Setting Up My Bike – Pletscher ESGE Kickstand, Handlebar Bags, & Deda Handlebar Tape

 

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

5:00 a.m. at the 7-11 on Chong-An Road in Taipei

I probably should have stayed in bed and tried to sleep longer. I am going to pay the price for this later on today. Then again, I’ve already paid the price. Somehow, a mosquito or two got into my bedroom last night, and they tormented me throughout the night. I’m usually quite adept at tracking mosquitoes down and killing them – I’m quite methodical in my approach – but I couldn’t find these ones no matter how I tried. All I could do was put in earplugs to drown out their buzzing and then try to go to sleep and let them have their feast. I find it’s a cruel joke on poor humans that mosquitoes have evolved in such a way as to be sporadic and finicky drinkers. A camel might rush to a desert well, drink many gallons of water until it has had its fill, and then move on, replenished for days to come. Not so the fussy mosquito. It’s a dainty drinker – a bit here, a bit there, a tad more there. Drink its fill of blood once and leave? Produce one large itchy welt on my skin once and move on? Awaken me from sleep once and then leave me in peace? Not the mosquito. It is too dainty for that. It has to sip at my blood – a little taste now and again – a bite here and then a nip there and another bite there until I am covered in itchy welts and am half out of my mind. Does my blood taste just slightly different depending from which artery or vein it is drawn? Is my blood like an entire country’s production of fine wine – different and delicate tastes to be sampled in all its variety? Apparently so. To my three much larger welts from the injections I received, I can now add a dozen or more tiny but much more annoying ones.

I left off my story yesterday with the injections I received at the travel clinic. I calculated later on that I had spent $400 on vaccinations so far with a further bill of about $100 to come. I’m guessing that it would have been cheaper to get these injections somewhere else. Perhaps I should have done some more investigating and calculated the cost beforehand. Perhaps I could have gotten the vaccinations in the Philippines at a much reduced rate? That thought never occurred to me. Such thoughts never occurring to me is probably why I’m so poor. Not wise with money…

My goal for the afternoon – modest as it was – was to ride my bike down to Alan’s Bike Shop and see if handlebar tape could effectively be applied to my bar ends. I’d already made sure my bicycle was roadworthy and the tires pumped up with air, so all I needed to do was assemble a tool kit for the road – for adjustments and flat tires – and then carry my bike down from my rooftop apartment to the street six floors below while navigating several tight stairwells and difficult doorways. I’ve had two other bicycles in my time here in Taiwan. One was stolen and I sold the other one. Both, however, were lightweights compared to the Beast (now capitalized, I see – maybe it should be The Beast). I didn’t know this at the time since I didn’t weigh the Beast until my return, but it weighs exactly 39 pounds. That’s the bike with pannier racks, water bottle cages, and bar ends. I believe my other bikes were about half that weight, and the difference is striking. Yesterday afternoon, I also had one pannier bag and my handlebar bag attached as I carried the bike down the stairs. That would probably add as much as ten more pounds, so call the whole thing fifty pounds. When I write “fifty pounds” it doesn’t seem that much. A small child weighs fifty pounds and don’t firemen fling them over their shoulder like rag dolls every day and charge up and down stairs during heroic rescues? Well, I challenge these firemen to do the same thing with the Beast over their shoulder. Whether it is the length of the Beast or its general unwieldiness, something about it makes it a very awkward and painful load. When touring, I generally would make at least two trips and usually three to bring my bicycle and all the pannier bags and camping gear out to the street and assemble it. However, I would never be carrying all of that out of my cramped living room, through my narrow front door, across a cluttered rooftop, down a tight metal staircase with a turn that brings my metal bike within half an inch of a fish pond and sliding glass doors on a balcony, through a double set of heavy metal doors that can’t be propped open, down six flights of stairs with the occasional low ceiling that nearly breaks my back, to a small landing in front of another heavy metal door, out to a set of concrete steps where I have to wiggle through narrow gaps between a cluster of scooters just to reach a narrow alleyway with cars racing by at breakneck speed. It was an effort just to make it to the alley, and I was reminded forcefully why I became a scooter driver in Taiwan and did not continue cycling. The actual cycling is challenging and somewhat dangerous, sure, but it’s okay once you get used to the heat and cold and the flow of traffic. It’s the carrying of the bike up and down stairs that is the problem (not to mention the impossibility of finding a place to put and lock up your bike once you are out in the city).

