Bicycle Insights

This morning I had a bunch of early meetings and then headed out on my daily bike ride of 16 miles. I didn't mind waiting a bit as the morning started cold and I prefer to ride when the temperature is at least 68 degrees Fahrenheit. While out on my ride I remembered the story of my dad at the beginning of his cycling obsession.

For some reason my dad thought it would be good to take a bunch of boys from Sandy, Utah all the way down to Lake Powell. Naturally he came up with the idea during winter and began training on an indoor bike in his basement. Every day he would watch a little television and pedal at a leisurely pace. When the snow finally melted and he headed out on his first outdoor ride, he went 7 miles. He put two large water bottles on his bike and drank both of them on his short ride. He didn't know how he could ride more than a few miles without carrying gallons of water. Only then did he realize that his indoor training did not have the intensity required to build up conditioning for a 300 to 400-mile bike ride over several days. To make a long story short, he increased his training and made it all the way to Lake Powell with a group of Scouts and their leaders.

Yesterday I had a lazy day and opted to ride indoors instead of outside. Fortunately I usually ride outside and know the level of intensity required to benefit my training goals. Without real-world experience it is difficult to know the right level of training required.

I am currently working on a project with some new software and services. Unfortunately I don't have any of that real-world experience and all I can do is look at documentation and simple examples. I think I have things figured out but I know I need to put my knowledge into practice and test it with real-world scenarios. To do so, I reached out to my technical team and will start working with them to configure the software for our projected use cases. Only then will I know if my book knowledge is enough.

Work From Home Tips: Daily Exercise

I am a huge fan of daily exercise and enjoyed using my company gym while working from the office. For those that are not familiar with my work setup in the Bay Area, I live on my sailboat during the week. Using the company gym is also how I showered daily. While my marina has a nice shower facility, the one at the office is much better. Every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday I would ride the 3 miles from the marina to the office, use the company gym, and then clean up for the day. That all changed when I started working from home because of COVID-19.

It is impossible for me to look forward to exercise unless it is fun or required transportation. I claim that I have to trick myself into exercise or I won't do it. Skiing is fun and so it is easy to wake up early every morning and spend an hour or so on the ski hill. Sometimes I am up long before lifts even start running so I can hike to the top of the mountain, ski down, and still make an early-morning meeting. Other times I will ski for an hour on the lifts and then rush home to start my day. It helps that Snowbird is only 15 minutes away and that I work California hours so I don't have to be in the office until about 10:30am local time.

In the summer, I try to get up and ride a bike. I have a loop that is slightly over 16 miles. It takes me a bit less than an hour and includes a significant amount of climbing. With Snowbird shut down for the summer, I have started riding my bike. I miss the skiing but biking seems to be better for me. I also make sure to get my 10,000 steps in daily. All of this amounts to a significant amount of exercise.

There are a lot of others that frequently used company gyms and working from home has led to the meaning that COVID-19 actually refers to the 19 pounds gained during the pandemic. It also refers to 19 pounds lost for a lucky few people. While I have not lost that much weight, I am down about 10 pounds from my weight before working from home.

Daily exercise is a great way to start your day. It gets the blood flowing and helps clear your mind so you are prepared for the day. Others may find that evening exercise suits them better. The important takeaway is that you shouldn't neglect your physical health while working from home.

Driving with Earphones

While riding my bike to work this past week I witnessed a near accident because the driver of a car was wearing earphones. The bike path I take to work runs alongside a dog park. That means it crosses the parking lot where drivers have to stop and watch for cyclists. On Tuesday a guy on a road bike passed me on my much slower mountain bike. He came to the crossing at the same time as a driver wearing earphones. The driver stopped but never bothered looking to see if any bikers might be approaching. He started going as this other cyclist, who was not required to stop, got to this minor intersection. The cyclist realized the driver was not paying attention and slammed on his brakes before getting T-boned by the much larger truck. The cyclist tried to yell at the driver but the driver couldn't hear a thing because of the earphones. The driver then proceeded through the intersection without yielding to the cyclist.

As a cyclist, you have to be aware of your surroundings and pay attention to all of the inattentive people driving cars. It is my experience that headphones make drivers less attentive and I think they should be illegal to wear while operating a bike or motor vehicle. The state of California agrees with me. Its law states:

Wearing headsets or earplugs in both ears is not permitted while driving or operating a bicycle, unless designed to aid hearing or specifically designed to attenuate injurious noise levels.

