Life and the Tour de Pink

It has been more than two weeks since my last blog post, and for that I sincerely apologize!  Last weekend, my wife and I rode in the Tour de Pink.  Tour de Pink is a charity ride that raises money to pay for mammograms for women who cannot afford them.  I had planned to write about this ride at some point in the future but not for this week's (or actually, last week's) post, but it so nicely illustrates why this post is late I could not resist posting it now.

Last year was the first year either my wife or I had ridden in the Tour de Pink.  It was the first charity ride either of us had ridden, and more importantly, one of the first group rides either of us had ridden.  Up until then, we had thought we didn't like group rides, that we preferred to ride by ourselves.  However, we had such good time last year we resolved to ride it again this year.  There are seven different distance options for this ride ranging from 12 to 100 miles:

Last year, we rode 47 miles, a personal best for my wife.  This year, we decided to attempt 63 miles, another personal best for her and a metric century.  We followed the tried and true approach of increasing my wife's mileage by 10% a week, shooting for a final training ride 75% as long as the ride, or 48 miles.  At the same time, I was hoping to ride another 200K in October, so I did my long(er) rides on Thursday, and we did her long rides on Saturday, this schedule reflecting that I am semi-retired and work for myself and that my wife works full time as a professor at one of the local medical schools.  As luck would have it, my wife had a grant deadline two weeks after the ride.  Grant deadlines in the academic world are all consuming so this definitely complicated training, but we persisted and she reached her training goals.  The grant deadline affected not only her but me as well because I took advantage of an understanding boss to help her write the grant and so Sunday, September 9, the day I was schedule to put up my last blog post, I instead spent the day working on my wife's grant.  For variety, I had been using my Bianchi for shorter rides, and the following Tuesday I hopped on as usual, and for reasons I still cannot understand, went right over the top of the bike, leaving me skinned up and shaken and my poor Bianchi with a bent front wheel.  Between doing penance by trying to fix my Bianchi, working on the grant, and being discouraged and disappointed at my clumsiness, I did no riding last week.  Needless to say, the blog post that was due the previous Sunday didn't get much attention either.  However, I encouraged myself that I probably could use the rest, 63 miles was a significant ride, and that I might not be so far behind in my training thereafter.  On the morning of Saturday, September 15, the day before the ride, we got a phone call that a close friend had died, and that the funeral was the next day.  Shamefully, it took us a full hour to convince ourselves that we simply could not miss the funeral, that we were going to have to miss the ride.  In our defense, we were not only worried about missing our ride, we were worried about letting down our team and our donors who had supported us.  Once we resigned ourselves to that, however, we did a quick back of the envelope calculation and realized that if we rode 12 miles - but no longer - we could drive out to the ride, get our pictures taken with the team, ride the 12 mile course, drive home, shower and change, and get to the funeral on time, which is what we did.  Here is our "official" picture from the ride:

So what is the moral?  Firstly, it is to say that I take my reader(s) seriously and to let you know that I believe  I owe you an explanation when I miss a post.  Secondly, it is to try to provide some perspective to help me take the inevitable ups and downs of life in stride.  Since restarting cycling in 2008,  my efforts to get more out of cycling and to become a better cyclist have suffered many setbacks, from equipment failure to the limitations of being older to competing responsibilities to the illness and death of friends and family.  It is certainly not that I have it any harder than anyone else, but rather that, like everyone, I simply have to accept what comes along and to take as much joy as possible from every ride, even when it is a 12 mile ride on a day that 63 miles were planned.

Riding Comfortably for 200 Kilometers

Both the 200 km brevet I rode in May and the longer training rides leading up to it involved a fair amount of discomfort. To help control that, I took ibuprofen during these rides, but to my mind that is a stop-gap, not a solution. Some of that discomfort was muscle pain in my legs which hopefully will be improved by more training. However, much of the pain was not in my legs, but in my neck, arms, shoulders, and hands. And then there were the saddle sores. Since my brevet, I have been experimenting to see what I can do to make my bicycle more comfortable for long rides.  In this post, I will describe the experiments I am performing to learn what I can do to make my bicycle more comfortable for long distance rides.

