Luck and the Art of Survival

 

Some of the more common rides originating at my current home in Emerald Hills. Two exceptions are the rides shaded in yellow which originate from my previous home in San Carlos which I included for comparison. Strava provided the length of the rides in Miles and Minutes as well as the total feet of climbing. From that I calculated Feet/Mile as one way to estimate Intensity. The Feet/Mile number for the Emerald Hills ride italicized because I do that ride on an eBike and the electric assist reduces my effort by an unknown (to me, now) extent. The other way I estimated Intensity  is how the ride feels, shown under Subjective Intensity. All of the current rides are described below except for the Emerald Hills ride which I have described previously.

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In 2018 I attended my first post-Texas group ride, the Art of Survival, a metric century (100 kilometers, 62 miles) in the town of Tulelake, located at the far northeastern corner of California. I attended again in 2019, but in 2020, the COVID19 Pandemic hit, preventing me from attending. By 2021, COVID seemed sufficiently under control for me to attend but training problems prevented my going. This year, in 2022, I overcame those training problems and was all set to go when bad weather caused my friend Roger and I to cancel our plans to attend. That is the (bad) luck referred to in the title of this post. The good news is that, unlike last year, I was able to complete my training plan for this ride. For that reason, I am going to use this post to describe my recent training.

What do I mean when I say I was unable to complete my training plan in 2021? Let’s start with what that training plan was. Assuming I have been riding a reasonable amount fairly regularly, it involves replacing one of my weekly rides six, four, and two weeks before the metric century with increasingly long rides of 33, 44, and 55 miles respectively. (The 33 mile ride is often part of my routine riding so I may or may not need to add it explicitly.) In the runup to Art of Survival in May of 2021, I completed the first two of those longer rides but never felt strong enough to complete the third, I was just too tired to try. In the fourteen years since I returned to cycling and the ten years I have been blogging about it I have had the growing experience that the only metrics that work for me are subjective metrics, I have yet to find an objective metric for my ability to ride. That said, given that my feelings were subjective, should I have just powered through, forced myself to go on that third training ride even though I didn’t feel like it? Maybe, I honestly don’t know, but my judgment at the time told me that to attempt that ride would be a mistake. 

The failure described above had an immense impact on me. For one thing, it made me extremely pessimistic about my cycling future. For a second, it motivated me to think hard about what had gone wrong. This is my fourth blog post in response to that failure. The first two were some of the densest and most technical of all my blog posts, building a statistical framework for using a subset of my rides (the so-called “Alpine-Like” rides) as a measure of how well my training is working. Since writing those posts I have continued to use those tools but will be taking a different, more descriptive, more subjective approach in this post.

It is far from clear that my failure to complete my training program for the 2021 Art of Survival was due to my training, I could have just been having a bad few days, it might have been due to the stress of my recent move or other events in my life, I could have had a subclinical illness, etc. However, the only explanation over which I have control is my training so I have looked very hard at that training in case there is a problem there I could correct. Specifically, I have speculated that my move to the hilly neighborhood of Emerald Hills accidentally led to a training program that was too hard, that my failure to prepare for the Art of Survival was due to Fatigue resulting from excessive training. I confess I lack the tools to address that speculation with any degree of rigor, my evaluation of the Intensity of my rides is entirely subjective. Unfortunately, I only have the information I have and just have to do my best with that. So what did I decide to do, first, in advance of my failed training for the 2021 Art of Survival and second, between that failure and my successful training for the 2022 Art of Survival?

My move from the relatively flat neighborhood of San Carlos to the much hillier neighborhood of Emerald Hills occurred nine months before I started training for the 2021 Art of Survival. I only lost a week of riding because of the move and I had a pretty typical riding schedule leading up to the move. After the move, however, I could not easily ride the same routes that I had been riding from my home in San Carlos so had to come up with some new routes. Two routes that I could continue riding more or less unchanged were my Alpine and Alpine-Cañada rides (renamed New Alpine and New Alpine-Cañada to note the minor changes), two and three hour rides, respectively, that I describe as moderately hilly. I had one candidate for a new ride, my son had shown me one of his favorites, to Huddart Park and back. I found it to be very pretty but also hilly. For the first six weeks after my move, my typical week would consist of those three rides. On the surface, there were a few problems with that schedule. First, the experts recommend dividing the week into four or five days of rides, three being considered too few. Second, simply on a minutes of riding basis, it was on the higher end of what I had found sustainable before. Third, up until now I had been mostly doing a mix of the moderately hilly Alpine-like rides and easy rides. Now I was doing a mix of those same Alpine-like rides but with an even more hilly ride substituted for the easy ride(s). Consistent with this, at the end of that six weeks I was feeling tired. 

In an attempt to make my weekly riding sustainable I looked for a replacement for the easy rides I had left behind in San Carlos and as a result of that search I developed the Lake Loop ride. The problem was, it was not as easy of a ride as I had hoped. Long term I am working to better classify the Intensity of my rides but without going into the details, if I subjectively classify my rides as Very Easy, Easy, Moderate, Moderately Intense, Intense, and Very Intense, with my Alpine-Like rides being Moderate, the Lake Loop, which was supposed to be Easy turned out to be Moderate. Until I figured that out, my typical schedule was two Alpine-Like rides and two Lake Loop Rides. That continued for the next 13 weeks and brought me into December, which is the rainy season. In response, I set up my trainer to be able to ride on rainy days. Having done so, I realized I had finally come up with an easy ride. Because I can make a trainer ride as intense or as easy as I want, my trainer became the place for easy rides. For the next twenty weeks leading up to my failed attempt to train for the 2021 Art of Survival my typical week became one Alpine-Cañada ride, one Alpine ride, and two Trainer rides. One thing this meant was that I didn’t need to “add” a 33 mile ride to my metric prep because it was already part of my routine training.

In retrospect, I certainly cannot make the case that my inability to prepare for the 2021 Art of Survival was due to overtraining, but that is what I believed at the time and I responded accordingly. I backed off slightly on training and after four months Form as measured by speed on my Alpine-Like rides seemed to be coming back from a low that occurred about the same time as my failed training for Art of Survival. I would like to reemphasize a key point here: poor Form can be due to Fatigue without that Fatigue coming from overtraining. Fatigue can come from stress, illness or other causes. The good news is that the correct response is the same either way, cut back on training. I did, and apparently it worked.

Unfortunately, right after my revival of form in September I suffered from colds in October and December that resulted in three weeks off the bike altogether and many more weeks of light riding. Presumably as a result, I lost a great deal of Fitness. Starting in January of 2022 I was able to work my way back up in anticipation for another try at the Art of Survival. Minutes of riding is far from a perfect measure of training Load; it ignores the differences in Intensity caused by hills and by how fast I ride. Nonetheless, it is something, and in particular, reveals how dramatic my reduction in riding was:

The red dots represent the 2021 and 2022 Art of Survival rides and the green dot the rebound in form I experienced in September of 2021.

So what does this all mean? The big takeaway for me is that I developed what I now believe to be an incorrect impression that I was training too hard due to the increased hills in my neighborhood after my 2020 move. It was probably true that I was training both too hard and too infrequently in the first six weeks after the move and it is true that it took me a while to find a way to do easy rides in this neighborhood but neither were responsible for my failure to train for the 2021 Art of Survival. I do think I was suffering from Fatigue and that was what kept me from completing my training but I now think that Fatigue was not the result of my training but of something else. What were the consequences of this incorrect impression? Very few, I think. I do listen carefully to my body and Fatigue, no matter the source, is appropriately addressed with a reduction in training. Perhaps I reduced my training a bit more than strictly necessary, but that is hardly a disaster. Unfortunately, reaching these conclusions is a step backwards. Previously, I had a possible explanation for my inability to complete my training for the 2021 Art of Survival and now I am rejecting that explanation without providing an alternative. Stay tuned to see where I go from here.

