Monthly Archives: January 2012

Pedal for Project Impact

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Pedal for Project Impact, an organized bike ride that will begin and end at Willmar’s MinnWest Technical Campus, will be held June 16.

I’m on the planning committee for this year’s event.

This year, the event’s second year, will feature three routes: a 20-mile family route on the Glacial Lakes trail and 40- and 60-mile routes that will take cyclist over some the hills and past some of the lakes that make this area such a fun place to ride.

Riders in last year's Pedal for Project Impact pedal down the Glacial Lakes Trail.

As its name indicates, funds raised by the event will go to Project Impact, a program at Safe Avenues, the local shelter house for victims of domestic violence.

The project provides support and safety planning for children who have lived with violence in the home.

Besides the registration fees riders pay to participate in Pedal for Project Impact, cyclists are encouraged to also collect donations.

Besides the rides, there will also be fun and safety-oriented event for kids at the tech campus and T-shirts for riders.

So mark June 16 on your calendar and be sure to head out to the campus for the big ride.

Same old bike but different

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For the past couple years, my friend Bob Hines and I have spent a week during warmer weather participating in an organized bicycle ride in some other part of the country. This year we’re heading to upstate New York to ride in the Bon Ton Roulet. It will be from July 22 to 28 and offers a scenic tour of the state’s finger lake area.
When you’re cycling, you soon learn pretty scenery often means elevation. It might be hills or it might be mountains, but either means climbing.
Bob and I own road bikes that are fine for around here, where what we call hills are referred to as “bumps” in some of the places where we’ve ridden.
Most road bikes these days have two gears in on the pedal crank and 10 on the rear wheel. Youngsters in really good shape can pedal those types of bikes over almost any hill or mountain.
Some old “flatlanders” like Bob and I, however, have learned the hard way that when ride organizers recommend having three gears up front, we’d better listen.
We found that out a couple years ago on the Bicycle Tour of Colorado when we had to catch a ride on a truck over the highest mountain on the route and walk over another.
So, when the Bon Ton website states that it’s best to ride a bike with three gears, we decided we’re taking our mountain bikes instead of our road bikes.
Not only do they have three gears up front, their drivetrains are designed for climbing. They have fat, gnarly tires that we won’t need riding roads so we’ll replace them with skinnier, high-pressure ones to make pedaling easier.
That modification was, at first, an idea I offered to Bob when he said he wanted a bike better suited to terrain like the Bon Ton route but didn’t want to buy another bike.
I was going to get another bike – more of an all-terrain bike.
My wife, Sofia, had other ideas.
“We should use what we have,” she told me.
That was one of the nicest way she has ever shot down one of my plans to spend money, so I figured I’d better take the hint.
What if I upgraded my mountain bike? I asked her.
I could modify it and do a home improvement or two and spend less than I would on a new bike.
She agreed and I was off to Rick’s Cycling and Sports Center.

Beau Williams prepares to cut the steerer rod.

There I told the guys I wanted an adjustable handlebar stem to allow me to sit more upright and give my old back a break.
I also wanted disc brakes. I’ve seen charts of a typical day’s ride on the Bon Ton and wanted to control my descents as much as possible.
And, by the way, my suspension fork has this knob at the top. That means I can lock the suspension, doesn’t it?
No, I was told.
So I found out I needed a new fork too.
Suspension forks are great when riding a bumpy, unpaved trail. But they also dissipate some of the energy of your pedaling. You don’t need any energy dissipated when struggling to climb up a hill or mountain on a paved road.
The shock absorbers on that type of fork make it heavier, so I could also save some weight by switching to a rigid fork.
The photos I’ve included are of Beau Williams at Rick’s installing the new fork and handlebars on my bike.
Bikes are simple machines, but watching Beau cut, fit, lubricate and adjust that part of my cycle made me appreciate that there are far more, parts, measurements, understanding, experience and skill involved in the upkeep and – when some crazy cyclist wants it – the modification of a bicycle.

Beau attaches the handlebar stem extender.

