Bike Tuesday

A double stuffed Oreo of bike fun, the last Tuesday of the month is bus Tuesday and its Golden Cruise Tuesday as well…wholesome fun for the entire family. Bus Tuesday occurs the 4th Tuesday of the month where I get to hop on the bus with my bike and ride out to Golden for a recurring committee meeting. A couple months ago I was selected to serve on a committee for work. On some levels getting the nod to serve on a committee can be compared to getting into a car accident: it is bound to happen to just about everyone at some point and when it does you only pray that you’re able to stand up and walk away from it. So while I was ‘voluntold’ to be on this committee, the meetings have been effectively organized and astoundingly on-topic to the point of being productive (shocker for a committee I know), and the real plus has been the once monthly opportunity to flee my gray walled hole during the middle of the day.

Riding to work and traveling to a committee meeting can be a challenge by bike. In the past I’ve managed to only get the call to serve on committees within a mile or two from my office: easy bike to meeting range. A couple years ago I had the pleasure of serving on a group that convened out in Aurora. Fortunately they met early in the morning so I was able to get up and bike down to the main bus depot and hop the express out to the location. Getting back to work was an easy express ride to Denver. Faced with the proposition of an afternoon meeting in Golden I found myself again busing it once a month with my bike. While the commute via bike and bus takes about 15 min longer than driving, I find the time on the bus to generally be more productive work-wise than sitting in a car. I can get caught up on email, read docs or reports and actually prep for the upcoming meeting (which otherwise wouldn’t happen if I went straight from office-to drive-to meeting…there’s just no time for luxuries like effective preparation.)

Today I was able to check some email and get caught up from some lingering items outstanding from last week’s time out of the office, and I got to enjoy the company of some of my fellow bus travelers. Most of the afternoon’s conversation centered around a fellow with macular degeneration who talked at length about how he rides his bike downtown to Golden frequently much to the dismay of his wife who gives him a fair bit of grief about it. When pressed about his route he indicated that the roads are in fact smoother and more direct than the path, which got a chuckle out of everyone around him now listening to the conversation. “I usually take the road down, and then the path back he said,” which made perfect sense to me I suppose; as he had in fact already acknowledged his inability to effectively see either. He also told us a funny story about how he got a call indicating that he was qualified to win a scooter: he just had to answer a few questions. His response to the caller was “Well hopefully the first question isn’t: can you see to drive the thing!” This again got a pretty good laugh from the other riders. He got off at the same stop as I did and cane in hand made his way down the sidewalk. It goes to show how far one can get on sheer willpower and strength of character (if not a bit of stubbornness as well), even despite seemingly limiting obstacles. People all the time say, “Oh I’d probably be able to ride my bike but this and that and such and such.” Well this man could barely see and apparently had a nagging wife: that didn’t stop him!

Home at last from all my biking and busing in a professional sense, its time to load up the bikes for the monthly Golden Cruiser Ride. Tonight marks the second to last installment of this wonderful summer institution. The theme tonight apparently is PJ Party…which is not a theme I can really get behind. I don’t really P or J and I assure you that no one wants to see the alternative. So its shorts and a shirt tonight but for next month’s Halloween Costume Cruiser Ride we’ll be pulling out all the stops. Stay tuned for more on that front!

Snow+Dumb-Bus=Freezing

My skepticism got the best of me this morning when I woke up to find that it had in fact snowed overnight as promised. During the drive home from the airport yesterday I heard the DJ on the radio indicate that the forecast for Tuesday night included a high chance for snow. I distinctly recall looking at the weather online sometime on Sunday—or maybe Monday—prior to our coming back home; snow was assuredly not in the forecast. That hazy memory coupled with the blue skies and warm day time temperature on Tuesday clearly implied to me that the weather folks assuredly got this one wrong.

Well Mother Nature certainly did not disappoint in both snow as well as making me look a fool! Now we did not get a blizzard or anything like that so there is no point in being overly dramatic. However it did snow and the temperature was in the mid-teens this morning: yhe good ship Indian Summer ran aground somewhere last night and left frosty decay and black ice in its wake. Thankfully after our ‘multi-modal’ day adventures I found myself in possession of 6 one way bus tickets all conveniently with an expiration date of 12/31/09 (I wasn’t aware of that fact at the time I bought them). So with ride coupons to burn I thought, what the heck get on the bus. This proved slightly more difficult than I initially thought; interestingly none of my issues were even remotely bike related. Getting out of the neighborhood was easy enough despite the packed-snow- transformed-into-sheet-of-ice covering the road. In hindsight, given the ease at which I navigated our neighborhood streets, I should have just continued on the rest of the way.