My First and Second Cycling Careers

The inspiration for this post comes from the fact that, as of 2022, my first cycling career, which ran from 1965 to 1979, and my second cycling career, which so far has run from 2008 to 2022, are now equal in length. Interestingly, the gap between those careers was 29 years so that next year, in 2023, the sum of my two careers will equal that gap. Will this be an excuse for another post?

Forget about another post, is this post even justified? By what logic did my first cycling career not start until 1965? I have (and have posted) a picture of me with my first bike which was taken in 1956 and I haven't been without a bike since. I did at least one recreational bike ride back then, a long ride a friend and I took, way out into the countryside around Santa Rosa. (I have no idea what "way out" meant to me back then.) By the same token, the 29 year interregnum between my first and second cycling careers was not entirely devoid of cycling, I remember at least one ride with my son, Michael, when he was in elementary school. (If memory serves, I rode my old 3-speed.) And then there was my year and a half gap at the beginning of my "second" cycling career. Perhaps my second cycling career should be dated from 2010, not 2008. All good points, but in the end some arbitrary decisions had to be made and I am sticking to the dates in the previous paragraph.

What happened in 1965 that defined the beginning of my first cycling career? It was the purchase of my first "10-speed", a 1963 Schwinn Continental from my Uncle Leonard who owned a bike shop in San Jose, California. It was once I had that bike that I began taking recreational rides regularly. I have no photographs of that bike so cannot be entirely sure when I purchased it. It could not have been before 1963 because I remember enough about that bike to be able to date it’s model year but I might have purchased it a while after the nominal model year and it might have been a while before I started riding it seriously.

Although I have no pictures of that bike, I do have a picture of a friend and I, exhausted after a ride, that was taken in 1965, so I have chosen that year as the start of my first cycling career.By February of 1966 I had replaced my Schwinn Continental with a true racing bike, a Peugeot PX-10. In the spring of 1966 I had raced in my first ABL of A race, a criterium in Lindsey, California. By that summer I had ridden my first multi-day tour, a five day ride that went over the highest road crossing the Sierra Nevada mountains, Tioga Pass at 9,941 feet. I raced as a Junior during the spring of 1967, spent that summer bicycling through Europe, and raced as a Senior when I got back. I continued racing through my Junior year of college, the 1970 season, but then got too busy with my studies to continue racing. When I started graduate school in the Fall of 1971 I continued riding mostly because I met the love of my life, Agi, who enjoyed riding with me. For our summer vacation in 1979 we bicycled from one Inn to another in Vermont. That was to be our last significant bike ride for 29 years, years during which we established our careers and built our family, and thus, that was the end of my first cycling career. 1965 through 1979 is 14 years. 

My second cycling career started in 2008 when I took my 1963 Bianchi Specialissima into Daniel Boone Cyclery and had it restored to rideability and continues through today, 2022, 14 years later. How has it compared to the first? The obvious, most important difference is my age. My first cycling career ran from age 16 to 30, my peak athletic years. So far, my second has run from age 59 to 72, both starting and continuing well into the inevitable decline of old age. I have never been an exceptional athlete so even in my first cycling career there were always cyclists who were much faster than me; I didn’t win a lot of bicycle races. On the other hand, completing a ride was rarely a problem. The closest I came to confronting my limitations came during the summer of 1967 when I cycled through Europe and discovered that I could not ride every single day for weeks on end without a day off now and then. My second cycling career, on the other hand, has been dominated by disappointment. I plan to accomplish something in my cycling, not something unreasonable but something that seems almost modest, and over and over again, I am unable to accomplish it. The biggest accomplishment of my second cycling career (other than maintaining it for 14 years) was the completion of two 200 kilometer brevets in 2012 and 2013. That sounds great until you realize that what I had hoped to accomplish was to follow that first 200 kilometer brevet with a 300, 400, 600 and then on to a Grand Randonée, 1200 kilometers long. Many cyclists, some older than I, have been able to do that. Not me. 

Not as significant as my age but another big difference between my first and second cycling careers is the impact of computers and related technologies. This started with the plain old desktop computer and its word processors, spreadsheets, and databases and continued with cycling computers for tracking speed, distance, heart rate, cadence, etc. Let’s begin with the gathering of ride data; distance, time, average speed, etc. During my first cycling career, all the options were mechanical. The only device any of us ever used was a small odometer mounted on the front fork. It consisted of a small counter attached to the fork and a mechanical activator attached to a spoke. Every time the wheel completed a rotation, the activator would hit a gear-like mechanism on the counter and via some mechanical mechanism, that would be converted to miles. These caused a bit of drag and also were not entirely robust to high speeds, e.g. descending a mountain pass. At high speed the activator would hit the counter so hard it would advance more than it should resulting in an overestimation of miles. At the extreme, this would damage or destroy the counter. My memory is that over time we all stopped using them. We did occasionally estimate ride length in miles, but did so by measuring the distance on a paper map. Even more rarely, we would measure ride time using a mechanical stop watch (especially for sprints) or a wrist watch and using the two together could calculate speed. All of this is probably moot because if memory serves, we made little or no use of any data we collected and in particular did not record or save it. 

I purchased my first computer in 1982, after my first cycling career had ended. In 2008, at the start of my second cycling career, computers were an everyday part of my life and that turned out to have a great deal of impact on my cycling. When I got home from my first 5 mile ride, I decided to start recording my rides in a spreadsheet on my computer. Within a few months, I had purchased a Catseye bike computer that tracked miles, time, speed, etc. When I went for a ride, my cycling computer recorded the data from the ride which I transfered, along with any subjective comments I want to make, to a spreadsheet or word processor document and as a result I now have a reasonably detailed record of every bike ride I have taken during my second cycling career.  In contrast, I have no record of my rides from my first cycling career other than photographs and the odd souvenir. 

Another very impactful aspect of computer technology was the Internet. This blog is one example, but the availability of an almost unlimited source of information about cycling is another. I am pleased that I still have my childhood encyclopedia, the 1956 World Book, which was considered a good encyclopedia at the time. How does it compare with Wikipedia? There are differences due to both age (1956 vs today) and scope but since this post is about then and now I will lump those together. World Book had about two pages on the topic Bicycle, one taken up entirely by photographs (including the one to the right) which is pretty much the only place I could find any cycling information. My encyclopedia did me no good back during my first cycling career. By comparison, Wikipedia has been and continues to be an invaluable source of information during my second. Wikipedia is invaluable, but nowhere near the most important cycling asset on the Internet. That honor would go to the plethora of websites dedicated to every imaginable cycling subtopic.

Another big change that computer technology has brought to our lives is digital cameras. When I first started thinking about this post, I assumed this would be significant, but as best I can tell, it has not been. I confess I have been too lazy to count all the photographs I have from my first and second cycling careers, but glancing at the two collections, they do not look all that different in size. There is no doubt that digital photography has made photography cheaper, easier, and better, so all I can figure is that the rate limiting step in how many cycling pictures I take is something else, perhaps the inconvenience of interrupting a ride to take that picture.

