Princess Promenade

The second annual “Princess Promenade” — a bike ride for women and girls to try and get them to exercise — was held today along the American River Parkway in Sacramento. Numenius was a bike radio mobile and I was a shadow radio operator for the director, which meant I saw a lot of pink tutus and tiaras, saw gals coming back in saying this was the furthest they had ever ridden, got to witness the horror of a teenager who had thrown her retainer in the trash which had then been emptied and had to tell her I didn’t know where they’d taken the bags. She really was prepared to paw through dumpsters…

As I write the Red Sox and Angels are tied at four. Hoping the Sox put this one away tonight…

Lance To Visit Davis?

Inspired by a strong performance in a 100-mile mountain bike race last month, Lance Armstrong has decided to come out of retirement to try to win his 8th Tour de France in 2009. One of the races he plans to ride as training for the Tour de France is the Amgen Tour of California. Since Davis is a host city for next year’s Tour of California, being the starting point for the second stage of the race, we should be able to see Lance Armstrong warming up riding in the streets of Davis before the day’s race on February 15th. The trick will be to arrive plenty early before the riders depart for Santa Rosa.

Changing of the Pannier

My old Jandd grocery bag pannier finally wore out — in the photo it’s the bag to the left. Saturday I shopped for its replacement, and ended up with the Deuter grocery bag pannier at right. We shall see how well it lasts, but so far I’m pleased with it. It’s a little deeper than than the old pannier, it has a cover that you can close up in inclement weather, and there is a second carry handle which should help guard against the way the old one ripped.

Theological Question of the Day

Bike Whisperer

It’s never too late to learn to ride a bike, as this story about a bicycle riding instructor in Somerville, Massachusetts relates.

Host City

Our breakfasts continue to be enlivened by following the Tour de France. Today was the critical final mountain stage, this year ending in the famed Alpine climb up l’Alpe d’Huez. Carlos Sastre rode like a banshee the final few steep kilometers, winning both the stage and taking the overall lead. The remaining decisive stage will be Saturday’s time trial; we shall see whether Sastre can hold his lead, or will lose it to a better time trialist.

Today we had exciting news about California’s answer to the Tour de France, the Tour of California. This cycling race, first held in 2006, has become the biggest stage race in the United States. These past couple of years the race has passed through Davis in a stage running from Santa Rosa to Sacramento. Thanks in part to the enthusiasm of Davis cycling fans these past two years, Davis won’t just be an intermediate town on the way, but will be the starting point for the second stage of the race next year. This stage will run from Davis to Santa Rosa. Happily, this stage will be on a Sunday (February 15) so we’ll be there to watch and take in the pre-stage festivities!

The Tour de France

Our mornings in July go like this:

I get up, get the tea on, feed the cats, get online, go to the BBC’s cycling page where there is live text commentary (no choice if you’re on dialup) on the current stage (if you’re not following it, today is moving from the Rhone delta into the alpine foothills and punishing mountains that follow). Numenius gets up anywhere between one and three hours later and is usually still in time to catch the finish.

I started following cycling when Miguel Indurain was in his heyday. He was probably the finest athlete Spain’s ever produced. Now that Lance Armstrong is no longer the king of the peloton and the interest of Americans in bike racing has sort of returned to where it was before, it’s back to following the fortunes of the unlikely, the opportunists, the ones whose last chances are this year having been unfortunate enough to have come of age when Lance did.

It’s great there’s no obvious favorite. Sentimentally, I’d like Evans to win. But mostly I just love to follow this fantastic event over the three weeks it takes, watching the emergence of the likes of Mark Cavendish (Manx sprinter) and the breakaway hopefuls. Allez allez!

Bicycle Economics

Inspired by David Mackay’s online book Sustainable Energy — Without the Hot Air, I worked out just how much more energy-efficient a bicycle is than a car. Here’s the math: the energy content of gasoline is about 10 kWh/liter. Our car gets around 25 mpg (none-too-efficient, I know) which equals 10.6 km/liter. Dividing through our car therefore uses 0.94 kWh/km. As for the bicycle, at a modest pace of about 20 km/hr, I use about 15 kcal/km of energy (this value comes from the excellent book Bicycling Science, by David Gordon Wilson). At 857 kcal/kWh, I thus use 0.0175 kWh/km on my bike. The bicycle is therefore 0.94/0.0175 or about 50 times as efficient as the car.

In working out these energetics problems, one quickly runs into a plethora of conversion constants. Here’s one for fun: since a kilocalorie is the same as a food calorie, driving the car 1 km uses the energetic equivalent of a pint of ice cream.

We’re doing pretty well though in minimizing our car travels. Going through our expenses this evening, I worked out that over the past six months, we spent far more money on bike maintenance and parts than we did on gas (those bicycle overhauls add up).

Heat, Asphalt, an Offer for my Hand

It was 65 degrees at five in the morning when at least 600 riders were already out trying to get the first 100 miles under their pedals before it reached 100 degrees. The brutal hot winds we had this week were mercifully spent, but that meant there was nothing, no breeze, to move the heat off the roads until around twilight.

One guy drove up from San Diego and another down from Oregon the day before, deciding to register for the ride. The registration czarina made them say unequivocally they understood what the predicted temperatures were going to be the following day. Hmm, they said.

Our brief was rest stop 5 (of 11) followed by sagging the course forward to Davis. The rest stop was supposed to close at 2:00 pm; we got out of there at 4:30. But with Numenius taking his turn monitoring the radio in the car, I helped hose down riders — which is when I got the offer of marriage. (Lest this be construed differently, I should say a) this person couldn’t even see me, his head was down and flowing in salty water that was turning unsalty; b) the other hoser-downer got a similar offer twenty minutes earlier. It’s an occupational hazard, getting proposed to on hotter than hell Double Century days.)

Many people needed rides back to Davis or at least over the big mountain. One broke two spokes early and we had to get him up toward the lunch stop; he’d been the captain of a container ship (which doesn’t offer much opportunity for cycling) and since retiring had taken up cycling with a passion. A second had run out of water between rest stops, spaces roughly 25 miles apart, and had ridden in the heat for five miles without water. He just was never able to recover from the dehydration; we picked him up four miles out of Rest Stop 5. He’d only really been riding for two years, but this was his fourth Double. Why? After he recovered from a brain tumor, he figured he needed to do something positive. (!) Finally, we picked up a DC veteran, someone who’d ridden this event 36 — that’s thirty-six — times. He’d never been sagged in before, but was unable to move because of heat cramps. His heart was certainly willing and able to keep going, but his legs just couldn’t function anymore.

No shame at all in calling it quits in this heat, chaps. No shame. I’m just glad you figured it out before someone needed to get you to the ER.

Today, I’m gardening and birding.

Rattling Around Upstairs

Yesterday morning I dreamt that I was with my brother and nephew who were wondering if I had been following the Tour de France this time, which had just ended. I hadn’t, but the news in the paper and the highlights on TV were discussing Jelle Nijdam’s victory in the Tour. At which point the cat wakes me up, and I’m wondering where on earth I came up with that name, so I write it down. When I get up in the morning I search on the name and find his Wikipedia entry. It turns out he is a Dutch former professional cyclist who had held the yellow jersey in the Tour for one day in the 1987 Tour, for two days in the 1988 Tour, and won a couple of stages in 1991. I probably haven’t run into his name since!