Is It A Junk Food? Or An Energy Bar? Or A Performance-Enhancing Substance?

Sometimes I give advice in topics about which I have absolutely no business advising anyone.  Sometimes I'm pressed into it:  Someone thinks I know something about some topic on which I'm about as well-versed as Hon. Dana Rohrabacher is on atmospheric science.  Other times, I think I know more about something than I actually do, or--believe it or not ;-)--lose sight of that (very thin!) line that separates my opinions from facts.

When people assume I know more than I actually do about something, they ask--and I give advice--about dating, family relationships, how to deal with co-workers and bosses, love, education, politics, fashion, careers or the existence of God(s).  When I think I know more than I actually do, I find myself giving advice about any and all of those topics, as well as health and almost any academic subject.  (I hope my department chair isn't reading this!)  And, of course, when I start conflating my opinions with knowledge, I start advising people about cycling equipment!

There is, however, at least one area in which I never have given, and do not plan to give, advice.  

Even when I was skinny and in excellent condition, I never presumed to tell any cyclist--or anyone else--what or how he or she should eat.  It's not for lack of knowledge:  I know, probably, as much as any layperson about nutrition--current notions as well as almost any from the past 40 years or so.  Nor is it from any noble desire to do good or not to do harm.  Rather, my reticence about proffering nutritional advice has more to do with the fact that I would have trouble doing such a thing with a straight face.

No matter what kind of advice I might give on the subject, I would be a hypocrite.  Even when my body-mass index was lower than my age, my diet would have appalled just about any nutritionist--whether of the orthodox, holistic or any other variety.  Not only did--do--I eat pretty much whatever I liked, whenever I wanted it, I gulped exactly the things we were told not to touch when riding, or ever.

Now, in my defense, I'll say that while I was on bike tours, I was more interested in sampling the local fare than I was in maintaining a regimen that would keep me at my maximum efficiency. (You would be, too, unless you were in a race!)  So, while in Europe, I downed lots of bread and cheese and dark chocolate--though, to be fair, I also ate plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables I picked up from roadside stands and farmers' markets.  

So..when I should have been gnawing on Power Bars or downing Energy Gels, I munched on jambon-beurre all over France.  In fact, one j-b I ate in a truck stop between Menton and Frejus--more than thirty years ago--remains one of the best sandwiches I've ever had.  Hey, if a place like that can elevate something with three ingredients--a demi-baguette, ham and butter--to an art-form, why in the world would you want a Clif Bar?

But my food choices while cycling have not always been even that elevated.  I was reminded of that today when, before starting a ride to Coney Island, I ate something I haven't had in a while:  Pop Tarts.

Yes, I admit it!  In fact, for a time, I never left for a ride without tucking one of those packets with two 'tarts into my jersey pocket or Camel Back. My riding buddies were doing the same, especially when rumbled up and down the trails in Vermont and upstate.

What made them so popular with our sub-segment of the mountain biking community in those days--about two decades ago--was the "rush" we got practically the second we swallowed a bite of one.  Especially from frosted brown-sugar cinnamon Pop Tarts:  I think they contained every kind of sugar ever concocted in a food processing plant!

Today I ate two cherry 'tarts'.  I was always partial to them, and to the blueberry and strawberry ones. Then again, it's hard to go wrong with any of those fruits.  But coming up with the brown-sugar cinnamon tarts was a real accomplishment.  As far as I know, neither the UCI nor the Olympic Committee has banned them!

I hear that now there's a whole-grain version.  Does that assuage your guilt?

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.

Davis: Still Trying To Set People On The Path Of Cycling

"It was Portland before Portland was Portland."

That is how someone described Davis, California for me. 

 Today, when you ask people to name a "bicycle-friendly", they are likely to think of the City of Roses.  I will not quibble with its reputation:  Few American cities have done more to promote bicycling as a viable means of transportation (though, as in most places, some of those efforts have been misguided).  Portlanders adopted their first bike plan in 1973; after meeting its goals, which included 190 miles of bike paths, new bike plans followed in 1996 and 2010.

It should be pointed out, however, that Davis was developing a reputation as a bicycle haven as early as the 1950's, at a time when few American adults cycled--and Portland was still a lumber-and-mining town.  (When Bill Walton arrived to play with the Trailblazers, the local NBA team, he was dismayed to find a "redneck" burg.)  The local agricultural college had just become the University of California-Davis (UC's seventh campus); the city's flat terrain and warm climate as well as enthusiasm over a new educational project attracted a diverse group of people who were willing, well, to try something new.  