How about changes in cycling technology? I have blogged a lot about how disorienting I found those changes, but upon reflection, I think they have been very beneficial to my second cycling career. I am working on a future post discussing my current bicycles. Here is a quote from that future post: “I love my 1960 Bianchi Specialissima … [but] it has never been a practical bike (at least not since the 1970s).” Not since the 1970s, that is, not since my FIRST cycling career. Back then, I usually only had one bike and it was always one very much like that Bianchi. I rode such bikes for everything and everywhere with never a thought they were in any way deficient. I now find my one survivor* from that time almost unacceptable compared to my more modern bikes which range from modern but retro to full out cutting edge modern. Why is that? To be honest, I don’t completely know, but I can imagine two possibilities:

• What was comfortable for my young body is now uncomfortable for my old body.
• Back then, I had nothing to compare the Specialissima to so it did not suffer by comparison. 

Some specific then and now comparisons: 

• Clipless pedals are way better than pedals with toe clips and cleats. Clipless pedals were invented after the end of my first cycling career. 
• Lower gears, which I now need, are much more available than they used to be. 
• I think that my modern bikes have much more relaxed geometries than the Specialissima, something my aging body now needs. I don’t think those geometries were available during my first career. 
• Clincher tires are much better now than they were during my first cycling career, and thus I can take advantage of their practicality with no significant loss in performance. 
• Brakes have gotten much better over time.

A recurring topic on this blog is different ideas about training and how I could apply them to my own cycling. How does that compare to how I trained during my first cycling career? As best I can remember, I had no formal training schedule back then, I just rode as whim suggested and occasion allowed. I did have some sources for training information. In the first place, my bicycle club, the Modesto Roadmen, had a coach, the only time I have used a coach in my life. Unfortunately, we did not take nearly the advantage of him we should have and I could probably write an entire blog post as to why. Another potential source of training guidance was “American Cycling” magazine, predecessor to today’s “Bicycling” magazine. I don’t recall that we ever used that guidance and I am really not sure why not. Finally, I still have two small books about British bicycle racing, “Cycle Racing” by Kenneth Bowden, published in 1958 and “Scientific Training for Cycling, third edition” by C. R. Woodard, published in 1961:

“Cycle Racing” is only 129 pages long and only 12 pages are about training. Here is Bowden’s training schedule for excelling in the 100 mile time trial:

• At the end of the season, take off two weeks.
• For the next 20 weeks, take 50 to 120 mile long rides, riding at 15 to 17 miles per hour, rides that should be “relaxed, warm, comfortable, companionable - pleasure miles”. That said, do not stop, carry your food with you, and do all your eating while riding. The total of these rides should be about 2,000 miles. (This works out to about 1 to 2 rides a week - the Zombie.)
• For the next 2 to 4 weeks, ride six days a week. Three of these rides should be short (less than 10 miles,) easy, utility or pleasure rides. One ride should be 80-120 miles long ridden at 16-18 mph in a 68” to 72” gear. One ride should be 20 to 30 miles long ridden at 20 mph in a 70” to 72” gear. The third ride should be 40 to 60 miles long ridden at 18 mph.
• From the end of that 2 to 4 week period  to the beginning of the racing season, ride a similar schedule except up the speed and gears a bit and ride a few 250 to 300 mile weekends.
• Thereafter, racing will provide most of the training you need.

It goes without saying I could not complete this schedule today, even if - quite literally - my life depended on it, but how about during my first cycling career? I do recall that pretty regularly we would do 100 mile long rides into the Sierra Nevada Mountains on weekends, so perhaps the initial 20 weeks of training described above would not be too different from what we did, but beyond that, I can say no more. Even if our training did follow this book, I don’t think it was deliberate. Rather, I think any resemblance between our training and that book was purely coincidental.

Scientific Training for Cycling, by comparison, was comically less useful. Looking back through it today I was reminded of the hysterical laughter it invoked when we first got it and I have exactly the same reaction today. Out of kindness, I will say no more.

The final thing that has differentiated my first and second cycling careers is that cycling has gone from being an almost invisible niche sport during my first cycling career to being a mainstream sport in my second. This has resulted in the proliferation of different kinds of bikes and the amount of content on the Internet described above but has also made many more books on cycling available, some of which I have reviewed on this blog, which is where I get many of my training ideas. Back during my first cycling career, I had no idea about what the community thought was the right way to train. During my second, I am inundated with those ideas. I occasionally wonder, what if I had a time machine and could go back and advise my 16-year old self how to train, would it make a difference?

So which was better, my first or my second cycling career? I was inspired by writing this post to give that question a great deal of thought. I went down a rabbit hole of psychology and philosophy trying to understand the meaning and purpose of happiness and came to a firm conclusion: that question is not interpretable, much less answerable. What I can conclude is that my cycling has been a tremendously positive force during both of those careers, and that my life would have been much better without the interregnum separating them. More than that, I cannot say.

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* I actually have two surviving bikes from my first cycling career. The first is the 1963 Bianchi Specialissima which is the focus of this post, a bike I acquired used in 1970. The second is the 1967 Hetchins Mountain King I acquired new the summer of 1967. The reason I am focusing on my Specialissima is that it is virtually identical to the way it was during my first cycling career. In contrast, when I got the Hetchins back 50 years after I sold it, all I got back was the frame and even that had been modified. As a result of being built up with all new components, it has a much more modern and comfortable feel than the Specialissima.

^ There have been some retrospective posts on this blog about my first cycling career but that first career has not been covered on this blog in nearly as much detail as the second.

 

Eroica California 2022

This post is very much a follow-up to my post about Eroica California 2019 so if you haven’t read that older post you might want to do so. Towards the end of that post, I said “As I think about it, whether I go back next year or not depends on Roger and Janet and David and Sarah. If they go, I go. The best part of the event was hanging out with them.” They decided to go back, so as the 2020 running of Eroica California approached, I signed up. And then COVID struck. Eroica was postponed from April to September, and then as the pandemic continued, it had to be postponed again until April of 2021 and then again until April of 2022. Roger and Janet and David and Sarah still wanted to go, so I went as well.

Just like in 2019, the two events in which I participated were the Concours d’Elegance on Saturday, April 30, where I again showed my 1963* Bianchi Specialissima, and the 35 mile long Pedras Blancas ride on Sunday, May 1. As was the case in 2019, none of my friends participated in the Concours and Roger and David rode the much more difficult 73 mile Santa Lucia route. However, this year Janet and Sarah joined me on the Pedras Blancas ride. The two rides left at the same time and the photo at the top of the post is the five of us ready to go. 

