n+1 Revisions

I am constantly on the look out for my next bicycle.  At times, this seems ridiculous to those around me, and occasionally, I have to admit, it is a bit silly even to me.  I will long for a trials bike (Google Danny MacAskill if you are curious) when I want to play in the urban environment.  Lust after full suspension, carbon, cross-country mountain bikes.  Endurance road bikes catch my eye, and I have been known to dream of long, continental tours on a Long Haul Trucker (Surly's stout tourer).  It goes beyond that though.  I picture winter rides on the Pugsley, and was nearly overcome with the release of the Moonlander (Surly's "Omniterra" bikes whose 4 inch tires ride anywhere).  Better than touring might be touring on a tandem, off road, or chucking a folding bicycle or a Co-Motion tourer into a suitcase and busing or jet setting off to new riding adventures in new places.  Car-free though, the ability to carry more intrigues me.  Maybe a BOB, or a utility bike...

Thus, my next bicycle "plan" is often dependent more on my mood, than my need.  Yet, when a need for a new bicycle arises, I am quickly torn about what style of bike would best fill that need.  Of course, in all of this, price-point also matters.  Co-Motion bikes, no matter how wonderful they seem, are not in my near future.  Next off the list are the bikes with very specific uses.  A trials bike, while fun, would not be much added value in my current life, and the smooth, over-groomed bike tracks of New Zealand do not even warrant front suspension, let alone full (I have been riding rigid single-speed, much to the confusion of Kiwis). The process of elimination leaves me with final choices that are difficult to make.  Leaving me to struggle through a decision with too many variables to be able to decide based on reason, and not emotion.

The deliberation is currently between a utility bike, a disc-brake commuter, and a disc-tourer.  I have between one and two commuters (between one and three if you count Sarah's bike, the fluctuations are based on current state of repair, and gearing and tire size currently on my single-speed).  Thus, another commuter is not really what I most need, but it is probably the cheapest option (aside from soldiering on with what I have).  The disc-tourer would be great, but I would probably end up balking at the cost of the tourers I want, and get something that is more a commuter with racks than an Africa traversing beast.  Thus, the utility bike leads in the standing as an idyllic path to car-free bliss.

Enter the Xtra-cycle!  These amazing bicycle accessories let you carry a week's shopping at Costco and a friend.  The catch of this great device?  Notice the other two bikes had disc brakes.  Xtra-cycles are not disc brake compatible (though I could probably rig up some front disc-rear rim brake nonsense, it would be undesirable at best).  Kona makes the Ute, a rigid body utility bike with disc brakes for $1300 (or ~$1000 for last year's model).  Kona accomplishes the price by going with cheaper components, and skipping out on the wide range of Xtra-cycle accessories for their own design of inferior bags without accessories.  This, strikes me as undesirable (the closest Kona dealer being in New South Wales, Australia does not help either).  Leaving the clear leader in the current standings the Surly Big Dummy.  The Big Dummy is based on the rack system of the Xtra-cycle, meaning every Xtra-cycle accessory is a Big Dummy accessory.  The components are better than the Ute (at least one step up in every category), and there is an importer to New Zealand (though I do not know of any shops that carry Surly products).  So, why an Xtra-cycle?  I can take people to/from the Taupo Airport, I can buy enough groceries for a week (or longer), I can haul big items home when I have to purchase them, they turn heads, people who ride them are sexier than people who don't, and (the Ute and Big Dummy) have disc brakes.  Enough said, right?

Well, not necessarily.  I should not really need a bigger quiver of bikes.  The no new bike option is the most cost effective, and easiest.  I commute and mountain bike.  I run for fun.  I have been known to climb, and have started swimming.  I do not really need more activities, and I live close enough to the shops that I do not need to buy a week's worth of groceries.  The exciting force in all of this is that I want disc brakes, because disc brakes stop better in the rain.

