five o’clock shadow

Column: Combo bikes offer speed and comfort

The Herald Sun
May 26, 2005

DURHAM — May is National Bike Month, and last week was National Bike to Work Week. They probably schedule these celebrations for May because of the weather. I mean, how can you resist going for a ride when the highs are in the 70s and the mosquitoes aren’t out yet?

It makes sense, then, that May is also the time a lot of folks start dreaming of that new bike.

John Murray of Durham writes in to ask for a little advice on choosing his next bike. He says, “I am a 60 yr.old male in good health. I have a small amount of experience with a road bike (narrow tires, drop [sic] bars, 20 years ago) and when at the coast, I ride a fourteen year old Diamond Back Sorento.

I am looking to… lose weight, and improve my cardiovascular condition. I will be able to ride to work, 6.9 miles. I would like to get to the point of riding 20 to 30 miles on a Saturday morning without being completely wasted (this may be wishful thinking).

Should I go with a road bike, a mountain bike, or something in between?”

Finding a bike that fits your riding style is tough. I can tick off some of the considerations you’ll want to keep in mind, but the absolute best advice I can give you is to go to a local bike shop, have them size you for a bike, and then test ride several. The only way to decide on a new bike is to get a feel for it.

It sounds like you want a bike on which you can put in some serious weekend mileage as well as commute to work. The difference between a mountain bike with road tires and a road bike (with even skinnier tires) is all about preference.

Traditionally, you ride in a more aggressive, aerodynamic posture on a road bike, whereas you sit more upright on a mountain bike. The bent-over, road riding position is harder on your back, neck, and wrists. The more upright mountain bike riding position is usually more comfortable.

Chris Hull of the Durham Cycle Center showed me a few bikes that help blur these traditional distinctions, bringing more comfort features to road bikes.

The Specialized Sequoia ($800) is what Hull calls a “comfort road bike.” It combines traditional road bike frame geometry with a suspension seat post, taller stem, and carbon fiber fork. The fork and seat post “help reduce road resonance,” says Hull, while the taller stem puts the rider in a more upright riding position. All this translates into a smooth, fast road bike that puts less strain on your back, neck, and wrists.

The Sirrus ($470), also from Specialized, uses a traditional mountain bike frame with flat handlebars, and trigger-style gear shifters, but uses narrow, light 700c road tires. This makes for a fun commuter bike that can zip around urban streets. The frame is strong enough to carry panniers and light enough to invite you to ride it just about anywhere.

Skinny road bike tires mean less rolling resistance. You can go faster and ride for longer stretches of time using less energy than you would on 2-inch wide tires. The skinny road bike tires, however, require the rider to use more skill and keep more focus on road conditions. A fatter mountain bike tire is a little more forgiving if you hit a pot hole or gravel. So, if you plan to ride dirt roads, you may want to look at something like the Trek 7200.

The 7200 ($390), compared with the Specialized bikes, is oriented more towards comfort. The rider sits in a very upright riding position atop a wide seat with a suspension seat post. Riser handlebars attach to an adjustable stem and a suspension fork. This bike is made to eat the bumps so that your arms and legs don’t have to.

The last bike Hull showed me is the Specialized Roubaix ($1,200 for ‘04 model). The Roubaix, he says, “is more performance oriented. It’s a race bike with some comfort features.” Someone with prior experience on a road bike would be comfortable on the Roubaix, Hull thinks. With a traditional road bike frame geometry, the Roubaix uses “resonance absorbing technology in the fork, seat post, and even seat stays” to make a comfortable ride that you “could bring to our Tuesday night rides,” referring to group road rides Cycle Center hosts every Tuesday night.

Infusing performance bikes with comfort technology is a new trend in bike manufacturing. It’s an exciting trend, says Hull. But new technology can’t (and doesn’t) replace a good old fashioned bike fitting. Hull says that when you’re looking for a new bike, whether at Cycle Center or anywhere else, bike shop employees should take the time to adjust the seat height and the handlebars to “make sure the bike fits you properly before your test ride.”

Piotr Sommer - Between Them

Phillip Barron
Originally published in the News of the National Humanities Center

Poetry, says Piotr Sommer (2004-05 Hurford Family Fellow at the National Humanities Center), is the “basic cognitive instrument” by which he measures life, “almost a way to deal with the misunderstandings and miscommunications of the world.”

Editor of the Warsaw-based journal Literatura na Swiecie, Sommer divides his time between writing poetry, writing about poetry, and translating Anglo-American poetry into his native Polish. Literatura na Swiecie gathers together foreign literature into Polish translations, most often but not always contemporary literature. Sommer translates the journal’s title as “somewhere between ‘Literature in the World’ and ‘World Literature.’” To Sommer, the “somewhere between” symbolizes that even simple cultural concepts do not translate comfortably.

Through Literatura na Swiecie, Sommer is responsible for introducing or reacquainting Polish readers with such luminaries as Jacques Derrida and John Cage. A 1986 issue of Literatura na Swiecie on the New York Poets has been cited as perhaps the single most influential collection of American poetry on the Polish literary community.

