Last week, I wrapped up my final paperwork for classes and jetted off to Portland for a course in leadership training through the Adventure Cycling Association. ACA is a non-profit organization dedicated to inspiring and empower people to travel by bicycle, right up my alley. I've been working to get my bearings in my career encouraging people to use their bikes as transportation, whether to get their groceries or to go on vacation. ACA has many great trips and routes across the United States, any one of which I would love to join. After speaking with a friend who is a tour guide with some of ACA's trips, I decided to make the leap to attend their Leadership Training Course in Portland. While this wouldn't be a self-contained 93-day tour along the TransAmerican route, I realized that this course would give me the education and tools to leading effective and successful tours, and possibly even the opportunity to lead tours with their organization. 

I showed up at PDX a bit frazzled from my busy work schedule, the end of classes, and my last week of the City Management Academy. I had been hoping to ride out to Champoeg, a cute little campground that we had stayed at about 6 years ago during our epic (for us) 600-mile bike tour around Oregon when Big Brother was just 10-months old. However, because I was borrowing a bike from a friend in Portland, I didn't think I'd have enough time to get the bike and ride the 35 miles to the campground before class started. Plus, I was being extra gentle with myself to get through these final weeks of my crazy schedule. Luckily, I was able to reach out to another participant and get a ride into camp. I was sorry to not get the ride along a beautiful road and to rack up some extra miles for May Is Bike Month but I was happy to keep my energy up for the fully packed weekend. 

The course was wonderful. I cannot sing the praises of our leaders, Joyce, Wally, Sid, and Joe, enough. They gave us plenty of guidance but in a way that encouraged us to create our own trip and get exactly what we needed out of this experience. Getting to know the inner workings of an Adventure Cycling trip made me only want to join one even more. To my surprise, even with a group of 20 participants, we were able to form a cohesive group where we shared cooking duties (and I was one of the lucky winners to one of the best meals of the trip which earned me a fancy pair of ACA socks), got to know each other, and rode together. I met some great people whom I look forward to keeping in touch with. There wasn't much riding but we were kept busy with other important things--like a talent show that everyone participated in. We camped out in a grassy field, it rained one night and I realized that I need to re-waterproof my old tent but otherwise stayed nice and warm. 

The adorable bike I was riding was certainly the talk of the camp with its cute flowered basket. There were some amazing bikes--custom, titanium, S&S couplers, all types of racks, and high tech bags. Mine was the only one that also had wheel skirts. After riding 25 miles on the bike on Sunday, I was pretty glad to find a ride to get us back into town without extra riding. Another participant was heading my way and was able to take the bike and me back to our friend's house to return the bike and then hop on the MAX light rail. The MAX took me closer to my favorite farmers at Fiddlehead Farm, my brother and his family. I didn't get much time with them as in my rush to return home to my kiddos, work, and my last classes, I decided to change flights for an earlier return. 

Home again to my happy, wonderful kids and and crazy busy schedule. Children to cuddle, bike clinics to teach, rodeos to set up, finals to finalize, and city management graduations to graduate from. 

I'm excited to use my new skills as a tour guide with all these fun local bike trips and am looking forward to being able to join an ACA tour, both as a participant and hopefully one day as a guide. They have some great family adventures as well, a wonderful way to get your family into bike touring with plenty of support and family fun. Take a look! 

Installing a generator headlight on the HaulaDay with factory front rack

We recently purchased a HaulaDay (HaD) after emailing back and forth with Elle, who was able to address some of my reservations. In a separate guest post I’ll go over the equipment choices we made, and how we feel about them. On the whole, it’s a fantastic bike!

Having grown up in Germany, I firmly believe that a city bike should have a kickstand, fenders, chain guard, and generator lights, so I ordered the HaD with the generator hub, even though Robert from Bike Friday was unable to give me good answers as to where to place the headlight. In general though, Robert was extremely helpful and responsive in the ordering process.

The logical place for a headlight on a bike with 20” tires is the fork crown. It’s about the perfect height for the best road illumination, it’s relatively close to the hub for easy cable routing, and it’s out of the way and protected from bike racks and such. Unfortunately the superb front rack and basket of the HaD seemed to sit too low over the front tire to allow for a fork-crown-mounted headlight. I ordered a B&M Eyc T Senso Plus headlight due to its reasonable price and stellar performance, not thinking much about its diminutive size. See the first light on this page for a detailed description: http://www.peterwhitecycles.com/b&m-hl.asp.