Instead, I opted to hold to true to what I told my wife were my plans and got off the road to wait for the bus. Before I left I checked the bus schedule and swear it said there was a bus due around 7:12 (I arrived promptly at 7:10). After about 20 minutes of standing around in the snow and freezing temperature I began to think I somehow erred in my calculations. Perhaps I read the time for the stop at Wadsworth, which certainly wouldn’t have done me any favors. Perhaps the bus was early and my 7:10 was cutting it too close. Or, the schedule we have is admittedly a year old, and probably needs to go out with the recycling; but really do the routes change that much from year to year? In any case, I was left hanging and freezing. I thought after 20 minutes a bus certainly would be due: guess again genius. Ok, 30 minutes?—getting warmer, figuratively that is, physically I was beyond numb and nearly ready to hop on my bike and race off into traffic to end it all before a couple other fellow bus riders at last started to appear. Shortly thereafter the bus arrived. I didn’t catch the time which might have made a nice little nugget of wisdom to tuck away for another such day where I’m apt to repeat this all over again. The lesson learned from all of this? Get a current schedule? Measure twice freeze briefly? Nope, the lesson is wait 10 minutes and then start peddling otherwise your toes won’t thaw until 9:30am.

Tomorrow it could snow again…and is supposed to be 6 degrees at go-time. I think I’ll be a bit more prepared in case they go 2 for 2.

Happy T-Day

Thanksgiving is a time for being grateful for all that we have. So, to celebrate this holiday I thought I’d stop and take some time to reflect on all of the many things there are to be thankful for, such as:

• Carbon fiber
• Gore Tex Windstopper fabric
• The DI2 electronic shift option for Dura Ace
• Wonderfully Dura Ace components like derailleurs and pedals
• Hell all those other gruppo’s too for the Campy and SRAM crowds let’s not be bigoted in our hardware selections
• The Zipp Sub 9 aero wheel
• Brooks saddles
• Balloon tires
• Lance and Alberto likely dueling to the death in the 2010 TDF
• Bike lanes
• Phil Ligget
• Embrocation
• Tom Boonen getting off the rock
• 3 months to get back into shape
• Universal Sports covering cycling
• Cadel finally getting a big win so he’ll shut up for a while about not getting a big win
• The new ACA website
• Team rides
• Solo Rides
• Cruiser rides
• Those rides to the store when you forgot to get bread and Cheerios
• Commuting to work…on even the not so nice days
• Johnson and Johnson’s Multi-Day Ultra Wound Care Pads
• The afternoon mail delivery when you get the new VeloNews
• Fat Tire (its bike related)
• Finally getting your mis-matched Velo Swap parts to work
• Selling the mis-matched Velo Swap parts you couldn’t get to work
• Hipsters…they give people something else to make fun of instead of roadies
• Catching at the light that bastard in the SUV who buzzed you and giving he/she the “kiss my ass” gesture of your choice
• 3 feet to pass
• Lube
• Following the Tour of Missouri in a Vanagon
• Having Levi and Lance show up at the Rock the River Time Trial outside of Glenwood Springs
• First Places…Last Places and all places in between
• Pro Race 3’s
• The end of Goat Head season
• Chrome Bags
• Leg shaving
• Roadie tan
• Railing the descent down Lookout…or any of your favorite descents
• California courtroom justice
• Jens Voigt

Have a Happy Thanksgiving.

Better safe than sorry

A Multi-Modal Kind of Day

Today I woke feeling somewhat poorly. My head ached and my stomach felt a bit queasy. I missed the 8:30 start for the HART team ride and moped around the house for a couple hours until my wife, Kate, started to chide me for what she affectionately termed “wallowing.” After some breakfast and coffee, consumed in the slowest manner possible, I did start to feel a bit better. With my mood and overall physical state improved, we set about planning what to do with the uncharacteristically warm November Saturday. We decided to take our cruisers out and explore parts of Denver and Littleton via bus and light rail connections. Now you might be thinking, can you fit balloon tires on a bus bike rack…? Of course you can. Won’t your back hurt after lifting a heavy steel frame cruiser in and out of trains and up onto bus racks...? Of course it will. Will you look good doing it…? It’s a vintage Schwinn…of course you will.

