Rants

If you bike commute, you’re likely a familiar friend of fear. Undesirable vehicle (UDV) drivers feel fear too. They fear the drunken driver. They fear following the close call they experience once every couple of years. They fear looking bad. They drive the nicest UDV they can’t afford so they feel respected. They fear non-conformance. I don’t like fearing those things. I don’t like fear.

That is one thing I really like about western religion. For the most part, the only thing they teach you to fear is god. The rest is “Ye, though I walk through the valley of death, I shall fear no evil.”

I think about the people who fear the most in this world. I feel like they’re the ones who own the most, have the most power, are the coolest, the richest, the most beautiful. They have so much they always fear that they’re going to lose something. Kim Jong Il and the Iranian government are perfect examples. They fear and thus create fear to control their own fear. Voodoo priest are similar. They control by fear — creating more fear, combated by fear, combated by rituals originating from fear, etc.

The best quote I’ve heard regarding fear is extremely cheesy but is useful in a certain context…Yoda: “Fear leads to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads suffering” — suffering like the people in Darfur, Korea and Iran. I think that that quote could start with, “Possession leads to fear…” The Dark Side here is obviously evil and evil is bad.

Most of the people I know drive UDVs. As a bike commuter, there’s not much else I fear other than UDVs. Take UDVs out of traffic and I have almost complete freedom to operate. Although I fear these people in their UDVs, I do not fear for myself. I fear that my children and future generations will not enjoy, even modestly, the privileges that I’ve enjoyed in this life — opportunities to eat, be reasonably comfortable, and to travel modestly and learn new cultures.

Does UDV use lead me to fear? Yes. Does UDV use lead me to anger? Yes. Does it lead me to hate? I don’t think so. There is where I break from Yoda. I do not possess the future of my children and future generations. While I fear for their future, it is a fear born of caring and love. My fear leads me to conserve, to return the privilege, to sacrifice, to return the love I’ve been shown. I am determined to continue to fear…to continue to conserve…and more importantly, love. I love for my son, daughter, others.

I hope you will find the joy I’ve experienced from sacrificing my convenience for the future of others.

I hope you continue to fear. May your fear lead to love.

I work in an industry where standards are commonplace. Many standards work to ensure that different products play nicely with others. For example, the IEC 60601 standards help to ensure that your pacemaker doesn’t stop due to electromagnetic interference when you pop a hot pocket in the microwave. While bike technology has moved forward immensely in the past 20 years, bike companies are kind of like the music industry – extremely fragmented. While this is positive for technology development and individualism, it is frustrating for guys like me who just want to ride their bike to work and be able to fix it at home.

Riding a bike frequently, like 16 miles a day, requires quite a bit of bike maintenance. I am constantly fixing something on one of my two bikes I ride frequently. Besides being expensive and time consuming, it’s often frustrating. Bike parts are ever evolving and thus always require some new tool or servicing technique or a specified amount of torque. Yes, some of the technology has improved the reliability but mostly it has changed to better specialize bikes for a specific purpose like trials riding or Super D. For someone who just wants to ride his bike to and from work it’s annoying. If I want to take my vehicle into a shop for someone to fix all of the time, I would buy a car.

Here’s what I would like to see: A bicycle design standard that specifies the following:

1. 1) All of the mating features of components,

1. 2) Standard bolt sizes,

1. 3) A standard home tool kit that enables the owner to service all parts

1. 4) A standard road tool kit that enables the owner to service parts that are most likely to fail on the road,

1. 5) A detailed service manual,

1. 6) An option to buy bike, kits and manual at the point of sale.

As I hope we are moving toward a society in which more people will be using bicycles for regular transportation, a standardized bicycle with standardized tools would be very beneficial for several reasons. Bike parts would be cheaper, more widely available, easier to service and likely, more reliable than currently available parts. This being the case more people would be inclined to taking up cycling as a mode of transportation because after all, in the current world of bicycles, the layperson probably has a hard time figuring out what a bike is.

Who’s willing to lead the initiative?

After reading the title, you’re probably saying to yourself, “I can easily find new, quality bike parts.”   I say, “You’re probably buying new parts that are branded with a name you associate with quality.”

New bikes or bike parts are much like any product sold around the world today.  Much of what we buy is designed and built to be used lightly and temporarily and then discarded.  It’s good for consumerism.  We buy, discard, buy, discard, buy, discard…  However, if you happen to me like me, you strive to get the most out of almost everything you buy.  But even the most durable goods (high quality) wear out with time and use.  Again, if you’re like me, you try to replace parts of worn out goods.  If irreparable, I immediately begin lamenting buying a replacement.

One definition I have of quality is something that functions correctly for its intended purpose and last longer or much longer than I expected.  Especially with bike parts, I tend to have a pre-conceived notion of how long something will last based on what type of part, its design and who made it.  Usually, my notion about the quality of the part matches the part’s longevity.  Usually that’s enough for me to buy the part again or repair it.

