From the Archives - Freak Bicycle Accident

Introduction

I consider bicycling to be a reasonably safe activity. Obviously it has its risks, and I’ve been injured a few times. Even so, by my rough calculation, I’ve cycled close to 200,000 miles, so I’m fine with my track record so far. There are those who think urban cycling in particular is unconscionably dangerous, but you know what else is dangerous? Urban walking. I don’t recall anybody trying to make the case that pedestrians should just give it up (unless you count Irvine, California where walking is so unheard of, it’s practically against the law.)

A recent article in “Berkeleyside” provides maps of where in Berkeley the reported pedestrian and cyclist accidents occurred last year. According to the Berkeley police, 230 people were injured across 220 accidents, and three killed. Of these, 98 involved bicycles, with 99 injured and one dead. Here is the map of bicycle accidents:

A yellow marker indicates that the driver was at fault; blue means it was the cyclist’s fault. So how does this break down? Police ruled that “fault was evenly split, with drivers and cyclists each responsible 47% of the time.”

What about the other 6% of the time (indicated with a green icon)? In those cases, police didn’t assign blame to either party. And yet, in three of these four accidents, the cause was “unsafe door opening.” So … would it be that hard to ascribe blame? Let me give you cops a hint: do bicycles have doors?

In my experience, and that of most of my cycling pals, police are quick to assign blame to cyclists in the absence of overwhelming evidence that the motorist was at fault. Consider my worst bike accident ever: the driver ahead of me inexplicably swung to the right, and then cut a hard hairpin left turn in front of me to head into her driveway. Needless to say she didn’t look behind her, nor signal her turn. I laid down the bike trying not to T-bone her car. Later, after the ambulance hauled me away, the cop rang her doorbell to get her story. (She’d been hiding in her house throughout the ordeal, ignoring my screams, which her neighbors heard a block away.) She claimed to have used her turn signal and that she had behaved very predictably and safely. The police officer took her word for it, even though (as detailed here) her testimony cannot have made any sense. The fact that my bicycle didn’t actually collide with her car further exonerated her. The cop chalked it up as my fault because I was “going too fast” (even though I was below the speed limit). I guess he had a point: if I’d been going walking speed, I might have been able to stop in time. So I’ll make a deal: I’ll go at walking speed from now on, so long as motorists agree to do the same.

Bicycling (like driving) will always involve some risk, no matter how careful we are. Just today, a friend of mine was hit by a car while bicycling. The driver was texting. While driving. While driving, in fact, through a roundabout. Who does that?

But yeah, I’ll confess that cycling has its dangers even when drivers aren’t directly involved. I recently stumbled across an email to a few friends from about six years ago, recounting my most bizarre bicycle accident ever. What follows is about 80% gripping yarn, 20% cautionary tale.

Freak bike accident – November 2013

Let me tell you about my crazy bike accident. Yesterday evening I was riding home from Bart [the train station, less than a mile from home] in the dark, around 6 p.m. I had basic lights front and rear. I was trying to turn left on Gilman Street and thought a particular driver was going to let me in, so I was out in the road. It’s a never-ending stream of cars at that hour, heading towards I-80, and they’re all fricking zombies, stricken by tunnel vision as they slog through their commute. Alas, it soon became apparent that, eye contact notwithstanding, the driver wasn’t going to let me go ahead of him after all. The gap he’d allowed to open ahead of his car was apparently unintentional, for now he closed it right up, shaving precious fractions of a second off his commute time. I guess the look he gave me was meant to convey, “I see you there, and I don’t care.”

[Coincidentally enough, this act of non-courtesy occurred almost exactly at the site on the map below, where—about four months ago—a driver failed to yield while turning left, struck and injured a cyclist, and didn’t stop.]

This guy’s attitude was shared by the whole line of drivers, whose safety seemed assured at this speed even though unbeknownst to most of them they were slowly dying, a withering wasting car commuter’s death, the death of actual living that doesn’t become apparent until it’s too late. I rode back across the (empty) left lane and hopped the curb up onto the sidewalk. My plan was to head a short distance down to a crosswalk where I could walk my bike across Gilman, as that’s the only way to get these rush hour motorists to let you through.

So there I was, riding along on the sidewalk, and then suddenly I was down. I mean, it was the weirdest thing, because normally you see a crash coming, and in fact time seems to slow down. (This is because, as detailed here, “your amygdala [acts] as an emergency control center that gets all the other parts of the brain to quit mucking around with their daily tasks and concentrate all the resources on the one, main thing that is happening.”) Normally, there’s an opportunity for evasive action or at least to think, “Oh, shit!” But not this time. I just suddenly realized I was no longer in control, was no longer moving, and was somehow in great pain. Given the suddenness of this situation, and the astonishing force of it—suddenly, everything hurt—I automatically assumed a car must have been involved.

And yet, the weirdest thing was, I wasn’t actually on the ground. The bike was down and I was tangled up with it, but I’d landed on my feet. “Landed?” you may well ask. “What do you mean landed? Like, from where?” I know, it makes no sense. Somehow I went from biking to landing with seemingly nothing in between. I immediately dreaded having to tell my wife about the crash, and the whole situation was so horrifying I found myself yelling, “NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!”

And then I thought, wait, if I’m not actually down on the ground, then I haven’t really crashed. This was a bit of a relief because I was wearing a nice suit and it’d have been ruined. But it wasn’t much of a relief because I was in so dang much pain. My back hurt, my neck, my groin, but especially my head. My head? WTF!? Why would my head hurt when it was nowhere near the ground?

My mind raced, trying to make sense of the situation. With no car involved, and my head far from the ground, I figured somebody must have bashed me with a baseball bat or something. Or maybe I’d been shot? I staggered around, taking in the scene. And then I finally put it together: there’s a tree planted in the median with a big stout bare branch, with very dark bark, sticking out over the sidewalk. I never saw it and I’d simply run headfirst into that bad boy—it was a bit like being clotheslined. I wasn’t going all that fast, but this was nevertheless a terrible way to be (mostly) separated from my bike.

Man, it was horrible. I righted the bike, was amazed to see the chain hadn’t even fallen off, and remounted, but I was in so, so much pain. My head, man, it was just killing me. And my groin, it felt like somebody very strong had tried really hard to rip my leg off. My shoulder hurt , my neck hurt, my back, my legs ... I just moaned and groaned the rest of the way home (only a couple blocks). I got into the garage, flipped on the light, and inspected my helmet. I’m so, so glad I was wearing it. Sure enough, the foam was compressed and cracked ... totally unsurprising given that my head felt like it had taken a hit from a bolt gun. This was a big burly Bell helmet, my commuting helmet, and I though I’m sad to see it go, it obviously served me well.

I hobbled into the house, and my 12-year-old daughter saw me and gasped: “Oh my gosh, Dad!”

I thought, oh no, I must be missing some memory of this thing—maybe I did hit the ground, maybe I’m all bloody or ripped up or something! But I tried to play it cool. “What?” I asked faux-innocently. Alexa said, “Well, it’s just ... I’ve never seen you in a suit before!” Man, what a relief. She didn’t suspect a thing.

