Riding from the House

One thing I've never been able to capture with my maps is the most common type of ride we all do. That's the ride from the house. It's the personal ride(s) that all of us dedicated cyclists have. These are the rides that won't make it on anyone's list of great rides, but we still love them. They're OUR rides. They're the rides we do when we don't have time to go do something epic. They're the rides we toss in on a Saturday afternoon or a Tuesday night when we've only got a little bit of time available. They're the rides that we know every single pebble and pothole and low hanging tree branch on. They're the rides that keep us sane. Here's to rides from the house!

Worthwhile Upgrades

My road and mountain bikes are both around 10 years old and counting. People occasionally suggest to me that I'd really benefit from upgrading them. I tell them they're wrong. There have only been a few new technologies in the last 20 or 30 years worth spending the money to upgrade to. While there have been tons of other innovations, those are only worthwhile buying when your old stuff breaks or wears out. Here's a list of worthwhile upgrades:

Road bikes:

• friction shifters to indexed shifting: indexed shifting "just works", allowing you to concentrate on riding rather than shifting


• downtube shifters to bar shifters: the obvious difference is that you don't have to take your hands off the bars as much (which is safer), while the subtle difference is that you end up riding MUCH more efficiently since it's so easy to shift and keep yourself in a comfortable gear range


• toe clips to clipless pedals: the comfort and ease of use of clipless pedals is great


• tubular (sew-up) tires to clincher tires: tubulars totally suck to deal with when they go flat on a ride - stick to clinchers if you don't have a follow car


• aluminum frame to any other type of frame: aluminum frames tend to have harsh rides, and there is good evidence that smoother rides lead to significantly less strain on the body

Notice that the most recent of the worthy road bike innovations (STI shifters) is from 1990. The basic road bike configuration hasn't changed in a long, long time.

Mountain bikes:

• toe clips to clipless pedals: once you're used to them, you can get out of clipless pedals in an instant without conscious thought - they will save you major injury at some point, guaranteed


• rigid fork to front suspension: you never realize how bumpy even the smoothest trail is until you put a good suspension fork on your bike


• hardtail to (good) rear suspension: the energy you save by sitting more is subtle but really adds up quickly - Horst Link (FSR) designs are the gold standard


• tube tires to tubeless tires: these virtually eliminate flats when used with good tire sealant


• rim brakes to hydraulic disk brakes: it's really amazing how well hydraulic brakes stop your bike when it's wet and when you're going downhill a lot

Things to keep an eye on:

• tubeless tires on road bikes: if these can eliminate flats like tubeless mountain bike tires do, they will be worth it

Here's what really matters:

• your bike fits you: you should be comfortable - if you notice your bike more than you notice the ride, check into this


• you have a comfortable seat and good riding shorts: your ass is the most important component of comfort on the bike, I promise


• your bike functions properly and reliably: it needs to get you to the end of the ride


• you ride enough to comfortably finish the rides you want to: if you only ride occasionally, you will always be struggling and won't enjoy the rides

Note to the racers reading this: I could argue all day long about whether the newest, coolest, lightest, trickest thing will really make you faster, but I won't. If you think it makes you faster, then that is all that matters, because the mental component of racing is huge.

Additional note: when you do buy new parts, buy as far up the quality ladder as you can. Bike parts are made incredibly well these days, and the good stuff will last you for a long, long time. The more expensive parts tend to be a good investment.

February 2010 Release

I just pushed out a new release of the site. Other than a few new rides, most of you won't notice anything new since the main thrust was finishing-up the process of open-sourcing the site.

New rides:

• Paradise Canyon


• Willow City Loop


• Fredericksburg - Harper

The biggest change is the final open-source release of all the code used to create the maps. The overall project is described on The SABX Project. It'll point you to all the relevant stuff. The code itself is now on GitHub, so you can go there to check it all out.