After the brevet, I tried to maintain my conditioning by continuing my 90 mile training rides. As I have previously discussed, this did not work as a training strategy, but I was able to use the two rides I completed to do some important experiments. The first ride I completed on my Surly as ridden the the brevet. The second ride I completed on my Bianchi Specialissima. There were a number of differences between these two bikes:
1) The Surly had 18 speeds and index shifting using shifters on the brake levers. The Bianchi had 10 speeds and friction shifters on the down tube.
2) The handlebars on the two bikes were a bit different; those on the Surly seem wider and have some unusual bends in them.
3) The Surly had the plastic saddle it came with. The Bianchi had a well broken-in Brooks B17 saddle.
4) The Surly had 28 mm tires inflated to 90 PSI. The Bianchi had 23 mm tires inflated to 120 PSI.

Point 1, the difference between index and friction shifters, matters remarkably little to me. When I switch from one bike to the other, my reflexes take a few miles to adjust and on the Bianchi, I tend to shift less often. However, I have not noticed much difference in performance, comfort, or utility. On my brevet, the index shifters on the Surly came out of adjustment, so I had to stop and figure out how to adjust them. This would not have happened on my Bianchi. It is sort of like the difference between a guitar and a violin. If your guitar ("index shifters") gets out of tune, you have no choice but to stop playing and tune it. On a violin ("friction shifters"), you simply adjust your finger position. I think if I were to build another brevet bicycle, I would build it with friction shifters simply to get the better reliability (and lower cost). That said, this has little impact on long term comfort.

Point 2, the difference in handlebar shape, is a good example of the difference between long term and short term comfort. In the short term, I definitely prefer the shape of the handlebars on my Bianchi, and as a result am looking for different handlebars for my Surly. However, I can't say that I notice any difference in my long term comfort due to the shape of the handlebars.

Point 3, the difference in saddles, is an even better example of the difference between long term and short term comfort. When I first purchased my Surly, I fully intended to put my Brooks saddle on it. However, once I rode on the plastic saddle it came with, I found I liked it very much and kept it. Besides being comfortable, I liked that I didn't have to worry about it getting wet in the rain. When I switched back and forth between my Surly and my Bianchi, I found the Brooks somewhat squishy and odd feeling; if anything, I preferred the Surly's plastic saddle. The first evidence that the Brooks might have advantages came from the brevet itself. After the brevet, for the first time in my life, I developed saddle sores. They did not bother me on the ride and they never got very bad, but I had read enough about them to know to be exceedingly careful. In the weeks after the brevet, I found that almost every time I rode, they would flare up. However, I started noticing that the Surly's plastic saddle seemed to cause the flareups whereas the Brooks did not. I have just put the broken-in Brooks from my Bianchi on my Surly, and am eagerly waiting to see if this prevents saddle sores in the future. (By the way, this means my Bianchi now has a brand new, hard as a rock Brooks B17 saddle. 34 miles down, 466 miles to go before it is broken in.) There are many saddles on the market, including some specifically designed for randonneurs. Clearly this is a very personal decision and in my reading I came across many different recommendations for saddles which were good, and saddles which were bad. I decided to try a B17 because it probably received more favorable recommendations than any other single saddle, because I knew I found it comfortable to at least some degree, and because I had one in hand, all broken in, to try. If it doesn't work as well as I hope, I will try others.

Plastic Saddle that came with my Surly Crosscheck.  This saddle retails for about $50 and gets fairly favorable reviews.

Brooks B17 currently on my Surly Crosscheck.  This saddle retails for about $100 and is probably the single most recommended saddle by randonneurs.

Point 4, the difference between the tires, was, to me, a very interesting confirmation of what I had been reading. My Surly came with 32 mm tires inflated to 75 PSI. Even before I swapped them for 28 mm/90 PI tires, and even before I replace the very skinny, very hard tubular ("sew-up") tires in my Bianchi with clinchers, I was surprised at how little difference there was in the speed of the two bikes. Although subjectively, the Bianchi seems a bit "peppier", the speeds I find myself riding on the two bikes continue to be very similar. For short rides, I do not notice that much difference in ride quality either, and have been known to take the Bianchi onto dirt roads. However, when I did a 90 mile training ride on the Bianchi, by the end of the ride I was finding the rough ride of its hard tires very unpleasant. This experiment has definitely made me a believer in fatter, softer tires for brevet riding.

