This is it. We have reached deepest, darkest realm of winter riding. I applaud those who have diligently plugged away indoors on their trainers. I just don't have the mental fortitude to do such things. I feel like I've been on pretty even footing this winter. Balancing much needed time off the bike with some long, easy rides. I even weathered the blizzard quite admirably as well; going on long hikes through the snow and even taking part in the impromptu SnowCXpacalypse. But then, nothing. The first day of riding in the fresh snow was novel and fun. Days passed and the snow stayed and it was trampled and compacted into rutted, foot-shaped patterns of ice, which as you can guess isn't very fun to ride a bicycle over. Now even with 40+degree weather and somewhat dry roads, I still can't ride because the snow is still sitting on the shoulders of nearly every bike route in the region. Oh, and what's that snow doing? Melting. Great, right? Wrong. All it does is melt until nightfall when it fucking freezes again and becomes black ice. I'm going to get out there eventually. I'm not going to ride fast and I'm definitely not riding near that snow bank that used to be the other half of the road. What concerns me is the natural propensity for black ice to make things turn to shit. Since it looks like a plain wet spot on the road, you never know where it is and because of this you can't react or brace yourself until you're about to eat shit. Even my ultimate ninja skills can't save me from black ice, which is a total letdown. Not only because I really want to ride my bike, but also because ninja lessons are really, really expensive (not to mention hard to find).
It doesn't help that everyone on the MABRA listserv and my team listserv has been posting updates on road conditions and where they're planning to ride "just to see" if the road are clear. It also doesn't help that the MABRA schedule looked full of interesting races, many of which I actually want to do well in. Where is this fitness supposed to come from? To put things in perspective. Jeff Cup is in just over a month. What. The. Hell?
I've been whining about this crap all day at the shop, so I'll stop it here and take a more constructive approach. (ed- What's better than hanging around a bunch of bikes in the winter when you can't ride?) So here's the plan:
1-
Ride anyways. Fuck the roads and the traffic. I'm just gonna ride down the middle of every motherfucking street that I should be riding down anyways had it not been for the blizzard.
2-
Pay someone. There's got to be enough people in the area to pull some money together and pay some John Deer to bring his lifted Bronco with a snowplow and clear the entire loop around Hains Point. I've already found a guy who'll do it for $25/hr and I'll volunteer to run the BikeReg.com site to collect the money. The park service can suck it.
3-
Leave. Maybe not forever, but definitely for the weekends. The plan is to go down south for a night or two over the weekend, maybe race a little but really just ride a whole lot. It might not work with my class/work schedule and I'm sure there might be someone who'll miss me (right?), but desperate times call for desperate measures. Also just so we're keeping track, we are currently 2/2 for Tradezone cancellations. Who's taking bets on next weekend's TZ? I'm putting my money on the RIR race instead. I gotta at least give this whole weekend migration thing a chance. I'm going nuts up here.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Stinkers
My bike stinks.
No. I'm not comparing it to EBH's Pinarello. [His bike is just alright.]
I'm talking about how my bike actually smells.
The little riding I've done these past couple weeks have been almost exclusively on my commuter rig. I bring it on my two-part car+bike commute to class and work and with 28c slicks, full fenders, and a rack it's pretty much perfect for riding where ever there isn't ice or 3 feet of snow. [Note: there are currently very few such places.] I did however make a few modifications recently in light of the heavier use it's been getting. Drop bars were added to keep any fixie hipsters from thinking my bike was "cool." And I also took one out of the ProTour mechanics' books and used grease on the chain to seal in an initial layer of lube and keep the snow/salt muck from screwing with my stuff too much. So far it's held up admirably and my chain hasn't uttered a single creak all winter, despite the salty, margarita-like slush out there. I've tried several different combinations of grease/lube, but haven't really found a clear winner. I've used everything from Shimano Special Grease (oooOOOooo! Flouro Yellow!) to Park Tool's pukey-green PolyLube 1000. Personally, I tend to lean towards whatever is cheapest. The mechanic in me cringes whenever I see the filth on my chain (at least it's not in my chain) so I'm frequently wiping off the excess or reapplying a new coat of grease. Such obsessive compulsive behavior can end up being quite pricey when you're using several tubes of high-grade teflon grease each winter. Also, I don't recommend doing this if your clothes aren't already stained with several years worth of bike grease, unless you're already in the market for a new wardrobe. Actually I don't recommend doing this at all to your chain. Having just re-read the above paragraph, I realize I'm starting to sound like those whackos that come into the shop singing praises about all this crazy shit they use on their bikes, like motor oil on their chains and WD-40 on their squeaky brake pads. And much like those crazies, I have taken an obvious digression from my original thoughts and written about something stupid.