Enjoy!
Jay Farrimond

New Trails at Flat Rock Ranch

We rode the Upper Loop at Flat Rock Ranch yesterday. It looks like they've done some trail work recently, and it has really paid off. They have re-routed the trail in a couple of spots and added a whole new section of trail that skirts around the edge of one of the hills. I thoroughly enjoyed the improvements. The Upper Loop used to be the part of Flat Rock that wasn't very enjoyable because it was too steep and not thought-out well enough to let you get a good rhythm going. Now it rocks!

January 2010 Release

Just in time for the new year, I've released an update to the site. I made some big changes for this release, but it won't seem like it if you aren't a software developer.

The biggest change is that I'm open sourcing the project. I'll write a complete blog post about this soon, but for the moment suffice it to say I'm putting all the source code under a GPL license. The map data, on the other hand, I'm keeping private. Well, semi-private (I guess). It wouldn't be very hard to take the JavaScript data files for each ride and reverse-engineer them, and I doubt there's anything I could do about it. Still, I'm not giving the data away, so you'll have to work at least a little bit if you want to steal it.

I've also gotten rid of the comments and conditions tabs. Nobody was using them, and I don't feel like maintaining that code, so now they're gone.

I fixed a quirk with elevations that could have made some of the profiles wrong. You'd really have to know what you were looking for to find it, but it was there. Basically, when I create a ride out of several different GPS tracks, it was possible for some of the segments to have different relative elevations than they should have. This resulted in weird jumps in the profile when going from segment to segment. I've normalized everything using USGS elevation data, so it should be about as good as I can make it now.

Last, but not least, I added a new ride. Paradise Canyon is an old favorite of mine, and I'm glad to have it up.

Enjoy!
Jay Farrimond

PDF Maps Added

I think I'm finally getting close to printed maps that I'm satisfied with. Or that I at least don't totally hate. Long ago I started with trying to setup Google Maps to print out the routes, but those were totally unsatisfying. Then, I discovered the OpenStreetMap project and Mapnik, which helped me along the way. Still, those maps were fuzzy when you printed them and not very useful. I've finally gone one step further and created high-resolution maps that should print nicely. I had to put them into PDF files to achieve this, so the print feature is no longer available. Now, you can download the PDF file for a particular ride option and print that out. I'm still not totally satisfied with how readable they are, but I feel like I'm heading in the right direction. The next refinement to the printed maps will be to fiddle with the fonts, colors, line weights, icons, etc... to make them works of art. I'm sure I'll get to this someday.

As a result of removing printing, I had to redo printed driving directions. Now there's a button on the parking page that brings up the standard Google Maps page for directions from your starting point to the ride start. I think this will work nicely.

Other refinements in this release are no more adds on the maps themselves, and radio buttons to choose the ride length. The map adds were just plain annoying and didn't make me enough money to justify their existence. The radio buttons stemmed from a user complaint that it's not obvious that there are different length options for each ride. I hope this helps. Only time will tell.

Up next I have some final refinements to the map page that I want to implement. After that, I have some ideas for a mobile-phone app for the site to help navigate on rides. Keep an eye out for these refinements in the near future.

Enjoy!
Jay Farrimond

Meeting for Public Art for Leon Creek Trail

I recently received this email that I thought I would share with all:

Hi Jay,
My name is Daniel Rodriguez, public art specialist with Public Art San Antonio.
We currently have a public art project that is in the design phase and is looking to be done on the Leon Creek Trail/Prue Rd. intersection (underpass I believe).

I am looking to put together a public art focus group for this project for area residents and frequent users of the trail. Would you happen to know of any bike clubs, bikers, or anyone who might frequently use this trail that I can contact? These meetings are primarily a forum to exchange ideas of what the project could be and a chance for the public to meet the project artist, jack Robbins.

The meeting is scheduled to happen on Nov. 9 from 5:30-6:30pm at the

Igo Library,
13330 Kyle Seale Pkwy
San Antonio, TX 78249
Phone: (210) 561-6113

If you or anyone else you know would be interested in attending this meeting and providing feedback and ideas to the artist, we would be happy for you to join us.

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Daniel R. Rodriguez
Public Art Specialist
City of San Antonio
Phone: 210-207-1435