the following day. I met with an old racing buddy over this past weekend, and he reminded me of Olin's catch phrase which I can hear him uttering that fateful fifth stage - "that's bullshit."

This quote I found about him kind of sums up the way he rode, and who knows, maybe continues to ride: "Olin Bakke, now he was a hardcore, old-school badass...How many people do you know who go out on 150 mile rides with lead-shot filled water bottles strapped on their bikes." -quote by Mark Fennell at cyclebanter.com

Quotable link...

"She is late. Stuck in traffic. I was the early one. A trusty little bike had saved my bacon." - Just a nifty little anecdote to promote the Clif-2 mile challenge.

What good is a bike lane / path...update...

You might remember a post from a week ago in which I lamented the profusion of trash cans blocking the bike lane on Mountain Avenue here in Claremont. Well, this is what I found today:

Just look what the voice of a lone blogger can do; it can move mountains, or at least trash cans. Ha, ha, but no, this photo is from a day earlier than last weeks photo; this one, taken on a Monday, prior to waste collection, last weeks photo taken on a Tuesday, after pick up. What this clearly seems to show is that the problem lies not with the residents, who put the receptacles out against the curb, or even on top, leaving adequate room in the bike lane, but instead lies with the waste management company who seems to let receptacles lie where they will. And this is where they will (Mills Avenue heading up to the Wilderness Park):

Clarification...

Just a quick clarification concerning an earlier post about the Bicycle Doctor shop ride. It may have sounded like the Bicycle Doctor was not in Highland Park anymore. They are, and have always been; though they have changed location twice, the different locations have always been in Highland Park. The shop is known today as Cycleworx, and the shop owner, Mitch, who was shop manager during the BD ride era of which I wrote, performed emergency welding to my bike when I was hit while commuting in to work - for no charge. As I have mentioned before, it does pay to be on good terms with your LBS.

Slow Sunday scenes from the Village (and some not so slow ones)...

but first

Please DON'T run down the tourists. She is in a crosswalk for christsake! A little patience goes a long way.

Now back to it...

a mechanical put him on his feet...

read between the lines...

relaxing in the morning sun...

riding fixed... ohhh, that may not be the right choice of words...

down at the corner...

later...

just passing through...

bringing home the flowers...

the farmers' market was hopping today...

and they had the toe-tapping covered...

i hereby decree orange to be the color of the day...

faster daddy, faster...

have knapsack will travel...

cruising the boulevard, bikestyle... but wait...

make way, peloton coming through...

and through...

lanterne rouge. Judging by the prevalence of one particular jersey, I think that was the Cycling Connection group rolling by.