So at risk of being a rule obsessed roadie, I have to share two rules I think everyone should follow while road riding in response to this video I recently discovered. We could call them best practices, but then you might ignore me and end up like this guy:

It appears this ride ended up fairly unscathed, but you might not be so lucky. I have logged tens of thousands of miles in group rides, and this could have been prevented. Please follow these rules to avoid his fate.

Rule #1: Aero bars are verboten in pace lines.

This rider’s biggest problem is he is tucked in his aero bars at the back of his pace line. Not only does that mean he has no ability to slow down his bike, but the aero bars are completely unnecessary! The whole idea of a pace line is to draft on the guy in front of you. Your aero bars are providing you no benefit while your crash is becoming a “when”, not “if.”

If you are going on a group ride, leave the tri bike at home. If your road bike has aero bars, stay out of them unless you are taking a pull at the front or when you get dropped.

Sitting in your aero bars in a pace line is dangerous to the people around you and does not help you. Don’t do it!

Rule #2: 32 spoke, triple cross wheels rule.

When you are training, save the low spoke count wheels for races. This guy should not have overlapped the rear wheel of the guy in front of him, but when he did and got hit, the reason he lost control is that one of the spokes on his ridiculously low spoke count wheel snapped causing a catastrophic failure of the wheel.

Low spoke count wheels look cool and sometimes save weight (though many times not … often the manufacturer has to beef up the rim to take the high tension this wheel build requires negating much if not all the weight savings of the fewer spokes.) Unfortunately, they have little to no redundancy. I have experienced a low count, radial built wheel completely fail with a single broken spoke.

Read this book and you will understand the beautiful balance of strength and weight in the triple cross wheel (plus you'll learn to build your own!)

With wheels, tension is the most important factor for the overall strength of the wheel, both enough and that it is even. I have a strong preference for hand built wheels as you know the tension will be right (plus I really enjoy building my own wheels.) Machine built wheels are pretty good these days too, though you do not get to choose your wheel parts which often leads to the 32 spoke variety being heavier than they need to be for economy.

Now before you say I am not being “Pro” or whatever phrase you want to use to describe roadie orthodoxy, take a look at what most pros ride on training rides. More often than not it is 32 spoke, triple cross wheels. They are dependable and pretty cheap even for the nicest pair… perfect for the abuse on long miles. Many pros choose this type of wheel for training because it makes senses.

This is why I am wary of the guy who shows up to a training ride on his Zip 404s. He is broadcasting to me he does not have the experience to know you save those wheels for race day or pre-race tune up rides. This is not someone I am going to feel comfortable jumping into a pace line with because he may just do what the guy in this video did.

So there. I broke my own rule by making some rules. The only difference is these rules are not about making me feel better than you but hopefully making that next group ride a better experience for everyone.

The sustainable way to the good life?

It is easy to be overwhelmed by the problems of the world. I suggest you confront it by turning a pedal instead of the ignition key.

At times myself, I’ve imaged these put-together European mothers, and decided I don’t need to wear a helmet either. I want to perpetuate women on two wheels that are strong, but the science behind it says that bones of a skull just aren’t stronger than cement or asphalt. That science makes me convince my kiddo to strap in, but I can still work out a loop-hole for myself: “I’m only going a couple of miles.” “There’s a bike lane the whole way.” “I’ve got lights on.”

This weekend I visited the 4th Annual Texas Custom Bike Show. The spacious room housed bike enthusiasts and bike experts, amidst some of the finest hand built frames in Texas. One of my favorite frames of the show was built by Freddie himself of Freddie Frames (based out of Oklahoma, not Texas). The frame was modeled after an 1918 Elgin bicycle. I’d never seen an Elgin bicycle before, but imagine Pee Wee Herman’s red bicycle, with a thinner frame and lower curved top tube, and you’re on the right tract. Freddie claimed that he had the original Elgin back in Oklahoma with all of the original pieces and parts, including the rotting and flaking original tires. I was impressed. I conjured up a visual of an Elgin mounted with a rider back in it’s hay day, and even in my imagination the rider had no helmet. A stretched leather rugby player helmet from that time era was the closest I could come up with. And Pee Wee, no way, no helmet through his big adventure.