I had a whole bunch of Lessons Learned from 2019 that I planned to use to make my 2020 (2022) experience better. Quoting from that older post: 

• “I don't think I should use my Specialissima as both a display bike and a riding bike.” What other option did I have? Well, between 2019 and 2020 my 1967 Hetchins became rideable while remaining Eroica Legal. At first riding it wasn’t an option because my son planned to ride the Hetchins but even when he dropped out, the logistics of taking and managing two bicycles seemed daunting. In retrospect, I think my concern on that point was well justified, I had enough trouble taking care of my Bianchi without worrying about another bike. So, once again, I was forced to ride the Bianchi with all its limitations. Again, because I opted for the short (35 mile) ride, those limitations did not prevent me from completing the ride. 
•  “Either I have to find another bike for the ride, or give up on the Concours.” Just as in 2019, my beloved Bianchi won no prizes at the Concours in 2022. This is despite the best efforts of
  
  Gebhard at my LBS to make it ready, correcting as many of the problems the judges had with it in 2019 as possible. Unfortunately, there are two fundamental problems with my Bianchi that Gebhard could not fix. First, I have used and maintained this bike. When parts broke or wore out (which they do when you use a bike) I replaced them. Insofar as possible I replaced them with the same item that had originally been on the bike. As just one example, when the original Brooks B17 saddle fell apart in 2008, I replaced it with an identical Brooks B17 saddle. (The design of the Brooks B17 has not changed since it was first released in 1898.) The judges noted, however, that the saddle, despite now being 14 years old, is much newer than the bike, and that was a strike against it. Second, Bianchi Specialissimas from the 1960s are fairly common, it is not a particularly unusual or interesting bike. Nothing can fix these deficiencies. For these reasons I have decided that 2022 will be the last year I will show this bike. That said, now that I am free to drastically modify it to make it more rideable, I am finding I don’t want to. Partly it is because the Hetchins is available to fulfill my desire for a classic yet comfortable bike. So, although I plan to stop using my Bianchi as a show bicycle and start using it as a bicycle to ride, I don’t anticipate it changing much. Rather, I plan to live with all the problems I experienced in 2019 and 2022, at least for now. 
•  “Whatever bike I choose for the ride, and whatever clothing I select, should be ready weeks in advance so that I have plenty of time to test them and I don't run into problems like I had with the shoes this year.” Because I wanted to keep the Bianchi clean for the Concours, I could not do that. There were some things I managed to test, my shoes for example, and there are some things I probably could have tested, should have tested, and just didn’t, my handlebar bag for example, but the big thing I couldn’t test was the bike itself. Fortunately, it worked flawlessly. Thank you, Gebhard! 
•  “I was lucky with my sew-ups, they survived for 35 miles despite being in rather rough shape, but I would not want to count on that again, certainly not if I opted for a longer ride. So whatever bike I ride should have clincher tires so I can easily fix any flats along the way.” Gebhard put new sewups on the Bianchi. These are not as easy to change in the case of a flat as are clinchers, but being new, they were less likely to fail. 
•  “[D]espite the fact that the gears on the Bianchi worked fine for the short ride I did, I definitely would want lower gears before attempting a more challenging ride.” Since I did not choose to do a more challenging ride, it was not necessary to lower the gears (although it would have been nice.) 
•  “One argument in favor of purchasing [a Peugeot PX10 bike that was offered for sale in 2019] at this year's event was that it [could be made into] a comfortable but Eroica-legal riding bike and I am still wondering if I should have grabbed it for that reason alone. But, ‘A man's got to know his limitations’. Frankly, I have way too many irons in the fire these days, I don't need another project bike. And who knows? Maybe one of those other irons will pan out.” The Hetchins was one of those irons and it has most definitely panned out. If I want a more practical Eroica bike, the Hetchins is the logical choice. 

So, given all that, how did the ride go? The biggest problem with my ride in 2019 was that my shoes hurt my feet. Since then, I put considerable effort into stretching those shoes and in addition decided to wear them without socks. These two steps took these shoes from not acceptable to barely acceptable. Should I ride Eroica again and should I find better shoes, I would buy them, but if not, I would be willing to wear these same old shoes again. However, before the ride I did not know that, so I wanted backup. To that end I decided to bring along a pair of sandals, adequate for both walking and riding. But how to carry them? In 2019, I carried my spare tire in a blue seat bag. Although it was, in fact, from the correct period, it looked funny on my Bianchi. In any case, there was no way sandals would fit in that bag. I had an inspiration: I would use the black canvas handlebar bag I used for thousands of miles

between 1966 and 1979, which looked better on the bike and could hold much more. The problem was that some of the stitching had failed and one of the straps had come off. I had been planning to repair those straps for a long time so I took this opportunity to do so. As I was repairing the strap that had come off, another came off and I repaired it as well. That should have been a warning. As I was packing up for the ride Sunday morning, a third came off and I had to do an emergency repair with safety pins. Also, the bag tended to rub on the front tire. These kinds of bags are supposed to be used with a front rack but we never did that “back in the day” so it did not occur to me that this was going to be a problem. I managed to finish the ride with only an occasional rub, so that was OK. The big problem is that the bag restricted my hand positions on the handlebars. That plus the fact that the handlebars are already too low for my aging body led to painful shoulders by the end of the ride. I would not use this bag again. 

The ride started at 8 am at which time the temperature was 47 degrees, at least according to Google. I felt like I had not brought enough warm clothes for 47 degrees so wore everything I had; a helmet with a Bianchi cycling cap underneath, a windbreaker over my Bianchi Jersey over my Icebreaker wool underlayer, wool cycling shorts, and my 1960s cycling shoes (without socks.) In fact, the day felt warmer than the numbers so I ended up removing the windbreaker before starting and that turned out to be perfect for the ride. Both my Bianchi cap and my Bianchi jersey were visible, putting me into the spirit of the event.

Unfortunately, there was confusion about the route. There were two maps available on the website, one for 2019 and one for 2020. The 2020 route was similar to the 2019 route with two changes. First, the 2019 route had left Highway 1 in spots on the way back to both get us closer to the ocean and to add a few miles. In 2019, most riders ignored this, continuing back on Highway 1 the way they came. Perhaps as a reaction, the 2020 route followed the lead of the 2019 riders, making up the missing miles by continuing past the rest stop at the lighthouse before stopping on the way back. Since 2022 was just the delayed version of 2020, I assumed the 2020 route was correct. Janet was less sure, introducing some uncertainty in our minds. In my post on the 2019 ride, I complained about the lack of signage along the route. At least back then there was a printed map in the registration packet so that, when in doubt, I could refer to the map. This year, not only was there no signage along the route, there was not even a map with the registration packet. Janet commented that even a poster at the start showing the route would have reduced our confusion. As a result of this confusion, when we got to the turnoff to the lighthouse and there were people there halting traffic and waving us in, we went along with that. On the way back, I noticed some riders taking the 2019 route, but again due to lack of certainty, we continued on Highway 1. I ended up making up the missing miles by riding to and from the start from my AirBnB which was about 2 miles away, but I found the uncertainty annoying. 

Last year I complained about the food at the rest stop. I had no complaints this year, the food was delicious and plentiful. That said, Roger and Dave had complaints about the availability of food and especially water on their longer ride, supplies were not where they were most needed. Last year, I noted that a lot of my concerns were echoed in the Classic and Vintage forum of the Bike Forum website. There were fewer complaints this year and there were a large number of participants pushing hard on the message that this was a remarkable achievement in the face of the COVID delays and that despite everything, it was a wonderful experience. Though they were few in number and though the pushback from the voices of positive thinking were strong, the critics made their opinions heard, including some who speculated that Eroica California was dying. After the ride, we all went to Roger and Janet and Sarah and David’s AirBnB and talked about how we felt about the event. Roger has been going to this event for years. He is much more enthusiastic and knowledgeable about old bikes than I am. And yet, he wondered if this would be his last Eroica California. After 2019, he had no such doubts. 