Sommer has published two books during his residence at the Center and is spending his fellowship working on two others. Continued (Wesleyan University Press, 2005), his first book-length collection of poetry translated into English, gathers poems from his previous Polish publications. Po Stykach (Slowo/Obraz Terytoria, 2005) is a collection of his essays on Polish and Anglo-American poetry and on the art of translation.

In Polish, Sommer explains, ‘po stykach’ is a “concise slangy phrase, so rich that I really cannot translate it into English in one phrase. It suggests doing something along delicate lines, which can be lines of contact or lines of argument. It contains the concept of borderlines as well. And also a sense of touch—in Polish, ’styk’ means touch.”

His current projects include a book-length examination of the influence of twentieth-century American poets such as Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, Robert Lowell, and Charles Reznikoff on contemporary poets in Poland. He’s also finishing a Polish-translation anthology of American poets he’s “been excited by in the last twenty years.”

A poet who writes and a poet who translates, he claims, are different people. “Writing poetry in your own language, you both control it and let it behave the way it wants to behave,” he explains. “You can allow it quite a bit of pleasure and freedom. You can even let it outpace you.” A translating poet, on the other hand, doesn’t want to give the foreign text a lesson, or correct the author’s voice. “You study the original, see what you can do with it, and find a way to bring things into your own language,” Sommer says.

When translating, he continues, “you must be prepared to take into account every single ingredient that works for the desired result in your language, to find the multiple levels of meaning, beginning with, let’s say, such a basic unit as the sentence.” Being careful, however, he cautions, “doesn’t exclude freedom in the new language, naturally, because the result still must be beautiful. And because the new language doesn’t have to—or sometimes cannot—behave like the original.”

It takes tremendous effort but also serendipity for a poem to translate well into another language, Sommer notes. Between double meanings and colloquial expressions, translating is a process that constantly asks the question, “How much can we stretch our syntax and still keep it beautiful in our language?” Finally, Sommer adds wistfully, a thoughtful translator also must be willing to accept that something beautiful in one language may not be possible in another.

the view from down here

Column: Women’s biking group offers fun, support

Phillip Barron
The Herald-Sun

DURHAM — Susan Crosjean of Raleigh practices “popping” her front wheel off the ground again and again. Once she’s comfortable with the move, she aims her bike at a tightly packed row of logs, each 12 inches in diameter. Riding toward them, she gathers speed. She’s cheered on by her friends and encouraged by spotters, who are there just in case.

She lifts her front wheel, then the rear, and rolls gracefully over the stunt.

I ask later whether she’s ever cleared that stunt before. “Never,” she says, “but I don’t let anything stand in my way. I do it again and again until I get it.”

This is a typical evening for the women of GRID.

Just over a year old and more than 100 members deep, GRID — Girlz Riding in Dirt — is a Trianglewide, all-women’s mountain bike club. Last week, GRID founder Peggy Dodge let me tag along at Lake Crabtree County Park with 10 of the club’s members.

I’ve never ridden with a more excitable bunch. Riding through the woods, you’ll hear just as many “Yahoo!” shouts as supportive words. This group hits the trails to have fun.

Experience levels among GRID’s members run the gamut, from newbies to racers.

Right now, “GRID primarily caters to the less-experienced crowd and intermediate riders,” Dodge says. “Let’s face it, for a beginning rider the trail can be very pushy and intimidating.” Membership benefits include “no-drop rides, weekly mailings, bike maintenance and skills clinics, group trips and a great time! It’s very social.”

Lisa Schell of Cary adds another benefit: “It’s nice to be around people who understand it’s OK to have three bikes.”

Encouraging riders like Crosjean to improve their skills in a noncompetitive, friendly, confidence-building environment is exactly what GRID specializes in.

Many of GRID’s riders started mountain biking within the last three years and choose to ride with the club to develop technique. Paula Frost of Holly Springs sports the new woman-specific Specialized Stumpjumper. “Peggy got me into mountain biking,” she says. “She’s very positive; a good teacher.” Three years and four bikes later, Frost says she’s riding ’til she’s 50.

“What? I’m not stopping at 50,” shouts Schell.

Amaris Guardiola, a hard-tail rider from Graham, has been mountain biking since 1996. Echoing a sentiment I heard repeatedly that evening, Guardiola says she used to ride alone, but started riding with GRID for the companionship.

“Everyone’s just so encouraging,” she said.

Schell says her riding improved after her first GRID ride. She raises her voice to announce, “Hey Peggy! Two days in a row, I didn’t fall!”

Yeah… I was the only one who tumbled on the trail Tuesday night.

The guys can join in the fun on any of GRID’s co-ed rides, but Dodge keeps the club focused on women. “I actually established GRID for selfish reasons… I wanted to ride with other women and not just the boys who were so much stronger and more skilled than me,” she told me ahead of time. “Women are more cautious while men approach their riding more aggressively, facing the consequences later.”

If I’d listened, maybe I wouldn’t have ended up face down on a switchback.

Dodge would also like to see GRID expand by developing a team component to the club, “to have an individual who can establish a race program and build membership by recruiting more advanced riders.”

Back at the trailhead, we stand around swapping stories, discussing the benefits of clipless pedals and bashguards, and sharing riding techniques. Just like any other group bike ride, the conversation inevitably turns to pizza. The camaraderie never stops.