In Taupo it rains so frequently that Noah would pray for a reprieve.  In December, someone from Vancouver or Ketchikan would find the weather enviable, but a Pacific Northwest dweller would not trade one day of their summer for the gloomy summer solstice that the South Pacific spits upon New Zealand.  In daily rain of this magnitude, bike brakes, like all brakes, need more stopping distance.  Yet, the coefficient of increased stopping distance is reduced with disc brakes, and a short stopping distance is key to a long life with these daffy bastards zooming about in their four-wheeled, metal coffins.

Calling cars metal coffins may seem extreme, but 369 people died last year driving in New Zealand.  That may seem like a paltry few, but this is a small country (i.e. few roads), with a small population.  The USA has a mortality rate in motor vehicles of 8.5 per one billion vehicle kilometers (Wikipedia).  New Zealand has a mortality rate of 9.1 per one billion vehicle kilometers (Wikipedia).  If the unit is tricky, just think of it like this, if you drive in New Zealand, you are about 7% more likely to be killed than if you drive in the United States, where 32 708 people died in motor vehicles in 2010 (Wikipedia).  Thus, strapping into a metal box, and grimacing at the weather for thirty minutes a day is just a dance with death, a dance I do not particularly enjoy.

Thus, I choose to bicycle commute.  This does not increase my odds of living, but it increases my enjoyment of the riskiest part of my day.  I can take measures to reduce the risk.  I can, for example, ride on the trails, which increases enjoyment, reduces risk, but adds significant time to commuting.  I can be a timid rider, and avoid roads in favor of paths that weave back and forth across the highway, and get splattered by one of the motorists who accelerate towards pedestrians crossing the street (motorists do not have to stop for pedestrians saving specially marked cross-walks found only near schools, making crossing streets like a real-life game of Frogger).  Or, like all of the other road users, I can accept that my employer decided that the value of their employee's lives is less than that of real estate near where they life, and ride my bike 10 miles, everyday.

My grumping about highway safety, and my current lust for disc brakes stems from a first experience I had the other day.  I, for the first time, was in a collision with a vehicle.  Some people may be smugly thinking, "Ah, I bet he'll be wearing hi-vis now."  But I won't be.  I was headed home, south, in the left lane (recall that they drive on the left here) of State Highway 1.  At intersections, Kiwis attempt to miss cyclists by mere inches to shave nanoseconds from their drive, hi-vis or no.  After several near misses, I have decided to take the lane in intersections.  This puts me in a place where a collision seems more likely, but it forces the drivers to treat me like another car, rather than a pole in a slalom course.  Usually, the driver waits their turn behind me, but not the driver of a blue Holden sedan on Friday.  This individual decided to pass me in the right lane (indicating that he clearly saw me), then make a left turn from the right lane in front of me.  This event would have been a bit rattling had everything gone smoothly, but it didn't go smoothly.

Unfortunately for me, there was a car in the roundabout, so rather than pull a douchey move, the Holden started to pull a douchey move, then came to a sudden stop mere feet in front of me.  I recall brake lights, swerving away from a trailer hitch, and braking hard, then my wheel hitting their bumper, and my chest hitting their trunk.

I did not loose consciousness, I was not even hurt.  I have a cut on my hand, and a larger one on my right shin.  My legs were banged up a bit, and I took my saddle pretty hard to my bum, but nothing major.  There were noises of cars stopping, and I think a pedestrian might have yelled something.  These auxiliary details are unclear to me, not because of injury, but because of how fast it happened.  A car swerved in front of me, stopped, then inertia did its thing.  I got off my bike, and walked around their car.  The passenger rolled down their window, and the first thing I said was, "are you okay"?  They asked me the same, and I said yes, and that I did not think their car was damaged, but before I finished speaking they drove off.  It was over.  I pulled my bike to the side of the road, checked for damage and reset my chain as other motorists who witnessed the event drove past.

I have lived in this country four months.  I have had numerous near misses with cars, as has Sarah (who only comes to visit!).  I cannot change how Kiwis drive, and I am unwilling to change my lifestyle to other equally dangerous ones (two GNS staff members were medevaced following a motor vehicle crash commuting to work last year, they both lived).  I am keen to add to my quiver an urban/tarmac bike with quick stopping disc brakes, and maybe one or two other fun features, and hope that will decrease my stopping distance in the rain.  That seems like my best action following this incident.