Kate works for a very forward thinking and eco minded employer, and as a result can ride the bus or light rail anywhere she wants with her eco-pass. I on the other hand needed to head to King Soopers to get a day pass. RTD recently updated its website and now offers a number of nice features for route planning and navigating bus and light rail schedules. You can use an interactive map to look for routes and they have a much improved search and timetable tool for checking schedules. We planned to get me a day pass at the King Soopers at Quail and Colfax and then catch the 16 down to Denver. Contrary to the info on the RTD website, King Soopers, at least that one, doesn’t sell day passes so I grabbed a booklet of 10 ride coupons for $18. Not the deal I hoped for, but the extra ride coupons might come in handy if I get stranded on a snowy day.

We stood across the street and waited for the 16, and after getting the wave from the 16L which didn’t stop at the cross street were camped by, decided to head out and cruise along on our bikes. We went down Quail and caught the D-10 detour by the Lakewood Technology Park and rode through Lakewood Park. This small network of trails is actually kind of neat and offers pretty good views of downtown and the foothills. The trail takes you through some weird science themed sculptures and art before dumping you off in a neighborhood. The RTD West Line light rail project in this neighborhood rerouted the bike route all over the place, and the detour signage in this area was pretty poor. Since we knew the way to go from previous trips, we made our way up to 13th and across Kipling. We awkwardly circled two Lakewood cops and a couple in the midst of a domestic dispute before we had a clear shot at the trail entrance through the neighborhood and back out onto 12th. From this point it was a smooth straight stretch down 12th and 14th to Pierce where we hit Colfax and the 16 bus.

We got on the D line heading south at the Auraria light rail stop alongside Colfax Ave. Now that RTD no longer requires a special pass for taking your bike on the light rail, getting your bike on the train is a piece of cake. They even have signs on the ground to let you know which doors you can use with your bike. Lifting your bike up onto the train would definitely be easier with a lighter bike, but we like a challenge. The only other complaint would be the general lack of room to stand on the top platform with your bike while on the train. At each stop we inevitably were in someone’s way. The train took us south to Littleton where we got off at the main station downtown and cruised up to the Main Street area. We stopped off at Merle’s for lunch. I had a buffalo burger with cheese and bacon, which was cooked superbly and tasted great, along with a chocolate milk shake—which was a bit warm but really chocolaty. After our pit stop we walked along the streets in Littleton and stepped inside a number of the shops and stores in the general downtown area. After a couple hours of walking around we went back to the station and took the D further south to the Mineral stop. Here we crossed Santa Fe using the pedestrian walkway and went to the Aspen Grove shopping area. Kate wanted to go by the Apple store to check on a battery for her IPod and I wanted to check out the Sprint store for a possible upgrade to my phone. All in all the trip to the mall was relatively uneventful and not terribly exciting. There is limited bike parking near most of the vehicle entrances, all of which are somewhat out of the way in and unassuming spots. Additionally there are no public bathrooms since it is an outdoor mall, which combined with an entire day of riding and commuting around made for a bit of annoyance.

Bladders at the point of explosion we headed back up north on the C line and stopped off at Union Station. From here we needed to just get to 15th and we could catch the 28 or 32 back out to Lakewood. With the unseasonably warm temperatures we opted for the 32 which would drop us off on the north side of Crown Hill park where we could enjoy a pleasant night ride around the lake. We had 20 or so minutes until the 32 was due so we opted to head over to the House of Commons and get some tea. The nice folks there graciously poured us tea even though it was an hour after they supposedly closed (the lights were still on and they were just putting away their outside placard so how were we to know?) Armed with tea and bus coupons we headed up to Central St and caught our bus back home.

The blanket of clouds reflected the urban light pollution and lit up the park much like a full moon night. We enjoyed a leisurely ride through Crown Hill around the lake and back to 26th. We’ve ridden down to this area a couple times using the Platte River trail and other bike routes; it’s a nice ride, though a long one from our part of town. The combination of bike and public transportation allowed us to explore a part of the city that we typically don’t get to. To do it again it might make more sense not to drag cruisers along, instead using lighter road bikes. However the pleasure of rolling along on a big heavy steel frame cruiser cannot be denied and doing so around scenic Littleton under the autumn sun and back home in the cool night air made for a great way to spend a Saturday.