MacroBlog

Ephrata, Pa. – It was a cold, gray Saturday morning in early February, and we were about 25 miles into a very hilly 45-mile ride from Ephrata up to Texter Mountain.

I’d begun lagging behind my buddies because of some annoying shifting problems. It seemed like the usual nonsense you get when the chain or sprockets are worn, or the derailleur is badly out of adjustment– skipping just when you’re applying the heaviest force to the pedals. At one point as I was standing and cranking hard, it skipped so violently I almost crashed. “Nice save,” said a guy behind me.

A similar incident years ago at the Tour de France sent Tyler Hamilton over the handlebars, a nasty crash in which he cracked his collarbone due to failure of the freewheel. I was not keen on replicating that, so I slowed down further.

Before long the skipping became regular, and I fell behind even more as I stopped to examine my chain. Sure enough, it was coming apart at one of the links, where a pin was hanging on for dear life to just one of the plates instead of both, and that plate was bent. It was a wonder the thing still worked at all.

Grotesquely deformed derailleur

Kneeling in grass by the side of the road, I tried to bend it a little straighter by hand. Kyle showed up and asked what I was doing. “You’ll probably just make it worse,” he said. Less than a mile Half a mile (Kyle tells me) down the road,  catastrophic failure ensued. The chain snagged my derailleur and triggered instant, violent destruction. I hadn’t been going fast, so I didn’t crash when the rear wheel locked up.

But enough energy went in to stopping my rear wheel to pretzel the poor derailleur, which now jutted at a grotesque angle from the right side of the bike, and was tangled in the spokes as well.

“You forgot the bike toss,” says Kyle. OK, I guess I do remember picking  up the bike and throwing it to the side of the road in disgust. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t as emphatic as the famous Bjarne Riis bike toss in the ’97 Tour.

Kyle  returned to help me by standing on the frame while I tugged the derailleur hard enough to free it from the spokes.

With the rear wheel free, I now had the equivalent of an Amishman’s scooter. However, we were 15 miles from my car in very hilly terrain… too far to walk the uphill portions in bike shoes. Pretty soon Bill Brown, Dave Stauffer and the others started to appear, having detected the absence of several in the group. Bill said he had a smart phone, so we could figure out where the heck we were, so that I could call my wife for a ride. (She’s a cyclist too, and over the years we have gladly performed such rescues for each other.)

But then Bill said, “Get on,”  put his hand on my back and started pushing me.

And that’s the rest of the story. Pretty soon Dave Stauffer came up on the other side, reached out his hand, and I felt a new surge of power in my spine. Then the other guys, including Ken Lessans, David (I still don’t have your last name memorized, David), Tom Lausch (who is coming back from surgery and shouldn’t even have been riding as hard as he did solo, never mind pushing me), Marlin Hess, and Jay Brubaker were lending a hand.

On the steepest hills I got off and ran (in my mountain bike shoes, which I was glad to be wearing) and at some points I was able to do the scooter push with my left foot, making like half a Fred Flintstone. Yeah, you guys, I heard the Amish scooter cracks…

But on the level, on the downhills, and on a surprising number of climbs, I was magically propelled at high rates of speed. The backbone of the effort was Bill, who is blessed with an engine not unlike that of a Kawasaki or Yamaha. Or a Harley– that might be more appropriate, given the steady, endless stream of torque. A diesel Harley. Yeah.

The next biggest contributor was Dave Stauffer, who would just redline himself at high cadence to get me up over the next rise, drop back, then come up again. This is not to minimize the efforts of the other guys– everybody gave what they could. If the shoe had been on the other foot, my bird-like 135 pounds wouldn’t have generated much surplus energy for anyone else.

At some points we were doing over 20 mph, and of course I bombed the downhills, staying off the brakes as best I could. Once, there were three guys at work… Dave on my right, Bill on my left, and someone (not sure who) pushing Bill. This continued for the entire 15-mile trip back to the parking lot.

Hey, sorry if this post got wordy, but so be it. Unless you’ve had eight or nine of your good friends come to your rescue and push you home, you just don’t know what a cool feeling it is.