But I made it. I was out in the alleyway outside my apartment. And just as I hoisted myself up to the seat and started pedaling, it occurred to me that, ridiculous as it was, this was my first time on this bicycle in over three years. Three years! I’m pretty sure that is right. Certainly the last time I rode the bike any kind of distance was on my cycling trip along the southern cross-island highway when I first returned to Taiwan more than three years ago. That seems such a long time ago now. I remember riding my other bike once or twice, but that would have been well over two years ago anyway.

Well, no matter how long ago it was, I was not used to it and suddenly pedaling down the road on the Beast came as quite a shock. At first, it was incredibly uncomfortable and awkward. The bike felt all wrong but in ways that I couldn’t put my finger on. To be honest, the Beast has always felt that way – too long, too short, too high… who knows. Yet, I’ve never known if it is really the wrong size and shape for my body and for touring or if it is just the way it feels to be on a bicycle.

I had two main sensations as I rode down the alley and then turned right onto Zhongshan Road with all the traffic. The first was that I seemed to be going in slow motion. I am so accustomed to the speed and acceleration of a scooter that the bike felt agonizingly slow. It was ridiculous. Who wants to go this slow? I felt like I was barely moving. It brought a grim smile to my face. Here I was thinking that it was going to take me forever to ride my bike across town and yet I’m thinking about riding across a good portion of the world. It’s insane.

The second sensation I had was that riding a bicycle was really, really hard. It was hard work! It was physical effort. I’d forgotten about that. I hadn’t even made it 100 yards to the first intersection, and I could feel my heart beating fast and my legs protesting. I experimented by trying to put on a burst of speed – a thrust forward and down with my legs… and nothing happened. I barely went any faster. Contrast that with a simple twist of my wrist on the scooter’s accelerator to rocket up to 80km/hr in seconds. And this was on my bicycle with barely any luggage attached. Once on tour, I would have another thirty to forty pounds of gear and water on the bicycle. How slow would I be going then? How hard would it be to ride up a hill, let alone a mountain? I started to wonder how in the world I had ever done it in the past. I had begun to think of my bike rides through Ethiopia and Guinea and across Canada as fairly routine affairs. I was quite blasé about them. Now, they seemed like extraordinary achievements. How had I managed to get up and down the endless mountain roads of northern Ethiopia on this beast? Honestly, how?

It was an eye-opening trip, my six-kilometer ride down to Alan’s Bike Shop. That little ride did more to focus me on what I was planning to do in the near future than all the reading and thinking and writing of the past few months. It reminded me again – if I needed reminding – how important it is to actually have a physical experience to understand something. These days, with the entire world at our fingertips on the Internet, I find we do a lot of reading and looking and thinking. And we imagine that this is a learning process. But it is nothing without actual physical experience. I’m thinking about things like buying a camera. I might spend a hundred hours or more over several weeks reading camera reviews to figure out which camera is best for me. I think this is time well spent. Yet, all of that research can be made totally redundant by simply going to a camera store and picking up the actual camera in your hands and holding it. I remember thinking that this or that camera was perfect based on what I’d read. But I knew I hated it the second I saw it for real and held it in my hands. There is simply no replacement for actual physical experience. Think about the difference between reading about a massage and actually getting one, between reading about the taste of whiskey on ice and then actually having some. It seems obvious when you think of examples like that, but in life I find we often do other things without any physical learning going on. One could plan to bike around the world for years by going over maps and reading everything you can find. Yet, all of that is quite a dangerous thing to do if you don’t actually get on a bike and do some riding and see what it feels like. And remember, I was not on a fully-loaded Beast. I was pedaling a stripped down and lightweight version of what I will soon be riding in the brutal heat and sun of the Philippines.

I don’t mean the above comments in a negative way, as a cautionary tale. No, I’m saying that the physical experience of something is the only way to truly appreciate its nature. I’ve had a fair amount of experience with bike touring, but it’s been so long since I’ve done it that I’ve completely forgotten its true nature. How much more so would that be true for someone who has never done it? One short ride through the streets of Taipei on a cool and pleasant day suddenly brought home the reality of what bike touring through Asia is going to be like – its difficulty and, by extension, its worth.