I have a cool lady friend from Austin who did a solo bicycle tour down the west coast of Oregon without a helmet the entire journey. Coolness or craziness, I get a similar sense of awe from her adventure that I do from the cycling Dutch mother. But unlike the stylized Dutch mother, the wind blew my friend’s hair out of place the entire time. And the last day of her tour, a strong head wind, combined with her tiredness at the end of the day, blew her and her bicycle over. She cracked open her skull and it took 11 stitches to seal it back up.

My hope is if we talk about helmets more, maybe we’ll think about wearing them more, to the point that we won’t think about it, we’ll just do it. Hair styles wont be considered. Myself included.

We welcome the opinions and thought-provoking statements in this article, found them interesting and overall positive, and we hope to be able to partner with you Elliott (and other interested parents) on walking and biking efforts for students and parents at your child’s school this year. We look forward to working with you, as we consider your experience as a regular cyclist and your ideas as a concerned parent very valuable to the goals and efforts of the Austin SRTS program, which are aimed at increasing the number and safety of kids walking and biking to school. We thank you for your interest and concern, and welcome the involvement of all parents at our Austin SRTS schools.

The schools that are part of the current Austin SRTS grant were actually chosen several years ago when the funding application was submitted. The amount of grant funding received was only sufficient enough for staffing and program costs to implement the project at a very limited number of schools. We agree with you that it would be ideal to have SRTS programming in every school in the Austin area if possible. In the meantime however, any school or parent/neighborhood organization can begin and implement their own SRTS program, with the free resources and information of both the National Center for SRTS and the SRTS National Partnership. There are several schools in the Austin area that are not part of our particular Austin SRTS grant, but that are running their own independent SRTS programs in order to increase the number and safety of kids walking and biking to their schools.

We agree that addressing parent/adult drivers with appropriate programming and education is a necessary part of the Safe Routes to School program. To that effect, several months ago we began developing a parent/school staff training presentation titled “School Zone Driver Safety.” We realize that while we would like more parents to walk or bike to school with their kids, there will always be a presence of parent drivers. Therefore we too thought it was necessary to address those parents and adult drivers with safety education, in order to make the school environment as safe as possible for those kids that do walk or bike to school. We are in the process of completing the development of the training, and we are partnering with the Austin Police Department on this important topic. We hope to have the presentation completed by January 2012, and our goal is to have APD officers deliver the training to parents and school staff in Spring 2012. We also do address driver safety and awareness in many other areas of our program, such as during radio interviews and other media efforts, take-home educational fliers to parents at our schools throughout the year, during monthly SRTS Coalition Meetings, and in our monthly email SRTS Newsletter. We have advocated for Distracted Driving Awareness campaigns and efforts, and believe this is a current and timely issue that also needs to be addressed to keep kids safe.

The data statistic that you cited (1/3 of 5-9 year old children killed by motor vehicles are on foot) was listed on a handout given to the parents at the school training you attended, and was part of a packet of safety and educational information we distributed. This handout did have a source listed on the back of the handout, which is NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or www.nhtsa.gov). The handout was part of a Safety Tips series producted by NHTSA back in 2004; this handout in particular was titled “Tip #8: Kids on the Move: Walking & Biking Safely.” We appreciate you bringing this statistic to our attention, as there is now more recent data research (see below). We will update our handouts and safety information that we give to parents and other SRTS partners to make sure we are reflecting the most current data available.

From the most current, (2009) NHTSA Pedestrian Safety Fact Sheet (), it states that in 2009, one-fifth (19%) of all children between the ages of 5 and 9 who were killed in traffic crashes were pedestrians. This is a lower rate than what was cited in 2004 (one-third), so the rate of children pedestrians killed as part of all M/V collisions is declining.

There is also a 2009 NHTSA Children Traffic Safety Facts data sheet. It states that (unfortunately) motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for ages 3 to 14 (based on 2007 figures, which are the latest mortality data currently available from the National Center for Health Statistics). Another interesting fact from this data sheet: 74% of the pedestrian fatalities among the 14-and-younger age group occurred at non-intersection locations, which is a slight decrease from 2008 (76%). This is why we place such a heavy education emphasis to parents on modeling safe street-crossing behaviors, such as crossing at the corners, crosswalks and traffic signals, instead of mid-block and non-intersection crossings (where it is less safe).

