Hey Dude! Catch This Wave!

For a few years, I did a pretty fair amount of mountain biking.  I even had two "crews" I rode with.  In one of them, I was the only white, non-Caribbean rider; in the other I was the oldest.  We rode, went out to eat, went to movies and engaged in all sorts of ribaldry.   And we talked a lot of trash--to and about each other and everyone else in the world, it seemed--all in good fun, of course.

I have never surfed, but somehow this milieu reminded me of what I always imagine "boarders" enjoyed with each other.  We had a kind of high-octane testosterone-fueled camaraderie and egged each other on in making fast turns and drops and, on occasion, chatting up women.  (Oh, if they could see me now..;-)).  Much of the slang we, and other mountain bikers, used at that time was that of surfers.  Someone who took a tumble "wiped out", tough terrain was "gnarly" and anything particularly pleasurable or exhilarating was "bitchin'! and could leave us "stoked".

Oh, yeah, and the way we, and other mountain bikers used the word "dude".  Yes, it was a slang term for anyone male, but it was also used as an all-purpose rhetorical exclamation. "Du-u--de!" Lots of riders would yell it when bombing down a steep drop. 

It all made sense to me when I realized that in some ways, mountain biking--especially the downhill variety--has a similar thrill, a kind of adrenaline rush, that "riding the waves" does.  Even cross-country riding has some of that feel:  When you ride fast through turns and over rocks, creeks and such, after a certain point, it's not about how hard or fast you're pedaling; you stay on your bike and move forward to the degree that you can ride the "waves" of whatever terrain your tire treads roll over.

So, I guess, it does make sense that someone actually created this:




From Charlie Kelly's website

"Soon to Revolutionize Self Propelled (sic) Recreational Vehicles"?  It must really be revolutionary if the rider doesn't need a helmet or other protective equipment!

Why Do--And Don't--Women Ride?

In late 2014, People for Bikes commissioned a study on women's participation in cycling.

Its findings confirmed some things I'd suspected but revealed other things that surprised me.

My own experiences and observations have shown me that more males than females cycle.  According to the study, 45 million women ride a bicycle at least once a year, compared to 59 million men.  In other words, about 43 percent of all adult cyclists are women.  Given what I've seen, I'm not surprised by those statistics. 

Nor am I surprised by another PfB finding, interesting as it is:  Boys and girls ride bikes at the same rate at ages three to nine.  At ten years of age, girls and women start to ride less than men and boys. The gap grows as they grow older, and is its widest at ages 55 and older.

That, in spite of something else the surveys revealed:  Almost the same numbers of women and men say they would like to bike more often.  One of the reasons women most commonly cite for not cycling is simply not having a working bicycle available at home.  This is a factor for somewhat higher of numbers of women than for men. 

Safety concerns are another deterrent to cycling for many women. While the numbers of women who worry about being struck by a car is roughly equal to the numbers of men who express such concerns, women are much more likely than men to cite fears about their own personal safety as a reason for not cycling.

One of the study's revelations that surprised me somewhat is that 94 percent of female cyclists rode for recreation while  68 percent rode for transportation to and from social and leisure activities.  Actually, I'm only somewhat surprised by the second figure, but more so by the first, based on my own observations and impressions here in New York City.

The most surprising part of the study (at least to me) is this:  A much higher percentage (31) of women with children than without (19) rode at least once a year.  Then again, the study found the same held true for men (46 vs. 31 percent).  These contradict a UCLA study that suggested women don't ride because they need their cars to handle childcare responsibilities. 

Knowing about the People for Bikes study leads me to wonder whether women's actual and perceived barriers to cycling can be overcome--and whether doing so would change the ways in which women ride.  If more women started to ride to work, and if more of us started to ride our bikes to social and other activities, would more women take up long-distance touring, racing and other genres of cycling in which the gap between women's and men's participation is even greater?

A Tube That Pumps Itself

Yesterday I wrote about airless bicycle tires.  The Zeus LCM tires I tried about thirty years ago made my bike about as quick as a donkey cart and gave it the handling of a shopping cart.  And, from what I read, it actually did less to deaden a bike's performance than other airless tires available at that time (about 30 to 35 years ago).  So it was no surprise that they all but disappeared a few years later.

I've been around long enough not to be surprised that there are attempts to revive the idea.  The new airless tires, and the insert made by Hutchinson, all have, from what I understand, the same drawbacks as the old airless tires:  a large increase in rotating weight (especially on road bikes), a hard, dead feel and difficulty of installation and removal.

Companies and individuals are reviving the idea because of people's fear of getting--or, more precisely, getting their hands dirty in fixing-- them.  When people learn that I ride bikes, the most common question is, "What do you do about flats?" While, in my mind, my younger, snarky self is saying, "I wear them when I'm not wearing my heels," I explain that fixing a flat is not a complicated process and that I carry a little vial of waterless hand cleaner if I'm going to work or some other place where I have to be presentable.

 When I've worked in bike shops, led rides and volunteered with organizations like American Youth Hostels and Recycle-A-Bicycle, I've told people that the one bike repair they should all learn is how to fix a flat.  I've also told them that if they do no other bike maintenance, they should keep their chains lubed and their tires properly inflated. 

Someone who's afraid to fix a flat also probably won't pump his or her tires if they're not obviously flat.  I think that people don't realize that all tires "exhale" air, and that such gradual air losses are less noticeably in car tires because it's less noticeable, given the greater volume of air.  They might go weeks or even longer before inflating their car tires, but probably need to inflate bike tires every week or two.

Then, of course--as with fixing flats and other bike maintenance--there are those who are too lazy or scared to do it.

For them, there is inventor Benjamin Krempel's creation, called the PumpTube.

A cutaway diagram of the Pump Tube.  The beige element represents the pumping mechanism.  From Gizmag.

It consists of a regular inner tube with a one-way valve in the valve stem. That valve draws in air which doesn't go directly into the main body of the inner tube. Instead, the air goes into one end of a tube-like pumping mechanism, which runs along the outside perimeter of the inner tube.  As the tire rolls along the ground or street, the pumping mechanism is compressed, which forces air into the inner tube.  The resulting absence of air in the pumping mechanism creates a vacuum effect, drawing more air into the valve. 

I should also mention that there is a dial on the valve stem that can be used to set the "target" pressure.  Once that pressure is reached, no more air is pulled in.

The mechanism in the PumpTube is probably useful in compensating for normal seepage or to counteract pinhole leaks.  Krempel admits that a larger punctures would  probably need to be repaired.

It will be interesting to see whether the PumpTube is actually helpful, especially to commuters and other utility cyclists.   If nothing else, it does overcome--somewhat--a drawback of one of Krempel's earlier inventions, the PumpTires.  As you may have guessed, it was a tire that had the same sort of mechanism as the PumpTube.  The problem with the PumpTire--aside from the fact that it requires users to give up their regular tires--is that once the tire tread wears away, the pumping mechanism is compromised. 

Plans call for Pump Tubes to be compatible with regular 700 C and 26 inch tires. Krempel says that once he perfects the design, he plans to start a Kickstarter campaign to produce PumpTubes, which are expected to sell for US $30 to $55 per unit.