idiot cyvant

Winter Wait Part Two - The Great Wall

2012-01-30T18:59:00.003+08:00

ChineseNew Year is a crazy holiday here. Thiscity essentially shuts down for 7 days. Most of its population return to their families' homes in variousprovinces throughout China. Many expatsdo the same or take the opportunity to go on vacation. Those few Beijingers that actually stay inthe city are presented with a weeklong fireworks demonstration. Firecrackers, rockets, Roman candles, andmortars are lit, fired, and launched all day with seemingly little regard forsafety or people's sleep schedules. Thankfully I'm a pretty sound sleeper and managed to snooze through thepercussive pyrotechnics displays bursting literally right outside the window ofmy 8th floor apartment. Despite theomnipresent explosions and streets littered with the smoldering remains ofcelebratory munitions, the Beijing population is significantly pared downduring CNY. It becomes as close to aghost town as one can imagine for a bustling city with a population of 12+million. The simple fact that I didn'thave to elbow anyone out of my way (unless I wanted to) was a novelty to meafter over 6 months of MMA-style pedestrian travel. CNY is a family holiday after all. It's a combination of Thanksgiving and(Gregorian) New Year celebrations. People spend time with the relatives, eat lots, and go on family outingsto temple fairs. Being that I'm herewithout family, I spent the first half of last week drinking in the wholeBeijing-style New Year celebration. Iwent to a few random parties and spent a fair amount of time at the handful ofbars and restaurants that were actually open during the holiday. Unwilling to lose my finely honed "crowdmanagement" skills, I ventured into a handful of traditional miaohui's (ortemple fairs) to battle my way through the hordes of Chinese tourists. I successfully elbowed, stomped, and wedgedmy way through the craziness to "chuan'r" (kabob-style street food) stalls, performancestages, and festival games. I evenmanaged to snap a few pictures as well. But you can only do so much celebrating and binge drinking in one week,so I made other plans to carry me through the holiday.

Wednesdaymorning, I packed my giant Chrome bag with (too much) stuff and rode my bike tothe Great Wall at a village called Mutianyu. Here are a few highlights:

My shitwas heavy

It'swinter and as such, one must prepare accordingly if one expects to becomfortable (and alive) at the end of a 100km slog through the mountains. Unfortunately, if you're this Idiot you wouldoverpack for every possible contingency imaginable in the mountains. This was mostly because only Idiots ride bythemselves in the middle of the winter on unfamiliar mountain roads. I packed enough to survive sleeping on theside of the road for a few days. Ipacked enough to fend off a Mongol horde when I reached the Great Wall (i.e. Ihad a big knife and was practicing my "angry" face). I packed 2 cameras, extra batteries, a sparelens, a giant flash, n+1 pairs of underwear and socks (where n=# of days spentin mountains) and enough anti-bonk ride fuel to bring the late Fausto Coppiback from the dead then give him a near-lethal food coma. And don't get me started on spare tools andbike parts, because I cursed every extra ounce of spare tubes, tools, Gorillatape, toe straps and zip ties that I lugged up those damn mountains.

My asswas slow

By now,you've realized that Idiots like to make things hard for themselves. Whether its weighing themselves down withunnecessary weight or just downright choosing the wrong equipment for the ride,I stood unified with fellow Idiots both far and near and rode an obnoxiouslyslow pace to my mountain retreat. Obviously being that it's the "off-season" here [ed - it'salways the off-season here] my fatass didn't have the fitness to push a biggear, which was made even steeper by the 700x35c cyclocross tires I threw onbefore my trip. Did I mention my shitwas heavy? Grinding up a small mountainroad with a 30lb pack and a 30lb bike on fat, knobby tires isn't going to helpme break any cycling land speed records. But thankfully that wasn't my intention in the first place. One of the best things about riding byyourself is that you can just ride your own pace. If you want to putz along uphill in your34x27, you can (and I definitely did). If you want to little ring it on the flats and spend your time veggingout in the saddle you can (and you better believe I did that too). All in all despite being crazy slow andridiculously overpacked, I didn't really regret my decisions despite thevulgarities spewing out of my mouth on some of the climbs. Obviously I'll pack smarter/lighter (and havesome semblance of athleticism and legs) the next time, but I used everything Ipacked and wasn't stressed to make it anywhere quickly. I did start worrying a bit when the sunstarted setting and I was in the bone-chilling shadow of the Yan mountainrange, but this Idiot was ready for just about anything, plus I was on vacationdammit!

I like mountains

I haven'tbeen on a vacation in a long time. Excluding a brief weekend trip to Xiamen a few weeks ago, I haven'tplanned any trips for myself in years that didn't involve some kind of bikeracing agenda. So even though thetemperatures averaged -4* C last week, nothing sounded better to me thanescaping the urban jungle and biking to a eco-retreat in the mountains next tothe Great Wall. The Brickyard was builtin 2009 from a reclaimed tile factory that was shut down due to increasedpollution regulations. The new ownersrenovated the compound and turned it into a 16-room lodge with a smallrestaurant, spa, and garden all designed and committed to environmentalsustainability. The simple luxuries offresh air, clear skies, and a remote location had been lost to me since I gotto Beijing, but I finally got out of the city and really enjoyed a couple daysin the mountains. In the simplest words:It was nice.

The GreatWall is epic

Evensimpler still is using the word "epic" to describe the GreatWall. A lot of people rag on the localsectors of the Wall as being touristy, crowded, or fake. Since Mutianyu is so close to the city, it'sprobably one of the more traversed parts, but thankfully not in the winter,when it's too cold for most tourists to make the trip out to themountains. It gets even better when youwake up early in the morning and beat the crowds. I got up before sunrise to take the short40-minute hike from my room to the base of the Wall. Getting there before most of the villageresidents had even woken up, I was the first one there and had the entire thingto myself. I watched the sun rise overthe hills and just sat around taking pictures as the light worked its way over thesleepy villages below. Touristy? Nah. I'll take a quiet morning hike along the Great Wall anywhere anytime andI'm definitely planning to go back.

The view from The Brickyard

The Sounds of Being Sharp

2012-01-16T12:26:00.000+08:00

I hate the sound of the air being sucked through the top of my plastic Starbucks lid. With each swig of my Americano, coffee is replaced by nothingness and there's an audible reminder that I'm becoming a complete square. In concert with the keys tapping on keyboards and shoes trudging along the thin office carpet, this whistling cup o' joe has become a featured artist in the official soundtrack of a desk jockey.

It's not enough to say I miss riding my bike. That's a given. The sense of freedom and exhilaration from riding a bike doesn't need to be explained to anyone who might've stumbled upon this blog. And while I'm still more than capable of achieving that same sense of adventure and excitement, those opportunities are becoming fewer and further between. I've since replaced time in the saddle with nights out, binge drinking until the wee hours in the morning, but it's not as if my priorities have changed. An epic early morning bike ride still takes precedence over boozing the night before, but my heavy drinking has become a function of the availability of safe, non-toxic riding conditions and opportunities to compete or participate in racing or riding events.

I miss being sharp on the bike. I knew I would, but nothing serves as a better reminder that your legs are worthless than attending a UCI World Cup Track race. Last weekend I attended the second day of Round 3 of the World Cup Track race at the Laoshan Velodrome, which was only my second time at a velodrome and my first as purely a spectator. I went by myself, and besides all the athletes and their supporting staff, I was only one of a few dozen in attendance. Alone with my thoughts, I reveled in the uniqueness of track racing. From a road and cyclocross background (sprinkled with a random backcountry mtb race every now and then), it was pretty amazing to see every aspect of a bike race in detail unfold right in front of you. You can observe racers' in their element, every nuance in their preparation and race tactics. A keen eye can spot the moment when a racer cracks, completely shuts down, and can't push his body any further. At the same time, you can pinpoint the exact moment a racer lays it all on the line and makes his bid for victory. It's like watching a chemical reaction unfold in a petri dish from beginning to end and it's something that you can't seem to get anywhere else. A 'cross race comes close, but you ultimately end up having some part of the race obscured from your view. As a spectator, watching the events at Laoshan was one of the most significant reminders that I miss having the legs for competition. My heart would yearn for the days of pinning numbers on as the air filled with the sounds of thick chains driving impossibly steep gears, disc wheels slicing through the air, and the faint breathes of the racers as they rumble along the wooden boards. It's not enough to say that it was an "experience." It was probably the most pure and concentrated summation of everything I miss about training and bike racing, to sharpen legs and mind to their full potential, and the hurts-so-good feeling of just plain going fast as hell. I know I've been a pretty mediocre racer relative to what a lot of people have managed to accomplish, but I'll be damned if I don't have plans to get those legs (or better ones) back.

Unlevel riding at a high level.

The Runs

2012-01-09T17:35:00.003+08:00

In what was quite literally my first vacation in several years, I visited Xiamen last weekend, escaping the bitter cold, snog/smow, and general craziness of the Beijing for a couple days. Xiamen, being a southern coastal city in the Fujian province, had fantastic air quality, warm weather, delicious seafood, and perfect conditions to run a marathon in January. Or if you're a fat desk jockey like this Idiot, you'd run the half marathon but with slightly more preparation than the last one you did.

Honestly, it wasn't really hard to do more in preparation for this run. My training for the Beijing half marathon in October was nil. You might even say it was negative training if you consider the fact that a week before the run I was in the US, drinking lots of delicious beer and pigging out on multiple trips to Chipotle. So with a handful of runs logged on a treadmill/torture device between October and January, my cup runneth over with confidence that I'd beat my previous time. I did. But then literally 15 minutes later, Peter Kamais finished his marathon. The full one. Of course, comparing myself to a professional marathoner is like comparing a sack of potatoes to a rocket ship. The only thing that could propel a potato at a velocity even remotely close to that of a rocket ship would be my homemade PVC potato gun, but the police in northern Virginia have that in their possession now. Fortunately, I have no aspirations to become a speedy marathoner. Running is specifically categorized in my book as "Stuff-I-do-because-riding-bikes-in-Beijing-is-damn-near-impossible" or in the genus "No Big Deal" That it might be fun or a challenge never really enters my mind. Save for the beautiful scenery that Xiamen has, it was a rather boring and easy run. Doing a run at the pace I did and for the amount that I trained can't be considered an accomplishment. Its not like I was a contestant on the Biggest Loser or anything. If I were to ever win a TV competition, the show would have to be named Averagest Boringer. Being told my entire life that I could do great things if I "apply myself," I know when I'm being a slacker or when I've really got my head in the game. Using a grade-school scale of achievement, my performance was far from astronaut-caliber, but I'm damn sure glad it gave me an excuse to get out of 'Jing for a minute. It felt damn nice to breathe clean air and hear myself think for a minute.

Fighting through all these people at the start effs up your finishing time.

Is It Worth It?

2012-01-05T11:24:00.000+08:00

It's a new year. I think it's 2012, but won't be able to tell for another 6 months after all the constant auto-correct reminders and scathing remarks about my Idiocy sink it. As it is, my learning curve is rather inelastic.

While I do wish I had posted more entries last year, I have struggled to find a more relevant purpose for writing here. No. I am not nor am I capable of having deep introspective moments so don't think that time I spilled my guts about x, y, and z while drinking a fifth of bourbon will happen here. I'm simply looking for more interesting things to write about. Obviously, I'm no longer a dirtbag bicycle mechanic, nor am I racing (poorly) in the MABRA scene. My grease- and roadrash-based muse has left me for now. Things have changed a lot and many of the things I've thought about posting about Beijing have been pretty base complaints about air quality, obnoxious crowds, and traffic. I mean, how often do you want to hear about this Idiot essentially elbowing a random Chinese person in the face because he zigged when he should have zagged? Because this happens on a daily, no hourly basis. People here walk everywhere. Ev. eR. RHEE. WHERE. They do so while giving off the appearance of having a fixed trajectory in concert with the drunken stumblings of a toddler-hobo ("todbo" or "hoddler"). You could also liken it to the organized chaos in a beehive. It's almost completely unpredictable. They'll look like their walking straight towards you until at the the last moment they strafe right or left. I find it best to stare at their feet, keep my elbows out, and think skinny thoughts as I squeeze by the Chinese masses. But I do this everyday on my way to work and I don't want to complain about it everyday because some days I get really pissed off by it while other days I hardly notice it (likely because I'm drunk). The point is I don't want this to be a blog where I constantly peddle my petty complaints.

Nor do I want this to be a place where I write stupid letters home to let people know that I'm "doing fine" or "having fun" or "sober". Firstly, because of all of 2.5 people read this thing, none of them are family (thankfully). Secondly, us Idiots are built from hardy albeit slightly dim-witted stock, so there's no need to worry about us. We're capable of surviving any number of hostile environments, i.e. the Beijing club scene, any Beijing crosswalk or bike lane, and even nights out with a few cases of baijiu. Finally, I work a regular 9-to-5 and don't even travel enough to be worried about. And further to that point, I'm not here to do all the touristy crap either. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot to see here, but like my time in Washington DC, I don't feel compelled by this city's "impressiveness" to experience absolutely every damn tourist trap there is. So don't expect "OMG. Like the Forbidden Palace is like an amazing dude."

Despite my somewhat hurried departure from the states, I feel like I had pretty reasonable goals and expectations about what I was going to encounter in Beijing. I knew there would be plenty of things that I needed or wanted to do here and that I'd have to take some lumps along the way. But let's be honest, those lumps aren't really that big an issue, especially if you look at them in the grand scheme of things and what I stand to gain from them. Even considering the fact that I moved here practically without knowing anyone or a single Chinese guttural utterance to save my life, I've been surrounded my entire life by dozens of people who've managed to do more with less than what I came to Beijing with, including my parents. And if there's anything that'll light a fire under a second-generation refugee's ass, it's the fact that your parents aren't exactly impressed with whatever tiny problems you might have. Are they proud of what I'm doing? Yeah. Sure. Sympathetic? Maybe a little. Impressed, though? Not likely. I can just see it now. If I started complaining to my parents, they'd say something to the effect of "So lemme get this straight: you have clothes, food, and shelter and don't have to scrub toilets or wash dishes and you're complaining because....?" It's the Asian equivalent of the Western "I walked 15 miles each way to school in 6 feet of snow" story. So I just plan to plug away, work hard, soldier on, sack up, power through, etc etc. But the point isn't be be impressive; not to my parents or anyone else. I'm not infallible (hardly possible when you're drunk all the time). I'll be honest and say that I stress out some days. Things aren't always easy here, but they're far from horrible and the only way things will get any better is if I do something about it. So if you asked me if I'm "doing ok," you're asking the wrong question. At the end of the day, it's more about doing what you want, right? Cyclist know this as a fact of life. "Suffering" is a term too often used and glorified, but can be appropriately used in this instance. People on bikes can put up with a lot of shit when they ride; cowpies, road rage, hazardous weather, hazardous riders, etc. We bonk, crash, break things, and still get back in the saddle. People sometime think we're insane for putting up with here are a multitude of reasons why we do it, but it boils down to: I just wanted to, dammit.

So a more appropriate question to ask is "are you getting what you want out of whatever you're doing?"

I'm not here in this country because I made a singular resolution that I would "try new things." I'm not here because I wanted to leave my family, my friends, and my dog behind. I don't enjoy the pollution or the crowds. And a effing hate doing touristy crap that, despite several thick coats of paint on so-called ancient historical treasures, seems so transparently oriented towards ripping off foreigners. (ed- as a personal goal, I aim to the stand-and-smile in front of as few of these famous Beijing sites as possible). No I'm here to pursue a life that I think is fully within my grasp and worth taking a few lumps for. And because it's still strange for me to be so goal-oriented, I leave it at that.

So if I was going to arrive at a point I guess I had better do it now: "Fine," "fun," and "sober" are all subjective terms. If you want to know how someone's doing, compare what they're doing to what they want to be doing and what what ultimately want to achieve. Sometimes I use "living the dream" to describe this and can be tough sometimes to act on "dream" plans. But if you asked me right now if moving to China was worth it, my response would be:

"Fuck yeah it was."

Meh. City life. Didn't come here for that, but I'll take it.

Idle Hands and Winter Wait

2011-12-19T15:26:00.000+08:00

Whoever said "idle hands do the devil's work" must have known I was moving to China. Since I've been here, I find myself constantly trying looking for things to do to. The goal is to take advantage of every opportunity that comes my way in China, maybe make a friend or two, and keep myself from playing too much Sudoku and Tetris on my phone.

The group rides were a good way to kill a good chunk of time on Saturdays. The early starts got me up and out the door before 7am and home by 3 or 4pm. The added bonus of these rides is that I had a legitimate excuse to to not spend too many nights out each weekend, drinking heavily, eating street food, and making poor decisions (e.g. KTV). Also, I would usually come back from these rides in shambles and it would only take 1/4th the amount of booze to knock a post-bonk Idiot down for the count. Three cheers (literally) for cheap nights out!

But it's Winter now and the group rides have gone into hibernation until the Spring. So without the riding to fill my schedule, I was scared that being left to my own devices would result in some serious weight gain and belligerent drinking. Thankfully, a fellow Peloton-er had the awesome idea to do a bike maintenance and repair class and asked yours truly to be the instructor. And while it hasn't helped keep the poundage down, as someone who's slung a wrench or two I leapt at the opportunity to get my hands greasy again. My crap pubic speaking skills and average mechanical ability probably don't make me the most ideal person to teach Wrench-Fu here but I damn sure have fun doing it. We're set for an 8-course run to teach basic installs, derailleur and brake adjustments, headset and bottom bracket troubleshooting, cable installs, and a little bit of wheel truing. I'm makig a little bit of cheddar on the side, but I'm mostly happy to get out of Bike Dungeon Ver2.0 and check out a new part of town. The classes are held at a place called The Hutong, which is a kind of expat workspace where people host various classes that range from cooking traditional Chinese cuisine to art and photography. I'm definitely planning to check out some of the course offerings there, especially the ones where I get to eat what I cook. I'm still working on the not being a fatty-fatty-fatty here so going to cooking/eating lessons might work counter to my winter goals, but waiting for idle hands to do their damage sounds a lot worse than adding a little "roundness" to my belly.

Off to Class; The Extra Layers are Masking the "Roundness"

Taxiing Hell: The Competition

2011-12-13T16:10:00.000+08:00

I try to be a good, environmentally-conscious individual. I don't drive a Hummer, I don't club baby seals (even that one time a seal was giving me the stink eye), I properly recycle used motor oil, and generally try to ride my bike or take public transportation whenever possible. Some days are easier than others to be green and tree-friendly, but there are definitely days when you just have to take a cab somewhere. Like when the AQI tops off at 500+ PM2.5 and the air is burning your lungs or it's freezing cold and you're drunkenly trying to get home after the subway has closed. Also, some days I'm just really lazy.

Having mastered the ability to direct a cabbie to my apartment (and a few other points of interest) means that I'm no longer intimidated by the prospect of having to communicate with a collective group of people who possess arguably the 'Jingiest accents in this city. In fact, I somewhat like that about cabbies and will take advantage of any opportunity to throw in a heavy Beijing errrrrr. What I don't like about taking a cab is the lack of self-reliance in terms of getting myself places. When I ride or drive somewhere I'm more or less traveling on my own terms. I'm completely in control of when, where, and how I get somewhere, limited only by my legs and the traffic. If I take a cab, I have to stand on the sidewalk with my arm sticking out like a skanky call girl waiting from some Yuēhàn (that's "John" in pinyin) to pick me up in his nasty car. And in a city this size getting a taxi can be damn near impossible depending where you are and what you look like. It's easy to pick up a cab mid-week in the CBD, but you won't have such luck if you're in one of Beijing's bar areas during the weekend trying to get home at 1, 2, or 3am. Things are made increasingly difficult if you look funny or more specifically if you're white. ABC's like myself have it relatively good. Cabbies will pull over for us on the assumption we know Chinese and usually don't figure things out until you stumble over your first syllables. Unfortunately, you're still competing with a million other Chinese folk on the same street so the competition has the potential to be super fierce. Rawr! [obligatory]

So what do you do have to do to get in a taxi on these days? How can you outsmart or outmaneuver the competition? I try to avoid douchebag moves like throwin' 'bows and poaching someone else's cab as they're trying to get into it. No, contrary to what you may think, I prefer a more subtle tactic (in this instance at least). I've identified a key characteristic as the Achilles' heel of the typical taxi rider; something that nearly all of them refuse to do; something that is practically the antithesis of the taxi rider raison d'être. Walking. Or really just about any other kind of physical movement. In their minds, this constitutes as "travel," an act or service that should obviously be provided by the taxi driver. "Why would I walk have to some place that I am already going to pay someone to drive me to?" I'd imagine a typical cabber would say to himself (in Chinese). "If I stay here with my arms flapping like some kind of bird-streetwalker hybrid, I'm sure to get a cab and not waste any precious time or energy." As for myself, I think the opposite way. I seek my taxi advantage in light of their static positioning. Instead of standing on a corner waiting to get picked up, I'm the kind that puts the "walk" in "streetwalker" and stretch my legs in order to better pick-up a cab. Sure, I get a little sweaty in the process and would probably make a really ugly whore, but I can get taxis like a champ. A few of my favorite tactics include walking in concentric circles around a particular block and walking away from a group of waiting cabbers down the sidewalk in the opposite direction of traffic. That way when an available cab makes his way down the road, I'm the first to wave it down. Score: Me-1 Lazy Cabber-0. I've got a few other tips (like jump in the cab shut the door before giving the cabbie directions so he can't refuse to drive you there), but if I gave them all way, I would be adding my entire readership to the list of people I'd have to compete against to get a cab. Yes I realized a grand total of 2.1 people read this thing, but you gotta fight tooth and nail for somethings here and I'm gonna make the most of any advantages I have at my disposal no matter how slim they are.

1000 cabs in this picture. None of them are going to pick you up.

Gifts, Coal, and Bah Humbug

2011-12-08T14:52:00.001+08:00

Firstly, Kolobnev is an idiot and this is why pro sports are dumb. Instead of radios, the UCI should just ban talking altogether.

Secondly, I don't know why but I was surprised the first time I saw Smow (smog + snow, get it?). It makes almost perfect sense that factories burn more coal to keep warm during the frigid winter months. I say "almost perfect" because who the hell burns coal any more? I guess in China everyone gets coal for Christmas.

