Tales from the early days

Like an old man on the porch outside the general store, I’ve been reminiscing about my early days of bicycling, before I knew what I was doing, before I considered myself a bicyclist. Each of my stories has a moral.

12. Theft

I kept forgetting my helmet. If I was less than halfway home when I noticed I didn’t have my helmet on, I’d go back to my office for it. If I was more than halfway when I noticed, I’d keep going and I’d get my helmet the next day. It annoyed me when I forgot my helmet because I was very proud that it took me 20 minutes to bicycle, or 15 minutes to drive my car, park, and walk into the office. For just 10 minutes extra each day, I got 40 minutes of exercise. But when I forgot my helmet and had to go back, my efficiency was shot.

Finally I hit on the brilliant solution of leaving my helmet on my bike instead of bringing it inside. It’s habit now. When I take my helmet off, I hang it on the handlebar. When I reach for the bike, the first thing I touch is the helmet and I put it on my head.

I put my bike gloves inside my helmet too, until they got stolen. After that I brought my gloves inside but I left my helmet on my bike. No one ever stole my helmet. (My bike, of course, is always locked.)

I’ve never had a bike stolen. I usually use a U-lock and I also carry a cable lock in case I can’t find a bike rack and the only thing to lock up to is a fence or a tree. Those are not good places to lock up to, but anything is better than not locking up.

The only other thing I’ve had stolen is my flat kit and spare lights. I was in Phoenix for 2 weeks and I rented a bike. I had a set of cheap lights that I put in the seat pack in case I got caught in the dark. I asked the bike shop to rent me a flat kit. I parked my bike every morning on campus and one day I came outside and the seat pack was unzipped and empty. I had to pay the bike shop $50 to replace the flat kit. I don’t think it was worth $50.

The moral of this story is that I could be paranoid all the time, but unless I’m in downtown Phoenix I am probably ok making sure the bike is secured and not worrying too much about the other stuff.

Tales from the early days

Like an old man on the porch outside the general store, I’ve been reminiscing about my early days of bicycling, before I knew what I was doing, before I considered myself a bicyclist. Each of my stories has a moral.

11. My first winter

The first winter I biked, I wore a winter coat and a hat. I wrapped 2 scarves around my head. I wrapped the first one tightly around my ears and face. The second one went over that but tucked into my coat. The helmet held it all in place. I pushed the first scarf under my mouth so I could breathe, but then I couldn’t push it back up when my face got cold without getting off my bike and re-wrapping both scarves.

Eventually my dad gave me a balaclava he’d found lying on the ground in a parking lot. That made all the difference.

The coldest bit was going DOWN that hill that I’d griped so much about climbing UP. In the winter, I didn’t mind going up hills as much. At least I could get warm.

My coat was, if anything, too warm, yet at the same time let the cold wind in. It was the same coat that had padded my pregnant self in college the day my bike slipped on the ice.

My fingers still swelled up in the cold, an effect left over from the frostbite in college, and I was desperate to keep them warm. I put on as many gloves and mittens as I could fit. I hated spending money on my bicycling, because that took away from my pleasure of saving money by bicycling. I picked up a pair of cheap but thick gloves at Walmart. Nothing kept out the wind chill. Finally, I spent $50 on a pair of ski gloves and considered it a worthwhile investment.

Since I am still wearing those gloves today, 10 years later, I’d say it was an excellent investment. Also, my fingers no longer swell up in the cold.

I put on extra pairs of socks under my shoes. That turned out to be a mistake because the shoes weren’t big enough to accommodate all the socks. The layers cut off my circulation and my feet were colder than ever! Instead, plastic grocery sacks over my socks add considerable warmth without cutting off circulation.

It bothered me to no end to spend $70 on something that had the word “undershirt” in its label! It was merino wool and I still wear it as my base layer. I spent $200 on a rain jacket and $200 on rain pants. They are my outer shell in cold weather, as well as raingear in wet weather. My entire outfit cost as much as my bicycle. Nowadays, money isn’t so tight, and having saved $90,000 over 10 years by simply not owning a 2nd car means I’m ok with spending a couple hundred dollars here and there to be comfortable.