I went upstairs and it hurt just taking my suit off. I crawled into bed to rest a bit. It hurt to move so I just lay there on my back. I just wanted to lie there the whole night, but of course there was dinner to prepare and kids to deal with, and actually I knew in the back of my mind that it would probably be a good idea to stay awake for a few more hours and make sure I didn’t get dizzy, or hurl, or look in the mirror and see my eyes dilated or spinning like pinwheels or whatever happens when you have a concussion. [If, back then, I’d had the concussion protocol training I’ve since received as a high school mountain bike coach, I’d have had myself checked out far more thoroughly, believe me.]

So I stuck it out, finished out the evening, cleaned the kitchen, read to my younger daughter, stayed up until 10 or 10:30, took like four Advil and some beer, and got to bed. I woke up this morning feeling really sore and stiff, and I can barely walk. My head hurt most of the day but it’s better now. (I took a two-hour online training on RFID technology and passed the test, so my brain does still seem to work.) Mainly my groin hurts,  but also my neck, like I can barely turn my head. Riding is pretty much out of the question. It’s horrible.

Anyway, the funny thing is, when I was heading out yesterday morning, I actually thought about not wearing my helmet. I had fresh gel in my hair, for one thing; plus, a guy in a suit wearing a helmet on his commuter bike is just so nerdy. But I only paused for a second before doing the right thing and putting on the ol’ brain bucket. So what if I have reactivated hair gel and helmet-head for my big meeting ... vanity is for weenies, right? Right. Man, oh man, I’m so glad I was wearing that thing. If I hadn’t, I might be a corpse now, or an extremist political pundit with his own radio show.

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From the Archives - UC Santa Barbara Bike Paths

Introduction

My older daughter, a high school junior, wants a car when she goes off to college. This is comical for two reasons: 1) she doesn’t even know where she’ll be going yet and thus whether a car would be appropriate, and 2) it’s not like you can just ask your parents for a car ... can you? Myself, I hate cars, so why would I give one to anybody?

When I was in college, I naturally rode my bike everywhere. (I didn’t get my first car until I’d been married for three years and my wife needed one.) At Berkeley, commuting by bike was (and is) serious business, with real traffic and real laws that are really enforced. But at UC Santa Barbara, where I spent my first two years of college, biking was just this big joke that everybody was in on. Just now I randomly stumbled across this article about biking at UCSB, which basically said, “Hey, kids, did you know you’re supposed to obey traffic laws?” The fact of this article attests to the lawlessness of the bike paths at UCSB. So does the following post, from my archives.

[You will note in the photo above, and others in this post, that nobody biking to class at UCSB wears a helmet. At least that was true when I was there. Wearing a helmet simply never occurred to us.]

The UCSB Bike Paths - March 6, 1989

Laugh all you want at the shocking tales you hear about the UCSB bike paths. Heck, I do too. But for those who lack eight years of bicycle racing experience, the daily traumas are no laughing matter, and the accident rate gets top billing in our campus newspapers. The other day, I rode along the bike path reading in the UCSB Generic that there were 212 bike accidents in the past year alone that required immediate medical attention. The article, which was incidentally one of the most poorly written I’ve ever read, began to offer a solution: “Lex Murray, bicycling instructor at UCSB, feels that common sense would...” There the article runs off the bottom of the page, and never picks up again. Dang.

I’ve found that one of the biggest hazards is the pedestrian contingent. If they wanted to be safe, they would never dare to use the crosswalks, but since they simply must cross over the bike path, they take their chances. The out-of-towners get it the worst, since in their complete ignorance of the bike situation they wander right into traffic and get hit. During my Freshman Orientation at UCSB, one of my group members was the victim of a high‑speed crash which wasn’t just entertaining, but also artistic, with the rider flying through the air like an acrobat.

Some pedestrians get so flustered at the crosswalks, they actually just close their eyes and walk across, praying to God that they don’t get hit. Perhaps more common are the people that look at an oncoming cyclist, check to see that he is paying attention, and arrogantly walk straight across his path, forcing the cyclist to slow down. (This is really stupid, since few bikes at UCSB have working brakes.) These boneheads are my favorite: whenever I detect that I’m being scanned like this, I accelerate and head straight for the guy, staring into his eyes like a lunatic. I have yet to lose my right‑of‑way (although when I finally do, it’ll be ugly).

I think the most dangerous bicycle commuting factor at UCSB is lack of confidence. Allow me to illustrate just what kind of confidence I’m talking about. While exchanging war stories with friends from the cycling team, I described a crash I had a few years ago. Towards the end of a fast criterium in Denver, there was a big pileup. I thought I could squeak by it, but a guy ahead of me cut over into my path and my brake lever went right into one of his haunches. Flipping over my handlebars, I watched, with a strange sense of peace, almost a calmness, as the ground flew towards my face. I took the impact on my chin, splitting it open. At this point in my rendition of the story, one of my teammates asked me why I didn’t let go of the handlebars to catch myself on my hands. Realizing this guy was obviously a novice, a pal explained, “He still thought he could ride it out!”

Simply, the attitude a rider must take on the UCSB bike path, is this: “Nothing can crash me; I am invincible.” If you firmly believe this, then nobody will mess with you because they will know. To keep the rubber side down, riding defensively isn’t enough—you must ride offensively. And when things get sketchy, you cannot panic. You must absolutely refuse to go down—once you submit to fate, you’re a goner.

Your typical UCSB student tends to be pretty self-assured, even cocky, about his bike safety. Perhaps part of it is that he believes his body is as indestructible as his 40+ pound beach cruiser. It’s just a big game to him—which is good. I’ve had some close calls but my fellow students seldom panic. The other guy might simply ignore that we’ve locked handlebars, or he’ll find amusement in our mutual fight for control. Occasionally, he’ll say something witty like, “Whoa, dude!”

I have identified two things that make the UCSB bike paths particularly tricky. One is that there are these roundabouts that nobody knows how to negotiate. Students here bike between classes pretty much on autopilot, which normally works fine, but then you reach a roundabout and are yanked out of your mental haze because it suddenly seems like bikes are coming at you from every direction.

The other problem is congestion. You don’t see too much of this between classes, or even right before a class starts, because nobody here worries much about getting to class on time. But as soon as a class period ends, everyone is out of that lecture hall like a shot, students pouring out of buildings and mounting their bikes. The next five or ten minutes are total gridlock, but without the reduction in speed or observance of safe distance motorists give one another. After all, we’re all on bikes so nobody can get hurt, right?

Just the other day I found myself in the midst of a bike path nightmare. Somehow, about ten of us got suddenly crammed into the space that only one or two bikes could safely occupy. To make matters worse, I was travelling about ten miles per hour faster than anybody else (and we were all cruising). Tapping into my mountain biking skills, I squeezed my bike handlebars, which are about 28 inches wide, through an opening about 18 inches wide by putting one half of the handlebar through at a time. Had anyone panicked, we all would have been history. Instead, there was a collective burst of laughter.