Speaking of which, I'm not going home for Christmas so I guess I get coal too. Yeah, it's a bummer, but if you know me, you'll know I'm somewhat of a Scrooge when Christmas time rolls around. Plus, being cheery is so mainstream right now. Ew. Funnily enough, there are things that I actually like about the holiday, but not in the cheery universal way that everyone else does. The so-called "holiday cheer" that everyone has in December is lost on me. Where does it come from? Is it just something that spontaneously manifests itself when everyone wakes up from their Thanksgiving Day comas? Whatever sickness causes this affliction, I seem to be immune to it. No amount of gift giving, song singing, or mouth-upward-shaping (aka smiling) will change that. I won't go into all the cliche things that I dislike about the holiday, but pretty much the only thing I did cherish during this season was spending time with my family, and guess who can't do that this year? Bah humbug, indeed.

Hey look at that! A relatively short post. Don't you worry though, once things calm down at work a bit, I'll be back to my more verbose and infinitely more obnoxious ranting.

Smow or Snog?

Counting Every Second for Six Months

2011-11-28T18:56:00.000+08:00

I'm a lot busier in China than I ever was at a bike shop. That's probably a stupid thing to say, but sometimes stupid things need saying.

You hear it all the time, but things seem to move faster here. "Time flies like an arrow" and all that. Can you believe I've managed to survive here for nearly six months? I thought for sure I'd have died from being run over by a bendy bus or baijiu-related alcohol poisoning/spontaneous combustion by now. Six months, 1/52ths, or nearly 2% of my life thus far has been spent in China and by all accounts it seems like it's all happened in the blink of an eye. When you face challenges everyday on the street, in the office, and at home, there's hardly any time to spare because if you're not making any progress here you're doing it wrong. I like to call it "being good at China." Some days you're really good at China and the day goes by nearly effortlessly. Other days aren't as smooth and the already thick pollution-filled air starts feeling like pudding with every step you take.

If I were to be completely trite and cliche (honestly, when am I not?), I'd say that it's not unlike riding and racing bikes. At the very core, if you're not making forward momentum and propelling yourself with each pedal stroke, you're doing it wrong. You're not riding. You're not experiencing the thrill that I and so many others like me have enjoyed during endless hours in the saddle. You're missing out, plain and simple. Riding bikes. China. Life. (blah blah blah) It's all the same. You gotta hustle to make it work.

That sometimes means I have to give up things that you would otherwise do in your "free time." Unfortunately that includes epic bike rides, blog entries, and going on all the super amazing adventures I have planned for the not-too-distant future. On the bright side, desk jockeying is working out for now and I have been studying Chinese diligently (albeit with the occasional paralyzing hangover), all of which should make the riding and adventuring here all the more epic and super amazing in the long run. So don't you worry. Despite all the posts about how much this place irritates me, I've got plans and I definitely intend to make good on all of them.

Tick Tock. Check out how long this post has been sitting in my drafts folder.

Prison Strength

2011-11-24T13:17:00.000+08:00

It's cold here. Like below freezing cold with a few puddles of icy slush already forming where pipes have burst. It's also quite dry so I've added a humidifier to my studio apartment/terrarium to deal with itchy skin and dry nasal fossae. Surprisingly, the air quality hasn't gotten much better despite the changes in weather. We had a few blustery days with clear blue skies, but once the winds died down there wasn't anything left to push the pollution out of the city. So we're back to 'Jing grey today. I'm slowly getting used to it, but that's not always a good thing.

For one thing, it makes me all the more surlier. As it is, I already don't like smiling. It's always been a little unnatural for me to turn that frown upside down or whatever, but here it's a little worse. I spend a lot more time scowling and clenching my jaw, stomping around the streets of Beijing, shouldering people out of my way, and staring down any cars, cyclists and buses that try to run me over.

For another thing, getting used to crappy air quality also means I'm getting used to being a big fat slob. Since it's obviously more detrimental to exercise in sludgy air than it is to drink beer and crap whiskey, I tend to drink more than I ride bikes. It used to be that these two behaviors coexisted in some twisted amalgamation of poor-quality, hungover cycling and having a low tolerance for alcohol, but now the ratio has turned much more in favor of working my liver instead of my legs and lungs. I'm planning on changing that soon and I'm fortunately masochistic enough to actually enjoy freezing my ass off on a bike in the winter, but I still need a plan for when the air tastes bad.

So I'm just thinking outside the box here, but I think I'm just gonna get my prison strength on. Pardon the allusion, but I can't help but feel like a trapped inmate when the air gets toxic. That mentality, possibly compounded my habitual watching and rewatching of The Wire, has led me to this point. I'm just going to do a million push-ups, sit-ups, and inverted handstand presses until I look like I should be working a G-pack for that mope around the way. Oh, indeed! I guess it's not unlike riding a trainer or rollers indoors. The same kind of insane monotony, just without taxing the lungs too much or the need for excess gear (i.e. the rollers that I refuse to buy). Plus, this gives me an opportunity to walk in the footsteps of Big Red during his Tunaaa days, albeit a bit more ghetto and Chinese and with a lot less smiling (obviously). I could always go to the gym and I realize people in prison have access to gyms too. My company offers a free membership to one so the opportunity is there if I want it, but I just plain don't like them. Plus, I'm going for that crazy solitary confinement look and you just get get that when you're socializing with gym rats (it's all in the eyes). Better watch out Beijingers! If you see a tatted up, surly Chinese-Vietnamese American expat charging at you on his way to his boring and completely benign desk job, you'll want to stay out of his way.

"Unhealthy"

Smells Like... China

2011-11-22T18:43:00.000+08:00

So one of the things about Beijing being a gigantic Asian city is that everything is very tightly packed. There are tons of little hole-in-the-wall places to shop and eat. From a foodie perspective, this is pretty great albeit a little overwhelming. My dining adventures are generally limited by my vocabulary and the servers' ability to comprehend my point and gesture method of ordering food (Step1: Point to mouth. Step2: Rub belly). Couple that nonsense with the inability to determine which of the million restaurants are actually decent and you can start seeing my dilemma. I mostly rely on word of mouth recommendations from co-workers or other expats in the know and as a result I've had the opportunity to chow down on some excellent meals. The only downside is that almost all my clothes now smell like food.

For the record, and I'm sure this comes as no surprise to you, Beijing has a particular smell. Quipped a DC-based teammate, HotSexyDisco, on his recent visit here: "It tastes like... burning." And that's not far from the truth. The combination of smog, sewage, exhaust fumes, and cigarettes can be a constant source of nausea for the weak-stomached or deathly hungover. If you go to a bar that allows smoking, be prepared to leave smelling like you've been rolling around in an ashtray. You'll have the burn marks to prove it too as you'll inevitably bump into the business end of a cigarette multiple times in a crowd 'Jing bar. If you're walking up a stairwell in any building, there will be at least one person smoking between you and your destination. And even if it's 8am and you're groggily walking to the office, wiping the sleep from your eyes, you'll have to bat away the fumes from mopeds, scooters, cars, buses, hobos, and (of course) cigarettes. I don't think I've ever hated smoking and air pollution more than after I moved to this city.

Adding to the urban musk you develop from walking around here, you also wear a little bit of what you eat too. Close-quarters dining in your neighborhood restaurants can have you smelling like the dishes you ordered. And no matter how delicious my meal was, I generally don't like smelling like it when I get home. Ventilation systems and big open dining rooms, much like centralized air/heat, are really more of a luxury here than anything else; a helpful, yet ultimately ignored suggestion. Often you'll dine only a few feet away from where your meal was cooked, which means you always get a hot meal served to you quickly but also means you smell a bit greasy after only a few minutes in a restaurant. There are plenty of places with large dining spaces and even some with decent ventilation, but a majority of the meals that I consume are in the divey-er places in town keeping true to my natural dirtbag tendencies. And normally, I don't complain about being a dirtbag (when I'm sober), but as I'm turning over a new leaf in an attempt to be more civilized and this sometimes necessitates clean, odorless laundry. And as I mentioned in my last post, my washing machine is missing a few key parts and is out of commission. So now I have a stack of smelly-ass clothes, a rapidly dwindling supply of clean underwear, and nowhere to conveniently wash them. I fear a relapse back to my booze-hounding, hobo-fighting, Dirty McDirtbag days aren't far away....

Famous Duck Fixin's at Da Dong. No dirtbags allowed.

Deaf Dumb Mute

2011-11-21T11:33:00.000+08:00

I'll be the first to admit that I'm no engineer. I never took an engineering course, always sucked in physics, and have a generally tenuous grasp of basic mathematical concepts. But I like figuring things out. I'm a fan solving puzzles and an even bigger fan when they're of a more practical nature, like wrenching on cars and bikes. Fixing simple things around the house, while still an annoyance, is tolerable if it requires some kind of critical thought process or mortal danger, preferably in the form of electrical shock or explosions. At the very least, I'm a bit of a tinkerer. My hands are always busy. There's always a bike component or tool not far from wherever I am.

In Beijing, not only did I leave all my tinker toys at home, but I left my ability to effectively communicate with people about even the simplest repairs. My vocabulary, while still growing, is mainly limited to things that I can eat, transportation back to my apartment when I'm drunk, and telling people I have no idea what I'm doing. Before moving the Beijing, I had never been without the ability to discuss how a repair will be done. Even if I didn't know how something was supposed to be fixed, I could always start a meaningful conversation with whoever was doing the work about. At the very least I'd be able to gain something from these exchanges, be it step-by-step repair knowledge or simply an explanation of a mechanical concept (e.g. car engines make fire and vroom-vroom noises). But things are a lot different now and I have to rely on point-and-gesture communication to get my point across, including when I ripped the handle off my washing machine this weekend.

In an attempt to be productive on a Saturday morning. I got up a few minutes early to do laundry before joining the usual expat group ride. The only caveat was that I needed to get my laundry (in this case bedsheets) out of the washer and drying before I left because the rides take up most of my day. Leaving a set of sheets stewing and stinking in the washer was not an option I only owned one set (a testament to how much I hate shopping). So when the load was finished washing, I go to grab the door's handle and give it a tug. It doesn't budge and after a subsequent tug, the entire thing pops off into my hand. Dammit. I needed to leave. Thoughts of saying screw it and sleeping in a sleeping bag that night were briefly considered. "No! I'm not the same dirtbag used to be" I told myself despite knowing full well that I was. So I opened up my tool roll (just kidding it is permanently open on my kitchen table), and went to town on the metal latch that was keeping me from my freshly washed sheets. I tried prying it open with a screwdriver. I tried grabbing the entire hook/latch mechanism with pliers. I even tried disengaging the spring with some combination of pliers, multiple screwdrivers and brute force. No dice. That last thing I wanted to try was removing the pin/axle that the latch and spring were pivoting on. Obviously, the person who designed such a crap handle knew so and made it possible to grab this axle and remove the entire latch assembly. I stopped short of doing this only because of the damn language barrier.

Because I wouldn't be able to effectively explain my predicament and my remedy to the repairman when he came, I decided to leave the machine alone until he came. That is, I left it in almost exactly the same condition it was when it broke, save for a few screwdriver gouges and evidence that I had been verbally abusive whilst trying to pry the machine open. There was no way I'd be able to explain how or why I took the pieces apart, much less explain what caused the handle to break in the first place. Later that day a maintenance guy came by my apartment and proceeded to give me a detailed explanation about how the crappy handle was a crappy handle and by yanking on the crappy handle it broke like the piece of crap it was. He pointed to where the handle actually broke, a thin plastic loop that was responsible for lifting a small metal bar attached to the heavily-sprung latch. He then proceeded to do the exact same steps that I had previously done prior to call him. Finally, he pulled the latch axle/pivot out and removed the entire assembly, which mind you is the exact thing that I wanted to do.

I've become my own worst enemy. Because of the language barrier, I've become a useless know-nothing who can't even order a simple plastic handle for his crap washing machine. I can't even tell a repair man that he'll save time by not repeating the same exact steps that I did. This is a problem because I don't think I'll ever be able to turn off my brain when it comes to fixing things. I'm simply not content to let someone else do it for me. Being mechanically self-sufficient has always been a big part of my life and the idea of having to rely on someone else rates at least a 12.5 on at 10-point scale of lameness (with 0 being "not lame" and 10 being "triathlete"). On the bright side, at least I'm not pissing people off like some supposed know-it-alls do at bike shops. The guys that read too much repair literature or had to many engineering degrees (one degree is too many), always had a way of getting under my skin because they could only speak about fixing things on a theoretical level and all the theory in the world wouldn't make them any more capable of doing the repair. And while I'm far from being one of "those guys," the guy I am right now is pretty worthless from a mechanical standpoint and I don't like that at all.

Hulking Out

Uncritical Mass

2011-11-10T21:49:00.000+08:00

Don't you hate it when you think up a great idea and you have no way of writing it down or sharing it with someone? Like the other day, I was walking home from work and was thinking to myself....

Dammit. I thought that would help jog my memory. I could've sworn it was a brilliant idea, but then again I'm the type of person that thinks adding bacon to anything is a brilliant idea. Bacon and marshmallows? Eureka!

Anyways, the sentences above were sitting in my drafts folder for a week until I realized what it was I wanted to talk about: traffic. A lot of people complain about the traffic here. Sitting in a motor vehicle in Beijing traffic has the potential to simultaneously be the most exciting, dangerous, unnerving, and frustrating thing you do here. You generally expect cabbies to disregard traffic laws, but when an entire population of drivers ignore them it makes for interesting results. Cars will make turns onto smaller streets from 3 lanes over, cutting front of two bustling lanes of traffic. They sit side-by-side at an intersection on a two-lane two-way street stacked 10 deep waiting to make the same right hand turn to merge into traffic on a major thoroughfare, all the while blocking any cars attempting to use that road headed the other way They drive 140km/h on the shoulders of the highway, park their cars anywhere they want including any sidewalk they please and the aforementioned highway shoulders. And they honk. Oh do they honk. If there was a word for "incessantly-to-the-max-until-your-ears-bleed" I would use it. I'm sure they have one in Chinese. I think you'd generally be forgiven for thinking you went deaf if you spent a week in the CBD or Sanlitun and then returned home to DC streets. But (most) Chinese folk don't honk out of road rage, but rather as a safety precaution. It's an unfortunately obnoxious consequence of having 12M people in cars, on foot, et à vélo who don't give a flying banana about what the other person is doing as long as they don't hit or get hit by them.

So obviously, being a pedestrian in Beijing is no cake walk either (lolz PUN!). Like most city people around the world, 'Jingers walk everywhere, in every direction, and at varying speeds. They walk all over the sidewalk; left side, right side, or traversing laterally like a hairy crab. They walk on any road, bike lane, or highway pass. And best of all, they'll walk straight at you while making direct eye contact, all the while refusing to change their trajectory until I inevitably resort to a last second shoulder-turn-bailout maneuver. I'm 0-452 this week, playing pedestrian chicken with the locals. And despite many 'Jing pedestrian idiosyncrasies, including my 8am dose of second-hand smoke on the way to work (everyone here smokes like a chimney stack packed with Civil War musket-grade gunpowder), I think the most interesting interaction is between pedestrians and other modes of transportation.

The coexistence of pedestrians and vehicles has been on tumultuous terms ever since the first cave man got his toe run over by a bougier caveman and his fancy wheel. Back then "right of way" was settled by the point of a spear or the business end of a club. Over time, people developed laws to regulate how we vehicularly (ed- yes I just wrote that) interact with each other. Right of way was given to pedestrians and cyclists to protect them in the event they got wrecked by a car. Over time, that right of way developed into a mentality that simply assumed someone would stop for you if you crossed paths with their horse, carriage, jalopy, or hoopdie. And things are getting a lot safer now. Vehicles have all sorts of safety gizmos to keep the drivers and those around them from harm. Granted, this wasn't always the case. People were trampled by horses, run over with wagon wheels, crushed by Model-T's, and sent to the ER to get a tetanus booster shot and remove a piece of headlamp from their skull. Things are indeed changing for the better, but if you thought those dangerous days were long gone, you should remove yourself from your little stateside safety bubble and come to Beijing. Here we have a different kind of coexistence with motor vehicles. Putting my 5-months of experience with nonsensical corporate terminology to use, I like to call it "Next-Generation DangerXR 2.0" Here are the Version 2.0 Release notes:

NGDXR2.0 builds upon the existing successful framework of cars not hitting people, but adds a critical component of mortal danger at every turn, a feature that was noticeable lacking in previous versions
Cars are now given unrestricted access to sidewalks, dirt paths, bike lanes, and the walkway to the front entrance to your apartment.
Similar governance applies to motorcycles, mopeds, scooters, and all other EVs
Motor vehicles are allowed to buzz, raze and squeeze through any opening they find, including but not limited to: pedestrians, other motorists, bendy buses, road furniture, and actual home furniture that's been placed in the road. Any rate of speed is acceptable, but high speeds and close calls are preferable to their "safety-saturated" alternatives.
Those traveling on foot are granted greater access to converge on the street at intersections and form a mobile median strip of sorts to block on-coming traffic and steadily inch their way across the intersection. This safety-in-numbers strategy shall heretofore be referred to as the "Critical Mass-Frogger Methodology" and is considered a global best practice for any metropolitan pedestrian population.
Any persons traveling on any street, path, corridor, walkway, escalator, or aisle shall occupy the full width of that passage and must take up any excess room with their baggage, canine companion, cigarette butts, and/or other persons that they may or may not know. Should anyone attempt to walk towards or around your blockade, you are required to hold your ground under the mandatory "Red Rover Initiative."

Obviously I need to brush up on my corporate vocabulary. (It's hard when it's all in Mandarin.) But please note that the words "streamline" or "efficiency" were never mentioned because it's impossible to think that anyone traveling anywhere in Beijing is looking out for anything but their own self-interests. Traffic is the epitome of stop-and-go, and crowds are more than happy to block, push, and squeeze by you to get where they're going. In this city, personal bubbles and comfort zones are noticeably lacking. The culture here is about accepting close calls as the norm to the point where they're no longer considered "close" any more and you fail to see your constant exposure to harm as "dangerous." You see it and process it as "oh-I-guess-I-better-move-now" actions like a janitor mopping the floor by your feet. Absent here is the indignation and offense that comes when a soccer mom fails to abide by the 3-ft rule and passes you at a life-threatening 29.5-inches. Granted, there aren't too many recreational sports that require people to use the roads for anything other than transportation. The point is that the majority of the people here just shrug off close calls and keep on truckin'. It's just a huge collective mass of people that aren't concerned enough with the current state of pedestrian and motor safety to criticize or change anything.

A Slow Day at Guomao Bridge

Dirty Thoughts

2011-11-06T23:15:00.000+08:00

So I bought a mountain bike. An 08 Santa Cruz Superlight with a mix of SLX/XT 9sp components. It's nothing special. Just a single-pivot full-susser with an average build spec. Surprisingly, this is only the second mountain bike I've ever owned and the first one with gears and squishy bits. My first rig was a Surly 1x1 with a rigid fork. I built it up with a complement of inexpensive and durable components and lovingly referred to it as my po'boy mtb. I'll readily admit this new bike was an impulse buy. A UK expat was unloading it on one of the Beijing cycling list-servs and I immediately grabbed it up before I could think twice about it. Since I landed here last summer, I was trying to see how I could get a mtb here from home the cheapest way possible. As I mentioned in a previous post, my language skills aren't super great yet so I don't quite have the confidence in my ability to negotiate with a LBS here in order to not get screwed over on the price of a new bike. Thoughts of getting a bike here from the states were driving me mad. The cost of paying retail, boxing, and shipping a bike here were pretty high. Add to that the risk of potential damage to the bike and I was forced to look at more po'boy options. Singlespeeds, rigid forks, and cheap wheels were all I could even think about bringing to Beijing. And because I have no knowledge of the terrain or trail conditions out here, a po'boy mtb is something I just couldn't convince myself to buy. So when the opportunity presented itself, I couldn't pass it up. Or at least that's what I'll tell my parents if they ever find out that I'm building a bike dungeon clone in Beijing. "Financially independent" also means "buy more bikes" in my book.

In a way, buying one before the icy cold winter arrives was a smart idea. People are looking to unclutter their households which in turn made for a low(ish) price. In other way it kinda blows. The problem with buying a bike before the winter is that, you'll soon have no time, sunlight, or available non-life-threatening terrain to ride on. But I hope that dreams of me blasting down some singletrack will keep my dirty mtb thoughts warm throughout the icy winter. Hopefully my Chinese will be good enough come this spring that I can ride with the local Chinese mountain bike clubs in addition to the expat club rides. That way I can piggyback on their excursions past the 6th Ring Road and maybe find some more secluded trails that I wouldn't have found otherwise. As far as where I can mountain bike that I don't need a car to get to, rumor has it that Fragrant Hill's new No-Bikes policy is more of a soft-enforcement of the rules. Considering that this is China, I'm not particularly surprised. I have yet to go out there as it's on the opposite side of town from me, but at the same time, I haven't had to ride away from any security guards yet either. I heard through word of mouth that there's also a chance that I can ride on the old 2008 Olympic XC course which would be pretty cool (almost as cool as being able to ride on the Olympic velodrome, which I also need to find out if I can do). One of the Belgians I ride with brought up a good point the other day. Riding here is way less consistent. There are so many factors that work their way into your riding plans. You can roll out your front door from just about anywhere in the US. It's a little different here in Beijing. Knowing where to ride and how to get there are the biggest issues, especially with the crazy traffic in the city. Then there's pollution, with the AQI rising into the 300+ "Hazardous" range for several days at a time. Add to that hazy regulation of park usage policies and the potential for frustration grows that much larger. The chance that I might ride my mountain bike all the way across the city, risking life and limb in traffic, only to be turned away by a park official would totally suck. But sometimes you just have to live the dream and hope that you can regularly finagle your way onto some trails and it's because of that that I made this seemingly impractical purchase. Damn I miss some good ol' US mountain biking!

For the time being, I'll just be sitting idly on my mtb, checking the rear shock sag for the 23489th time, and making imaginary mountain bike noises (brrrraaapppp!) as I wheel it around in circles in my studio apartment's kitchen/livingroom/bedroom/bikeshop.

Language, Barriers

2011-11-03T23:31:00.002+08:00

I'll be honest: I'm better when I'm drunk.

Or at least I think I am.

There are sometimes when you just have to head straight towards the barriers at break-neck speeds and hope for the best. Successfully clipping-out, hitting the ground on the right foot, taking a few giant strides, leaping over whatever's in front of you, another step (or two or three, if you're me), and a buttery smooth remount. This all happens in a blink of an eye, at least in a cyclocross race anyways.