Lastly, I’d like to point out another great resource from NHTSA, developed in October 2008, called “Prevent Pedestrian Crashes: Parents and Caregivers of Elementary School Children.” This handout talks about myths and facts of safe walking for small kids, discusses safe street-crossing behaviors, and lists the most common reasons for child pedestrian crashes and parents can do to prevent them. (

Again, thank you for bringing up some very relevant and interesting points in your article, and we look forward to working with you to make the streets safer for our kids.

Kristi Stillwell
Program Coordinator, Austin Safe Routes to School
Austin/Travis Cty Health & Human Services Dept.

While this particular injustice is about pedestrians, as equally vulnerable and often harassed road users I think this story will speak to cyclists as well. Here is what I said:

In April 2010 in Atlanta, Georgia, Raquel Nelson and her three children took the bus home from a birthday party as they do not own a car and depend on public transit for mobility. To get to their home from the closest bus stop, they have to cross a four lane divided road. The closest cross walk is three city blocks away, the equivalent of half a football field. As many of the people in the neighborhood do, Raquel and her family crossed the street where the bus let them off.

As they crossed the street, they were hit by a driver, Jerry Guy, killing Raquel’s 4 year old son A.J. and injuring Raquel and her other children. The driver failed to render aid and fled the scene. When he was interviewed by police, he admitted to having been drinking while taking pain killers earlier that day and to being blind in one eye. He also had been convicted of 2 previous hit and runs on the very same road. In this instance, the district attorney plea bargained with the driver waiving vehicular homicide charges for a lesser hit and run charge.

Raquel on the other hand was charged and convicted by a jury of vehicular homicide. You heard that right. The person who was a victim of the crash, who watched her child die because of it, who does not own a car and was not driving one at the time of the crash was prosecuted for vehicular homicide for walking home from the bus stop. Raquel, who is black, was convicted by an all white jury, all of whom admitted never having ridden the bus.

Raquel personifies the injustice of how we have turned our city streets, the very backbones of our communities and for thousands of years the center of public life, into nothing but a conduit for moving machines as fast as possible. We have made owning a car a requirement if you want a good job or you want to complete simple tasks like buying bread or visiting the doctor in a reasonable amount of time. Transportation is the second largest household cost after housing with the working poor having to spend 25% or more of their income and take on personal debt in a depreciating asset if they want to buy into the automotive requirement for upward mobility.

When it comes to our city streets, we make the most vulnerable users navigate dangerous, inadequate, and often very inconvenient infrastructure while we do everything possible to minimize delay or expense to those in automobiles. And when there is conflict as in Raquel’s story, we do not ask how we can make the streets safer for the least among us. We wag our fingers and punish the weak while we give the wealthy and powerful a pass on any responsibility. Owning an expensive, polluting, dangerous machine should not be a requirement for living the good life.

I light this candle to remember four year old AJ, Raquel, and all the others in our community who are forced risk their lives so that the rest of us can get to work or the store a minute or two faster. Let this candle be our hope our city streets can become a safe and welcoming place for everyone, regardless of their ability to own or drive a car.

Call it the Rapha effect. Ever since the high end clothier started selling minimalist styled cycling clothing and producing high art films and a magazine, there has been a proliferation of blogs that seek to define what it is to be Pro including Embrocation, Belgium Knee Warmers, Red Kite Prayer, and Velominati. In a post-Lance Armstrong world, they glorify the great hard men of the sport, past and present, those who had the daring and the legs to make legendary racing. These site fit my disposition towards bicycle racing. I look forward to the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix more than the Tour de France. I appreciate Thor Hushovd, Phillip Gilbert, and Thomas Voeckler far more than Andy Schleck and Alberto Contador. I’ll read Bobke and A Dog in a Hat any day over It’s not about the bike.

Rapha or Ralph Lauren? Rapha has brought classic cycling clothing styling back from its Primal existance.

When it comes to style, the authors of these sites look to their Pro heroes to define good taste and best practices. I take a classic sense of style in my bikes so these voices are welcome in a world of too many Primal jerseys and generic carbon bikes. Unfortunately, this can too easily descend into a rigid hero worship and elitism that is unwelcoming of other riders because of silly idiosyncrasies like the logo placement on your tires and whether your glasses go under or over your helmet straps.

