Trailers, Photos, Rants...

I rode back up to Lizard Head Pass today, this time with my loaded trailer. I'll tell you, it sure felt a helluva lot slower, but when I got back my cyclecomputer said my average speed had only dropped 1.8mph. I was expecting a much slower time over that distance. Still, how you feel on the bike is more important than the numbers, unless you're racing I suppose. And it did feel like a much tougher ride.

I love my trailer though, and I think I made the right choice not going with panniers. It's a B.O.B. Yak, which is a single-wheeled trailer, instead of the usual two wheeled like the one I took to Yellowstone. The biggest advantages I've noticed so far are a lower rolling resistance and more precise cornering (as the trailer leans into the turn with the bike). The only disadvantage is that it becomes difficult to stand up out of the saddle on flat terrain with speed, because there's a delay between when you sway the bike in one direction and when the trailer catches up. This creates a rather unstable feeling. The only thing to do is to limit the amount of back and forth you allow, which takes more concentration and control. This is less of a problem below about 10mph though, so climbing isn't so bad.

My roommate Kiley took some pictures of me on the bike this afternoon. A few of them turned out okay, but we had the camera set at a slower ISO to try to get a little blur for effect and most of the shots are just blurry, if you know what I mean. Turns out you can't really get that cool effect of a blurry background and a sharp subject with a point-and-shoot the way you can with an SLR. Oh well, maybe I can get her to try again tomorrow. What I'd really like is a good shot that I can put on a business card, which will have my LAF and blog website addresses, that I can then hand out to people I meet along the way. That'll make donations a bit easier.

Kiley has a background in film and television, and she filmed a short interview with me. I'm not sure what we'll use it for, maybe I can post it here. Haven't seen it yet. I was nervous...never been interviewed before.

When you enlarge that last photo, scroll all the way down. See all that loose gravel? If you're not a cyclist you might not realize how big of a problem that stuff can be for skinny tires, nor how many roads actually look like that or worse on the shoulder. So, when you're driving and about to pass a cyclist, please please please give him/her a lot of room so they don't have to ride through that stuff and risk a flat. If you can't move over far enough because of oncoming traffic, it wouldn't kill you to slow down for a few seconds until you can. This concludes my rant on autos vs. bikes, even though I have much more to say on the topic. I don't want to get too pedantic.

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