Speaking of which, it was a cold feeling too. With the temperature hovering around 40 degrees F, I was not dressed for sedentary cycling. My motorcycling days are mostly past, but I remember some VERY cold rides.

As a final inconvenience, my buddies (minus Tom, Kyle and Barry Free, whose routes home diverged from the group’s) tolerated my setting them up for a group photo despite our being late getting back.

Then they threatened to leave me stranded next time if I don’t put on a brand new derailleur hanger, chain, and whatever else it needs.

That seems fair. They know me better than I thought.

Update 3/7/12:  Repairs consisted of pounding the derailleur hanger straight, replacing one part in the derailleur, and installing a new chain. Subsequently I realized that the rear cassette was shot, which is what precipitated the entire chain of mechanical failures in the first place by causing the chain to skip over the sprocket teeth, eventually tearing it apart. So now the bike has a new cassette too.

###

In this modern era of the Interwebs, every business is a publishing business. As a result, instead of being clustered exclusively at magazines and newspapers, writers are finding their way into into a variety of companies, whose owners are finding a need for writing ability that didn’t exist ten years ago.

If you run a business, you may already know people who write well and are versatile. Sure, they have talent with words– they didn’t get to be pros without getting their point across clearly in a style appropriate to the audience, all while avoiding grammatical and punctuation errors.

But what about their other skills, such as the ability to research a topic quickly and thoroughly? Suppose you find a writer who also knows his or her way around the Web and social media? Now you have someone who can affect a company’s bottom line in all sorts of ways, with powerful, polished writing that resonates with customers, staff, suppliers, business partners, and the world. Here are five points to ponder:

1. Professional writing applies not just to websites, marketing and advertising, but to business letters, conference summaries, internal documents, knowledge bases, even articles for submission to publications. Published articles in industry trade journals are a wonderful way to complement your marketing strategy, raise awareness of your brand and increase your company’s prestige in the minds of customers. All the above will have a positive effect on revenue.

2. Website content management – Are there errors, bad links, and outdated information on your company website because nobody updates it regularly? Is your site being optimized to attract search traffic, and organized to serve visitors efficiently? Is there any reason for people to read what’s on your site? Time after time, usability studies show that if you build a clean, compelling website, you’ll have a competitive advantage.

3. Search engine optimization and marketing (SEO and SEM) – Do you have anyone in charge of these areas? A writer’s skills figure heavily in these word-based disciplines. Hiring a writer to manage them could make a big difference in leads, conversions, and sales.

4. Social media marketing – Agencies can help get you started, but who inside your company is paying daily attention? Knowing what’s being said online about your business is important to protect your business reputation. You can’t fake this or hand it off to outsiders. Learn by interacting with customers, both happy and unhappy. If nobody at all is mentioning your business online, it’s the perfect time to step in and take control of your online image!

5. Effective email campaigns – Here too, an internal staff person who can write professional copy, hire graphic designers, set up and manage mailing lists, administer and track results can be more effective– and cost-effective– than an outside agency.

The list of potential uses for a writer goes on and on. How about powerfully written request for testimonial letters? Use of testimonials on websites and other marketing media can greatly increase the odds of acquiring a new customer. What about customer surveys? Even small companies can benefit from regularly polling their customers and analyzing responses.

Now that I’ve advocated the idea, where can you find such a person? You’re reading one of his blog posts right now. How’s that for a call to action?

###

Siegrist's Mill Covered Bridge on Sunday, 9/11/11

On Sunday morning, after the water had gone back down from Tropical Storm Lee flooding, I rode around on my bike taking pics with my phone cam. First, I wanted to see what was left of the Siegrist’s Mill covered bridge, built in 1885 and swept off its foundations several days ago.

Second, I wanted to ride down Pinkerton Road along the creek and see the damage to the stone bridge. I’ve now posted three photos from that scene.

In one of the panoramic shots, a beautiful inset marble slab shows the date of the bridge, the contractor’s name, and the names of the county commissioners.

The stone bridge on Pinkerton is still passable on foot or by bike. Obviously the road is badly damaged.

This bridge was 128 years old when damaged by Tropical Storm Lee.

Another view of the approach.