6 December 08
What's New Is Old
Davis is home to a homeless bicycle museum. The California Bicycle Museum was formed recently after the university in 2001 bought a collection of bicycles dating back to 1823 that was owned by a rancher near Modesto. The museum is seeking a permanent place to display these bicycles, but in the meantime they are on temporary display in the community center adjoining Central Park, open during the times of the Farmers’ Market.
We finally made it to the exhibit today and were quite impressed by the collection, which ranges from the 1823 draisienne with no pedals (you sat over the frame and pushed it along) to the latest design in streamlined human-powered vehicles with a full fairing. What struck me was how little bicycle design has changed in the past century. Once the safety bicycle came along in the 1880s and pneumatic tires were added shortly after that, the bicycle looks quite modern. One of the bikes in the collection was a track bike used by the great American racer of a century ago Major Taylor, illustrated above. The lines of the bike resemble any track bike of today, though the wheelset was made of wood and he trained on a particularly massive set of wooden rollers (as seen below the bike in the illustration).
Of the evolution of bikes in the twentieth century Frank Berto in The Dancing Chain writes:
…around 1908 there was a fork in the road: English cyclists took the right fork and would pedal their three-speed epicyclic hub for the next 40 years. French cyclists took the left fork and rode their derailleur gears right up to the present. American cyclists fell down a hole in the road and continued to pedal single-speed coaster brake bicycles for the next 60 years.
10 October 08
Different Strokes for Folks
Here are two noteworthy bikes for this week. The first bike is a prototype that would be good for our emergency preparedness efforts. The second bike we saw Sunday when we worked the Princess Promenade event. This quintuplet (scroll to the bottom of the page of photos) was not officially part of the event but it caused me to do a double-take when I saw it go past one of the rest stops.
5 October 08
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…
11 September 08
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.
4 August 08
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.
27 July 08
26 July 08
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.
24 July 08
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!
19 July 08
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!
18 July 08
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).