Nutmeg Creation Tour Notes

I’m traveling to Vienna, Salzburg, and Prague during April with the Greater Middletown Chorale.

Naturally, there’s a blog attached to that. Hope you’ll follow the adventure!

Ghost bikes mark an intersection in Portland, Oregon, at which two bicyclists were killed by turning vehicles during October in separate incidents.

The city is now responding by re-marking certain intersections with so-called “bike boxes.” These are essentially stop-lines for bicyclists that place them ahead of, and in full view of, stopped motorized traffic. Motorists aren’t allowed to make a right turn on red at an intersection with a bike box. Traffic officials hope that the boxes will reduce the incidence of “right hook” collisions, in which a motor vehicle turns in to a cyclist who is trying to proceed straight (or sometimes even turning!).

Here is a permalink to the article in The New York Times.

No one deserves to die because their vehicle is smaller, or doesn’t surround them with two tons of steel and plastic. I think this is a long-overdue step in recognizing the rights of other road users.

Of course no amount of paint or signage can protect us from the stupid or malevolent driver who brings only a dim awareness of responsibility to the street. Nor is it any match for head-in-their-butts radio shock jocks who juice up the morning commute crowd with road-warrior invective against anything that gets in their way.

But, it’s a start.

Well, well…

So Floyd WAS doping on the 2006 Tour de France. Or at least he’s been found guilty of it by an arbitration panel. (Here’s the story: Landis’s Positive Doping Test Upheld

I was so taken up by his gutsy surge in the mountains that I blogged him here the day the Tour ended. (And, the AP picked my entry up in a little “What’s on the Blogs” sidebar. How the heck did they find me so quickly? Never underestimate the power of Google.)

I’m a little embarrassed about one question I asked (just a little):

And all the fine young men who feel entitled to the yellow jersey because, well, they’re physically perfect, will again wonder what went wrong—why was their physical prowess insufficient to get them to the podium?

It’s clear that part of “what went wrong” was that Floyd had a little help from Mr. T. That may be the spring from which the gutsiness flowed.

Nevertheless…the larger point that the man was struggling with an arthritic hip, was several years older than many of the young studs in the field, and kept on going…still holds.

Floyd’s not my hero—far from it. Too bad he felt compelled to cheat. It shouldn’t keep the rest of us from trying, legally.

This morning’s New York Times had an intriguing article about the significance of body shape in bicycling fitness versus running fitness:

The Bicycling Paradox: Fit Doesn’t Have to Mean Thin - New York Times [may require registration]

The author profiles a number of middle-aged cyclists (that sounds familiar as I travel into my next half-century! ) touring with a former competitive cyclist. The initial expectation that a good rider should look rail-thin — like a runner looks rail-thin — is discarded.

A theory for why bicycling is more forgiving than running is that running mechanically is more like riding a pogo-stick, while bicycling is more like rolling on wheels (yes, the awesome Gina Kolata actually said that! she didn’t search for a true simile…). Bicycling takes the center of gravity somewhat out of the equation. While lighter riders can climb hills more quickly and with less effort, heavier riders can descend more quickly.

That’s been my experience as well — I find myself sailing past other riders on the downhills whether or not that was my intention. As an aside, it’s harder on my brakes, not to mention my forearms.

Definitely a recommended read, and do it quick before it goes into the pay-per-view archive.

I’m bummed, and I’m not. All at once.

Along with Alison I have been doing bicycle trips since 1997. (Our first one actually travelled in 1998, but we started the planning before that.) I’ll add some background on that to this blog soon, but the bottom line is that 10 years is a long time to do anything.

It’s time for a sabbatical break.

This entry comes, not surprisingly, after I’ve started riding my bike again this week following a long lay-off. (See Felled by the Tick! from last July.) There is something about cranking pedals, hitting that seat, and pulling away from the house for the first time each season that gets my mind and spirit grounded again.

I have loved, and continue to love, leading group tours. We’ve shared the road with so many wonderful youth and adults over the past 3,000 miles (more or less!). But, it’s time to take a break.

