My new seatpost arrived today. For this photo, I removed the top brackets which clamp onto the seat rails to show off the one-piece design of the post and crown. The post is slightly ribbed – there are very fine grooves on the surface. I presume this is to help prevent slippage in the seat tube. Or perhaps it’s just because it looks awesome up close.
I’m considering now that the seatpost may be the nicest component on my bike. Hmm.
Carbon fiber has been increasing used in bicycle frames and components in recent years. It’s very lightweight and still reasonably strong. It also allows framemakers, on the high end, to create areas of varying stiffness by altering the direction of the weave. The area where the down tube, seat tube, and chainstays meet the bottom bracket can be make very stiff, for optimal power transfer, and more compliant in other areas to lessen road vibration. That’s the theory anyway. There is a lot of marketing hype in the cycling world but there’s also a lot of hardcore bike engineering geekery. I find it credible to a degree. I have changed my mind about carbon seatposts, however.
Thomson, maker of fine aluminum seatposts and stems, has this to say about carbon:
I think this is precisely what happened in my case: I had raised my seatpost a bit recently after developing a bit of knee pain. It’s the place where it was previously clamped that failed yesterday. I’d ridden a few hundred miles after raising the post. No hard impact was involved – I was cooling down on my way home when this happened. All I did was sit down after a standing climb and crunch.
I’m convinced. I don’t like buying throwaway stuff. I’d rather spend more money up front for parts that will last a long time. So I went ahead and bought a Thomson aluminum post. It’s lightweight, has good reviews from other cyclists, and has a lot of bling factor to boot. I guess I’m lucky I passed on the Jamestown Classic race yesterday. Having your seat fall off could be a bit of a hazard when going 30 mph.
Aside from his mastery of shrill there is another reason to love Paul Krugman – he’s a cyclist!
Going fishing – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com
Well, cycling actually. I’ll have a column in tomorrow’s paper, then will take four columns off. I may do occasional blog posts from the road. But for the next two weeks I’ll be worrying more about whether I can get up that next hill than about the fate of the republic.
I rode in my second ever cycling race today. My first was just this past Sunday morning. Both were criteriums - riding multiple laps on a short course. Sunday was hard. I expended a lot of energy needlessly chasing riders breaking away from the main pack. These riders always slowed and dropped back into the group. It saps your energy to try to stay out front and gives you little advantage. I promised myself that my second race, the one today, would be different. Well, it was and it wasn’t. Again, I ended up pulling, that is, riding at the very front and taking all the wind. In fact, I pulled for the last three laps. I was pretty annoyed that the pace was so slow and thought I’d just hit a comfortable stride and if everyone else wanted to draft let ‘em. So that’s what I did. I expected a final push from the well-rested riders behind me that would be hard to keep up with. But it didn’t come. I just widened a gap along with one other rider. In the end I came in fourth because, you see, there was a break away group of two that had long left us in the dust. Next time I’m going to be in that group! But pulling the main pack for three laps and then still kicking ass at the end felt great.
Students at Bridgewater-Raritan High School in suburban New Jersey raise $2000 for a bike rack. The school refuses.
Offended by the snub, students promptly began planning a response. Yesterday, more than 50 students rode their bikes to school, commuting in pairs and groups. After studying up on state biking laws — and carrying copies with them — the students legally tethered their bikes in conspicuous clusters around lamp posts, trees and other poles dotting the circular drive in front of the school.
It seems the school administration feels that biking to school is not safe. They may be right about that. But then lots of things aren’t safe. Taking a larger view, cars are unsafe on the macro level (?) in terms of accident fatalities and on the micro level (?) through their contribution to global warming. But in the immediate, bikes are, perhaps, a bigger risk then pulling up at the drop off curb in the cage.
I’m a cyclist and a reluctant driver. I’m really, seriously emotionally invested in the idea of riding bikes to save the world. But I don’t ride to school with my daughter because I fear for her safety in morning traffic. So, how’s this? The school is right in the particular but wrong on every other level. Could they do something to make the routes leading to the school safer? Traffic taming, bike paths, traffic lights, speed limits – there are a lot of partial solutions out there. Some combination of these would make it possible for me to feel differently about getting my daughter on her bike every morning.
And then there’s the “suburbs” factor. The way Americans have chosen to live is the biggest obstacle. And that’s not changing. We’ll drive to the mall or stay inside and watch TV. The nearest store will be too far to walk. There will be no sidewalks.
We may save ourselves if we can convert our economy to clean electric power. But it’ll still be difficult to ride a bike to school safely.
Well, nothing. There’s nothing you can do. But you can use less gas. That’ll save you some money.
Bike To Work Day is tomorrow, May 16th, 2008. I’ll skip the celebrations and just do the riding. Like I do most days.
Here’s my steed. (Sorry! No drive side photo!)
Funny name but what I’m describing is the camera mount for my Flip. It has velcro straps that allow you to attach it to just about anything. The only thing I can think of is a bike, however. And that’s what I bought it for. 
QT version
