Bridging the Gap: The Most Important Meal Of The Day

My breakfast today consisted of 1 Snickers ice cream bar, 1 can of Starbucks' Double Shot Espresso, and half a 32oz bottle of blue-flavored Gatorade. I would have finished the rest of it, but considering I downed all of that in approximately 73.3 seconds, I was too worried that my ever worsening case of brain freeze would make my head explode. I've been up since 6:45 this morning and headed out on a 3-hour ride without breakfast. The lethal combination of sleep deprivation, weak legs, no breakfast, and a crazy sweet tooth had me riding from Vienna to Bethesda with blinding carb withdrawal, hence the retarded breakfast. That ice cream hit the spot though and it's not like I stick to a specific diet. Hell, half of everything I've ever consumed at the bike shop isn't real food, but rather a combination of grease, chain lube, degreaser, and bike packaging. And if you were wondering what chain lube tastes like, it tastes exactly the way it smells: like ass, stinky robot ass.

Bridging the Gap: Interbike

Dammit I want to be there right now. And not because it's in Vegas and because there will be tons of "models" there. I want to go simply to play with bike stuff. That and the swag. You can't forget about the swag.

I want to demo bikes till my legs fall off. I want to play with little trinkets till my fingers fall off. I want to hear sales pitches until me ears fall off. Needless to say, I'd gladly pay an arm or a leg to go to Interbike. Well, maybe not a cycling-specific appendage, but maybe a pinky toe or something. Who wants to go with me? Or better yet, who wants to pay for me to go?

If you're considering making a donation, please make checks out to "Idiot Cyvant's Dream Vacation Fund"

Questions?

Whoever said there isn't such a thing as a stupid question clearly never worked at a bike shop. We get a million stupid questions every day. It usually starts around 9:30 in the morning or earlier if any employee is dumb enough to be there that early (I'm guilty of this) with the shop's first "customer." The question is usually phrased as a surprised passive inquiry: "So you guys aren't open?" No! We're not open you dunce. Why do you think the doors are locked, the lights are off, and I'm still in my riding gear? Aren't there giant numbers on the front doors that tell you what times we're open? Didn't you have to knock at the back door for a whole 5 minutes before I acknowledged your presence? What could be so important that you need to bring your bicycle to the shop more than an hour before the doors open?

Other Not Stupid (but really stupid) questions:
- Oh, there's a tube in there?
- What pressure is my tire rated to?
- Can you fix my gas-powered scooter or motorcycle?
- Can you install these carbon aerobars for me?


And while there are plenty of dumb questions to ask me, more often than not I find myself asking the questions and getting a dumb answer back.

-Example 1-
Idiot Cyvant: How can I help you?
Someone: My bike makes noises.
IC: Under what circumstances does it make noise?
S1: It usually happens when I'm riding at 12-19.5mph.
IC: Are you pedaling hard? What gear are you in? Does it happen when you're out of the saddle or when you're seated? When did you last get a tune up? When did you last lube your chain?
S1: Pedaling? You mean you don't work on Vespas?

-Example 2-
Idiot Cyvant [ringing a customer out]: Is there anything else I can help you with?
Someone 2: Do you know martial arts?
IC: No. No, I don't.
S12: Oh, well... I just saw you twirling your pen and tools around and just thought you might know some martial arts.
IC: Ok... (?)
S12: Have a nice day!


Or, y'know, maybe it's me and not the racist, insensitive, ungrateful, and thankfully few morons that come to the shop. Maybe it's that I'm tired from this cold I've been fighting, a long day's work, riding for the first time in weeks, or suffering from withdrawal of some kind of controlled substance like alcohol or pasta. But the light at the end of the tunnel is that I'm going to get some quality sleep now and will wake up bright eyed and bushy tailed to peruse the internet for hours on end reading about new bike stuff from Interbike.

Ikea Defeat

So what am I rewarded with when I tried to start up the good ol' Swedish furniture building machine? I get shat on, that's what.

Still sullen (and slightly hungover) from breaking a wheel that's never even been ridden, I decided to reboot my mechanical hubris by building Ikea furniture. The desk unit was calling out my name, especially since I'm always in need of somewhere to put/organize/play with bike stuff. My thoughts before starting this project were somewhere along the lines of "Ok, this desk is two piece of giant crappy Ikea particle board and legs. How hard could it be to bolt this thing together?" Unfortunately, I didn't factor into the equation a few key components:

1) Ikea furniture is notorious for sucking
2) Ikea furniture and its modular "customizable" nature lead to a gamut of sucky roblems
3) Ikea employees (whose only job is to select the proper combination of sucky parts to make sucky furniture), for lack of a better word, SUCK!

