Fitness

Welcome to all who have an interest in anything cycling of any kind.( road, mountain, commuting, stationary, whatever).

This is the place to come to ask that question you have been wanting to ask,

or tell that story about your latest adventure riding your bike,

find out how to use cycling to get in better shape, or anything else you can think of.

So, to start, tell us, what you ride, where you ride and what type of riding you enjoy.

Come back often too check out what's going on and see what's on everyones mind or add your knowledge to the group. 

 

Looks like google is great for finding stuff. I have located a basket made by Kettler that has the same dimensions as the grocery store basekts. Guess what I ordered.

Hi all,

Wife and I got out early this morning before it got too hot. Had a great 20 mile spin through some new rural areas, very nice. Coming back to our parking area we have a couple of hundred yards on busy 2 lane road. We ride the right hand side as usual, until I can see my parked vehicle, I then check behind and move to the center of the lane and signal for a left turn.  A car is coming up behind me now, and he decides to pass on the left as I am turning. Now I am still clearly giving the left turn signal but on he comes. Finally he realizes oops that is not going to work and yanks it back to the right almost hiting another car in the right lane. My wife who had held back figured I was going to get hit. No impact, made the turn and alls well.

We were talking about the driver, and decided that since it was a young kid, perhaps he had never seen a left turn hand signal and thought I was directing him to the left lane. Who knows, you gotta be alert all the time. We had a good ride, just the last 100 feet were a bit hairy.

Regards,

Norman

norman, i had that exact same thing happen on a ride when i was out with 2 colleagues at lunch. they were behind me, so i pulled out to the center to turn on my own. the car had been a sufficient distance back when i pulled out, but after i glanced back and started to pull left he had sped up to a ridiculous speed to pass us on the left. as i moved left, he kept speeding up and moving even farther left. my colleagues were convinced they were about to witness me getting run over. ultimately he did speed past me on the left (in the oncoming traffic lane, which was mercifully vacant).

i fault myself for not looking back again, and for not waiting for an even bigger opening. mine too was a young driver.

I have to say I am speechless when it comes to the ignorance of drivers. I was born and raised in Europe (Denmark) and over there people ride bikes all the time so drivers are a little more used to dealing with them. Here it seems that people think a bicycle is something you have in your house to exercise on!

My ride home tonight from work was extremely uneventful. I don't think I had two cars pass me on the way home. Then I realized the Cavaliers were playing the Spurs so no wonder the entire state of Ohio was glued to their televisions (Cavs lost - ugh). It kind of spooked me a little to be out there all by myself, lol. Saw a beautiful deer though.

Jane

I tried to bike commute this morning... totally failed.  I got to the end of the paved bike trail and the traffic was pretty bad.  There didn't seem to be a reasonable break in traffic either... so I turned back and rode home.   I wasted an hour doing that... but still had enough time to shower and get to work.   I think bicycling for me is going to have to be something I just do for fun unless I either change jobs and work somewhere closer, or we move closer to my work.

Atleast I gave it a shot.

There's no other good backroads way I can go without taking myself another 5miles out of my way.. and then I'd have some higher speed busier roads to go down closer to my office.   So, oh well.

I was hoping to save some $$$... but now that doesn't seem possible.

not to be disagreeable, but that was most certainly not a waste of an hour! you gave it a good try and you got in an hour ride before work - more than most folks do before their day job!!

GOOD FOR YOU for trying it! some places just don't have the routes/roads for it.

Well, had I not rode today I could have brought my running cloths and taken my lunch break and headed to the track.  But yeah I guess it wasn't a complete waste of time.  I tried it... it didn't work out.   I'll spend more time now just focusing on my big thursday rides (30 or more miles) after work and just riding around the city I live in.

I'm totally psyched; we have some great off road trails within an hour's drive from my house, but since I have a road bike, I haven't been able to try them out.  But no more!  My brother's neighbor owns a bike shop and he found a very nice 2005 Fisher Tassajara for me.  It's in the back of my SUV waiting to go for a ride!!!! 

I want to put in a kudos to those of you who are commuting to work on your bikes.  It would save me so much $$$, but the road I live on is so incredibly busy and people seem to have little regard for cyclists.  Good job!

Wow Carrie, I didn't realize that the auto/bike conflict was that common. I think the drivers just do not recognize a bike as a vehicle sharing the road that is entitled to its space in the lane.

At least it all ended well this time. Hopefully we can all avoid this in the future, be aware out there everyone.

Lot's of thunderstorms and rain here now, so no riding this evening.

Oh yeah, we did a new MTB single trac on Saturday, about killed us, lol. I almost went over the bars twice. Once a sapling caught my left brake lever and brought things to an abrupt halt. Then a little later my rear wheel wedged between two roots and slammed me into the bar again.  My wife was keeping up fine until the hairpin turns with an sharp climb. Front wheel just drove into the ridge rather than climbing and she gouged her shin when she lost the pedal.

