Tikit on the Way, But no Clever Pun

[Washington, DC] In breaking news today, Steve announced that his Bike Friday Pocket Crusoe will soon be joined by a Bike Friday Tikit. That's right. It's a cream soda blue, stock size large Tikit. It is making its FedEx way across the You Ess of Eh as we speak.

The Tikit will have eight gears, is used, and appears to be of the "Just the Tikit" model from the Bike Friday line of Tikit folding bikes with 16" wheels.

Incredibly, Steve had no puns about the name Tikit. No clever rhyme or insertion of a catchphrase containing the word Tikit; no careful play on the name to suggest speed or lawbreaking or anything. "I guess I just want the bike!" exclaimed Steve over a steaming cup of Starbucks Mocha Grande Latte Exp Post Facto Caramel Vente coffee. Hah! No, he hates coffee and Starbucks. Starbucks is the "Evil Empire" according to Austin Powers, remember.

So here's a post about the Tikit without some lame "it's just the 'Tikit' to my commute", or "I'll be speeding merrily along on my 'Tikit'" nonsense. These things are almost as bad as haircut shops with clever names like "A Cut Above the Rest" and "We've got Chops" and crap like that. No! You'll find none of that here. Just the facts.

This Tikit is a size large, and I'm curious how it will fit me. If I were starting from scratch, I'd be working from a medium frame size. But, I talked at length with BF and we think with the arrangements we've made, it will work just fine. I'm getting handlebars that are a little more swept back to ease the reach. They are also throwing on a shorter Ahead stem. Also, there is room to play with saddle height, of course, but perhaps more importantly, some playroom in the steerer tube/ stem riser. It would be easy enough to just lower the seat, but two things can result from that---inefficient pedal strokes due to sitting too low; and having a riding position that is too upright for my tastes. I like saddle and handlebar near level for commuting and the saddle a little above the bars for riding fast. My Pocket Crusoe has the saddle about an inch or so above the bars. I created this by sliding the stem down the stem riser about an inch.

So, I anxiously await the bike. It has departed Portland, Oregon, and is somewhere from the mountains, to the prarie, to the oceans white with foam. I'll hopefully soon know! Happy riding everyone.

I Only Have Ice For You

This winter thing is getting a little old. Specifically I mean the daytime runoff that becomes nighttime ice. I don't have studded tires, and right now I am riding 1.35 inch, basically slick tires. Coming home from work the other day, at 0600 hours, I was dodging ice flows like the Titanic could only dream of. But it does get to be a pain when you have to hop off your bike a few times when the ice blocks the whole street. Give me some more snow, but hold the ice, please. ``````````````````````````````````````````````photo from: http://www.varsitybike.com/

All-in-all, with reduced speed and the usual vigilance, winter riding in snow is not so bad, even on relatively skinny tires. Bikes and the humans who steer them can really do a lot if confident and careful. But it does send shivers to think about smacking the asphalt in a nanosecond if I were to hit an ice patch. Riding down the lonely office park boulevard this early morning that thought was in my head as I raced (okay, pedaled judiciously) home, and noted some of the street lights are burned out. This creates wells of shadow. I was on a keen crow's nest lookout for anything that glared and sparkled or otherwise reflected more light than a well-behaving, dry piece of asphalt ought to.

My hypervigilance paid off, and I was soon safely ensconsed in my bed for some much needed rest after a 10-hour shift. Hitting the bike after 10 hours really does feel great, though, and it's a nice preamble to a hot shower and bed. It's too bad that the last three trips of my work week will be by car. Unfortunately, on Saturday and Sunday, the bus I take does not start to run for over an hour after I get off work in the morning. Call me crazy, but I ain't waiting around for that. So, I shuttle myself up with the car on a Wednesday or Thursday, bike back, and have the car waiting for the Saturday trip back home to DC, and again on Sunday. My only recourse is to occasionally ride the whole distance back to DC, or at least back to the first Metro rail stop. I plan to map out a good route, and try this once the weather is nicer. I wouldn't mind the miles, but the time would kill me!

So the ice is a beast, but the cold is survivable, with thermal layers and a facemask. The bike seems to tolerate the cold just fine. We typically don't do insane cold here in DC, and that helps. But please, take the ice elsewhere! I am looking forward to days when I need give no thought at all to roadway glaciers. But I am sure by then I will miss the cool riding temps. Oh well, you can't have your bike and ride it, too. Wait, that's not right...Oh, time to quit my grumblings and ride. Happy cycling all!

Taking the Safe Way

I learned two things this afternoon while riding my bike back from the grocery store:

1. A plastic two-liter soda bottle can survive, intact, a fall from a moving bike.

2. A FedEx truck can stop in time to avoid crushing a plastic two-liter soda bottle that has fallen from a moving bike.



I rode to get groceries, forgetting that I had removed my Nashbar double pannier that loops over the rack and, most importantly, has two lash straps that hold soda bottles tighter than Peter Angelos' wallet at signing day. So I used my bare rack and one piece of bungee that lay fortuitously coiled in the bottom of my other, single pannier, in an effort to portage my pop. (This single pannier, btw, is a Louis Garnier, which, while highly functional, is quickly falling apart on me. The elastic went to pot quickly on the rain cover and then shortly after on the pannier itself. Stay away from this brand. At $80 it was a bad deal.)

Off I went towards home, and a mere 100 yards or so away from Safeway, off went the soda bottle. Cheers to the FedEx guy paying close enough attention to the cyclist in front of him that he noticed and reacted to the pop-goes-the-soda pop. This is one Diet Cherry Pepsi that almost ended up very flat.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It's Off to Ride I Go!

The UBC is back! Now with a salary. That's right, yours truly has landed a gig in Germantown, MD, and now has a multimode bike commute once again. And brother, I hit all the modes. I leave DC on bike, ride to one of several Metro Train stations, and head up to Shady Grove--the end of the line and the end of what can be stretched to "DC-ish". Then it's on board (thank God), an express bus. Yes, this rare beast of the urban jungle; bypassing stops, hitting the HOV lane on a nightmarishly backed-up I-270, and generally whumping its way to within a mile or so of my office in fifteen sprightly minutes. Then it's un-rack the bike and hit the lonely office park road to my dead-end job. Wait, that didn't come out right. Un-rack the bike and ride to the dead end of the office park drive and go to work. That's more like it!

Speaking of bike racks on the front of Maryland Ride-on buses, here's a tip: in winter, when the bus has been washed the prior evening, the rack can freeze. The release handle won't budge, and if it does, sometimes the swing arm that goes over the front tire won't come out of its warren for fear of the cold. Thank the Gods again--this time for my folding bike. One driver suggested I "take the next bus" when the rack failed to work properly due to being more frozen than tomorrow's Big Macs, but he changed his tune when my Bike Friday halved itself and he accommodatingly allowed me to bring it on board! Thanks Mr Driver man!

Oh, and speaking of Driver Man, if you are a fan of the Violent Femmes, take a listen to their whimsical song about NYC buses. It goes:
You got the mother and her kid
you got the guy and his date
we all get mad, we all get late
Looks like somebody forgot about us
standing on the corner, waiting for a bus...
Hey Mr. Driver Man, don't be slow
'cause I got somewhere I gotta go.
Hey Mr. Driver Man, drive that thing fast
My precious time is slipping past...
Delays aside, the bus rides have been rather pleasant, other than the one surly driver who, as I sprinted with my bike to make the bus, serenaded me with: "you better get that piece of contraption up on the rack so we can get on outta here". I make new friends all the time. Ain't cycling great!