The moral of this story is that the right clothes make all the difference for winter cycling.

Tales from the early days

Like an old man on the porch outside the general store, I’ve been reminiscing about my early days of bicycling, before I knew what I was doing, before I considered myself a bicyclist. Each of my stories has a moral.

10.

Every day I climbed 1 crazy steep hill to go to work and 3 slightly less insane hills to come home. They never got easy, but I got used to them. They occupied a good deal of my attention. I became deeply interested if not obsessed with hills. I learned their percent grade and the percent grade of other hills in the area. The longer, but not steepest, hill on my route to work was 11%. I discovered Sapp Hill which I could barely climb. I discovered that if you stop on a hill, you might not be able to get started again.

By “hill”, of course, I mean up hill. Going down a hill is easy. I maxed out at 47 mph going down Easley Hill. I always wondered how fast I would go down Sapp Hill, but I never got around to trying. I don’t think I could get to 47 mph because I would have to brake for the sharp bend in the middle of the hill.

The turning point for me and hills came when I got an extra small granny gear installed on my bike. It was a few months before I made it out to Sapp Hill and I forgot I had changed the granny gear. “I can’t believe how easy this is,” I thought. “I have gotten so strong since the last time I was out here!” I felt proud for a moment until I remembered I had an extra small granny gear.

With that very small granny gear, I can climb a hill slower than you can walk it. My odometer stops reading below 2.2 mph. That extra small granny gear also comes in handy when I’m hauling a heavy load, such as when I’m bicycling touring fully loaded over hills and mountains in all parts of Missouri.

Gears are essentially levers. The moral of this story is if you give me a place to stand and a long enough lever, I can move the Earth. Or I can climb Sapp Hill.

Tales from the early days

Like an old man on the porch outside the general store, I’ve been reminiscing about my early days of bicycling, before I knew what I was doing, before I considered myself a bicyclist. Each of my stories has a moral.

10.

Every day I climbed 1 crazy steep hill to go to work and 3 slightly less insane hills to come home. They never got easy, but I got used to them. They occupied a good deal of my attention. I became deeply interested if not obsessed with hills. I learned their percent grade and the percent grade of other hills in the area. The longer, but not steepest, hill on my route to work was 11%. I discovered Sapp Hill which I could barely climb. I discovered that if you stop on a hill, you might not be able to get started again.

By “hill”, of course, I mean up hill. Going down a hill is easy. I maxed out at 47 mph going down Easley Hill. I always wondered how fast I would go down Sapp Hill, but I never got around to trying. I don’t think I could get to 47 mph because I would have to brake for the sharp bend in the middle of the hill.

The turning point for me and hills came when I got an extra small granny gear installed on my bike. It was a few months before I made it out to Sapp Hill and I forgot I had changed the granny gear. “I can’t believe how easy this is,” I thought. “I have gotten so strong since the last time I was out here!” I felt proud for a moment until I remembered I had an extra small granny gear.

With that very small granny gear, I can climb a hill slower than you can walk it. My odometer stops reading below 2.2 mph. That extra small granny gear also comes in handy when I’m hauling a heavy load, such as when I’m bicycling touring fully loaded over hills and mountains in all parts of Missouri.

Gears are essentially levers. The moral of this story is if you give me a place to stand and a long enough lever, I can move the Earth. Or I can climb Sapp Hill.

Tales from the early days

Like an old man on the porch outside the general store, I’ve been reminiscing about my early days of bicycling, before I knew what I was doing, before I considered myself a bicyclist. Each of my stories has a moral.

9. Money makes the bicycle wheels go round

After major abdominal surgery in October of 2005, I began bicycling whenever I could, instead of when I had to. I wanted to recover at least as much fitness as I had before surgery, if not more.

