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Wishing you peace & prosperity in your life.
Selamat Tahun Baru & Selamat Hari Raya Adha!

Eating While Riding

When riding one-handed because you are reaching for food or water, grip the handlebar top next to the stem. This helps you sit up, and your movements won’t be as likely to make the bike swerve.

Practice eating while on training rides. Clear your nasal passages just before eating because you have to breathe through your nose while chewing.

Eat something every 30 minutes on long rides to keep energy levels high. Preserve your glycogen (muscle fuel) by always accelerating smoothly, avoiding hard efforts on hills, and resisting all other activities that make your body switch to anaerobic metabolism to meet extra energy demands. Hard riding uses glycogen much less efficiently than evenly paced, aerobic metabolism.

From Bicycling 250 Best Cycling Tips/ photo courtesy of mikesbike.com

Bicycling through the camera lens

Paddy field at Yan, Kedah

Facts of the Day

The average 4-mile journey in Central London, for example, takes just 22 minutes by bicycle, compared to 30 minutes by tube, 40 minutes by car, 62 minutes by bus and 90 minutes with walking - which makes the bicycle the fastest mode of transport there.

Source: photo courtesy of sfgate.com

Boxing Your Bicycle

Although airlines, bus companies, and railways are generally accustomed to transporting bicycles, there is always a risk of damage. Proper boxing can minimize the risk of damage or loss.

You must anticipate the possibility that your bike will be dropped, stacked in cargo bins, or otherwise handled roughly once it leaves your sight. Don't travel with your bicycle unless it is boxed!

Some airlines have boxes available. Some airlines require several days' advance notice that you'll be traveling with a bicycle. Give this notice directly to the counter where you will be departing.

You can often get used boxes from bicycle shops, especially if you call a few days ahead. While you're at the bicycle shop, get two boxes (for each bike you want to ship), preferably one slightly larger than the other. A single box can be modified to protect your bicycle fairly well, but one slipped inside another to form a double-walled container, braced internally, will give your bike better protection and give you greater peace of mind.

It takes time to box a bicycle, especially if it's your first try, so don't wait until a half-hour before your flight is scheduled to depart to begin working on it. You'll need a pocket knife, some extra strips of cardboard, some scrap wood, tape (filament or duct tape), and some light rope, twine, or stout cord.

Disassembly
1. Shift the gears so that the cables are slack.
2. Deflate the tires halfway for more shock-absorbing capability.
3. Remove seat and post as a unit.
4. Remove the front wheel. Cut a small block of wood to fit between the front-fork dropouts, and tape it in place. This will help prevent the fork blades from being bent.
5. Remove the brake cables from the brake levers. If your bicycle has a very long wheelbase, it may help to completely remove the front brake so the fork can be rotated 180 degrees.
6. Remove the handlebars and stem as a unit by loosening the stem bolt two full turns. Then, protecting the bolt with scrap wood, hammer to loosen the internal wedge, and pull the stem out of the steering tube. Retighten the stem bolt to avoid losing the wedge.
7. Remove the pedals. Remember that the left pedal is a left-hand thread; the right pedal is a standard right-hand thread.
8. Tie or tape the front wheel to the right side of the frame, padding between the wheel and the frame with cardboard. Turn the crank arms parallel with the box bottom and tape in place.
9. Make two 6-inch square "washers" of several layers of cardboard with a center hole. Make them thick enough to prevent the front-wheel axle or quick-release end from puncturing the box. Tape these in place over the exposed front axle end and the end of the rear axle opposite the derailleur.
10. Unbolt the rear derailleur (but don't disconnect the cable) and tape it to the rear wheel spokes below its normal position so it doesn't stick out past the frame. Pad the derailleur with a roll of cardboard also taped in place.
11. Cradle the handlebars and stem over the top tube or around the fork and head tube if space permits.

Preparing the Box
1. Cut five pieces of cardboard, each about one foot in length, and wide enough to fit snugly across the inside width of your box. Form tightly rolled tubes and fit them inside the box. These tubes will absorb forces from the sides and prevent the box walls from collapsing into the bicycle.
2. Place one tube inside the box near the lower end of the front fork. Place two tubes, slightly flattened to fit, through the rear wheel and tape them in place. Place other tubes where the top and down tubes meet, through the front-wheel spokes, and below the top tube, toward the front of the bike. Tape each tube in place.
3. Lower the bicycle into the box, and add cardboard pads wherever any remaining sharp or fragile parts might contact the box. Anchor the cross-bracing cardboard tubes further by punching holes in the box sides to match the tube centers, and securing the tubes with tape, rope, or both. The rope can also be padded and used as convenient carrying handles.
4. Wrap the saddle, pedals, and other parts in newspaper or cloth and secure them inside the box. You might also want to place the tools you'll need to reassemble the bike in an easily retrievable bag inside the box.
5. Seal the box with tape, and clearly label it with your name, destination, flight number, and home return address.

