Wellsburg to Wheeling WV along the Ohio

11/19/11 46m 55F

I had the occasion today to deliver a youngster to Franciscan University in Stuebenville, Ohio, and I had about six hours until it was time to retrieve the yute. Since it was 55F I decided to ride my bike along the Wheeling Heritage Trails, which includes the Ohio River Trail and the Wheeling Creek Trail.

Before I could ride, I needed to repair the flat rear tire that I discovered on Friday. I had indications of a slow leak, but as long as I pumped it every few days I was able to evade the issue. On Friday, after five days of no riding, it was flat as a pancake.

I have had too many flats lately. I average one flat (and one fall) every 500 miles, but I'm having more flats per mile this year than in recent years. I've got good tires, but I've recently put some gouges into both tires, and they've both got a few boot-kludges inside of them.

I had stopped at REI and purchased some tire liners and a Slime-filled inner tube.

I would love to get through the winter with my present tires, and more than that I would love to change my recent pattern of changing flats in adverse weather. I installed the tire liner and new tube in a parking lot and then made ready to commence the ride.





It's a very nice trail that passed through both industrial areas and natural scenes. I saw a few people on the trail north of Wheeling, and then in the city boundaries there were quite a few people.

Today's "Most Photogenic" award goes to Cooper The Dog; second honors to his driver for the kicky Bern Helmet.


When you start on the north end of the trail in Wellsburg, you'll see a circle marked on the pavement labeled "Sun". They've used the trail to present a scale model of the solar system, and as you travel south you pass a marker for each planet. It's an interesting way of demonstrating the tremendous distances of the outer planets as compared to the inner planets.

I had a headwind on the first leg going south. I continued past Wheeling to the southern trailhead in South Wheeling, then turned north and took the Wheeling Creek Trail a few miles to the east. The Wheeling Creek Trail involves a few blocks of marked bike lanes on city streets; they've done a very good job of it. There's a cool viaduct and a lit tunnel as the trail climbs away from the river, and the WCT ends at a nicely built skateboard park.

All the various trail sections are well marked, easy to follow, and well maintained. There's not many mile markers, but there are signs for restrooms and food, and signs indicating the local emergency contact phone number.

I wish I knew more about bridges, because this ride takes you by several generations of bridge designs - old, old bridges, some restrung with modern cable, 1945-ish bridges, modern wishbone bridges.

My last hour on the trail was after sunset, which is probably a technical violation of trail rules but I think there may be a waiver for veterans. It does get very dark along the trail.

I have the impression that my tire, with the tire liner and the Slime-tube, takes a bit more effort to accelerate, and tends to slow down just a little bit faster. Or it may be that my legs were dodgy after a five-day layoff.

This was a very nice ride on a great paved trail, and it was good to be out on the bike again.

11/11/19 Week 43

this week: 78 miles

[4th quarter: 843 miles]

2011: 4109 miles

My Bicycle Headlight Choices and Experience

11/17/11

A brief article on my bicycle headlight choices, because there's a lot of different options and technologies out there and in the end, there's a choice and an experience with the choice.

We have these statistics on night bike accidents:

• Motorist exiting from side street 47.2%
  
• Motorist turning left 22.3%
  
• Motorist overtaking 21.0%
  
• Wrong-way cyclist head-on 9.5%

When I first read this, the most surprising thing to me is that most night car-on-bike collisions do not involve a car overtaking from behind; only 21% are overtaking cars, and so rear lights can only hope to mitigate one-fifth of night bike accidents.

A full 70% of night accidents involve a car that is exiting from a side street or turning left. These cars are in front of the bike, ±20° — or, in pilot-clock-position terms, from 11:00 to 1:00. These accidents can hope to be mitigated by front lights that are intended to make the bike visible and identifiable to drivers.

In these 70% of night accidents, the driver doesn't see/perceive/identify the bicycle. It may be that the driver's scan doesn't fully extend, or that an intermediate vehicle interferes with recognition. This is where the blinky "see-me" light comes in; it's not there to illuminate the road, it's there to call attention to the bicycle. Its job is to shout: "I am here! Don't Kill Me!"

On the front of the bike I use a Planet Bike 2Watt LED headlight (two AA's) as a "see-me" blinky. I'm very pleased with it, I get a lot of comments on it, and I see cars maneuvering to give me a wider berth when I have the blinky on.

I use a Planet Bike Alias HID (big heavy battery with a proprietary charger) to light my path. When this thing warms up it's like a light saber, and the bike looks like an oncoming locomotive in traffic. I love this light; the negatives are (1) weight, (2) a bulky recharger base, and (3) the usable burn time is only about two hours. My experience with the Alias HID is quite positive.