Anyway, a day after he changed the fork, Beau called to say my bike was done and I could pick it up.
Naturally, I’ve been anxious to try it out.

The new fork and handlebar are installed.

It’s been snowing and blowing ever since.

Basement biking

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While winter has been mild so far this year, there have been some days when bicycling outside seemed like a really bad idea.
My standards for a bad day to bike outside might be a little different than most people. Over the past few years, I’ve put together the cycle, clothing and other gear that allow me to bike in the type of weather sane people would never consider.
Even then, when the temperature, excluding wind chill, is below 10 and wind chill takes it even lower, I head for the basement.
I’ve set up an old bike of mine on a trainer — a stand that holds the cycle upright with a roller up against the cycle’s rear wheel that offers resistance when I peddle. It’s supposed to simulate riding.
It doesn’t.

I've spent quite a few hours like this.

So I’ve added my own improvised multimedia system. It consists of an old TV my son left behind when he moved out, a really cheap DVD player and a hook up that allows me to also view video from my iPod on the TV.
I went really cheap on the trainer so I have to use headphones to hear what I’m watching over the noise of the trainer.
There are cables running back and forth between the TV and the bike held out of the way by a couple of nails.
Being able to watch old TV shows and movies helps distract me from the fact that I’m sitting on a bike in my basement going nowhere.
Basement biking, riding outside when winter does weather meet my standards and working out at the YMCA help me avoid gaining too many pound over the winter.
But having gained a little weight just makes it that much easier to spend even a more time on the road once the snow starts melting.
That and the fact that I prefer the smell of buds and blooming flowers to the scent of Kitty’s litter box a couple feet from my basement TV.

Bicycling near and far

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Readers of the West Central Tribune’s Saturday Extra section may have read some of my stories about bicycling. I hope to blog regularly about all things cycling, including organized bike rides in the area, equipment (as much of it as I can understand) and mine and other people’s adventures on bikes.

During the past couple years, I’ve been lucky enough to spend a week now and again exploring different places on my bike. I’ve ridden in Colorado, northern Minnesota and southern Indiana.

But you don’t have to go far to have an adventure – or misadventure – on a bike.

I was reminded of that Jan. 5.

It was one of those unseasonable mild days we’ve had recently and I had the day off.

I wanted to spend part of it cycling. My friend, Bob Hines, had the day off too and had the same idea.

The bike he usually rides was in the shop so he was riding his mountain bike. I rode my mountain bike too so that we’d be traveling at about the same speed.

Bob really likes riding the Glacial Lakes Trail, which starts in Willmar and goes to Paynesville. I like the trail fine, but figure the bikes we usually ride are called road bikes (the kind with dropped handlebars and skinny tires) for a reason. When he can’t ride, I’m usually pedaling down some highway or paved county road.

But Bob was free and so we headed for the trail.

The thing about the trail is that during a normal winter, it’s used by snowmobilers. That’s obviously not happening yet this year, but the trail is never plowed.

So we hadn’t ridden very far when we encountered stretches of the trail that was pocked with ice. That only happened between Willmar and Spicer, Bob assured me. He’d ridden the trail past New London a couple day earlier and it was clear the rest of the way.

Things did improve as we headed from Spicer to New London.

But a few miles past New London there was snow on the trail.

There was brown grass, leafless trees and no snow for as far as we could see in any direction.

On the trail, however, there was snow.

Bob Hines rides Jan. 5 down a snowy stretch of the Glacial Lakes Trail.

It was a little more than a dusting, but would continue for stretches of as much as a quarter mile. In some places the snow was over spots of ice. It made me glad I was riding a bike with fat, heavily treaded tires.

We continued riding, our tires making a crunching sound as we rolled over the snowy patches, all the way to Hawick. Covering that distance meant I rode a total of 42 miles. Bob did a couple more because he lives that much farther from the trail.

As we pedaled back to Willmar, I couldn’t help thinking that we were experiencing record warmth that day and yet we were probably riding on the only snow in the county.