My bike smells. [Oh shit, this is gonna be stupid too]
It smells and I don't care if this is stupid, but after a couple weeks of riding in the pre-treated, treated, and post-treated(?) roads my bike smells bad. It's not the kind of taint sweat-soaked neoprene saddle cover smell that you can manufacture in any fat man's gym bag. It's the kind of stink you get from a backed-up sink that you just ran a 25ft snake down to clear. That's right. Sewer stink. I guess it makes sense since instead of the water draining from the roads, it sits on top in it's semi-frozen state being peed on by hobos and splashed in by cars, trucks, and people dumb enough to ride their greasy, dirty, salty bikes outside.
No. I'm not comparing it to EBH's Pinarello. [His bike is just alright.]
I'm talking about how my bike actually smells.
The little riding I've done these past couple weeks have been almost exclusively on my commuter rig. I bring it on my two-part car+bike commute to class and work and with 28c slicks, full fenders, and a rack it's pretty much perfect for riding where ever there isn't ice or 3 feet of snow. [Note: there are currently very few such places.] I did however make a few modifications recently in light of the heavier use it's been getting. Drop bars were added to keep any fixie hipsters from thinking my bike was "cool." And I also took one out of the ProTour mechanics' books and used grease on the chain to seal in an initial layer of lube and keep the snow/salt muck from screwing with my stuff too much. So far it's held up admirably and my chain hasn't uttered a single creak all winter, despite the salty, margarita-like slush out there. I've tried several different combinations of grease/lube, but haven't really found a clear winner. I've used everything from Shimano Special Grease (oooOOOooo! Flouro Yellow!) to Park Tool's pukey-green PolyLube 1000. Personally, I tend to lean towards whatever is cheapest. The mechanic in me cringes whenever I see the filth on my chain (at least it's not in my chain) so I'm frequently wiping off the excess or reapplying a new coat of grease. Such obsessive compulsive behavior can end up being quite pricey when you're using several tubes of high-grade teflon grease each winter. Also, I don't recommend doing this if your clothes aren't already stained with several years worth of bike grease, unless you're already in the market for a new wardrobe. Actually I don't recommend doing this at all to your chain. Having just re-read the above paragraph, I realize I'm starting to sound like those whackos that come into the shop singing praises about all this crazy shit they use on their bikes, like motor oil on their chains and WD-40 on their squeaky brake pads. And much like those crazies, I have taken an obvious digression from my original thoughts and written about something stupid.
My bike smells. [Oh shit, this is gonna be stupid too]
It smells and I don't care if this is stupid, but after a couple weeks of riding in the pre-treated, treated, and post-treated(?) roads my bike smells bad. It's not the kind of taint sweat-soaked neoprene saddle cover smell that you can manufacture in any fat man's gym bag. It's the kind of stink you get from a backed-up sink that you just ran a 25ft snake down to clear. That's right. Sewer stink. I guess it makes sense since instead of the water draining from the roads, it sits on top in it's semi-frozen state being peed on by hobos and splashed in by cars, trucks, and people dumb enough to ride their greasy, dirty, salty bikes outside.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Not Just Surviving
I seem to be weathering the snomaggeddon just fine. The trick? Eating. A lot.
Think about it. On Thanksgiving and Christmas, do you ever have an insane urge to ride? I don't. I sometimes have the masochistic need to further hurt myself after already doing some damage to a holiday spread of turkey, ham, potatoes, pie, etc. But that particular desire for pain comes from being food-drunk (and also alcohol-drunk) and isn't exactly the same kind that motivates me to go on Hains Point noon ride. So this weekend, I put myself in a state of food-comatose bliss and ate a whole bunch of gross food. Several pounds of pizza, candy, and soda later, I can safely say that I have no urge to ride 50+ miles this weekend.