If you're like me and made the hilarious decision to move to a country where you don't speak the language, the process of clearing the language barrier takes a little longer. Why didn't I study Chinese in college? That one year of intensive Italian to fulfill my language requirement is all but worthless. For the life of me, I can't think of any Italian phrase other than "che cazzo fai?" Four years of French in high school and a lifetime of bumbling Vietnamese and Cantonese words to my parents and relatives are similarly of no use to me in Beijing. Hell. If I even studied more English in school I'd probably be better able to communicate with people here, but as it stands me English it no so good.

Fortunately, I won't be helpless in China forever. I have a tutor, helpful coworkers, and an essential survival mentality here in the Middle Kingdom. The process of learning something from nothing can be a little overwhelming. It's definitely slow, that's for sure. And if you've ever seen me race, it's pretty obvious I know a few things about Slow. Slow lets the mind wander. It creates doubt, self-consciousness, and occasionally, paralyzing fear. The phrase "Speed kills" should more often be used with its second half: "but Slow sucks." Like I said though, I'm making progress. My vocabulary is steadily growing beyond "whiskey, no ice." And I'm starting to understand my coworkers' conversations and be understood in turn. But damn if I didn't wish this whole learning-a-new-language thing would go a little faster.

Sometimes you just have to be a little reckless with this effing language. Sometimes you have to just play the game before you know all the rules. You can only do mindless, structured, roadie-type training for so long before you lose your mind. The beauty of cyclocross is that being a physically strong rider is only part of the equation. You need finesse (which I don't have), smarts (definitely don't have that), and a whole host of different skills to get you through the race. Some days you have it all and everything clicks. More often than not, you'll be lacking in several of these categories. You still play the game though. And if you're like me, thoughts of poor equipment choices, lack of training, and the 16 beers you drank the night before all go out the window as soon as that whistle blows. The only thing that occupies my mind is putting up the best fight I can with whatever I've got. And you know what? That's part of the fun. There's no sense in letting an opportunity go to waste, be it a race or the chance to move abroad. Just barrel straight towards whatever's in your way, consequences be damned, and get through it without trying analyze every single step of the process. A little bit of booze sure helps too.

I've recently discovered China's passionate relationship with getting drunk. Doing business here necessitates a hearty liver and strong stomach. It's not fancy and it's far from pretty. When you go out with your friends or coworkers the emphasis clearly isn't on having a sensitive, discerning palette, as evidenced by the popularity of baijiu and pale, watery beers. Drinking here is a social thing. It's all about process, respect, and getting very, very drunk. It's also the perfect opportunity to let fly with some horrible butchering of the Chinese language. Every time I go out with the folks from the office, I swear my Chinese gets a tiny bit better. It's a lot like the "race into fitness" mentality that has consistently failed and entertained me throughout the years. By just throwing caution to the wind (and adding a little liquid courage), I've learned a lot about what to say and how to say it, usually with a total disregard for proper pronunciation or the inclusion of appropriate regional tones. It's been a good way to break the ice and get to know some of the people I work with. Speaking Chinese to them in an inebriated state is a whole lot less frightening than trying to talk to them in the office with my lacking professional vocabulary. And before you start thinking that I'm messing around too much and telling me to start taking life more seriously in China, just take a deep breath and relax a bit. I'm making decent progress. I promise! I can even drunkenly mumble directions to a cabbie to get back to my apartment after rowdy nights stumbling through hutongs and Sanlitun. See? Progress!

Měi Shì Kāfēi

2011-10-28T18:53:00.000+08:00

Dammit, I'm apparently way more productive with coffee in me. DammitDammitDammitDammit.

The nice thing about flying halfway around the world and the resultant jet lag is the ability to sleep for 10+hrs for a week or so and wake up completely rested at 5:30am. I'd start my day wide-awake, just looking for things to do before heading to the office. I watched the sunrise over Beijing, went for a run/ride, or just putzed around on the internet looking at bike stuff (to get it out of my system before work). I'd get plenty of work done at the office and my energy levels would be pretty well sustained throughout the day. It was nice. Unfortunately, normal people don't go to bed at 7 or 8pm. In fact, that's when some people are just leaving work at my office (not me). So eventually I recouped enough zzz's to get to bed at a decent hour and still manage to be productive and alert in the mornings. 10 o'clock... 10:30... 11:45... Oops its getting late... Wait, it's now 1am and I need need to be at work in 6hours for an East Coast conference call?

I've slowly fallen back to my normal ways, though it's still rare for me to have a 2am nightowl session (They're a h00t!). I find myself unable to fall asleep until after 11pm despite valiant efforts to get all my stuff done beforehand. When my first alarm clock goes off (I set several), I hit snooze and zonk out for another 30 to 45 minutes. Getting out of bed is not exactly and up-and-at-'em moment either as I drag my groggy ass to the shower. And the fun doesn't stop there. I tend to coast through the work day too. Even simple tasks seem to drag on and on. I'll occasionally fall asleep in a meeting or seminar. Thankfully, a majority of these are done via webconferencing so it's not completely obvious to those not directly adjacent to my cube. Still, that's no way to get through the work week. And a newish life goal of mine is to not be a slouch in whatever I'm doing. (I say newish because it's something I've always been driven to, but never put into actionable objectives)

I was happy, proud even, to have shaken free of the death grip coffee had on my life less a year ago. A morning French press before work, a shot or two of espresso as soon as I rode into the shop, and more shots throughout the day even if I didn't particularly need it. And don't get me started on soda or as I like to refer to it: "liquid candy yum yum". I wasn't so much functionally dependent on caffeine as I was just completely reckless and ignorant about my intake. Having an espresso machine 4feet away from your workbench will do that to you. I'm away from that scene now, but it still took a while for my shaky hands and heart murmurs to stop. And like I said, I was feeling real good about myself and not drinking much coffee. I'd treat myself to a small Americano twice a week, usually during my Chinese tutoring lessons, but I never actively sought out a caffeine fix. I don't own a coffee maker of any shape. Hell I don't have any kitchen equipment period. I'm that much of a bachelor pad dirtbag at the moment. This week I've had coffee almost every morning before work and I've come to the unfortunate realization that a cup of coffee in the morning makes life a helluva a lot more tolerable at the office. I gotta figure something out. Paying 21kuai for a tall Americano at Starbucks isn't exactly breaking the bank, but I'm not all about funding their reign of terror on the coffee bean. We'll see what happens. Maybe I'll spend some cheddar on some nice tea and maybe invest in owning a cup or similar drinking vessel for the bachelor pad. There's good tea here, which in theory should help me steer clear of its more aggressive, beanier cousin.

Eee-Vees

2011-10-26T15:42:00.000+08:00

You know all those visions of a "not too distant future" that you see portrayed in the media? Do you really think that the future will look like that? Sparkling white, bright LED lights, and the gentle buzz of some kind of nerdy fission-propelled vehicles? I don't think so. I've seen the future, or at least Beijing's current application of "futuristic" technology and let me tell you, it's kinda gross.

Electric Vehicles or EVs are everywhere here. They're not bicycles. They're not motorcycles. They exist in another dimension between the two, but are surprisingly treated worse then either of its two-wheeled brethren. They come in many forms here; modified bicycles, scooters, electric mopeds, tricycles, cargo trikes, etc. If it has wheels, you better believe some Chinese guy figured out a way to strap an electric motor to it. I totally understand the motivation behind them. While the whole "bicycles are for peasants" mentality hold some truth here, it's just plain more convenient to have an EV. You can dodge the heavy taxation levied on anything with combustion engines, weave recklessly between and against the flow of traffic, and you're essentially weatherproof as well. In the gross, sweltering summer heat you aren't burdened with the physical requirement to pedal your bike and can happily display your Chinese shirt roll (CSR) skills to get some free air conditioning.. And in the icy winter months you can bundle up in physically restrictive, sleeping bag-type cocoons and huddle behind your EV's wind fairing. But all that convenience has its trade-offs and given the large population in Beijing, you can readily see these trends given the massive rate of EV adoption.

If I only had one complaint as a bike wrench (I obviously have more than one), it would be that people not only don't maintain their bikes, but they outright ignore and abuse them. I could go on and on about how simple maintenance techniques can save you time, money and frustration in the long run, but alas I'm no longer a professional, surly bike wrench (only a recreational surly bike wrench), so I no longer ride in on my tall bike/high horse and drunkenly berate bicycle idiocy. That said, I did learn the perils of commoditizing something to the point where just about any schmoe could simultaneously pickup a bicycle and raise my blood pressure. Look at the fixie trends and how even Grade D bike manufacturers like Schwinn are making bikes that are hip, cool, and urban. Look at Shimano's Coasting project from a few years back (since cancelled) that paired a dyno front hub that charged a computer "brain" in which was responsible for auto-shifting a 3-speed rear hub. The idea behind it was to get more "butts on bikes" by making "simplifying" technology to make cycling more accessible to people who didn't like riding bikes. (ed: How is your target audience "people who don't like riding bikes" if you're a bicycle component manufacturer??) Look at how bike commuting is growing ever more popular worldwide, which is a good thing! Unfortunately, this also means buying piece of crap bikes off Craigslist is increasing too. The benefits of spending a little money and effort to make a bike run smoothly (and appreciating the concept of diminishing returns) is a surly life lesson that I've been able to take with me from the greasy shop pits. Spending money on an electric vehicle is just plain dumb, especially if you're doing only the bare minimum as a buyer and owner of said vehicle.

EVs aren't super popular stateside, but here they reign supreme here and are firmly considered a necessary commodity by nearly all 12M Beijingers. This makes for city full of whirring, battery-driven machines. Some are fast, some are slow, but one thing's for sure no one bought them and thought (the Chinese equivalent of) the words "hip," "cool," "status," or "green." These things afford the average city dweller with the means to travel without relying on a car, bicycle, or pubic transportation. That's about it. Everyone has them, but this plug-and-play mentality has led to some unforeseen consequences. From an environmental standpoint, producing giant batteries for all these EVs can't be healthy. And in a place that has so little advocacy for proper recycling, can you imagine where all these low-quality industrial-size batteries go when they eventually crap out? That isn't to say that Beijing's streets are flowing with the leeched acid from shoddy batteries. It actually flows with the waste of a slightly more biological nature. But there are millions of people here and none of them take care of their EVs because they simply don't care about them. It like how I don't do much more to clean a toaster than occasionally turn it upside down over the sink to shake the old crumbs out of it. I'm not proud of owning a toaster. It's a completely neutral and sterile relationship. Sometimes you have to shake out some of the detritus before you can toast your bread, but no one spends time to polish and tune a toaster. Back to owning an EV, the idea of the government upholding some kind of standard for all of their EV filth is damn near impossible when cars and crime rate higher up on the list. Plus, I'm sure the red tape involved with trying to regulate something like EVs could stretch the length of the Great Wall several times over if you involve everyone from the state, provincial, and local levels of government. From a social perspective, the only thing that people stand to gain from EVs is weight. When people collectively stop pedaling their bikes or walking to work, they obviously don't burn as many calories on a daily basis. Taking into consideration the fact that Beijing isn't exactly a labor-intensive, manufacturing city, waistlines have definitely been increasing. And since no one here thinks riding an EV is cool or sexy, there's no additional pressure to look "the part" so to speak and do other things to watch the gut. I haven't seen a single Prius or any other hybrid car. Even Smart cars are rare compared to the number of Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Astons, Benzs, Bimmers, and Hummers that I've seen here. It's obvious the folks here have found other ways to impress their friends and get laid than with their EVs. The result from all this is a city full of dirty, softly whirring electric vehicles ridden by fat people with big ol' Buddha bellies, who threaten to bowl you over at every intersection, bike path, and sidewalk. If it weren't for the inevitably late honk from these jerks, I'd be smash flatter than a Peking duck pancake several times over (but that's a story for another day)

Your Invitation

2011-10-20T16:23:00.000+08:00

I know it's over a year away, but I am SUPER PUMPED about the cyclocross world champs coming to Louisville, Kentucky in 2013. I have to be there. I will be there. No question about it. I flew home to race in a dinky MABRAcross race*. I damn sure will be flying back stateside to go to Kentucky. Do you even know what's in Kentucky?? BOURBON, that's what! Nothing says "awesome vacation" like a trip through Bourbon Country and watching world-class cyclocross talent. Those European fans have no idea what they're up against. I'll be out there with the most fanatical of them, drinking them under the table, eating all their frites, and out heckling them at every bobbled corner, run-up, fall-down, slip, and slide. You better believe I'm booking my tickets as soon as I possibly can.

So if you want to join me for a dirtbaggy road trip around Bourbon Country and a couple days of amazing cyclocross racing, consider this your invitation. Let's start planning now!

*NB: Actually Tacchino Ciclocross is one of my favorite cross races and I'm not just saying that because my old team hosts it. And there were other factors that flew me halfway around the world that week, but still. Cross is boss!

The More

2011-10-19T14:22:00.000+08:00

Figuring out a bike to take to Beijing was tough. I did tons of research on the type of riding that's out here. Over the Great Firewall (GFW) came a few bits and pieces about well-known bike shops and a riding group or two. It wasn't very promising, so I wanted to bring a bike that would allow me to do a variety of things; on-road, off-road, light touring, bar hopping, etc. The obvious choice was a cyclocross bike, some hand-built wheels, durable Shimano 105 components, and S&S couplers for good measure. I went the cheap CroMoly route, opting to by a Surly Cross-Check to save on the cost and add singlespeed versatility. Surly used to make the Traveler's Check, which was a pre-coupled Cross-Check, but it was discontinued in favor of the LHT Deluxe. I was left to my own devices for the S&S retrofit, which was handily done by the good folks at the Philly-based Bilenky Cycle Works. A cheap, durable, versatile travel bike? Good idea.

I packed an entire duffel bag full of spare parts too. Skinny road tires, rugged 'cross tires, and giant balloon city cruiser tires (40c!). Spare chains, cassettes, and cables. Brakepads and tubes. Oh and tools. What would I be without a trick bag of tools? Friend, Etsy entrepreneur, and businesswoman, Laura P. hooked me up with a Soulrun pro mechanics tool roll and a pair of jersey pocket wallets. These things are awesome! I would highly recommend getting some. Recently tested in a torrential downpour, the waterproof wallet kept my phone and a few other goodies bone-dry. No more zip-lock bags! I packed the tool roll will all the tools I need (including duplicates!) and still have plenty room for more. YES. More tools! All in all, I'm very satisfied with my bike and cache of components and tools. End pat on the back moment.

How do you stop wanting more? Of course, there are a few items I still need for my bike. I ran through my road tube collection pretty quickly riding dirtroads lined with jagged rocks. And I should've originally gone with legitimate compact gearing (50/34) as opposed to the more 'cross-specific (48/39) gearing that's proven slightly useless on the long mountainous rides I've done recently. I've got most of the parts I need now and just need to install them, but the more disturbing trend is that I can rarely turn my mind away from The More.

The More time I spend away from my bikes, either not riding or wrenching on them, The More I become obsessed with them. I start daydreaming about owning More bikes, traveling on More trips, and obvious riding a whole lot More. So what do I do with this compulsion? Hit refresh on all my favorite cycling websites until my F5 key wears out? Is there any cure or like a withdrawn junkie, do I just wait it out? These are the questions I'll being trying to figure out while I'm out here. Top of mind are those questions and where can I find a decent friggin' Tex-Mex joint in Beijing?

Half Running

2011-10-17T14:22:00.000+08:00

It's no secret that I'm a not much of a runner. I enjoyed cross-country and trail running in high school, but those days of frolicking in the woods are far far behind me. It's not that I don't enjoy a good frolic, but I live in Beijing, which isn't exactly a lush forest, and I've since lost that naive gaiety in favor of bourbon and a surlier disposition.

So you'd be forgiven if you thought I would never register for a running race, particularly of the 21km variety. But register for the Beijing Half Marathon I did. Well, the good folks at the office did that for me. All I did was say "sure, why not?" to the event months ago and promptly forgot about the entire thing. A week and a half before the run, I was back in DC, getting my ass kicked in a singlespeed cyclocross race and drinking plenty of delicious bourbon. It was there when it suddenly clicked that I was supposed to do some kind of running event that month (the exact date had unsurprisingly alluded me). Also through my immense powers of deduction, I came to the conclusion that I would need a pair of running shoes. Yes, folks. This Idiot didn't even own a pair of running shoes prior to a week and a half before the marathon. In fact, I hadn't done a serious run or even a light jog since 2006. Instead of buying a reasonable pair of shoes, with cushioning, an insole, and laces, I rode the Fad Wagon to the running store and picked out a pair Vibram FiveFinger KSO's, which are basically 2mm thick rubber soles that you velcro to your feet.

Training? What training? How much can you actually do the week before a run like this? Of course, I did do a quick 50minute run two days before the half-marathon to break in my new kicks. Of course, I went out too hard and too fast. And of course, I got blisters on my feet and was incredibly sore the day before the race. Smart, right?

So the day of the race, I put a dab of chamois cream on my feet cut down on some of the chafing (it didn't help) and headed out the door. Starting any event from Tiananmen Square is pretty epic, even if it is a stupid foot race. Blue skies, cool temps, and clean air made it a perfect day for a run (or so someone had told me a the start). We ran in front of the Forbidden City and then 2hr05min later I was done. During my run, I made the following observations:

- Running for 2hours without a running buddy, forest trail, or even an iPod is really really boring. I can ride a bike all day by myself and would be more than content. In the city, running is probably the slowest way to see a repetitive collection of nearly identical streets and highway overpasses. There was almost no change in scenery, running surface, or elevation. If I could've take a nap while I ran I totally would have.

- One of the reasons I couldn't have taken a nap is that asphalt is apparently a pretty hard surface. It's been a while since I've crashed on the road (*knock on wood*) and even longer since any outing on asphalt didn't involve a minimum of 25c of tire between me and the blacktop. Me and asphalt were reunited by my barefoot-style foot gloves and in those 2hours we spent a lot of quality time together. I actually really like the FiveFingers and the fact that I came off that run with nothing more than a few blisters and muscle soreness is pretty much a damn miracle in my book. That said, I still wish I had spent more time gradually getting to know my new shoes as opposed to yesterday's hot and heavy introduction.

- I got beat by a lot of people. At the start I felt pretty decent for someone that's shut running out of his life for 5years. With the huge number of registrants, the first couple kms were a huge sort-out. Tons of people were bouncing off each other and weaving through the crowd. The chaos finally settled and a rhythm found its way into my legs. If I were to guess, I'd say I maintained a pretty steady pace for the first dozen kms. At that point, either boredom, lack of training, or both kicked in and I saw myself slowing down a bit. It was only for a moment and I wasn't walking, but this was the first time where I caught myself thinking about how badly I suck at running. I shook it off after a few hundred meters and kept on truckin'. Another drop in pace came about 5km later and in similar fashion, I tried to shake it off but couldn't pick the pace back up to where it was when I started. Lead feet. Fine, I thought, I'll just keep running at whatever speed my legs will let me as long as I wasn't speedwalking or trotting. I kept it up until the last 1.5km, where I have no idea what I was doing, but it wasn't running. Stumbling like a drunk hobo maybe, but definitely not running. Each time my pace dipped or dropped, I was passed by a variety of different folks. Someone will have to tell me if the following are considered the norm for marathon-type people, but at no point was I not constantly passing or being passed by:

Someone wearing gungfu shoes
Someone with external speakers playing Chinese opera, easy listening, or folk music
A kid
An octogenarian
Someone grunting, spitting or publicly relieving themselves

I think the ratio was close to 1:1 for people I passed:was passed by. But they came at different times. The first 75% of the race I did most of the passing, which was nice. But getting passed by an 11-year-old wearing a boombox and gungfu shoes in the last couple kms more than made up for any good feelings I might've had about myself. Stupid little hip-hop Shaolin monks...

All in all, I'm glad I did it, though having half-assed my way through a half marathon I can't honestly count this as an "accomplishment". I have a feeling that running will be an unlikely ally in the battle against urban sedentary life since riding in the city is deadly and getting out of the city by bike or otherwise is unpredictable and time consuming. As much as I hate to admit it, running seems to fill a void in my traditionally cycling-exclusive routine. A morning mid-week run or two will help clear the mind, work the legs a bit, and keep the flab to a minimum. Eventually I'll try to actually train for a distance run. The Great Wall Marathon looks particularly fun/menacing, so maybe I'll do that one of these days. The following weeks will see how far I'll take these intentions, but in the meantime my dumbass needs to let the legs and a few blisters recover a bit.

Oh, Booger

2011-10-14T16:44:00.000+08:00

I get asked a lot of questions about living in China. I'm always happy to answer them, but at times I feel that I'm no better at answering them than Google is. Before moving to Beijing, I scoured the internet for little tidbits about life in the Middle Kingdom. Surprisingly, there are a lot of things that made it over the Great Firewall and many of these things held true to my expectations. Common expat complaints/comments run the gamut from spitting, public urination, and the infamous Chinese Shirt Roll (CSR). The culture here is what you'd expect from a bustling metropolis in the Far East. It's crowded (pop. 19.6M), smelly occasionally, and can be a raucous good time if you'd like too. You can get just about anything you want here; high-end modern luxury goods, traditional Chinese clothing, cheap delicious street food, and the latest haute cuisine. Buyer beware though. You'll pay a price for these things, and in the case of many luxury goods, that price can be significantly higher than your US equivalent. It seems the wealthy here are very wealthy and have the bright Italian sportscars to prove it. While it wasn't exactly easy to start a new life on the opposite side of the world, I've enjoyed the challenge much like that of a 'cross race, where pleasure and pain can be found around every corner.

So there. Now you know I'm safe, relatively happy, and want for nothing more than a chili cheese dog and a box of Krispy Kreme donuts from time to time. Can I start being surly and nit-picky now? Gee, thanks!

As I mentioned above, a quick Google search will get you just about anything you want to know about life in China so I'll try not to whine too much about things like "oohhh there's too many people here" and "dammit learning Mandarin is hard." One thing I have trouble getting used to is the pollution. Now DC was never an East-coast tree-hugging stronghold as far as air quality goes, but the breeze off the Potomac would be quite literally a breath of fresh air compared to what I've been sucking down over here. This week was a particularly tough one. The AQI averaged in the high-200's "Very Unhealthy", with a couple days in the 300+ or "Hazardous" range. Rain usually clears things up a good bit, but we haven't had any all week until today, which was also the first time I saw a blue sky in a while. I know, you're probably thinking "aww poor baby! Can't make it through a widdle powootion widout crwying?" and you'd be sorta right. I like doing things outdoors and will readily ride my bike through rain, sleet or snow without any problem. But when it feels like you're chain smoking cigarettes or constantly riding behind a semi-truck, it's hard not to complain. (And I refuse to ride indoors unless I'm training for something.) I don't think I'll ever take fresh air for granted ever again.

