Saturday, March 31, 2012

Cruzbike, personal update.

I'm participating in an adventure race this Sunday.  There's an optional mountain bike segment that I was thinking of doing on a Cruzbike Sofrider.  Well...won't happen this time.  I got a stomach virus last week, so my partner and I decided to change our expectations.  We'll just do the foot segment and use this as a "training" race.  It's clearly the smart decision and it'll still be a blast.  Next race maybe the Cruzbike will appear.  We shall see.

Have fun and stay healthy,
Robert
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Robert Matson
New York City Recumbent Supply
The Innovation Works, Inc.
copyright 2012 Robert Matson

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Ticks. Thick with Ticks.

I just got back from a little two-day, one-night jaunt up to...let's call it a "major wild area within a good day's ride."  My friend and I peddled, pushed and carried our bikes up an overgrown and flooded (therefore highly entertaining) woods road to a spot where we shouldn't be, stashed our bikes and camping gear, and then spent a day hiking some beautiful unblazed terrain.

What a blast.  We had great weather, by which I mean sun, rain and fog.  And we had...great balls of tickage.  I've never seen so many ticks.  We picked maybe 30 off our clothes (that we saw) and three or four out of our bodies (those that we found, as of now) and discerned three different varieties including the infamous "crawling spec of dirt," also known as the deer tick.

For Pete's sake.  Talk about a dampener on your fun.  Give me rain or wind or mud, any day.  Hoping I don't catch something from the little cesspools of disease.

Now I have to clean and sterilize all my clothes, camping gear and shoes and boots and panniers.  I'm wondering if I don't have to pick over the bikes as well.  What a mess.  (But what good clean fun we otherwise had.)


I Recommend to others who plan to go out this year:
- Permethrin for treating your clothes.
- Deet


Learn more about ticks.  There may be ads on this page for tick resources and there are also some pages here, at the University of Rhode Island TickEncounter Resource Center.

Insect and tick-repelling clothing.

Stay healthy,
Robert
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Robert Matson
New York City Recumbent Supply
The Innovation Works, Inc.
copyright 2012 Robert Matson

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Smoothing out those #%&! rough roads.

Between my place and Prospect Park, there is currently 400 meters of construction that will eventually result in a beautiful separated bike lane. This project was unfunded for some 20 years, till now, and has included laying new pipes, and piloting around a construction robot doing I don't know what, and generally digging up a road that used to be fairly smooth by New York City standards.  As it is now, with the temporary patch jobs they do each time they finish a parcel of work, it's the roughest #%&! road you can imagine.  Take a washboard road, add 50 speed bumps of all sizes and shapes, intersperse each speed bump with a pothole or two, throw on some gravel and rocks, and put it on an incline, and you've very nearly got this road (at this time).

Needless to say, I avoid it when I can, but it's the shortest route to The Park.  A bad road is unpleasant on a standard frame bike, but with an SF, you can post (raise yourself off the seat).  On a bent, you can't.  So, every few days, I'm reminded of what I like about fully-suspended recumbents or -- if I'm riding an unsuspended bent -- what I might have done to make this stretch more comfy.

Here are a few tips for smoothing out your own local worst road.

1. Full-suspension.  If you're shopping anew, consider full-suspension recumbent bikes or trikes.  If you know you'll be on bad roads, there's no replacing the safety and comfort of keeping all wheels -- whether two or three -- in contact with the road at all times.
2. Steel is real.  Favor steel recumbents over (non-suspended) aluminum bents. While a steel frame can't absorb potholes, it does have a marvelous capacity to absorb road vibration and this goes a long way towards improving control on bad roads.
3. Fat tires, baby.  Speaking personally, 1.5"-wide tires are my minimum for city tires and I like them at low pressure.  My favorite?  Schwalbe Big Apples. These are "balloon" tires.  They're relatively light, flat resistant, grippy, have low rolling resistance, can run as low as 35 psi, and provide "built in" shock absorption.
4. Big tires, baby. 26" wheels roll over the rough stuff better than 20" wheels.  I realize that means we're talking about high-racers and there are reasons why high racers are sub-optimal in the city, but there's no getting around the benefit of big wheels.  If you decide to look at this solution, check out a Cruzbike Sofrider or Cruzbike Quest: big wheels without the typical high-racer's seat slope.
5. Sling mesh seats.  While I love hard-shell seats for climbing hills, a sling mesh seat is comfort factorial on bad roads.

Would I put it all together?  Say, a fully-suspended HP Velotechnik Street Machine Gte or Scorpion fs, with Big Apple tires and an Ergo Mesh seat?  Or a dual-suspension Cruzbike Sofrider with 26x2.15" Big Apples?  Yeah, I'd consider it.  At some point it may become overkill, but I'm not sure we've yet reached that point.

Stay healthy,
Robert
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Robert Matson
New York City Recumbent Supply
The Innovation Works, Inc.
copyright 2012 Robert Matson

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Cruzbike's Maria Parker Shatters Course Record by Whopping 7% at Sebring.

Maria Parker Shatters the Sebring 24-hour Course Record by a Whopping 7% on a Cruzbike Vendetta.



Beating men and women alike, Maria completed 474.5 miles in the 24-hour non-drafting race, shattering the previous course record of 442.6 miles. (For those who are reading this blog entry at some time in the future, this was in the 2012 race.)

Jim Parker writes:
Maria "...finished the 24-hour non-drafting race with an amazing 474.5 miles, beating all the men, too. Timothy Woudenberg had the second best finish on his NoCom and was the only other recumbent rider among the top nine finishers, the other seven all being men riding DF bikes. She surpassed Sandy Earl's course record of 442.6 miles by a whopping 31.9 miles."

Maria Parker's blog entry about the race:

Jim Parker's blog entry about the race.
http://cruzbike.com/results-bike-sebring

That Maria Parker is an amazing athlete. And that Cruzbike is one incredible machine.

Stay healthy,
Robert
------------
Robert Matson
New York City Recumbent Supply
The Innovation Works, Inc.
copyright 2012 Robert Matson