The Velo Orange Campagne Bag Five Years In

This here is what Grant Peterson refers to as "beausage:"

And these are what you call "holes:"

And this isn't a hole yet, but will be soon:

This Velo Orange Campagne front bag has served me well for five years. Through five Super Randonneur series, the Cascade 1200, the Goldengate 1000, half of Paris-Brest-Paris, a couple of Fleches, dozens of other brevets and permanents, and countless rides that didn't count for anything in the rando world, this bag has carried everything I needed to get through cold rainy nights and blistering days. On most rides, if it wasn't in this bag then I just didn't need it.

For a bag that costs less than $100 (at least that's what it was when I bought it five years ago, it's a little over that now), I'd say it's held up well. It probably hasn't held up as well as the fancier bags that cost two or three times as much, but... well, they cost two or three times as much.

It's been a good bag. Not great, but pretty darn good. To be great it would need something easier to deal with than the buckle enclosures that confound me when my hands are cold, or when I need a candy bar in the dark. And hardware that didn't rust would be nice too. It wouldn't hurt if the window on map pocket on top were bigger and while you're at it, waterproof would be a nice feature for the map pocket. But these are really fairly small nits. Overall, the bag did what I expected it to do and did it with a good attitude. It didn't even complain the many times I over-stuffed it with smelly wet clothes and sticky candy wrappers.

This bag is far from used up. I think I may get a new bag for my main brevet bike, but I'll continue to use this one on my commuter bike until the holes get too big and I start leaving trails of bike tools and Clif Bars. Even then, some hand-sewn-on patches should put things right for a few thousand more miles.

Braking Technique and Going "Over the Handlebars"

A couple of months ago Jan Heine posted an article on his blog about effective braking technique on a bicycle. In the post Jan talked about tests that Bicycle Quarterly had performed to learn some things about braking performance. The tests explored both the equipment (brakes, shoes and pads) and braking technique (front only vs. rear only vs. both), but in the blog post Jan talks about conclusions related specifically to braking technique.

One of the conclusions that seemed quite counter-intuitive to me is that on dry pavement, the front brake alone will stop a bike faster than both the front and rear brakes applied together. It’s easy to understand that under hard braking, the rider’s center of gravity shifts forward, significantly unweighting the rear wheel. As a result, the rear wheel has little traction and can’t help much with braking. But why would using the rear brake actually diminish braking performance? The article doesn't completely answer that question, but I get the impression that it has more to do with human psychology and physiology than with physics. That is, when we brake with just one lever, perhaps we’re better able to focus our effort on stopping the bike safely and quickly.

Jan was convincing enough in the article to get me to consciously shift my behavior from using both brakes most of the time to almost exclusively using the front brake. I still use the rear brake in certain situations, like when signaling with my left hand, braking on slipper surfaces or controlling my speed on a long descent, but otherwise I've been almost exclusively using the front brake lately.

Using the front brake alone is a bit unsettling at first for some who don’t have a lot of cycling experience. It’s easy to imagine braking too hard with the front brake and something like this happening:

But as Jan points out, it’s possible to brake quite hard with the front brake without going over the handlebars as long as you shift your weight backward and brace yourself firmly against the handlebars so that the deceleration doesn't force your weight forward.

Recently I did some real world testing of my own on this whole over-the-handlebars issue. My methods may have not been up to the same standards as BQ, but I think I came away a little smarter none-the-less.

I was coming home from work on the Burke Gilman trail, riding my single speed Trek 311 which lately has been set up with a fixed gear drivetrain. I'll admit I was going faster than I should have been as I approached an intersection between the trail and a road that generally sees very little traffic (actually, I was going about as fast as I could, trying to squeeze in some interval training on my commute home). At this particular intersection, it's very difficult to see a car coming until you're almost into the intersection. I was leaning forward, stretching my neck out trying to see around that corner a fraction of a second earlier so I wouldn't have to lose any momentum. Unfortunately what I saw just as I entered the intersection was a car on a perfect T-bone collision course with me. There was no time to thoughtfully reflect on the BQ brake tests or to consider which brake lever would stop me quickest. It was complete instinct and muscle memory that grabbed the front brake as hard as it could.