Once I put the bike together, I got out the headlight and hoping against hope, tried to fit it under the front rack: no dice, the light wouldn’t fit. However, looking at the fork crown mount, I realized that I could bend it down without having the tire get in the way of the light beam. These fork crown light mounts are tall enough to accommodate 700C tires whose apex sits quite a bit higher than the fork crown, but with a 20” tire I thought I could bend the arms of the mount down to clear the front rack above, without having the tire block the light beam. A bigger light than the Eyc probably wouldn’t fit even with a modified mount, so I was very glad to have ordered this tiny light.

I clamped the fork crown side of the light mount into my vise, and used an old seatpost to gain leverage on the forward extension of the mount:

After bending the arms down from about 120 to 90 degress, I reinstalled the light and tried it out: 

Still no dice: the light still didn’t clear the front rack supports, but it also became clear that I could bend the mount past 90 degrees without having the tire interfere with the light beam. Back in the vice the mount went.

Unfortunately the round cross section of the seatpost also bent the two arms of the mount towards each other, which I corrected using a bamboo spatula. :)

I couldn’t bend the arms any farther with the seatpost, but I realized I could use the spatula to bend one arm at a time by pressing the spatula against the top side of each arm:

However, there was still a bit of sidebend in the arms, which I corrected with a crescent wrench: 

Before and after:

Try again: the light fits!

To attach the light in such a tight space it’s nice to have ratcheting wrenches:

The light sits low enough that the fork can be turned 180 degrees to shorten the wheelbase in order to fit the bike on bus bike racks:

Now for the connection to the hub. I wrapped the cable around the right side of the light mount and the fork and secured the bottom end with a ziptie: 

The light has two extra cables exiting from it with spade connectors for attaching a taillight. (I used a battery-powered taillight, if for no other reason than avoiding cable routing complications with the telescoping frame, so I didn’t need these connectors. Given how little we ride after dark, a taillight powered by 2 AAA batteries will work for months if not years before needing a battery replacement) I wrapped the generator cable around these short cables to keep them out of the way This turned out to be not a good idea as the spade connectors shorted out against the metal light mount and the light wouldn’t work. Instead one ought to isolate and protect the spade connectors with some shrink tubing or electrical tape before wrapping them against the light mount. I ended up just pulling the spade connectors out from under the generator cable so they wouldn’t touch metal and short out. I’ll put some shrink tubing on them later. 

For connecting the cable to the generator hub, the Shimano service manual is actually quite helpful: Here is a link to the pdf: http://www.rideyourbike.com/images/leapfrog/nx70instructions.pdf

Cut the cables to the proper length. If they end up too short, you can always unwrap the cable from the fork one turn. I don’t have proper wire strippers, and instead of stripping the insulation from the second wire, I cut through the wire making it too short, so I had to resort to unwrapping the cable from the fork one turn. Make sure the cable with the white stripe on the insulation goes to the ground terminal, marked on the hub connector with a pitchfork.

Flip the connector over, lay the bare wires in the parallel grooves, and slide the black part of the connector onto the grey part until it snaps into place. 

Then snap the connector onto the hub. It only goes on one way. If there is too much slack in the cable, you can rotate the hub body (after undoing the quick release) to move the connector slightly farther away, so the cable can’t get caught in the wheel, but leave a little bit of slack. Like so: 

Done. If the light doesn’t work, make sure the taillight connectors are not touching metal or each other. Here is a photo of the light from the front: 

And here is a photo of the light beam produced by the light. The light sits slightly lower than is ideal, evidenced by the shadow of the fender and tire visible on the road, but since the shadow doesn’t extend farther forward than the edge of the basket, it’s not actually an issue. Most other lights won’t illuminate the road this close to the bike anyway if aimed properly for distance illumination, and if you mounted the Eyc on the handlebars, the basket would throw a much longer shadow, and potholes in the road would be less visible.

Last Sunday was Mother's Day and Sacramento's 4th annual CycloFemme ride that we've helped put together. The first year was just a little loop around Discovery Park with one other family, not quite the grand ride I had been hoping. The following years were longer rides along the American River Trail, all beautiful days and wonderful people to ride with. They've all been such great experiences to enjoy the ride and meet some new folks.

This year, we decided to have an afternoon ride with a tea party picnic at the end. I wanted to focus on the leisurely quality of rising casually and with (some new) friends. It was in direct contras with the AMGEN ride that started off at the Capitol that same morning.

We had had a long weekend already and were dragging even before the ride. Little Brother didn't quite make it to the park and luckily stayed upright on the trip over. While we were waiting, for other riders to meet up, Little Brother wandered off toward the playground and I had a moment of panic running around looking for him.

Right on time, about 10 other riders showed up to join our 8-mile ride along the trail.

I was riding the HaulaDay with about 5 gallons of iced tea and 90 pounds of kids. We made great time and it was helpful to have a smallish group of easy-going riders. We took advantage of a couple of the still-closed streets around the Capitol then found a shady spot near the International Peace Rose Garden.