I am talking about The Rules.

For some reason, the passionate roadies find it all too easy to impart their wisdom as absolutes. Some are made with tongue firmly in cheek like the Universal Truths of Cycling by 18 Miles Per Hour.

Others get so verbose and byzantine as to come off as thoroughly douchey. Take the 85, count ‘em 85 rules of the Velominati. When you get into high double digits for the guidelines of a philosophy, it ceases to be a way of life but simply personal tastes of the individual. As the Dude would say, “Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.”

The Velominati rules also seem to be stuck in the norms of the current Pro peloton, with little regard to the style and traditions of the past. Take for example rules #30 and #36.

Rule #30- No frame-mounted pumps.

Rule #36- Eyewear shall be cycling specific. No Aviator shades, blueblockers, or clip-on covers for eye glasses.

Really? So I guess Fausto Coppi wasn’t Pro?

Tut, Tut, Fausto. You are going to get your racing license revoked with that frame pump. Image courtesy of Italianalmanac.org

Though he could beat Bartoli on the climbs, by the Velominati rules even the great Campionissimo wasn't pro with those sunglasses. Image courtesy of The Telegraph

The golden bicycle rule

The world’s great religions are defined by a few simple ideas that guide all the other words that are written. So it should be with riding a bike.

I suggest we chuck all those other rules and follow the these simple commandments.

You shall love your bike and ride it at every chance you get;

AND

You shall love all others on two wheels, regardless of style or frame geometry, for these are your brethren and you too were once a newb’.

WWJD? He'd tell you to stop focusing on the speck in others' eyes and just get out and ride your bike.

If you want to be more stylish or Pro on your bike, by all means read these other sites and look to the greats like Coppi and Merckx for guidance. On the other hand if what you wear and how you ride works for you and makes you happy, ignore snobby roadies and just go ride your bike!

Integrated shifters are so ubiquitous that they are even available for internal hubs like this Versa Nexus/Alfine shifter.

My 1996 Bianchi Campione d’ Italia came with the original Campy Ergo integrated shifters and worked fine until last spring. Suddenly, the right shifter would no long stay in gear, the inner shifting cog stripped. One of the supposed beauties of Campagnolo is that all their shifters are serviceable. Sure, you may be paying a 20% premium over an equal Shimano or SRAM system, but when something breaks, you don’t have to replace it… except in my case you do. Campy stopped making replacement inner parts for my shifter years ago so while I can theoretically fix them in reality I was faced with replacement. My Bianchi is an 8 speed which Campy which left in the dust in its bid to have more cog gears than anyone else. I found an old replacement shifter at Frankenbike about that time but could not come to an agreement with the seller over price. This left me with no other option but to “downgrade” to down tube shifters if I didn’t want to replace the whole drive train.

The underappreciated down tube shifter. I sure am enjoying my downgrade!

Now I may sound like a Grant Petersen retro-grouch here, but I think non-racers would benefit from seeing friction shifters as an equally acceptable option on their road bike. Not only are they less expensive and lighter weight than the brifter equivalent but are much more forgiving on the novice user. Friction systems need next to no adjustment. As the shifter cable stretches there is no worry about sloppy shifting and there is less to go wrong.

Do friction shifters require more thought or technical acumen? Barely. Yes, they are not as brain dead obvious as the click of an index shifter, but honestly if you know how to turn up and down the volume on your radio, you are going to be able to pick up friction shifting in minutes if not seconds.

For racing, integrated shifters make more sense. You want to shift from the drops or hoods when you need to make an attack and the sponsored racer has a mechanic to make everything run smoothly. For the rest of us, friction shifters offer a simplicity with sufficient convenience to be totally up to the task. I’m not saying you should rip your STI, Ergo, or Double Taps off your current bike, but if you are building up a non-racing bike from scratch, give down tubies a consideration. I think you will be surprised how you will not really miss the brifter. I know I’ll continue to enjoy my “down grade” as I pedal my soul rides.

UPDATE/ADDITIONAL INFO: One of our readers reminded me that friction shifting is not a good match for the modern 10 speed drive train. The cable pulls are so small that it is too easy to overshoot the shift and can be difficult to keep the gear engaged. If you like the position of the down tube shifter and want to use a 10 speed system, Shimano still makes a down tube shifter for 10 speed however it is index shifting only, i.e. clicking through a pre-designed shift. So stick to 9 speed or lower with friction shifting.