Okay, let's pause to review some of the facts we've learned so far:

• I was going pretty fast. Definitely over 20 mph.
• I was leaning forward on the bike, trying to "see around the corner." (yeah, like that's really going to help)
• I was riding a fixed gear bike.

So here's a thing about fixed gear bikes. I've spent a fair amount of time riding fixed gear bikes, but I still occasionally "forget" that you can't stop pedaling on one. Generally when that happens it's a very momentary thing; the bike quickly reminds you with a strong "nudge" and you're back to pedaling, no harm, no foul. Of course that friendly nudge reminder tends to push you forward on the bike since as soon as you stop pedaling, the cranks want to take your whole body in a circular trip with them over the front of the bike.

Back to my story. So as you can imagine, the same instinct and muscle memory that caused me to grab the front brake with all my might also told my feet, "STOP PEDALING NOW!"

You can see where this is going, can't you?

In what seemed like a nanosecond I felt the back wheel of the bike lift up as I went somersaulting over the handlebars and landed on my head and right shoulder on the pavement directly in front of the car. All I remember about the impact is the deafening crunch of my helmet and body striking the pavement. There was none of the super cool time-freeze effect that Joseph Gordon Levitt's character experiences in Premium Rush. No weighing of options, no super slo-mo flight through the air. Just a loud crunch.

With my right clavicle in four pieces, four sprained fingers, and a number of other bumps, scrapes and bruises, I dragged myself and my bike out of the middle of the road and sat down next to the trail to take inventory. I knew immediately my collarbone was broken. I've broken a couple of bones before and there's a certain unmistakable feeling when your bones aren't all where they belong.

I never lost consciousness, but between being in shock and most likely having suffered a mild concussion, my memories of the first few minutes after the crash are fuzzy. I know the driver of the car got out and asked if I was okay, but I have no memory of whether they were male, female, young, old or what kind of car they were driving. I apparently convinced them I was okay, because they left me sitting by the trail trying to work out my next move. The next move of course was to call Sarah and ask sheepishly, "can you come get me and take me to a hospital?"

Okay, so what did I learn from this experience? I'm still trying to figure that out, but here are few things that come to mind:

• Sometimes I can really be an idiot.
• It takes about 12 weeks for a fractured clavicle to heal completely and during that time you get to see some really breathtaking bruises.
• It's difficult to shift your weight back quickly on a fixed gear bike.
• When your head hits the pavement, a helmet is a good thing to be wearing.
• Leaning forward to peek into the intersection as you approach is not the same as slowing down.
• Blowing through an intersection at high speed just because there "usually" aren't any cars there is a bad idea.

As far as braking technique, and going "over the handlebars," I'll continue to do most of my braking with my front brake. I have little doubt that it's possible to stop very quickly and safely on a bike using only the front brake, if you have time to prepare. Had I grabbed only the rear brake in the scenario described above, I would have barely slowed down as I skidded into the intersection directly into the path of the car. Luckily the car stopped in time, but if they hadn't, the rear brake would have been no help.

The key is having that time to prepare. So, if I learned nothing else from this experience, hopefully I at least learned to pay attention and always be prepared to stop when approaching uncontrolled intersections. In other words don't act like I'm Joseph Gordon Levitt in Premium Rush because, duh... that's not real.

The Big Event That Wasn't

Since I became serious about cycling back in 2008, I've built each cycling year around a Big Event that would be the main focus of my training and planning.

• In 2008, my first year of getting serious about cycling, it was the Seattle to Portland double century. 
• In 2009, it was spread across four separate rides as I dove into the randonneuring deep end and set out to ride my first Super Randonneur series. 
• In 2010 the Cascade 1200 was the pinnacle of my season as I took the next step up the randonneuring ladder. 
• In 2011, the granddaddy of grand randonnee's, Paris-Brest-Paris consumed me for months. 
• And finally 2012's event was the San Francisco Randonneurs' Golden Gate 1000.

I love having a Big Event to plan and train for. I never have a problem with going for a long ride in the country with no particular purpose, but with a goal in mind my energy level rises and I feel as though the ride is not just another ride, but a leg in an epic journey. I can push myself harder and longer when I'm training for an event rather than just out burning calories.

This year I had a different kind of Big Event in mind. The idea started with a fat dog.