Not wanting to provide the wrong information, I looked up the law for Utah. There is no law against wearing headphones while driving. That really surprised me but I guess that explains why I see a lot of drivers cruising down the road listening to headphones and not worried about getting pulled over. If you are interested in finding out the law in your state, AAA has a great page that lists every state with its headphone law.

I found it interesting that my last blog post talked about headphones and then I had this recent experience. It made for a good follow-up for today. Fortunately I was glad I didn't have to help scrape the poor cyclist off the pavement on Tuesday.

Best Inventions of 2018

One thing about being in Tokyo is my hotel room always has the latest copy of the Asian version of Time Magazine. I used to read it in my youth but stopped as an adult as I didn't see the need to pay for a subscription. When I do see a copy in my hotel, I will go through it and this time found a number of interesting articles. The one that made me stop browsing and focus on the entire article is the one on the 50 best inventions of 2018.

I think Time has a tough job trying to come up with the top inventions for any given year. What may seem groundbreaking to some is ordinary to others. Therefore it is not surprising that I disagree with some of their winners. For instance, they awarded a bicycling helmet with built-in headlights and turn signals. While that is a cool-sounding idea, it is actually a bad one. Bicycling helmets are disposable items that are not meant to be kept for more than a year or two, depending upon frequency of use. Embedding lights in the helmet double the cost. That means people are going to be reluctant to replace their helmet at proper intervals. Now if the helmet lights could be removed and put in a new helmet shell, that would be an innovative idea and deserving of an invention-of-the-year award.

While I disagree with some, there are a few inventions that I agree should be listed in this year's awards. I think my favorite is the roofing from 3M that fights smog pollution. This is probably important to me because of the recent fires in California reducing air quality to extremely unhealthy levels. I also know that I create a lot of pollution driving my car and flying all over the world. Doing something to right that wrong should be high on my priority list. When it comes time to put a new roof on my house, I will definitely look into pollution reducing shingles.

Going through Time's list of inventions for 2018 has been insightful. There are a lot of good ideas out there. Reading about them may spark new ideas. I know I came away with some thoughts on how to improve some of the things I use every day. You may too.

Stupid Technology

Last week I was riding from the office back to my sailboat when I passed a fellow cyclist on the bike path. As I rode past him, I noticed he had earphones on and a mobile phone mount on his handle bars. As he was on a bike path, I didn't fault him too much for the earphones. Then I noticed he was watching a movie as he rode down the bike path. At that point I was extremely glad to get around him. What kind of moron rides his bike in public and watches a movie at the same time?

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy watching a movie and riding a bike. In fact it is the only way to get through a workout on my indoor-stationary bike. When I am on a real bike and I am out in public, I feel it is critical to my health to devote 100% of my attention to my surroundings. It keeps me from getting hit and hitting other things. I'm sure this guy justified his actions because he was on a bike trail. The problem is that the bike trail is used by people walking, runners, rollerbladers, and other cyclists.  It is not a question of if someone will get hurt, it is a question of when.

Computers and technology have a place in our lives. Let's be sure to use them appropriately and not to create any unnecessary hazards.

To Bike or Not to Bike

Last weekend I drove my car back to Salt Lake from San Francisco. I only got pulled over once, when I stopped in a small Nevada town to get gas. The officer was nice enough when he realized I was just trying to get gas and use the restroom. He let me off with a warning. Otherwise the drive was mostly uneventful.

I drove my car back because it is time for the annual smog and emissions check. I could license the car in California, but I don't have a mailing address there nor do I want to pay the massively larger licensing fee. My plan was to drive the car back to California this weekend once the licensing is taken care of.

Now the question is if I want to bring the car back at all. I ride my bike to and from work so I really only need the car for two reasons: trips to the airport and trips to Scout meetings on Mondays. The airport problem can be solved with public transportation. It really cuts into my days, but it works. The only remaining issue is getting to Scouts.

In an effort to promote a "greener way of thinking", Google maps now has the additional options of getting directions using public transportation, walking, or riding your bike. I did a quick search to see how difficult it is to get from my office to the Elks Lodge in Redwood City, where we have our Scout meetings and it is only 10 miles. Amazingly, taking public transportation takes the same amount of time as riding my bike. I might as well ride my bike.

Several years ago I used to ride my bike 18 miles each way to work. That amounted to 36 miles of cycling every day. I loved it because I could eat as much food as I wanted. I never had to worry about being on a diet because I was constantly burning more calories than I could take in. The only problem was when we moved offices, I continued to eat as much as I wanted. In an effort to drop a few pounds, I'm thinking it is time to leave the car in Salt Lake and use the bike as my sole means of transportation in California. Maybe it is my starving stomach talking, but I think I could get used to eating more than I am right now.