Alison and I will be participating in our church’s youth mission trip this summer (I’m leading it, part of my current interim job). And we have plans 18 months from now to take our long-dreamed-of Florida to Maine tour. That one might end up being Maine to Florida if we do it in the fall, as expected.

Next summer we may also have a revamped tour to offer through Silver Lake. And I certainly commend any of their outstanding conferences to you for 2007.

But (and have I said this already?) it’s time for a break.

I’ve avoided tick bites for years and years–even though I show up at Silver Lake every summer!

I did not expect that I would get the Lyme Fever, but that appears to be just what happened.

I’ve just returned from a visit with Dave, the friendly nurse-practitioner at my doctor’s office. (You’d like him. A lot.) I had a fever that started early Saturday morning, but no other symptoms that made it look like the “summer flu” or other short-lived viruses. What I did have, though, is a localized rash.

It was on my left hip, where the hip meets the leg. And it didn’t really start to be noticeable until Sunday, when I spent the evening and night pushing 103°F (or 39.444°C, which oddly doesn’t offer me much comfort). That alternated with occasional cascades of drenching perspiration, which meant that the fever was down temporarily even as I tried to recall my swimming lessons. How they do it in Canada So, Dave thinks I got a tick bite somewhere along our route (and I’m guessing somewhere between New Milford and Sharon, but there’s no way to know).

Why I’m telling you this

If any of you have spent some similarly miserable time in the last few days, and it’s not an obvious virus, run (or crawl, if you’ve been feeling like me) to your doctor’s office. It’s not contagious, but it’s not going to get any better, and the later symptoms of Lyme’s includes arthritis-like stiffness and pain in the joints, muscle pain, and general ickiness. The fever goes away after a few days, but that’s the bacteria getting ready to move in and put a major hurt on you.

Here’s a link to the Centers for Disease Control subsite on Lyme’s.

Who among you really had heard of Floyd Landis before last week?

Yet today, he’s the winner of the Tour de France:

PARIS (AP) — The highs and lows of Floyd Landis’ nail-biter of a bike race ended without a hitch Sunday as he won the Tour de France and kept cycling’s most prestigious title in American hands for the eighth straight year.

The 30-year-old Landis, pedaling with an injured hip, cruised to victory on the cobblestones of the Champs-Elysees, a day after regaining the leader’s yellow jersey and building an insurmountable lead in the final time trial.

Notice the part about the injured hip? He crashed several years ago, developed arthritis in his right hip, and was on tap to have the hip replaced after the 2006 season.

Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t remember if any of you had this particular quick-release on your bicycle, but a couple of you had new bicycles on our tour, and this recall came out while we were on the road last week.Read story hereThe Consumer Product Safety Commission, which issued the recall, offers this particularly cheery information:

Hazard: The quick release skewers can unexpectedly fail or break when locked in position. When this happens the rider could lose control and fall.

Bicycles and wheels with this part were supplied beginning in November 2005, and a total of about 8,500 defective devices are out there.Please, for your own sake, check it out.

First time back on the bike since our tour ended Friday evening. I did a quick 22 miles (in about 90 minutes) along the Farmington Canal trail in Cheshire and Hamden.

When I got back I checked my home thermometer, which told me the temperature (at home) hit 100°F at about 10 minutes into my ride (at 12:10 p.m.). No wonder it took me two water bottles to go and a long time to cool off afterwards.

It felt great!

This story came from Reuters via Yahoo! this morning:

Overcome with remorse at having stolen a bicycle, a thief in Germany wrote the victim a letter and fully recompensed him for the loss, police said Monday.

After the theft in the Bavarian village of Bidingen was reported, police in nearby Marktoberdorf made an appeal in a local paper for any witnesses to the crime to come forward.

Soon afterwards, the victim received an anonymous letter from the thief containing 400 euros ($501.50) in cash — the exact value of the bicycle according to the police notice.

“The thief also told the man he was sorry he couldn’t remember where he’d left the bike,” said police spokesman Gerhard Kreis. “He may just have been a thoroughly honest person who saw the error of his ways. You still get them you know.”

I want to believe that bicycle thieves understand they are doing more than taking an assemblage of metal and rubber. I think this one did.

You can read the story at this link: http://tinyurl.com/ggcn2