In January of 2006, I drove to work for the last time. It was snowing and I thought it might not be safe on a bike. One fellow in a truck with a snow plow attached was merrily clearing the parking lots around the hospital. Push the snow forward, zip back with a twist, push the snow forward, repeat, like a dance. I waited at what I thought was a safe distance, until I realized that he was backing up straight at me! I laid on my horn, which he heard, and as he continued to back up at a brisk pace, he looked around trying to see who was honking. Finally I frantically tried to put it in reverse and get out of his path but it was too late. He ran into me. Insurance paid for the repair (mostly), but to me, this was a message to stay out of the car and stick to my bike.

I can hardly articulate what I love about bicycling. There are so many things. Sometimes I think the ego trip is the driving force, sometimes I think it is how safe I feel on a bike, sometimes I think it is the endorphins that I love. The first year, I spent a lot of time on my bicycle calculating in my head how much money I was saving. Mental math distracted me while toiling up the toughest hills.

Since we shared the car, driving to work for me meant Iain had to make 2 trips: one to drop me off and one to pick me up. I calculated that with our car’s mileage and the current price of gas (about $3/gal at the time), I saved us $1 in gas alone every time I bicycled to work.

If we had 2 cars, one trip to work would be just one trip to work, about 50 cents in gas. However, the median cost of car ownership is $9,000 a year according to AAA, totaling up all expenses (not just gas). Since we have not owned a 2nd car for over 10 years now, my bicycling has saved us $90,000.

The moral of this story is that money is a powerful motivator.

Tales from the early days
Like an old man on the porch outside the general store, I’ve been reminiscing about my early days of bicycling, before I knew what I was doing, before I considered myself a bicyclist. Each of my stories has a moral.
8. My origin myth
Superheroes have origin myths. Superman was a foundling in a spaceship. Wonder Woman was an Amazonian princess. My debut into bicycling and my identity as a bicyclist has an origin narrative, too.
I became a bicyclist when we became a one-car family. It was only going to be until we could afford a car, but I discovered I love bicycling and I love not having a car payment. We never did buy a 2nd car.
During my first year as a bicyclist, I biked when I had to. Sometimes I biked to campus and drove home with Iain, sometimes we drove to campus and I biked home. I thought maybe sometimes he could bike and I could drive, but he wasn’t interested.
It was the second year that I started bicycling whenever I had a chance, and I only drove when I had to. That was the year that I had a major abdominal surgery. I learned of other women whose lives were forever changed by the procedure. I was terrified that I would be prematurely old (I was 31). As soon after the surgery as I could with permission, I started doing stomach crunches every night until I could do one sit-up. I tried to do one more sit-up than I had the night before. Within a year I could do 100 sit-ups! Even when I was in the best shape of my life, I had never been able to do that before.
I started biking to work within a few weeks of my surgery. I biked slowly, but the nice thing about biking was that it didn’t hurt. The hunched-over position was actually comfortable. I biked whenever I could. I only drove if I was picking up Nell from school, or going out to eat with my family and they didn’t want to bike.
The moral of this story is that, just like not being able to afford a car payment was one of the best things that ever happened to me, major abdominal surgery also turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Tales from the early days
Like an old man on the porch outside the general store, I’ve been reminiscing about my early days of bicycling, before I knew what I was doing, before I considered myself a bicyclist. Each of my stories has a moral.
7. Blessing in disguise
My bike didn’t see a lot of use until 2004. We’d gone to Chicago for my first postdoc position. There was a fellow in the lab who biked 12 miles every day to work. He was tall and skinny and strong. I peppered him with questions. Was it safe? What about when it was cold? What did he do when it rained?
Those are the questions I find annoying nowadays. If it rains, I get wet, I don’t melt. If I want to stay dry, I wear rain gear. If it’s cold, I wear warm clothes and very warm gloves. It’s funny to think that I probably know more about bicycling now than he does, especially about bicycling with traffic. I wonder if he still bikes, or if he finally bought a car. He biked because he liked it, and didn’t want to spend a lot of money on a car. It’s expensive to own a car in Chicago. I paid three times as much for a parking permit at the University of Illinois – Chicago than I had at the University of Missouri, and I had to park in a gravel lot that was sometimes full and was always so far away from my office that sometimes I rode the shuttle instead of walking, especially at night, especially when it was cold (which it always is in Chicago), and especially after the creepy alcoholic homeless guy sitting on the corner asked me for details about my undergarments and shouted things at me. I sometimes wondered if I should bring my bike on my car so I could get to my office in a reasonable amount of time.
That was a miserable year for us so when I got a postdoc fellowship, I looked for another lab to join and found one in Columbia. On the move back to Columbia, we didn’t want to transport 2 cars and a moving truck, so we sold the older car. I was not excited about having to share a car again and we had the added trip now of driving Nell to school. Nell went to private school thanks to a generous scholarship from another parent because we couldn’t afford private school tuition. The scholarship covered most of the tuition but it wasn’t free, and we had to choose between a car payment and private school. I had a horror of public schools because of my experience with public school. But even with the thought of having to share a car, it was an easy choice. Besides, maybe I could use my bike sometimes.
I biked my route to work on a Saturday, just to see if I could do it. It was a hot July day and I was drenched in sweat. There were some steep hills, but it wasn’t too bad.
The moral of this story is that not being able to afford a car payment turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Tales from the early days

