Bike Newbie

Sunglasses

For most of human history, we have all just squinted on bright days or when on the water or snow. Or we have worn some kind of head covering to keep the sun mostly out of our eyes. How did sunglasses become a thing?

The Inuit, who spend much of their lives on blindingly bright snow and ice, developed eye protection using flattened pieces of walrus ivory with eyeslits before recorded history. It appears from my reading they were the first to develop such protection.

Chinese judges in the 12th century wore lenses made of polished smoky quartz, to help hide their expressions as they questioned witnesses in court. Apparently any sympathy or antagonism, real or perceived, toward the witness could jeopardize the judges’ good reputations.

There were occasionally darkened lenses made for individuals with light sensitivity, but they would have had to be specially made and probably quite expensive, up until the 1930s. Then, a man named Sam Foster started mass producing “sunglasses” to be sold at his shop on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City. He sold them under the name Foster Grant, and they were an instant hit.

In WWII, US aircraft pilots were issued “aviator glasses” with tinted lenses made by Ray-Ban. This, coupled with increasing conspicuous use by Hollywood movie stars and jetsetters going to tropical locales on vacation, or just playing in the California sun, made sunglasses immensely popular worldwide.

Today, sunglasses are popular as a protective and fashionable accessory. Already big tech companies such as Google, Snap and Facebook have developed hi tech sunglasses capable of recording video and taking voice commands, and reportedly Apple and Amazon currently have versions in development.

Here endeth the lesson on sunglasses.

Coyotes

Coyotes are native to North and Central America, spanning the entire continent below the Arctic more or less. Their closest relatives are wolves and foxes, and the three will typically avoid encroaching on each others’ territories.

Coyotes are extremely adaptable. Their habitats, diets, and other living conditions can vary widely depending on the circumstances. For this reason they are commonly seen in and near human cities, and are often vilified as being predatory on children. The truth is that in the US and Canada, only two human deaths have ever been documented as a result of coyote attacks: one a 19-year old woman in Nova Scotia and the other a child in Southern California. You are far more likely to be seriously injured by an errant golf ball or champagne cork than a coyote bite.

Coyotes socialize in groups, and often vocalize using group howling or yipping. This vocal communication is usually accompanied by body language and is extremely important in their success as a social species. In Indigenous cultures the Coyote is often a hero and/or trickster, “stealing” or “tricking” away gifts from other myth figures to give to humans’ early ancestors. In the Pacific Northwest outside of Puget Sound, most stories of the Creation feature Coyote, and these Coyote stories are only to be told in winter.

Coyotes perform important ecological services beyond predation of small, weak and/or sick animals. As scavengers they help move carrion through the detritus food web, and occasionally they feast on insects such as grasshoppers keeping their numbers manageable.

Coyotes are normally nocturnal and shy, but if you see a coyote in the daytime don’t be alarmed especially if it runs from people. Don’t feed coyotes, and if you feed your pet outside bring the pet food indoors at night.

Here endeth the lesson on coyotes.

Kentucky Fried Movie, Zinc Oxide and You

Whether we know it or not, chemicals play an increasingly important role in our daily lives. One of the most widely used and oldest chemical compounds is zinc oxide. This policeman…this farmer…and this housewife don’t realize it, but they all depend on zinc oxide in their daily lives.

HOUSEWIFE: But how do I use zinc oxide?

ANNOUNCER: If it weren’t for zinc oxide you wouldn’t have that bar of soap…

The dish towels you use every day…

Your toaster…

That brassiere you’re wearing…

Your kitchen sink…

Those curtain rods…

The shelves in your refrigerator…

Metal hooks…

The heat control on your stove…

The safety catch on your son’s rifle…

That fire extinguisher…

The emergency brake on your car…

All brakes…

That blanket…

How about sand?

Yes, sand.

HOUSEWIFE: Oh my God…

ANNOUNCER: Your husband’s pacemaker…

HUSBAND: *groans*

ANNOUNCER: Your artificial limb…

Yes, zinc oxide at work in our daily lives. Watch for Science Series #7, Rebuilding Your Home.

Here endeth the lesson on zinc oxide and you.

Beard History

This will be a short post, and I am very much biased. Through most of human history, facial hair in males has been a sign of honor and wisdom. Why should it not be so today?

Almost all civilizations including those of Southeast Asia and India have held beards in high regard. A beard was considered a sign of an honorable man. Many social transgressions were punishable by the public shaving of the beard.

There have been two notable exceptions to this in Western society. First, the late Roman Empire, where it was fashionable to be clean shaven except during mourning or some other calamity. Second, the United States in the 20th and 21st Centuries. If you doubt this, ask yourself, who was the last US President to sport a full beard? The answer: Benjamin Harrison in 1889.