But not everyone is so sanguine. Some students recognize the danger; panic; and succumb. I will sometimes see two riders on a collision course panic five feet from impact, close their eyes, and scream, and my immediate reaction is, “What a cop‑out! They didn’t even try!” Once things get out of hand, these riders just submit. That probably causes most of their crashes.

Why, just today I was coming out of the Phelps Hall parking lot, and two girls coming in the other direction thought they were going to hit me and panicked. They shrieked and almost crashed into each other. Meanwhile, I calmly held my line and they missed me by a good ten inches. Not half a second later, as I turned onto the bike path, another biker cut the corner to the inside and we really were destined for collision. A natural instinct here would be to throw up your hands to protect your face, which would be carnage. But I resisted the impulse based on my special training. I hit the brakes hard. Mafac cantilevers in the front, coupled with a Shimano U‑brake in the rear, really carried the day and I averted disaster by stopping on a dime. The other rider, totally freaked out, flew off in a skew direction. (If I had been cutting the turn to the inside like that, I would have expected near disaster and not lost my cool like that.) As I pulled away, shaking my head, another guy gave me a knowing look, as if to say—what? I don’t know for sure. But something profound.

Now, all this being said, it’s possible to be too confident. And that’s exactly what led to what my friends and I now call “the Gump Incident.” My friend John was the perp/victim. He was riding along no-handed, reading the school paper, not a care in the world, minding his own business, not bothering anybody, when all of a sudden, out of the blue, for no apparent reason, with no provocation whatsoever (this is all a standard preamble when describing a bike accident), this fricking parked car appears out of nowhere! I mean, one second he’s just riding along, and the next second he’s plowing right into the back of this car! And it’s like, what was that car even doing there, other than sitting next to the curb being parked? The audacity!

Now, there are a couple of things to keep in mind about the Gump Incident. First, it didn’t technically happen on the bike path; it was on Pardall Road, an Isla Vista street that the bike path empties onto, so perhaps a slight increase in caution would have been wise. Second, it could have happened to any of us, because sometimes you get engrossed in an article and don’t really realize that you’ve left the bike path and are in the street. So when my friends and I refer to the Gump Incident, it’s affectionately, not pejoratively.

Now I know just what you’re thinking. “That Dana, he’s a cocky one, and he’ll get his, just you wait.” Yeah, yeah, of course you’re right; deep down inside, I know there’s a Huffy or Schwinn out there with my name on it. And when I do go down, it’s gonna be incredible to behold. First there’ll be an ear-splitting squeal as I lock up my rear wheel and my Tioga City‑Slicker lays down a rubber road. Then you’ll hear something like “LOOK OUT, GEORGE!” (even though there’s no specific reason to suspect the other biker will think I’m named George). Then the screams of onlookers will almost drown out the krunking of mangled metal as Deore XT meets Schwinn-Approved in something like a bizarre ad hoc metallurgical experiment. You may hear my jeans or shorts rip as they’re dragged across a spiky bit of bike, but if bare flesh meets metal the carnage might be silent, like a carpenter’s rasp zipping up curls of soft pine. You may hear me yell, “You BASTARD!” just before riders and bikes alike are consumed in a six‑foot fireball that will send shards of molten metal and rubber flying for hundreds of yards. Jaws will drop, beautiful girls will sob, and an early dusk will come over Santa Barbara as the mushroom cloud slowly climbs and grows and smears out the sky.

Until then, I’ll continue to ride like a man possessed. After all, this is a way of life here at UCSB.

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From the Archives - Pushing the Envelope

Introduction

Here’s a little something I wrote back in college. Looking back, I find it laughable that I’d thought the movie “Gleaming the Cube” would give society a lasting new cliché (i.e., its title). I never saw the movie, but people must have been talking about it and tossing around the phrase “gleaming the cube.” Boy does this movie look stupid. “Brian’s skateboard became his weapon,” the trailer declares, “in a deadly game of international smuggling, murder, and revenge.... When getting even means risking it all: gleaming the cube.”

Pushing the Envelope - January 26, 1989

Modern cinema has popularized several great terms: “pushing the envelope,” “walking a tightrope,” and most recently, “gleaming the cube.” The latter has a specific skateboarding reference, but they all relate to one basic theme: living on the edge. Going to the very limit of safety. In short, pushing your luck.

I enjoy living my life according to this bold notion. No, I don’t climb mountains, or swim across channels, or jump in almost-frozen lakes bare naked. And I certainly don’t often push the envelope in a bicycle race. While many a criterium was won by the rider with the biggest balls, I’m not about to risk a handlebar in the ribs. However, I do enjoy taking risks that involve less physically debilitating consequences.

Here’s an example. Recently, I felt really lousy while on a training ride. So lousy, in fact, that the boredom of meager speeds was threatening to drive me stark raving mad. This was along US 101, a highway not offering any particularly interesting terrain. I thought about cutting my ride short, but that just didn’t make any sense. I mean, being out of shape was the problem here, and nobody ever got into better shape by slacking off. So, I pedaled on, and out of desperate listlessness, I decided to collect every single unbroken Botts Dot I saw. I’d bring them home, I decided, and figure out something useful to do with them.

[Note: my brother Geoff also collected Botts Dots, or, more specifically, Raised Pavement Markers, which are those cool road bumps that have built-in reflectors. We didn’t have these growing up in Colorado, because the snowplows would rip them up, but while in California we collected enough to line our basement floor with them back home. We glued them down, one long strip down the middle, and boy did it look cool. I cannot now remember whether, on this Santa Barbara bike ride, I was gathering plain old Botts Dots or Raised Pavement Markers. –Ed.]

The project became more of a hassle than I had ever imagined, because I managed to find an amazing number of Botts Dots. What’s more, I was wearing an old-school wool jersey that didn’t ensconce the Dots very snugly. When the total number of Dots per pocket reached five or six, my jersey sagged badly enough that it threatened to drag on my rear wheel. Plus, I was trapped in the saddle because my jersey would snag on it if I tried to stand up.

Soon I found a cardboard box in a ditch, and carried the Botts Dots in that. It was slightly wet, very old, and the bottom threatened to give out at any time under the crushing weight. I knew that I would have to be crazy to trust the box, which is precisely why I chose to do so. Granted, the risk factor wasn’t as high as that of hang gliding, but if the box gave out I’d probably run over its contents and face-plant. In the end, I managed to avoid mishap.

Carrying groceries on bicycle handlebars is a favorite way, in my family, to gleam the cube. Geoff and I, when we lived in San Luis Obispo, used to compete: who could carry home the largest amount of groceries in one trip? (I believe I still hold the record: $80 worth.) Recently, while on a massive fridge-stocking mission in Goleta, about four miles from home across a freeway overpass, I discovered a shocking new challenge to bike-grocery-schlepping: the plastic bags, which have always been the sketchiest part of this activity, have become even thinner and flimsier.

