Friday, May 15, 2015

Test Ride 4: Reference Route

I was teleworking on Bike to Work Day. That circumstance would initially seem to preclude participating in biking to work.

Mathematics to the rescue! It is well known that if you travel in a circle you eventually wind up back where you started (Valerie could prove this, I'm sure). So, if I were to go out for a bike ride that was, say, a loop I would wind up back where I started, riding to my home office from my home home, allowing me to bike to work. How fortunate for me that the bike-lovers who run Arlington sustain a loop trail known as the "Arlington Loop" and that I can access said loop easily from my house.

Riding the Arlington Loop had two additional benefits. First, it's the bike ride I have done far more often than any other over the past two decades. It is my Steely Dan Aja of bike rides (Aja is an album I've pretty much memorized over 35 years of listening - it's always what I use for test listening to new audio equipment - it's the first CD I ever bought and remains the only album I already owned on vinyl that I re-bought as a CD). Thus it would make a good, calibrated test for the new bike. Most importantly, since there were Bike to Work pit stops along the loop, there'd be SWAG!

Alas, conditions varied from the norm so it wasn't quite a calibrated ride. I had been out very, very late Thursdya night partying, dancing and perhaps drinking at a Jerry Garcia tribute concert at Merriwether Post Pavilion. My legs were a little achy in the morning and I was sleep deprived and dog tired. I let myself sleep in a little bit, not getting on the bike until 7:30 AM (my usual exercise time is about an hour earlier). I rode the loop counter-clockwise to minimize my interaction with commuters. Down the W&OD to Shirlington I went. I got happy as soon as I got on the bike - achiness and tiredness forgotten. It's easy to feel good on this part of the trail, since it's downhill all the way to Shirlington. I continued onto the connector trail they cleverly squeezed in to connect Shirlington to the river (before they added this trail segment this was the bad part of the ride, a confusing ride on the streets through some borderline neighborhoods).

The ride up the river is always my favorite part. Columbia Island Marina had signs saying they were a BTWD pit stop - yay, a swag opportunity!! I detoured into the marina but it was quiet - no pit stop in evidence. I was on the tail end of bike commuting rush hour and either the pit stop had already shut down or I somehow failed to find it. Dang, it appeared at I had missed my swag opportunity. With a heavy heart I pedaled back out of the marina and continued north on the Mt. Vernon trail joining the flow of bike commuters. I was quickly reminded what a slow rider I am. I was being passed by just about everyone from Spandex-clad robot riders to normal humans. The only riders I passed, and I must say I totally crushed them, were people out on Capital Bikeshare cruiser bikes. Riding in the bike commuter peloton in rush hour was not all that different than being on the Beltway and I was happy when I reached Rosslyn and broke off from the pack (they were mostly headed to DC) for my climb back out west.

As I climbed out of Roosevelt Island lot I chanced upon Arlington's main Bike to Work Day pit stop at Arlington Gateway Park! OMG! Booths. Water bottles. T-shirts. Cyclists milling about. Free coffee. Walter Tejada making a speech. I stopped and filled my pack with stuff before heading on. Swag at last!

A little confession: I set out wearing an empty backpack *strictly* so that I'd have a way to carry swag and to look enough like a genuine commuter to fit in (and get swag).

The ride up from Rosslyn to Ballston is always ugly. A series of inclines and dips, inclines and dips. On this type of ride I really miss the 3x front cog on my other bike. I can drop that thing into the granny gear and have instant access to the low range. On a 2x bike you have to shift down, down, down through a bunch of gears to get to the low end. Up through the gears, down through the gears. Up through the gears, down through the gears, all the way to Glebe Road. The good news is that my knees did not hurt at all on this ride, but towards the end the combination of sleep deprivation, hangover, tired legs and hills did get to me. I was happy to reach Mile 4.5 and do the final climb-out up to my house.

Some observations:

1. I am at this point a really slow rider. I seem to be averaging 12 MPH on rides. In Potomac Pedalers terms I am maybe a C or CC rider.

2. The bike is comfortable and well suited to purpose. I may at some point buy a second set of wheels and equip them with more roadie tires.

3. I need replace the front derailleur cable and adjust the derailleur.This is more daunting than the brake and tire work I've done since in my experience getting a derailleur adjusted is a dark art. If I'm going to keep writing on this topic I'll also need to learn how to spell "derailleur" without thinking about each letter each time, just as I have to learn to spell "reconnaissance" for my new job.

4. I need to continue tinkering with cleat positioning on my shoes. I have trouble unclipping my right foot, which naturally angles out. I adjusted the angle of cleat on that shoe but made matters worse (harder to unclip).

5. Before starting this ride I stretched much like I do before running. Maybe that's what I need to do to keep the ITB pain away.

6. I miss my rack trunk. I may need to put a rack on this bike. Carrying a backpack just for small items like a lock is a pain. And don't suggest I start wearing bike jerseys with the pockets in the back.

7. I need to break the bad habit of grabbing for the left brake. I'm a leftie and it's my dominant hand, so when I'm riding on the upper part of the bars I tend to drop down and grab left. Grabbing just the front brake is a dangerous practice. Bicycles are yet one more thing made for right-handed people.

8. I haven't been on the Marin since I bought the new bike. I need to re-ride the reference ride with that bike to have a controlled experiment.

Bonus observation: I remain convinced that cyclists are douchebags. I saw a lot of bad behavior out on the trail - dangerous passing, taking up too much trail, paying more attention to their phone than to the trail, etc. But you already knew I felt that way ...

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