Month: December 2009

Outlier dress shirt for cycling

Outlier has been experimenting with a new dress shirt that “moved better on a cyclists body.” Outlier modified the basic shirt to create a buttondown that retains the traditional look and feel of a dress shirt while working equally well both on and off the a bicycle.

They even designed the shirt for that “Don’t steal bikes, bro!” encounter.

Images from Outlier Tailored Performance. More info at OUTLIER: Pivot Sleeve Shirt – An Experiment In Form.

The People vs Andrew Woolley

I present to you the case of cyclist Andrew Woolley, which has been appearing on the various California bicycling listserves and other discussion forums.

Andrew Woolley was cycling west through congested traffic on El Cajon Boulevard in San Diego last March, splitting the lane to pass traffic because he was cycling faster than the speed of the other traffic. Numerous streets and business driveways intersect El Cajon where Woolley was riding, so splitting the lane seems reasonable to me.

Woolley passed San Diego motorcycle cop David Root, who was sitting on his bike in the traffic lane. Root flipped on his lights and told Woolley to pull over. According to Root’s testimony at traffic court, Woolley evidently is familiar with the California Vehicle Code and corrected Root on the wording of CVC 21202(a), which Root dismissed as “semantics.” Because Mr Woolley apparently got a little uppity with Officer Root in trying to educate him on traffic law, Officer Root responded with, “I was going to give you a warning, but now I’m giving you a ticket ’cause you can’t take a warning” and cited the cyclist for violating CVC 21202(a), which is the Far To The Right rule for cyclists in California.

Transcript of the case posted by Serge Issakov here. Mentioned also at Bike San Diego. H/T to Mark Sauerwald for bringing this to my attention.

CVC 21202(a) says: “Any person operating a bicycle upon a roadway at a speed less than the normal speed of traffic moving in the same direction at that time shall ride as close as practicable to the right-hand curb or edge of the roadway….” I’m not a lawyer, but in my dumb untrained mind, the cyclist was riding at a speed greater than the normal speed of traffic, so the Far To The Right rule doesn’t apply, right?

Woolley argued this in court and, because the speed limit on El Cajon is 35 mph, the judge decided that was “the normal speed of traffic” and found Woolley guilty. Bah, humbug.

Bikes May Use Full Lane

Bikes allowed use of full lane Gary Crocker was cycling around San Diego, getting his daily dose of Southern California road rage harassment. After talking with other cyclists about it, he and his friends turned that talk into action by launching the “Million Car Challenge” to get the word out that bikes belong on the road. They’re printing up stickers that will be available December 15 to help spread the word.

Gary realizes this isn’t compliant with the “Bikes Allowed Full Lane” rectangular signs for the proposed next edition of the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices, but nobody except traffic engineers care about those details. It’s just a sticker and it gets the point across.

December 15. Get one as a gift for the cyclist in your life.

Backwards forks: Not just on BSOs

I just wrote up the post on common assembly problems with department store bikes, and look what comes across my desk: The $4,000 Santa Cruz Blur XC Carbon as it appears in the current issue of Men’s Journal magazine.

What's wrong with this picture?

No, I’m not referring to the missing pedals (har har) or cross chaining: The fork is installed backwards!

To be fair, when bikes are sent out for review, they’re generally sent unassembled and the reviewer or gear editor is responsible for bike assembly.

Found on the Santa Cruz Bicycles 104 Bronson blog.

Update: George Hincapie posted a photo of his new BMC mountain bike to TwitPic. Thanks to Naotoj for pointing to this in the comments.