Is this negativity towards Eroica California unfair? After reflecting on it, I feel like that is the wrong question. The question I am asking myself is what does Eroica California have that I want? Let me start with some positive reflections. I like remembering my long history of cycling. I love that the bike that I was riding and showing was the same bike I raced on during the 1970 season and the same bike I rode from Boston to Montreal in 1972. I love that the handlebar bag, which admittedly wasn't so practical,

was the same handlebar bag I used so often so long ago. This is all very personal but it is not just me who feels this way. Janet took her husband's Modesto Roadmen Jersey and retailored it to fit herself. That is the jersey she wore for Eroica California 2022. Nonetheless, if I add it all up and decide it is not enough, then it is hard for me to see why I should attend. Eroica California is not a charity, if there are systemic benefits to the community from its existence, I am not aware of them. “But if you don’t support it, then where will we go to celebrate classic bikes?” This question assumes that I feel a strong need to celebrate classic bikes and that Eroica California is effective, or at least potentially effective, in accomplishing that goal. Reasonable people might disagree as to the value of Eroica California and I would enthusiastically encourage those who see more value in it than I do to keep it going, in no way do I want to discourage them. I am just wondering if I am really part of that group. Towards the end of our time together, Roger's decision to not attend in 2023 began to waver. Ideas (which I will not leak) for fun ways to participate in future Eroicas began to occur to him. So in the end, I am right back where I was in 2019. If Roger goes, and better yet, Roger and Janet and Sarah and Dave go, I will probably go as well. 

 

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* I have previously described this as a 1960 Bianchi Specialissima. I purchased it used in 1970 so I don’t actually know the model year. That 1960 date was based on the bike’s serial number. If there is an official database of Bianchi serial numbers, I have not been able to find it, but there is some user-derived information available here and there online. Either because I am reading the information differently or because that information has changed, I am now thinking my Bianchi is more likely to be a 1963.

Classic and Vintage Bike Ride

Things to note as you read this post: The gentleman to the left of the picture with the yellow helmet is Greg, the ride leader and person who got me involved with the Classic and Vintage Bike Group. Just left of center and towards the back is the 1956 Schwinn Paperboy bike. To the left and behind are San Francisco Bay and the mountains of the East Bay. Finally, note the gravel trail on which we rode.

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In April of 2019, I attended my first (and so far only) Eroica California. By the time I finally made the decision to go, I did not have nearly enough time to prepare properly. I also had little idea exactly what to expect. Nonetheless, in addition to riding, I decided to pay extra to show my 1960s Bianchi Specialissima, figuring I would learn if it was even worth showing, and if it was, what I should do to it to show it to maximum effect. As it turned out, this was the first year Eroica California was held in the town of Cambria and there were some transitional difficulties. One consequence is that I never received the formal evaluation of my Bianchi from the show judges. However, my friend Roger who was at Eroica as well introduced me to his friend Greg who is part of the show bike community. Greg gave me a friendly, informal evaluation of my Bianchi which I very much appreciated. He also suggested I might enjoy riding with a group of Classic and Vintage bike riders in my area, a group of which he was a member. We exchanged emails and by September of that year I was on their mailing list. There were four rides posted which, for one reason or another, I didn't attend, and then the pandemic hit and group rides were no longer an option for me.

Thanks to the availability of vaccines, group rides have again become an option and then a few weeks ago one of the Classic and Vintage rides caught my eye. This one was hosted by Greg, the person who got me involved with this group in the first place. I had just gotten my Hetchins rideable after some partially successful changes I had made to it just before the pandemic and was eager to ride it again, so everything seemed to be falling into place. But were they really? Just as was the case for Eroica three years earlier, I wasn't sure what to expect. Would everyone be in vintage dress? Would everyone be on vintage bicycles? Would my poor shadow of a Hetchins be out of place? What kind of riders would be on the ride and would I be able to keep up with them? Although I had gotten my Hetchins “rideable”, I certainly had not had time to get everything dialed in. In its current state, was it really ready for a group ride? As the time of the ride approached, my nervousness increased and I seriously considered backing out. An excuse I had was that I had originally scheduled an important training ride for that day. Might it be better to stick with my training plan rather than risk a disaster on this unknown ride? In the end, I pulled it together and went, and I am so glad that I did.

I opted for a mix of faux-vintage and modern clothing. I left the Eroica-violating clipless pedals on the Hetchins and wore modern cycling shoes. I then drove the half hour to the start of the ride, a start which was on one of my Go-To rides, the Stephens Creek Trail. We assembled in the parking lot of Landels Elementary School. I had parked a few blocks away so biked up to the start and found five or ten riders assembled. They looked to be somewhere around

my age, everyone was on a vintage bike, and folks were friendly, introducing themselves and asking me about my bike. Greg was there and immediately identified my bike as a Hetchins, impressive given its lack of a headbadge, decals, or other identifiers. “The fork is unmistakable,” he said. The clothing I had selected was well within the range of what others were wearing. I was not the only person with modern, clipless pedals. Most of the bikes were fixed up nicer than my Hetchins, but it fit in just fine. There was a huge range of types of bikes from all out racing bikes to a 1956 Schwinn paperboy bike with fat tires, and a cantilever frame constructed from the classic Schwinn “electro-forged” tubing, heavier than a black hole and indestructible. Once we hit the trail, it became apparent I was not going to have trouble keeping up. One of the things which is not quite dialed in on my Hetchins are the gears which have never shifted very well even at the best of times. For that reason and because this was a flat ride, I simply never shifted, I completed the entire ride in a 39 x 18 (59 inch) gear.

From the Elementary School parking lot it was half a block on sidewalks to the start of the Stephens Creek Trail which we took it north to The San Francisco Bay Trail. In my solo rides, I have often turned on to the Stephens Creek Trail heading the opposite direction, coming from the Bay Trail to the north. On this ride, we headed southwest on the Bay Trail, onto a section of that trail I had not previously ridden. This section of the trail is entirely gravel, a surface that was comfortably  rideable even on the very skinny tires (27 x 1⅛) of my Hetchins. We then exited onto the streets of Sunnyvale to do some Silicon Valley and Military Industrial Complex sightseeing. Greg, our ride leader, is a retired

Lockheed employee so was an excellent tour guide for public parts of Moffett Field. (The picture to the right is Greg wearing his Brooks jersey featuring the address of the factory where Brooks Saddles are assembled with the Moffett Field dirigible hangar in the background.) We then returned to the Stephens Creek and Bay trails and headed for lunch at the Shoreline Lake American Bistro, a restaurant which is part of the Shoreline Lake Regional Park with an ambiance I found charmingly resort-like. Shoreline Lake Park was constructed by the city of Mountain View. Its centerpiece is a 50 acre saltwater lake heavily used for recreational boating. Because of its location on the Bay Trail, the bistro is also used by hikers and bikers in the area. After lunch, we rode a quick 5 miles back to where we had started the ride at which point the ride was over.

Why am I so glad I went on this ride? It is not so much in the details as it is in the overall experience. I think the social aspect of this ride, that I was meeting and riding with other people, was huge. I’ve said this before: although it is clearly true I am by nature a loner and that I really enjoy riding by myself, there are limits even for me and that I could really benefit from more social rides. I found out that there exist group rides compatible with my low level of fitness. I found out that my Hetchins and I fit comfortably into the local Classic and Vintage bike group. A smaller point, but not one to be neglected, is that I was introduced to a new section of the Bay Trail. It is not as obvious or well marked as other sections of the Bay Trail I have ridden so I might not have been able to discover it on my own. Now that I have ridden it, however, I think I would be able to navigate it in the future. Finally, the tour Greg led us on of Silicon Valley and Moffitt Field was both fun and informative. Thank you Greg, for introducing me to this group and leading this ride!

A Social Ride During COVID

Fringy, The Zombie, and Paul, left to right.

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Only two times since the start of the COVID pandemic have I managed something other than a solo ride and both times were with the same two friends, Fringy and Paul. These two rides were, in fact, the third and fourth in a series, a series I have neglected to post about until now.