The problem is, if I’ve used the part more than six months (likely, if it has good quality), the part is no longer available from the manufacturer.  It’s been replaced by a new model which features numerous design changes, many of which may affect quality.  Or the part has been obsolete.  Or you can’t buy repair parts because the newest design uses new components and the manufacturer doesn’t carry the replacement parts anymore.

To illustrate my point here a couple of examples:

Lowe Alpine Contour Mountain 50 (See Review here):  After 11 years of use, it’s still going strong.  I tried looking at the selection of backpacks Lowe Alpine has now to see if there is an equivalent but nothing looks even remotely close to what I have.  I’m sure their new product line is not manufactured in the same location or made from the same materials.  How do I know my next LA pack will have the same quality?

White Industries Hubs (See Review here):  These hubs have worked well over a long time.  When I contacted WI, they were able to tell me what parts I should service and had all of the parts available.

I may be jaded.  I live Memphis which has more road cacti than a mountain track in the Mohave dessert.  I patch flats and replace tubes all of the time.  When I was riding my road bike, I was fixing flats 1-3 times per week on my 16 mile round-trip commute.  I have since gone to my mountain bike mostly because the route I now take but also very much because I have fewer flats.  I tried slicks when I first switched to the mountain bike but was having the same number of flats as I had with the road bike.  Now, I ride street nobbies and only suffer a flat about once a month.

The neighborhood kids recently started coming around as my family and I are outside our home every chance we get.  Both of my young children have bikes they ride around the driveway and this attracts the other kids.  The neighborhood kids have bikes and probably not a whole lot else.  The bikes are village bikes, meaning everyone rides them, so they are, of course, not well maintained.  I regularly pump up flats and tighten axles.  I recently purchased some replacement tubes as one of the kids, who goes by Snuggles, couldn’t ride his bike anymore because of a flat.  I told him I would sell a tube to him for $2, but his mom wouldn’t give him the money.  Undoubtedly, she found it weird that I was trying to sell him a tube.  With all of the maintenance I do for the neighborhood kids, let alone what I have to do to upkeep my own rides, no wonder bikes don’t work for the general public.

Bike maintenance is a pain in the ass.   Most bike parts are finicky, poorly designed or require a lot of maintenance.  I liked bike maintenance when I was younger but now with a wife and two kids, it’s just time consuming.  It’s also expensive but I’ll go into that in my next blog.  Bike maintenance is also not easy.  Bike maintenance requires numerous different specialized bike tools, none of which come with the bike, and substantial know-how.  Bike shops are typically not that helpful.  They’re usually not that close, won’t work with you to fix your bike and likely don’t have the parts you need in stock.  But back to the flats.  Fixing flats or even just pumping up tires is beyond the domain of most laypeople.   It’s hard to find people that will put a donut on their undesirable vehicle to get it to the station.  They just call in roadside assistance.   Given the finicky nature of bike tires – they lose pressure easily and flats are fairly common – bikes don’t work for the general public.  I haven’t held a poll but I’m pretty sure that most people that have a bike have no idea what to do to fix a flat let alone have the equipment to do it.  I’m willing to bet that a single flat has ended the life of many a bike for that owner.  They get a flat, throw the bike in the garage and it collects dust for the next ten years until they sell it at a garage sale for $20.

While the bike industry is continually trying to make more bicycles (like coasting and cruisers) to attract more of the general public to bicycling, I think they’re missing the point.  It’s my contention that until you make bikes with tires that travel ~5000 miles without out a flat or need for repressurization, bikes won’t work for the general public.

I get depressed about the automobile culture in which I live.  I’ve ridden my bike in Memphis for almost two years now and it seems I’ve had virtually no impact on the transportation choices people make.  A lot of people, mostly at work, have said they admire that I ride my bike.  Yet, I’ve had no one join me or even said, “I’m now carpooling with a friend because I agree cars have a negative impact on the environment.”  Even my friend who rode with me to work several times last fall hasn’t expressed any interest in bike commuting again (I’ll give him that he has been having some knee problems).

I wonder when we stopped thinking that undesirable vehicle exhaust was not pollution.  I wonder when we stopped caring about the clothes we wear and how much we weighed, because if we have enough money we’ll just wrap a nice car around us.  I wonder when we stopped caring about our communities.  I wonder when was the last time we could step outside and not hear the sound of an undesirable vehicle.  I wonder when was it we last looked at the stars without them being blurred or dimmed by air and light pollution.  I wonder if people really realize how violent an undesirable vehicle feels and sounds when passing only a few feet from you.  I wonder if we’ll ever go forward enough to allow us to go back.  I wonder if anyone thinks about anything at all.

I feel like I’m doing the right thing by riding my bike almost everywhere I go.  I wonder what Memphis and other cities would be like if even 20% of others rode their bike or took sustainable transportation.  I don’t think that will ever happen in my lifetime.  I guess change takes time.  All I can do is hope.  Besides, I can’t bear the thought of driving an undesirable vehicle everywhere.