Like an old man on the porch outside the general store, I’ve been reminiscing about my early days of bicycling, before I knew what I was doing, before I considered myself a bicyclist. Each of my stories has a moral.

6. Lazy and out of shape

After we moved to Columbia, I worked for ABC Labs for a few months. We lived north of town, and ABC Labs was also north of town. We shared one car, and it wasn’t easy to get our toddler daughter to daycare and both of us to our jobs. I did all the driving and worked part-time. One day I thought I’d try biking to my job. I had no idea how long it would take bike 11 miles but I thought maybe 45 minutes. When I arrived, an hour and a half later, Iain had called the lab several times frantically worrying because I wasn’t there yet. He picked me up and drove me home at the end of the day.

That was my first attempt since college at using my bike for transportation. I didn’t try it again for several years.

I hated having to share a car, having to wait for someone to pick me up, having to make extra trips to drop someone off and pick them up, having to hang out awkwardly with nowhere to be waiting for someone else to pick me up. It wasn’t long before we took on a car payment and a 2nd car.

In graduate school I was appalled at how far I had to walk to go to seminar. It took me over 20 minutes. I thought that was ridiculous. I started bringing my bike to campus. I could sit at my computer an extra 15 minutes and ride over to seminar in just 5 minutes.

The moral of this story is that I was getting out of shape by the time I was 24. Today, I don’t think less than a mile is worth the trouble of biking, I just walk it. Also, it doesn’t take me 20 minutes to walk that far.

Tales from the early days

Like an old man on the porch outside the general store, I’ve been reminiscing about my early days of bicycling, before I knew what I was doing, before I considered myself a bicyclist. Each of my stories has a moral.

5. Frostbite

I had a little pair of knit gloves. I hadn’t needed any better gloves than that, walking to campus wearing a backpack with my hands in my pockets or driving around town with the heater on. I wore those gloves through the winter. Springfield is far enough south it doesn’t get as much snow as northern Missouri. But it gets some snow, some cold weather, and the wind chill on a bike makes it that much colder. When I got to campus I tried to warm my hands under the tap water of the sink. Even the cold water felt boiling hot. My fingers hurt every time I biked to early morning calculus study sessions on cold days. I’d had to drop Calc II the previous semester, so I went to every single study session the next semester.

I not only passed Calc II, I got an A in it. But I also got frostbite on my fingers. For years afterwards, my fingers swelled up every time they got cold. Even just washing my hands in cold water made my fingers swell up.

The next year we were married and I was pregnant, and I still rode the bike to campus rather than walk 20 minutes. I bundled up in my winter coat. I thought I would walk on icy days, because pregnant women shouldn’t fall off bikes. But one day I didn’t know it was icy. It didn’t look icy. It didn’t feel icy until I tried to turn the corner and the bike slipped out from under me and I landed on the road. That scared me, but I guess my thick winter coat cushioned the fall. Anyway the baby was fine.

