How Fast Does He Ride To Work?

This morning I was running late.  I worried: I didn't want to be late to a still-new job.  Still, I took the time to talk to, and stroke, Marlee and Max before I left my apartment.

Of course, frolicking with my felines didn't buy me any more time.  So, I knew that I'd have to ride at a pretty brisk pace to get to work on time.

If there are bicycle-commuting gods or goddesses, they were definitely on my side today.  I didn't feel as if I'd been pedaling particularly hard or fast, or as if I'd been flying up 29th Street, across the RFK Bridge, through Randall's Island or across Bruckner Boulevard. But, somehow, I managed to make it to the college earlier than I'd been arriving when I left home on time, or even early.

How did that happen?  Well, it had nothing to do with breakfast, because I hadn't had any (except for a cup of green tea).  My legs felt nice and supple, not tense, afterward.  Still, I'm not sure that my pace had anything to do with my conditioning. 

Or with traffic. During a break between classes, I re-ran my commute through my mind. As best as I can recall, I didn't have to stop for any lights--and, no, I didn't run through any red lights!

But I'm not sure that even my luck with traffic signals had much to do with my timing.  One thing I know for sure:  It didn't have to do with my bike.  I was riding my heaviest and slowest machine, the one with the thickest tires ( the LeTour).  And I had a pannier filled with papers, books, small tools, a pump, an inner tube and a few other things.  

Hmm...I wonder how much faster I would have been had I been riding something like this:

Last week, this Aerovelo Eta set a new speed record of 144.18 kilometers per hour (89.59 MPH)  during the International Human Powered Vehicle Association's annual Human Powered Speed Challenge.  Contestants rode a course along State Route 305 just outside of Battle Mountain, Nevada.  The route included an 8 kilometer  (5 mile) acceleration zone followed by a 200-meter "speed trap" at an altitude of 1408 meters (4619 feet).   The contest was held in this setting for the 18th year in a row.

Eta's pilot broke the record he set last year. Todd Reichert, a Canadian cyclist who holds a PhD in Aeronautical Engineering, also designed the machine--and co-founded Aerovelo.  His specialty is in the design of aircraft as well as land streamlined land-based vehicles, and says he is specifically interested in "blending the functional with the beautiful".  

I won't dispute that he has achieved those goals with the Eta.  But, as the saying goes, beauty must suffer.    Or, more precisely, someone suffers for it:  In this case, I think it was Dr. Reichert himself, when he was inside that capsule!

As much as I admire both his design and his ride, I simply cannot imagine myself inside that cockpit with my rear end hovering just a couple of inches above East 138th Street!  And--as someone who was once in his position, in another manner of speaking, I have to wonder how he felt about riding with his "family jewels" only a few hairs' breadth away from a wheel spinning at nearly 90 MPH! 

On Track, Or Off The Rails?

If someone mentions a "track bike", you're likely to think of something that's meant to be ridden on the velodrome.

 

Such a bike will, more than likely, have a frame with a very short wheelbase and steep angles, a single fixed gear and no brakes.  If you actually race with such a bike, you're likely to equip it with very light tubular (sew-up) tires and rims, a very sharply angled handlebar stem and handlebars with a large drop and a very small flat area.

Also, if you're racing, you are likely to, at some point, ride on the top part of the embankment.  On some tracks, you will be riding almost horizontal position, as if you were riding along a wall.  I found that the best way to do this was simply to look ahead, not down, and keep on pedaling at a steady pace.

Now, if you're not confident of your ability to ride on a track, you can always try this:

That bike reminds me of the first "mountain bikes" Gary Fisher and friends concocted from old Schwinn cruisers and parts modified to fit them.  One difference is, of course, that those early mountain bikers barreled down northern California fire trails, while the bike in the photo would be ridden on railroad tracks, which are almost always flat.

 

Apparently, that bike wasn't "Stinky Pete"'s first "track" bike.  A vintage Panasonic touring bike met an untimely demise when it derailed (and you thought only derailleurs were supposed to do that!) at 16 MPH.

Talk about "going off the rails"!  Let's hope his second attempt stays on track!

 

Girls Just Wanna Ride Bikes....In Iran

If you were going to start a movement, would you ban 51 percent of the people from participating in it?

Perhaps that seems like a rhetorical, or merely silly, question. 

It is, however, one that is begged by a turn of events in a country full of paradoxes.

I'm not talking about the US Presidential election campaign.  Rather, I am referring to a something that happened in a country where such things normally don't happen--and what resulted in one part of that country. 

The nation in question is performs more gender-reassignment surgeries than any country except Thailand.  Yet its leader once famously declared that there are no homosexuals in his country.

By now, you may have realized that I am talking about Iran. 

It's not a country noted for its advanced environmental policies.  So more than a few eyebrows were raised when, in November 2015, environmental activists in Aran, an industrial city in the western province of Markazi, introduced the idea of "Tuesdays Without Cars" or, more generally, "Clean Tuesdays", on which people are invited to leave their cars at home and, instead, commute by bicycle. 

The idea quickly spread and now all of the Iran's provinces have joined in.  Now it's on the verge of becoming a national event.

But national events aren't easy to coordinate in a country like Iran.  I have never been there, but I have been told that in at least one sense, it's like neighboring Turkey, where I have spent some time:  there are great cultural differences from one region to another.  So, in a city like Tehran or Istanbul, there are neighborhoods full of people who live lives not too dissimilar from those in Western capitals.  However, in both cities, there are also conservative religious enclaves.  So, it almost goes without saying that in the countryside, customs and interpretations of Islam are, shall we say, not exactly liberal.

In Marivan, a county of Kurdistan province about 500 kilometers from Markazi, some women were stopped on 29 July for the crime of...cycling.  At least, some police officers had the idea that women on bikes were haram.  For the time being, women can't ride bikes on the streets in the area.

While there is nothing in Iranian legal codes that prohibits women from cycling, in places like Marivan, the idea of a woman riding a bicycle goes against traditional religious values--or, at least, interpretations of them.

Now, I am certainly no expert on the Qu'ran or Sharia law, but I don't think anything in either would exclude women from riding bicycles, specifically.  But some would interpret those texts, which warn against shameful acts, to mean that women should not ride bicycles.

Or, at least, they would interpret them to mean that women should not be seen riding bicycles in public.  Upon hearing about the July incident, Mamousta Mostafa Shirzadi, the Friday prayer Imam for Marivan, said that officials of the Sport and Youth Organization "need to provide" the women an "appropriate indoor space" for cycling.

In response, organizers of Tuesdays Without Cars pointed out that women, as much as men, need to be able to use their bikes as transportation-- and not just for exercise or recreation, which is all that an indoor space would allow.

Here is a video from a protest against the ban:



Below is a still from a video of a mother and daughter defying the de facto ban on women cycling:

A mother and daughter defy the fatawa against women cycling.