I did make it out for a ride today though. A couple of the District Velocity guys posted an impromptu cyclocross stage race in the city and I couldn't resist. Obvious the need to do stupid things was driving this decision and I soon found myself being launched through the air and landing on my head on more than one occasion. We sure got a ton of stares as people were wondering why these lycra-clad weirdos were riding down a sledding hill on their bikes. Somewhere along the ride, I got a slow leak in my tubeless setup, which I was totally expecting since I haven't put new tubeless juice in those wheels since August. I also somehow broke the mount for the racheting buckle on my Sidis. Nearly every part of the Dominator buckle system is replaceable and I had to break the one that was hard-mounted into the shoe's upper. Lame. I called it a day, took a hot shower that made my toes sting, and ate the last bits of pizza I had in the fridge. Besides all the broken bike stuff, I'd say I'm surviving the Snowpacalypse just fine.
Think about it. On Thanksgiving and Christmas, do you ever have an insane urge to ride? I don't. I sometimes have the masochistic need to further hurt myself after already doing some damage to a holiday spread of turkey, ham, potatoes, pie, etc. But that particular desire for pain comes from being food-drunk (and also alcohol-drunk) and isn't exactly the same kind that motivates me to go on Hains Point noon ride. So this weekend, I put myself in a state of food-comatose bliss and ate a whole bunch of gross food. Several pounds of pizza, candy, and soda later, I can safely say that I have no urge to ride 50+ miles this weekend.
I did make it out for a ride today though. A couple of the District Velocity guys posted an impromptu cyclocross stage race in the city and I couldn't resist. Obvious the need to do stupid things was driving this decision and I soon found myself being launched through the air and landing on my head on more than one occasion. We sure got a ton of stares as people were wondering why these lycra-clad weirdos were riding down a sledding hill on their bikes. Somewhere along the ride, I got a slow leak in my tubeless setup, which I was totally expecting since I haven't put new tubeless juice in those wheels since August. I also somehow broke the mount for the racheting buckle on my Sidis. Nearly every part of the Dominator buckle system is replaceable and I had to break the one that was hard-mounted into the shoe's upper. Lame. I called it a day, took a hot shower that made my toes sting, and ate the last bits of pizza I had in the fridge. Besides all the broken bike stuff, I'd say I'm surviving the Snowpacalypse just fine.
Friday, February 5, 2010
The Eve of the Snowpacalypse
Why is it that on the eve of the second coming the Snowpacalypse I have my worst case of cabin fever to date? Could it be the lack of general riding for the past couple weeks? Or maybe it's because all I've been doing in my free time has been watching clips from the Tour Down Under, my 12hr DVD set of the 2005 Tour de France, and other race videos. I bet it's also because I'm kicking off the race season in a couple of weeks down at NAHBS. Oh yeah. ANDI'MGOINGTOFUCKINGNAHBS!!!! Dammit I'm so psyched about this!
But I haven't just been sitting on my ass and wishing I was riding. I did out a couple times on the Surly Cross Check, albeit as part of my two-part (car+bike) commute into the city for work and school. The bike's built up as my commuter rig with slickish 28c tires. Despite the obvious disadvantage, I've still been riding on the Custis trail. It's the same story every day. I park in my secret Arlington location and ride to the trail right behind the Italian Store. That one patch of trail is perfectly clear and dry. My heart jumps a little and I begin to think that maybe the above-freezing temps have miraculously melted away the previous day's snow and ice. I get maybe 15 yards of dry asphalt before my hopes are dashed across the hard-packed snowy ground. The rest of my ride is along the trail is a series bumps, "controlled" slides, and dabbed feet. But don't get me wrong. I'm having fun. At least I'm on a bike doing something. I'm bunkering down in the city for Snow Dookie 2010 and you better believe I'm bringing my (real) 'cross bike with me. You'll find me on the C&O Canal Towpath.
But I haven't just been sitting on my ass and wishing I was riding. I did out a couple times on the Surly Cross Check, albeit as part of my two-part (car+bike) commute into the city for work and school. The bike's built up as my commuter rig with slickish 28c tires. Despite the obvious disadvantage, I've still been riding on the Custis trail. It's the same story every day. I park in my secret Arlington location and ride to the trail right behind the Italian Store. That one patch of trail is perfectly clear and dry. My heart jumps a little and I begin to think that maybe the above-freezing temps have miraculously melted away the previous day's snow and ice. I get maybe 15 yards of dry asphalt before my hopes are dashed across the hard-packed snowy ground. The rest of my ride is along the trail is a series bumps, "controlled" slides, and dabbed feet. But don't get me wrong. I'm having fun. At least I'm on a bike doing something. I'm bunkering down in the city for Snow Dookie 2010 and you better believe I'm bringing my (real) 'cross bike with me. You'll find me on the C&O Canal Towpath.
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