According to local lore, the real driving (pun intended!) force behind the city's pro-bike efforts were a family who returned from a year in the Netherlands in the early 1960s.  They found sympathetic ears in a newly-elected city council that, no doubt, saw bicycling as a way to promote their city as well as the new UC campus. In 1967, Davis striped what were claimed to be the first bicycle-specific lanes in the US.  

Other efforts and experiments soon followed, which included facilities  and ways of accommodating bicycles at traffic signals.   The university invented the bicycle roundabout, now used on many other schools, to handle the large number of bicycles on campus.  Today, the city of ten  square miles boasts 50 miles of on-street bike lanes the same amount of off-street bike paths.

Even after other cities have ramped up their efforts to make themselves more appealing to cyclists, Davis is still seen as a cyclist's paradise--at least, in comparison to other American locales.  A far higher percentage of its citizens cycle to work or school every day than in almost any other city of its population (67,666, according to a 2015 estimate).  Still, Susan L. Handy muses, "Perhaps even more interesting than the fact that so many people in Davis cycle is the fact that so many more don't."

Professor Handy is the Chair of the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at UC-Davis.  She is also Director of the Sustainable Transportation Center, part of the Federal University Transportation Centers Program.  She is probably  in as good a position as anyone can be to understand patterns of bicycle usage--and, more important, what might be behind those patterns.

She also uses what is, arguably, some of the best bicycle infrastructure in the United States. Still, she says it is not enough.  "[W]hile good infrastructure is necessary to get many people bicycling, it is not enough to get most people bicycling".  The experience of Davis would seem to bear this out:  Although a higher percentage of Davis workers ride their bikes to their jobs than their colleagues even in nearby Berkeley (home to another UC campus)  or Palo Alto (Stanford University), or in other campus towns like Ithaca, New York (Cornell University)  and Boulder, Colorado, the number for Professor Handy's hometown is still only 15 percent.  

Still more telling, a similar percentage of children cycle to their soccer games, even though most don't have to go very far.  

According to Professor Handy's research, whether or not children cycle to their soccer games is influenced by whether or not their parents also ride.  Ditto for whether or not they--or their older siblings who attend high school--ride their bikes to classes.  Of course, as in most places, whether or not kids ride to their high schools is also a function of whether or not they have drivers' licenses or access to automobiles.

Interestingly, according to the research, friends' and peers' attitudes about cycling have little or no effect on whether kids or teenagers ride to school or their soccer games.  Based on my own admittedly informal observations, I would say the same for whether or not adults ride their bikes to work.

Another factors that  helps to depress the numbers of cyclists who ride to school or work is the perception of safety:  People often express fear of traffic, crime or other factors.  (I often hear such anxieties expressed here in New York.) Perhaps not surprisingly, women express these fears more than men do.  And then there are those who simply don't like to ride bikes.

Nobody seems to know how to influence that last category. (I failed with a spouse and a couple of romantic partners!) They, like those who come from families who don't ride or worry about their safety, are not pedaling to work because of their attitudes about cycling.  And, as Professor Handy says, attitudes are even more important than infrastructure in getting people to forsake the steering wheel and grab a handlebar.

If there is anything discouraging about Professor Handy's conclusions, it is this:  She came to them in one of the few places in the United States with two generations' worth of "cycling memory", if you will.  In most other places in this country, most drivers have little or no idea of how to act around cyclists because they haven't ridden a bike  on a street, for transportation or other utilitarian purposes, since they were children--if indeed they even rode then.  In much of Europe, by contrast, far greater numbers of drivers are still cyclists, or have ridden recently in their lives.  And they are more likely to have come from families with at least one member who regularly cycled.  

I offer myself as an example:  I am the first--and, to date, only-- member of my family to regularly ride a bike beyond the age at which I could hold a drivers' license.  (I am also the first to do a number of other things, such as earn a high school diploma and college degree, and to do things that are the subject of my other blog!)   But I am an anomaly:    I simply found that I enjoyed riding and never lost that love.  I rode, even with a complete lack of infrastructure , very little cycling culture and few peers who rode. And I continue to ride. On the other hand, I have never been successful at enticing anyone to ride who wasn't already inclined to do so. The complaints and excuses were the same then as the ones I hear now.  

As Professor Handy points out, the real challenge is to change those attitudes--if they can indeed be changed.  She seems to think it possible.