As an unexpected consequence of all the microscopic particulate matter in Beijing, I've noticed I tend to get more dried nasal mucus. Yes, "boogers". Even without taxing my respiratory system with hours in the saddle, snot and phlegm flow freely in China, which likely contributes to the prominence of spitting in this region. It not so bad as to require a tissue pack-a-day habit. In fact, I rarely need them and no, that doesn't mean I constantly pick my nose. Instead, the increased particulate matter in the air (PM2.5 if you must know) tends to present itself in the form of daily nasal congestion and sometimes a headache, similar to a reaction on days when the pollen count is real high back home. Yes it's a small annoyance, but it's a daily small annoyance and one that from time to time culminates into a giant snot-rocket of a rant about how boogers are a disgusting byproduct of the crap air quality and crap air quality makes for a surly expat that doesn't get to ride his bike as much as he'd like because (surprise surprise!!) you need clean air to fuel cardiovascular activity.

Achooo! Phew, it feels good to get that one off my chest.

The Motivation: New and Chinese

2011-10-13T06:28:00.003+08:00

Your RSS Feed must be having its mind blown right now. I realize it's been a long while since I last wrote something, but to say I've been busy is a bit of an understatement at this point. I also just realized that I've had this blog running for 5 years (and 1 day). A quick glance at my Archives will show that 2008 was a banner year for posts (relatively), but alas I can make no such promises of consistency this year. 2008 was me at my dirtbaggiest. I was in college (and at times out of college), riding a bunch, and drinking a bunch more. A lot of things have changed since then, but at the same time many things have stayed the same. Five years ago I never thought I'd find myself in Beijing, away from a pegboard full of allen wrenches and bottom bracket tools, and working in a corporate office. But here I am, in China, a desk jockey extraordinaire. As for the things that haven't changed, the one most relevant to this blog is my passion and obsession with cycling. It's a shame I moved to a country where cycling is mostly used for transportation as opposed to recreation, but I'll try and make do here. There are a few riding groups here that I've had the pleasure of joining and I'm optimistic that the riding scene will change for the better in the near future. That said, there's no real racing scene here and cyclocross all but nonexistent, which pains me deeply. So I am once again using this blog to help me keep my obsessions in check, rant extensively, and hopefully update my imaginary readership regularly with a few of the adventures I have planned while I'm out here.

-ic

CanVelo

2011-01-15T09:12:00.003+08:00

More news today coming from the Irrelevant and Redundant Cycling (IRK) newsfeed:
Cervelo and Canyon have reached a settlement over their patent dispute.

What's with legal terms sounding way cooler than they actually are? A dispute should be something you have at a bar with half a broken beer bottle and a ginger midget. It shouldn't be about who's seattube is squarer, stiffer, or whatever(er). Most of the articles regarding this patent sissy fight don't go into depth about any of the actual agreement terms that were settled on between the two manufacturers, but they all seemed to mention the same little tidbit. Cervelo would be able to continue its use of Canyon's wide seattube design and in return, Canyon would have the right to use certain undisclosed Cervelo patents in their designs.

Now before you get all excited about new models coming from either of these two excellent manufacturers, let's take a few things into consideration. All mass produced carbon bike look the same anyways. You don't need a patent to differentiate one bike from the other. Spindly seatstays. Chunky BB cluster. Oversized chainstays. Oversized EVERYTHING. Vertical compliance. Lateral rigidity. Puke. Vomit. Regurgitate. Rinse. Lather. Repeat. The fact is that Cervelo is likely not sharing their R&D department with Canyon. Patents from my understanding as a wrench are simply stop-gaps in an industry where everyone is trying to achieve the same thing (i.e. ride quality) and usually by the same means (i.e. wide seattubes).

Take a look at Cane Creeks recently expired split ring patent for headset upper bearing caps. Guess who's miraculously stepped away from their superior machining stance and adopted a split ring? I actually like both Cane Creek and Chris King, but it just goes to show that bicycles are really simple things and if it works, it works. It also goes to show that it's hard to make a buck in this industry. So King waits until the patent expires to use split rings, saves a some money in doing so, and gains a few extra converts coming over from other headset camps. To be honest, with the influx of new customers, I'd say they probably broke about even if you consider all the warranty bearing caps they've replaced in the past.

So who cares if Cervelo is sharing their patents with Canyon? I sure as hell don't. All that means is that they're giving Canyon access to old designs that they're currently working on replacing anyways. It might be just a tweak here or slight adjustment here, but I guarantee you Cervelo's not sweating it. They've probably got their marketing department working hard on snazzy new "technical" terms to help sell it. BBright? I'm not excited about any new CanVelos coming. Sharing a patent with Canyon is like Netflix getting the jump over HBO for the dvd release of You Got Served. It's the same tired old story and there was already some sketchy Chinese dude sitting in the theater with his camcorder and he was making copies months ago.

I know this might sound like the jaded drivel of a burnt out (slightly drunk) bike mechanic, but it's true. Everything is eventually going to ride the same (or better) eventually. If you can afford it, more power to you. Buy that S-Works, RC, Hi-Mod, or SSL. You won't be disappointed. But don't be surprised a year or two down the road when you're riding a something a third of the price and it is eerily similar to what you previously shelled out tons of cheddar for. What do I ride? Some aluminum turd for bike racing and bike crashing. I'm currently on the hunt for a steel dream bike, having just sold my old one. (d'oh!)

Winter Jogging

2011-01-14T11:05:00.003+08:00

I don't get jogging. I don't understand the point of "jogging" as opposed to actual running. I feel that people who run have a specific objective, a workout plan that includes something along the lines of distance, speed, and interval duration/frequency. I get running. It's a sport, albeit one that I personally loathe except in cyclocross situations. Jogging on the other hand...

It seems like people who "jog" are doing so without a particular purpose or objective. They just go out because it's some sort of physical activity and physical activity is part of healthy lifestyles, like drinking "light" beers (or diluted pee). So I see these people all over the local bike trails at all hours of the day, flailing their arms about, trotting with headphones plugged in blaring the latest tunes from something called a "Justin Bieber." And for the most part I'll casually pass them on the left. I'll say something like "On your left," but that typically falls on deaf ears. And life goes on. I continue on to complete my ride or arrive at a particular destination. The jogger jogs, sings, and skips-to-his-loos until it's time to watch The Biggest Loser or some other inane TV show. And that's it, which is fine with me.

I'll be honest and say I don't expect joggers to have some specific reason to do what they do. It would be like asking me why I have a tendency to punch people with popped collars. The answer: it's just something that happens. But what I hope for someday is a bit more consideration from the jogging population. I don't expect much. As a cyclist, I know I'm not the king of the jungle out here on the trails. This far out on the W&OD, there are several signs that point to a mythical beast called a "horse" which is to be the recipient of any and all "yields". No, what I dream of is a world where joggers show a little more deference to the winter weather. Instead of adopting a foreign-to-them, hardcore, gung-ho attitude, I wish more joggers would find time in the winter to pursue competitive sodoku or take up cooking classes (obvious bonus: you'd get to eat what you cook). Jogging after all is not a winter sport. It's not even a summer sport. In the Olympics, there's running (track, marathon, etc) and (speed)walking. Why then are joggers coming out in the evening darkness and daintily tiptoeing on and around the ice and snow? The question that comes to mind is "Are you serious??" What are you doing out here? Can't you and your buddies have just as much fun playing Jenga or Twister? Instead you're doing out here is jogging aimlessly on the trail, getting in my way, and packing down all the snow which will soon become ice. You know where there's a good place to not get clobbered by a bike commuter? That's right. Indoors. Get there. Or if you really must pointlessly frolic outdoors, I would suggest an open field or park. There are plenty in the DC-Metro area and if you're lucky a hobo might be so kind as to cut you, which I promise is much better than getting a 53t chainring to the face when you get run over by a surly bike commuter.

Fred'd!

2011-01-13T03:30:00.004+08:00

I wanted to wait before writing about the new Luxembourg Cycling Project, mostly because I'm lazy and somewhat indifferent toward people who ride Trek. I used to work at a Trek dealer and at the end of the day, I've found that they're just another bike company. Which is why this CyclingNews article caught my eye.

The article details the "11th hour scramble" that the folks at Trek did to prepare all the equipment for the Leopard-Trek team. Apparently they had 10 days to paint and decal frames and wheels and develop all the marketing material. Despite having approximately 50% of the work completed, they still had a significant amount of work to finish considering an equivalent task takes roughly 30-40 days to complete. As someone who wrenches on bikes and sometimes has to deal with unfortunately short deadlines, it makes me laugh a little bit seeing "industry folk" struggle with the same things I do. Trek, you just got Fred'd!

Thanks to redundant cycling media outlets, we all know that everyone's been working hard getting this project running, but 10 days to do all that work is a laughable amount of time to get all that work done. It's basically the equivalent of some "racer" coming in to the shop 5 minutes before close asking for someone to glue up his tubulars so that he can race in the morning. Oh and while you're at it: overhaul his drivetrain, rebuild his shifters, and post pictures of the process up on TwitBook so he can retwat them to his freddly friends. Sure, stuff like this gets done at all levels of the bicycle industry all the time. And at all levels, one obviously must consider using your right to refuse and what that necessarily implies.

If I refuse to do the work for some jerk that comes in at the 11th hour, it's very little skin off my back. I go home drink a beer (and 8 more after that). The Fred goes home, tries to glue his own tires, and gets dropped or crashes the next day anyways regardless of whatever equipment he did or did not have repaired. My (shop's) reputation was never really in jeopardy since generally no one really gets paid enough to put up with ridiculous crap like that and most shops don't make money off bike racers anyways. In fact, I'm probably better off because now I have one less Fred who will try to come to me at the last minute wanting stuff done. If Trek refuses, all hell breaks loose. They're reputation is on the line and they need to deliver otherwise they stand to lose money, credibility, and probably something else that I'm forgetting right now. The stakes are much higher when you get up to that level. And by completing such an arduous task, now Trek is looking more and more like the brown-nosing, apple-shining nerd you beat up in middle school. What some may call upholding a professional business standard, I call acquiescing to the unreasonable requests of Super Freds. So what if Andy et al. would be riding non-team-issue bikes for a few more weeks? I'd rather get the job done right the first time even if it took more time or meant that someone's clothing/bike didn't match. For me it more about appreciating the work that needs to be done and respecting the person who's doing it. Hopefully this trend doesn't trickle down to the LBS level, but I'm afraid it will. I mean just look at this sweet ass mechanic's truck. Any mechanic would be ecstatic to be working in anything that Euro PRO. Instead, look at the mechanic inside busting his ass getting bikes ready because the Freds at Leopard-Trek rush ordered 100+ bikes. He looks far from happy. And what is he doing with that hammer?

Sick, Inside and Outside

2011-01-12T10:31:00.004+08:00

I'm sick.

Again.

This is like the 27th time since October. I have no idea how I've been getting sick so frequently. I know during 'cross season I made the mistake of racing while still sick. Not only did I do miserably, I made myself sicker in the process. I guess that's what happens when you're living the dream, but I probably shouldn't have had all those beers after each race either. That was just dumb (and awesome). I don't drink that much nowadays. It's just not that fun drinking by yourself, loudly clanging a cowbell, while you scream at the latest streaming 'cross coverage on the interwebs. Well... It's a little fun, but I still haven't been drinking that much.

I have been riding a bit more than I usually do in the winter. Most winters do a weekly roller ride for an hour, then waste three hours blogging about how I hate riding indoors. So far thanks to a relatively moderate winter I have yet to ride the rollers. In fact, I have no idea where they are right now. Meh. I'd much rather be outside in the cold anyways and you can't get sick doing something you enjoy right? Like this one time I went to a Black Keys concert, drank half a fifth of whiskey and didn't get even the slightest bit sick or.... oh... wait never mind. I remember now. Sort of.

How am I supposed to have a balanced riding plan that won't make me sick? If I ride indoors I'll become mentally ill. There aren't enough Hulu, Netflix, or Youtube videos that would keep me on the rollers for over an hour. If I spend a day battling 15-degree windchills for hours and hours, when I thaw out I'll spend the next days as a snotty mess curled up in the corner hugging a bowl of soup. I thought being the Southeast Asian Sven Nys could totally work. Damn you, genetics. But I must soldier on and keep riding. I don't know why, but that just sounds like the right thing to do right now. Plus it gives me yet another fine weapon in my arsenal of excuses I use when I get my soul crushed on the road.

8 Wrongs Make It Right

2011-01-10T10:43:00.005+08:00

Another edition of the Haymarket Winter Bike League has come and gone. I still have yet to develop any real road legs or self-preservation instincts. You know how two wrongs don't make a right? Well lets try this:

Wrong - Successfully bridging up to two man break
Wrong - Working hard to establish gap
Wrong - Blowing up
Wrong - Trying to latch on to winning chase group of MABRA elites
Wrong - Blowing up
Wrong - Not replacing my shoe's cleats sooner; having one cleat rendered useless on the final gravel section with 10+miles to go
Wrong - Forgetting to replace co2 cartridge for pump the last time I used it; having to scramble with hand pump, eventually bumming a fresh cartridge off a friend
Wrong - Eating 1/2lb burger, fries, chili-cheese fries, hot chocolate, and a coke after ride

What is that? Like 8 wrongs? That's not a comedy of errors. It's an effing epic saga of how I suck at riding. But you know what? I still had fun and wasn't stuck on a trainer and that's alright with me.

Growing Some Legs

2011-01-09T07:34:00.007+08:00

What is it about getting dropped that has me so fascinated? There's this strange feeling where the legs just turn off or simply reject the next hardest gear that I'm trying to grab. It's the combination of running low on food, water, and oxygen-rich blood that I seem to love so much. Sometimes it's completely expected, like when I roll up to Haymarket's Winter Bike League rides/races. Sometimes it catches me by surprise and I find myself without the company of my teammates on a tame "moderate pace" ride. (Note: It was a moderate pace. I was just riding off the front like an idiot. Over and over again.) Thankfully it's still winter and the perfect time to sow the seeds of some real riding legs. Hmmm... It's time to do some hard thinking about this. I think some whiskey might help.

I promise I'll write funnier stuff when I've got more time or more booze.

One Leg at a Time

2010-12-16T05:47:00.002+08:00

It took me three hours of riding in a constant headwind for me to figure out how to ride my road bike again. The goal was to pedal, one leg and then the other, for a while without stopping to pick my bike up and attempting to scale a wall. So by my standards, it was a success. I only stopped once to refill my water bottles and eat some sushi, cheesecake, cookies, and knock back an espresso. Do I know how to off-season or what? I'm sure by anyone else's standards it'd be a fail, as my chicken legs and lack of road handling skills [I need to stop countersteering so much] are two obvious signs that I am not ready for any kind of road racing.

Thankfully, Haymarket Bicycles is hosting a Winter Bike League, which will feature a four-part series of unsanctioned road races/rides. I'm absolutely psyched for this. Having done one of the Battle of Bull Run races last year, I'm looking forward to the excellent riding that the Haymarket area has to offer. Miles of smooth rolling terrain, some leg-breaking climbs, and plenty of dirt roads to break up the usual monotony. I'm in no kind of shape to be rolling hard with some of the guys that will be showing up. In fact, I expect the "race" to go something like this:

-Start
-10minutes in: Get dropped
-Wait till everyone is out of sight, out of mind
-Crack open flask of bourbon
-Enjoy the ride

That's right, the Lanterne Rouge has a dining car that will be serving a liquid brunch. Everyone's invited to join me, but it might be hard to "catch" me. I'll be so far behind everyone, that if you want to ride with me you'll have to stop by the side of the road and build yourself a large campfire to stay warm before I roll by. Bonus shots go to anyone that has s'mores waiting for me.

Keeping the Dream Alive

2010-12-08T12:21:00.005+08:00

The end of 'cross season is always a strange time of year. I think they call it "winter." There are several things I like to do during the winter months. Somewhere at the top of this list would be "race more 'cross" which naturally includes "drink more beer" and "eat more." But sometimes you just have to settle for enjoying long rides outside while the ground is still dry. There are several issues with this.

Considering that you've done nothing but intervals and pound beers (yes. at the same time) for the past 11 weeks, you'll start your winter riding campaign wondering how anyone could ride their bike for more than an hour. This revelation usually comes once you've ridden an hour away from your starting point, which requires you to ride at least another hour, grumbling to yourself about how much you miss 'cross season. Additionally, you'll wonder why your large chainring has 53-teeth. And at the bottom of long hills, you'll have to resist the urge to dismount and shoulder your bike, deeming the hill completely unrideable "unless you're J-Pow," who would just bunny hop the entire damn thing. It's surprising how strong you can feel cruising in the dirt on 32c tires and at the same time feel like a chicken-legged weakling going up a small incline on your 25c training tires.

This all comes at the worse time of year too. When the bitter cold winter wind cuts you to your very core. When everyone's dusting off their rollers, trainers, and collection of cycling documentaries. You may even consider taking up a winter hobby that has nothing to do with being cold or miserable or both. I've done it before. Rock climbing. Time at the local gym/meat factory. "Reading books." Eff all that. Here's how you keep the cyclocross spirit alive during your roadie reeducation and winter training months:

- Talk incessantly about cyclocross componentry. People love to hear about how supple your 32c tubulars feel and how you would rather sacrifice the actual stopping power of your road caliper brakes for the modulation and mud clearance of your cantis.
- Heckle other cyclists. I like to scream "BUNNY HOP!" toward oncoming cyclists and pedestrians who bypass twigs, piles of leaves, and potholes. I tried the whole dollar-bill on the ground thing but it didn't work. I ended up getting in a fight with a hobo, though that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's not even that irrelevant to racing cyclocross either. There have been many shitty races where afterward I've felt as if I'd been beaten by a drunken hobo.
- Drink. Heavily. You gotta stay warm, right?

Holiday Dilemmas

2010-12-07T10:40:00.006+08:00

[or I'm Basically a Gift-Wrapper Covered in Bike Grease]

I know that as an employee in the retail/service industry it's super cliche to say this, but I'm not the biggest fan of Christmas or the "holiday season" in general. As a disclaimer, this Bahumbug moment is brought to you by a beer (or three).

For me, working in the bike world during the holiday season is the worst. It's completely different from working at any big box retailer or department store. When you work at any of these places, you deal with picky customers and gift receipts all the time. Returns of a particular item are generally expected. As a wrench, this time of year means people think they're getting in they holiday spirits by purchasing a bike for a loved one. In reality, they're just being stupid. Bikes aren't ugly sweaters that can be returned, hidden forever in the back of a closet, or thrown in a fire. Bikes tend to be highly personal items. People who ride them are generally pretty specific about their bike's fit, componentry, and even the color. Yes, I realize these specifics don't differ much from wardrobe items, but do you give $500+ sweaters to people if you aren't sure they'll like it?

People who buy other people bikes are obviously not cyclists. If they were, they'd realize how crazy it is that they're buying someone else a bike and aren't receiving a bike themselves. We call this the Cyclist Prisoner's Dilemma (Christmas Edition), wherein two cyclists facing an uncertain outcome (receiving a gift bike), minimizes his own risks (money spent on bike shit) resulting in a zero-bike game. Simply put, a real cyclist wouldn't bother buying a bike (a whole entire bike) if he isn't guaranteed to get a bike in return. The Pareto-optimal solution is for each cyclist to buy the other cyclist a bike. That way everyone benefits from the cooperation by getting a new bike and also receives the positive externality of having a legitimate answer when a significant other questions the presence of a new bicycle in the household ("What? That? I didn't buy that. It was a gift!"). With everyone getting new bikes and all the households in a peaceful state, the world would be a merry place indeed.

But noooOOOOoooo....

The reality is that we live in a consumer culture and anyone can buy anything, even bikes, for Christmas. It's usually a some fat cat named Mr. Moneybags that comes in, arbitrarily picks a bike off the floor, and buys it for his unsuspecting (and high-maintenance) wife. He can't be bothered to stick around for the 20 minutes as you quickly tune the bike and install every damn accessory known to man on it. Kickstand, rack, fender, new grips, bottlecage (only one though), mirrors, lights, and of course a giant-ass saddlebag are all added to the bike. [Note: in a few days, they'll all be removed and installed on something different when the gift recipient comes into the shop to get a properly-fitted bike.] When Mr. M returns he'll walk directly towards someone else's bike, pick it up, and curtly say "I'm here for this. Thanks." To which I'll reply, "No, you're not. That bike belongs to the guy standing right next to you. Y'know, the one you walked around before picking up his bike?" Despite the blunder, he won't even flich and will just stand there, waiting impatiently as you bring his bike out, naturally worrying about the meter maids ticketing his double-parked luxury car. Oh and he'll need some help putting it in the backseat of his car too. Be sure not to scratch the interior. Thankfully, Mr. M put down some newspaper to help protect the leather upholstery.

Have a merry Christmas, Mr. M. We'll see you in a couple of days. Oh and by the way did you by any chance think about the message you'll be sending your significant other by buying her a piece of exercise equipment? Didn't think so. Bye now!

11 Weeks

2010-12-03T09:43:00.000+08:00

I just spent the past 11 weeks in the pain cave racing 'cross. Holy 'eff that was quite a run. I did more races on the dirt (18) than I did on the road (16) and had a blast doing it. Cyclocross is definitely my style and it pains me that my spell check doesn't recognize cyclocross as real word. Hold up. There. Fixed it. Now if only I could get it to auto-correct to add fifty exclamation points behind the word I'd be ecstatic. But now the season's over. I don't have to plan weekend road trips any more. I'm ready to get fat and lazy for a little while. Speaking of fat and lazy, I've been obviously away from this blog for a while and I apologize to the two people that actually read this thing. I'm always thinking about funny things to write in the blog, which is why you'll usually catch me chortling under my breath (churtling?) I promise I'll try to write more often, especially now since I don't have any excuses. Not that 'cross racing was ever really an excuse. It was pretty obvious I didn't train a lot with the exception of practicing my pain face in the mirror every morning. It's also pretty obvious that I didn't really focus on eating "right" during the race season either. You could see examples of this at every race where I was magnetically attracted to every food truck or vendor that served any combination of beer, chili, fries, hot dogs, Italian sausage, or candy. So I don't really know where I'm getting this whole "I'm gonna get fat and lazy for the off-season"-thing. I'm already there. One thing's for sure though. I'm finally going to crack open that bottle of whiskey I've been sitting on (not literally). How's that for an off-season resolution?

