Cycho Librarian

One of the more interesting side-effects of the divorce is that I am now car free. The reactions I get when I tell people this are, frankly, kind of amusing. Almost always there’s some look of horror, an expression of sympathy, questions of how I can possibly survive without a car, etc., etc. The way I ended up here is really very simple: we only had one car, she needed it, I didn’t. I was already riding my bike pretty much everywhere I needed to go. I have one bike with a crate and a trailer, so transporting groceries and so forth wouldn’t be much of a challenge; and in the worst case scenario, my new apartment is an easy walk from stores, restaurants, and a bus line. So really, it’s not that big a deal. In fact, one of the most interesting things about being car free is how surprisingly easy it’s turning out to be. “But Nick,” you say, “sure it’s easy for you. You’re cycho!” Okay, I grant you that I already ride my bike a lot, but contrary to what some people tell me, you won’t...

November 4, 2008 . A day that will live in infamy. Oh, and some guy was elected president .

This evening as I was riding home, I caught up with another cyclist just as I had taken a turn into the 15 mph west wind. I'm still riding my beast of an ancient mountain bike and was wearing my nylon shells, so I was basically a big sail. The cyclist I caught was wearing a nice kit and riding a nice bike, so I figured I'd tuck in behind him and let him pace me into the wind for a bit. Drafting another cyclist is remarkably effective. That's why you see pros do it in the races all the time. The thing is, in order to get the benefit of the draft, you have to follow fairly closely. There is some skill involved in doing this, but generally people won't try it unless they're pretty comfortable on the bike. There's also a lot of etiquette around what you should do if you catch another cyclist, but generally you should just acknowledge each others presence and then offer to take turn on the front after a while. So as I fell in behind the other cyclist, I saw him...

Yeah, so I was hit by a car Tuesday night. I was going through the intersection at Broad on Grant when I suddenly see a car turning left right into me. I had no time to react. All that stuff you hear about time slowing down is absolutely true, and the further away from the event you get the more you can parse out what happened. I remember seeing the hood of the car just about to hit me and thinking "You stupid..." I remember rolling onto the hood of the car and then somersaulting over the top of the car. I later found out that in doing so I caved in her windshield. As it happened I didn't notice the pain of hitting it though, just rolling up and over. I remember feeling my arms tossed around like rubber as my backpack came off. Then I remember landing on all fours in the intersection and collapsing. My first thought was "is anything broken?" I sort of did a system check and gingerly pushed up off the ground and thought "holy crap, nothing's brok...

Women's gymnastics takes silver to China? Men's gymnastics takes silver too, but in an upset? Michael Phelps breaks every record there is? No, this is what I care about: Fabian Cancellara rides the time trial of his life to win gold after taking bronze in the road race, and Levi Leipheimer brings it home for the USA with a bronze. Even though the road race was boring, the boys came through with one hell of a time trial event . The Olympics are never well suited to the 100+ mile road race format, but time trials provide just the right mix of brevity and a close race to make them exciting. Too bad the men's time trial is only online or on MSNBC. Apparently they're going to broadcast the women's tonight, but the men's is where the excitement was this morning. Thanks to Pez Cycling News for great coverage where the American press falls flat as always.

… signs that you may be Cycho. 10. You regularly show up at work with chain marks on your pants legs. 9. You look at the wind speed and direction before leaving home or office. 8. You get aggravated by red lights not because of the wait but because you lose momentum. 7. An average speed of 18 mph on a ride is frustratingly slow to you. 6. You can think of no better way to spend July in France than in a camper with satellite TV on top of a mountain. 5. You’re just as likely to have your head turned by a nice bike as a member of the opposite sex. 4. You’ll change in restrooms in order to ride to work and meetings. 3. When driving up a 10% grade you think, “This would be a great climb.” 2. You look at your 23x700c’s and think “My tires are too fat.” And the number one sign that you may be Cycho… 1. “Man, if VdV hadn’t crashed on la Bonnette he would’ve had a chance” actually means something to you.

The mayor recently delivered his State of the City address , and while the biggest attention was on enforcing curfew laws and installing streetcars, a lot of folks in the media seem to be downplaying what was actually a fairly significant part of the speech. Hizzoner committed to spending $20 million dollars in the next 4 years (pending a bond issue in November) on bikeways! A grand total of 86.3 miles of bike routes and trails, 54 of which are on-street routes and lanes . Needless to say, I was very happy about this. It's about time that people in power started listening to us and doing something about the fact that you take your life in your hands every time you get on a bike in this city. But as nice as it will be to have dedicated bike lanes, this is only the first step in making Columbus bike-friendly. First of all, I couldn't help but notice that bike lanes certainly didn't make headlines in the reports on the speech, and in many cases didn't even make it into...