One thing that is the same for the two bikes is that on long training rides, my neck, arms, shoulders and hands become very sore. This is probably as limiting a factor to how long I can ride as the exhaustion of my legs. Because the two bikes are the same in this regard, I have to look elsewhere for hints as to how to solve this problem. From my reading, I learned that pain in the neck, arms, and shoulders is a sign that one's handlebars are too low, and that as one ages, one becomes less flexible and needs the handlebars raised higher. At first, I thought I might be out of luck raising the handlebars on the Surly because it used a threadless headset; the handlebars could only be as high as the fork stem. However, while bicycling in Maine, two of the riders that brought their own bikes (a Bianchi Volpe and a Surly Crosscheck) both had extenders on their threadless headsets to raise their handlebars beyond what the fork allowed. Thus, for about $25 I purchased an extender for my Surly and am testing higher handlebars. This job is not complete because I found I will need to extend the brake cables to make this work, but without yet having accomplished that, I have already gotten some height increase on the bars. One other benefit I hope to get from this change is access to more hand positions, which might help with hand pain and might provide some more efficient riding options. With the handlebars at the height they came, I found the dropped position on the handlebars unusable. I hope that, by raising the bars, I will be able to use the drops, giving me options for both efficiency and for comfort.

The handle bar extender is the slightly shinier black piece with two screws right below the stem.  It can add over 3 inches to the handlebar height.  If you look closely at the front brake cable as it approaches the brakes you can see that it is strained.  For that reason, the stem (and thus handlebars) are not as high as they can go; there are still two spacers above the stem.

This picture shows the current height of the handlebars on my Surly.  They are now just a bit higher than the saddle.

One assumption implicit in the above is that the Surly is my long distance bike rather than my Bianchi. The reasons this is so (at least for the moment) are as follows:
1) My Bianchi is an heirloom and I do not want to risk ruining it, so am reluctant to take it out too much or under harsh conditions.
2) As noted above, the tires on the Bianchi are too hard.  It might be possible to put wider, softer tires on the Bianchi, but I haven't tested that yet.
3) the Surly currently has lower gears than the Bianchi and it is not clear that the Bianchi can accept lower gears.  Even if it could, adding them would be taking it even further away from its pristine heirloomishness.
4) The Surly is generally easier to have repaired and maintained.

As I continue to experiment with the Surly in attempt to make it more comfortable on long rides, I will report my experiences on this blog.

Cycling in Houston, Texas: An Overview

Skyline of Downtown Houston, adopted from a montage from Wikipedia Commons.

When our family was getting ready to move from Boston, MA to Houston, TX about 25 years ago, close friends of ours who had grown up in Houston and who knew about our interest in cycling, warned us not to try to ride our bikes in Houston: "Texas drivers are not used to bicycles. They'll kill you." they said. I was in my cycling interregnum at that point, so their warning really didn't make any difference. I went bike riding with my boys a few times, but basically I had no occasion to test their advice. However, when I decided to take up cycling again 4 years ago, I recalled their warning. I carefully plotted out the 5 mile bike ride from the bike shop where I picked up my renovated Bianchi to my home to avoid as many busy streets as I could. (The trip was pleasant and uneventful, and these carefully chosen streets have been part of the venues of many subsequent bike rides.) Since then, I have been amazed and grateful for the many cycling opportunities afforded by the City of Houston, the County of Harris, and various other government agencies. This post is an overview of cycling opportunities in Houston. I plan to go into some of these opportunities in more detail in future posts.

Braes Bayou, near Texas Medical Center.  The bridge is part of the Multi Use Path along the bayou.

A nickname for Houston is the Bayou City. What is a Bayou? According to Wikipedia, it is "an extremely slow-moving stream or river (often with a poorly defined shoreline), or ... a marshy lake or wetland". Although this may have once been true for Houston bayous, many of Houston bayous look like canals to me. This is presumably the result of their having been modified for flood control. That notwithstanding, the three main bayous of Houston; Buffalo Bayou, White Oak Bayou, and Braes Bayou, have been utilized by local governments as sites for recreational multi-use paths which are heavily used by walkers, runners, skaters, and cyclists. These trails vary from 5 to 20 miles in length and are completely free of traffic. The number of cross streets is reduced because of the limited number of bridges that cross the bayou. In some cases, the cyclist needs to face traffic when crossing these streets, but in other cases, the bike trail goes below the bridge used by cars making the crossing car-free and safe. There are also two or three similar paths built on the site of abandoned railroad lines.