Feeling Pressured

2010-08-29T07:17:00.003+08:00

What is it about tire pressure that 's so interesting to people? I'm not talking about the pressure in my 'cross tires. I don't like to divulge that kind of sensitive information. It's important to keep those secret so I can blame them for my shitty performance(s) on race day. What really bugs me are customers' inquiries about their own tire pressure.

As a mechanic, I really don't mind pumping up tires for a customer. It's not an inconvenience to me because I have an air compressor. Even if I didn't have an air compressor, I understand it comes with the territory along with the more "interesting" wheel builds and bearing overhauls (plus I have guns of steel. Floor pumps don't stand a chance). But my patience always run thin when, without fail, the customer opens his stupid mouth to ask me about his tire pressure. You should know what pressure you're supposed to run in your tires. 40-80psi for the mountain bike tires you use on your hardtail commuter. If you have a hybrid, 70-100psi should do it. If you rock a road bike, you'll probably rock 100+psi. But let's be perfectly fucking honest here. The average customer doesn't give a shit about this stuff. They don't even have pumps with pressure gauges on them. They use janky piece-of-shit hand pumps that hardly work and half the time they rip the damn valves out of their tubes anyways. And yet they still ask me what pressure their tires should be at and I inevitably have to bend down and scan their tire for the pressure reading, like some raider of the fucking lost ark brushing away the cobwebs and brake dust caked on the sidewalls of their tires. Once I retrieve this precious bit of information, my reply is usually met with this little gem: [*gasp*] "Well, what was my pressure to begin with??" which usually happens as I'm topping of the last tire. Goddamn people! Do you want the tire's entire biography? Obviously if a nincompoop like yourself, who doesn't own a pump with a pressure gauge and who doesn't even know what PSI to pump their tires to, can garner that they need air in their tires, then the pressure reading will simply say: TOO DAMN LOW. Why do you want to know how low they were to begin with? So that you can schedule in advance the number of days it will be before you ask me the same damn thing? Fuck you. That's why we keep a floor pump chained up outside.

Get With The Programming

2010-08-23T20:02:00.003+08:00

Dear VeloNews,

You fail again. I know throughout the years I've given you a helluva lot of grief for constantly being shitty, but I just can't help it. You're shit is just shitty. From crappy web design, unnavigable photo galleries, and crap tech articles written by good wrenches-turned-crap tech editors; I would say that my criticisms were well-deserved. But then again, I could just be an insatiable, nit-picky asshole.

I'm late to the whole Google Reader thing. I know, I'm old school like that. I loved having a 100+ links saved up on my web browser. I loved clicking on each and every one of those links, opening up innumerous tabs on my laptop-equivalent of a rusty 10-speed Schwinn. I particularly liked when my web browser would fail completely or require some stupid "update" and subsequently erase my entire collection of bookmarks. In fact, I LOVED that. Jumping on the RSS-feed wagon has made my web surfing procrastination 100% more efficient and generally bulletproof. It's so efficient in fact that if anything disrupts my ability to rifle through several blog entries, newsfeeds, and generally useless internet memes, I get slightly peeved.

I will applaud Velonews' attempt to add an RSS feed option. It truly is the wave of the future. But where I'll stop is when I actually receive their updates in my Google Reader. The Reader is designed for people to quickly glance over and digest massive amounts of information in the form of newsfeeds etc. I can literally scan through 100+ posts and YouTube videos in less than an hour. This is partially aided by the fact that many sites that have an abridged-for-RSS version of the articles it posts on their full site. And much like newspapers, you really only need to read the first paragraph or two to get the general gist of the article. Unfortunately, the boys and girls at Velonews never got this memo. So what I get when I open my Reader are pages and pages of useless shit, like all 526 finishers of the Mt. Washington Hill Climb. As a general rule, if I have to use the scroll wheel more than 3 times to get to the end of a post in my Reader, I'll just mutter some obscenity, skip it and move on. This happens every time I read VeloNews. C'mon guys, get with the programming.

The Future Looks Bleak

2010-08-17T09:13:00.004+08:00

THIS is not funny.

I know it's a proof of concept and the engineers are just keeping their minds fresh or whatever but gimme a fucking break! I'm sure some douchebag's kid is going to love this bike. He'll love it right up to the moment a bigger, badder kid runs over him with his BMX bike. Who the hell would give this to a kid? Kids these days don't even have the basic motor skills to walk in a straight line to any destination that doesn't have an XBox controller or microwavable personal-pan pizza waiting for them. How's a kid supposed to be coordinated enough to figure out the brakes and shifting on a Mektronic-equipped tri bike? ["Look dada! BUTTONS!"] If kids start coming into my shop and asking to have aerobars installed, I'll lose my shit.

Alternatively, a hat tip must be given to the Trek engineers for THIS. A full-carbon, rigid single-speed mtb with XTR hydraulic discs is just what every kid needs.

Good Write Bike

2010-06-09T13:18:00.008+08:00

I've been drinking. That's not an excuse for my nearly two-month hiatus from this blog (but it kind of is). It is however an excuse for me to be look up stupid shit on Inside Triathlon's website.

First comes this lovely gem. I'm not really sure what I'm looking at, but either way the mechanic who built this bike should commit seppuku for disgracing all that is sacred in cycling. I know that triathletes aren't bound by geometry/body position restrictions like cyclist are with respect to UCI standards, but someone has to pull an intervention on whoever is riding this bike. There should be some rule like "if you don't have the flexibility to touch your toes, you should not be riding this bike" or "if your aerobar risers are taller than the length of your stem, surly Asian mechanics are allowed to kick you squarely in the ass."

Diving further into this treasure trove of goodness, I found this shitty article about SRAM's new Apex group. For an example of why I think triathletes are morons, look no further than the first sentence:

The sport of triathlon is growing at an incredible rate but the cost of swim, bike and run gear is an obstacle that keeps many people away from multisport.

People who read this shit must be fucking stupid if they think this sentence makes any sense.
1) "The sport of triathlon"
What the fuck else is a triathlon? Redundant. Fail.

2) "the cost of swim, bike and run gear"
Has anyone heard of a fucking gerund? I'm not English major and while I have a loose grasp of the language in general, I'm pretty sure "run gear" isn't no good English. And if you're using "running" you might as well have parallel structure and use "swimming" and "cycling". Or I guess if you're a douche you can use "biking," but I promise to hate you forever for it. Triathletes are so goddamn enamored with the whole "swim, bike, run" mantra that they can't pause for a minute to put together a decent sentence. [ED- Pausing to write a proper sentence is considered to have a negative effect on a triathlete's transition times. This is important because as we all know, both races and sentences are either won or lost in their transitions]

3) "Multisport" is a fucking adjective.

Skipping over the garbage that is this "tech review," let's look at the verdict:

The verdict: The stuff works. Apex may not be as flashy or crisp as high priced groupsets but it functions efficiently and is a great way to cut the price of triathlon.

um... WHAT?
1) "The stuff works."
Really? That's going to be your first sentence? It's the first of only TWO sentences in this verdict.

2) "a great way to cut the price of triathlon"
Is triathlon some mythic beast of grammar or am I just missing something here. Let's try that sentence with another noun. Example: "...a great way to cut the price of race." It doesn't work. It's not like triathlon has a silent -ing at the end. It's not a verb converted into a noun like cycling. This phrase doesn't make any fucking sense. You could even put an "-s" at the end or use an indefinite article like "a triathlon." But noooo, these idiots use "triathlon" like its the fucking Swiss Army knife of the English language, when in reality its the cleaver that has butchered the language altogether.

I know I might be nitpicking here and like I said I have a pretty loose grasp of the English language as it is. But this shit really doesn't make any sense. I know that for a fact. I also know that the Lagunitas Undercover Investigation Shut-Down Ale is delicious, has an ABV of 9.75%, and that I will have having several more in the immediate future.

PS- This all goes to show how little the Competitor publishing group cares about the actual content of their publications. I'm pretty sure a drunk infant could write better articles about triathlons. Zack Vestal and Velonews are shameful, but this is a disgrace. In similar news, did anyone else notice that venerable tech writer and racer Matt Pacocha has left Competitor/Velonews for Future Publishing Limited? That's right, he'll be joining forces with James Huang and writing for BikeRadar, CyclingNews, and several other Future PLC publications. Awesome.

UPDATE: Now with links. I was tired and slightly drunk last night.

Bridging the Gap: May God Help Us All

2010-04-20T11:38:00.003+08:00

This race is sponsored by Michelob Ultra (ed- the good stuff is at 0:09). MGHUA

http://www.bikereg.com/events/register.asp?eventid=10400

Bridging the Gap: The Have-Not's

2010-04-08T00:37:00.002+08:00

In a continued effort to cynically breathe (scoff?) life back into this blog, I've thrown together a few random thoughts into another edition of Bridging the Gap.
___________

If I'm not riding or working or if I'm just trying to avoid doing things I need to do, I'll open up a few of random boxes of bike crap that I have just to tinker with them and see if I have enough parts to put together a beater. It ends up creating a mess and I'm usually good for at least 45 minutes of good ol' fashioned time wasting. The list of bikes that I sort of almost have complete sets of parts for are:

- 'Cross bike to race on
- 'Cross bike to tool around on
- Fully-geared (gasp) mountain bike
- Time-trial bike
- Single-speed fixie with brakes (gasp^2)

As you can imagine, I have 3+ large boxes crammed with derailleurs, cranks, bb's, brakes, bars, etc. And as you can probably also imagine, I am surprisingly frustrated when I don't have a part that I think I should have. So today I found that I (still) have an old, injured Force rear derailleur, but don't have a 10-speed Shimano rear mech (that I need to match the Shimano bar cons for a potential TT bike). I have a 9-speed one, just not a 10. Just run it with 9sp in friction mode, you say? Nope. Thought about that, but the 9sp derailleur is for the second 'cross bike. Mo' mechs, mo' problems right?

Also, I don't have nearly enough front derailleurs to match up to the bikes that I want to (maybe) build. Stupid.

Sister Zack and the Church of Unholy Sacrilege

2010-04-07T11:14:00.014+08:00

I've been thinking a lot about pain lately. Nothing related to crashes or running head on into walls, but more to the effect of riding oneself to the limit. I like that. I like it so much in fact that I keep myself in a constant state of unfitness so that I can struggle more and "enjoy" myself that much more. Training, methinks I like it...

Speaking of painful, how godmotherfuckingawful is it to try and view images on Velonews.com? It's bad enough that you have a possibly imbred Zach Vestal right a piece [ed- yeah, piece of shit] about the Belgian champion, Tom Boonen's bike, but to have their image gallery arranged in such a illogical fashion blows my mind away. So not only do I not get any interesting information about Tommeke's custom Merckx, I get lines like the following:

As with many bikes this week, a chain catcher is fixed to the front derailleur hanger, arcing rigidly toward the small chainring to direct an errant chain back into place onto the ring.

Yes. Thanks, Vestal. Thank you for telling me how a chain catcher arcs. Apparently flaccid chain catchers just doing do the trick and I've been using them them the wrong way the entire time. What Vestal seemed to leave out was that it is necessary for a soigneur to fellate each chain catcher before the race to ensure its rigidity. And for special races like the Ronde van Vlaanderen, fellating a chain catcher for a grueling 273km race can take up to three hours and several tubs of Polylube 1000.

Not only does every word of Zach Vestal's article significantly lower your IQ, trying to navigate through the image gallery is bound to enrage you in your weakened mental state. So if you click on one of the pictures below the shittily written article, a logical, internet-savvy user would expect to see an enlarged picture of whatever thumbnail he had just clicked. What do I see? I see that retarded article that I just fucking read. Where's the picture? It's at the bottom of the page. You have to scroll down to see it. If you want to continue this frustrating exercise you can click the 'Next' button, but if you're used to more intuitive designs (i.e. Facebook, Cyclingnews.com, etc) you might try and click the current image to skip to the next one, which would be a mistake. If you click this image, the same image pops out of the regular webpage into a sort of magnified viewer. But here's the thing about the view, it's only like 10% bigger than the image on the original webpage and you can't cycle through any of the other images in the gallery with this fantastic viewer-thing. The script at the bottom of the viewer-mode always says "Image 1 of 1." And to add further insult to the reader, each image is coupled with a pointless quote from Vestal himself. I've included the highlights of his "tech" article below.

Lastly, and to take an admittedly cheap shot at Zach Vestal, I noticed his stupid last name didn't come up on my blogger's spellcheck. [ed- Isn't it amazing what you can do on the internet nowadays?] So I looked up the definition of "vestal" and Dictionary.com had this to say:

–adjective

1. of or pertaining to the goddess Vesta.

2. of, pertaining to, or characteristic of a vestal virgin; chaste; pure.

–noun

3. vestal virgin.

4. a chaste unmarried woman; virgin.
5. a nun

Now a real academic would do research and draw parallels between Greek mythology and Zack's now soiled virginity as VeloNews' newest tech editor. But I'm too lazy to go into all the deets. (That's short for details.) Instead look at #5 on the list: A nun. That's right. Zack Vestal is actually Sister Zack from the Church of Unholy Sacrilege of Cycling Classics. He'll be all over Europe covering cycling's most important race in the most inane and uninteresting ways possible. Next up: Paris-Roubaix live coverage via Morse code!

Vestal Captions About Tommeke's Bike:

- "Tom Boonen’s Campagnolo front brake."
- "The box section of Ambrosio rims probably makes this Fast Forward decal application fairly straightforward."
- "It’s Campy Record for Boonen.
- "There’s a chain watcher hiding behind the front derailleur."
- "A Belgian bike for the Belgian champion, it stands out against the rest."
- "Here’s a better look at that chain catcher."
- "Boonen doesn’t need a GPS to keep track of the route, because he probably has every stone memorized."
- "Boonen’s Deda handlebar is wrapped in Prologo tape, but if it’s double-wrapped, it’s not terribly obvious."
- "It’s hard to tell in the photo, but this is a long and low setup with the Deda stem."

To Road or Not To Road

2010-04-05T22:12:00.003+08:00

Has anyone noticed a growing trend towards off-road road racing? There was Boone-Roubaix this past weekend, the Pro/Am Tour of the Battenkill is this weekend, and there have been two edition of the Battle of Bull Run, which from what I've heard is Sick McNasty and increases your ball girth by 33.33%. As an (extremely) amateur cyclocross racer, I like this growing trend for several reasons.

One
It makes the race more interesting, more selective. The change of pace from the half-hearted attacks and surge/slow patterns that I've sadly become used to is nice.

Two
It levels the playing field. Granted, there isn't much of an advantage to be had over your fellow Cat4 racers if you have deep-dish carbon wheels (which I don't), but a race featuring even the smallest stretch of gravel will have most sensible racers switching to something a bit more reliable.

Three
It's fun to watch shit happen. While every difficult race is called a "race of attrition," if you take away the asphalt you get watch all types of stuff simply explode. From the dummy who thought it wise to still ride his carbon wheels (ccccrrraaaaccck!) to the guy riding his flimsiest, oldest set of tires and tubes (pffftttt!) to me and my amazing leg-shaped firecrackers (KAAABOOOOOM!), it's always fun to see and hear the destruction.

I've got a few tricks up my sleeves to make it through these off-road races with your bike in one piece and air in your tires, but I'm not going to share them here (yet). It'll be fun to test out my ideas and if they don't work I'll just carry a cellphone and a flask with me. Perfect.

The Bucket List

2010-04-05T10:36:00.003+08:00

I'm a list kind of person (I think most bike mechanics are). It helps me organize my thoughts and plans. Written or unwritten, I have a list for just about everything, from a weekly schedule to the type of pies I like to eat to a massive compilation of all the bike parts that I need to complete my imaginary, but nonetheless amazing bike builds. What I like most about lists is the satisfaction I get from scratching off items that I've completed or conquered. Strawberry-rhubarb pie is delicious? Check.

One of the lists that seems to be growing as the cycling season ramps up at the bike shop, is the list of shit I need to do for my own personal fleet of bikes. Here come the excuses! I work all day on bikes and the last thing I want to do at the end of the day is work on my own, even when said bike is resting not further than 3 feet from the repair stand and tools that I was just using seconds ago. Overhauling a creaky bottom bracket or truing a wheel becomes such a mental task at the end of the day that the thought of just going home and drinking myself to sleep goes from a better option to practically a requirement. Furthermore, when I go home there are all the Pro-Beero Bikes to work on, that allow me to sleep in such comfortable, drunken stupors. [ed- Get it? Pro-bono? Pro-beero? I'm so fucking clever.] Go figure a guy obsessed with bikes surrounds himself with the machines at work and at home and generally anytime he's not out riding. So when I do get a "break" from working on bikes, all I really want to do is simply ride. Which is easier said than done since I spend a majority of my time riding cursing at the creaky fucking thing and its lazy-ass mechanic. This is quintessentially the Bike Mechanic Paradox. Meh. It could be worse. I could be a mechanic at a triathlete shop. I have no idea how to tune-up a wetsuit.

Tour Duh Hains Point

2010-04-02T09:18:00.004+08:00

Riding at Hains Point is silly in general. Add the natural phenomenon of flowery trees in bloom and things get a bit sillier. Every year the Cherry Blossom Festival brings thousands of people into the city to see a couple little flowers, which apparently have their own website. Hains Point isn't even the most highly traveled destination, but does provide tourist with a ton of parking space. This causes drivers to wander erratically from lane to lane, speeding up, and slowing down, searching for a parking spot that isn't there. As you can imagine, this is chaos to the average cyclist who wants to enjoy a noon lunch ride or for anyone crazy enough to attend a Thursday night sprint there. But if you were hoping to find a pro-cycling woe-is-me rant here you might be out of luck. Or maybe you won't. I guess that's why it's called luck right?

Why Tourists are Stupid

While I don't necessarily consider myself of the tourist variety, I do like to go places that I haven't been before. Usually this involves three parts: traveling to destination, doing something, leaving destination. From what I can see, the problem with the D.C. tourist traffic at Hains Point is that they seem to have these things all jumbled together into one giant frustrating shitfest. For example, today's weather was downright gorgeous; a bright sunny day with barely a cloud in the sky and a nice cool breeze from time to time. "What better day to enjoy the outdoors" I thought to myself and, because I'm a normal logical person, I chose to ride my bicycle and meet up with Powerlegs for a ride. The average D.C. tourist is not normal and far from logical and as such enjoys the outdoors by:

1) Driving, but "outdoors"
2) Rolling down the windows to "enjoy the weather"
3) Cranking up the radio
4) Meander aimlessly throughout the Hains Point loop

Oh yes, great. You can get so much fresh air through that window you just cracked open, never mind that it's tainted with the sickly scent of your pine air freshener hanging from your rear view mirror. Never mind that you're not really enjoying anything either. Are these people crazy? Do they realize that they're just sitting down in a box with the equivalent of moving pictures passing them by? You could sit in an IMAX theater with 3D glasses and get nearly the same experience. I promise I'll pass by you and call you a motherfucking idiot too. (You know, for consistency's sake.)

Why I Can Somewhat Slightly Come Close to Tolerating Tourist

I don't own the road. Yes, I have a right to be there, but that piece of asphalt isn't anyone's property. And as sucky and dangerous as the drivers are down at HP this time of year, there is a silver lining to this retarded cloud. They might suck at driving, but they don't suck at forking their money over. I'm not talking about robbing tourists (despite being a million times as mobile in a getaway on a bike). I'm talking about fat, lazy tourists pulling over to a random restaurant or street cart cart to grab some chow and buy a stupid hat that says FBI on it. You know what those sales taxes help to pay for? Some of that asphalt that we ride on year-round (as in those million other opportunities for us to ride at HP without tourists). So let them have their Big Macs and sketchy driving techniques. I'll still go to the point from time to time, but not with my usual hammerfest expectations. I'll even bite my tongue too, except when someone really deserves it.

Oh and another thing, I was running this question by Powerlegs and Big Red today and I'll ask you all the same thing: Why isn't there a bike lane at Hains Point again? Amazingly enough, the thought had never even occurred to me until today. HP has arguably the most cycling and recreational traffic in DC and there aren't any additional safety measure set aside for the people that use it? I'm not talking about building a race course for roadies. It'd be nice to simply have a lane for those that aren't planning on going the posted speed limit (or for me when I spontaneously combust at a noon ride). That way rollerbladers, stroller-pushing parents, random shadowboxing freestyle-rapping hobos, and triathletes can have access to a lane on the road to do whatever it is they do and roadies can take to the roads a little more freely (as soon as those damn tourist clear out).

Bridging the Gap: About Eating

2010-04-01T04:06:00.004+08:00

My jaw is sore. Before you start thinking any dirty thoughts, my jaw is sore because I just wolfed down a giant post-ride lunch. Much like my racing style, I tend to be quite the food masher and finish pretty quickly. All that anaerobic chewing is giving me a mouth cramp. (ed- Is it possible to bonk from eating too hard?)

Cycling and eating are my favorite things and there isn't much better than going on long rides and eating at the same time. But for me combining these two things can be a recipe for disaster. Forget the whole "Pro"-style look of noshing down on a panini for a moment, and consider my aforementioned style of eating in addition to my style of riding. I like to take big bites. Big bites are bad. I've come close to suffocating myself on several occasions. I must subconsciously think that going fast and taking big bites of Clif Bars, Powerbars, jelly beans, chewy things, and Italian Store subs is somehow more efficient that slower, more manageable bites; as if somehow the wind velocity make my consumption work like a ram-air intake. It does not and usually goes like this: pedal, pedal, bite, chew, deep breath, chew, chew, exhale, chew, inhale, cough, swallow, get dropped by anyone riding with me. I know, it's kind of ridiculous. I'm working on it.

Breaking It Down

2010-03-25T05:45:00.003+08:00

Gotta do this quick before my other self comes back and tells me I should be studying/doing more productive things.
______

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

2010-03-11T03:48:00.003+08:00

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

2010-03-07T07:10:00.004+08:00

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.
_________________________

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

2010-03-04T06:51:00.004+08:00

"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.

This Is Getting To Be A Bit Much

2010-02-20T09:10:00.003+08:00

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.

Stinkers

2010-02-16T13:50:00.003+08:00

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.

Not Just Surviving

2010-02-08T10:42:00.000+08:00

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.

The Eve of the Snowpacalypse

2010-02-05T12:02:00.004+08:00

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.

Welcoming the New Year

2010-01-05T00:05:00.006+08:00

What is this large, bulbous protrusion just below my chest?