For those running a 10 speed system, friction shifting is no longer a viable option, but you can still get the cost/weight advantage of down tube shifters with Shimano 9 and 10 speed index shifters.

Want easier access to your friction shifter? Bar end shifters like these are a good option.

A recent report released in the peer view British Medical Journal showed some pretty impressive health benefits and the low safety risk of the bike share program in Barcelona.

Compared with car users the estimated annual change in mortality of the Barcelona residents using Bicing (n=181,982) was 0.03 deaths from road traffic incidents and 0.13 deaths from air pollution. As a result of physical activity, 12.46 deaths were avoided (benefit:risk ratio 77). The annual number of deaths avoided was 12.28. As a result of journeys by Bicing, annual carbon dioxide emissions were reduced by an estimated 9,062,344 kg.

Is bike share the path to greater community health and wealth?

I’d love to see some economic impacts of bicycle sharing as well. While the U.S. health care industry makes profits when people are sick, other industries and our society at-large see the real costs of an increasingly over-weight, unhealthy population. For example, the City of Copenhagen regularly looks at the positive economic effects getting regular citizens on bikes has to their bottom line health care costs. Their reports estimate the City profits $1.77 in greater productivity and health costs saved for every miles their residents traveled by bike. Meanwhile in Demark as a whole, the nation looses 26 cents for each mile driven (which includes both health/productivity costs as well as the higher cost of automotive road maintenance versus bicycle infrastructure.)

There is also a huge potential local dividend from those who shift away from car ownership. For most Americans, transportation is the second largest portion of their household budget after housing at as much as 20% of expenses. With car ownership, the vast amount of your expenditures leaves the community. Most of the purchase amount goes to Detroit, Bavaria, or Japan, your loan interest and insurance premiums leave for New York or Delaware, your fuel dollars more often than not go to foreign interests with at best indifference to our nation, and this does not address the wealth lost in thin air with the heavy depreciation of car values. AAA currently estimates the average cost of owning an automobile is around $10,000/year. With the vast majority of this cost leaving our community, image the huge dividend our local economy would receive with each person who walks away from the automotive ownership trap.

Austin fancies itself a fit city. It’s time to make that more than 5 Ks and triathlons. It’s time to make good health an integrated part of most people’s lives and bike share can help make it happen.

In bicycle advertising, who will win out: the carbon fiber frame or the pretty girl?

Today’s films are two recent examples. The first is actually from the bike industry, albeit the small Dutch style contingent that the rest of the industry has written off because the bikes are too heavy and you can’t race them. Vancouver shop Flying Pigeon Bicycle produced this lovely film showing the beginning of a new romance on the back of the bicycles that took a billion Chinese to work every day.

The Flying Pigeon Bicycle from yulu canada on Vimeo.

The second is from New York City fashion house 3.1 Phillip Lim which is using the theme “Girls On Bikes” to launch their Fall 2011 women’s line.

3.1 Phillip Lim “Girls On Bikes” Women’s FW11 Collection from 3.1PhillipLim on Vimeo.

The bike industry is dominated by men, engineers, and tech lovers. If you look at industry ads in magazines like Bicycling, more often than not you will see a picture of the product, not people or how it is used. And how has that worked for us? The U.S. bicycle industry has been in decline for over a decade.

Humans are animals driven by stories, not objects. We need to image ourselves how we wish to be. Most Americans do not wish to image themselves kitted out on a carbon racing bike, but allow them to envision themselves looking really good with the hint of a new romance and you’ll have them. It’s time cycle chic was the norm, not the exception.

Is this guy a Fred, a Poser or both?

What do you think?

Are they mutually exclusive or one and the same?

UPDATE: For whatever its worth, here’s the condensed definition of Fred from Wikipedia:

Fred is a derisive term used by “serious” road cyclists to describe other cyclists who do not conform to serious road cyclists’ norms with regard to dress and equipment, and appear amateurish to them. The term is generally reserved for men, while the female Fred is sometimes called a Doris or a Wilma.

The exact qualities that define one as a “Fred” vary widely among regions and cyclists. The earliest two definitions used for the term are actually completely contradictory.