As expected, the desk came in a variety of pieces. It's a somewhat large thing so the actual tabletop needed to be bolted together with a frame that also needed to be put together. I had ordered this desk from the Ikea showroom with the help of Some Guy, who spec'd all the pieces and arranged the delivery. I started with opening all the boxes; six or seven total. In addition to the expected desk components, there were two identical sets of instructions. Said instructions featured two fake words, "Ikea" and "Galant" (Swedish for "Mwahaha. I don't envy you!") and Swedish hieroglyphics that allegedly have instructions for every combination of desk you could possibly make. As an added bonus, if you buy an Ikea gas-powered generator and three sets of every desk combination you can build your very own Optimus Prime. Having not remembered which desk combo I ordered, I was left with no choice but to use process of elimination to determine the wonderful piece of furniture I was to build. But here's the kicker: I was missing pieces! Some Guy didn't pick the right pieces for my desk (and he was paid for it) and as a result, I sat on the floor for two hours alternately rotating pieces of Swedish particle board and scaffolding.

And even though it wasn't my fault this time, my mechanical abilities have been cast into further doubt and distrust. I don't know if I'll ever build anything again.


Also:
I went downtown today and caught the last half of the pro race of the Capital Criterium. Highlights included being two feet from Will Frischkorn and Christian Vande Velde and nearly running into Jonathan Vaughters on the sidewalk. Highlights didn't include the ridiculous parking situation around the race course (yes, I drove. Shame on me) and the ridiculous cold I've been dealing with.

Bridging the Gap: So Close!

I am an ass. I finally got all the parts in for this Gunnar project that I've been waiting to build. I bought the frame in July and have been accumulating parts somewhat sporadically. Today was supposed to be the day all these parts came together and I could finish the bike. But I am a dumbass. I over-tensioned the rear wheel, ruining my DT Swiss rim. Now I'm stuck in limbo for a week until another rim gets ordered. Dammitdammitdammitdammitdammit!


But let's look at the positive side of things:
- This gives me time to buy some carnuba wax and properly seal the paint.
- I like building wheels (despite being a retarded jackass and breaking mine)
- I have other bikes
- I probably won't even remember this happened considering I just bought a split of Chivas and will soon drink myself into oblivion.



Endnotes:
I don't suck at building wheels, I was caught in a moment of inattentiveness. Oddly enough, it was probably because I was sober when I was building the wheels.

Bridging the Gap: My Stuff

No. I am not compulsively checking the tracking numbers for the shop's order. Sure, it might contain the last few precious pieces for the bike I'm building, but there's no way I'm that obsessive about shiny objects made out of aluminum and carbon. After all it's just bike stuff right? Right?



My stuff just left the UPS distribution center in Alexandria and is out for delivery.

Hello? Is Anyone Out There?

I'm back at this blogging thing again. I took a bit of a hiatus to get drunk, work on bikes, fall off bikes, and punch hobos. Here's a quick update:

Ikea:
Damn those Swedes. It would seem that this conflict has reached a standstill. After building a small table, bed frame, and huge corner sofa, I tackled the dresser. While not the most difficult piece of furniture, it was probably the most mind-numbing. The instructions called for the assembler (me) to build the frame (x1) and then the drawers (x6!). And if you were wondering, building one big box and then six small boxes to put in the one big box is not fun. I don't think I'll be building much more furniture in the coming days. I'm pretty comfortable with the couch and its lovely view of several half-opened cardboard ikea boxes.

Bikes:

I really can't say that I've been taking time off to ride. I've taken quite a few quick spins on my fixie, but those don't come with any fitness points, especially since I was drinking a majority of the time. I have made a bit more progress with Gunnar Project 2008. The wheels are almost ready to roll and I order the rest of the parts today. As far as my other bikes, I cleaned up the Trek and then didn't ride it so it's just a really really clean "art" piece that doesn't match my fancy Swedish couch and packing materials. The Surly recently got an overhaul too. The drive-side BB cup was severely corroded to the point where it had essentially seized up. Race Face BB's have had a history of being shitty so I wasn't too heartbroken. A bit of bearing polish, super slick grease, and 45-minutes later I had both cups pieced apart, seals off, flushed out, polished, repacked, and reinstalled. I can't honestly say that it works as good as new, but I do have some interesting upgrades that I'll be saving up for this winter. Oh and where's my 'cross bike? It should be here soon...


Drinking:
If you thought that I'd have an extremely high tolerance for alcohol now you'd be very wrong. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Taking the cyclist approach, I've found a way to consume tons of booze without increasing my AlCoHol-Max, thus making me the most (financially) efficient drinker EVER. Despite this huge accomplishment, my alcohol intake lacks any lateral rigidity and I constantly find my drinking lay-up schedule passing laterally from one day to the next. This is known as the Bender Effect, in which a few drinks on a Monday night soon find themselves magically turned into multiple potent concoctions as soon as the clock strikes midnight and even more when Tuesday night rolls around. As is common with lacking lateral rigidity, I've noticed a sharp increase in vertical compliance, which in this case implies that my esophagus complies with my stomach when it wants to vertically eject the pub grub and several pitchers of beer that I've consumed. Curiously enough, this "vertical" phenomena occurs most often when I am hunched over a large porcelain throne of some sort.



Also,
Thanks for stopping by (all 12 of you). I promise I'll keep these posts coming more regularly now, as long as the above don't get in the way again.