Angelus Oaks to Clarks Summit.

Another one of those long bike rides. I was always wondering if those fire roads over there could get me to Big Bear instead of riding all the way around the road up highway 38. Turns out the road is probably easier. But I did it anyway just because it was there. I don't know if I want to do it again. Maybe if I can get some poor fool to suffer with me. Near the top it is loose and rocky in places with some small ring climbing. For some reason (now I know why) there were no other bikes on this trail even on this perfect weather early June Saturday. 3 or 4 jeeps and a half dozen motorcycles. According to my GPS I burned 3566 calories. Not bad since I did it on 1 power bar and two Power Gels. It did make me really hungry and I enjoyed a couple of nice Arrogant Bastard drafts along and an awesome Rare AHI sandwich as a reward.

How to Create Google Earth Views with your Garmin Bike GPS

How did I make these cool bike ride pictures? Well here is how. You need a Garmin bike GPS. I have the Edge 205 (or newer and more expensive if you like). Garmin has two programs that you can use for mapping your tracks. One is Map Source, the other is Training Center. You can download both from the Garmin web site, and you need the more current versions. I have Map Source 6.13.7 and Training Center 2.4.3.

After plugging your GPS into your PC, installing all of the software and drivers etc.(I won't get into that here for obvious reasons) you can view the tracks in either program.

Training center allows you to graph speed and elevation, grade, pace, etc. Once the Training Center program has the graph I want, I use Alt-Print Screen to capture my desktop, the a graphics program (you could use paint if you have nothing else) to paste from the clipboard, then crop out the selected chart and save it as a .jpg.

Then download and install Google Earth. You should do this anyway. It is cool. Below I will refer to the Places navigation panel of Google Earth:

Map Source also has an option to download info from the GPS. After you do this, select the tracks tab so you will know what is going to be displayed in Google Earth, then select the View, View in Google Earth menu option. It takes a while and a fast PC that has decent memory. It loads a bunch of stuff into Google Earth in your Temporary Places folder, in a sub folder MapSource. You really don't want most of the stuff, it is confusing and excessive. Uncheck the Temporary Places folder so it all disappears, then expand the MapSource folder, then the Tracks folder (in the MapSource folder, then the Path folder (in the Tracks folder). Then click on the track number you want to map, and it will appear. You can then right click on it to change the properties of the line (which is a good idea to make it narrower and more precise). Also you can rename it and save to My Places (also right click).






UPDATE (Nov 2010). Google earth now has an option to show the elevation profile of a selected track:



Have Fun!

Bike Chain Lube

For where I ride, which is mostly in a dry and often dusty area this is my opinion on bike lubes. If I were to ride frequently in wet and muddy conditions, I might have a different opinion.

ProGold Pro Link Lubricant is the best stuff I have used. It is kind of hard to find but you can get it online and at some bike stores. It stays very clean. It takes several applications to clean the gunk off a chain, or better if you actually use a serious attack of cleaning with a brush and solvent first. ProGold starts to build up after several applications. It is noticeble that after the first ride it seems to wear off quickly, then up to about 5 or 6 rides it seems to be lasting a very long time. This tells me that there is some kind of bonding thing going on. It seems like magic.

Google ProGold Bicycle Lubricant

Boeshield T-9 Bicycle Lubricant is very good, but attracts more dirt (if you ride in the dirt) and makes the chain more difficult to clean. Still better than most anything else. Lasts a bit longer than the above. If your cleaning time is not so valuable, this is probably a more cost effective product than the ProGold, but not so satisfying.

Google Boeshield T-9 Bicycle Lubricant

Notice that the best time to lube your chain is AFTER a ride. Not before. Otherwise it is WET and will ATTRACT DIRT. BAD DIRTY CHAIN. Lube after. Dry the next time when you ride. OK?

Now if you are getting ready to ride and your chain is already squeaky, a dirty wet one might be better than a dry squeaky clean one, but save yourself the energy of thinking about it and get used to the routine. (I am glad sex isn't so complicated.)

For any chain lube the thing you need to do is 1) clean the chain first - 2) apply the lube until the chain is wet - 3) run the chain through a dry clean rag to pick up the excess - 4) let it dry overnight - 5) the next day run the chain through a dry clean rag to get as much off as you can.

