WombatNation

Last weekend we headed up to Geyserville and I decided it was time to climb Pine Flat Road. The photo above is from the top. I started out way down at the bottom of that valley, around 3000 feet below where I took that photo. The dirt road is actually a fire road. The real road is paved, but almost as steep in parts.

There’s a benefit ride coming up on June 6 that I wish I could make it up there for. They describe the route as “extremely tough and extremely steep” and “straight up with a beat-down at the top”. I concur. Check the altitude profile on that page.

The ride up was actually fantastic, despite the punishing climb at the top. The wild flowers during the bottom part of the climb were amazing and the canyon walls were beautiful. While I was happy to get to the flat part of Pine Flat Road, I knew the crazy steep finish was next. The climb finishes with over 1.5 miles of mostly 10-15% gradient, with one stretch of about 500 meters that had to be about 15% the whole way. I had to take my only break about 2/3 of the way up that stretch to avoid Roger Rabbit syndrome after my heart rate shot up close to 180.

Getting started again was fun, as it’s a very narrow road. I had to ride across the road a few feet to build momentum and turn hard and straight up the hill to avoid riding off the side of the mountain. If I didn’t make the turn in time, I probably would have gone 100 feet down the hillside before the brush or rocks stopped me. At that point, the vultures flying overhead would have suddenly taken an interest in my ride.

The descent started out a bit scary, as the steep turns with the big drop-offs made for feverish braking and cornering. Then as I entered a steep left hand bend, I heard the terrible sound of a flatting tire. The valve stem separated and the tire went completely flat almost immediately. Since I was in a hard turn, the now flat tire rolled over the rim and jammed in the brake. Of course, it would be the front tire, so I was launched over the handlebars. I went right shoulder first, with my body completely twisting over and landing on my left hip.

Fortunately, I had slowed way down for the turn, so I didn’t have much forward momentum. However, the road was so steep that gravity sent me sliding a few more feet. I scraped off all the skin near the bottom joint of a finger on my left hand and a rock took a small chunk out of my right thumb. Thumbs bleed much, much more than fingers. Especially near the tip of the thumb.

Of course, I had no cell reception. And the only car I had seen at the end of the road (it’s basically a dead end at a closed gate leading onto a private road) had already headed down the mountain. After gingerly (partly due to big scrape on my hip and partly due to Look cleats with covers on a steep downhill) walking my bike an 1/8 mile down the road, I caught up with the car that had just left. Fortunately, they were bird watchers and had stopped to check out the wildlife. They very kindly agreed to give me a ride down until I could get cell reception and call my wife to come meet me a little farther down the road with her Uncle Fred. Thank you bird watchers! You rock!

A week and four bike rides later, I’m fortunately almost completely recovered. Yay, magic healing powers.

Update: 1/25/2010 Fantastic video of Levi Leipheimer descending Pine Flat Road. The corner in which I crashed is 3 minutes 5 seconds into the video. If this had been a video of my ride, it would have been at least 4 minutes into the descent. He’s taking the corners very fast.

Levi Leipheimer Descending Pine Flat Road from Roger Bartels on Vimeo.

One of the things I really love about my Audi is that it has heated seats. While the SF Bay area isn’t the coldest place on the planet, it can still get pretty cold. Well, at least for a couple of weeks out of the year.

The surface area of a seat on a bike is quite a bit smaller than for a car, yet in chillier northern regions of the country, I can imagine that the first minute or so in the saddle on a bike that has been waiting for you in the wintry wonderland could be bracing. That’s why I like the thinking of the person who designed this heated bike seat.

As far as I know, this is not a manufacturer’s equipment option. If you’re thinking of customizing your ride with one of these, I recommend looking for one with a bit of heat-conductive padding. Maybe some wadded up mylar sheets. At least up front on the point.

via: Makezine via: Momentum

In September when we were in Bled, Slovenia, I spotted this ramp at the main intersection in town. While I’m, of course, happy to see that the main shopping area is accessible to people in wheelchairs, I was equally happy that bicycle racers are also welcome and accommodated for. Hopefully everyone queues up single file, though.

Over the past few years some universities and colleges have provided incoming freshman with free (well, bunded into tuition and fees) laptops, and even more recently, iPhones. The Times reports that now some schools are making bicycles available for free or inexpensive rental. The University of New England spent $50,000 on bikes, helmets and locks. Normally, 75% of freshman bring cars with them, but with the free bike offer this year, only 25% brought cars. There are some caveats, though. Bike maintenance must be factored in and students should be held accountable for the condition of the bikes.

The $700 billion bailout plan was amazingly extended beyond wealthy bank CEOs to include bike commuting schlubs like myself via the Bicycle Commuter Tax Provision. However, I may be out of the money because I don’t regularly use my bicycle “for a substantial portion of the travel between the employee’s residence and place of employment.” If only I liked riding in the cold, rain and dark more.