In this illustration, holes have been punched corresponding with the cardboard tubes which will protect the bike against side loads. The tubes have then been held in place with tape. Finally, rope acts as both support and temporary carrying handles.

Remember, on most airlines you will have to sign a waiver which will remove the airline from any responsibility for damage to your bicycle. It is to your benefit to spend some time carefully packing your bike. It's no fun to get to the trailhead of your long-awaited tour only to find your bicycle has been damaged.

by Adventure Cycling Staff, How-To-Department.

Do Bicycle Seats Cause Impotence?

The Washington Post's Roy Furchgott recently wrote an excellent article looking back at claims a few years ago that bicycle seats impeded the flow of blood to the penis causing impotence in male riders. Although bicycle seats designed to prevent this are new widely available, the impotence claim appears to have no scientific grounding.

As Furchgott reports, the episode was started after an article in Bicycling magazine in 1997 that cited an unpublished study by urologist Irwin Goldstein. Major media outlets such as "20/20" picked up the story and soon Goldstein was giving quotes like, "There are two kinds of cyclists: those who are impotent and those who will be."

But even today, Goldstein's study has never been published by a peer-reviewed journal. In fact when Furchgott asked Goldstein for a copy of his paper or the data behind his claims, Goldstein told him that they were unavailable, but that he would describe the results of his study over the phone.

There have been a number of studies on this published in peer-reviewed journals, but most of them appear to have had fundamental flaws, not the least of which is that the largest study to date study only 160 men.

William Steers, the chairman of the urology department at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville and a critic of Goldstein's claims, notes that if bicycles do cause male impotence it is hard to explain the continued fertility of men in countries where bicycle use is almost ubiquitous. As Steers puts it, "In China 90 percent of the male population cycles, and they don't seem to have a problem maintaining the population."

More importantly, Steers points out, it was a bit odd for the media to give such huge scrutiny to an activity like cycling which is a healthy form of exercise when behaviors like smoking, obesity and inactivity are much bigger risk factors in male impotence.

This whole episode is an almost textbook case of advocacy research trumpeted by the media despite lacking any credible scientific basis.

By Brian Carnell, Skepticism.Net. Wednesday, September 5, 2001/ photo courtesy of nytimes.com

Are cyclists at risk for osteoporosis?

Cycling is a great cardiovascular exercise that can spare joints from stress, but it still puts riders at risk for osteoporosis, says Mountain Bike columnist Selene Yeager, so she recommends adding cross training and calcium supplements to exercise regimens.

• If the only time you move your body is when it's clipped into a pair of SPDs, you could be raising your risk for this bone-thinning disease.
• Cycling is a non-weight-bearing activity, which means your bones don't have to support your own (or any outside) weight to do it.
• That's good news for your joints, because they're spared the stress, but it can be bad news for your bones because they need stress to build.
• Without it, the body keeps taking the calcium it needs from your skeleton without putting any fresh bone back, and you lose bone density.
• The best thing for your bones--and the rest of your body--is to throw in some cross-training.
• Weight training is particularly good for building bones.
• Doing a full-body strength-training routine three days a week strengthens your skeleton as well as your muscles.
• Adding running into your routine a couple times a week (or more in the off season) can strengthen bones as well.
• As for calcium supplements: They're great added protection.
• The National Osteoporosis Foundation recommends getting 1,000-1,300 milligrams of calcium a day.
• That's about three glasses of calcium-fortified milk a day.
• If you don't eat much dairy, definitely supplement.
• KEEP YOUR SKELETON STRONG DON'T SMOKE: Human chimneys lose bone twice as quickly as nonsmokers.
• DITCH THE COLA: Carbonated drinks, especially colas, are high in phosphorous, which blocks calcium absorptions.
• Plus they're a big zero in the nutritional category.
• MODERATE BOOZE: Too much alcohol inhibits calcium absorption and bone formation.
• Stick to no more than a drink or two a day.

Source: MountainBike/ photo courtesy of A2Z of Health, Beauty and Fitness