Downhill Tour Operators Fear Their Business Going Downhill

Just over a year ago, I wrote about the "downhill bike tours" in Maui.  Never having been to Maui, or anyplace else in Hawaii, I can't comment on the route or terrain.  I did, however, opine that "downhill tour" is an oxymoron.  Every multiday bike tour I've taken has included hills, or even mountains, that I rode both up and down.  And, save for a few downhill mountain bike rides I took in the '90's, when that first became a "thing," any time I've ridden down a hill, I've ridden up it, or some other incline.

So, in that sense, I have some difficulty in sympathizing with the "downhill tour" operators who stand to lose business after a new ordinance to limit them was passed the other day. That new regulation would limit which parts of the route can be used, the hours at which tours can operate and increases the minimum age limit from 12 to 15.

A line of riders on Hanamu Road in Olinda, Maui, October 2021 Photo by Matthew Thayer for The Maui News.

Tour operators are complaining about that last part because many tours include families.  They also feel that the parts of the route that are now forbidden have some of the best views. That is one way I can sympathize with them:  I would hate to lose those views, too.  

On the other hand, I have to think that residents may have legitimate complaints about the riders, almost all of whom are tourists from outside of Hawaii.  I would imagine that many don't have experience riding down long, steep downhills on roads with little or no separation from traffic or people's property.  And I have to wonder whether those tour operators are sufficiently vetting the riders, not only for technical skill, but for emotional maturity.  After all, a 15-year-old--or a 50-year-old for that matter--can be just as reckless as a 12-year-old, especially when adrenaline is rushing through them.  They are exactly the sorts of riders who give the rest of us a bad name, whether on a mountain road in Hawaii or a residential street in Queens.

Maybe They'll Get It Right...Some Day

I think it was Winston Churchill who said that Americans will do the right thing after they've exhausted all other possibilities.

Sometimes I think he was an optimist, at least when it comes to laws and polices regarding bicycles.  In my own humble (OK, I gotta say that:  I know I'm right because...well, I'm so damn smart and I've been riding for almost half a century!) opinion, no vehicle--whether it has one, two, three, four or more wheels--with a motor should be allowed in any lane designated for pedestrians, pedaled bicycles or any vehicle that doesn't have a motor.

I've presented my wisdom, I mean, opinion to everyone from the folks at Transportation Alternatives (of which I'm a member) to City Hall.  The response is almost always the same: "You're right. But how could it be enforced?"

So, we have to contend with "rocket" scooters, e-bikes with boosters, and hand-throttle e-bikes in bike lanes that are six feet wide--for bike traffic in both directions.  Or, in some places, we and pedestrians are "protected" by wrongheaded regulations.

The new year will begin with such a policy for folks who cross the Golden Gate Bridge.  Starting on 1 January, there will be a one-size-fits-all 15 MPH speed limit in the bike/pedestrian lane.  Currently, bridge-crossers are "advised" to remain within that limit.

Photo by Sherry LaVars, for the Marin Independent Journal

While I understand the concerns of pedestrians (having walked across a number of bridges, including the Triborough/RFK and Queensborough/59th Street, in bike-ped lanes), I can also say that most cyclists who are going more than 15 MPH have a commensurate level of handling skills.  The same cannot be said, I believe, for folks riding e-bikes and motorized bikes and scooters at 25 or 30 MPH.  Plus, a motorized bike (which, as often as not, is really just a scaled-down motorcycle) can inflict more serious injury or damage than a pedaled bicycle at any given speed.

My hope is that Churchill will be proven right and whoever came up with the new Golden Gate Bridge regulation will realize the error of it and come up with something more sensible--like, say, banning anything with a motor from the pedestrian/bike lane. 

I'm Such A Rulebreaker, Sort Of...

I wear a helmet when I ride.  Well, most of the time, I do.  Whatever the naysayers might say, I have had two occasions when wearing my helmet probably, if not saved my life, then at least prevented serious injury.  In the second of those incidents, my helmet actually broke in two but I escaped with only a few scratches.

I admit, though, that I've ridden bareheaded, even after those incidents.  When I ride in Florida, I don't wear a helmet:  Even on cool days, most riders, it seems, aren't wearing them. And on my recent trips to Paris, Rome, Cambodia and Laos, I went sans casque, except on the Grasshopper tour in Siem Reap.  I think the only reason we had those is that Grasshopper tours is run by Westerners and was probably covered (pun intended) by insurance regulations in the US or someplace else.  Otherwise, in Southeast Asian countries, I'm not sure I could have even found a helmet: I didn't see any in the bike shops I peeked into, let alone the bike stalls of the market places. 

In the Italian capital, I followed the age-old advice: Do as the Romans do.  I did the same in Paris, which meant that in both cities I didn't wear helmets.  It wouldn't have been hard to find a hardhat in either city:  In fact, some rental services offer them. But it seemed that no one else was wearing them, so I didn't.

So, even though I have had occasions in which wearing a helmet might have saved me, I am still hesitant to support laws requiring every cyclist to wear one.  We don't have such a law here in New York, though every once in a while some police officer tickets an unsuspecting rider who isn't wearing one. In some places, like New Jersey, helmets are mandatory for kids; a few other places require them for adults.  But even though helmet-wearing has become more or less the norm in much of the US, there are still relatively few places that require it.

I am more ready, however, to support another ban:  one on headphones, at least ones that cover the ear.   Right now, the city of Washington, DC forbids cycling with headphones.  So do a few other jurisdictions; more, however, do not allow motorists to drive with mini-speakers covering their ears.

