Michael Jay Lissner

So you wanna buy a bike

2013-02-05T20:19:16-08:00

Another of my friends is asking me questions about buying a bike. I love that they do this, but since it’s become a trend, I figure I should throw my thoughts together here as a reference.

Buying a bike is actually pretty simple:

You want a used road bike.
You want gears; more is better.
Lighter is better.
Size is important.
Exotic isn’t for you (yet).

That’s pretty much all there is to it, at least on the macro level. Let’s dive into each of these a tad, shall we?

First, you want a used road bike. The reason for this is pretty logical: As a commuter, you’ll be riding mostly on…roads! You could get a cruiser (but that defies rule #2), or a mountain bike (defies rule #3) or a recumbent (see rule #5). But ultimately, road bikes are the best for what you want to do: travel quickly and safely to and from work and around town with minimal fuss. New ones cost a fortune, so get one used.

I wish I didn’t have to mention rule number two, but for all the hipsters out there, you’re wrong about fixies. If you live in San Francisco, a city with specific maps for the hills, you should use the things that were invented to get you up hills: Gears! Even if you live in a flat-ish city, you should get gears because they give you flexibility. Sure, your bike is a commuter today, but tomorrow your friend might want to go on a bike ride with you. Or maybe you move to a new city. Who knows? Get gears. Don’t be trendy.

Enough said.

Rule number three is that lighter is better. If you look at new road bikes, you’ll quickly learn that you can spend an incredible amount on bikes. And naturally, the lighter they are, the more expensive they are. So how light is right? Well, this one is tough and somewhat subjective, so I say, find one that’s as light as you can buy for your dollar. Off the cuff, I’d wager that around $400 is the point of diminishing returns for most people.

Size is important. If it doesn’t fit, it’s useless. Go to a bike shop and get sized before you do much shopping. It’ll help you winnow the stuff you’re looking at anyway. This may as well be the first step of your search.

Rule five explains itself. When you know more about bikes, branch out if you care. You probably won’t, so save yourself the effort of looking at exotic stuff. It’s exotic for a reason.

Bonus questions for the avid reader

What brand should I buy?

Doesn’t much matter, surprisingly. There are better and worse brands, but if you’re buying a used road bike, and follow rule number 3, your goals will be accomplished.

What material should my bike be?

Probably steel. Aluminum is good too, but probably out of your price range. Steel’s a very reputable material though. If you can find Reynold’s steel, all the better.

How do I know the bike I’m buying isn’t stolen?

Good question! This one’s hard. You can look for the serial number or try to only deal with people that seem legit. There is a national bike registry (which you should use!), but otherwise there’s not a whole lot you can do…yet.

Comments? Thoughts? Email me. You’re probably my friend already if you’re reading this…

Calculating the average elevation of a trip using a TCX file

2012-09-16T10:33:31-07:00

If you use a site like ridewithgps, something you may want to know is how to calculate the average elevation for a trip. Unfortunately, most sites don’t seem to provide this, so we have to do a little hacking.

Here’s what worked for me:

download the GPS TCX file
grep out the altitude lines (grep -i 'altitude' your_file.tcx)
find & replace out the remaining XML tags and whitespace using a basic text editor
average the remaining values in a spreadsheet

Takes about five minutes. For my trip the number came out to be 10,753 feet!

Project Idea: “Breaking the Cycle: Isolating Easy Solutions to the Bike Theft Problem”

2010-06-15T11:44:13-07:00

I’ve decided that I should start blogging my project ideas so that they may be aired more widely in public. I have amassed quite a number of these, and have been sitting on them for some time, but more and more, it’s looking like I won’t have time to get to all of my ideas. Starting today, I’ll be writing out ideas that I have had. If you have project ideas of your own that you think might be interesting to share here, let me know, and we’ll get yours posted too. If you’re interested in pursuing one of these ideas, go for it!

And so, without further ado, I present…….

Breaking the Cycle: Isolating Solutions to the Bike Theft Problem This is something that I have been thinking about for a good while, but considering more seriously as of late. Basically, what it amounts to is 90% a social/political solution, and 10% a programming and system design solution.

