Holey saddle

As a plan to do some upgrades to my cyclocross bike (more about it sometime soon) I bought a new saddle - Selle An-Atomica Titanico. Apparently, this is supposed to be the most comfortable bicycle saddle in the world. At least this is what manufacturer claims. And many riders as well. We shall see.

So far I can say that Titanico is more comfortable than the old saddle I had on this bike. I do have to make some fine adjustments though. The slot seems to work as expected - It lets both parts of leather move independently as you pedal. Plus, leather is suspended across the rails so you feel more like you sit in a hammock. This way Titanico adjusts to my butt and not the other way around.

This piece of leather with a giant cut in the middle is not exactly cheap. It retails for $190 (yikes!). However, there has been a sale recently and I managed to get a new one for half the price. My saddle is white, which may make it less visually compatible with many bikes (In case I want to move it to another bike in the future.), but it does match my white cross bike really well.

I see bicycles everywhere!

Just when I was ready to put my bike away for a short Christmas break and focus on other things than bicycling, I saw this at the Christmas party:

UPDATE: And another one!

Merry Christmas!

Time to put the bike away. Temporarily, of course. Christmas is not a bicycling time for me. More like a time to spend with family at the table.

I hope that Santa will be good for you this year and you will find some appropriate gifts under the Christmas tree. Maybe those studded tires, biking gloves or a wicker basket that you were thinking about?

Have a great Christmas holiday!

Be American, save your legs?

Today's weather is quite amazing. It really feels more like October than the end of December. It is 13 degrees C outside! Obviously with such a winter weather, there is no excuse not to ride a bike. Or walk.

Elka took Dr. J. for a walk to Wilson Farm in Lexington this morning since she had to run some last minute Christmas errands. I would prefer to ride a bike since the farm is nearly 4km away from our house, but Elka likes to walk. Especially that we are not prepared to accomodate Dr. J. on a bike yet. His first ride will likely happen next spring.

On the way back, she met a German woman living nearby, who was also pushing a stroller with her kid. The ladies started talking and at some point our neighbor said "I thought you were European." Then she explained: "Because no American would ever walk that distance."

I just say: weather is nice so keep walking or riding a bike. Especially now with all that Christmas shopping rush when finding a place to park at the mall could be impossible.

Motivation

As you may remember, I wrote a post about 5 main reasons why a bike is better than a car. Today I discovered the reason #6:

You don't need keys to ride a bicycle.

Today I had one of those low-motivation mornings. I don't know if it is the winter time, darkness, low temperatures, or something else, but I didn't really feel like riding a bicycle and I planned to drive instead. I thought that it would be a good idea to let my legs rest for a day. And then, as I was going to leave for work, I couldn't find my car keys. I spent over 5 minutes searching for them and finally gave up. This is when I realized that my bike is just there, waiting for me, I don't need keys to ride it, and with air temperature of 2 degrees C it is really not that cold for a bike ride.

It seems that it is always possible to find motivation to ride a bicycle. With some help of misplaced car keys.

Trying The Other Bike

It is getting chilly. This morning my cheeks froze pretty well on my ride to work. I guess winter is finally going to visit us this year.

Last weekend I decided to do some tweaks on my Other Bike to make my riding position more comfortable. I am trying different stem lengths and saddle positions to figure out what the best combo will be. Until now, I felt a bit too stretched between the saddle and the handlebars and I want to make sure that even longer rides on this bike would be pleasant.

Riding on the Minuteman Bikeway (Pictures are from a cell phone, unfortunatelly. A SLR camera somehow doesn't fit well in my jersey's back pockets.)

To try out some of the new settings I rode along the Minuteman Bikeway to Bedford. It is a nice 25km (round trip) ride from Arlington ending at The Bikeway Source store...

...and a historic railway car parked next to the Bedford Depot Park museum.

Do you really know how to drive?

LuckyChow99 left a comment to my Tuesday's post:

It doesn't help that you can get driver license (here in Georgia) by taking the road test in a parking lot.

That made me think - do most people even know how to drive?

I remember my first driving test ever - 16 years ago in Poland. There were 3 parts:
1. The usual written test with 30 multiple choice questions where more than one answer could have been correct. Most questions were about various road situations, especially on intersections, presented in simple drawings where I had to decide, which vehicle should yield to others, etc. I was allowed to make only 1 mistake (And I did).
2. The second part was a parking lot driving, where I had to parallel park, back into a garage, start uphill (The test car had a manual transmission, naturally), etc.
3. Third part was finally a road test in regular city traffic.
I didn't pass the first time since my parallel parking was less than perfect.

Years later, I decided to get a Massachusetts driver license. Out of 20 multiple choice questions, easily half of them were related to alcohol. I still keep wondering what is the benefit of knowing the maximum fine a person under 21 would have to pay for having an opened beer bottle in the car? I always thought that knowing how to respond to various road conditions is the most important part of every driving test. Well, apparently not in U.S. In this country, it is much more important to know how to safely transport a six pack than safely transport people.
I nearly failed that test, since I had to guess many of those stupid questions that didn't even apply to me (I was well over 21 at that time).

The road test was a joke as well. Mr. Policeman seeing me being familiar with the car, stopped me after driving just a few meters and decided that I was only wasting his time.

Seeing all this, I am 99% sure that no American would pass Polish driver license test. Of course, this doesn't mean that in Poland we know how to drive. Quite the opposite. How many people know how to really control their cars? Many more in Finland than in Poland or U.S. for sure.

Since having a driver's license in 21st century America became as important as owning a revolver in 19th century Wild West, I wonder - did we make it too accessible? Maybe 17 year old drivers should really learn how to drive before using their fathers' 3-tonne trucks? Maybe if we refocus test questions on what is really important, drivers would know what to do when they get to a 4-way stop?

Considering this, it would be safer to put all these drivers on bicycles. At least they would move slower and had less chance to kill anyone.