What Cyclists Wish Drivers Knew #6: That White Line is not a Force Field

If you're a cyclist and you live anywhere there are on-road bike paths, you've been there, too. Let me recount: you're pedaling merrily along in the middle of a bike lane: maybe 30 to 40 inches of space next to the curb, marked by a thick white line between you and traffic moving 20 to 30 MPH faster than you are. Maybe there are arrows and icons of cyclists on the pavement, maybe there's a sign along the roadside that says something to the effect of "No motorized vehicles in bicycle lane."

What Cyclists Wish Drivers Knew #5: We actually do obey traffic laws.

I haven't always lived in Indy; in fact I've spent less than half my life in Indiana even though I moved away when I was well into my twenties. I recently moved back to town after "serving a seven-year sentence" in Houston, Texas. If there's one urban legend that permeates the driving community in Houston (where, in an average year, a dozen cyclists die on the roads, most in hit-and-runs), it's that "95% of cyclists run every stop sign and red light."

Well, I must be one of the 5%, then: I'm nowhere near stupid enough to run a red light in Indy, much less in Houston! As for stop signs, well, I'll admit to "Idaho stops" when there are no moving vehicles approaching from any direction. Over the past ten or so years (more than 20K miles on the bikes, I have never had a near miss because I ran a stop sign or stop light. I've had a couple of very close calls when drivers ran stop signs, though.

A Symposium on Shift Cables

A frayed, partially broken shift cable

A while back, I heard a participant in an indoor cycling class talking about shifting problems with her road bike. I could tell she was a distance rider with plenty of endurance rides under her belt, as opposed to someone who rides a few miles on the Monon Trail on holiday weekends. It was also pretty clear, though, that she had limited knowledge of how her machine works. I say that because her problem was a frayed shift cable, but she had no idea why it caused her problem!

My first road bike (a 1964 Garlatti) had shift levers on the down tubes: you could follow the entire length of the cables running from the levers to front and rear derailleur. Not so my current road bikes (a 1994 Trek 1400 and a 2015 Fuji Altamira): they both have Shimano STI® integrated shifters, with the end of the shift cable concealed inside the shifter beneath the rubber “hood.” Cables, in case you didn't know, aren't solid wires: they’re made of multiple strands of stainless steel braided together, which allows them to be flexible while minimizing stretch.

Riding in My Basement with Greg LeMond

LeMond RevMaster Pro Spin Bicycle

For some bizarre reason, our local gym (a YMCA) decided that the membership isn’t interested in spin classes, which resulted in the removal of about half the spin classes from their schedule. Oh, sure, the ones with cycling “in the dark” are still on the schedule, but of the four that we regularly attended, three are now gone… What’s a dedicated road cyclist to do during the winter?

We bought a LeMond RevMaster Pro, that’s that we did. The LBS that sells then (Bicycle Garage Indy) carries both the Pro and Sport models, but we decided on the Pro for two reasons:first, dual-sided pedals (SPD on one side, toe clips on the other) are a $100 option and second, a cyclocomputer isn’t available. The construction of the Pro is sturdier, including aluminum friction cam handles for adjustment of the seat post and head tube, and an overall heavier frame – 31 pounds heavier than the Sport model.

Things Cyclists Wish Drivers Knew #5: That White Line Is Not a Force Field

For a lot of the past couple of decades I lived in different cities in Texas – a state that's quite possibly the very model of modern bicycle hostility (though I must admit I’ve never ridden in Mississippi, Florida, or Alabama). Then-gov Rick Perry – who at the time claimed to be a cyclist – once vetoed a safe-passage law passed by the scarlet-red legislature, effectively making anyone with a driver’s license a double-oh agent. Kidding. Sort of. But now I live in Indiana... and not much has changed.

