1000 Miles

I hit just over 1000 miles today as I passed through Green River, UT. That includes all of the highway mileage as well as any side trips, including grocery stores and all of the mileage in the National Parks. And exactly 1 month of biking so far. Hopefully I will be able to increase the mileage as I go along, aiming for roughly 50-80 miles a day, but right now I am probably hitting 40-50 or so, unless there are special circumstances, like the mileage in the National Parks where I have to get back outside the park to camp for the night.

And the best part, so far, no flat tires!

Repairs

On the way from Monticello to Moab my bike started making strange noises so once I got to Moab I wanted to have it checked out. I went to the first bike store I came to, which was Moab cyclery, and described the noise and what actions cause it. Basically every time my right pedal neared the top of it's rotation there was a creak that didn't use to happen.

After I described it to the mechanic he was able to tell right away that the bottom bracket was either loose or dirty. He proposed to take it apart, clean it and then re-oil everything. After about 25 minutes he had it back together and had me try it out. Fortunately that fixed the problem, so I am back in business, at the cost of $15. At some point in the near future I would like to re-oil the chain and everything, but it can hold off for a bit.

After my previous research I have also been looking for different gears for the bike to give me a better ratio, mainly for climbing all the hills. I checked every shop in Moab, but none if them had any smaller gears for a five bolt setup like I have in front. Ideally I would like to replace the 30t gear I have right now with a 24t gear. This would help out quite a bit, dropping the slowest gear down to an ideal 6 mph, instead of the 7.8 mph ratio I have now. I might also replace the rear cassette with something bigger, which would also help the situation. That change is a bit more involved, likely involving a change in rear derailler as well.

Proper gearing

I did a bit of research to find out more about proper shifting technique for long distance biking. It turns out that it is more efficient to rotate your feet at a higher rpm with lower gearing. The ideal rpm is roughly 80-85, which is much faster than most people would be pedaling.

I also counted my gearing on the front and back gears to see what that might translate into for mph.

On the front gear I have 3 gears, with 30, 42, and 52 teeth respectively.
On the rear gear I have 8 gears, with 12, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, and 25 teeth respectively.

Given the tire sizing, one complete tire rotation is roughly 86.35 inches traveled.

Putting this all together I can figure out the ideal mph for each gearing ratio, as follows:

	52 teeth	42 teeth	30 teeth
12 teeth	28.34	22.89	16.35
13 teeth	16.16	21.26	15
15 teeth	22.7	18.31	13.08
17 teeth	20.01	16.16	11.51
19 teeth	17.9	14.45	10.33
21 teeth	16.22	13.08	9.35
23 teeth	14.78	11.97	8.5
25 teeth	13.6	10.99	7.85

This has a few interesting features. First, I should be pedaling a lot faster, instead of harder. Second, I had always assumed that the middle front gear was always a higher ratio than the smaller gear. It turns out that some of the ratios with the smaller gear in the front can actually be higher, so it is not always a low, medium, high gearing in terms of speed.

I can use this information with my bike computer to determine which gearing I should be using, in an ideal situation. I have previously just been going based on changing gears whenever it felt too easy or hard to pedal. I'll have to see how this actually goes though, but now I have some data to use.

Bike Computer

I got a bicycle computer a little ways back, and here are a few stats
Top speed: 39.5 mph (downhill)
Avg speed: 10.4 mph

uphill in lowest gear 4.5-6 mph
avg flat speed: 13 mph