Dingle Cog Perfect for Polo

After months more of crazy buzy (and rocking fun) life, I was able to put Sunday afternoon aside for some Polo. It was just as much fun as last time (way back in October!), but I wasn't quite so incompetent and even managed to score a couple of goals and be on a winning team for the first time. We hope to play again in 2 weeks - check this thread if you'd like to join us.

Because I still ride the Surly Dingle Cog which I got as a precaution for riding Taupo in 2007, I was able to ride over in my normal gear (48:17) and then switch lower (42:21) for the play itself. This is the first real use I've found for the switchability (since I never get offroad), but it was a real winner. The lower gear gave me heaps more acceleration and (importantly) braking, so I could get there fast with less risk of horrendous collisions*. Having all that control gave me confidence to get in tight, so in the end I had more crashes not fewer. The astroturf surface also helped - not so bad to fall on as tarmac (and fun to skid between games).

Way back in October their was a photographer watching us, who turned out to be from Remix magazine. The following shot turned up on a double spread of 'scene' photos**, and he was good enough to make a copy available.
Afficionados will observe that I've just released my brake lever to free up my mallet hand - having a gear low enough to ignore the brake simplified everything. The guy in the black jacket and jeans is Alex, who helped setup akfixed.com.

* I do run a brake, but it's on my mallet hand so it was good to forget about it.
** At a whopping 2" across, but there I am in print!

Quickies

Halloween critical mass was fun, although I lost the main bunch after waiting for a tail-ender who then decided to call it a day. Then I worked a station for the improvised akfixed.com alleycat, but got there after the lead riders. Oops.

And you might have noticed the little 'glasshouse' in the background. We've been surprised how effective a simple plastic enclosure has been for growing seedlings in. Heather's hard work has been rewarded with a much better hit rate then previous years.

In other news, the city council is scrapping almost all cycle, walking, and public transport spending. They are almost halving the largest roading project, which encourages me, but the Harbour Bridge project seems about to recede another 10-15 years into the future. Grump.

Going somewhere even more different, I often think that we eat quite a lot of salt and wonder how it doesn't affect my blood pressure. Having a few slices of pizza at work today makes we wonder if we don't avoid more salt by simple, healthy eating than we add back in for flavour. I've been pouring in water all afternoon to compensate.

Returning to the positive (which is, of course, about bikes) I've taught a colleague how to shorten his chain for a simple conversion to single-speed riding and then we popped up to check out the new T White's Bikes.

Putting my money where my mouth is

Today I joined the Green Party - partly something I've been procrastinating, and partly a response to the recent elections. I cycle past their nearest office quite regularly, so today I just stopped in and got on with it.

We don't know how propitious are the circumstances, Frederick!

Last Saturday I met a new neighbour, recently escaped from Wellington, who enthused about how flat it is up here, and how great for cycling. That'd be news to my any-excuse-to-stop-him-talking-about-riding-my-bike-to-work friends!

Another propitious aspect of this delightful City of Cars is steady recent growth of a cycle culture, and the Labour Day long weekend freed me up to join the AK Fixed crew for some bike polo. Somebody was taking photos, so I obligingly fell over right in front of him and collected an opponent on the way. (Hopefully I can track down a copy.) Somehow I was in the losing team for each of three short games, but had a blast and came home to be told I had a big smile all over my face. Must figure out how to fit in more of that.

Off to bed now, so that I wake in time to work on my costume for Friday night's Critical Mass. Managed to waste about five hours on a dead end this afternoon, so it'll be a tight thing. Yet more reason to remember - we don't know how lucky we are!

Automatic control for a nuVinci?

Hints from Interbike suggest that a controller will soon be available for the nuVinci hub to keep it at a constant cadence. This would be great on the wheelchair bike, as the posture is all wrong and freeing a hand to change gear on the steep dip on our street is very hard. I wonder if it would keep up with the rapid pace of change? I've considered building a simple controller myself, probably based on detecting the chain links interrupting an IR signal, but haven't done anything in that area and lack the time. So one you could buy would be great...

A much needed break

You haven't seen anything for months on this blog because life got crazy busy -- basically work intensified, and I didn't cope with it too well. Things are backing off, and I've hopefully picked up a few tricks about handling things better, but it was great to take a weekend away in mid September.

Continuing my campaign to exploit public transport, I put my bike on the Friday night train to Helensville and cycled four kms over to the Parakai campgrounds. The train service extended this far out about four months back, with a pilot program of one train each way per weekday. I was concerned that this one train on Friday night would be full and they'd prevent me taking a bike (let alone the big old Yuba), but got there several minutes early and nobody quibbled.