Who are Fringy and Paul? In 2001, I started working in the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor College of Medicine as part of the Human Genome Project. Paul was director of the Informatics group and thus my boss. Fringy was a research scientist. (The nickname Fringy comes from his preferred hairstyle.) Paul and Fringy were among the many good friends I made during the three years I was part of that group. 2001 was a long time ago. Fast forward to 2019 when we all found ourselves in California, me in San Carlos, Fringy in Davis, and Paul in Santa Cruz. We decided to get together to chat about science and life and since we were all cyclists, a bike ride seemed a natural way to do that. It was understood that these were low key rides, talking over lunch being at least as important as the ride. Because I live geographically between Fringy and Paul, we decided to meet in my part of California. I was asked to select a flat, interesting ride with a suitable restaurant en route and so hit upon The Bay Trail. In September of 2019 we did our first ride, 18 miles including a detour into Foster City for lunch.

We enjoyed that first ride so much we repeated the exact same ride, having lunch at the exact same restaurant, five months later. We hoped this would become a regular event but little did we know that a pandemic was coming. But, by spring of 2021, we had all managed to get ourselves vaccinated and so it was the perfect time to resume our rides, a perfection spoiled by the Delta variant. We decided to risk it anyway so had our third ride in July of 2021. A few days before the ride, I checked out our old route only to find it closed by construction, so we moved our ride south to another section of The Bay Trail for a 15 mile ride and lunch outdoors (in honor of Delta) in Mountain View. 

Since we had become proficient at defying variants, we decided to defy the Omicron variant seven months later. Paul had another event the afternoon of the ride so we all went to him so he could fit in both and the result was a lovely ride through the charming city of Santa Cruz, ably guided by Paul, 14 miles of cycling with lunch at a very snazzy restaurant Paul selected. 

Our planned route. We ended up cutting it short by a mile or so, eliminating the out and back to Wilder Ranch on the left side of the map due to time constraints.

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Though the shortest of our four ride series, this may have been the most tiring as Santa Cruz is where the mountains meet the sea and the ride was far from flat. As usual, I did a miserable job as a photographer but did catch a photo of the two of them in front of the famous lighthouse at Field State Beach.

You may say, “What a stupid post, these are not serious rides, who cares?” I would beg to differ. I claim this post is precisely what I promised ten years ago when I started this blog. When I restarted cycling thirteen years ago after a twenty nine year hiatus, my reasons for doing so were several. Nostalgia was one. Health was another. The joy of the sport was a third. What I promised for the blog was a chronicle of the journey of an old man returning to cycling, and the rides described in this post are very much part of that and in fact illustrate yet another benefit I derived by restarting cycling back in 2008, a social benefit. The rides described in this post are part of that, they are another way I am enjoying my return to cycling.

Emerald Hills Go-To Ride

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What is a Go-To Ride? Let me begin by apologizing for the name, it really should be Go-To Route, but I have already used the term Go-To Ride so often I don’t feel like I can change it now. But a Go-To Ride is, in fact, a route (or at least usually, see below.) Collections of good routes for cycling are very common, almost every bike club has one. One that was particularly useful to me when I moved to California was that of the Stanford University Bicycle Club. Often such routes include variations signaled with phrases like “If you want to extend this ride…” A Go-To ride is all of that but what distinguishes it is that it is a ride I do over and over again. My familiarity with such a route allows me to do a ride without having to think about where to go, a real advantage when my enthusiasm is low. I find that the variations of a Go-To Ride add some flexibility without significantly diminishing the advantage of not having to think too much about where I am going. However, there is one situation where I do try to minimize such variation, and that is when I use my speed on such a ride to assess my Form (my ability to ride long and/or fast.) Because I repeat my Go-To Rides so often, they are natural candidates for such a test, but only when ridden on the exact same route. Thus, for some of my Go-To rides I have one or more variations which I flag as “canonical” and it is those I use to assess my Form.

Although I did not use the term Go-To Ride back in Texas, I certainly had such routes. The ride which I have repeated most often by far was there. It was the Rice University Bicycle Track ride. Typically that ride would consist of two miles from my home to the track, 35 times (more or less) around that third of a mile track, and then two miles back home. I repeated that ride almost 600 times. (That works out to about 20,000 times around the track.) Now that was a Go-To Ride! When I moved to California in 2017 I missed those rides and coined the term Go-To Ride to help define what I needed to do to settle-in here.

To a large extent, Go-To Ride is a self-defining categorization - my Go-To rides are the ones I end up repeating over and over again independent of my expectations when I proposed them. In a post from a few years ago I said the following: “In my second post from California, I described my Go To ride, … the Alpine Ride. Since then, I have developed other Go-To rides which I can do depending on my training needs and mood.” Although the title of that post, “Go To Sprint” referred to one ride I named The Tamarack Sprint, the post also discussed another which I named The Neighborhood Ride. Interestingly, the first failed the “self-defining” criterion in that I only ever rode it six times, whereas the second, mentioned as an afterthought, ended up being the most frequent ride I did during the three years I lived in San Carlos. Here are the routes I rode most often while living in San Carlos:

Ride Name	Number of Rides
Neighborhood	250
Alpine	140
Alpine Cañada	30
Peninsula Bikeway	40
Tamarack Sprint	6

When I moved from San Carlos to Emerald Hills, I blogged, somewhat tongue in cheek, “My Go-To Rides Must Die!.”  What was not tongue in cheek was that my move meant a significant change in the rides that I did. Here are the most common rides I have done in the year and a half I have lived in Emerald Hills:

Ride Name	Number of Rides
Trainer	70
New Alpine	30
New Alpine Cañada	30
Emerald Hills	30
Lake Loop	15
Huddart	10

New Alpine and New Alpine Cañada are almost the same routes as the similarly named rides from San Carlos except that they are about a mile shorter and have about 100 feet less of climbing relative to the old routes because I no longer have to ride to the start of the route; I now live on the route. At the time I announced my need for new Go-To rides, I blogged “The move provided new opportunities for go-to rides. Shortly after the move, I went on a ride with my son (another advantage to living closer) and he showed me one of his go-to rides, a beautiful if hilly hour long ride that has now become a ride I do weekly.” That ride I named The Huddart Ride (because it went to Huddart Park) and although I did ride it 10 times, it turned out to be too hilly to ride every week. Lake Loop is a route/Go-To Ride I have already blogged about,  though perhaps I should say failed Go-To ride because I did not end up riding that route as much as I had expected. The problem was that it was not actually an easy ride. At the time, I described it as follows: “If I use the lowest gear on my Volpe and deliberately keep my pace as slow as I can, the ride home, while not effortless, is not too bad.” Not too bad, perhaps, but not easy enough as it turned out. The surprise winner of this schedule is not a route at all. Because I was unable to find a route that qualified as an easy, recovery ride, I set a trainer up in my bedroom for that purpose, so “Trainer” has become my most commonly repeated Go-To ride. Way back when I lived in Houston, Texas, I blogged about purchasing that trainer. My initial review of that trainer was not positive. I had no complaints about the trainer itself but because riding it was hot and boring, it failed to fulfill the role I had planned for it and for the first few years I only rode it only a handful of times. That changed a bit when my wife became ill. I dared not leave her alone to go for a bike ride but was able to maintain a bit of fitness with the trainer. However, it was only upon moving to Emerald Hills it really came into its own. The problems of boredom and overheating are less when it is used only in the context of providing an easy, recovery ride. 