There are a number of streets with dedicated bike lanes in Houston. These bike lanes are not of very high quality; they are narrow and the surfaces are often uneven and dirty. Nonetheless, they can sometimes make the difference between an unacceptable degree of risk and a relatively safe ride. For example, 43rd Street is a very busy and fast road, carrying large trucks moving at 50 miles an hour, but because there is a bike lane between the White Oak Bayou trail and highway 8, this provides a very acceptable extension to one of my standard rides. Finally, there are signed "bike routes" with nothing special about them except for the sign. I suppose these might have long term benefits for making drivers aware of cyclists, but personally I have not seen that these provide much in the way of short term benefits.

Variety of cycling infrastructure near downtown Houston.  Multi Use Paths are in grey or green, bike lanes are in blue, and signed bike routes are in red or orange.  A high resolution PDF of the Houston cycling infrastructure can be obtained from the Houston Bikeways Program

Of course, bicycles are vehicles and, in most cases, have the same right to use the roads as do cars. Despite my friend's warning from 25 years ago, I have found Houston drivers to be reasonably accommodating for the most part, and Houston is filled with wonderful and varying neighborhoods with many low traffic streets perfect for even nervous cyclists like my wife and I. These streets are neither formally recognized nor documented, so one simply has to ride around and find them on one's own. What is safe and car free depends very much on time of day and day of the week as well. One of my early discoveries was that downtown Houston, a death trap during the week, is completely empty and a delightful place to ride early Sunday morning.

Two other interesting bits of Houston cycling infrastructure are the Alkek velodrome and the Rice University bike track. I regret to say that in 25 years, I have never been to the velodrome, but it looks very interesting and visiting is high up on my to do list. The Rice track, on the other hand, is a facility I use all the time. This track is carved out of a parking lot, is about a third of a mile around, and is completely flat (e.g. it lacks the banked corners of a velodrome.) Despite the lack of banking, riding at my old man pace, I have never had to slow down for the corners. The Rice bike track is my favorite place to do my least favorite cycling, interval training.

Almost everything I have described so far is within the city limits of Houston. There are a number of delightful country rides within a few hours by car. Again, this is a mixed bag. Some country roads are very busy and fast and I don't feel comfortable riding them. Drivers seem to agree, and tend to be annoyed and unfriendly towards cyclists on such roads. There are others, however, where you can ride for an hour and never see a car, and the drivers you do see are more relaxed and accommodating. On some roads, bicycles vastly outnumber cars on weekend mornings. I have become a real fan of the Texas countryside; it is somewhat barren by East Coast standards, but once you acquire a taste for it, it is teaming with wildlife and the small towns have an authentic country look and feel which I have not found elsewhere.

Texas countryside.  One of the bike rides near Fredericksburg.  Yes, farm animals are on the road.

The City of Fredericksburg, Texas is about four and a half hours' drive from Houston, so strains the definition of "Cycling in Houston", but nonetheless deserves special mention as the self-styled "Bicycling Capital of Texas". Local cyclists have created a unique resource consisting of 18 well documented bike rides in the area varying between 19 and 88 miles in length. Information about these rides is available on the web and as downloadable PDFs. In addition, this website contains a wealth of information on safe cycling practices for the area, housing options, local attractions, and the like. Early in our return to cycling, my wife and I spent a lovely long weekend in Fredericksburg, rode a few of their routes, and found them to be everything promised.

One advantage Houston has over many cities is that one can bicycle here year around. The coldest days in winter do require warm clothing, but none are so cold as to preclude riding. Truth be told, however, summers can be brutal. The bicycle club I belong to, the Houston Randonneurs, schedules a brevet once a month. However, the July brevet begins at 6 pm and is run during the night, and there is no brevet scheduled for August. Nonetheless, summer rides, especially in the early morning, are possible.

It seems that Houston is always under construction. In terms of cycling infrastructure, this is both a blessing and a curse. On the good side, Houston's cycling infrastructure is continuously getting better and more extensive. One of my favorite rides is the multiple use path along White Oak Bayou, and the day I reached the "end" and found a couple of more miles of path, including a lovely iron bridge and some of the prettiest parts of the bayou, was a good day indeed. On the bad side, construction either of the cycling infrastructure itself or of adjacent areas frequently compromises the infrastructure. The White Oak bayou path, the Terry Hershey park path along Buffalo Bayou, and the Rice track are all more or less compromised as I type this.

