Arriving UFO

The hot news is that my Terracycle Tailsok arrived. A tailsok (sic) is I suppose primarily an aerodynamic device, designed to reduce the negative pressure zone that forms behind the rider of a bike, or the bike itself in the case of a reclined rider. One might say the pressure zone sucks, because its existence pulls energy from the forward movement of the bike, and that means more energy is needed from the rider for a given speed. Of course, since air is a fluid, the effects of all this are more pronounced the faster you go, and on the level, 25-27mph is about as fast as I can go with a naked bike. And that's based on having enough smooth tarmac at my disposal; otherwise it's on the steep and all-too-short hills that I encounter, where I might touch 40-45mph before hauling on my brake levers. But on the other hand, those same hills I often have to tackle in the opposite direction later on, where 10mph is a good speed! At those speeds, less of my biological energy is used up pushing the air apart and more of it used in gaining potential energy, and aerodynamic devices are not much more than expensive extra weight.

I also have a front fairing for my bike. I bought my HP Velotechnik Streamer a few years ago from Bikefix, in London, and it sat for two or three years after I discovered that the mounting system was incompatible with the front of Speedy's chassis. I bought my P-38 with an express purpose of being able to use a fairing on it. But having more or less discredited the go-faster theory, given how much of the time I spend gaining elevation, rather than elevated speeds, why am I bothering? Because a fairing on the front also keeps the weather off you (or at least, my feet and shins) and a fairing on the back is highly visible if you make it out of brightly coloured stuff. Note that I'm only saying visible, in the pure colour sense; it would be unwise of me to state outright that bright yellow for example equals safe. A lot of the time, you make your own safe, depending on how you ride on the road. There's also a school of thought that suggests motorists give a wider berth to something they don't know about, and something that's thin and half the height of a normal bicycle and rider, and with a pointy-out bit at the back and no pedal movement, is a bit strange.

My tailsock is bright yellow -- not quite hi-viz vest yellow, because it's probably faded in the sun in its former life -- on the upper half, and reflective black on the lower half. I've always been partial to reflective black, ever since spending £12 on a piece of A4 vinyl with 3M watermarked on the back. My new helmet is black, but tastefully adorned by me with great big strips of reflective black, lovingly cut by hand. On the positive side, I commuted two days running this week with the tailsock and early impressions from the behaviour of my fellow road users were good. However, the aluminium framework over which the sock is stretched, like pulling on a sock over one's foot, manages to obscure just enough of my pannier rack that it's a Complete Bloody Faff to attach my rack bag. And that's quite apart from the additional faff to unhook three of the four corners of the sock just to get at the rack. Speedwise I'm not sure there's much in it; my commute, even when it's right across town, which it usually isn't, involves just a bit too much starting and stopping at traffic lights, jinking around potholes, and dabbing the brakes and scrubbing off precious momentum as the car in front hesitates a fraction of a second longer than I would like. A better technique, I've learned, is to leave in the morning before everyone else clutters up the roads. You can reduce your commuting time by up to 13.2 percent that way.

The second test was in pouring rain: the sort of precipitation that collects in the folds of my Goretex jacket, then seeps underneath the storm flap (which W.L. Gore frustratingly designed with itty-bitty pieces of Velcro, rather than a single long strip à la Freestyle) and through the zip to give me a rather lovely damp tummy; the sort of weather for which a fairing is really rather good. But while the fairing is polycarbonate and thus shrugs off water, my tailsock simply went soggy. Of course, these things are usually designed in California where it never rains without permission, and all the roads are long and straight and smooth, and everyone rides to work carrying only a credit card and a CO₂ canister and has no need for bags or racks. Since it was raining, and November, and my fleecey gloves were lying on the shelf below my old Roland synth in my house, my enthusiasm for speed records was ... dampened, shall we say, as my fingers cheerfully turned white as they poked out through the holes in my mitts. There was also altogether too much traffic and traffic lighting, interspersed with buses and roadworks. The Lothian Road to Tollcross area of Edinburgh, it has been said, has had continual roadworks since about 1970. In fact, I'd go so far as to say continuous, and not just continual; it certainly feels like it when I ride through town most days.

But what with the elements, traffic management and the urge to experiment, I digress. Having both the Streamer and the Tailsok in place, my P-38 begins to look every inch a human-powered vehicle, with road presence in spades, and I think that size is a big, big chunk of being safe on the road. The person who invents a bicycle-portable opaque hologrammatic projection of a Leibherr LG1550 will be raking it in. Goodness knows they travel at the right sort of speed.

So now that I'm armed with weather protection and aerodynamic bright stuff, today I rode my none-more-black Speedmachine instead. I rather fancied the suspension, to be honest.

After my summer holiday's unexpected output of the bottoms of my larger panniers being ground along the ... ground, and thoroughly worn through, I bought a pair of Arkel RT-40s for more capacity and to sling under the seat on my RANS V². There's no substitute for cubes, as they say, and these have plenty of those, shared on each between a decent-sized main compartment, a decent-sized pocket on the outside with stretchy mesh on the outside of that, and a little end pocket with a quirky but effective diagonal zip. I used my pair of Edinburgh Bicycle universal panniers constantly from about the beginning of 2003, in which time they'd been soaked, gritted, stood on, stuffed with spiky things, and towards the end of their hitherto exciting but unforseen short lives, turned inside out and attacked with a soldering iron, electric drill and pop rivet gun (Carradice hooks - 1; Rixen & Kaul hooks - 0). They featured just a big main compartment and a low-riding outside pocket, which was invariably home to my puncture repair kit and multitool, and perhaps a mobile phone, pedal/headset spanner, etc. When one makes the transition to new panniers, it is a very good idea to:

1. mentally note the number and location of each new feature; and
2. mentally note into which pocket you place each precious item, lest one of them apparently go missing over a weekend, leaving one with rather more grey hairs than one had before.

It just wouldn't be cricket not to mention another top secret bicycle-related project, would it? This time though, I've enlisted the help of someone who has better tools than I do.