Interlude - cue music

Just a quick post to muse of some of the abnormal characters you see when riding to work that you might miss (or in this case hit) when driving in a car.

For those of you not from Canberra, there is one major road that accounts for about one third of my commute. It is essentially a freeway, since all of the cross streets go either under or over the road with various on ramps and off ramps. I am talking about Adelaide avenue. It is about 5 km long and has an on-road cycle lane built into the widened shoulder.

The cycle lane is very smooth and although you could cover the same ground on bike paths, they tend to meander around a bit and have lots of tree roots growing right under them, making them quite bumpy. Making Adelaide avenue less attractive is the fact that it is the main road connecting South Canberra with the parliamentary triangle so the traffic is quite heavy. In its favour is the fact that on any morning while driving I would pass 10 - 15 cyclists so most motorists on the road would be used to them, making them more cyclist aware, in theory.

So, riding along the shoulder is nice, until you get to an on or off ramp. Here is how it works:

• On the off ramps, the cars have to give way to the cyclist. There is a green painted lane on the road that the cyclist ride in if they are going straight on, passing the off ramp. Cars have to wait until the bike clears this before exiting. Once I had a car pacing behind me a 30 kph waiting for me to clear it to exit. Once it did, the car behind it decided to have a swerve at me on the way past since I had delayed his trip to work by 15 seconds
• On the on ramps, the cyclists have to give way to the cars entering the road. This usually means looking over your left shoulder for cars coming down or up the ramp and timing it through gaps in the traffic. Worst case is that you have to stop, but they have put little poles there for you to hold on to while you wait

Anyway, all that background to tell you about this idiot. Somehow he had over taken me on a downhill section and as I was approaching the next on ramp he was a few metres ahead of me. There was one car on the ramp approaching and I could tell if I slowed a bit I could time it perfectly to cross right behind it and so could the tool in front of me. Well he must have had a kevlar suit on since instead of waiting, he just stuck his left arm out to signal and just pulled across the lane in front of the car which had to jam on it brakes. As it passed him it have him a good swerve just for good measure (who knows what these swerving drivers would do if they miscalculated and hit someone while performing this manoeuvre? Would they tell the cops that they were only trying to scare the person on the bike?).

Anyway I couldn't believe my eyes. I yelled out "You idiot! You are supposed to give way to them!". The next little bit after the on ramp was an uphill so I caught up to him and noticed he had headphones on so wouldn't have heard my rant. He said something to me, but I had headphones on and didn't hear. I just looked at him and said "Idiot!" and rode past.

Crash

Hmmmm, time for some headlights I think. I went via the shops on the way home last night to get some vitamin C since I had a cold starting. When I got out of the shops it was quite dark, but I only had a couple of km to go till home and no roads to ride on so I figured I would be fine.

There was this one little path to get between some houses that is a bit overgrown with bushes so when I spotted a well-travelled dirt track next to the concrete footpath I decided to go down it instead to avoid the bushes. Little did I know that it was well-travelled because the local brats use it to approach the 18 inch high dirt jump they have constructed at the end. Since it was dark I only spotted it when I was right on top of it.

I went over the handlebars and landed on my side and badly bruised my right thigh. The seat is bent a bit out of shape and the wooden bracket that the battery is (was) screwed to snapped off and the battery came loose (since reconstructed). Ouch.

Still no photos of the modifications yet, but I drop the bike in tomorrow to have a new 52/39 tooth front crank set fitted, which should have me cruising over 40kph once my leg recovers. Oh yeah, and I'll be looking at lighting while I am there...

Back on the road

Hey all I am back on the road with the modifications as discussed in my last post. No photos as yet since I am blogging at work (shhh, don't tell). In summary what I now have is:

• A single speed, 16 tooth rear free wheel cassette
• Brand new soft and comfy hand grips
• Front and rear flashing lights
• A more centred back wheel
• A thumb throttle
• A second charger at work

At this stage I really have to stop and give props to Paul Smith from Smith Cycles, he really has looked after me. He only charged me $63 for parts and labour for this work, eseentially giving me the labour for free.