Our dog Lucy is a sweetheart but let's face it, she's too fat. I can't practically take her on rides with me, so last fall I started running with her to help her burn off some calories. I've never been much of a runner; it always seemed to me like a painful unpleasant task one did because one couldn't think of a more sensible way to exercise. But Lucy seemed to like it, so I was willing to make a sacrifice for my dog with the runaway BMI.

Somehow on those early morning runs through the park with Lucy, completely without warning, I became a runner. It snuck up on me. I found myself actually looking forward to going running, and wanting to do progressively longer runs. I'd catch myself researching running shoes online rather than cranksets and derailleurs.

One thing lead to another, and by the Spring of this year I was making plans for a 2013 Big Event that didn't have a darned thing to do with bicycles or randonneuring. A runner friend, John came up with the concept and I opened my wallet wide and bought in. The plan was to do a 17 mile trail run through the Enchantment Lakes, from the Colchuck Lake/Aasgard Pass end through to the Snow Lakes trail head. The date was loosely set for Labor Day weekend. 17 miles isn't marathon distance, but with about 4,400 ft of elevation gain and 6,500 ft of descent it would be a challenging enough run to easily qualify as my Big Event for the year.

As I started ramping up the running miles, I realized I had no choice but to ramp down my cycling. There are only so many hours in a day and it was hard to find the time, let alone the physical and mental energy for both running and cycling. So, once I had wrapped up a Super Randonneur series with the Seattle Randonneurs' Watery Olympic 600k in early June, I shifted gears from cycling to running.

Other than my daily commute to and from work I did very little cycling during July and August. I rode fewer miles in July and August combined than I had ridden in either May or June alone. But with my training for the Big Event keeping me busy and flooded with endorphins, I wasn't missing cycling much.

July and early August were filled with some fantastic and memorable trail runs of increasing difficulty, including a beautiful rolling 12 mile ramble on the Mt Rainier Wonderland trail from Longmire to Box Canyon and a grueling 16 mile loop from Mowich Lake through Spray Park and along the Carbon River.

But with that Mowich Lake loop I made a classic rookie runner mistake: Too much too soon. With a ton of crazy steep climbing and descending it was more than my inadequately trained half century-old knees could take. I developed an extremely sore right knee about 10 miles into the run and had to walk the last five miles. My knee continued to hurt enough that I thought I should stop running for a few days to let it recover. Problem is, it ended up taking a few weeks to recover instead of a few days.

On the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, John and another friend ran the Big Event without me. They lucked into some ideal weather and had a fantastic time. I hadn't been able to do any running for a couple weeks at that point, and my knee was still too painful to even think about running around the block.

Summer seems to have ended early in the Pacific Northwest this year. The storms are rolling through like it's November and snow has already started falling high in the mountains. There'll be no Big Event for me this year.

The good news is that I'm finally back into running shape again, but starting slow, doing three and four mile runs close to home. Lucy is happy to see me running again and so am I. Luckily cycling doesn't seem to aggravate the knee problem at all, so I was able to get in some nice long rides in the last days of summer.

Running is in my blood now and I intend to keep it up as long as my body allows, but when it comes to the Big Events, I've discovered that my body is much happier being pushed to the limit on a bike than on foot.

Brooks Cambium C17 Update: It's a Keeper

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I had just received one of Brooks' new Cambium C17 saddles. Since then I've logged a few hundred miles on the C17, so I suppose it's time for a more proper review.

The C17 has bounced around among three of my bikes as I've tried to figure out what kind of riding it's best suited for. It started out on my Bianchi Volpe that generally get's used for off road stuff, spent a few days on my Trek 760 in full roadie mode, and eventually settled in on my Trek 614, the randoneuse. All three of these bikes have the handlebars set at least 4 cm below the saddle, so I have yet to try the C17 on a bike with a more upright position.

The rides I've done on the C17 have ranged from short hilly intense training rides, to several-hours-long gravel road adventures, to lazy daily commutes to work. I had a chance to ride it on sweaty hot days, and cool drizzly ones. The longest ride I've used it for was a little over 80 miles.

In the riding I've done on the C17, it has mostly disappeared beneath me. That is to say, I didn't really notice it after the first few minutes of the ride. To me, that's the greatest compliment you can pay to a saddle.