I noticed this mere seconds after leaving the store. When I was only halfway across the parking lot, two bags burst simultaneously, sending tuna cans, apples, tomatoes, and onions rolling across the asphalt while I attempted in vain to stabilize the load. After bystanders (touchingly) ran to my aid from every corner of the lot, I took out the two spare bags I had brought along.

I assessed the situation: if those first bags didn’t even last fifty yards, how could I expect these backups to last for four miles? I decided if I had any brain at all, I’d go back into the store and get plenty of extra bags. But then that perverse envelope-pushing impulse crept into my mind, and I knew there was no way to stop it. A grin spread across my foolish face, and I mounted up and set off for Isla Vista with no extra bags.

Throughout the trip, I dodged every pebble in the road, every squashed bug, and every oil spot. When I reached the UCSB bike path, I knew I was in trouble. The path is wrinkled in some places, probably because of some really bad bike accidents. These wrinkles have the effect of a jackhammer on a fully loaded mountain bike with like 90 PSI in its tires. Almost instantly, two bags gave way simultaneously (they tend to go in twos, probably because of Murphy’s Law). The familiar produce dispersal ensued, and this time nobody rushed to my assistance. (I should mention that it was dark by now; naturally, I didn’t have a light.)

After collecting the goods, I put some of them into other already-full bags, and held one ripped bag together with my right hand. The left hand wasn’t free for steering either, because it was clutching the tiny top of a ten-pound bag of potatoes. So I could barely steer, and braking and shifting gears were out of the question. I guided my overburdened machine with my palms on the ends of the handlebars, each finger straining to the limit under with the tremendous weight it bore.

I kept reminding myself of what was at stake: I’d just paid dearly for that food; a lot of it was in jars; the produce would be crushed messily; and the dry spaghetti would be broken. Besides, one more bag failure would leave me with no means of carrying the surviving groceries. Somehow, I managed to keep it together until I was speeding through the bombed-out La Loma parking lot. Then, everything started failing at once. I flew towards my apartment, a ball of boy, bike, and groceries. It seemed my load was staying together only through sheer force of will. No sooner did I get the front door open, but everything rolled onto the floor of my apartment, miraculously unharmed. Not only had I pushed the envelope, but I had held it together after breaking it.

Yesterday, I engaged in this self‑inflicted phenomenon once again. My roommate had been whining hysterically about the four bags of empty jars which had accumulated in the kitchen as part of my recycling project. We also had a bag of crushed aluminum cans, and one of mixed paper. Alas, this whining roommate was the only one with a car, and also the only one unwilling to help recycle. The old bug bit and I had to prove to myself that I could get it all down to the recycling center in Goleta by bike. This being a tedious activity, I decided I had to do it in one trip. On my ride over there, I would be literally encased in glass.

I imagined the outcome of failure: “A 19‑year‑old UCSB student was killed today in a bizarre accident as yet unexplained by law enforcement officials. He was found buried in a mound of broken glass, with the bumper of an AMC Gremlin clenched in his teeth.” Or, “A UCSB student was arrested today by law enforcement officials for vandalizing Hollister Road. The youth was found breaking bottles there, and unsuccessfully tried to pass off his bizarre actions as mere accident.”

Okay, I’m exaggerating. The worst‑case scenario probably wouldn’t involve death or dismemberment, or even arrest, but it would surely involve a great deal of broken glass. But what alternative did I have? I filled my duffle bag and my big backpack completely with jars and bottles, and carried the cans and papers in bags hanging from the handlebars of my Miyata beast of burden.

To keep the duffel bag from swinging down into my rotating legs, I had to sit bolt upright and secure the bag with my right arm, leaving just the left hand to steer and brake. I comforted myself with the knowledge that in a panic situation I could dive for the right side of the handlebar. After about ten seconds of biking, the pain set in. My shoulders, arms, back, and even my toes began to ache. Soon, I was audibly groaning, moaning, and even whining. It seemed as though I’d never make it to Goleta. But as always, I somehow pulled it off ... which means I need to set my goal even higher next time.

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Bike Helmets

Introduction

I bought a new bike helmet. No, you can’t see it; this is a blog, not Show & Tell. But the selection and purchase got me thinking about bike helmets. And a couple of things have been nagging me about helmets lately anyway.

First, in my New Year’s Resolution post I didn’t resolve to wear my helmet whenever I ride, though I’d thought about making this a resolution. Occasionally when riding my kids to school—on the sidewalk—I haven’t worn a helmet, and a fellow parent commented on this recently (using the phrase “bad dad,” no less). I doubt any of the school kids look up to me, but what if they did? I’m not in the habit of making resolutions I don’t intend to keep, but I’m on the verge of toppling off the fence on this one.

Second, I’ve been thinking about my comment in my last post about the dorky helmet James Bond once wore motorcycling. You may well imagine that I got a lot of heat for that, but you’d be wrong—I haven’t heard a word. Nor would I retract the statement that Bond, the fictitious and apparently invincible character, shouldn’t wear a helmet. But I guess I wasn’t really thinking about the stuntman, who, it now occurs to me, perhaps deserves head protection. (My myopia on that isn’t unique; consider the disclaimer in movie credits that says “No animals were harmed in the making of this film,” and then ask yourself, what did the crew eat on the set every day?)

This post examines my history with the bike helmet, primarily for the reader’s amusement.

What this post is not

This post is not an appeal to cyclists to wear their helmets. Why not? Is it because I don’t think helmets are necessary? No, it’s almost the opposite: the value of bike helmets is so widely acknowledged in this country, I really don’t need to make this appeal. Even the pro racers in Europe are required to wear legit, hard-shell helmets now, and every cyclist I ride with wears a helmet on every training ride. In the entire Bay Area cycling community, I know of only one rider who still goes helmetless, apparently due to vanity. (In his case, it backfires; to me, it just makes him look old, because a) riding without a helmet associates you with a bygone era, and b) he’s balding.)

(Within the shelter of these parentheses, I will concede that it would be pretty embarrassing to suffer a head injury during a short errand ride. Early last year I was riding, helmetless, to my kids’ school when the frame broke on my commuter bike. Part of my relief in managing not to crash was that I wouldn’t have to feel like an idiot for not having had a helmet on. But I’m not living up to the title for this section—I’m starting to nag. Fear not, the rest of this post will be decidedly non-didactic.)

My first helmet

Imagine my delight when I opened a gift-wrapped box on Christmas morning, 1979 or 1980, and laid eyes on my first bike helmet. I hope you have a good imagination, because there was actually zero delight. I suppose there was a bit of curiosity—this helmet, the Bell Biker, was among the first I’d ever seen—but instantly I knew I’d catch hell from other kids for wearing a helmet to ride a bike. It’s easy enough for kids now to embrace helmet use—not only are bike helmets ubiquitous now, but in many places it’s the law—but back then, bike helmets were unheard of. My brothers and I were waaaaaay ahead of everybody else here. Some people in such a situation become trend-setters, like the Plastics in “Mean Girls,” but my brothers and I were socially retarded to begin with. Whatever the odds of getting a head injury in a bike accident, we know they were lower than the 100% chance of being ostracized for our Bell Bikers. This helmet was a double-bummer: not only would I have to wear the thing, but it was my main Christmas present that year. Sweet.