If you are using the pro gold stuff after a few uses the chain starts to stay clean longer, but you still need to lube it.

You know your chain needs lube when it starts to make a bit of a rattle. How much of a rattle? Well you will figure it out as you hear the difference between a fresh lubed chain and one that needs lube. If it starts to squeak, you are wearing it out badly.

To clean your chain, you need a stiff brush with plastic bristles that scrape all of the crud off. If you are using a good lube, you might not need a solvent. If you DO use a solvent, I would suggest something like Simple Green. Make sure you get ALL of the solvent off and then use two or three applications of the lube to make sure you displace all of the solvent. This fancy chain lube is not much good if it is contaminated by solvent residue. The solvent breaks down the lube!!

Also, your cogs and chainrings need to be cleaned as well. Same routine.

Best trick to apply the lube is to shift into the smallest cog in the rear, and run the crank in reverse while dripping the lube across the chain right at the rear cog as it rotates around. It takes a bit of technique to get enough lube onto it. Or if you have nothing better to do, put a drop of lube on each pin/roller and see it penetrate. This takes a long time and seems kind of silly. At some point you will learn how to use plan A with the right amount of pressure to minimize waste and splatter and still get enough on the chain. Then wipe down all of the excess that goes into the pulleys. If you have an old school bike with rim brakes, you also should make sure you wipe off any lube that drips onto the rim. (Doh!) If you are finding the whole drive train dripping lube all over it would seem that you have overdone it. Not the worst problem assuming you are not in your living room on a white carpet. Oops. I suppose I should have started out telling you this to begin with. My bad.

Once you have a good clean routine going, you might not need solvent. A good brush should take care of things. Particularly with the ProGold. Boeshiled is a bit more gooey. I think the ProGold is like an every time you ride thing (assuming it is several hours), while the Boeshiled is more like every other.

Other lubes:

I have used other more heavy duty stuff like Pedros, but I find that a dirt magnet and a cleaning nightmare. It might be just the thing in the Northwest however. WD-40 is the ultimate mistake. Not much in the way of anything but a dirt magenet, only slightly better than nothing.

Why do my brakes rub on my bike?

A friend of mine asked this question, then I found out my answer might be something worth sharing, as there is a lot of experience here:

I don't know how much you weigh. If you are over 185 you are heavy for the factory made typical sport class wheel which is made for riders with an ideal weight of about 150-170. The bike makers make lighter wheels because the market thinks lighter is always better. Bike buyers do not have enough experience to know this is not always true. The wheels do flex with torque and weight. Also as a wheel wears and is adjusted, sometimes the screws on the spokes and the nipples get looser and then does not stay true as long. Sometimes you can true it up then put a tiny bit of blue loctite in there and that keeps it set. Tighter tension is better, but that tends to pull the nipples through the light alloy rims when you hit stuff espcially if you are heavy and have a hard tail. I used crack rims at the nipple from hitting stuff, worse if tightly tensioned. If you are not hitting stuff because you are always on pavement it is less important, but I had the problems on road wheels too. A guy I know used to build wheels for me and then tension them on the tighter side to make them more true under torque. I think he had a tendancy to overdo it. But then he was in the business of selling replacement rims and wheels so there you go.

There is no way around the rim rub issue. It is just a compromise with design. Very much like a guitar with respect to action height, except you are not beating on the guitar (hopefully). My older bike has rim brakes and even with my weight (175) I get a bit of wheel rub when the wheels are not true and perfectly tensioned. So I just back the brakes off a bit. Of course at some point you back off too much and then you can't get enough pressure to brake as well as you would like, not to mention the brief delay. Another thing. Unless you have the CERAMIC surface rims (expensive enough to make you consider discs) with appropriate pads you will wear through the aluminum rim with the pads eating the rim. There is no way out of it unless you use softer pads then you are replacing them at least monthly which is a pain in the ass. Your wheels will need to be replaced after lots and lots serious riding. I went through a several wheelsets doing that until I got onto disks. One time I used some hard pads and ate a set of wheels in three months. OOPS. Very stupid. Every time I bought a ceramic rim it seems I would pull a nipple through it or dent it on a rock so it would have a bump in it while braking. I stopped doing that and then my wheels would always last until the rim got eaten by the pad, but before I pulled a nipple through it. I could not win. I still have one old ceramic front on my bike in the mountains. It is 7 years old. Pure luck. Of course front wheels have it easy if you ride right.