In summary, I am sure that many cities have more impressive cycling infrastructures than does Houston. Nonetheless, due in large part to two cycling friendly mayors in a row, Houston is a fine place to be a cyclist.

Another Brevet?

In mid-February of this year, I decided I would attempt a 200 km Brevet two and a half months later, at the beginning of May. As I previously described, by following a standard training protocol, I was able to successfully complete the brevet. What I hoped and expected would happen then is that I would have permanently reached a new level of fitness such that from that base, I could work towards longer brevets. My experience since then has been quite different.

I took it easy the week after the brevet and when I then returned to the 90 mile training rides I had done the two weeks before the brevet. When I did, I found each of these rides harder rather than the previous one rather than easier. In response to what I interpreted as over-training, took one week completely off the bike and then took it easy for the next two weeks. When I then started increasing mileage again, from 36 to 40 to 44 miles, I felt rested, which was good, but also felt like I was right back to where I started; that nothing had improved due to the previous training cycle, that to work my way up to a 90 mile training ride in preparation for a 200 km brevet was going to be just has hard the second time as it was the first. That was discouraging and caused me to revisit training schedules for randonneurs, with an eye this time for what a schedule looks like over multiple brevets and multiple seasons.

Here is what I learned:

1) I had expected to be able to do too much, too soon.

My textbook for training for the 200k was the book "Long Distance Cycling" by Edmund R. Burke, Ph.D. and Ed Pravelka. To prepare for my brevet, I extended their 10 week plan for preparing for a century to cover the 124 miles of a 200K brevet. I planned to attempt a 300k brevet two months later. When I found that I could not do that, I read the next chapter in "Long Distance Cycling"on training for a double century (since 300 km is 186 miles, getting towards a double century). It says "You need a solid foundation before increasing your training to the level this requires. ... we don't recommend striving for this level until you have at least 3 full years of cycling behind you ... even though you may have knocked off a century or two without much problem." In retrospect, what I was attempting was unrealistic, especially for a 63 year old man in the steam bath that is Houston, Texas in the summer.

Confirming this was some advice I got when I chatted with the other riders at the May 200k brevet. Hearing that this was my first brevet, one suggested that I "not rush it", that is, to not increase my brevet activity too quickly, but to allow some years work up to my goals, e.g. a 1200K or a Super Randonneur award. I listened to that advice, but didn't think 300 km in two months was "rushing it". Apparently, I was wrong.

2) Fitness is not a simple, monotonic, upward progression. Staying at the peak of fitness is a major stress that cannot be sustained.

One of the readers of this blog commented that, once he was in shape, he did not follow a training protocol as intense as what I had outlined because it was too hard on his body.

This is also stated very clearly on a how-to page of the website of the British Columbia Randonneurs Cycling Club: "In qualifying for PBP here in British Columbia, your training will have peaked in early June (to meet a July 1 entry deadline), but PBP is not until late August. Should you try to maintain your conditioning through the summer, or take a time out and rebuild again later? For PBP 1995 I made the mistake of trying to maintain my early-June conditioning through the summer. The results... training fatigue and injury! In the PBPs since then I've taken a break and then jumped back into training in July." (Eric Fergusson http://www.randonneurs.bc.ca/toolbox/training/big_ones.html)

In fact, this notion is implicit in the periodization approach to fitness common to many sports, including cycling. I have summarized the phases of an annual periodized schedule from the Ultramarathon Cycling Association Website:
"Transition: Can last a few weeks or a couple of months. It is a time for active rest, to repair your body and regain mental freshness.
Foundation: Occurs during the late fall and early winter months in which the cyclist accrues base mileage.
Preparation: A time to focus the training effort, gradually increasing volume (time on the bike) and intensity (how hard you ride). Training becomes gradually specific to your goal events.
Peaking: Focuses on the specific demands of your goal events. It is a relatively short period that achieves top form."
(Janice Tower, http://www.ultracycling.com/old/training/training_for_beginners.html)

3) There is more than one way to (not) prepare for a brevet.