The helmet was big and white and gaudy. I don’t have a photo handy but click here and scroll halfway down the page and you’ll see it. The print ad for this helmet showed a cut-away cross-section of the helmet with a ruler showing the thickness; the caption read, “The difference between our helmets and the others is about an inch.” Like that over-thick Styrofoam was a benefit. Since my three brothers and I all got helmets and my dad didn’t want us getting them mixed up, he bought 3M Scotchlite in four colors—one per kid—and added it to our helmets. I got red. For some reason, you got more in the roll of red Scotchlite than other colors, so I got extra stripes.

Eventually the helmet pads started to wear out. They were about a centimeter thick and made of soft spongy stuff, just like those off-brand sink sponges that your cheap college roommate bought instead of Scotch-Brite. The pads wore out fast, especially the front one that got most of the sweat, and after rotating his own pads for awhile, each of us would raid his brother’s helmet and swap out his own grody front pad for his brother’s less grody back pad. I got sick of my pads getting snaked, so I took a magic marker and made a dot on each of my pads—kind of like a rancher branding his cattle. My brothers thought this was a great idea and went one better: they inked their first initial and last name on each pad (e.g., “BALBERT,” “GALBERT”). What they didn’t realize was that their sweat would react with the ink, and they’d have all this backward writing on their forehead after a ride. I secretly enjoyed this. Since the labeling had been my idea, this was the closest I’d ever come to writing on my brothers’ faces with a felt tip as they slept.

The social outcast effect

As predicted, the helmets made my brothers and me pariahs. It was tempting to think this was my dad’s actual reason for making us wear them, just to build character. (After all, he never got us sunglasses, which might have looked cool, or sunscreen, which might have at least made us smell like the lifeguards that got all the chicks.) But more likely, our dad was just ahead of his time. (Decades later, he cautioned me about trans fats, long before I—or anybody else—had heard of them.) When our dad suggested that we wear our helmets roller-skating, I finally put my foot down. Does this mean I stood up to my old man? Of course not—I just stopped going to the roller rink.

It was my second helmet, though, that made things really bad. I got a Bell Tourlite when my first helmet got run over by our car in 1983. I have always suspected my brother Max was involved in the destruction of that first helmet. First of all, it was crushed right after Max and I had been in a big fight; moreover, moments after the helmet was smashed Max came running into the house with it, gleefully holding it above his head like a trophy. Of course I couldn’t pin anything on him and I got in big trouble. My mom took me to a bike shop for a replacement, and they were out of the Bell Biker. I hated the Tourlite on sight: it had tiny vents, fancier stripes, and a dorky tinted visor. The front pad wasn’t velcroed on but just sort of sat there, framed by soft foam. It was a fake chamois pad and looked just like a club cracker. I knew this pad would get lost (or stolen by an envious brother) in no time, and I wasn’t wrong. But I couldn’t very well protest the Tourlite purchase, since I was in trouble anyway. I tried to make the helmet less awful by snapping off the visor, and I guess it helped a bit. Here’s a photo of it:

My best friend at the time didn’t like the Tourlite at all. We were in the process of drifting apart anyway, and this escalated the process. “Why’d you get that?” he complained. “I thought we agreed it was ugly!” It seems silly to claim that a friendship could be compromised by a helmet, but it really could, and was. In fact, my brothers Geoff and Bryan were also snubbed by one of their best friends over their helmets. He’d ride to junior high with them, but a few blocks from the school would make them go on ahead. “It’s not that I don’t like you guys,” he said, “it’s just that I can’t be seen with you.” (Rest assured, he got his: not long after this, his own parents started making him wear a helmet too, along with his little brother, who suffered the added indignity of being made to ride only on the sidewalk.)

That same summer, when I was fourteen, I went on kind of a blind date. There had been two girls my age hanging around the neighborhood one day, and I fell into a weeks-long phone-based quasi-romance with one of them. (I never figured out which one it was.) Finally we agreed to meet up, and chose a video arcade downtown as our rendezvous point. This presented a problem: the place was about five miles from my house, so I had to ride my bike there, and I knew if I showed up wearing a helmet I’d be spurned for sure. At the same time, I was convinced if I rode all the way across town without the helmet, I was bound to run into my dad and get busted. (This may seem paranoid to you, but my brothers and I would frequently bump into our dad at any hour of the day and in any part of town. It was weird.) So after much deliberation I decided I’d better wear the helmet. I got a half a mile or so out when I changed my mind again, rode home, and ditched it. All the way to the arcade I sweated it, worrying about seeing my dad. To say I felt naked without my helmet isn’t enough; I felt like I was naked in church. When I got to the arcade I realized that after all my indecision and dallying, I was like half an hour late, and the girl had bailed. She never talked to me again.

Anti-helmet arguments

Of course my brothers and I wouldn’t have dared argue with our dad about the necessity of the bike helmet, but Max did argue with the other three of us. He alone dared ride without a helmet, and occasionally did get busted. His rationale was, “If I crash hard enough to need a helmet, I’m going to mess up my bike, and if I mess up my bike, I’ll want to be dead.”

As helmets became more common, many others developed anti-helmet arguments. One use of such arguments was to justify the use of a leather “hairnet” helmet in bike races instead of a hard-shell; as late as the early ‘80s a hairnet was all that was required for U.S. races. Some argued that a big hard-shell helmet increased your chances of falling, as if the weight of it would drag you to the ground—kind of a reverse-Weeble-wobble theory. Others argued that having a helmet on would encourage you to take unnecessary risks. When hard-shell helmets became mandatory in U.S. amateur races, some racers complained that the weight caused neck strain. (They must have been airheads for the helmet weight to even matter.)

But there was one day when my friend Peter and I did stumble on a solid argument against helmets. We were out on a training ride and were bored out of our skulls. Pete decided, on a whim, to grab one of my helmet straps and drag me around by it. I retaliated by grabbing his helmet strap, and right away we were weaving all over the road. Suddenly our handlebars got all tangled up, and for a brief moment we stared at each other in shock. Then we were both sailing over the bars, and we stacked pretty hard. We went back to his place to treat our road rash and fix our bikes, and his mom said, “At least you were wearing your helmets.” Pete replied, “If we hadn’t been wearing our helmets, the crash never would have happened.” And he was right!

About the silliest excuse I heard was a couple years later when Peter was on the 7-Eleven junior team. As we headed out for a ride (I in a helmet, he not), his mom hassled him. “I can’t wear one,” he explained, “because we haven’t ironed out our helmet sponsor for this year and I can’t risk being seen in the wrong helmet.”