I had another experience on this bike ride that fits this pattern perfectly – and it involves the Internet. The thing is that with the Internet, we’ve all started shopping online more and more. And this means that we buy things sight unseen and then have them shipped to us. I think that’s true for everyone and it’s much more true for me since the things I want to buy are almost always unavailable in stores. It’s impossible to go see these objects in person, so I have no choice but to roll the dice and order them. When I open the box that arrives in the mail, it’s the first time I see the object I’d only read about.

On my bicycle, I had such an object. I’d read about and been intrigued by a type of heavy-duty double legged kickstand. Touring bikes are quite heavy when fully loaded, and it takes a special type of kickstand to keep them upright when you park them. Lots of people don’t even use kickstands. They don’t want the extra weight on the bike, and they figure the kickstand won’t work anyway. From what I read, these double kickstands are the cat’s meow. The whole bike sits up on these two legs that splay out to the right and the left. In this way, the bike isn’t leaning to the right or the left. It is perpendicular to the ground and rocking on the kickstand. To that extent, the kickstand can serve as a simple bike stand for repairs and maintenance. The more I read, the more I liked the idea. I did a huge amount of research and I decided that the Plescher ESGE was the brand and model for me. This kickstand is very heavy and very expensive, but I ordered one.

I’ve had this kickstand installed on my bike for a while and I played around with it inside my apartment. It seemed ideal. It worked quite well assuming that I cut the legs to the right length. Well, a couple of weekends ago I decided to get that done. I spent a long time testing and measuring and testing and measuring again. The old carpenter’s adage “measure twice, cut once” is a useful one for long-distance cyclists. In this case, I measured about fifty times. Then, I took out my trusty hacksaw and slowly and methodically sawed through the heavy kickstand legs. It took a long, long time and a lot of effort. These things are very thick and strong. Now that I’d cut the legs to length, I was committed. I wouldn’t be able to sell the kickstand to anyone else if I didn’t use it. I was confident though.

Unfortunately, there was a flaw in my testing procedure. The flaw isn’t an obvious one perhaps, but it is serious. The flaw was that I was testing the kickstand on an unloaded bicycled. There was no weight on the bicycle in terms of pannier bags, and the bike was perfectly balanced. Under those conditions, the kickstand worked well. As I was riding my bike to Alan’s Bike Shop, I had the chance to put this kickstand to a real world test. I stopped the bike and pulled it up onto the kickstand. So far so good. The length seemed good, perhaps a bit too long still. Then I let go of the bike, and the bike promptly fell over. I set the bike back up on the kickstand, let go, and it fell over again. The problem, I quickly figured out, was that I had just one pannier bag on the right side of the bike plus the handlebar bag. Therefore, the bike wasn’t balanced. I wouldn’t call it terribly unbalanced, either. I hardly had anything in the pannier bag. It contained only a tire pump and a patch kit. However, that plus the weight of the pannier bag was enough to overcome the kickstand and topple the bike to the ground. I couldn’t believe it. I found that if I turned the handlebars to the right so that the front wheel and handlebar bag counteracted the weight of the pannier bag on the left, the bike would stay upright. But it was a very delicate balance. Just the slightest touch with my finger and the bike would fall over again. It was pivoting on a very tiny point, since the legs of the kickstand did not splay out very far on either side. It was clear to me within two minutes that this kickstand – for which I’d spent probably close to seventy dollars including shipping – was completely worthless for my purposes. Maybe, just maybe, with all four pannier bags attached and balanced, the bike could be made to stay upright. But the slightest breeze, the tiniest knock from a person walking by would send it crashing to the ground. So there you have it. Weeks of online research outdone and undone by two minutes of real world physical experience. I don’t mind that the kickstand doesn’t work well. I have another kickstand – a standard Greenfield – that sticks out to the left and works just fine even with the Beast fully loaded. It was just never 100% ideal and I thought this double kickstand would be an improvement. What I do mind is that I wasted $70 on what is now just scrap metal.