Notice I said, "mostly disappeared." In the first couple of rides on the C17, I was a little distracted by its "stickiness." Not sticky like honey, but the texture of the top of the saddle grabs onto the seat of your pants pretty well, especially when you're wearing spandex riding shorts. If you're used to the slipperiness of a classic leather saddle like a Brooks B17, you'll probably notice this right away. However, the C17 is far from the stickiest saddle I've ever ridden (that distinction would go to a cheap plastic Performance house-brand torture device). I spend a lot of time riding leather Brooks saddles, so I'm quite used to being able to easily shift my position on the saddle without lifting my bum at all. The C17 requires that I put a little more effort into shifting positions, but once in the right position I tend to stay there better. After some time on the C17 I came to consider the texture as more of a feature than a defect and quickly stopped noticing it at all. On my Brooks Pro on the other hand, I still sometimes find myself sliding around a little more than I'd like.

Early on I also noticed that my riding shorts would catch a bit on the chamfered edges along the nose of the saddle. This soon became a non-issue not simply because I stopped noticing it, but because it stopped happening. My guess is the exposed rubber edge where the cotton fabric ends is a bit grabby when fresh out of the box, but after grinding in a bit of sweat and road dirt, the grabbiness goes away.

The C17 achieves long distance comfort in exactly the same way a classic leather Brooks saddle does it. The suspended vulcanized rubber/cotton canvas/textile top feels quite firm to the touch, but it gives slightly under the weight of your sit bones. The firmness of the C17 is very similar to that of a year old Brooks B17 I have, but it's not as firm as my Brooks Pro (which is also fairly new but broken in). With a classic Brooks, the leather eventually retains the impression of your sit bones even when you're not on it. This hasn't started to happen with the C17 and it seems unlikely that it will ever happen.

I spent some time in a typical Seattle drizzle on one of my rides. I was riding my Trek 760 at the time which is proudly fenderless. (Riding a bike without fenders in Seattle is a sure-fire way to bring on the rain.) The C17 was of course soaked and covered with road grit. Had I been riding my B17 or Team Pro I would have been digging through garbage cans beside the road looking for plastic bags to cover the saddle so I wouldn't ruin it. With the C17, I had no worries. I hosed off the road grit when I got home and the saddle was as good as new.

One commenter on my previous post mentioned that when the top of the saddle gets wet, it doesn't easily wipe dry. This is true. The cotton textured top holds onto water better than your typical plastic saddle. So, if you park your bike outside in the rain and then hop on in your street clothes, you'll end up looking like you wet your pants. This hasn't been an issue for me as my bikes tend to be parked under cover when I'm not riding them, but if you park your bike outside you may want to cover the saddle to keep it dry.

The same commenter also complained of the rivets on the back of the saddle being uncomfortable. So far, I've never felt the rivets at all. Perhaps it's more noticeable if you ride with a more upright position? My position seems to be well in front of the rivets.

As I mentioned before, the C17 has settled on my Trek 614 for now. That's the bike that usually gets ridden on brevets and other long rides so it has to have a saddle that is comfortable from sunrise to sunset and beyond. It still hasn't been tested on a ride of more than 80 miles, but from my experience so far I'm confident that it will be at least as comfortable on long rides as the B17 it's replacing.

For sportier short rides like the kind I tend to do on my Trek 760 the C17 worked well. But with the deeper handlebar drop that bike has, I suspect a narrower saddle might work even better. I'm anxiously awaiting the introduction of the Cambium C15. Brooks claims it will be a narrower version based on the classic racing model, the Swallow. Sounds like just the ticket.

Reynolds-shmeynolds! All Steel Frames Are Alike.

For the longest time, I naively believed that one steel framed bike was pretty much like any other. I saw the bike frame merely as something on which you hang the components. I figured a cheap old frame with nice wheels and Dura Ace or Super Record components would beat the pants off of a high-end steel frame with a mediocre component gruppo and wheels.

Sure, I knew the old frames built with the top Reynolds, Columbus and Tange tube sets were a bit lighter, and were highly coveted by experienced riders. Weight matters to a certain degree, but the frame alone is far less than half of the total weight of a complete bike. And as far as being highly coveted, I figured those poor saps doing the coveting were just victims of marketing and hype.