In the DC Metro area, we are still bearing witness to the aftermath of our first winter storm, which brought 2+ feet of snow down upon our unprepared lands. I'll admit that I did join many of the mass in ransacking the local grocery store for bread, milk, hot chocolate, and candy. It was a shit show and some jerk wouldn't leggo my Eggo so I laid the smackdown upon him. This was all before Christmas and there's still piles of snow-turned-ice on the sides of roads and driveways. It's all coated in that sickly gray mixture of sand, salt, and exhaust fumes that make you wonder how you could have ever seen a childhood winter wonderland at all in the craptastic muck.

Which brings me back to the round bump below my chest. As it turns out, that would be my big, fat belly. While I probably still won't be picked for The Bigger Loser, I did gain a few lbs over the break. All those heavy meats and sweet treats took a devastating toll on my waistline and my ability to stay awake after eating them. All that time food-napping meant that something had to give and with the weather being as crappy and frigid as it has been, my motivation to ride bikes has been whittled down considerably. Losing whatever "fitness" I had during 'cross season, I have to start over again. On the rollers. God, I hate the rollers. But unlike last year, I will attack them with a steely diligence. I will be so disciplined in my winter riding this year that I will face and stare at a blank wall all winter and like it. No music. No movies. Just a wall. Maybe I'll put a poster up. I was thinking of getting one of a plain red brick wall or maybe a section of the Berlin wall that doesn't have too much graffiti on it.

Actually, wait. This sounds a lot like a New Year's resolution. And writing this blog post has the familiarity of desperate procrastination. I think the top button of my uncomfortably tight pants just shot off and punctured a hole in my tire. Great. Just what I need; another thing keeping me from the wonderful world of roller riding. That and my worthless jelly legs.

A Riddle for the Slow

2009-12-13T04:14:00.004+08:00

What's square, ugly, and rendered completely useless after 45 minutes?

That's right. My pedal stroke.

I rode my road bike for the first time in months today. I figured I owed it to myself to take a week off before transitioning from cyclocross to training for the upcoming road season. Forty-five minutes into my ride, I soon realized that my legs while somewhat useful for riding 'cross were nothing even close to effective at powering my road bike. I felt slow and in my shame, I refused to look at my computer for fear that instead of displaying my speed and cadence it would simply show alternating emoticons of laughing and frowning faces. :D :( :D :(

Stupid computer.

On another note, if you ever want to star in a Cheech and Chong movie while maintaining your superior Vo2-max then I highly suggest riding this winter with ventilated sunglasses. My eyes became so dry and red that I was tempted to pull over at a gas station and put droplets of anti-freeze on my frigid eyeballs. I resisted this urge and used chain lube instead (because I was near my shop and it was free). Now it's time to drown my sorrows in an alcoholic beverage and suffocate them in an Italian Store sandwich. Woe is me.

Muddaaay! [Part Deux]

2009-12-10T11:56:00.004+08:00

I still haven't cleaned my cross bike yet. Aside from dunking it in the icy creek at Capital Cross and then re-lubing the chain, it's just been sitting there with a layer creek mud caked on it. Today, I finally took the seatpost out and it's draining upside-down in my repair stand now. But there's still a good bit of work left to do. The rims have taken on a lot of water. It sounds like one of those ridiculous desktop waterfalls whenever I slowly spin the wheel. Come to think of it, it's actually quite enjoyable, but it does make me have to go to the bathroom more frequently. I'm pretty sure I need to overhaul one or both of my pedals as they hardly spin now. I guess all that graceful swan diving I did into 5-inch deep mud has taken its toll. It's also about time to replace the chain, brake pads, and bar tape. Stupid bike. How am I ever going to build up my second 'cross bike if this one is hogging all of daddy's attention? This is a typical case of a jealous first child/'cross bike with issues. Fortunately, daddy is a neglectful, booze hound that is easily distracted by shiny things (i.e. not my current 'cross bike). Cry all you want, baby/bike, but all you're gonna get is an ice-cold sponge bath.

I also realized that I vigorously shook my bike while it was upside down, further adding to the bad father/neglected child metaphor, but I was too lazy to work it into my blog post. So just laugh as if I did anyways. LAUGH DAMMIT! (puhleease?!)

Don't Hate Disclaimer:
I don't neglect or shake babies, upside down or otherwise. That said, you probably shouldn't let your baby near me if you have one. It's just safer that way.

Muddaaay!

2009-12-09T09:43:00.000+08:00

As in, "It's so muddy, it's muddaaaay!"

I should have brought my snorkel to the Capital Cross last Sunday. I was pretty much swimming in mud. I also took a dip in the creek to clean off my bike post-race. It had snowed the day before and we got about 4 inches of wet snow that turned to ice overnight. Racing at 11am gave the ground an opportunity to thaw and gave me an opportunity to make a mockery of myself yet again on a muddy, technical course. Goddamn I suck in the mud. "Smooth" is apparently not in my vocabulary and apparently "run-up" is translated as "pitifully hobble up like a pathetic gimp" when you're me and subjected to 40-degree weather. I felt like crap the entire time, which I guess is the point. Yeah. Sure. I had plenty of "fun". There's plenty of "fun" I'm still trying to get off my bike, out of my clothes, and from inside my ears, nose and eyes. I might dive into the world of tubulars next season. It's been a while since I got f'd up on glue fumes.

But now it's the off-season! While I enjoyed racing 'cross, it will be nice to spend the weekend drinking beers. That's right. Beers. Plural. This is significant because during 'cross season whenever I would have any alcoholic beverage over the weekend, it was usually after a race and I was more often than not exhausted and dehydrated to the point of delirium. This led to instant hangovers, something I would usually dismiss at the time. I would just pretend everything was fine, part of my "sack up and drink(!!!)" mentality that I developed in high school. Needless to say, it didn't work well back then and it didn't really work well during 'cross season. So despite having tons of fun racing in the dirt and enjoying the laid back atmosphere of the 'cross scene, I'm happily returning to my other favorite pastime: drinking my face off.

On the flip side, the road season isn't that far off. I am psyched!

Muddy Mirage

2009-11-30T09:09:00.003+08:00

Holy shit. What a muddy course.

The course at Taneytown favored the strong and the smart. I was neither. After I blew my wad trying to get up to the front of the race, I realized that perhaps I had too much air in my tires, not enough tread, and that I was a horrible bike handler. The sopping wet 9am course was practically 50% mud, a majority of which was 4-7 inches deep. Add in a few off-camber sections and I had myself a miserable slopfest. I started getting hung up on the fact that I wanted to ride through sections that were impossible to ride, which ultimately had me dismounting from a dead stop in peanut butter-thick mud. I then tried to make up time in the sections that were slightly more rideable, which is where I found myself sliding and falling all over the place. In the middle of the race I rode directly over some plastic rebar that was supposedly there to hold the tape up and define the course. I used it like a stripper pole for my bicycle, straddling and grinding on it with my bottom bracket. You had to be there, I guess. With all the mistakes I made, I was just happy to be able to cross the finish line in one muddy piece and I headed off the the hose to clean off the bike. Being a wrench, I figured I would be a pretty effective bike washer. I stood in line for a while shivering in my warm-up jacket and mud-caked embrocation, relishing the thought of my super efficient bike wash. I had it all planned out in my head and scoffed at the others' lengthy turns at the hose. It was finally my turn and I did everything I had planned out in my head. Chain, cassette, crank, wheels and even the underside of my saddle all met with the icy blast from that Taneytown spigot. I completed my wash in about half the time that the others took and arrogantly handed off the hose to the next guy. I proudly looked at my bike as I was walking away expecting to see a sparkling example of how a proper bike wash should look, but what I saw instead was a bike still half-caked in mud. I may have gotten the majority of the grass clumps out from behind my bottom bracket, but I still had turf and muck packed in my derailleur pulleys, shifters, and pedals. As my bike dried off, a filmy residue of dirt revealed itself as well as my mediocre bike washing skills. The course itself was a blast and I honestly did enjoy my experience in Taneytown, but be warned that if you're anything like me, the mud mirage is a dangerous beast. It'll have you tripping over yourself in a race-crazed stupor and perpetually cleaning your bikes. I hope it's dry at Reston...

The R-M Complex

2009-11-25T09:03:00.003+08:00

Dammit. I'm getting a bit of cabin fever. It's Tuesday. It's only been two days since I last rode my bike, but I'm getting all antsy. I should've just manned up and rode the 'cross bike in the rain, but it's dirty and I want to clean it before I get it dirty again. I know that doesn't make sense. It's part of my bipolar racer-mechanic complex. Racers are naturally careless when it comes to the upkeep of their bikes. Mechanics are usually obsessed with keeping their bikes in proper running order, even if they're weird frankenbikes. I tuned up my 'cross bike before the weekend's racing, scrubbed and relubed the entire drivetrain, and gave whole thing a pretty thorough wipe down. Then on Saturday and Sunday, I dragged the bike through the mud, sand, and wet grass that only two 9 a.m. 'cross races can provide. And now she justly deserves some much needed TLC before I take her out again into the muck and the mire. My mountain bike on the other hand stays dirty. That's because she's a ho.

I'm definitely riding tomorrow. Rain or shine. I can't let cabin fever get to me. It's not even December yet. What am I gonna do when the 'cross season ends? It probably doesn't help that my life is surrounded by bikes or that I spend an inordinate amount of time on crossresults.com keeping an eye on my nemeses' results. But I promise you that I am not becoming a stats-obsessed geek. We all know that that is slippery road to follow and usually ends in... *gasp!* fantasy football. Dun dun dunnnnn.

Tour of Whacko (a TOWC post)

2009-11-20T09:25:00.004+08:00

The MABRA Google group is all afire at the moment about the Tour of Washington County (TOWC). The 2010 season was scheduled recently and I guess all the organizers are planning out their races. The issue at hand for the TOWC is whether or not they should make the race a single bike race; that is, to make riders race the time trial on road bikes. One of the main reasons for this debate is the idea that a one-bike stage race would level the playing field for those who can't afford a TT bike. It also would simplify travel arrangements by not requiring teams to bring two bikes for each rider. But it's hard to figure out where to draw the line. Should they allow clip-ons? Aero helmets? What about deep-dish wheels? What about deep-dish pizzas? I'm pretty much nay on all those options, especially the pizza because everyone knows the Italian Store pizza can never be beat.

Mmmmmm....
Pizza.....
*drool*

Back to the issue at hand, here's what I have to say:
It's a STAGE race.
It's not YOUR stage race.
It seems like a majority of people are saying something along the lines of "Yes. Good idea in theory. No. It won't affect whether or not I race this race." So from what I understand with my limited, albeit drunken, understanding of English, if there's a time trial in the race people are going to race it. If they've spent a shit-ton of money on a TT bike, they want to use it but generally understand why this issue is being raised. If they've spent a medium-shit's worth of money on their TT bike, they also would still like to use it and also understand the "level playing field" logic. If TT bikes conjure thoughts of a different type of bowel movement (poop, not cash) for some riders and they refuse to own a TT bike, they would rather not compete against their more aero cousins but will probably come race anyways. I think either way, racers want to justify their purchases (or lack thereof) and be able to use the equipment they've invested time and money on.

About a year ago, I had to make a decision about what my next bike was going to be. Yes. I am aware I make these decisions nearly every hour. In this particular case, I was choosing between a time trial bike and a cyclocross bike. It wasn't even a close decision. I chose the muddier, more fun of the two. I don't regret it. I was never going to use a TT bike anyways, but for a few occasions, and even then I don't think it would have mattered given the fact that I am ungodly slow no matter what bike I ride. I took to racing 'cross and I'm having a lot of fun doing it. The format is just how I like it, short and miserable, and there's beer at the end. As I line up at races, a quick glance at the other bikes reveals that not everyone has a 'cross bike. People have lined up with their hybrids, hardtails, single-speeds, full-sussers, and road bikes. I don't complain that they're mucking up my race, tainting the sport, or creating long lines between me and the beer tent. They don't worry about racing against faster guys or level playing fields or the crazy dude behind them in line that should have been cut off after his first beer. Everyone just wants to race. The TWOC organizers should not have posted this issue to the MABRA group, especially knowing the type of response they would get from such a roadie-dense area like D.C. Just set the race up and the racers will come. Let them figure out how to race it.

For what it's worth, I'm all for adding a challenging, huge ass climb into the TT.

Also:
If you want a level playing field, race in a velodrome. Track racing is about as standardized as you can get with regards to bike setup. The only thing to consider is that while the bike might be more uniform on the track, the riders are definitely not. So expect at some point to be racing against some big-legged muscle man, who looks like he spends his free time at the gym doing squats with Mini Coopers on his back. How are you going to level the playing field with this one?

Flats and Valves

2009-11-18T05:00:00.006+08:00

Shit. I hate flat tires. I change them every day at work and I take special precautions to prevent having one myself. These precautions include pumping my tires to their correct pressure, proper tire selection, going tubeless with Stan's sealant when appropriate, and generally not being a dumbass.

I had a flat this morning. When I get a flat, I must know what caused it. It's important to do this kind of inspection to avoid a similar puncture and wasting another tube. I usually do this for customers; pulling thumbtacks, glass shards, and other debris out of their tires. And while that's just good customer service, I feel it is especially important to do this check when I personally get a flat because it also prevents my Hulk-like alcohol-fueled rage from boiling over. What caused my flat today? I thought I had the toughest, most pinch flat-resistant tires available, so what on earth could have done this?

A tiny, loose valve core. That's it. That's all that caused my flat. There wasn't a hole in the tube and after a couple hundred miles on them, the tires barely have a scratch. It was a stupid presta valve core that had loosen slightly as I unwound a sticky locknut, thus letting air seep out slowly overnight. Unfortunately, I only found this out after I had pulled the extremely tight tire off the rim. All that work for such an easy fix. Damn. I could have been drinking.

Who's to blame? Triathletes, of course. I blame them and their deep dish clinchers and their silly, pain in the ass valve extenders. Those damn valve extenders barely work half the time too. If I wanted to mess with plumber's tape and have ambiguous tire pressure readings, I'd trip acid and attack everyone in Super Mario World with a frame pump only to be ultimately defeated by a plumber's tape-wrapped Koopa Troopa mummy. [ed - Hey, I don't pick my trips. They pick me.] The point is, people should get the right tube the first time around. Then those piece of shit valve extenders would be obsolete and I wouldn't have had a flat this morning. See? It's a win-win!

Year After Year

2009-11-12T21:52:00.004+08:00

Just saw that the MABRA racing calendar has been posted for 2010 and I am super pumped for the season. Now I just have to find a team and some fitness. Too bad I'm having too much fun getting drunk and racing cross right now. One of them has got to go eventually, but it's so hard to decide between them when they seem so right for each other.

Speaking of amateurism, CyclingNews posted an article about the Lance Effect yesterday. Apparently USA Cycling experiences a 5-percent growth in membership whenever Lance is riding his bike, versus 3.3-percent growth in 2007 and 2008 when he was retired. I don't know too much about statistics, but I feel like this report might be jumping the gun. While the article does make it clear that USA Cycling isn't sure to what degree the Lance Effect has increased membership, it does say that Lance was significant contributing factor.

Lance retired in 2005 and didn't start racing again until 2009. Membership growth was still growing in 2006 after he retired. What's to say that 2007 and 2008 weren't just off years for racing bikes? Or that there was a huge epidemic that turned all but a few, sane cyclists into triathletes those years? I'm not saying that Lance isn't good for the sport. And due to my aversion to all math-related topics, I am certainly not suggesting that we do an actual statistical study on the Lance Effect. I just think that a 1.7-percent decrease could be a fluke. Also if you want to promote cycling in the US and see what motivates people to ride and race their bikes, you can't just rely on the "Oh! It must be Lance!" adage. I also think that USA Cycling should hire me as a consultant and hire a statistician for me to boss around and make my domestique.

Thieving

2009-11-11T22:19:00.004+08:00

I am alive. It was a bit shaky there for a moment. I spent Sunday getting cross-eyed at the new Tacchino Cross course out in Rosaryville. Soon after that I spent the rest of my morning getting schwastey-faced on beers, sausages, frites, and cookies. There's nothing like saying "Good morning, World!" with a grueling bike race, lots of food, and finishing it off with a hangover by 1pm. I pretty much spent the rest of the day napping. It was great.

In other news, I accidentally lifted a copy of Bicycling Magazine from the library yesterday. Imagine my shame when I found it in my backpack today. I'm embarrassed for two reasons. Firstly, I shouldn't be stealing from libraries. They provide a useful community service and have many resources that I use on a regular basis, like books with pictures in them and a place to drink in peace and eventually pass out (aka "take a study nap"). Secondly, Bicycling Magazine isn't all that great. It's generally regarded as the Mickey Mouse of all cycling publications. Every issue has something about "How to Tackle That Century." I'm not sure they know that riding a century is not about riding a bike for a hundred years. A century is actually referring to a hundred-mile bike ride that most cyclists can do with out a single-page article telling them to eat regularly and go slower than you would on a shorter ride. I didn't really fancy the eight-page Rapha clothing advertisement either. With jerseys and shorts averaging $180/pc and an ad showing off cyclists riding up a cold mountain without helmets, I will have to politely decline their generous offer to buy their stuff and look like any of those dweebs. I did however enjoy their Custom-Bike Buyer's Guide, though it could have benefited from a frame builder's perspective. Whatever. It's not like I can afford one of those frames at the moment either. So for the price of $11 for a year's subscription, I guess I should have some Bicycling Magazine sent my way. It'll keep myself and my library on much friendlier terms. Plus I'll have stuff to read when I'm sitting on the toilet.

Use What You've Got

2009-11-03T04:06:00.000+08:00

"Fucking pack rat!"

That's what they call me at the shop. One man's trash is another man's treasure is all I have to say. Why would I let perfectly rideable bike parts go to waste? I have the mechanical expertise and low enough standards that I can ride just about anything. As a result, my place is covered in bike stuff. It's a tinkerer's paradise (tinker, not tinkle). And while I try to keep all these components organized and out of the way, I usually end up rolling over a fixed gear cog or inner tube in bed.

Why would anyone put up with this lifestyle, you ask? Because it's totally worth it, that's why! I have parts galore and being surrounded by them only further motivates me to build more bikes, for better or worse. It also helps when I break something, which I frequently do. And they're great if you have plans to eventually upgrade one of your bikes. You never know when you'll need that extra set of carbon bars or ultra-light pedals. I've been sitting on a older model Fox TALAS RLC fork for a while now. I had been holding on to this thing for a while in the hopes that I'd possibly build a XC/Trail bike around it, but for my particular mtb riding needs, I don't require all the gears and gizmos. It's really hard to talk myself out of building another bike. REALLY. HARD. Once I came back down to earth, I settled on upgrading my current rig, a Surly 1x1. Its crappy RaceFace bottom bracket had seized over the years due to a complete lack of maintenance and uber-crappy seals. Disc brakes were another thing I figured the bike deserved, since I had chosen V-brakes originally to skimp on the overall build price. So now I need new wheels and they might as well be nice. With my head fully back in the clouds at this point, I figured a Chris King bottom bracket and ISO Singlespeed hubset built to some NoTubes rims should do the trick. I'll get them in pink to match my CK headset too. Pimpalicious!

Unfortunately, while we do get hooked up with EP forms and discounted parts at the shop, few manufacturers recognize empty bottles of Scotch and malt liquor as legal tender (though we do use them as trophies for hobo fights). So I've squandered my money on alcoholic beverages for the past couple months, which probably contributed to the recent batch of lofty daydreams/hallucinations, and now sober I have to figure out how I'm going to afford the last few bits I need on a drunk mechanic's salary. What to do, what to do... Keep hoarding, that's what! I figured I can keep an eye out for parts that will get me running on the suspension fork while I wait to order shiny new Chris King part.

Today, I found a trashed front disc wheel, a 160mm rotor and a mechanical disc brake caliper in the parts bin. The rim was toast but the hub was still in decent shape or at least was something that I have no qualms riding for free. Bought a cheap Mavic rim and some 14ga spokes. BOOM! I'm gonna be running on a new front disc and suspension setup by the end of the week. Sure it's a little ghetto, a little half-assed, but it's all about small steps right now. Plus, it's the off-season for us at the bike shop and I needed something to keep these hands busy. The wheel I built is split across the diameter of the rim with silver spokes on one side and black spokes on the other with black brass nipples on the disc-side and purple alloy nipples on the other side. It's the Purple Nurple Especial. See you on the trails!

Fall Stuff

2009-10-29T11:14:00.005+08:00

I love this season. At first glance, what's not to like? The gorgeous foliage, crisp air, the smell of mud and sound of cowbells at cyclocross races. It's perfect. But I realized today during my commute on the W&OD that all these great things come at a price. They call it "Fall" for a couple reasons.

There are leaves that fall. There's rain that falls. And the combination of those two wonderful Fall things creates another wonderful thing: slippery sludge. Runners, strollers, and pets all trampled across the wet leaves and it forms this slick, rotten pulp that coats the surface of the W&OD and makes it impossible to go anywhere fast, but it's still a million times better than driving anywhere. Riding a bike with full coverage fenders and 28c tires, I'm far from complaining. I didn't even fall during my commute. I'm just saying that riding at Commuter-TT pace is no longer possible. As a commuter I pay a lot of attention to how long it takes me to get places, mostly because it directly affects the number of alcoholic beverages I can consume once I reach my destination. So I was five minutes off my pace today. Which means that I missed out on two beers before class today. Which also means that I will soon be investing in a flask. This special edition USGP of Cyclocross is looking mighty fine right about now.

The cool, crisp air is another thing that I love about this season, but it is also a sign that our days are getting shorter. Not like apocalyptically shorter (though I do have several zombie contingency plans), but in terms of the amount of exposure that we have to that round, warm ball in the sky. So I spent a lot of time in the dark riding home tonight. What better than a trusty ol' Niterider MiNewt to guide me home? Well for starters, one that was fully charged would have helped. Five minutes into my 50 minute ride, my MiNewt battery's button changes from happy blue to angry red. I tried to salvage what was left in my battery by switching to strobe-mode. Not only was this ineffective at saving what would be a total of 15 additional minutes of light, but damn near gave me a seizure. So I spent the rest of my ride home going even slower than the slippery sludge pace I had ridden on my ride in. Safety, what a son of a bitch. I was fortunate enough to catch up with another commuter on the trail who had a decent headlight. I cordially said hello, told him my light was out, and followed him to my exit. You gotta love the bike trails for things like this. Even if it is riddled with triathletes, pathletes, and people that walk to get places, it's nice that people can use it as an efficient, car-free commute. However, I will note that not all commuters are as friendly as yours truly. After following through on proper path etiquette, saying hi, asking for permission to tailgun it for the ride home, and saying thank you, all I got was a gruff "Yeah. Later." from my leadout guy. Meh, teaches me to drunkenly sing show tunes on a bicycle around other cyclists. At least there's always 'cross races where I can be as weird as I want.