Reimbursement is limited to $20 per month for each “qualified bicycle commuting month.” Hmm, if I just stepped it up in the summer I could at least take home a couple more Jacksons. All of which I would spend on these:

I normally can’t see myself riding a recumbent, but this one would be pretty cool.

And going back to my previous post that mentioned wooden bikes, this one looks pretty heavy, and that’s just from all the spokes.

And topping the recent discussion here of belt-driven bikes is this cable-driven bike that you have to row.

I’ll be in Amsterdam for just under 24 hours in two weeks, but unfortunately I don’t think I’ll have time to make it over to Eindhoven for the exhibition.

So after fixing the flat I got biking to work today (fortunately, it was a slow leak, so I could ride in before fixing it), I’m talking to Stephen about bike innovations. After talking about the bike another friend of mine designed and constructed completely, or at least 99%, out of wood, we start talking about gearing and chains and whether it makes sense to build an automatic shifter with a battery that gets recharged by pedaling. Then we start talking about alternative drive trains.

Now, I can’t remember the last time I said penny-farthing. Probably while watching the intro to a Monty Python show ages ago. Among other drive train variants, I mentioned that a penny-farthing was direct drive.

Thirty minutes later I’m biking home. I turn off Buena Vista onto Grand and coming up the left side of the road is a guy on a penny-farthing bike. Perhaps, finally making it home after Burning Man. Sometimes life is weird like that.

Some of wife’s and my greatest memories (and stories) come from our travels in Bolivia. Today’s NY Times has a really good article that focuses mostly on the salt flats near Uyuni and “The Death Road” from La Paz to Coroico.

The Salar de Uyuni is so bizarre that I have always found it difficult to explain well to others. Ethan Todras-Whitehill does a really nice job of capturing the essence of the Salar, though. It’s a bit overwhelming to stand on a 4,000 square mile plain of crunchy salt, with tall mountains barely visible on the horizon in most directions. The mountains look deceptively small, because the terrain is so flat and unchanging for so far that you can’t quite tell how far away they really are.

The slideshow accompanying the article has a photo of a room in one of the hotels made from salt blocks, but I prefer my photo of the dining room at Palacio de Sal.

Ethan also writes about doing a downhill bike ride on the Death Road, which a friend of a co-worker is also doing soon, though on a motorcycle. I can hardly wait to hear about her experience after she returns. I was shocked at first to hear about the ride, but then I learned that a new road for cars and trucks opened in March 2007, so the dangerous, narrow road is now shared only with a small amount of local traffic. During our trips in 1993 and 1999 on that road, the risk of collision with another car or truck was very high. I doubt my heart rate dropped much below 120 during those drives. I’m sure that it’s still a white-knuckle descent, though. Even if you’re not on a ridiculously narrow gravel road (which supported two-way car and truck traffic when we did it!), winding around hairpin turns, driving through waterfalls that wash across the road, and staring over the edge down multi-thousand feet sheer cliffs, a 12 thousand foot drop over 40 miles is pretty steep.

This photo shows the view from Coroico back to the road. The part of the road you see is probably the safest, least scary, segment. The road twists around the corner and then hugs the mountainside as it twists up and around into the clouds.

Yesterday I rode the 60-mile route of the 2008 Healdsburg Harvest Century bike tour. Some friends and I did it at a very leisurely pace, finishing in a little over 4 hours, which included 20-30 minutes hanging out at the rest stops shoving down piles of food. Or at least I was doing that. The hills were short and not steep at all, so it was a pretty easy ride. Traffic was bad only in a few spots.

I did see the aftermath of two accidents just after the rest stop at West Side school. The road there was in especially bad shape. One person crashed on the descent and got some minor cuts and bruises. While the EMTs were treating that person, someone else crashed in almost the same spot. She looked very stunned while sitting by the side of the road being treated. The EMT said her injuries were fairly minor, too. I hope they both were okay, since that is a sucky way to end a ride, which I know from experience.

The food at the rest stops was extensive and tasty (melon, oranges, grapes, bananas, pretzels, cookies, Odwalla energy bars, PB&Js on wheat, etc.). Lunch included delicious veggie pizza, pasta salad, black bean salad, sparkling juice drinks from Sonoma Sparkler, ice cream sundaes from Clover, and lots more. At first, I thought I must have put on weight due to all the food I ate, but I ended up breaking even.

Maybe this is the year I finally buy a cyclo-cross bike and experience the gut wrenching thrill of shouldering my bike up a steep, muddy hill, bouncing down trails through the trees, and then afterward drinking Belgian beers and eating grilled sausages with the people who lapped me repeatedly.

The July issue of Wired has a review of a couple of cyclo-cross bikes. The review was written by a member of Team Oakland, which I’m also a member of, and the reviewers were racers from the racing team part of our club, Kaiser Permanente/Team Oakland, including one of my friends. I think the $6,000 Moots Psychlo-X is way more bike than I need, though I do love the name.