Fun with helmets

By the mid-‘80s, when hard-shell helmets became mandatory for racing, I could wear a helmet without shame. By that time the Bell V1-Pro had come out, and being a bit smaller than earlier hard-shells and styled after a hairnet, it was not so bad looking. Moreover, the pinstripes and logos were easier to remove, so you could give your helmet a stripped-down road-warrior look. Here’s a photo:

When the foam-only no-shell helmets came out, you could personalize your helmet: you could put on your own fabric cover, or not wear a cover at all. When I rode for the UC Santa Barbara team, we all got fabric covers to match our team uniforms. These covers had colored side panels and a white mesh center section that went over the vents. Screwing around while warming up for the UCLA hill climb, I turned my helmet cover sideways. The effect was that from a distance, it appeared my head was turned. My teammate Trevor laughed and turned his helmet cover sideways, too. This ended up giving us an unexpected psychological advantage in the race: as we both hammered at the front of the pack, a couple of riders toward the back thought we were just chatting while they got dropped. They were so miffed they complained to us afterward for showing off.

Here’s a photo (from a 1989 collegiate team time trial in Colorado) showing three different helmet choices. Trevor has removed the cover and used an ink stamp to make a barbed wire pattern all over his helmet. I’ve turned my cover sideways (well, askew). Mark has eschewed his free team-issue Bell helmet for the more fashionable Giro.

What I don’t have a photo of, but I wish I did, is our teammate Dan’s customer helmet cover that he made out of a pair of underwear (briefs, not boxers). He’d written “JOCKEY FOR POSITION” on the back in felt tip. He actually raced in that thing, and he was fast!

Helmets today

When helmets were something only safety-minded scientist-types wore, ugliness was okay—in fact, it was a badge of honor. In those days, manufacturers could get away with a pretty mediocre product: a helmet that was hot, heavy, and hard to get to fit right. But the helmets got better, and became more popular, and the two trends reinforced each other: a bigger market meant more R&D money.

When helmets became common (and eventually required) in the pro peloton, the state of the art got a nice boost. Pros demanded a decent helmet. (A nice side effect has been more money for the pro teams, as helmet companies pay for the privilege of outfitting them.) Modern helmets are pretty sweet: they’re light, have great vents, look pretty cool, and have these nifty adjustable ratchet systems to snug them up.

(Fit really is important. I once replaced the free Aria Sonics helmet I got from my bike team because I couldn’t keep it from sliding back on my head. On my first ride out with my perfect-fitting Giro helmet, I crashed really badly and was knocked out cold. The helmet performed perfectly; no question I’d be dead or severely brain-damaged had I been wearing no helmet, or an ill-fitting one.)

Even the modern kids’ helmets are really nifty—who wouldn’t want to wear one?

Who wouldn’t want to wear one? The Dutch, that’s who. None of the bike commuters wear helmets over there. (Perhaps it’s the same all over Europe; I don’t really know.) Granted, in the Netherlands the bike paths are great, the motorists seem alert, and the big black 3-speed “opafiets” bikes aren’t exactly built for speed. But still, you’d be hard pressed to find anybody (other than a bike racer) who even owns a bike helmet over there. Here’s a pretty typical photo:

I got that picture from a web photo album that a guy put together showing 82 bike photos he took in a 73-minute period on a fall day in Amsterdam. I counted 112 bikers and zero helmets on this website, and have seen much the same thing during my visits over there.

Ah, the astute reader has surmised, Dana is about to break his promises and start preaching! And he’s going to wax patriotic while he’s at it! Actually, no. I don’t wear a helmet when I ride in the Netherlands either, except on training rides. Neither does my brother, nor do my nieces and nephew over there. It just seems unnecessary, over there. I did a small bit of research and discovered a fascinating analysis concluding that you’re more likely to be murdered in the United States than killed while bicycling (helmetless, by definition) in Amsterdam.

But over here, I’m happy to wear my helmet. After all, I’ve paid my dues … the social outcast years are way behind me.

dana albert blog

The Return of Full Slab

Introduction

This is the tale of how my late-nineties Guerciotti, which still holds the title for the most expensive frame I’ve ever purchased, became my commuting bike. It’s sort of a sprawling family saga charting my commuter fleet, its deaths and diseases, and the Guerciotti’s downfall, which, in a strange way, has also become its apotheosis. My Guerciotti is named Full Slab, and here it is with me on a high mountain road in Colorado back in 2005:

Here’s a quick quiz to decide if this post is for you.

Q-factor is:

a) A subjective judgment of how cute a bike is

b) A measure of the distance between a bike’s pedals

c) A measure of how quiet a bike’s drivetrain is

An Italian bottom-bracket shell is :

a) More stylish than American-market bottom-bracket shells

b) Larger in diameter than an English one

c) Enough to get this post an R rating

Sturmey-Archer is:

a) A grain and oilseed conglomerate

b) A once-proud English maker of internally geared bicycle hubs

c) A dashing rogue from a romance novel

The right answer in each case is (b). If you got at least two right answers, or are disappointed at scoring a zero or one on this quiz, read on. If your eyes glazed over immediately, go read something else or enjoy some television. If you’re somewhere in between, scroll down and look at the photos. There are lots of them.

A proper fleet

Everybody really needs about half a dozen bikes. First, your pride and joy, which is your racing bike. Then, you need to have your “rain bike,” which is a lesser racing bike that you ride in the rain or on your stationary trainer. Also, you should have a mountain bike for satisfying your dirt centers (and optionally a cyclocross bike if you’re into that sort of thing). Finally, you need two commuting bikes. One is a basic three-speed with a big basket and fenders and a chain guard. This bike is for commuting when you’re in a suit and/or in the rain and/or when you’re grocery shopping. The final bike you need is your fast commuter, which has a full 12- or 14-speed drivetrain, light wheels, etc. for going all the way across town.

Until recently, I was living the dream: I had all the bikes listed above, and our household bike total was nine (with only one car). But then, catastrophe struck.

Death comes to the fast commuter

One day this past February, I was sprinting all-out on my fast commuter, not a care in the world (other than being late), minding my own business, not bothering anybody, when all of a sudden, out of the blue, for no apparent reason, with no provocation whatsoever (all of these phrases, by the way, are part of the stock tale that a bike shop customer tells when asking for a warranty), there was a really loud sound like a snapping turtle breaking a broomstick in two, and my bike went from riding just fine to flexing like crazy, a weird springboard boinga-boinga-boinga action, probably a bit like an early ‘80s aluminum Vitus. Remarkably, I was able to get the bike off the road without crashing it. Check out how it broke:

It’s not unusual to break a frame on a fast commuting bike. All frames have a lifespan, and commuters get ridden hard and put away wet (to use an equine analogy). The first frame I built up as a fast commuter was a Serotta, which I got free in 1985 from a fellow mechanic at the bike shop. It had broken before I got it, and to teach himself the art of brazing this mechanic replaced a tube or a lug or something. That frame lasted three rides. I replaced it with a Maserati, a cheap Italian frame a pal gave me because he’d outgrown it. The Maserati lasted about five years, and then it broke as I dropped off a curb going from Sproul Plaza to Bancroft Way on a rainy night in ’91. I replaced it right away with a Bridgestone RB-7 or some such thing that I traded a headset for. That bike gave me nineteen years of trouble-free use. (The components have gone from frame to frame to frame; the rims are Wolber 58s that could withstand the Apocalypse.)