This bike ride also answered another burning question – again an example of brief real world physical experience trumping months of research and thought. This question involved my handlebar bag. I’ve mentioned it several times already I believe. The utility of a handlebar bag in general is not in question. It’s a wonderful thing. It sits right up front on your handlebars and is easily accessible. It’s the perfect place to put all the things you might want to get at a dozen times a day – sunglasses, maps, sunscreen, camera, binoculars, snacks, money, compass, and on and on. And my handlebar bag is an emperor among handlebar bags. It is the Big Bar Bag from Arkel and is a model of design and functionality. I don’t think there is a handlebar bag made anywhere on the planet that can come close to it in terms of design and functionality. However, I had never used one on the Beast before while touring. I wanted to use one, but it didn’t seem to fit into the way that I travel and the things that I pack. Anyway, I thought I’d try one out and I bought one.

Yesterday, I set off with one pannier bag and the handlebar bag on the bike. The usefulness of the handlebar bag was instantly apparent. When I found that I didn’t want to listen to my iPod, I simply took it from around my neck and dropped it into a pocket on the handlebar bag. When I found I was too warm in my jacket, I took it off and stuffed it into the handlebar bag. When I wanted to check my map, I just glanced at the map on my handlebar bag. All perfect so far. But then came the crunch. I arrived at Alan’s Bike Shop, and I needed to hand over my bike to Alan so that he could work on it. To do that, I had to remove my bags, and now I had two bags to deal with. Why did I have two bags? Why didn’t I have just the convenient and amazing and wonderful handlebar bag? Well, for the simple reason that I always carry either a word processor or a large notebook with me, and these items are too large to fit into a handlebar bag. So I have to have at least one pannier bag with me at all times to carry something to write in. And then adding a handlebar bag means I now have two bags with me. The handlebar bag has suddenly gone from a convenience to an annoyance.

I had a second experience with this after I left Alan’s Bike Shop. I wanted to pop into a coffee shop somewhere and read for a while and hang out. To do that, I had to lock up my bike outside and then remove two bags from the bike and carry two bags into the coffee shop. It was a huge pain. After two seconds of thinking this over, I realized that no matter how many advantages there are to having a handlebar bag, if I want to carry a notebook computer or this NEO with me at all times, I can’t use a handlebar bag. Case closed. Done. No need to think about it anymore. Real world physical experience wins again. I was actually very glad to have these two issues solved so easily – the kickstand and the handlebar bag. As soon as I got back to my apartment and carried the Beast all the way up the stairs, I set about removing the kickstand and the handlebar bag. Two failed experiments. I was wiser but poorer. I doubt I can sell the kickstand, but I might try to sell the handlebar bag.

I’m glad to report, though, that I think I was successful in terms of fixing up my bar ends. Only time will tell. I was disappointed when I got to Alan’s Bike Shop to find that Alan’s wife was not there. Alan himself does not speak any English, and being the mechanic of the place, he doesn’t have much time to talk to customers anyway. He gets the work done. It’s his wife that spends time with customers. Alan was busy with another customer when I showed up, and it was clear that he was going to be occupied for a long time. He was selling this man a bicycle, and Alan is very thorough about that and goes through a long and detailed process of tuning it up and custom fitting it to the rider. Luckily, there is another fellow at the bike shop – a young guy – and he was free. Together, we went over the various options in the shop for putting some kind of grip or cushioning on my bar ends. Just as on my last visit, we came to the conclusion that the only reasonable solution was handlebar tape. And the only way to know for sure was to simply do a test. This young guy dug up a length of old and ugly blue handlebar tape and set about wrapping it around my bar ends. When he was done and had it installed he called me over to look it over and see what I thought. It seemed to have worked quite well, but it’s impossible to say whether it would stay in place over the long term. This type of tape usually goes on handlebars, and handlebars have a smooth metal surface and gentle curves. My bar ends had a different surface – rougher – and had a pretty sharp and pointed angle. This young guy had to do some fancy wrapping to get the tape to go around that corner and stay in place. I tried to get his opinion about whether the tape would remain in place, but I couldn’t get much of an opinion out of him. Alan seemed to think it would be fine though.