As I've written recently, I lost my Alias HID about a month ago, and after going through the stages of Bicycle Grieving (Anger, Forum-Surfing, Vacillation, Selection and Purpose), I finally chose to replace it with a Light-and-Motion Urban 500.

The L&M Urban 500 is a new product with an internal battery with a USB charger. Although I'm seeking to standardize around AA/AAA batteries, and don't want to carry another recharger I am already carrying a USB recharger around for my phone, so I'm good with that.

The concern about a light with an internal battery is that if/when the battery goes bad, then the light is useless — so I resolved to purchase the light through REI because (1) I really do like to buy equipment at REI and (2) their superb return policy makes me comfortable buying something.

Inevitably, the day after I ordered the L&M Urban 500 I received an email that some good souls had found my HID light, and a few days later they returned it to me. Unfortunately I had already ordered and paid for the Urban500. I went to my local REI and took delivery of the Urban 500, and as I sat there cradling the puppy in my hands I was tempted to take it home and love it but better judgement prevailed - the cost of this thing was half a set of Ortlieb panniers - and I gave it back to the green-vested REI staffer and immediately returned it.

Rear Bike Lights: Cateye TL-LD1100 and Radbot 1000

11/16/11 #238

On rainy days we may blog about equipment and the rationale of selection.

As the hours of daylight dwindle to a precious few, bicycle lights are more important than ever. Rear lights are important because you're relying on them for cars you're not looking at; you're unlikely to steer your way out of a overtaking-car collision, even thought they're not the majority of night time car-bike accidents. I'm using two rear lights, a Cateye TL-LD1100 and a PDW Radbot1000, and I think they make a good team.

One of the primary decisions about lighting, front or rear, is power supply; where do the electrons come from? The "serious cyclist" answer is a front-wheel hub dynamo powering the lights, but the range of lights you can use is limited (there are some recent developments that offer increased choices). The "green-commuter" answer is rechargeable batteries, often built into the device, that (increasingly) use USB connections to recharge; this often involves removing the lights for charging. The "Fred" answer, and the choice I ended up making, is AA and AAA batteries, which can be purchased at most convenience stores; these present an ongoing expense and an environmental impact.

I've added a Radbot 1000 to my rear light array in the last year because it's one of the best lights in a new category: the LED strobe. The Radbot1000 from Portland Design Words is passive-aggressive; it's a combo passive reflector and an extremely bright, occulting strobe light. It's annoyingly bright and suitable for daytime use. It uses two AAA batteries and the mounting clip is compatible with the mount from the PlanetBike SuperFlash, which is its primary competitor.


My other rear bike light, and my mainstay rear light for a decade, has been the Cateye TL-LD1000 which used two AA batteries. This light contains 10 LEDs, in two rows, wrapped across three surfaces of the light - in other words, two LEDs facing left, six facing the rear, and two LEDs facing right. It's an excellent, sturdy reliable rear light.

In the last year, my TL-LD1000s (I have one on two different bikes) have become problematic: when they get bumped around they turn themselves off. I suspect the battery springs lost their tension. I sent Cateye an email a few weeks ago, they sent back a reply asking me to ship them the two TL-LD1000s, and the mailman just delivered a package containing two of Cateye's most recent offering, the Cateye TL-LD1100.

There are a few upgrades in the 1100 version: the overall design is the same, but the LEDs are twice the brightness of the 1000, the battery sleeves seem to provide for easier replacement, and the case locking mechanism seems more robust. I'm very impressed that Cateye replaced two 10-year old lights with an upgraded model gratis, no questions asked. It makes me feel better about buying another Cateye light the next time I'm shopping.

National Tunnel and Tandem Ghost Bike

11/13/11 32m 65F

Rode the Montour Trail from McDonald to world-famous Farm House Coffee and back, 32 miles round trip on a very mild day.

I'm always glad to ride out to Farm House, and today my thinking was it might be my last chance to ride out beyond the National Tunnel, which tends to accumulate ice stalagmites on the floor once the temperatures go steadily below freezing.

Unfortunately, FarmHouse Coffee is closed on Sunday, Day of Rest n'at, bad planning on my part. I finally ended up visiting the StarBucks across the street in spite of myself (nothing against SB, I just prefer an indy coffee shop).

On the return trip passing Henderson Park I read the sign on the white tandem for the first time, I've been by there before but never noticed it (it's been up for a few months, I'm told).

I think that's a great safety message without going saccharine-preachy, I think they did a good job on that.

The weather improved as the ride progressed, it ended up sunnier than I expected and not as windy.

Great People, Drone Trains, Bike Lanes

11/12/11 #235 27m 55F

Three weeks ago I lost my Planet Bike Alias HID headlight on a long ride and I had no idea where I'd lost it. This week I saw a post about a found headlight on the BikePgh web forum, and it turns out that B. had found my light and was searching for the owner, how extremely cool is that?