Here’s the problem: Last year, during the recession, about 15 million new bikes were sold in the United States, and according to the FBI, in 2008, about 220,000 bikes were reported stolen. Obviously, both of these numbers are suspect. The former doesn’t include the many thousand used bikes that were purchased during 2009, and the FBI’s number clearly doesn’t include the vast majority of the bikes stolen. Other estimates of the number of bikes stolen are much higher than the reported number. One estimate is that more than five million bikes are stolen every year in the U.S. Another estimate from the National Crime Victimization Survey is less pessimistic, with a 2006 estimate of 1.3 million stolen bikes per year. Despite these differences in numbers, and the problems of under reporting, the point is clear that this is a major problem in the United States.

Solutions: Honey pots and databases There are at least three simple and cost-effective solutions to this problem. I’ll start with the most fun one, which is to place a GPS unit deep in the bowels of a nice bike, and to poorly lock up that bike in a high theft area. This, in theory, will tempt thieves to steal the bike, and will lead to their arrest. Such sting operations have been done in the past, and have had great success, since many of the people stealing bikes are mass offenders, that are also wanted for other illegal activity [ref]. There are worries that this may amount to inducement to steal (and thus may be illegal), and also that linking the person that has the bike after the fact with the person that stole the bike in the first place may be difficult. But both of these are fairly easy problems to solve, if the operation is done carefully.

The second solution to this problem is to create a LoJack system for bikes. As far as I can tell, such as system has not yet been created. As was mentioned in the freakonomics blog, such a system creates a positive externality: Your placing a GPS device in your bike also reduces the theft of other bikes in the area by creating a scare that those bikes might have the system as well. There are challenges in placing such a system in a bike, such as battery life and getting the satellite signal in and out of the bike, but again, these can be worked out. There is demand for such a system: When working on another project related to bike theft, I asked a number of people about LoJack for bikes, and they were all excited about creating and using such a system.

The third, and perhaps most important, step in breaking the bike theft problem is to create a better national registry of bikes. At present, there are a number of registration systems. Cities have implementations, there is a for-profit organization that does registrations nationally (this is where my bikes are registered), and there is even a registry of bikes that have been stolen. What we need, is a single national registry. It has to be good, and it has to be used. All new bikes sold in the United States need to be entered into the system before the sale, and if somebody is buying a new bike, they need to first look it up in the system. This is a cultural shift, and can be brought about in a number of ways. For example, sites like Craigslist and E-Bay can encourage linking to the system when bikes are sold, manufacturers and bikes shops can be required (legally) to check the system for the bike, a paperwork trail can be created and enforced, similar to the system for car sales. These are all ideas for such a system, but the point is, that it needs to be built, and it needs to be supported. Some states already have laws relating to bike registration, but they aren’t enforced. The assumption needs to shift from “This bike isn’t registered, oh well” to “This bike isn’t registered in your name, it is not yours.”

Conclusions Some clear conclusions emerge when looking at this problem. First, bike theft is huge. Millions of bikes are stolen each year. And, judging by the number of thefts that are reported and trickle up to the FBI’s database, people don’t feel that reporting the theft is worth the effort. If we assume that five million bikes are stolen each year, and that of those, 250,000 are reported, that’s a reporting rate of only 5%.

A second conclusion we can draw from the above is that this problem is solvable. Using social and technical approaches, this can be solved quickly and relatively inexpensively. Furthermore, it’s quite likely that many of the solutions to this problem can be profitable for both the organization implementing it, as well as the bikers whose bikes are no longer stolen.

In parting, I will conclude by pointing you to the best resource I’ve found on this problem, which is the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing’s report on bicycle theft. It’s brief, to the point, and informative. Enjoy.

References A lot of the information for this post was gleaned from the following excellent resources:

Cheap Metal Bike Stand

2009-12-29T12:05:12-08:00

It’s my winter break right now, so I’m taking advantage of it by doing some of the things that have been on my list for far too long. One of those things was to build a repair stand for the work I do on the bikes in my life. For about $50, you can build this stand, which works remarkably well.

Essentially, what you need to make this beauty is five pipes, a 90 degree elbow, a 45 degree elbow, and a welder. Since I don’t weld, I went to a local muffler shop and they were happy to do it (for free!) The one big lesson I’ll share is that you can’t (and shouldn’t) make this from galvanized metal, since welding that is dangerous. The stuff you want is called “black pipe.”