I highly recommend the following webpage from the British Columbia Randonneurs Cycling Club: Training For Randonneur Cycling by Eric Fergusson http://www.randonneurs.bc.ca/toolbox/training/training.html
It outlines every imaginable training schedule (including not training at all) used by successful brevet riders. I haven't found anything specific to take away from this mountain of experience except encouragement to experiment and to find my own way to prepare for this sport.

Summary:

I'm still trying to put all the pieces together and to fill in the gaps to come up with a long term training plan and some realistic goals for brevet riding. In fact, I am wondering if brevet riding is even what I should be doing. I enjoy it very much and I was able to complete a 200 kb brevet, but perhaps the long term wear and tear of such long rides is too much for my aged and neglected body. For now, I am planning on a second 200 kb brevet in October, and depending on how that goes, perhaps a 300 km in November. Depending on how those go, I will re-evaluate.

Besides the training issues discussed here, there were other issues that arose from my first brevet, and I will discuss those in a later post.

It's Not About the Hybrid

In a previous post, I wrote about a cycling vacation we took in Maine where we rented bicycles.  It was a wonderful, well organized trip.  The only flaw was that my wife and I found the rented bicycles difficult to handle.  I speculated as to the cause, and one speculation was that we simply don't like hybrid bikes.  On our recent vacation on Martha's Vineyard, we rode borrowed hybrid bikes and had a wonderful experience.  Thus, I no longer feel that the problem with the rented bikes was that they were hybrids.

The bicycle I borrowed was a 1990's Specialized.

One of the most objective complaints I had against the hybrid I rented in Maine was that it was not stable enough to allow me to stand while climbing.  One of the rides we took on the Vineyard was somewhat hilly, hilly enough to allow me to try standing while climbing, which I could do comfortably and easily.  In general, I never felt unstable on this Specialized.

My wife rode two bikes on the Vineyard.  The first belonged to our hostess:

The second had belonged to our host and hostess's son before he outgrew it:

These were a matched pair of Schwinn Frontiers, about 10 years old.  My wife, who fell on the bike she rented in Maine and who, in general, felt insecure on it whenever she rode it, felt comfortable and secure on both of these bikes she rode on the Vineyard.

In summary, the three randomly chosen, inexpensive, hybrid bikes we rode on the Vineyard were perfectly adequate. This contrasts with the bikes we rented in Maine, where two out of four of the bikes were barely adequate to inadequate. To be fair, it is difficult to be sure I am comparing apples to apples; the bikes we rode on the Vineyard might, in fact, be considered mountain bikes not hybrids; they have 26" wheels and fat tires.  The reason I classify them as hybrids is because they have no suspension.  At some level, however, this argument becomes circular; the bikes we found unsatisfactory are different from the large number of different kinds of bikes we find satisfactory.  I only hope the very nice folks who ran the tour and provided the bikes in Maine noticed the problem and are thinking about it at least as hard as I am.

Old Bikes

Penny Farthing on display at local hotel bar on Martha's Vineyard

1980's Bianchi Volpe

In my last post, I described our vacation to Martha's Vineyard and the cycling we did there.  In the course of riding, we encountered some older bicycles that caught my eye.  Our first dinner on the Vineyard was at the home of Bill and Melissa, friends and neighbors of our hosts. When Bill heard we planned to bicycle the next day, he asked to come along. On that ride, I was immediately struck by his bike - an old Bianchi Volpe.  

Bill's Bianchi Volpe

Bill's Volpe is a 12 speed with 6 gears in the rear and two in the front.  It uses friction, bar-end shifters.  (I assume the aero-bars are not original equipment.)  The wheels are 700C.  The derailleur is a Sun Tour Cyclone, a feature that helps date the bike.

Rear derailleur on Bill's Volpe

I checked some Bianchi catalogues available online and found a Volpe in the 1987 catalogue but not in the 1973 catalogue.  Bill's Volpe appears similar but not identical to that in the 1987 catalogue - it has two rather than three gears in the front, for example. The frame is constructed from Tange Cr-Mo tubing.  The sticker promises that the three main tubes, but none of the other tubes, are thinner in the center than the ends ("double butted"), a feature which reduces weight while increasing strength. The Volpe in the 1987 catalogue claims that not only the three main tubes but also the chainstays are double butted. I don't know if this is a difference between Bill's Volpe and a 1987 Volpe, or if they just don't have a sticker for that.  (The two most common kinds of stickers are "Tubes" and "Tubes, Forks, and Stays". The 1987 Volpe is between these two standards.)