The moral of these 2 stories is 1) wear good gloves and 2) watch out for ice, especially on the corners.

Tales from the early days

Like an old man on the porch outside the general store, I’ve been reminiscing about my early days of bicycling, before I knew what I was doing, before I considered myself a bicyclist. Each of my stories has a moral.

4. My first real bike (the future Hulk)

When my husband Iain started college the first time, he bought a pair of roller blades with his first student loan check. During winter break he spent the last of his money on a huge jar of cheap peanut butter and an enormous package of cheap frozen chicken patties. When those ran out, his friends took him out to eat sometimes but otherwise he didn’t have any food. Finally he got emergency food stamps. When his next student loan check came he bought his new girlfriend a pair of roller blades. That was me. But I guess he did better at budgeting because he didn’t have to eat cheap peanut butter or get food stamps again. The bicycles arrived the same way– a student loan check came in, he bought himself a bicycle, and used the rest of it to buy me a bicycle.

He didn’t buy a cheap bicycle. He had a friend who was a serious bicyclist (and roller blader) so he knew not to buy a bicycle from Walmart. We went to AB Cycles in Springfield, MO, which still exists. If I wanted to, I could take that bicycle there for free tune-ups even today, 22 years later, because it has lifetime tune-ups.

When I went in to pick out my bike, I said I wanted to use it to go to campus. Our apartment was a 20-minute walk away. Especially on my way to the 7:00 a.m. calculus study sessions, that was a long hike. With a bike, I could make the trip in 5 minutes. I didn’t know anything about bikes and the bike shop fellow recommended a hybrid. I got a 15″ maroon Specialized Crossroads. It was completely different than any bike I’d ridden before. I felt wobbly and wondered if I would be able to ride it. But my boyfriend had spent a lot of money on it, money that frankly he could not afford. So I wobbled along the sidewalks. I didn’t know you shouldn’t bike on sidewalks. I didn’t know anything about biking.

It didn’t take me long to get the hang of riding it, but I’m not sure I really figured out the gears until I became a real bicyclist, 13 years later. When I became a real bicyclist, I learned that a 15″ bike is too small for me.

The moral of this story is that when you get something so you can be lazy, like bike 5 minutes instead of walk 20 minutes, you might use that same bike years later so you can be cheap and bike 20 minutes instead of drive 15 minutes.

Remember those days? It was a while ago, as you can tell from the hairstyles in the audience, as well as the KU jersey on a young Danny Manning!

Tales from the early days

Like an old man on the porch outside the general store, I’ve been reminiscing about my early days of bicycling, before I knew what I was doing, before I considered myself a bicyclist. Each of my stories has a moral.

3. Danny Manning Basketball Camp

In high school I went to a summer camp at KU in Lawrence. My dad had bought 2 used Schwinn bicycles. He thought they were a really good deal because Schwinn was supposed to make such great bikes. But he didn’t know much about bikes at the time and they weren’t really that great. I took one of them to KU to go to my summer camp classes and to downtown. The turnoff to my dorm was halfway down a really steep hill. Coming down that hill, I braked and nothing happened. My brakes were not slowing me down.

At the bottom of the hill was a busy street. I had to attempt the turn before I got to that street.

A man was standing on the side street that I was trying to turn onto. His parked car was just behind him. I wasn’t able to make a narrow enough turn at that speed, and I was heading straight at him. He jumped out of the way. I collided with his parked car. The bike was totaled, I was bruised and scraped, and his taillight was busted.

He was a college student, in town over the summer because he worked at the Danny Manning basketball camp. I was excited to meet a teammate of Danny Manning! My parents were not so excited about paying for the taillight of his fancy foreign car. It cost $155.

The moral of this story is to keep your bike in good working order. If you buy a bike anywhere besides a bike shop, take it to a bike shop for a safety check.