In July our then newest cat, a 1 year old kitten named Gandalf the Grey, suffered a severe asthma attack and died. I've owned a lot of cats in my life, and I can say without hesitation that he was the sweetest cat I have ever known. He is still sorely missed. Since then I discovered the joy that is lolcats . If you haven't seen these yet you're missing out. Some of them a pretty cheesy, but every so often there's one that is perfect. My wife snapped a priceless picture of Gandalf that was made for lolcats, so I turned it into a lolcat picture. Yes, he really was riding my bike.

I was extremely disappointed that after my last impassioned defense of cycling the Tour descended into an even greater morass than in the previous year. But regardless of the mess created by bastards like Rasmussen (Honestly, I really never did like him-- arrogant prick) and misdirected overachievers like Vinokourov , I stand by what I said. I think that Cycling has turned a corner, and that the majority of professional riders are clean. Unfortunately all you ever hear about are the ones who mess up, and screw up the sport for the rest of us. I've begun to suspect that Fuentes and the other folks involved with the Operation Puerto scandal were targeting pro riders, and that the "papers" that keep turning up with the names of seemingly every single pro rider with a shot at the big time were just Puerto's files on who they wanted to nab. All of this just serves to give the sport a black eye. But it's still a beautiful sport, and it's still worth preservin...

Those of you who pay attention to my sidebar may have noticed that my ride changed about two months ago. Now instead of pedaling off into the wilds of Gahanna I get to pedal into the wilds of downtown every day. This change has some advantages. First, it shaves about 3 miles and ten minutes off my commute. Second, it's mostly downhill heading into work. Both of these make it much easier for me to overcome a reluctant morning and still get on the bike. Of course, there are disadvantages as well; the most obvious being that it is, thus, uphill to get home. But the most interesting disadvantage is that the way into downtown is busy enough and I'm fast enough that traffic actually affects my time. Thus far the fastest I've been able to make it downtown is just under 16 minutes, which doesn't even come close to my best time out to Gahanna. Plus normally I'm running around 17-18 minutes, not because I'm not pouring it on but because I have to stop and start fo...

We’re on our annual summer vacation and I’ve been looking forward to some long rides over some real hills in New York and New Hampshire. Usually we try to do a little something extra between visiting my parents in New Hampshire and Jessica’s in Pennsylvania. This year we started our vacation at a family reunion in Michigan, then made our way through Ontario to the Adirondacks. Absolutely lovely trip. We camped one night at Presqu’Ile Provincial Park on the north shore of Lake Ontario, and the morning before we left I did two quick laps around the peninsula to the tune of about 12 miles. I was feeling pretty good about longer rides in the Adirondacks, and I had planned a doozy of a 35 miler for the next morning. Fish Creek Pond - Saranac Lake Find more Bike Rides in Saranac Lake, New York We camped two nights at Fish Creek Pond campground , which was a fabulous spot between Tupper Lake and Saranac. Every campsite is on the water, and the whole site is in the middle of a stand of...

Before I get to the Top Ten, I feel that I have to apologize. I've really been falling down on the job lately, and haven't been meeting my resolution of posting once a week. I could get out on a technicality by pointing out that my total number of posts works out to more than once a week, but that would be rationalizing now, wouldn't it? I especially have to apologize to the one person who checks in (almost) daily. Lord knows right now she has better things to do than to keep checking in on a blog that's not being updated. I will try to do better. I promise. Really. No, I mean it this time. Anyway, here are my Top Ten... ...Pet peeves about people in cars while I'm on my bike. 10. People who honk at me and/or yell at me to get off the road. Since you obviously didn't read the vehicle laws when you got your license, let me enlighten you: as a vehicle, it is illegal for me to ride on the sidewalk. 9. People who ignore my signals. Again, if you had read y...

Clintonville to Gahanna. 8.02 miles. 23 minutes, 23 seconds. Average speed: 20.6 mph. Isn't it great what a 20 mph tailwind and lactate threshold training will get you?

I rode my bike 1260 miles in 2006. I think. I kinda ran my bike computer through the wash in March, and while I'm pretty sure there were about 250 miles on it at that point, there might have been more. The actual mileage from March through December though was 1010. It took me 56 hours and 26 minutes to ride that distance, which makes an average speed of 17.9 mph. So you probably think that's pretty good, huh? Well, to me it's another New Year's resolution down the drain. In 2005 I rode 1444 miles at about the same average speed, and I resolved to ride further, faster in 2006. So much for that one. I guess in my defense I could point out that I took two more weeks off work during the summer than I usually do, and since most of my riding is the 16 miles round-trip to work, I lost 160 miles during peak weather right there. Plus at the end of the year I was sick during some of the last good riding weather in November and December. This is the point where the hardcore ...