The campsite was pretty rundown, complete with sign in shower that it took two to five minutes to get hot water. I took a lukewarm shower after waiting 15, but the next day there was plenty of hot. Somewhat ironic since Parakai is known for its hot springs - as it happens I didn't visit them either as there were too many kids causing mayhem and I was out for a quiet weekend. I found a nice pair of trees for my hammock, and discovered that my friendly neighbour had lived there since 1982! Another neighbour had been a market gardener and his caravan-and-shed were a study in efficient use of land.



Saturday I cycled back to Helensville in the hope of finding a farmer's market mentioned on the internet, but none was to be seen. I enjoyed a morning free to wander the craft shops (looking for somebody's birthday present) with no real deadlines. Not that it took that long to exhaust my options in that booming metropolis. On returning to the campsite I had great plans to fix the rip in my tent netting, or maybe my bag liner, but ended up reading two novels I found in the kitchen. I can recommend Vernon God Little, but not anything by Clive Cussler. [I actually did need to fix the netting, so ended up sewing it as the sun set around 8pm!]

After I had planned this weekend around train trips out and back, the call went up for supporters at a Sunday afternoon rally advocating cycle and pedestrian access to the harbour bridge. Attending the rally met cycling in to town, which was only 50kms but much more than I'd tried with the Yuba. After some equivocation, and much studying of the unreliable elevation data on bikely and similar sites, I decided to give it a go--after all, I would still be very close to home and could easily organise a rescue if I got stuck.

As it turned out, the ride in was great. The weather was terrific (my first sunburn for the year) and none of the hills too steep. I did take 3:50 for just over 50 klicks, including about an hour of resting and lunch, but the bike steadily ate up the miles with all my luggage on it. (A duffel bag fits nicely on the back sidebars, btw.) I don't think that I could take the Yuba over the steeps on the way to Awhitu, but getting home via W. Auckland wasn't a problem. That was a great encouragement to me. Here's a view of the harbour over the motorway.

The rally itself was boring, and only about 400 showed up. Still, I'm glad that I went. A few disobedient types rode over the bridge, ensuring great coverage in the papers. Wish I'd been there. :-) It seems hard to know which way the various government authorities will go on supporting the cycleway, sadly. After the rally I ended up cruising off to a pub with some of the akfixed.com crew, who I'd been keen to meet. Like this guy's tattoo?

Weekend Away

This weekend was one of my quarterly respites, and my friend Anna organised a group to go cycling together. She booked a couple of nights at a Presbyterian church campsite, and offered to cook for all comers.




The main route in/out was about 65kms, excluding the commuter train ride down to Papakura, with 40 flat kms and 25 a lot steeper. Anna's friend John was the only one game to ride out with me, and the poor chap generously waited as I struggled over the hills on the fixie. It was a bad choice for the trip - the dingle cog allowed me to switch to a lower ratio as we reached the concentrated hills, but I was always slow on the downhills and just didn't have the stamina to cope. I only had to walk once (when using the higher ratio), but since I was always working hard and found it hard to take drinks or snacks I was completely bushed when we reached the end. John was very supportive.

Next day, Saturday, we had a lazy morning as the three guys joining us didn't arrive until noon. In the end two of them rode with us for about 2 hours, and we did a nice loop over ludicrously steep rodes. I took the bike left spare by the one guy not riding, which happened to be one of mine anyhow. It worked well for me, so I decided to ride it back on the Sunday. Check out this hill on Boiler Gully Road - we had to walk the first of two consecutive steeps like this, but had the hang of it better the second time.


Sunday morning we set off a bit late, at 8:30. John needed to catch the 12:10 train, so we had to make better time than on the way in. We managed to avoid the unscheduled detour to Clark's Beach which made for a nice morning tea location on day one, but I did get two punctures on the old tyres the backup bike had. Having gears made a huge difference, and it probably helped that we did the worst hills at the start not the end. We may even have had a tail wind through the flatter section, although I mostly noticed it when it flung sleet into my face on the heights. We made the trip in 3:30, arriving just in time to catch the
train and spread our wet, smelly selves across an empty carriage.

Going in was hard, but coming back was fun (in spite of the wet). All up, this was a good respite and restful. So different from Taupo last year. That old bike from my Uncle did me real well, although I'm glad I swapped seats before the ride out. No more taking the fixie on long trips unless I do heaps of real buildup first (which I won't).

ps - Can't resist showing you how I got the bike over to the guys who wanted to borrow it, along with the rack for carrying the bikes on the back of their car. :-)