The Arseless

With my fast commuter broken, I’ve spent the last nine months commuting on the Arseless (named after an assassin's bike in a Roddy Doyle book), which is my old black Triumph 3-speed, from England (by way of Connecticut and craigslist). The good news with these old 3-speeds is that you never need to service them. The bad news is that you never need to service them. Bikes like these could really use a good overhaul, but you don’t dare. It’s common knowledge that if you go near one of these bikes with a wrench, they can go to pieces, parts sproinging out like some crazy Pandora’s jack-in-the-box. Every bolt you touch strips instantly. Each component is slowly rusting to death, held together only by habit or inertia—the pattern of is molecules is just barely stable. For years I refused even to take the rear wheel off this bike, fixing each inevitable flat by pulling out the punctured part of the tube and patching it. Keep in mind that I worked in shops for more than a decade: if I’m reluctant to work on a 3-speed bike, you can bet its previous owners were even more reluctant. Which means this bike has likely never been serviced in its life, and it’s older than I am.

So you never tune up the 3-speed, and it just gets slower and slower as the bearings gradually destroy themselves. If you did take the wheel off, you probably couldn’t turn the axle with your fingers. Perhaps a one-speed would be manageable without ever being serviced, but a 3-speed is trickier. The English-made Sturmey-Archer 3-speed hub is a feisty beast, known to turn on its rider without warning. One second the pedals are engaged with the rear wheel, and the next second the linkage is missing and the pedals spin uselessly, which can make you lurch as if dry-heaving, bash your leg on the bars, and/or crash the bike.

Every 3-speed I’ve ever owned has done this to me. Usually it’s when you’re in second gear and then, suddenly, aren’t. Here’s just one such tale of woe, which I described in a letter to my brother a few years back: “I was riding to the store on the Arseless the other day, in a hurry because dinner was waiting on whatever I had to buy, and the rear tire was almost flat so I was out of the saddle. I was in second gear, because that bike is so inefficient (and high-geared) that third would’ve been too hard. Right about the time I realized I was in second, and what that meant, it was suddenly too late—the Sturmey freewheeled on me and my knee bashed the bars with great force. I cussed up a storm, not realizing I was passing the new down-the-street neighbors’ house and their little daughter was within earshot. D’oh! My knee was really sore, and in fact that evening I could barely walk.”

The cussing theme recurred recently when, as a treat, I rode to my daughter’s school on the Arseless, riding one-handed so I could roll my daughter’s mountain bike along next to me (so we could ride home together). This two-bike arrangement meant twenty-plus pounds of extra weight, and that I couldn’t ride out of the saddle up Peralta, which is a steep hill. (It’s not actually steep. I could probably tackle it in the big ring on my Orbea. But the Arseless makes mountains out of molehills. First gear on a Sturmey is okay for the flats; second is fine for a downhill; third is only suitable for going down a ski slope. Either England is totally flat, or the Sturmey company saw an opportunity to celebrate that famous British stoicism and perseverance.) Struggling not to drop Alexa’s bike, I was weaving back and forth, barely able to continue pedaling, and let loose with a loud and serious curse, when I saw one of those nice old people who sit on their porches watching the world go by. She looked stricken. I felt great shame. It decided then and there it was time to build up another fast commuter.

Finding a frame

Having never shelled out any money for a fast commuter frameset, I set my budget at near-zero. I figured I could find a decent old frame, or even a complete bike, on craigslist for cheap. The 1980s was a golden era for good inexpensive Japanese road bikes; you see them all over the place, still going strong. Generally, a bike owner has little idea as to the value is of his bike, and this can work in your favor. But I was shocked to find people asking more money for an early ‘80s bike than the damn thing cost new! They seem to think the bikes are collector’s items or something. The worst ad was for a “"vintage Free Spirit road bike" for $125: “Bikes in rideable condition... Also would be a great frame for a collector to rebuild.” A Free Spirit is a department store bike, which is the bike equivalent of non-dairy creamer, or a cheap kid’s toy covered with lead paint, or a Costco frozen burger patty. No Free Spirit has ever cost more than $100 new, and would be a total rip-off at $5. “Great frame for a collector to rebuild” … is this guy crazy? I’d sooner buy used toilet paper.

Which brings us to Full Slab. The frame was just sitting in the garage, its parts having been looted to put on a new frame three years ago. The chrome on Full Slab was lousy to begin with, and as a result it had badly rusted during its four-year role as my rain bike. Three years ago I decided to get some Quick-Glo rust remover and restore the frame. Here is a before shot:

I did a web photo album of the restoration, and the above photo carried the caption “The Horror!” A friend posted this comment: “A more appropriate title for the photo is impossible. That makes me want to run from the room shrieking like one of my daughters.”

The rust cleaned up remarkably well, but all the same, my friend’s comment really made an impression on me. The phrase “my daughters” was particularly compelling; after all, I can’t help but descend pretty fast, even on my rain bike. So I’d decided I couldn’t conscionably keep using the frame for actual road rides, and replaced it with something basic but non-ferrous. (Note to burglars: as far as you know, I have a vicious attack dog who guards my house, and just the other day I trained him to chew the zipper out of a pair of jeans.)

Now, a commuting bike doesn’t have to be as safe as a road bike; I seldom break 20 mph around town. So, the rust wouldn’t be an issue. Yet, I hesitated to reincarnate Full Slab as a commuter because a) it seems a lowly occupation for what was once my primary road bike, and b) I actually never liked Full Slab that much to begin with.

I’d bought the frame online in August of 1998, sight unseen, for $881.94. The website provided most of the details of the frame geometry, but the head tube angle was listed as “proprietary.” Since the frame had a long top tube, I naturally assumed it would have a steep head angle, which is how to keep the wheelbase relatively short. But Full Slab arrived with a shallow head tube angle and a long wheelbase. I’ll never forget that first ride. As I left my apartment and rode up Polk Street toward Lombard, I immediately realized the ride was lousy. Like a damn mule.

(When I replaced Full Slab, I was determined not to take any chances with frame geometry, and designed my own frame. Here is a design that, in my opinion, totally rocks.)

Needless to say, I got over my misgivings about repurposing my old road bike, and set about putting the Guerciotti back into service.

The catch

The trouble was, predictably enough I couldn’t get the fixed cup out of Full Slab’s bottom bracket shell. The cup is made of (relatively) soft aluminum, and its design is the victim of dunderheaded nationalism. The British Standard for fixed cups is to have a left-hand thread, and for jolly good reason: as you pedal the bike, the turning crankset causes the bottom bracket spindle to rotate within the cups. Because of this rotation, a cup with a right-hand thread will tighten itself down endlessly until it’s too tight to remove for servicing.