When I was there on my earlier visit on Saturday, I had settled on some blue tape as the best option. I liked the feel and texture of the tape, and the only other color options were red and green. The blue would not match anything on my bike at all and would probably look terrible, but I didn’t think that would matter. The Beast’s job is not to look good and preen on the runway. Its job is to carry a heavy load and carry me around the world. However, when the young guy finished putting on the experimental blue tape, even I was taken aback. It really looked nasty – a patch of fluorescent blue just blazing away on this all-black bike. I balked. I asked the young guy if there weren’t some other options, but he wasn’t that helpful. Just as with my vaccinations experience, it is essential that a customer be proactive in Taiwan. People in shops don’t really see it as their job to make sure that you get what is appropriate for you. Their job is to sell you what you want. It’s YOUR job as the customer to decide what is appropriate. A sales clerk in Taiwan will happily sell you something that he or she absolutely knows is wrong. That’s different from how a sales clerk in Canada would behave. I’ve been to many bike shops in Canada, and the sales people there will work very hard to find out what it is you are looking for and then guide you to making the right choices and avoiding mistakes. In Taiwan, I don’t see a lot of that. I often make the mistake of expecting some help and I get a bit frustrated when I don’t get any. Then I realize what is going on and I just become more assertive.

In the case of this handlebar tape, I really didn’t like the color. I told the sales clerk that and I half expected him to solve my problem by seeing if they can order a different color – get out the catalogue, look on the Internet, call suppliers, etc. But he didn’t do that. He just looked at me and waited for my decision – to buy or not to buy the blue handlebar tape. It was all the same to him.

I backed off for a bit and went for a walk around the shop. I chatted with the sales clerk and tried to get him involved in the process, but he pretty much just kept me company waiting for me to decide yes or no on the blue tape. While I was walking around, I stopped to look at the Surly Long Haul Trucker touring bike again. As I said, it’s a beautiful bike and I like it very much. I noticed that the Surly had beautiful, soft and supple and cushiony grey handlebar tape. I put my hands around the handlebars and felt the tape and it seemed perfect. The shop did carry handlebar tape of other colors, by the way. It wasn’t all blue. However, all the other tape was hard and plasticky or rubbery. The blue tape I was considering felt more like leather or some other soft material. That’s why it was my only option. I had told the clerk all of this – that I was touring long distances, that I needed the tape to be durable and stay put, and that I wanted a softer material – not hard rubber or plastic. He just nodded and agreed with everything I said without offering any kind of solutions or feedback. Then as we walked around the shop, I drew his attention to the handlebar tape on the Surly. This, I told him, is exactly what I’m looking for – handlebar tape like this. He agreed with me that it was pretty good stuff. But no other reaction.

At this point, I felt I had no choice but to just leave the shop and keep looking for other handlebar tape. Now, at least I knew what kind of tape was available. But I decided to go over their displays one more time. I went back to the racks and I went through all the boxes of handlebar tape. I saw the red and the yellow and the green plasticky ones. I saw all the hard black grips, all the stuff I’d seen before. There was the bright blue tape made out of the nice material. But then, what’s this? What’s this hidden way in the back, a single solitary box that I hadn’t noticed before? What could it be? Yes, it is. A box of beautiful, soft, cushiony, grey handlebar tape. As far as I could tell, it was exactly the same as the grey handlebar tape on the Surly Long Haul Trucker. Eureka! I grabbed the box and showed it to the clerk. THIS will work. He smiled and agreed. No other reaction. Did I want to buy it or not?

I guess it doesn’t really matter how I got there, but I got there. Whatever this guy lacked in customer service skills, he more than made up for it in terms of practical skills and he set about putting on that beautiful handlebar tape. A few minutes later, he called me over to check out his handiwork. He had done a beautiful job. It looked awesome and it felt awesome under my hands. It was exactly what I was looking for, and since the bar ends are quite short, he only had to use one of the pieces of tape. I still have the other piece, and I’m sure I will be able to find a use for it. I might go back and see if he or Alan can figure out how to use that same type of tape to replace the rubber grips on my handlebars. Those grips are sort of coming apart, and they always feel sticky against my hands. I’m pretty sure that process started way back on my first trip on the Beast, the trip to Ethiopia. I had a bottle of Muskol insect repellant with me, and, as every good Canadian will know, Muskol is about ten thousand percent pure Deet – the most powerful repellant known to the human race. It’s great that Deet is so effective for repelling mosquitoes and flies. However, a little known fact about Deet is that it will dissolve rubber (and probably lots of other stuff). So it really isn’t the greatest choice for a cyclist. I applied the stuff, got some on my hands, transferred it to the Beast’s rubber grips and the grips proceeded to melt and dissolve. I really should do something about them before this next trip, and that handlebar tape might be just the ticket.