We were a little sore, battered and bruised, but thought it was fun. We may be a little too old for these off road excursions. Can you say "paved bike path", lol.

Happy riding to all

Norman

Norman : " ... she gouged her shin when she lost the pedal."

OUCH! That's the #1 reason I ride Speedplay frogs : to keep from gouging my legs when I flub a pedal! I was just thinking how much I love that about them - no clawing edges. Sounds like a TOUGH ride!! KUDOS to you for taking on the single trac!

abaker, not sure how hot it is there, but if it's hot outside, be careful leaving your bike in the car all day. i often come out to find 2 flat tires when i do that.

car's in the shop today, so i dropped it off and rode in from the shop this morning. no way to make it home in time to pick it up (going home seems to take about 20 minutes longer than getting to work, because of hills & heat, i guess?). thankfully i can do the after-hours pickup having paid the $1600 bill over the phone. talk about OUCH!  :-)

Carrihound, thanks for the tip about the flat tires. Fortunately it's not too hot today, just beautiful June weather.

sounds awesome! enjoy that ride!!

Night c1 is it possible to mix your commute up? Maybe drive part way then ride? I work with a guy who drives to the daycare center to drop his kids off. He leaves his car there and rides the rest of the way to work. I'm not sure about your situation just trying to toss out some possible soulutions.

Did another 24 Hour race this past weekend. This time on a 4 man team. We got 4th out of 28 in our class and 25th out of 135 overall.

Here is the write up if anybody wants to read it.

Ride Log

Some inside jokes and info you guys might not get :)

some pictures

Thanks

Kevin

gmule,

Hey I welcome the suggestion, but other than leaving my car in the parkinglot of a local walmart or something near the 1/2 way point... I don't really see a good way to do that.   I'd really rather not leave my car somewhere I don't plan to be anyway.  If I have to leave it somewhere, home is a good place.

If I had a co-worker that lived somewhere between where I do and the office I would aim for a partial commute, but our office is small on staff thanks to the work I do building & expanding the database systems to meet the companies needs.

The public transportation system in Anniston doesn't have bike racks on their vehicles... and really a good public transportation system anyway.  Not like in a real big city or something.  It's more for the elderly.   I don't think the working poor even use it.  There are probably only 4 vans in the whole fleat.

So I've pretty well evaluated the whole thing.   I need to either get up at 5:15 or so and get on the trail by 6am... or get my speed up so slight hills don't phase me at all.   I think more training is in order.
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kclark0153,

Nice write up man, and hey some nice pics too.  That 24 hour race seems like it would be good fun.

yeah they're fun but hard. I thought maybe doing it on a team might be easier than solo but I didn't take into account that with a team you are going hard the whole lap.

Hey Kevin,

A great report and photos of your enduro team event. I especially enjoyed the write-up, felt like I was there for the whole thing.  Thanks for sharing your triumph with us all.

Regards, Norman

Sincerely bummed now that I left the house without charging my Garmin...  The battery died on me on the way to my softball game, so I have no idea what my time was on the way back.  But I guarantee I have never biked that fast before!  It's funny what a little fear does for ya.  :)  I went about two miles through Forest Park, which at 10:30pm is completely deserted and rather creepy, then about 2 miles down some rather desolate residential streets.  I'm sure I was perfectly safe, but I get a bit creeped out late at night sometimes, and I was seriously flying just now.  :)

Gotta shower and get to bed, so no time to follow up on recent posts.  I have been reading though, and I'm both learning a ton from you guys and am duly impressed by some great accomplishments here! 

pandajenn19, I am in the same boat. I get seriously spooked when riding at night. I think we need to invest in more lights so that we can shine like a christmas tree.

Tonight I didn't have to go to work so I just took a stroll around town. This chick in a big truck screamed at me to get off the road and used some pretty foul language. I returned the favor by screaming at her to get her fat behind out of the truck and see if she could do it. I had no idea I could get road rage on a bike, lol. So instead of the "wide load" sign they want to make for me at work, I am thinking more along the lines of "I have a right to be here too"

Jane

austin is going through a "be kind to cyclists" phase at the moment. it was featured on the news last night. there's even a PBK2C website :

www.bekindtocyclists.com

i've found it makes more sense to smile, wave/nod, be courteous & a little condescending (just bein' honest) to angry motorists. i was thinking about it this morning : i doubt i've EVER, in nearly 10 years of cycling, delayed any motorist more than 45 seconds. And for that minor inconvenience, i've been the brunt of some nasty, sometimes life-threatening behavior, all for 45 seconds of slowing down another vehicle. hardly seems proportionate, don't ya think?

road rage in a car, or on a bike, is pointless, so best to be the bigger person and hold yourself to a higher standard. not always easy when it gets heated & confrontational, but staying above it is something good to strive for. 

where are we all in such a hurry to get in our cars that we can't slow down a bit to appreciate the journey?

fun anecdote : at 2 intersections on my ride home, i was one of 7 bikes stopped at the light!!!! we nearly outnumbered the cars!!! THAT made me SMILE!!!