Started off the bike day rendezvousing with B. & M. at Southside REI. They arrived on their tandem to deliver my lost (and found) headlight. It was very nice of them to make the effort to find me. They're very interesting people, they've ridden across America once, and ride a very interesting bicycle - a Santana tandem with S&S couplers for shipping the bike. Their rear wheel had the largest disc brake I've ever seen, which I guess makes sense for a tandem.

I rode from the Waterfront to Boston, PA's Green BoxCar and back for 27 miles in 55F. A very nice ride in excellent conditions, I found I was overdressed as the temperatures neared 60F and it was much better when I removed some layers.

On the way back, I encountered a very colorful, high-viz locomotive that was shuttling traincars back and forth, coupling them together to form a.... well, a train. I'm a sucker for high-viz vehicles.



Although the locomotive was moving, there didn't seem to be anybody on board. Then I read the sign ( closeup photo at right): Caution Remote Control Locomotive. Apparently all the drones aren't in Iraq; they're running drone trains in McKeesport.

On the one hand, how cool a job is that, operating a remote control locomotive? That's the dream job of every kid that ever had a model train. OTOH, I looked around and there wasn't any evident Train Control Room in the vicinity; I wonder if it's done via some sort of long-distance VPN. I'm figuring (hoping) the dead-man-switch has been replaced by a lost-network-connection-switch.

And then I considered the safety program slogan painted on the outside of the engine.


What puzzled me is they're using a remote control locomotive so they don't have to pay a highly trained worker to sit in the cab, because sometimes trains sit idle and it would cause the Corporation to explode if a skilled person got a few minutes of non-productive time. So they've got a roomfull of Drone Pilots Engineers at an undisclosed location, and they've dumbed-down the required skillset (and payscale) of the people that do have to be on the site (physically, n'at).

So they paint safety slogans for the physical meatspace workers on the side of the unmanned Drone Locomotive. There's a very deep disconnect in that.

As I rode north I encountered a cyclist who had fallen along the trail on a high-end road bike. I think he broke his collarbone, and there was a lot of cuts and bleeding. He hit his helmet on the pavement, and a section of the helmet foam had broken under the impact. One of the carbon fiber spokes on the front wheel had failed, I don't know if that was secondary to the crash or the cause of the crash.

The injured bicyclist (the second I've seen this year along that section of the trail) reinforces my notion that we need Wayfinding signage along the local bike trails, identifying the location, the number to call for assistance, and the direction and distance to the nearest trailhead.

Finally, this was my first opportunity to see the new bike lanes around the Marcegaglia plant at the Waterfront. These are very nicely done, and they're probably the best bike lanes (in terms of marking, signage, segregation) in the region.

11/12/11 Week 42

this week: 146 miles

[4th quarter: 765 miles]

2011: 4031 miles

A Blue Heron, 4000 miles

11/11/11 28miles

Rode 28 miles in 2h14m on the Montour Trail, 40F w/c 33F. Today's ride put my 2011 mileage above 4000 miles.


This was an excellent ride. I started from the Boggs Trailhead with midweight gloves on but switched to my Descent Wombat gloves which were toasty warm. I rode west to MP14, then east to MP0 in Groveton and back to Boggs.

I saw only one other person west of the Enlow Tunnel. On the east side of the Tunnel, I saw a dozen joggers, a few walkers, one bicyclist, and one unicylist.


On the final leg, riding west at MP3.5-ish, I saw a blue heron with the biggest wingspan I've ever seen, flying low over the creek as if it was working in ground effect. It was a magnificent sight.

---

OTOB (On The Other Blog): The Bike Safety Paradox, Ghost Bikes, and Risk.

Good Signs

11/09/11 #236 30m

Rode 30 miles in 65F. Excellent conditions for Nov. in Pittsburgh.




I parked my car at the Boggs Trailhead and while I was fooling with my phone I heard a tap on the window and I was surprised to see my friend S. with her bike. S was out on a 38 mile ride and it was serendipitous to meet.

We east rode together and took the Airport Connector. I noticed this sign on the main trail, I had not seen it before. On a weekday, there are vehicles on the airport service roads and we saw three or four yellow trucks with big numbers painted on the side. We waved at each one, trying to make a good first impression as friendly cyclists (as opposed to anarchists).

The new section is really an excellent route and the up-and-down and changing scenery are a welcome diversion to the old tried-and-true trail.

We reversed and rode to MP0, and then I returned alone to Boggs. We rode for about two hours and in that time the sky changed from sunny to overcast, but it was 65F in Pittsburgh in November, and I got to ride in a jersey and shorts sans wool and layers, and it was a very pleasant ride.

Also, I received a patch (a physical artifact via snail mail!!) today for completing the Coffeeneuring Challenge, thank you very much MG!