The HaulaDay made a great iced tea counter and there were many other goodies added to our little picnic. The boys ran around after having been properly filled with sugary treats.

So after starting the ride full of exhaustion and stress, it ended with me feeling refreshed and enthused by the beautiful ride and great company.

I'm still not sure how to build the ride and market it to a larger crowd but I'd rather have a smaller, more personal group than an overwhelmingly large and uncontainable ride. This was just perfect!

May Is Bike Month is almost halfway done and things are going smoothly. The bike rodeos and clinics have been going really well. Little Brother won a gift certificate out of the first week's drawing and we've each reached about half our pledged mileage.

Tomorrow is Sacramento's 4th CycloFemme ride! This year is a little different (as it has been each year since the first). We meet at McKinley rose garden at 4pm and roll out shortly, riding 8 miles mostly along the bike trail with some urban roads. Once we get to the International Peace Rose Garden at the Capitol, we'll spread out picnic blankets and share iced tea and a potluck picnic snack. The AMGEN tour will have just finished and hopefully the streets will be open. What a great bikey day! It's the perfect way to celebrate women and riding, mothers, and tea parties. Join us!

We made it through April! I managed to bike every day although there was one day where my ride consisted of about 50' of pedaling to get from the garage to the driveway. Otherwise, I've continued riding each day about 5-20 miles. There has been lots going on around here. I've been teaching lunchtime bike clinics through the 50 Corridor TMA, different topics such as getting started, which bike to choose, bike touring, and my personal favorite, biking with kids. It's been such a great experience and I have more clinics just about every weekday until the end of May. It's been wonderful being so busy, spring and fall tend to keep me on my toes. This month I'll also be taking a bike tour guide training class through Adventure Cycling Association and I get to teach another Project Ride Smart class through the North Natomas TMA for fifth graders. I love my job(s)! 

Throughout all this craziness, we've somehow managed to have a bit of fun, too! This weekend we got to hang out with some fellow cargo bikers at the second Sacramento Cargo Bike Race. We didn't end up staying for the race part but we still got to check out some nice bikes. The racers carried donations to the Sac Food Bank and then picked up 50lb bags of grain to drop off at Bike Dog in West Sacramento. 

Yesterday was the Great Scott walk/bike event where they close about 20 miles of rural roads between Rancho Cordova and Folsom. I had heard of this event last year but I'm not one to drive to biking events and this one wasn't easy to get to without a car. I had also assumed that it wouldn't be appropriate for kids because it'd be full of roadie packs. However, I have the awesome opportunity to work with the amazing folks at the 50 Corridor TMA who were integral in putting this all together so I was really interested in checking it out this year. We loaded up the HaulaDay on my parents' Prius and met our buddies in Folsom. 

The three boys, K, and I rode out along the peaceful rolling hills toward Rancho Murieta. While there were plenty of other riders and many spandex'd, we didn't have any issues with wannabe pelotons, except for one guy who barked at us for not getting totally off the road when we stopped for a quick break. Other riders were very encouraging to the boys, cheering them on as they cranked up the hills and sped back down. Little Brother couldn't spin fast enough with his tiny crank arms and single speed but figured out how to coast so that helped keep his feet on the pedals. Big Brother still can't downshift his bike but had no problem doing the whole thing on a single gear, standing up for most of the ride. We saw lots of our other bikey friends riding around and everyone had giant grins plastered on their faces. 

Little Brother pedaled about 6 miles then took a break by hitching on the back of the HaulaDay. We made it out 10 miles where the Nature Conservancy had a rest area with Jamba Juice. On the way back, Little Brother hopped on and off the back of the HaD a few more times during our 21 mile ride. The two bigger boys rode the entire thing without a complaint! It was a beautiful day and was starting to heat up as we made it back to the starting point. There was a food truck and music playing as we rested up before the drive back home.  

This whole event was a wonderful experience for all of us. While K and I wished we could have ridded the rest of the route, the boys were (understandably) tired and had done such a great job. The roads were beautiful and it was so relaxing to ride without having to constantly be on guard for passing motorists. The boys had so much fun being able to ride at their own pace and have a little more freedom. We will definitely be back next year! We need more car-free roads, hopefully some closer to home, too. 

Don't forget to register for May Is Bike Month, join our Tiny Helmets team, and log your miles. This Sunday is the CycloFemme ride: a tea party picnic! Wear your finest tea party garb, bring a snack to share, a tea cup, and a blanket to lounge on. We'll meet at McKinley Rose Garden at 4pm and ride down to the Capitol for our tea party. Everyone is welcome! Come celebrate women and bikes for our 4th year riding. Yay for May!