On my Laguna bike I have disks and they are now perfected. For a while they were unreliable but the technology developed. Still I would use nothing but Shimano (harder to adjust) or Avid hydraulic disks. The other brands are not as reliable. I use Avid Juicy 7s which are amazing. Needs pads maybe once a year, even with my level of riding. Even disks, the rotors can warp or get tweaked a bit from a stick or something and you need to mess with little bends on them to keep centered. Also occasionally align the calipers. But any rub is less inevitable, and the feel is far superior as is the power. I would never go back but its a huge price to upgrade from rim brakes unless you are already buying a new wheel set anyway. Also older bikes may not have the mounting points for disks.

All of the factory wheels are not as good as the best hand built wheels. The last wheel set I bought I got smart. I got tired of those wheel issues. I told the guy to build the lightest training (not racing) wheel he could. He used Hope (UK) hubs, DT (swiss) rims and spokes. They were hand built by a pro and cost me $500 for the set. They have been perfect in three years of heavy riding and I have only needed to have them tesioned twice, and this was just for maintenance purposes, not because they seemed uneven. They are on the heavier side (but NOT a downhill wheel) because I like strong more than I like light. A good wheel set is made by a pro with your weight and riding style as consideration. I have never pulled a nipple through the DT rims. I had that problem with Mavic rims, I think the alloy is softer.

Its also hard to know who is really good at it, like you know just because its handmade does not mean the guy who did it is better than a machine. In that way it is exactly like guitars.

I don't like the brain shocks. They get stiff when they feel no bumps. Then the first bump just kicks your ass. Then it gets soft like a stupid shock again until it goes smooth for a while. I am happy with my stupid shock where my ass does not get kicked at all. It might be ever so slightly less efficient but as I am not racing I don't care. It has a lockout so I can lock it out when I am climbing but actually I don't give a shit and don't bother because I am not racing. You can forget and then start going downhill, hit a rut and crash.

I rode today. My bike shifts crappy too. Time to replace the cables. You have got me thinking about it. Also I need a new rear tire, but they are like $40 and I am cheap so I think I will push it a bit more. Last year I would have thrown that tire out by now.

Another Day on The Trails

I ride on trails for fun and adventure. (Occasionally on the road, but in So Cal the cars rule and I don't really enjoy the thought of getting run over by 5000lb SUVs while riding an 18lb road bike.) At least on the dirt only my own mistakes can kill me. Some days I can hammer on the road when I go in a group and stick with early rides on way back roads.

Today I rode 36.5 (total out and back) miles on a trail near my mountain home. It took me about 5 hours. Killer workout with amazing scenery. Today I saw one nasty rattlesnake (unusual), a bobcat (very elusive), and various squirrels and birds. 5 other riders the whole time which is unusually a lot for a week day. Almost entirely the trail is wide enough for only one bike or hiker at a time. Some of it along cliffs where falling can kill you. Some parts (about 200 yards) I walk because falling is not an option you can live with. Of course the first time I did this ride it, it took all day and I thought I would die. And of course you don't start out doing 36 miles at a time, but just like 4 and then working up as you get stronger. It takes a couple of years to get in shape for doing this routinely. But I ride 3-4 times a week (usually more like 2 hours and 20 miles at a time) and have no fear of beer, steak, and pizza, as it all comes off. I am a skinny guy mostly from the rides.

I attached a couple of pics of today's ride made from my GPS tracks. I saved some sat photos from google earth and overlaid the GPS on them. You can't see the trail because its under the trees and narrow. Not for rookies. If you crash you could be bear food. Usually I prefer a partner, but I have enough (10+ years) experience to do it alone. (probably a bad idea anyway) Cell phones don't work everywhere and its usually about a 3 mile hike into parts of the trail from where any kind of rescue jeep can go. So its a cool adventure. I write songs in my head when I'm not totally wrapped up in navigating the scary parts. The nature is fabulous. I am happy to be able to do this at 53, but it is not luck it is hard work (and good fortune).