Efficiency

2009-10-26T10:15:00.004+08:00

First things first:
DCCX was rockin'. Props to the DCMTB crew!

Now:
I don't know why I think drinking beer after a 'cross race is a good thing. DCCX was great, but they should have cut me off after my first beer. I didn't get drunk per se. Having only 4 small beers wouldn't have done me in, but after a race that shit might as well be poison. Dehydration and fatigue undoubtedly play a huge role in the intense buzz I get after a few sips of a delicious beer. I know I shouldn't, but the compulsion to look as cool as possible overwhelms my survival/sobriety instincts. So after the race, not only was I exhausted from my race, I pretty much had a race+beer induced hangover without ever getting drunk. How's that for efficiency?

Also:
If we can put on a grassroots 'cross race in the district, why not bring back the U Street Crit or some other race like it for the road racing season?

Football and Drinking

2009-10-21T09:47:00.000+08:00

I like football. That might be an odd statement for a cyclist, but it's true. Don't get me wrong, I'm not some fantasy league champ nor do I know every obscure stat from my favorite 60 players whose careers I've followed closely through the years beginning with their freshman high school games. I don't know, or even pretend to know every rule, set-up, or play that goes on. I like it simply because it is a sport where a bunch of big heavy armor-clad players try to move a 400 gram leather balloon across a 100-yard field while other big heavy armor-clad players try to stop them. Boiled down to its very core, football can be very interesting. What's less interesting about the sport is the special treatment players get off the field. Sure, you expect them to drive nice cars, have sexy ladies hanging off each arm, and to generally be able to get away with anything. I don't really care about all that. They're professional athletes and that kind of behavior is to be expected. What I don't get is why these athletes can't drink from a bottle of water with out the aid of a waterboy with a giant logo bottle, towel (essentially a giant napkin/bib), khakis, and the proverbial (and sometimes literal) boner for having a gig in such close proximity to sweaty smelly professional athletes. It's not like they're boxers who have giant gloves taped to their fists. Most football players need a great amount of dexterity to handle a ball effectively, and at the very least have enough to hold and squeeze a giant plastic upside down water bottle in the general direction of their mouths. I don't know what the reasoning is behind this phenomenon is and I won't speculate since most aspects of the game cannot be explained with exploded diagrams of derailleurs, hubs, or hydraulic disc brake calipers. What I will say is that in most sports, and especially in cycling, the athletes water themselves. Cyclists can even drink and race at the same time. Oh, and we get to eat while we race too which is something I'm sure all those jocks would love to do.

Forgive Me Father For I Have Fixied

2009-10-20T10:22:00.006+08:00

What the hell is wrong with people? More specifically, what's wrong with people who want to refurbish vintage bikes and make them into fixies or single speeds?

I'll admit that I am guilty of this. I have committed this hipster sin multiple times, both for my own fixie gain and for the gain of others. Where I stand out from the rest is in my occupation as a bike wrench. The easy of access to a multitude of parts and tools makes super hip conversions a cinch. I can build a rear wheel and setup a single-speed chain ring in 45 minutes. Drunk. In fact, I can still vaguely recall those days I buckled down for a long night surrounded by fruity-colored rims, hubs, and a six pack. It was very easy to setup a handful of rigs the night before a city ride/pub crawl. Fun would be had by all, even if we were some awful clichéd suburbanites turned drunken hipster/hobo amalgamation. But at least we were self-aware. We knew this was a new fad and how quickly it would turn lame. It didn't matter because we did it on the cheap, didn't really care much about our bikes, and were more about drinking than actually riding. That's how I justify my hipster sins.

We see a lot of hipster sins at the shop. Sometimes we're the confessional, where customers come to ask forgiveness for threading both a cog and lockring onto the freewheel side of their free/free "flip-flop" hub. It's at these moments I usual go into fire-and-brimstone mode: "Are you crazy?! You could have DIED! Did you wrench on this yourself? Have you never heard of Sheldon Brown??" Other times we play the role of the Lucifer himself; throwing Zipp track wheels onto chrome-lugged Waterfords. It's these days that I feel my soul burning.

To make up for these sins, I repent by (and get great satisfaction from) telling customers to cease and desist. It starts with an innocent customer walking in to get a crankarm removed. Usually a simple task, but this particular crank is the older cotter-pinned system that was install in the pre-WWII era. It's not going to budge. Sure we could take a saw to this piece of crap, but one look at your vintage Dutch bike's bottom bracket tells me that there's no way in hell you're going find anything remotely close to this antiquated standard. Oh, you brought in another vintage bike from the same era and it has a crank in "good condition"? Well I'm not going to be able to remove that crank either and since the second bike is from a different country, it's wholly incompatible with the first frame's bottom bracket. I'm sorry you had some big ol' plans to strip and paint your cool frame, but looks like you walked in with two hunks of junk and you're leaving with both of them.

Other things I didn't tell you:
- There's probably rust throughout the inside of the frame that threatens its structural soundness. I know. I've broken a fixie because of that.
- You're going to be spending a lot of money on that bike, especially if you plan on running brakes.
- Whatever you do, it won't be reliable. Want reliability? Buy new.
- The internet can be tricky. Sure there's FGG and forums galore, but those are all naively positive perspectives on fixie culture. The internet is also the place where you'll find highly cynical and negative voices on said culture. Your best bet is to do the due diligence before you get your heart broken by your LBS mechanic. Chances are you won't be building up that piece of scrap metal after all. Amen!

Don't Hate Disclaimer:
Fixies are still fun as shit to ride and very easy to maintain. They definitely serve a purpose for simple urban transportation. That's why there are so many of them. This post was geared (pun intended) towards those who have taken a relatively simple task of building a fixed gear and made my life at the shop considerably more of a pain in the ass.

Apple Harvest 'Cross

2009-10-19T10:01:00.003+08:00

I got home from Winchester a few hours ago. Since then, I've spent most of my time trying to sift through the mess pile of crap that was in my car. I seriously considering doing those modifications I proposed a few days ago. It's either that or I buy a car with more space, like an RV or Semi. It's not that I have a lot of stuff, but finding what I need is damn near impossible with an overstuffed duffel bag and an undersized car. The contents of the bag usually explode all over the my car's interior and I find a missing sock or half-eaten energy gel oozing on my carpet four days later. A larger vehicle would give me more working space to lay out my crap and after the race, I could just rake all my shit out the back into a giant trash bag. But that's just me daydreaming. Even if I could afford a big truck, I'd probably spend the money buy several more bikes, tools, and race fees. (Or for that same amount of money, I could by one "nice" Pinarello).

A couple thing about today's race:

- I drove there last night, not wanting to drive through the week's cold shitty drizzle at 6am. It turns out that driving through last night's cold shitty drizzle is slightly worse. It was pretty nerve racking to drive an hour and a half solo in the rain on the highway and Winchester's country roads. I will not be doing that crap anymore.

- I didn't warm up before the race. Despite staying at a friend's place literally 7 blocks away, I timed my morning breakfast routine into a big fat FAIL. Forgetting briefly that I didn't preregister for the race left me with only a handful of minutes to pump tires, wiggle into skinsuit and put the correct shoe on each foot after I signed in. I tried in vain to warm up and was only able to do a quick sprint run through the first 100 meters of the course. Great. Also for not doing the pre-reg, I got to start in the back. I basically spent the first two laps wanting to die as I tried to jumpstart my legs, lungs, and hands. On the bright side, I was still able to make up a few spots throughout the race thanks to my lack of falls and special hobo fighting techniques (i.e. drinking Scotch).

Race Car

2009-10-14T06:58:00.002+08:00

It's Wednesday and I've finally cleared out the rest of my the race day remnants from last weekend. Gone Monday were the spare wheels, skinsuit, extra water bottles, gloves, and food. Taken out yesterday were the helmet, shoes, pump, and socks. I thought I had gotten everything out and naturally patted myself on the back for having cleaned out my car so efficiently. But alas the celebration was short lived and I had to recap my celebratory 40oz. bottle of Steel Reserve. This morning I found a stray arm warmer on the passenger-side seat, mocking me for thinking I could have anything in my life that wasn't in some way associated with cycling. It is now time to face facts.

I don't think I'll ever be able to keep my car clean and clear of bike stuff. It's Wednesday and I'm only 5% sure that I've gotten everything out from last weekend's races. And in a few more days that car will once again be loaded up with gear for a race. I might as well embrace this aspect of my life and simply transform the car into a dedicated bicycle transportation and support vehicle.

A trip to The Container Store and Home Depot would be all I need (plus about a thousand bucks) to retrofit a storage system inside to organized clean clothes, dirty clothes, helmets, sunglasses, and the rest of my crap. Also, I'd have soap dispenser-like fitments to dole out gobs of chamois cream and embrocation. I would find some way to get a shower rigged up as well as taps for water and post-race beer. It would be pretty similar to Lance's Livestrong bu s, but more Asian (because I drive a Honda Civic hatchback and because I'm Asian) and built with a lot less money. Sure the weight of such a contraption might not be great for my 1.6-liter SOHC engine and it would definitely not pass a VA inspection, but at least then I would not have to wrestle with my compulsion to blend in with other normal human beings. Instead, I'd live freely on the roads, driving where ever I pleased, content with having everyone know I was a cyclist weirdo.

Yes. I would also put dimple on the body of my car too. It could use an aero treatment.

Richmond Fun

2009-10-12T05:17:00.005+08:00

Just finished two days of racing in Richmond. I had fun, but honestly I was just happy to be healthy enough to race my bike. As for the races, I felt fine but thought that the 30-minute race duration was a bit short. Compared to the average 45-minute length of a Men's C race, this weekend's race format meant more pain in a shorter period of time whereas I prefer to experience the pain of the cross-eyed monster for as long as possible or until I break down and cry. It (the pain, and sometimes the crying) tends to make the races more interesting, but what do I know? I prefer crits to road races, so maybe I'm just a hypocrite.

What I do know is that I need to work more on being smooth over the barriers. I wasn't botching any of the dismounting/remounting, but as I was watching the 1/2 and 3 races go by, I noticed how smooth some of those long-legged racers just float over them. But I have a plan to lengthen my legs. It includes gravity boots, a weight belt, and learning to eat Chipotle burritos upside down. I will use the gravity boots to suspend myself upside down and wear the weight belt to stretch my legs until they're long enough. Ideally, I'd like a 48-inch inseam, or roughly 3 times the height of a regulation 40cm barrier. The burrito comes into play in two ways. Firstly, it's about the only thing that will keep me entertained whilst hanging upside down. I mean, what else am I supposed to do? Crunches? Secondly, after eating the burrito I will inevitably be unable to do a single sit-up and will thus be confined to the gravity boots until the food coma kicks in. I will be able to stay in my inverted position longer and thus be that much closer to my goal of having 4-foot long legs.

I would like to add that while I might not be the best barrier crosser out there, I am far from the worst as witnessed by myself and approximately 25 of my peers at the first set of barriers in today's race. What we saw to day was a racer in the Men's A/B field eat it, tripping over the second barrier. Yes. That happens to everyone. But what doesn't happen to everyone is a subsequent hissy fit where said racer throws his bike (including his carbon tubular wheels), spikes his helmet and glasses. What came next was a red-faced and sweaty rant about how he was having bad luck in the corners, over the barriers, and no one would work with him to establish/maintain a break. To that I say: That's racing, buddy. Nut up, practice more, and bring something other than an expensive bike and a bad attitude to your race next weekend. After all, why are we doing this shit if we weren't having sick, sadistic fun?

Sick No More

2009-10-05T10:14:00.002+08:00

I rode today. Thank God. Spending a week and a half sick and then recovering from said sickness totally gave me cyclist's blue balls. No. It isn't the the kind you alleviate with a cut-out saddle or stupid gel-filled "bicycle chair" cover. It's the kind you get when all you want to do it ride your bike fast and have fun, but can't because if you did, you'd hack up a lung covered in yellow phlegm. But alas, my phlegm is no longer yellow and while today's ride was far from the fast, it was the fastest I've been in a while. It was a gorgeous day out today and no amount of lost fitness, real or perceived, would keep me from riding. Other than that, I don't have much else to write about, but let's have a go at it anyways:

hmmm....

Um. Next Friday's my birthday. My present to myself will be two 'cross races in Richmond. My mission will be to simply not suck complete ass either day.

.... and the Steelers are winning right now. I find that frustrating, even though I know nothing about football other than those bulky pads and helmets are totally not aero.

Car, Radio + Update!

2009-09-25T03:45:00.001+08:00

I've finally cleaned out my car of last Sunday's race stuff. There's always something that I forget in there. Usually it's a pair of shoes or my kit with race numbers still pinned, rusting away and staining my jersey. And it's usually the smell more than anything else that compels me to clean out those final pieces. What's frustrating about this week's situation is that I actually made an effort to clear out all my race crap and failed because of a stray pair of sock. Damn you, Woolie Boolies! If you were a lesser sock, I would have thrown you away out of spite.

In other news, radios are on their way out according to reports from the latest UCI Management Committee. While I applaud the UCI's interest in creating a more exciting, natural form of bike racing, I believe their decision is lacking in the creativity department. I think it would have been more interesting to see a designated team captain with a single radio, like they do with the quarterbacks in the NFL. Captains get the directions from the DS and then it's up to him to relay the communications to the rest of his team. That way you get some level of "natural" racing, more teamwork, and still address the "safety concerns" of racers. I know the report doesn't give very specific details on this radio business, but I have a feeling that the UCI hasn't thought this one all the way through. Golfers have their caddies. Pitchers have their catchers. QB's have their coaches, as do basketball players. Even Rocky Balboa had Mickey in his corner, yelling at him with real-time strategies and advice. Cycling would be probably be the only professional sport where an athlete would have to step out to where ever his coach/advisor/DS was then ride back to the competition. Hell, I'd be happy with race directions coming from tin-can phones or via text or "tweets," but I think the total elimination of the radios isn't necessarily what the sport needs. Sure it might bring it back to its roots, but so would wool shorts and down-tube shifters. And have you seen what roots look like? They're all scraggly and covered in dirt. I don't want roots. I want a cycle-berry fruits (stupid metaphor, I know). I want cycling to make progress, to not necessarily limit the peleton, but challenge it in a way that will make the sport more exciting while not inciting another stupid protest where the peleton trucks along at 12mph the entire time. But if all else fails, I still haven't written off starting an official International Bike Jousting League.

Bonus Update:
My meanderings on the interwebs have led me to an article about some triathlete that is auctioning herself off on eBay. It's an auction for a 2.5-hour "date" with professional triathlete Jenna Shoemaker in an attempt for her to get a job? She was advised to get a job so that she could save money to train uninterrupted in January. The auction and her blog (ed - oh God, triathletes can read and write now?!) state that a portion of the proceeds will go to fight breast cancer. The article also says the auction was an effort to keep her from stripping. Now I'm thoroughly confused, but definitely not surprised. I'm confused about how a triathlete can combine stripping and breast cancer in the same intention and how she's going to get a job out of auctioning herself off on eBay. I'm not surprised that the combination of the internet, an overly tight swimcap, and years of sponsor-laden temp tats have resulted in this. What I'm not quite sure about is who in their right mind would want to sit down with a triathlete in Vegas? During INTERBIKE?! There are like a billion things to do there and if you're not doing one of them you're sleeping, passed out, or being carted off in an ambulance. What's there to talk about?

"So, uh... you like aerobars huh?"
"Yeah. They fast."
"...Ok..."
"Want me to draw a smiley face on you with my grease pencil?"
"No." [Leaves room]
"Swimcapwetsuitaerobarsrunningshoes!"

So with less than five hours left, she has raised a grand total of $275. Good luck, Jenna. And good luck to whomever wins that auction. You're going to have dinner with a really interesting person. Like really interesting.

Sick, Spiders

2009-09-22T20:16:00.003+08:00

When I predicted that my 'cross season could possibly be afflicted by pneumonia, it was not an invitation for my body to do a test run. But now I am sick with what looks to be a cold. I hate being sick. My head's throbbing, throat hurts, and my nose is running like Sven Nys through a sand pit. I'm this close to putting chamois cream on my nose since its getting rubbed raw with my 100-grit tissues, which are still better than the 1-grit shop rags I used yesterday at work. I haven't ridden since Sunday. It's not that I would have definitely been on the bike had I been healthy. But it's similar to a spoiled kid's logic that I could have been on the bike if I wanted. Having written off riding today, I had few other things on my To Do list so I now present to you a picture I took today of Fred, the Spider:

Don't Call It A Comeback

2009-09-21T05:12:00.000+08:00

The blog machine has been getting rusty. It's hard to get it started up again without some kind of major overhaul. I don't know how well I tuned this blog up, so please bear with the random squeaks, squawks, and typos. I'm only a cyclist after awl.

Like many cyclists in the mid-Atlantic, I opened up my cyclocross season with Charm City Cyclocross. The course was rockin'. It featured a staircase run-up, sand pits, off-camber sections and plenty of pain. Oh God was that painful. I looked retarded. We all did. After the race, I was afflicted by The Hunger. Miss Piggy, Pumpkin Boone, and I packed up and headed to Golden West Cafe for some Sunday brunch. They have a pretty good variety of southwestern food, including various plates of huevos, pancakes, and burritos. I watches as a table of Baltimore hipsters were served and a few had ordered the same thing: The All-American Burrito. I knew I had to get one. It was ground beef (essentially burger patties), sauteed onions, rice, and jack cheese wrapped in a giant tortilla about one and a half times the size of a Chipotle burrito, then smothered in mushroom gravy, then topped with an egg sunny-side up. It. Was. Phenomenal. I housed that burrito and a Bloody Mary and raced home to beat an impending food coma. As you can plainly see, I survived the trip despite the insane Maryland drivers and have just woken up from my nap. This season is going to be a good one.

My predictions for this year's 'cross season are:

- There will an 18% increase in pain
- My tolerance for post-race alcohol will decrease dramatically to the point where I will no longer be able to drive myself to and, more importantly, from races.
- I will gain 5 lbs in post-race frites. YUM.
- 'Cross Eyed as a race/blog meme will be make its seasonal return and possibly be tattooed with a 46-tooth chainring onto the body of some poor soul. Alcohol will be involved.
- I will not be cold this year. I will be putting the final touches on my winter riding arsenal with a few more key pieces and souped-up embrocation. Pneumonia on the other hand is a distinct possibility.

They Put The "Fun" In "Fungus"

2009-08-05T08:07:00.004+08:00

I didn't get mad when I got stuck in traffic drive to Wakefield. That's just the nature of this area's beltway. Congestion is a constant in this area and doesn't seem to be getting any better. In fact we've been rated as having the second worst traffic in the nation with the average driver spending 62 hours in traffic annually. Lovely, no? The traffic is just one of those things we cyclists inevitably have to put up with to further pursue our sport, be it to a group ride, race, or mountain biking trip. I tend to use it as a pre-ride warm-up since my a/c is broken and screaming at other drivers is great at elevating my heart rate.

I didn't even get mad when I was stung by a bee mid-ride. I chalked that one up to being outdoors and trespassing on a bee's natural turf. It still swelled up like a mother fucker and while getting stung is not going to happen every time you ride, it's not an unexpected or even surprising event by any means. Furthermore, I'm used to being various insects' pin cushion since every damn mosquito this year has been magnetically attracted to me. I've nearly become numb to these insects' attacks by now. I think all that hobo fighting with hypodermic needles has helped me build a tolerance for things that like to poke/stab me.

No, I don't usually get mad on mountain bike rides. I'm actually a pretty happy (and slightly drunk) mountain biker. But this evening's ride had me all in a rage.

I went early to avoid the crowds and was pleasantly surprised at how few people there were. I got about three full laps in before I started noticing more and more riders on the trail. So I headed out, starting from underneath the power lines, riding down the berms towards the trail that would lead me to the parking lot. To my surprise, half way down the hill some guy was trying to climb his way up the very same berms that I, and everyone else that rides at the park, use as the equivalent of a fireman's pole to get to the bottom of the hill. I shouted for him to move as I grabbed the brakes to slowly, safely, and respectfully ride around him. No problem. He was probably a n00b and didn't know any better. That comes with trail time. Two berms later, I nearly run into the rest of his group. Another guy was charging up the berms with two females in tow, all riding 1990's 26" junkers. I did the whole shout and slow down bit again and passed them with no incidents, but couldn't help but mutter a few (hopefully inaudible) expletives under my breath as I passed the last girl. She was the one lagging behind because she was riding without a helmet, wearing full-length workout tights in 90-degree sweltering heat, and riding a 700x32c hybrid with slick tires up the rocky section of my descent. "Fucking shit! Do you people have a death wish?"

I guess I shouldn't let my anger get the best of me. Maybe I was just deflecting my beltway road rage. Or maybe a bee didn't actually sting me, instead a vengeful hobo stabbed me with a syringe full of PCP. But in my defense, dodging those riders was like dodging a car driving in the wrong lane. On the bike path. Shooting at you with a paintball gun. And there's just something so horribly offensive about a misguided, newbie "mountain biker" leading a herd of clueless, ill-prepared lemmings up a steeply banked trail feature. The blind leading the blind, indeed. If you could do a time-lapse series of mold growing on an Italian Store sub and compact it into the 5-second time frame it took me to pass these people, you'd understand what I'm talking about. My eyes were witness to a tragedy today. A beautiful combination of dirt, bike, and rider ruined by the spore-like reproduction of horrible cyclists.

Lobster Special #12

2009-08-04T09:09:00.008+08:00

Can someone turn up the a/c out there? Or at least ride in front of me with a dehumidifier and occasionally peg with snowballs and waterballoons? It's friggin' hot out there. Yesterday's rain and my aversion to cleaning my road bike (again) had me dusting off the 'cross bike, which actually had me doing more cleaning and tuning than I really wanted to do.

For starters, I need new brake pads. A season's worth of riding in the rain, snow, and mud have worn the pads too close to their shoes for comfort. Plus, they were probably a little bit dry rotted too and I couldn't get them to stop chattering and squealing (until I got the bike in to some mud). The tubeless setup didn't last beyond the season. The sealant dried up and wouldn't hold air. I guess it's a good thing that I can always throw tubes in them. Finally ready to go, I headed out towards the equestrian park that I've been neglecting all these warmer months.