But the Italians just had to be different, had to defy the British and their sensible design, had to throw their weight around and ensure incompatibilities that I imagine were originally meant to protect their GDP. The Guerciotti being Italian, it has an Italian-thread bottom bracket shell and thus was doomed to have its fixed cup tighten itself to death. The adjustable cup (threaded into the left side of the BB shell, where pedaling would tend to loosen it) came right off, but all I managed with the fixed cup was to booger the wrench slots up a bit. I brought the frame to my local bike shop, and the mechanic there took one look at it and said, in essence, “Sucks to be you.” He made a cursory attempt to remove the cup, and then threw up his hands. I can’t blame him; such an operation isn’t really a repair—it’s a fool’s errand, and cannot possibly be profitable for a shop.

Fortunately, I have some red meat in the house, and a garage with a big messy workbench, and a Dremel tool, and a vocabulary rich in expressions like “Sometimes a man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do.” So I used the Dremel to cut a new slot into the cup so I could get a really good purchase with a big screwdriver, to which I would apply, with extreme prejudice, great and violent pressure using a tool that at the bike shop we liked to call “The Persuader.” That is, a hammer. Here is the Dremel tool in action:

This scheme did not work. Actually, I didn’t really expect it to work, but I had to try. Then I sought advice from my brothers Geoff and Bryan, but subsequently decided that neither of their suggestions would work. This wasn’t necessarily a fair conclusion, but having been mocked by my older brothers during my teen years for not being “mechanically minded,” it was almost a matter of pride to pursue my own solution. I cut another slot in the cup, across from the first one, and widened the slots:

Why did I widen the slots? And why two of them? So I could fit a flat headset spanner in there, of course:

Once I had the spanner in there, it was just a matter of whaling on that bad boy with the Persuader. Like magic, the cup screwed out just fine, in one piece no less. The threads are perfect in the bottom bracket shell, and the new bottom bracket went in in a jiffy. The hard part of the assembly was over; now it was just a matter of moving the parts over from the Bridgestone.

The assembly

Fortunately, I had my daughter Alexa helping. It’s not like I couldn’t have done it without her, but involving her makes this less of a selfish bike project and more of a Quality Time With Dad scenario.

One goal for this enterprise was to purchase as little as possible in the way of new parts. All I actually purchased was an Italian-thread square-taper bottom-bracket (which I was relieved to find mail-order for $20). Other stuff I got from The Box. Every cyclist should have a box like this in his garage:

The hardest part of the assembly was the brakes. I’ve got some nice Dura-Ace calipers in The Box, but of course I wanted to use Mafac cantilevers with bolt-on Moots Mounts. Here, Alexa removes the mounts from the old frame, being careful not to lose any parts.

Why the Mafacs? Well, for one thing, every bike should have some French parts on it, as a show of humility and a hedge against dogmatism. (All my bikes have at least one French component, except the Arseless, which would reject it like a bad organ.) By the way, look at the bright orange water bottle in the ground there. It’s an important part of the bike. It has a story: I had it on my bike when I lived in San Luis Obispo, and a local racer actually asked me to stop using it. He was very proud of being Dutch, and told me that an orange water bottle was kind of his trademark in the peloton. I thought his request was absurd and reeked of narcissism. I was working at a bike shop at the time, and happened to learn that Specialized was blowing out those orange bottles for thirty cents apiece wholesale. I ordered like two dozen of them and gave them out to all my friends. At the next race, they were all over the place. If anything, the orange bottle had become the trademark of the Cuesta Community College cycling team.

Okay, back to the bike. Because the Moots Mounts flex like crazy, my brothers and I fashioned some stiffeners out of old steel chainrings to improve the braking performance. Tough to set up, but the setup looks pretty cool, doesn’t it?

Note also the Campy shifters. These are the later-model engraved ones made in Milan; I used to have the even cooler ones made in Vicenza with the “CAMPAGNOLO” in raised letters. Also note the pink gear cable. I was determined not to buy any cables, housing, brake pads, or anything. (I’m not sure why I have this impulse; perhaps it’s a backlash against an industry whose goal, as with most industries, is to get people to replace perfectly good stuff with the latest version.) Replacing the chain would have been a good idea about eighteen years ago; now, with two decades on it, it’s too late—the chain has a special relationship with the cogs, which would skip with any other chain. So I put the ancient Sedisport back on there.

What’s remarkable, given the old chain, is that the “new” chainrings don’t skip. Not exactly new: I dug out my old (1983) Dura-Ace AX Dyna-Drive crankset, wondering why I didn’t have it on the previous incarnation of this bike. Then it dawned on me that when I built up that Bridgestone commuter, I still had the Dyna-Drives on my racing bike! (In fact, they earned me the nickname “Dana-Drive” at UCSB.) These cranks used a wacky pedal—you can see a pair of them in The Box, above—that had no axle, and whose axis of rotation was actually below the end of the crank. This gave me the equivalent of a lower bottom bracket, lowering me a bit on the bike so I could get a better draft behind the others. Very cool stuff. In 1984 Alexi Grewal, though officially riding Suntour, used this same model of crank when he won the Olympic road race. Also in this photo you can see the beat-to-hell old Campy front derailleur.

Traveling exhibit

There seems to be a real fad of turning old road bikes into “fixies” by removing the derailleurs and such. Why anybody in hilly Berkeley or San Francisco would want to do this is beyond me. Not only are gears nice to have, but shifting is fun, and keeping your drivetrain intact provides the opportunity for more exhibits in your rolling museum. Look at this sweet Dura-Ace rear derailleur, circa 1980:

Locking up your bike’s wheels is a hassle, so I have these sweet bolt-on Suntour cartridge-bearing hubs. Of course it would be even cooler if Campy made bolt-on hubs for road bikes. I had to make do with using my Campy “peanut butter” wrench to install them. You can see the Arseless in the background. Note also the DT spokes the wheel is laced with. Life is good!

I’ve always hated those clunky little clamps for the Kryptonite lock, and have had the pleasure of not needing them, thanks to my Fisher twin-strut handlebars that accommodate the lock perfectly. Note also the brake lever condoms, bar-ends, and even a Dura-Ace headset—the height of decadence on a humble commuter bike!

So here is the bike, all ready to go. My main impression of it, when it was all done, is how huge it is. Lindsay noticed it too, the first time she got a ride on my top tube (a regular occurrence). She pointed out that nobody would want to steal the bike because they wouldn’t be tall enough to ride it. At first I thought the bike gawky, but you know, at the end of a long workday, it’s actually kind of nice not being bent so far over the bike. In fact, for a mere commuter bike, this thing rides like a dream. It is certainly the best commuting bike I’ve ever had, and I must say it’s nice to finally feel complete respect for Full Slab. This bike has finally come into its own. It’s like the mediocre football player who went on to be a great coach, or the so-so racehorse who found a glorious second career as a stud.

But wait, there was one final change I had to make after I’d taken this photo: the Concor Light saddle just didn’t belong. For an old-school bike like this, I really needed the Turbo. So here it is, all 450 grams of it, mounted on one of the sweetest seatposts ever made: the Campy Super Record.

Just in case you were thinking of ripping this bike off, rest assured I put it in a locker at Bart now. As for breaking into my garage at home, did I mention my killer attack dog?

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