These exceptions aside, the beard remains as a visible signal of honor, loyalty and commitment to an ethos. The beard has come back in the last decade or two in the US, and I mean to make it last. And women should be able to have shaved heads without shame. Just saying!

Not that it’s been much of a lesson, but here endeth the lesson on beard history.

Distance Ride Training

There’s just something about being able to tell people you just rode 100 (or more) miles in a day, or that you climbed 5,000+ vertical feet, or both in the same ride. And, when you cover that much ground you can have some extreme experiences (good or bad, depending on how prepared you are). It’s very rewarding, but unless you are a genetically-gifted twenty something it takes a lot of preparation to reach that kind of single-day distance.

First, start many months in advance. Give yourself time to work up to 100 miles or whatever your goal is, and to experience how your body reacts to a long bicycle ride.

Second, ride frequently when you’re in training. Don’t stop doing the short rides just because you’re doing longer rides. For me, I want to be riding a (real or stationary) bike at least 4x per week. More often if I want to accelerate my progress.

Third, if you take a week off for whatever reason, get right back on the bike as soon as you can. We all get busy or have other things going on, and often it can’t be helped. But it does not take long at all to undo months of training, and the longer you go without riding, the more the undoing accelerates. Even if all you have time for is 30 minutes on a stationary bike, that’s better than nothing. You want to keep your muscle memory, your calluses and your recovery rates alive and well.

Fourth, invest in a couple pairs of really good chamois shorts. Don’t cheap out; most of the good ones cost a lot but are worth it. Wear the cheap ones if you’re riding less than 50-60 miles, and the good ones for longer rides. You will think you’re fine just riding through the pain, and maybe you are that day. But days later you’ll be in a crazy amount of groin/butt pain, and it’ll hurt to even think about getting on a bike for a week or longer. You can’t afford to lose that much training time, so do your butt a huge favor and buy the good shorts (or pants if your legs get cold).

Fifth and finally, push yourself but don’t go too far too soon. Every ride should be at least a little challenging, and you should feel it for a couple days afterward. But if you find yourself needing four or more recovery days after each ride, you’re probably reaching a little further than you can grasp (at the time). For me, I can probably reasonably add 10-15 miles to my rides each month that I’m training. If I can do 60 miles right now without hurting myself, it will take me 4 months of training to get to 100 miles reasonably. Mind you, I could grind out 100 miles right now on willpower alone, but I would pay dearly for it because I wouldn’t be reasonably ready.

In short, being ready for long rides will make all the difference between a pleasant, rewarding ride (even if challenging) and a miserable, agonizing ride.

Here endeth the lesson on distance ride training.

Perseverance

A phrase I learned as a child goes like this: Winners never quit, and quitters never win.

This has been true, at a very simple level at least, in my life. But it’s a little more complex than that. If you make yourself single of purpose and one-track in your life’s work, it is possible that you can achieve success merely by grinding it out on that one track no matter the cost. However, it’s also possible that one track will take you to a place you don’t want to end up, due to a twist you didn’t see coming. It’s also possible that the one track ends up being blocked by something beyond your control, and you can find yourself burnt out or hopelessly frustrated and broken from years of banging against that one roadblock.

So, I would add this to the phrase: Keep a few irons in the fire, and know when to adjust rather than “quit”. Things have a way of changing, slowly or suddenly, without much advance notice. It’d be nearly impossible to simply map out your whole life in one sitting and just follow the map (it wouldn’t be much fun to do that either). Knowing that there will be forks in the road ahead, don’t just give up at the first sign of adversity, but don’t be afraid to take good, alternate opportunities (nor to ditch the opportunities that haven’t panned out) either.

In short, perseverance should be tough and hard, but also wise and discerning. Here endeth the lesson on perseverance.

Building a Team

Maybe you’ve been assigned a team at work. Maybe you want to put a cycling group together. Or maybe you are in charge of a few volunteers for a one-off single-day task. Whatever the purpose the principles of team building are the same.

A strong team will have gone through the phases of “Form, Storm, Norm” and come out of it successfully together. Form refers to the initial honeymoon phase. Storm refers to an internal conflict in the group. Norm refers to the process of resolving the conflict through shared understanding and norm-making.

A strong team will have a diversity of individuals with different perspectives, strengths, and weaknesses. They will not always agree, and the arguments can get tiresome, but having multiple viewpoints means that fewer things will go missed.

A strong team will make use of everyone’s talents while still realizing that the 80-20 Rule is sure to apply. This rule states that, in an average group of 5 or more people, 20% of them will end up doing 80% of the work, while the other 80% of group members will avoid work and skate by doing only 20% of the work.

A strong team communicates an appropriate amount using appropriate methods.

A strong team knows its mission, vision, values, and measurable goals, like 4 boundary lines on a playing field. A good leader knows not to micromanage folks unless they stray outside the bounds of the playing field. Sometimes the boundaries change, suddenly putting a player or two out of bounds…it’s nobody’s fault, but it needs to be handled all the same.