That brings me, at long last, to the Emerald Hills ride, shown at the top of the post. I mentioned this ride in my last post. I described how, to accommodate my new all-carbon eBike,  “I developed a Go-To ride that stayed within walking distance of my home” mostly in case I got a puncture, something which, at the time, I was unprepared to fix on that bike. So that seems like an unpromising start to a Go-To ride. Now that I am comfortable repairing such a puncture, why would I continue with this ride? Because it is the prettiest of any route I have ridden. What started out as a route forced on me by my ignorance has become one of my favorites, but one I can only ride on my eBike; it is too hilly for me to complete routinely on any of my other bikes. Even with the assistance of the eBike, it is a fairly Intense ride, more Intense than my (New) Alpine ride, having the same amount of climbing in half the distance, with many of the climbs significantly steeper than anything on the Alpine ride. It is shorter than the Alpine ride, typically taking me about 65 minutes to complete compared to 110 minutes for the Alpine ride. All that said, it fills a similar role, what I call a Pace Ride, a general training ride, neither too easy nor too hard.

What makes the Emerald Hills route so pretty? I could just show pictures but frankly, I am not that good of a photographer of scenery (few people are) and my pictures would not do it justice, so words will have to do. Much of the beauty of this ride is a direct result of it being so hilly. Around almost every corner (and with the winding roads in my neighborhood, there are a lot of corners) there is a great view. One view so common it might be underappreciated is that looking east. From the relatively lower elevations at the beginning of this ride, Silicon Valley looks almost like a forest. From higher elevations, a view in that same direction becomes one of San Francisco Bay and the mountains of the East Bay, including Mount Diablo and Mount Hamilton. A landmark, nothing special compared to the Seven Wonders of the World but quite charming in the context of our little neighborhood, is the Easter Cross, a massive structure at the top of a hill. I see it twice, once from farther away and then again when I reach the highest point on the ride. As I continue, I reach the top of the ridge and now, rather than looking east, I am looking west, out over Portola Valley where, depending on which corner I am rounding, I see the beautiful valley itself, the local cyclists training on Cañada Road far down below, or Crystal Springs Reservoir. I go right by our neighborhood’s local winery, Clos de la Tech, whose ambition it is to use our hills to make the finest Pinot Noir in the world. Finally, I get a peek at the business side of the climbing rock of Handley Rock Park.

One additional advantage of this ride is its flexibility. There are plenty of opportunities to shorten the ride or reduce its hilliness on a day I find myself more tired than expected. One additional point: notice that right in the middle of the loop that makes up my route is Emerald Lake, the location of my Lake Loop Ride. Thus, the Emerald Hills ride might be thought of as the Lake Loop Ride on steroids. Finally, this for the pedantic: besides Emerald Hills this ride visits the cities of Redwood City and Woodside as well. All in all, despite its unpromising origins, the Emerald Hills ride has become one of my favorites.

My First eBike: an Orbea Gain

My new Orbea Gain, right off the truck, with no pedals and the seat too high. This post is by no means a review of the Orbea Gain. For reasons which may become apparent, I am in no position to provide that. Rather, this post is a description of my personal journey through a most unusual bicycle acquisition experience. 

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About ten months ago my son Michael decided I needed an eBike. Why, and why just then? From time to time Michael becomes aware of my mortality. (This is not a newsflash about my health, it's just that the Bible promises us 70 years and I am 72.) According to Michael, this was one of those times. His reasoning was as follows:

• I had just moved to Emerald Hills and because of those hills, was finding it hard to do easy rides.
• It would allow us to ride together, my electric assist making up for his younger age.
• It might be fun for me to try some modern, high end bicycle technology.
• Given my age, I did not have an unlimited number of years of riding ahead of me so if I was going to do this, I might as well do it now to make the most of those years.

Because of the pandemic and associated supply chain issues, bicycles were (and are) hard to come by. Michael had gotten on the Internet and found what he thought was the perfect bike for me, available for immediate delivery, an Orbea Gain. Because of the bike shortage, he didn’t want me to miss this opportunity so was eager for me to follow up quickly, much more quickly than I found comfortable. I trust both of my sons very much so despite my deep concerns about buying a bike online rather than from a store and my feeling that I had not had time to think about what kind of bike I wanted, I closed my eyes and pressed the “Buy” button. A few days later, the bike arrived at my door.

What kind of bike is an Orbea Gain? It is an eBike built on the platform of a high end, thoroughly modern gravel bike. I am partial to bicycles manufactured by Bianchi, a fact Michael knows, but Bianchi’s eBike offering, their Aria, is built off the platform of a road bike and thus Michael felt that as a result it was not as appropriate a bike for me as the Orbea. Compared to the Aria, the Gain has a more relaxed geometry, wider tires, and lower gears (50x34 in front and 11x32 in back.)

What do I mean when I say the Orbea is high end and thoroughly modern? Pretty much everything on the Orbea that can be, is made of carbon fiber. It has Shimano Ultegra electronic derailleurs. It has Shimano hydraulic disk brakes. All the cables and wires run inside the frame to minimize wind drag and to optimize appearance. It does not go out of its way to advertise that it is an eBike; the battery is hidden inside of a rather normal looking downtube and the motor is in the rear hub. Anyone knowledgeable who looks at it will be able to see it for what it is, but it does have the general appearance of a normal bike. As for the electric side of things, it has no throttle, it only provides pedal assist. If I don’t push, it doesn’t help. It has three levels of assist plus a fourth no-assist setting. This was by far the most expensive  bike I have ever purchased; inflation doesn't even begin to offset that.

How was it, buying a bike on the Internet? The vendor, Contender Bicycles, Inc., was terrific. They seemed to be surprised to get such a large order out of the blue and called to thank me for it and to assure me I could contact them any time for help, an offer on which I have taken them up. They suggested that I take advantage of a shipper they used that does nothing but transport bicycles, which I did. It meant I got the bike a few days later than I would have but guaranteed my new bike would be handled with the care it deserved. The truck arrived and when the driver opened the back, I could see that all the bikes were held in bike-specific racks. He carefully removed my bike, reattached the front wheel, and that was that.

My first reaction to this amazing new bike was overwhelming fear that I would do something to damage it. My new Orbea came with no paper manuals and the manuals I found online were insufficient in my view, at least to a modern carbon fiber novice like me. I called Contender and they confirmed that what I found was all that was available but again reassured me they would be there to help. One thing that the online manuals did tell me was the torque required for every nut and bolt on the bike, so I ordered a torque wrench set from Amazon. I had to call Contender to find out how to raise and lower the saddle. They warned me about the pitfalls I should watch out for when I did that; the invisible bolt that held the saddle, if loosened too much, could fall into the seat tube, creating an adventure that the kind folks at Contender assured me I did not want. It turns out that, because the frame is carbon, I cannot put this bike on the bike rack on my car, a rack that supports a bike by the frame’s top tube, nor can I put it on my repair stand; both the top tube and the seatpost where the stand would attach are carbon. Someone on the Internet suggested getting an aluminum seatpost to swap in just to work on the bike. Contender warned me not to do that, so no repair stand for me. Even absent a repair stand, I did get the seat height adjusted without incident and put some old, low-end SPD pedals on the bike so I could go for a test ride.