I have a Trek Top Fuel 9.9, Its about a $6k bike but its a tool not a toy and worth every penny at this level of usage. Made for constant use like this. Also an older Trek Fuel 98, and a couple of older spares. I can't not ride just because my bike is in the shop.

Aside from my family and my music, my bike riding is the next important thing.

You can click on each of the pictures to see the original, more detailed image.

So where did you ride your bike?

(click to see more detail)

People often ask me that question, when we go to the Singletrack Lodge. This is where we ride. It's a dirt trail and today (once I got off the short road portion) I was entirely alone except for the birds and squirrels. Needless to say, when alone I ride extra slowly and carefully, because cellphone coverage is limited, and its a LONG walk out. The weather today was great, scattered thunderstorms kept the temp down around 70, while down the hill in the desert it was well over 110, and in fact even 93 at the beach. Another day in paradise.

My Favorite Training Ride

Hi, recently I got a Garmin Edge 205 bike GPS. Its a thingy that tracks your ride and then you can download where you went and map it out, including the elevation changes. Also you can use it to compete against your prior rides etc. You can google it and figure out the details if you want. But the point of this is that we do a ride for training and its a tough one. Its located at Crystal Cove state park and we do some loops around this course (pics below). According to the fitness GPS we burn about 1400 calories, which does not sound like much until you try to burn off that many on an excercise gear in your favorite fitness center. On this particular ride we did it in about an hour and 50 mins. (excluding about the 10 minutes in between a few hills I rested to wait for my training partner). My record for this is 1:47, but I think anything under 2 hours is a great workout result.

If you ever want to try this, meet us at the parking lot most Tuesday and Thursday mornings at 7:30 AM. Bring lots of water, spare tubes, and a pump. And if you are really slow, you might be on your own, because for the most part we need to get on with our day. Don't worry about getting ahead of us, if you are that good, have at it. As we are old farts (53 and 59) you young-uns can kick our butts - but unless you are used to this kind of riding you will be surprised at the difficulty in keeping up.

The route is looping - clockwise from the left, at the survey point we double back through the crossroads and do that little inner loop, back up to the crossroads, then back down the center, up to I think I can, back to the survey point again, then double back the starting route to total out almost 20 miles. We end up passing the crossroads 4 times, so there are lots of shorter (and longer) variations.

(click to see better detail: - sorry html programming bores me)


Here is the hill profile, (click to see better detail)

A Very Difficult Day on a Bicycle

Well I did it. The Breathless Agony. If you are looking for a physical challenge here it is. 7+ hours is a long time on a bike. And climbing mountains while you are doing it makes it even harder. This ride is like one of the difficult stages in the Tour de France. Which makes those pro racers seem even more amazing. I did this one day thing and it was really hard. These guys do similar stuff almost every day for a month. I had to work up to the task. Although I have been using bikes for fitness for the better part of 20 years, you need to notch it up to do this kind of a ride. I was up to five days a week between two and five hours per ride. Once you can do 70 or so miles on steep hills, you can probably do this 7 hour 114 miler. Actually this ride felt like three hard ordinary training rides back to back. After 80 miles or so the hard part is over and the last bit is almost all downhill. Not that you can ignore it because its on a winding road and you need to keep your wits. It was cold at the top at 8600 feet, but there are some refreshments and a bit of celebration. Then trying to keep warm in the wind chilled descent. Back under 6000 ft it was much more pleasant. Near the end there was a major headwind, but only a few miles to deal with it.

As much as I enjoyed earning the achivement, I can't say I'll ever do it again.

Click here to see the ride web site.

My Bicycle Distracts Me

I ride bikes. I have been doing this seriously for 25 years or so. Mostly on the dirt (that's for another post) on my mountain bike. I live in Laguna Beach, near what is probably one of world's best single park for riding a bike on dirt without getting lost, killed, or too far from good food and coffee.

A while back my buddy Stu who I ride with constantly convinced me to race in the Sea Otter Classic in Monterey. So we trained like mad and had a great time. Finding myself in relatively remarkable shape for a 52 year old, I decided to do something nuts. Saturday I am going to ride in the Breathless Agony (go ahead google it). So more training. The last week I rode 5 out of 7 days. A couple of 4 1/2 hour days. A couple of days with 70 miles and LOTS of hills.

I hope I'm ready. I'll fill you in.