Sticker identifying the type of tubing used to construct this frame

A nice piece of detail work on the frame (the Bianchi embossing at the end of the rear stay.)

In summary, I would guess that this bike dates from about 1987.  What is amazing to me is that the Volpe has apparently been in continuous production from the mid 1980's until today, about 25 years.  It has evolved over the years with changing technology but has maintained its identity as an all-steel, do everything, fast but practical road bike.

1990's Specialized HardRock

My wife and I borrowed hybrid bikes to use for our rides.  In a post about renting bikes, I expressed concerns about hybrid bikes. I will revisit this issue in my next post, but here I want to focus a little historical attention on the bike I used, an older Specialized HardRock. Unlike more recent versions of this bike, the model I rode had no suspension. Like Bill's Volpe, this bike had six gears in the rear, but had three in the front and had the lower gearing overall characteristic of mountain and hybrid bikes.

Specialized HardRock

I found a Specialized Hard Rock on eBay very similar in appearance to this one, which was dated "from the 1990s", helping to date the bike I rode.  The bike I rode had a SunTour derailleur; that and the six gears in back help confirm a date in the 1980's or 1990s.  A date in the early 1990s is perhaps most likely.

SunTour Derailleur on the Specialized HardRock I borrowed

SunTour is a very interesting company which produced high quality derailleurs and introduced a number of innovations in derailleur design before they went out of business, not able to compete with Shimano.  I have two SunTour derailleurs in my garage, A SunTour Cyclone on an old Centurion my son keeps here for when he visits, and a SunTour GTK I put on my wife's Gitane in the 1980's when I increased its gear range.

Summary

The culture shock I experienced from the changes in bicycle technology which occurred between my first and second cycling careers engendered in me a fascination with the history of bicycles between 1960 and 2010.  There are a lot of wonderful resources available, a few of which I have been able to explore.  Grant Pedersen publishes a newsletter, the Rivendell Reader.  Issue number 42 has a very nice history of much of this period.  Two other resources I found useful are the iBike Timeline and a post on the forum BikeForums.

Martha's Vineyard

Last week, my wife and I were on vacation in Martha's Vineyard, an island off the coast of Cape Cod in Massachusetts.  The island is about 15 miles across and is a popular vacation destination.

We got in some cycling whilst there, and that's what I will describe in this post.  The island is very crowded during the summer, it is expensive to bring automobiles "on island" via the ferry, and so alternative transportation, especially bicycles, is encouraged.  In the map above, the roads highlighted in yellow have dedicated bike paths next to the roadway.  The bike paths are heavily used.

Our hostess and my wife on one of the bike paths.  This one is right next to the road.  Others are a bit farther away from the road and are sheltered by trees, making them prettier.

We stayed with friends who have a summer house in Katama and borrowed hybrid bikes from them.  (I will discuss our experience with these hybrid bikes in a separate post.)  I participated in a total of four rides; 9 miles, 25 miles, 12 miles, and 13 miles.  We rode on a mixture of bike paths, paved roads, and dirt roads.

One of the more interesting bits of bicycling infrastructure on "the Vineyard" was a bike ferry connecting Menemsha to Aquinnah on the north shore.  Our last ride of the vacation was one of our prettiest, a 13 mile ride around Menemsha to Aquinnah, which returned us home on the ferry.

The bike ferry "terminal"

Our bikes on the bike ferry

Another bit of interesting cycling infrastructure was bike racks on the beach:

My wife in front of the on-beach bike racks

Like many of you, I would really like to see more support for bicycling in our country.  I am a realist, however, and realize that this will only happen if the benefits of cycling are apparent to a broad section of the American public.  Those of us who enjoy riding bikes are an important part of this, of course, but I think those who do not ride themselves also benefit from increased cycling, and if this were generally appreciated, support would increase.  There are many ways in which cycling benefits everyone, by reducing traffic, by improving public health (and thus decreasing healthcare costs), and by decreasing pollution.  In particular, I think vacationing cyclists should be of particular interest to non-cyclists.  As communities see cycling as an important form of tourism, support for cycling will naturally follow.  Thus, I was excited to see an example of just this on Martha's Vineyard, a major destination for tourism.