For anyone pondering my vague thoughts above about the unusual tendencies of sales clerks in Taiwan, I should point out another – and very wonderful – characteristic. In Taiwan, whether you’re talking about a scooter, a car, or a bicycle, labour and installation comes included with the purchase price of parts. It’s an astonishing fact for a Canadian, but it’s true. In the case of my handlebar tape, I did not have to pay extra to have the guy put it on for me. He did that for free. The same thing would happen if I bought brake cables, brake pads, gear cables, a new inner tube, whatever it is. Whatever you buy, they will put it on for you free of charge. (Perhaps the labor charge is hidden inside the purchase price of the object, but I don’t see that in general.)

I remembering encountering this the first few times and ending up somewhat confused. I’m used to installing things myself, and I simply assumed that whatever I bought, I would just take home and put on the bike. So I was standing there and wondering why the sales clerks weren’t handing me my stuff so I could go home. I started to get annoyed as I waited and waited and I had no idea what was going on. Then I realized that they were actually waiting until the mechanic was free to do the installation. Then I told them not to bother and that I’d do it myself at home. THAT confused them.

This installation-included policy leads to some other funny situations and possible misunderstandings. From living in Canada, for example, I’m used to taking home all the packaging and boxes and documents and everything else that comes with a product. I think of it as my right. So even if whatever I’ve purchased has been removed from the original packaging, I still want and expect to get the packaging. I want to take it home. It might have instructions or information on it that I need. I might need it for refunds or exchanges. I might want it so that I can resell the item in the future. And, quite simply, I paid for it, so I want it.

In Taiwan, with this custom of installing things for you, I think the habit has also developed of not giving the customer the original packaging. Why, after all, would you want that stuff? It’s garbage more or less and if you take it home, you’ll now have to pay to have it taken away with the garbage. So the store, by removing all the packaging and wrapping, is doing the customer a favor. Deep down, though, I never feel that way. I want the packaging, and when the store keeps it, I think they are trying to pull a fast one on me. I suspect that they are trying to cheat me in some way. Perhaps the object was actually used and not new, and by keeping the packaging they can then resell another used item as new. Perhaps by keeping the packaging they can get away without paying taxes. Who knows? In any event, I always have to ask for the packaging. I even asked for the boxes that my rabies and typhoid vaccine came in. The stuff is in my body. I might as well have the box it came in so that I can read the contents.

Sometimes there is a real wrinkle in the system, and that brings me back to my handlebar tape story. As I mentioned, the guy had only used one piece of tape total. Two long pieces of tape come in each box – one piece for each side of the handlebar. But since he had wrapped the bar ends, he just cut one piece in half, and that was enough. This left one entire piece. And when the guy finished and I approved of the job, he clearly expected me to roll my bike out of his shop and go home. I was standing there because I was waiting for him to pack up the rest of the tape in the original box and give it to me. Eventually, I pointed out that he’d only used half the tape. Could I please have the other half? He seemed surprised that I wanted it. After all, I’d wanted tape on my bar ends. I had tape on my bar ends. Why did I need the extra piece? I was surprised that it was even an issue. I wanted it because I’d paid for it. Not only that, I wanted the original box it came in. Further, I wanted the bar end plugs that he’d removed from my bike. The handlebar tape came with new plugs – special plugs to be used with the tape. He’d removed the old plugs and just thrown them on the work bench. I wanted them back. Who knows? The handlebar tape might not work out, and I might want to use those old plugs again. There could be a hundred reasons I wanted the extra tape, the box, and the old plugs. We finally got that sorted, and then I decided to pick up a spare set of brake pads for my front and rear brakes. This led to some confusion, too, because I just wanted the brake pads to take home. I’d put them into my luggage and take them travelling with me as an extra set to be installed at some point in the future. He was going on the assumption that he had to now install those brake pads. In his experience, customers don’t take brake pads home. We got through that misunderstanding, too, and I ultimately left the shop very happy and marvelling at my wonderful bar ends with their soft and supple tape.

 

Tags: bike, Bike Shop, bike touring, job, pannier bags, Taiwan