Friday Follies ~~ Oops!

Yesterday, I was scrambling to get ready for the evening ride.  It had been a long, full, and complicated day.  I’d thrown the garage door open to grab the bike.  I had one of the cyclocomputers in my hand.  As I reached to bring the bike down from the hook, I fumbled, the computer left my hand and…  BLOP …right into the oil catch pan.  The full oil catch pan.  (I’d changed the oil on my truck earlier, and had not then disposed of the used oil.)

I have a complicated history with portable electronics.  I’ve dropped cell phones (unintentionally!) into the toilet.  I’ve drowned them other ways too.  I’ve run over PDAs with my truck.  Back in the Walkman era, I trashed several.  I thought my first flip-phone was really cool, until the bike crash.

Way back in history we didn’t have fancy electronics to train with.  Our concept was different (and largely wrong) then.  Basically we got on the bike and rode as fast as we could for a long time.  We knew approximately the length of various training rides because someone had measured them with a car’s odometer.  In those days bicycle speedometers where huge and clunky, and only seen on the bikes of kids and the occasional eccentric adult.

One day, shortly after the “pocket” calculator became affordable, electronic gadgets for bikes started showing up on the market.  (This was just about the time that DOS 3.0 rolled out.)  They were called “cyclocomputers.”  I resisted them for a time.

I bought my first bike computer.  It was an amazing gadget.  It was both a heart rate monitor and a bike computer.  The heart rate function told me how fast my heart was beating!  The thing also told me how far I ridden the bike, and how long I’d been doing it.  It had a stopwatch in it too.  It had one other interesting feature.  I could be switched between two wheel sizes, so if a second mount was purchased it could be used on two different bikes.  I bought the second mount and used the thing on both my road bike and mountain bike.

That early cyclocomputer had an unadvertised feature.  It was an incredibly sensitive detector of power lines and of the early high frequency wireless security systems.  When I got close to either of these things, my heart rate would go to zero.  Incidentally, that feature took a while to figure out.

I thought the thing was amazing!  I used it a lot.  It changed the way I rode and trained.  Then, on a trip to Tsali, I had it on my bike.  I hit a “wheel eater” while transitioning one of the stream crossings.  I watched the magic device pop out of its mount and then land in the water.  Before I could begin to recover, the little gadget floated right down the stream and rapidly down the waterfall.

For a long time, bicycle computers were somewhat problematical.  They worked okay, until they were subjected to rain.  Then they died.  For a time, I rode with my computer wrapped in baggies, or condoms.  It often helped preserve them.

Eventually, the manufacturers improved the seals on the gadgets.  I became a fan of Sigma brand equipment.  It didn’t die when exposed to a mild rain shower.  I became a real believer when I left my computer in a pocket and ran it through the wash.  That was a pair of work pants.  I wash my own clothes.  For work clothing, I use the heavy duty cycle on the washer, and the “don’t screw with me, get it dry dammit” cycle on the dryer.  The computer lived through all that.  Amazing!  I’ve been a convicted user of Sigma brand equipment ever since.

Yesterday, as I watched the computer disappear into the dark and nasty oil, I didn’t despair.  There wasn’t time for that.  Instead a acted quickly.  I snatched a nitrile glove out of the dispenser on the wall.  (Doesn’t everybody have a disposable glove dispenser in their home shoe?)  I slipped the glove on and reached down into the pan, found the device by feel and retrieved it.  Then a grabbed a handful of paper towels from the shop dispenser, and wrapped them around the hand with the glove.  That contained the mess so that I could dash inside.

A fast trip to the kitchen sink, and large dollop of dish detergent, and then under the stream of warm water.  Scrub with brush.  Presto!  The computer was no longer coated in used crankcase oil.  And it still worked!

It’s nice to know that we are making some progress.

Of course, I’m still carrying my phone around in a zip-lock baggie.  Phones don’t like to get wet.  Will their makers ever catch up with Sigma?

Thursday Thoughts ~ “Inventions”

In the past week I’ve encountered a couple of historical oddities.  It really doesn’t matter what they were, the significant thing is that, at one time, a lot of bicycle folks thought they were the complete and total, can’t do without it, gotta have it, killer, HOT STUFF.  Of course, at this point in time, almost no one remembers these things.  They both have two things in common.  1)  They seemed like a good idea at the time.  2) Some Pro used them and seemed to go faster.  BLOING!  Instant marketing!

Something there is about the bicycle that makes a certain kind of individual want to tinker with it.  Improve it.  That’s kind of interesting, in that, since John Henry Lawson designed the first safety bicycle,* the basic design and shape of the thing hasn’t changed much.  Yes, there have been some successful variants, and materials have improved amazingly.  The look and shape of the thing has undergone some alterations.  But nothing truly major has changed.  It is for this reason that it is sometimes said that,  “The bicycle is the machine where they got it right the first time.”

In point of fact, if one were to somehow place an authentic reproduction of one of those very early “safety bicycles” in a bike rack alongside a collection of modern bikes, it would hardly be noticed.  For comparison, imagine parking a “curved dash Oldsmobile" in the middle of your local shopping center parking lot.  It would certainly draw a crowd.

The automobile has changed dramatically in the last 100 years.  By comparison, most of the changes in bicycles have been more of refinement.

However, the fact remains, some folks just can’t resist the urge to tinker around with the thing.  These tinkers seem to fall into two categories.  1)  The really serious and passionate.  2)  The Man With An Idea! (MWAI)

That first category is populated by folks who are passionate about cycling, who have educated themselves in various serious disciplines, such as engineering, materials science, human factors, exercise physiology, etc.  They tend to work for companies that produce innovative bicycles or bicycle accessories.**

The second category consists of well meaning, under-informed, folk who are convinced that if everyone would just listen to them, and completely re-tool the way the bike is designed, built, and ridden we would, at last, achieve Nirvana.  It should be noted that almost every example of this category is a relative newcomer to cycling.  They either don’t ride, or don’t ride much, or haven’t been riding for long.  And yet they stand ready to revolutionize our sport.  In other words, idiots.  Sometimes these folks are just socially functional eccentrics, afflicted with a relatively harmless mania.

Now we have come to a new era in history.  We refer to the era of the internet.  The era fo I.C.E.  (Internet Changes Everyting)  More specifically, with the new phenomena of crowd sourcing, a lot of these folks actually manage to get some product out there.  Add to that, there are always countless articles, available on the internet, that prove that the MWAI’s fantasy is founded on reality, and simply must be put into widespread use.

Then too, some of these apparent MWAIs are just plain charlatans, or some kind of con artist.***

Over the past 25 years or so, some MWAIs have actually managed, for a short time, to implement some of their manias.  At one time it was decreed that we would all be riding 650C wheels.    Does anyone else remember the Softride™ Beam?  Fortunately these things have now gone the way of the Nehru Jacket and the Leisure Suit.

*There is some argument on precedence here.

**Sometimes they start such companies, and sometimes they are quite successful at it.

***I am reminded of the big Saddle Scare of the 90s.  Riding a bicycle was supposed to make a man sterile, or impotent, or something.  This fire was fueled by several major market magazines.  It was based, in part, on articles written by a “noted urologist.”  And then, about two months later, PRESTO! this same urologist had designed a magical bicycle saddle that was going to save us all!  Just imagine that.