Breaking It Down

Gotta do this quick before my other self comes back and tells me I should be studying/doing more productive things.
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It was another typical day at the noon Hains Point ride. By typical I obviously mean giant pain in my ass. If YGD wanted some extra filler for his site, I could just wear a motherfucking helmet cam and I could put on a veritable clinic on the anatomy of getting dropped.

Step 1: Show up to Hains Point
Step 2: Ride backwards until you see the swarm, quickly turn around
Step 3: Stick with the pack for n laps, building up your confidence and furthering your delusional opinion that you are a somewhat "decent" bike racer.
Step 4: As you've most likely been averaging 30mph the entire time (ed- more like 6 bijillion), you think it's a good idea to come around a Harley rider who's most likely soft pedaling
Step 5: Eat wind. Lots of it.
Step 6: Explode.

There you have it. I have broken down my ride today into six simple steps, or what I affectionately call "the bane of my existence."

In other news,
I shaved my legs using the mullet principle of "all business up front, all party in the back." I thinking keeping the hair on the back of my legs will help smooth the airflow off of them, thus reducing drag. I'll try them out for Jeff Cup and get back to you with the results. I'm already planning the next phase of leg hair efficiency: Leg Hair Mohawk. (ed- Embrocation, Pomade? Tomato, Tomahto right?)

Mind the Gap

There are several reasons why you should wash your hands thoroughly after applying embrocation to your legs. We've all heard the wild tales of incidents in the bathroom involving embrocation on *ahem* sensitive areas. Truth be told, I've never done that. Mostly because I'm pretty careful when I'm doing stuff down there, especially when I'm in spandex, but also because I have a bidet that doubles as a fire extinguisher. And then there's always the one where you reach up to wipe something out of your eye with what you thought was a clean finger, which I call the Dirty Sanchez of the embrocation world. It sucks, but again I don't do that often since whenever it's embro weather, I'm usually wearing full finger gloves. Today's lesson in embro-sanitation comes from my lovely noon ride at Hains Point. I rode down from home and got in the mix with pretty quick guys today. The legs aren't there yet, but at least they were shiny in their embrocated glory. It was the perfect weather for it too, with mostly cloudy skies and pretty breezy conditions down at The Point. After taking my time getting home (aka I was completely out of gas), I jumped in the shower and suddenly realized the mistake I had made. While I was wearing gloves and arm warmers, there was a small gap between them. And if you've ever worn embro on a sunny day, you'll know that shit is like SPF -55. It might as well be fucking Crisco. It's actually fun to watch your legs sizzle in the sun, knowing that you're gonna have the most PRO-looking legs, or in my case the most PRO-looking fat blobs. But I messed up when I didn't get all the embro off my hands today and some of it got on my wrists right where the gap between my arm warmers and gloves was today. I have a subtle inch-wide tan line across each wrist. So now I look like some freaky, starved Chippendales dancer with horrible tan lines. So to all that use embro, mind the gap.

Bridging the Gap: Spring Cleaning

In an effort to keep this silly blog alive, I'm reviving the Bridging the Gap posts which will consist of lame, incoherent thoughts and other shit no one really cares about.
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It's kind of a bummer when spring starts. I'm ecstatic that the weather (and the roads) are decent enough that I can ride outside. What I'm not quite excited about is the amount of work I have to do in the saddle. The legs are shit right now. In terms of wattage, I probably couldn't power a compact fluorescent lightbulb. The good thing is that I've set goals, both for the short-term and the long-term. They include such things like sticking to a training regimen, eating right, racing more and peaking for one or two specific races (which I'm keeping secret). Fortunately, the season is long (almost too long) and I have time until I need to be in shape. So I guess I'll just bide my time blowing up my legs at noon rides and any hammerfests I can roll into.

Down and Dirty

"Go roll hard like the Belgians," I said to myself this afternoon. It was cold and drizzly outside today. The forecast was calling for snow that never came, so to celebrate I rode my bike. I had a pretty decent time out there, despite the obvious lack of fitness, but coming back my bike started making... noises. And these weren't the normal bike noises, like my chain desperately shifting into an easier gear. These were noises that immediately reminded me of my other set of excuses for why I don't ride in the shit weather.

Sand and grit now cover my bike. The noises were coming from a chain, crank, and headset in desperate need of cleaning. Nails on a chalkboard? To a mechanic, that's nothing compared to grit on a drivetrain. After I got off the bike, with the post-ride embrocation burn setting in I quickly cleaned and lubed the chain and left it hanging on the repair stand to dry. It's not uncommon to hear a wrench say something along the lines of "I hate cleaning my bike, I work on bikes all day and the last thing I want to do when I go home is work on another one." And this would be true in this case as well (except for the "all day" thing; it's still the off-season for a lot of folks). I will add however, that another reason why I don't like to work on my own bikes is because when I do, it has be done to perfection. Anything less than perfection will ultimately lead to more aggravation, cursing, and drinking the next time I go out for a ride. You missed a spot wrapping your bars? Drink, wrap them again, then drink some more. Forget to true the wheels? Grab a couple cold ones and sit down to the truing stand. Bottom bracket still creaking? Where's the tequila? I'll admit most of the drinking isn't spurred on by faulty wrenching, but any night when you have a reason to drink can't be counted as alcoholism right?

In other news:
As part of my ride, I took the W&OD and Custis Trails down to the Italian Store from the community center in Vienna. The trails are mostly clear thanks to the rain, with a few spots of slush and ice that I would bet melt away before the weekend's over. Another thing to note about riding the trails, there have been many dog owners who have left their pet's "artwork" on display all over the trail. Keep that in mind next time you ride the trail on a drizzly day and are gasping for air with your mouth open like some fat, unfit wannabe bike racer.