The first thing I noticed was that the front disk brake rubbed. I got on the Internet and figured out how to adjust it. This reduced but did not eliminate the rubbing; it still rubs for a few minutes after I apply the front brake or after I lean too hard into a turn, but that was the best I could do. (The back brake, by comparison, has never rubbed.) On the other hand, the brakes are AWESOME! I have never felt so in control on the steep, narrow, windy roads of my neighborhood. Could I now do an easy ride starting at my house? Sadly, no. The algorithm in the power assist requires I work before it will help. Also, even at the highest assist level, it took all of my strength and all of the eAssist to make it up the steepest hill in my neighborhood, a short (0.1 mile) hill that Strava assures me has an average grade of 23%. On the other hand, I did make it up that hill in the end so having this bike means I can ride anywhere I want in my neighborhood without checking that the grades are not too steep. Still, my fear that I was going to damage this bike and my ignorance about how to do basic roadside maintenance on it were causing me to ride it less often than I might have. One silly issue was ‘what if I got a puncture?’ I knew this bike was tubeless-ready, but was it tubeless or did it have tubes? The rims were carbon. Could I use my usual tire irons and techniques to change a punctured tube? In response, I decided to avoid straying too far so that I could walk the bike home if necessary. Finally, my one complaint with Contender is that they had mounted the front tire incorrectly such that it went ‘bump bump bump’ when I rode, tolerable on the rough roads in my neighborhood but annoying the two times I took it out on my smoother New Alpine ride.

At this point, Michael and I were getting a little discouraged. Was this bike a mistake, a bike I wouldn’t ride much? I really didn’t want that to happen so I developed a Go-To ride that stayed within walking distance of my home. By riding my new bike mostly for that ride I was able to use it on a fairly regular basis. I kept thinking that I ought to just take the bike to Gebhart at my LBS and pay him to help me with it, but I felt bad I had not purchased it from him so held back until the day the rear disk brakes started making a funny noise; I worried that if I ignored that I might damage the bike. By this point, my favorite bike, my Bianchi Volpe, was so badly in need of maintenance I could no longer ride it. Finally, for a variety of reasons Gebhart had been sitting on my Bianchi Specialissima for almost two years and I wanted to nudge him about that. All of these issues together pushed me over the edge and I gave him a call. “I’d love to see your Orbea!” he said. “Bring it in.” After much work, he got the front tire reseated, no more ‘bump bump bump.’ He straightened the disk for the front disk brake. When I got the bike home, that made no difference, the amount of rubbing was the same but at least I knew it was not something stupid I had done. He said the rear brake was fine, but put a bit of lubricant on the disk to take the noise away. The lubricant accomplished that but it also reduced its stopping power. However, by the end of the first ride the lubricant was gone, the brakes worked as well as before, and the funny noise was back, but again his reassurances meant I could ignore it. Finally, he assured me I had tubes and that my existing tube changing tools and techniques would work fine. Besides reseating the front tire, Gabhart had mostly just provided reassurance but that made all the difference. He sold me a water bottle cage that looked nice on this fancy new bike, I attached my pump to the second water bottle mounts, put the seat bag with my tools and spare tube under the seat, and I now have a bike as serviceable as any I own. Gebhart also ordered me some Ultegra SPD pedals that will be more suitable for this bike. (Since then, he has also overhauled my Volpe and he is making slow but sure progress on the Specialissima.)

In many respects (cost, technology, the electric power assist) my Orbea Gain is unique among my bikes, but in other ways, it fits right in. Since acquiring the Orbea, I have ridden it 37 times (28% of my rides) for a total of just over 400 miles. Two of those rides were over my New Alpine route which allowed me to compare it to most of my other bikes. Even from my new home, this is a route I can manage on a fair number of my bikes including my 1960 Bianchi Specialissima, my 2010 Surly Cross Check, my 2007 Bianchi Volpe, and my reborn 1967 Hetchins, so when I rode it on the Orbea, I did it with the power assist turned off. With the power assist on, low gears are less important but the Orbea does have a fairly low bottom gear of 29”, almost identical to my Surly at 28” but not as low as the Volpe at 22”. By comparison, the Specialissima and the Hetchins have low gears of 46” and 44” respectively, unimpressive low gears which are nonetheless adequate for the New Alpine route. Presumably the gravel bike from which the Gain is derived is quite light, but once you add a battery and motor, the Gain itself comes in at a hefty 29 pounds, only exceeded by the Surly at 30 pounds. The lightweights are the Specialissima and Hetchins at 24 and 25 pounds respectively leaving the Volpe in the middle at 27 pounds. (Given how overweight I am, the weight of the bike is probably pretty unimportant.) Is there something magic about the Orbea that, despite its weight, would make it especially fast? It would seem not, its speed on the two New Alpine rides was comparable to rides on the Volpe or Cross Check ridden a few days before or after.

I have already confessed that as wonderful as my new Orbea Gain is, it did not give me the easy ride for which I have been yearning*. In compensation, it opened up a new Go-To ride for me, one with some unique advantages (which I will discuss in a future post). It also allows me to keep up with my son Michael, either when it is just him on his non-electric road bike or when he is on his cargo eBike with his two kids. Finally, the Orbea has allowed me to try out the latest bicycle technology. The most important difference between my Orbea and the rest of my bikes is the electric assist feature which is absolutely game changing, but here I want to consider its other modern features. I have already commented on the hydraulic disk brakes, one of my favorite features of this bike. The electronic shifting is impressive indeed! It is stunning to shift the gears and hear the derailleurs adjust themselves to a perfect position. One thing I find slightly annoying about the index shifting on my Surly and my Volpe are that I cannot ‘tune’ the shifting like I can on my Specialissima and my Hetchins and so occasionally, in some gears, the derailleurs are positioned slightly suboptimally. The Orbea provides the best of both, the convenience of indexed shifting while providing an automated tuning to optimize derailleur position. As impressive as I find this, I have to say it is not game changing; neither the index shifting of my Volpe and Surly nor the manual shifting of my Hetchins and Specialissima bother me all that much. While it is true that the Orbea most definitely has the best shifting of all my bikes, it’s just that it does not make all that big a difference to me. There is something absurd about this bike in that it is constructed largely of lightweight carbon fiber, an advantage that is more than offset by its battery and motor. I can’t say that I find the ride experience of carbon all that different from the rest of my bikes, all of which have steel frames. The difference in ride quality between my Surly (which I like less) and my Volpe (which I like more) is vastly greater than any difference I feel with the Orbea. Finally, I want to talk about one component on this bike that surprised me the most: the saddle. I am a huge fan of old school Brooks leather saddles which I have on my Volpe, Hetchins, and Specialissima. By comparison, the more modern plastic saddle that came with my Surly is barely tolerable (though it is better than any other plastic saddle I had tried up until now.) Thus, I wondered what I was going to do about the plastic Fizik Aliante R5 saddle that came with the Orbea. The good news was that, because the Orbea is a gravel bike, the saddle was not as terrifyingly narrow as those found on most modern road bikes, but a Brooks it was not. Putting a Brooks on this bike didn’t seem like an option. Brooks saddles require long offset seatposts which are not compatible with the Orbea. I was thinking about some more modern leather saddles that do not require a special seatpost but figured I’d first give the Fizik a try. It felt hard compared to my Brooks saddles, but when I took the bike out on the longer New Alpine ride, I found that although this saddle felt a little less cushy at first, it didn’t become less comfortable with time the way the Surly saddle did; it was fine. Now that I am more comfortable taking the Orbea out on the road, I am eager to try this saddle on some even longer rides. In summary, although this clearly was not my most cost effective bicycle purchase, I am glad I have it and for me it was definitely worth the money.

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* As I will detail in a future post, I ended up solving the ‘easy ride’ problem by setting up my trainer to be used for such rides.