There are more mods to come though. Today's ride in was interesting. My average speed was pretty good at 33 kph and it seemed that I was getting more power. The only reason I can think of for this is that the new thumb throttle has a higher full power setting. Perhaps the broken twist throttle was never quite getting to full power. The new free wheel clearly has more teeth than the smallest gear on the 5-speed since when approaching 38 kph I really had to sprint. Now I know that I need a bigger front crank set. The only new problem that has been introduced is that the anlge of the chain when on the large front chain ring causes slippage under power. The new crank set I ordered will be a 52/39 tooth two gear set and will allow for a straighter chain angle to prevent this.

I have rigged up a rudimentary "cruise control system" in the form of a large rubber band that I slip over the thumb throttle. This has enough pull that it will hold the throttle on, but not enough that it pulls the throttle on when I thumb it back to zero. I'll run with this for a while until I come up with a better system.

I'll post some more photos soon.

Upgrades

So, the bike goes into the shop this week. I am getting the aforementioned freewheel modification done as well as getting a 48T chain ring installed at the front. I also have to get riding lights for it and now that I have a thumb throttle on the way I will need nice new soft hand grips too.

Rod from EV-Power has comp'ed me a thumb throttle when I ordered a second charger for charging at work. I am really looking forward to not lugging that 3.5 kg charger to and from everyday.

Putting the single speed freewheel on will also allow me to have the rear wheel properly centred. The only catch is that in order to space out the dropout they will have to put washers on the side where the wires come out of the axle. So I will have to disconnect the cables and remove the white plastic moulded plug from the wires so they can fit the washers over it, slide them down the wire and hence onto the axle. It will be nice to have rear brakes that work properly without rubbing on the wheel. I'll take some pics when I am doing this and post them tomorrow.

Breakage!

My twist throttle broke today. It must be psychic.

I was actually thinking at the time how dissatisfied I am with the twist throttle at the very moment that it gave up. A piece of plastic inside the collar broke and the handle detached from the electronic mechanism and the spring came out. Here is a picture of the breakage:



See the silver strip at the back of the curve? That is the magnet. It seems that the absence of the magnet causes the power to be always on. I'm not sure what the opposite side of the magnet entails, it must be more than a simple magnetic switch since it is not and on/off situation.

Actually on/off is what I want. I want to be able to just switch the power on and have a momentary, normally on switch to cut the power without applying the brakes so I can coast down hills without consuming power. Removing the crappy grips will allow me to put in something softer and make less strain on my wrists. I've asked Rod from EV Power to replace the twist throttle with a thumb throttle. I think this will allow me to dodgy something up that holds the power on without me having to use my hand and then put on some better hand grips.

On a different note, I had previously thought I was getting less power, but it turns out that the wheel was still not quite true and I had tightened the rear brake a little too much and it was rubbing on the rim for 1 third of each revolution. I have loosened this and the problem went away. This allowed me to reach a new record average speed on the way to work of 33.1 kph.

Now that the bike is off the road for a little while I will be taking it into the bike shop for a few more serious modifications, which I will detail in my next post.

Riding in the rain

This post is inspired by a comment on a previous post wondering if I was going to ride in then rain. Well the answer is yes, but not deliberately.

It was a Monday morning and I was a bit disorganised and so did not pay much attention to the weather, nor did I check the weather RADAR before leaving home. About 5 minutes from home it started to rain. That is about the time I started thinking about checking the RADAR, better late than never. I thought for a minute about turning back, but then decided it would probably stop in a few minutes. It didn't. By the time I got to work I was completely soaked. Even my shoes were soaked right through as if I have been walking in the ocean.

A few thoughts about the experience are:

1. In the end I am glad that it didn't stop. I wasn't cold due to the fact that I kept up a fair amount of pedalling to keep warm. If it had stopped I would have got very cold.
2. The worst thing about riding in the rain is the visibility. Water keeps getting in your eyes and as a result you have the tendency to keep looking down. I nearly had one crash because of this.