The Hoosier State, like Texas and nine other states (AK, HI, ID, ND, NM, IA, MI, KY, NJ)¹, has no legal mandate for a minimum passing distance when a motor vehicle overtakes a slow-moving vehicle such as a bicycle or Amish buggy. Some cities (Carmel, for instance) have passed local ordinances, but out on country roads it can be “Katy, bar the door!”
When riding city streets, especially those with striped bike lanes, and roadways with a fog line along the side of the road, most cyclists do try to stay to the right of the line – even though they are not required by law to do so. It’s common courtesy… What isn’t common courtesy, however, is the motorists who whiz by in the closest traffic lane without paying any attention to the cyclist, as if the white line at the edge of their lane marked a Star Trek-style force field.

Just so you know, there is no such thing! A bicycle or pedestrian on the side of the road is just as fragile as one in the middle of the road. Show some common courtesy, people, and leave them enough room to maneuver around road hazards. ¹ The differing state laws are detailed by the National Conference of State Legislatures

copyright © 2017-2018 scmrak

Park Tool CN-10: Well-Designed and Useful Cycling Tool

Park Tool CN-10 Professional Cable and Housing Cutter

If you, as do I, have several bicycles around the house and the garage and have come to the realization that you'd much rather perform your own normal maintenance out in the garage than go without your bike for a week, one of the critical tools you're going to need in your bike maintenance arsenal is a cable and housing cutter. Don’t be like me: the first few times I replaced a shift cable, I dug my ordinary wire cutters out of my toolbox. The result was a nightmare threading the cables through the housings and fitting a ferrule on the cut end. I've even tried using a dab of solder to “silver” the end of the cable.

What Cyclists Wish Drivers Knew 4: We Can’t Always Ride on that Bike Path!

If often seems to me that there are only two kinds of people in this world, or at least on the internet: there are the people who ride bicycles on the streets and there are the people who detest them. Sorry, that’s kind of a generalization… but when it comes to being vocal about cyclists and cycling on the streets, the dichotomy certainly seems to fit. All you need do is look at the comment section on any story about bicycles or cyclists, and you’ll see plenty of venting from the second group. Take, for instance, a recent post in the “Let It Out” section of the Indianapolis Star, in which the anonymous writer asked, “Why is this guy riding his bicycle in the street when our taxes paid for that nice new bike path?”

You see the word “taxes” come up a lot in discussions of bicycles on streets, since so many non-cyclists are of the (mistaken) impression that gasoline taxes and vehicle registrations pay to maintain local streets: they don’t – local property taxes pay the bulk of that cost. But that’s not my point today – my point is the question, “Why aren’t you using the bike path my money built for you, Lycra-clad loser?” The answer’s pretty simple, especially in towns that – like Indianapolis – are at best only moderately bicycle-friendly: The bike paths don’t go where I need to go; the streets do.

There’s more, of course. When people drive cars – and most adult cyclists also drive – they generally take the most efficient route. That means avoiding heavy, slow-moving traffic and streets that are in such poor repair that they slow them down. They use I-74 instead of Crawfordsville Road to get from Brownsburg to Indy, for instance. Well, on a bicycle, it’s the same: it’s inefficient to try to ride the Monon Trail when it’s filled with strollers, and it’s nearly impossible to ride the Fall Creek Trail when (and after) the creek has flooded it. I’ve seen bike trails blocked by standing water, fallen trees, official trucks (lots of times), landscaping crews’ trucks, and bridge construction; to name a few reasons I found myself riding in the street. That’s assuming, of course, that there’s a trail – and that it’s continuous. Out in Hamilton County, many a trail has been built up to the limits of the subdivision, where it then simply ends. We’ve even seen bridges to nowhere on some of our rides (see photo above). Alleged bike paths that just stop in the middle of a block dump riders out onto the streets, sometimes at seriously bad locations. Oh, and for what it’s worth? Many of those bike paths are part of the subdivision’s green space, and weren’t built with taxpayer funds…

So gimme a break, please, drivers! The reason I’m in the street instead of on the bike path is  the same reason you’re on that street: it goes where I’m trying to go!

copyright © 2017 scmrak