Now some startup company, Conduit Sports, has come out with a headphone that doesn't cover the ear and block the ear canal.  Its creators say their device allows for "situational awareness". By that, I assume they mean that you can hear horns and other traffic sounds while you listen to Cardi B or Brockhampton.  

Riding with such headphones may well be safe.  Still, I'll stick to riding without them, or without any other audio stimulation other than what's provided by my surroundings when I ride. Even if I'm doing a ride I can do in my sleep, I prefer to hear what's around me, in part because it helps me to think, meditate or simply relax while riding.  Also, I reckon it's safer than riding even with those new headphones.

But I'll still wear my helmet. Most of the time, anyway.

Check Your Pressure!

I took Physics in my junior year of high school.  That was, oh, let's say some time before the first Star Wars movie came out. So, I admit that I've forgotten much of what I learned that year, and that some of the basic tenets of that branch of science have changed since then.

But I'm pretty good at detecting male ungulate excrement, if I do say so myself.  And I've been told I have a sense of humor.  (I don't know how anybody could think that!)  So, very few things uttered by famous people have made me laugh as much as New England Patriots' coach Bill Belichick's explanation of the under-inflated footballs used in the American Football Conference's championship game.  

 

Now, in all fairness, the pressure--or, more precisely,lack thereof--in the footballs probably had little or no outcome on the effect of the game, which the Patriots won in a rout.  The Pats--and I say this as someone who isn't a fan--were clearly the better team in that game.

Still, you have to wonder what Belichick would be doing if he weren't a football coach.  Can you imagine him as a science teacher?  Or a minister?  A lawyer, perhaps:  He might win cases just by confusing people.  He's the only person I've ever seen who can channel Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon at the same time.

I'm mentioning him, and the "Deflate-gate" "scandal" because it got me to thinking about how many controversies there have been in cycling over doctored equipment.  While the two-wheeled sport has not been without such incidents, given bicycle racing's 130-year (give or take) history and the number of events held during that time, there actually have been relatively few controversies about equipment.

Some might argue that there seem to be few such scandals in cycling because they're overshadowed by doping.  Fair enough:  a Google search of "bicycle racing scandals" turns up a lot of entries about substance abuse--and, of course, Lance.  However, I think that the presence of drugs in cycling might now be overstated:  The incidents of doping attributed to Lance (and some of his peers) were a decade in the past by the time he had that now-famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view)  interview with Oprah.  

Still, whether or not you accept that cycling isn't as "dirty" as has been alleged (I think that it's a "cleaner" sport than it was, say, a decade or two ago.), you have to admit that drug scandals aren't the reason why we don't hear more about scandals involving doctored equipment.  There are a couple of good reasons for this.

One is that cycling's governing bodies have, for the most part, fairly stringent regulations about equipment.  For example, the Union Cycliste International decrees that no bike ridden in a road race can weigh less than 6.8 kg (14.99 pounds).  Some have argued that this weight limit is too high, given today's technology.  But I believe that most people--whether they are racers, fans, coaches or the sport's administrators--agree that there should be a "floor" for bike weight, whatever it is.  After all, I don't think anyone wants to see a sport in which technology matters more than the physical conditioning or tactics.  At least, I wouldn't want to see such a sport.

The Nihon Jitensha Shinkokai is another governing body that tightly regulates equipment used in bike races.  The NJS, which oversees keirin track racing in Japan does not allow riders to use bikes or components that it hasn't approved.  What's interesting is that NJS-approved equipment isn't always the lightest available.  However, it stands up to the stress and abuse of track racing and the training involved in it.  NJS officials explain that such regulations help to ensure the safety of the riders as well as the integrity of the sport, on which considerable sums of money are wagered in Japan.

What I've long found interesting is that, even in the absence of regulations, racers ride remarkably similar equipment.  So, while the UCI has a weight limit, it doesn't specify which components or frames can or can't be used.  Even so, nearly all of the riders are spinning wheels made by the same three or four manufacturers and are pumping on cranks and shifting gears made by the about the same number of companies.  Still, the equipment used in today's peloton is far more diverse than it was in the days of Eddy Mercx, when nearly all of the European pros were riding bikes equipped with Campagnolo components.

One reason for such uniformity in equipment is, of course, that Campy was making the most reliable stuff available at the time, and nobody wants to lose a race because of equipment failure.  At the same time Campagnolo had a near-monopoly on the equipment preferences of the European peloton, Japanese racers--even greater in number than their European counterparts--were using SunTour derailleurs.  

So, in brief, most racers and coaches have figured out that there's little, if any, benefit to using altered or unorthodox equipment.  Still, they should check their tire pressure! ;-)

Even Strivers Have To Walk

About two weeks ago, I bemoaned (OK, complained about) a sign ordering cyclists to walk their wheels across a bridge.  After all, it's a long bridge and it leaves you off on Randall's Island, which is about as far as you can get from anything else (Well, OK, there's Staten Island) in the city.

But I guess I shouldn't complain. As cyclists, we aren't the only ones beset by irrational rules.  

Which is more difficult:  walking a horse or walking a bike?  Since I've never walked a horse, I don't know.  

At least this gate faces West 138th Street between Frederic Douglass and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevards in Harlem.  The block is part of a district known as Striver's Row, which boasts some of the most beautiful and distinctive residential architecture in this city, if not the whole country. I ride through it every chance I get.