Victories and losses are both shared within a strong team, and a strong team takes lessons from both.

Here endeth the lesson on building a team.

Packing Options on a Bicycle

Whether you’re a road cyclist, a mountain biker, or a gravel grinder, your default setting is usually going to be Minimalist on the packing. A sip of water, an energy bar, your phone, maybe a trail tool if you’re really thinking about it…

Then, you get that first flat or other breakdown you are unprepared for. Or you find halfway thru your ride you should have packed WAY more water. Or your phone battery dies. Or you start circling the drain with 35 miles left to go because you didn’t pack enough food. Any of these will change a biker’s Minimalist setting very quickly.

So you want to be more Prepper than Minimalist, which means you want to bring more stuff than just what will fit in your jersey pockets. Here are some options; feel free to use them in combination as I do.

1. Bottle cages. These for me are a must. They secure your water bottles and keep your center of gravity low (on most bikes), increasing your stability. On a day ride, water is going to be the absolute heaviest item you pack, at least to start with. Thankfully these are cheap and easy to find, and most bikes built after 2000 have fittings for 2-3 of them. You can also throw things like a “cage rocket” (bottle for item storage) or a light jacket if it has a stuff sack into a bottle cage, assuming you don’t need it for water.

2. Rear rack and saddlebags / Front rack and fork bags. If you’re not a bikepacker or commuter, these might be overkill. On the other hand, they are super convenient especially a rear rack with 1-2 saddlebags, and good ones are very durable (but also spendy). I have made the mistake of going cheap on both racks and bags…learn from me and don’t skimp if you go this route. A good brand of bag that stays dry in the rain is Ortlieb.

3. Seatpost-mounted bag. These are widely available in a variety of sizes, and are cheaper than a good rack with good bags, and I have used them successfully a lot. If you only want to pack a few small items away, this is a good option.

4. Backpack. Most cyclists I know despise wearing backpacks. Maybe their shoulders get sore or their chest gets restricted, or maybe they just sweat too much under it. But, if you can tolerate a backpack, a backpack can hold a lot of things and is easily carried while out walking around (saddlebags and even seatpost bags are awkward to carry at best. If you go this route it may be wise to buy both a summer bag that has a breathable back piece and a winter bag that will keep your contents dry.

5. Handlebar basket. Hey, sometimes you just want to throw a six-pack or your snorkel mask or your little dog on the bike and pedal a ways. Handlebar basket to the rescue. These are very much back in vogue and you always have your stuff in easy view. I’ve never had these but people I know swear by them.

6. Frame bag. This is a bag that sits inside of the main triangle making up the frame (top tube, down tube and seat tube) and attaches to the frame, usually with Velcro straps. I’ve never had one and don’t know enough to have formed an opinion.

7. Pockets on clothing. Sometimes the best you can do is shove a bunch of stuff into your pockets…jacket, jersey, shorts, pants etc. Sometimes that’s the perfect solution.

Here endeth the lesson on packing options on a bicycle.

Deterministic Chaos

Is our universe governed by rigid laws that can be expressed and applied once understood? Or is it chaotic such that no outcome can be truly certain? The answer: yes.

Our understanding of the universe is still very basic, but we know at this point the universe is both a chaotic and deterministic system.

By chaotic, I don’t mean completely unpredictable and random. By deterministic, I don’t mean completely pre-ordained.

Chaos describes apparent randomness where inputs can be well known but precise outcomes really only guessed at. Deterministic systems are those where the starting conditions have a high degree of influence over outcomes…change the starting conditions a little, and the outcome will change a lot. So a system can be both chaotic and deterministic, and the universe is such a system.

What does this mean for us as humans? Everything and nothing, is what I’d write in the blue book. For me at this time, it means I will have another cup of coffee.

Here endeth the lesson on chaotic determinism.

Remembering People Who Have Walked On

This is a tough one to write about, as I have lost a few people close to me in recent months. It seems like the toughest part about it is not knowing what to do exactly. Do I make a grand gesture such as a charity or monument in my loved one’s name? Or do I press on unfaltering in my own life, barely pausing for a respectful moment? I think there are good cases to be made for both approaches.

Where I’m currently at is this: Imagine you were to suddenly die tomorrow. What would you want the people who care about you to do in reaction? I feel like I would want them to take notice that I was gone, and to remember me fondly (the laughs we shared, the problems conquered, the beers we drank, etc.). But I wouldn’t want them to dwell on my passing or grieve for too long—I would want them to get on with their lives and not fall to pieces over me. So I try to make my reaction at their passing fit that mold.

If you’ve lost someone recently or are about to lose someone, I am sorry and I hope this is somehow helpful. Here endeth the lesson on remembering people who have walked on.