I've slowly been outgrowing that belief over the past few years, but I recently had a massive growth spurt when I had the opportunity to compare two bikes that were very similar in every way except for the tubing they were built with. Remember that racy Trek 560 that I bought a couple of years ago? I loved riding that bike, but finally came to the conclusion that it was a size too small for me. So, I put all of the original parts back on it and put it up for sale on Craigslist.

The plan was to replace it with another Trek 560 of the right size once I sold it. Serendipitously something even better came up on Craigslist almost immediately after I sold the 560.

Say hello to my "new" 1985 Trek 760.

When I bought the Trek 760 its original Campy Victory parts were long gone. The guy I got it from had bought it as a bare frame and built it up with a mostly meh assortment of early 90s Japanese components. I decided to strip it bare and rebuild it with all of the parts that had been on the Trek 560. This gave me a rare opportunity to compare two frames with the exact same components so I could get a good feel for the differences between the frames.

So, with the 760 rebuilt the differences between the two bikes came down to this:

• The 760 is a size bigger than the 560 (the 760 is a size 56cm, and the 560 is a size 21" or 53.34cm)
• There are slight differences in geometry between the two models.
• The 760 is built with Reynolds 531C tubing while the 560 is Reynolds 501.

The size and geometry differences look like this (the 560's numbers are in the red box in the top section and the 760's are in the lower red box):





The head tube angle is a fair amount steeper on the 760, but other than that differences are either attributable to the different sizes (i.e. the 760 has a longer top tube and seat tube), or they are extremely small and probably not significant.

So what about the difference in tubing? How is Reynolds 531C different than Reynolds 501? According to the 1985 Trek brochure, there are differences in tube wall thickness.



The top tube's walls are thinner, the down tube's are a little thicker and the seat tube's are thinner in 531C as compared to 501 tube set. There are also differences in how the tubes are manufactured and the composition of the steel, but those differences supposedly have little impact on the strength or ride quality of the finished bike. There's some weight difference in the tube sets, but the difference is negligible when it comes to a fully built bike. Both bikes weigh about 22 lbs ready to ride with peddles and everything.

On paper this all looks pretty trivial to my inexperienced eye. I expected these two bikes to ride very similarly. I doubted that I would even be able to tell them apart in a blindfold test. Not that I would ever try riding blindfolded!

So, the next Saturday morning after building up the 760, I went for a good long ride...

By the way, I had ridden the 560 just a week before so its ride quality and handling characteristics were still pretty fresh in my mind. I rode 70 or so miles on some of my favorite roads that day with lots of ups, downs, twists, turns, smooth pavement, rough pavement and even a bit of gravel.

The difference between the 760 and my beloved old 560 was mind-blowing!

As I've said before, I loved the ride of that 560. Everything about it was quick and precise. When you jumped on it, it took off. The downside was that you could feel every pebble and crack in the pavement, and the handling required constant attention.

On the 760 I instantly noticed a smoother and more stable ride. There was little of the jarring and buzzing that I had come to associate with the 560. The ride quality was more like my Cadillac-like Trek 614 than it was like the 560. And the handling of the 760 had all of the quickness and precision of the 560, but with less effort and attention required. I never felt like I was having to force it into a tight turn. The handling was more intuitive and invisible than on any other bike I had ever ridden.

Talking about ride quality and handling characteristics of bikes is a little like wine reviews. It can be a lot of meaningless hyperbole that is really just trying to say either "I like this" or "I don't like this." So rather than try to use up a bunch more words explaining my perceptions, I'll just say this: I found my new Trek 760 to feel very different than my old 560, and I really liked the difference.

Since that first Saturday ride, I've ridden the new 760 a few hundred more miles. I'm still a bit blown away every time I get on it. It's by far the best riding bike I've ever owned. It has very clearly taught me that one lugged steel frame is not like another, even if they may look very similar on paper.

What accounts for the differences? I'm still not sure. It could be attributed to the different tube sets, but I suspect it's more complicated than that. That's one of the things I love about bikes. They are amazingly complex for such simple machines.

"Just like women" says a friend of mine.