When I got there the grass was long, dirt was muddy, and everything was steaming in the summer post-rain heat. I was more than the proverbial dumpling at a dim sum brunch. I was the friggin' Steamed Lobster Special #12. That super red, super salty, wine-infused main entree that always seems like a good idea until it arrives at your table and eventually makes you sick to your stomach. After an hour, I'd had all the "fun" I could stand and rode home with a few things running through my brain:

1) I have a lazy personal mechanic. He never wants to do any work for me. All he wants to do is get drunk, build bikes for other people, and daydream about bikes that he might or might never own. What an asshole.

2) I haven't been riding the 'cross bike much. The long grass is evidence to this and I need to spend more time "cutting" a trail into the park to make my rides there marginally faster (read: less painful).

3) I'm tired of the summer. No Page Valley or 540 Series for me. If I learned anything at Lost RIver, it's that I suck at road racing and that it's getting hot as shit out there. Spending the season doing crits and circuit races (and fighting hobos) has left me ill-prepared for anything that requires getting up anything. Spending the past couple days out there in the heat and humidity has me longing for the chillier, embrocation-heavy months. I think it's time I started training for 'cross and I can't wait until the season starts.

The Break-Up

2009-07-28T06:23:00.004+08:00

Break ups are never easy. You should have seen my face as I sold my beloved "Death Machine" fixie. I will never look at another loose headset the same way. I sometimes still have dreams where Death Machine and I see each other from across a field of wildflowers and we run to each other as butterflies and tiny birds flutter through the sky like winged confetti. Then she chews up my right pant legs with each of her 46-tooth chainring and bowls me over like a steamroller because she doesn't have any damn brakes.

Another break-up that I've been expecting is that of Contador and Armstrong. Their relationships been on rocky ground ever since Lance's return, but AC has put the final nail in the coffin with his comments today. He says his relationship with LA is "zero" and that he doesn't admire him and never will. This comes on the heels of LA's notable absence from Astana's team celebratory dinner Saturday night. He was on a date with his new girlfriend errr "sponsor", RadioShack, and had a bit too much wine. And as is pretty common in these kinds of situations, there is now the obligatory trash talking through texts, emails, and in this case, via tweets. Next up will the exchanging of each other's possessions. Lance will give back 'Berto's sombrero he won at Vuelta al Pais Vasco. Also among LA's returned possessions will be Contador's other pistol. He was keeping it safely tucked away in a secret holster in his bib shorts. Sadly, Contador will not be returning any of Lance's things because he was never given anything from the seven-time Tour champ. His racing motto "No Gifts" obviously found its way between the two lovers and could possibly be one of the reasons these two decided to break up. Despite the rift between the two riders, this year's Tour was one of the most exciting editions I've watched in years. I can't wait to buy it on DVD and relive all the attacks, TTT crashes, and general beastliness. My only concern is that they'll come up with cheesy title like "TDF 2009: Lance and Bert Plus 178" with 178 of course referring to the 178 other racers that didn't get any media attention whatsoever this year. I think I'd still buy the DVD set, but I'd have to hide it in my sock drawer with all my other embarassing things, like my 7-speed Tourney rear derailleur and my autographed copy of Patrick Dempsey on the cover of Bicycling magazine. (ed.- but he's sooo McDreaaaammmmy!)

I Lost My Breakfast at Lost River

2009-07-27T23:28:00.004+08:00

I didn't even have a chance. Things blew apart for me after I lost contact on the descent after the finish line. It wasn't a particularly difficult one, but that fact that I was surrounded by 30+ Cat 4 racers shuffling about was somewhat unnerving and I decided that it wasn't worth it to ride so aggressively downhill (read: I chickened out big time). I figured I could've made up the difference at the bottom, but I didn't know how long the descent actually was and was soon off the back. I chased with a few other guys for the better part of the next full lap but to no avail. Cramps soon came and I found myself doing the mashed potato up the climbs in my 39x23. That's right. I didn't change out my cassette. It was fun times. A gruppetto formed of a handful of riders right before the last climb. Still feeling like crap, I gauged my chances to beat these guys to the finish line at exactly zero and figured I'd do something stupid instead. Attack! RAWR! I put in an acceleration and got about a half dozen pedal strokes in before my head started spinning and I started feeling nauseous. I gasped for air and before I could exhale I threw up. I was fortunate enough to make it over to the side of the road before I let loose the bagel, banana, and cola-flavored Nuun water that I'd had for breakfast. On the bright side, I didn't puke on my white GamJams socks and I did some sweet hiking out there in the mountains the next day. It was my first road race this season, and probably my last. Page Valley is coming soon, but the only climbing I wan't to do is into a bottle of scotch. Sober me up when it's 'cross season.

Mashed Potatoes

2009-07-24T10:12:00.002+08:00

I'm going to race at the Lost River Classic on Saturday. It's a road race in West Virginia. The race is only 30 miles, but everyone's been telling me that it's a nasty climber's course. Each of the three laps we'll be doing features roughly 1000 feet of climbing. This might be shocking to you, but I climb like a tranquilized sloth or a molasses-covered sack of potatoes. I'm too stubborn and lazy to head out to where there's any real climbing and am perfectly content with mashing up tiny local hills in my 53 x 19. I don't think I'm even going to bother swapping out my 12-23 cassette with the 12-27 I stole from one of the shop's master mechanics, The Dragon. I have the tools and everything to do it, but I just think a 27-tooth cog looks too ridiculous to put on my very "Pro" looking aluminum, Rival-equipped bike. Plus, I've heard some crazy things about this whole "spinning" concept. I don't like it. It sounds like black magic to me and I'll avoid it at all costs. It's too bad I sold my fixie because I'd rather slap brakes on that piece than install a nerdy, climb aid like a 12-27 cassette. Bring on the mashed potatoes!

Skinny, Lycra-Clad Violence

2009-07-20T06:57:00.001+08:00

Like all good cyclists, I'm following Le Tour pretty closely, including the Lance-Contador quarrel and other stupid things. But the past two stages have taken a relative benign international cycling event from a G-rating to a bullet-dodging, fist-fighting, idiot-shoving, violence-fest. I have no choice but to change the rating of this year's Tour to a mildly impassioned PG-rating.

It was like someone had misinterpreted my recurrent dreams of the many fun things to do at triathlons when I read that someone had brought an air rifle to Le Tour. In my dreams I drunkenly ride head on towards my aero-clad imbred cousins drunkenly playing cowboys and indians. This was a little less interesting, but was close enough. Actually, I don't think it's very funny to have riders shot while riding their bikes. It's a lot funnier to have riders take shots while riding their bikes. Pass the Ciroc, si'l vous plait.

Voigt has been considered one of the strongest men in the peleton and as such I'm sure he's been tested numerous times by the doping brigade. But after Saturday's misfortunes and the crazy shit Voigt said afterwards, I'd like to have him tested for gamma radiation because that mofo is going to Hulk out and crush someone's head in. Or at the very least poke a hole in their tires.

Saturday also saw The Badger take out yet another unruly intruder. The stunt was the result of an apparent bet and, like in times past, Hinault had no reservations when it came to giving l'imposteur francais the business. Sheesh! Europeans are so pushy! It's a good thing I train and race in full riot gear. If you think an Italian frame pump does a lot of damage, wait till you see what my extendable baton and mace spray can do.

ZacK Vestal, Shut Up.

2009-07-14T00:12:00.005+08:00

I won't go as far as to say that I hate Zach Vestal. I'm sure he's a nice guy (despite his boring Trek-only stable of bikes). He's living the dream. Or at least one my dreams where I'm not getting chased by hobo zombies. [Ed. - Aren't all zombies technically hobos?] Vestal's sweet gig as Tech Editor for VeloNews.com has him traveling the world, going to huge races, and testing the latest in bicycle gadgetry. All he has to do is write interesting things that people want to read. Yet time and again, every time I read one of his articles I cringe because he is wasting this unique opportunity and because I can do better. The first thing I would be able to do better than Zach Vestal is know when an article is not worth writing.

In a recently published article, he writes about how one team mechanic for AG2R had to do a bit of unusual race day preparations in anticipation of heavy rainfall last Thursday. I figured it'd have something to do with the special grease they usually use instead of rain on those stages. Or it could have been about a special bar tape or saddle modification to increase a rider's grip. But as I read the article, my heart sank. It was about how one rider, Vladimir Efimkin, got his carbon Mavic tubulars replaced with clinchers with an aluminum rim and different brake pads. That was it. Oh, and Vestal goes on to add that the work was done by one mechanic in fifteen minutes:

Given that the whole episode transpired about 15 minutes before the start, you can imagine the mechanics were working quickly, but they got Efimkin set and ready to go in the nick of time. One more example of how these guys are prepared for every eventuality, both on course and off.

Holy shit, man. If it takes more than 10 minutes to install wheels and brake pads, I'd be shocked. Did he have to whittle the brake pads from a dual-compound brake tree? It'd probably only take 15 minutes to do that as Efimkin rolled alongside the team car; rolling wheel change, brakepads, and the lot. And "in the nick of time"? It's a friggin Grand Tour! If he was late to the start, he'd still have the better part of 181.5 km to "catch up" to the peleton. The title of that article shouldn't be "Readying for the rain." It should be "Apparently Pro Bike Mechanics Work Very Slowly And I Have An Awesome Job That I Take For Granted."

Socks and Heat Stroke

2009-07-13T06:45:00.004+08:00

Fuck my socks! Against my better judgment, I wore matching sock again. What can I say? I love to gamble. This time, instead of white, I sported bright red SRAM socks. Apparently red is the color of such things like fire, chili peppers, and my sunburned skin after racing at Dawg Days Circuit race in Bowie. I know it's summer, but I can't help but think that my sock choices determine the weather. Mismatched socks usually call for mild or mildly confusing weather. It's not uncommon to experience passing partly cloudy skies, comfortable temperatures, and a slight drizzle, flurry, or tornado in mismatched socks. White socks call for rain. They don't like staying white and as such will have you experiencing drenching showers and wet roads only to have the weather clear up just enough to ride your bike and get everything, socks included, covered in a layer of filth. Red is apparently the color of heat stroke. In anticipation of this sock-induced inferno, I packed a cooler with drinks and lots of ice. I filled up a clean sock with ice and used it to cool down and sponge off the sweat and salt from the day's efforts. I probably looked retarded rubbing a tube sock all over myself, but at the time I could have cared less. I contested the race's first prime (y'know, the one that no one really wants) and went to collect my prize. I was offered a gift certificate to a farmer's market I've never heard of but chose to substitute it for a nice pair of highly coveted white GamJams socks. I'd say that a real man doesn't measure the cuff length of his cycling socks, but that's before I measured mine in at a very cool, Extra Pro five inches! Thanks GamJams!

Hagerstown and Other Stupid Things I Did Today

2009-07-12T10:37:00.004+08:00

Fuck my socks. Everytime I wear white socks in a race it fucking rains. It happened at Reston. It happened today. I very rarely wear matching socks, but every time I do I regret it. The socks are pretty much stained gray by now from a mixture of sweat, road grit, and brake dust sludge. Screw it. I'm not even going to bother doing laundry. Let 'em stain. That'll show them what I think about their stupid pristine whiteness. I've also not bothered with cleaning my bike or unpacking more than my cell phone and wallet from my race day vehicle. I have another race tomorrow and I'll sort through that jumbled mess before I head out once again. There was very little I actually did after my race and of that small list most were just poor decisions on my part. Eating a candy bar, a bag of gummy candy, and chasing it with half a liter of Dr. Pepper might sound delicious, but on an empty stomach after a race is a recipe for epic Halloween-type tummy aches. Check. Since I didn't know how to get out of town and my brain was fried after the race I also drove aimlessly through Hagerstown's bustling meth district, with it's tweeked out and mostly shirtless inhabitants. If anyone needs some meth, I now know close to a dozen people that would be more than happy to supply you and probably bite off one of your kidneys. Probably the smartest thing I did today after my race was sit down with some good friends and have a nice dinner at a local sushi joint. Albeit, I first showed up there sporting my road grit, brake dust sludge moustache and reeking like wet bike racer, but it was a good dinner nonetheless. Despite the great dinner, I unfortunately realized I let my stomach get the better of me when I ordered my meal and was reminded of this when the bill came. I'm going to go crash now, which is something I fortunately did not do during my race. G'night.

The Race:
-Rain delay
-Soaking wet course
-Lots of crashes
-Rain eventually let up
-Car drove onto course during last lap

WTF Chronicles: Aerobars All Day Long

2009-07-08T08:56:00.003+08:00

Watching the team time trial today, I realized something

Watching people crash on time trial bikes is just about as much fun as you can have without hauling a keg and a fifth of scotch to your local sprint triathlon. I enjoyed the aero carnage so much that I humored myself by going to a ride hosted by a local shop with a reputation for being Triathlon central. In my defense, I was going to meet up with a racing buddy there but was running on Cyclist Time (CT) and as such was about 7 minutes late. I rode out to the hill loop hoping to find at least someone familiar, but what I saw nearly made my eyes bleed. Dozens upon dozens of triathletes had piled onto these roads. Riders with plastic Gatorade and Evian bottles jammed into their malformed bottle cages. Others made the sensible decision to ride without any water bottles or alternate source of hydration. Clip-on aerobars and full TT setups were riding side by side in the bike lane, climbing the hills in their aero-est of positions. Worse of all was the wheel choices. And by "choices", I actually mean "choice" because triathletes' decision-making processes are driven via hive mind. I saw so many pairs of Zipp 404's that I nearly passed out. I understand they're good wheels. I even understand that they're made to withstand plenty of abuse from rider's with nearly twice the wattage output and from roads far more vicious than those of suburban hell. But why do they train on them? They're too flashy, don't necessarily help you train any better, and make you look a little silly when you're beaten on your $2000 training wheels by a bewildered cyclist who's just looking for some escape from Triathlon Bizarro World. Needless to say, I did a few laps there in search of my friend but came up empty-handed, left, and will now proceed to drink myself into oblivion so that I will never remember what happened on this horrible day.

Speaking of looking funny on bikes:

Ben+on+Lance%27s+TT+Bike+Before+Stage+4 -- powered by http://www.livestrong.com

Lance and Alberto Sitting in a Tree...

2009-07-07T10:19:00.008+08:00

I'm still recovering from this weekend. I didn't get particularly drunk (or rather drunker than usual), but I did eat my body weight in grilled goodies, cookies, and s'mores. So today I basically sat around watching the last bits of Le Tour and refreshing CyclingNews and VeloNews until my F5 button caught fire. At first it seemed like pretty standard affair. Cavendish won. Surprise, surprise. One of the more interesting points of the race was earlier when Columbia-HTC turned nine sets of pedals in anger and blasted away from the peleton taking with them only 20-something other riders. I'm all for violent circular leg movements (you should see my vicious roundhouse kick), but after the stage was over the press yet again went into ludicrous speculation about a budding lover's quarrel between Armstrong and Contador (here, here, and here).

By now everyone should be familiar with the story:
Man wins bike race.
Man wins bike race.
Man wins bike race.
Man wins bike race.
Man wins bike race.
Man wins bike race.
Man wins bike race.
Man retires and becomes old.
Younger man wins bike race.
Younger man wins a bike race that isn't Le Tour.
Younger man wins another bike race that isn't Le Tour.
Younger man and older man meet, shake hands, tell everyone they're friends, and ride bikes.
Press gets bored and makes up ridiculous bullshit about intra-team rivalry.

It's been like this all year. No one seems to get that these cyclists are professionals. They do what they're told because that's what they get paid to do. Furthermore, as professionals, especially the Tour's GC hopefuls, they should know to stay at the front of race. Even Cat 5 racers understand this tactic. In fact they sometimes understand it so well that they'll crash into whatever gets in their way as they make moves to get more "fronter" than the other guys. I don't think it's of any significance that Lance moved ahead of Contador in the GC. If AC made a mistake, it will probably be short-lived. It's still early in the race and the course will sort everything out in time. So stop writing about this shit, Cycling Media.

The Start

2009-07-06T01:35:00.000+08:00

Is it just me or did the Tour de France organizers, ASO, try to pit American cyclists against their beloved Independence Day? Starting the prologue on the fourth of July, and in the fancy-pants city of Monaco nonetheless, is about as huge a departure from beer bellies and lighting shit on fire as you can get. I thought the French were supposed to be our allies, but instead they're hosting the prologue of the most famous Grand Tour on our celebratory day of independence and in a city synonymous with helipad-laden yachts. I don't care much for boats. You can't bike very far on a boat and I get a horrible case of self-inflicted seasickness caused by getting belligerently drunk from mint schnapps.

When did cycling become the sport of playboys? When did it join the ranks of Formula Un and James Bond supervillans? I never thought that cycling was very glamorous and can guarantee that anyone that takes up the sport under these pretenses will be shocked to their core the first time a road-raged soccer mom flips them the bird. I miss the Spring Classics, those manly one-day races when bikes look more like bikes and if you win a race you get a trophy made out of rock or abstractly welded metal. To be honest, I'd probably be happier having a good noon ride at Hains Point and having an Italian Store sub as my trophy than looking retarded riding a $9,000 TT bike next to a multimillion dollar floating mansion. Maybe I'm crazy or set fire to too many things last night, but I like to keep things simple, dirty, and fun. So I'm going to bunker down for the next couple of days with some beer and deeply discounted fireworks and wait patiently for some of the more interesting stages in France.

Try All Three

2009-06-22T11:50:00.000+08:00

Nothing wakes me out of a peaceful blog-hibernation like an infuriating new article from BikeRadar.com. The article seemed benign enough with its "15 Way To Ensure Your Best Summer's Riding Ever." Most of the points made in it were what you'd expect from a cycling publication pulling generic tips for summer riding. "Try All Three" was the final bit of advice from the author, Andy Wadsworth (Wadsworth? Really?). He starts with "Having a new goal will add variety to your regime, so why not enter a triathlon?" and then I blacked out in a fit of rage. If your goal is to be held to some supposed standard of fitness and look like an idiot, then sure sign up for the next doggy-paddle, coast, jog event. If you want variety get a different bike. I'll probably write more in the near future, but I'm still a bit groggy from hibernation so long.

Bikes, Bikes, Cops, and Rain

2009-05-14T00:44:00.003+08:00

Whoa. Back at it again. I tend to blackout when it rains for that long. I'd liken it to bears hibernating in the winter, but that would be an insult to bears and I already have enough of them pissed off at me.

While I was gone:

Giro, Schmiro
The centenary edition of the Giro d'Italia started last Saturday. I know this because nearly every bike website that I frequent has some sort of 'tech' article about custom-themed race bikes. Aside from winning Worlds or a national championship, it used to be that riders would get a custom saddle or might even splurge for different bar tape. Shoes were another component that riders would get customized, but that special treatment was strictly limited to parts that affected ergonomics. Earlier this year, Lance got a special bike for the Tour Down Under to commemorate his return to the sport. That was pretty cool considering his accomplished palmares. But now Trek has commissioned guerilla, street artist Shepard Fairey (the guy who created the "Obey" and "Hope" campaigns) to decorate Lance's bike with stickers. Fantastic, but I'm not quite sure "Winners, Not Wankers 2009" is on par with his other work. Decorating a Trek with stickers is only one step above putting a giant "Ford" sticker across the rear windshield of your F-150. What's next? Truck nuts for your saddle bags? It's not like these bikes are commemorating anything in particular. Take Gilberto Simoni's bike. Sure he won a couple Giros but what does that have to do with his metallic blue Guerciotti? Oh that's right. I forgot he had a smurftastic ride at the Tour de Smurf. I thought part of being a team was looking like one too. It's a the Giro d'Italia, not fucking NAHBS.

Speaking of Which
My dreams have come true and I will finally be going to see one of the most interesting bike shows in the world. Show founder and director, Don Walker just announced that the show will travel to Richmond, Va for its sixth edition. I. AM. PSYCHED!!!!11!!!one!!

The Fuzz
I got pulled over by a DC Park Police officer yesterday for allegedly "swerving" out of my lane. It took a lot of self-control not to sprint away from him, but two things held me back: I was wearing my team kit and I wasn't drunk. Also, I'm slow.

Rain
If you didn't notice the rain, you must love being indoors. I hate the indoors but I tried to do everything possible to be productive while being off the bike. I tuned up my mountain bike and installed new tires and a tubeless setup. I tuned up some old bikes I rarely ride to get them ready for sale on Craigslist. I guess I'm seeing a bit of faulty logic in trying to get my mind off riding bikes by spending time around bikes but not actually riding them. Hindsight's a bitch.

As far as actual riding goes, I'm ashamed to say that I didn't do much of that. Riding in the rain is fine for a day or two, but after that I seriously start considering moving to places where it doesn't rain for entire weeks, like the Moon. Also, from a mechanic's standpoint riding in the rain drives me nuts. You have two options: Don't ride in the rain and avoid having to dry, clean, overhaul, lube, and tune your bike. Or ride in the rain, be pissed the entire ride for intentionally mucking up your bike, and sit at home or at the shop for hours because your obsessive-compulsive self won't allow you to have a bike that isn't in perfect working order.

The write-in option in this scenario would be to ride in the rain, be pissed for getting your bike wet, put it away wet because you're pissed and tired from the ride, then spend the next fair weather ride super pissed because you're chasing around 16-million squeaks and creaks from all the dried out and gunked up components that you didn't take the time to fix (which is what happened to me yesterday).

Planned Cyclehood

2009-05-01T10:59:00.004+08:00

I hate planning rides. I don't mean simply planning to ride on a particular day. I do that just about everyday. What I mean by "planning a ride" is preparing and organizing for a specific route that is usually not included in your regular ride routine. I planned for such a ride yesterday. I was to be joined by Z-man and Flaco on a Skyline Drive bro-ride, which is two-rides under a Zone-1 ride and one ride above a charity ride raising funds for my bar tab. And as happy as I was that we received a sizable rainfall to wash away that inch-thick coat of pollen off my car, I was equally disappointed that it forced us to cancel our ride.

Maybe "forced" is too harsh a word. It wasn't exactly the rain that cancelled our trip. It was the rain that made us lazy and drag our feet to the point where we somehow accepted the logic that maybe it wouldn't be such a good idea to spend a super soggy day climbing and descended on roads of questionable conditions. Looking back on this supposed "logic," I can't help but plead temporary insanity. I'm going next time, even if there's a fucking tornado.

There are somedays when I feel like being a workhorse in the saddle, or rather a workpony if you've ever ridden with me. But no matter what, I am the laziest sonofabitch when it comes to planning a ride. Do you know why I stuff all those tools, tubes, and food into my pockets when I ride? Because even preparing for an individual ride is friggin' impossible for me to do. I keep all my "pocket crap" in the same pile and don't even bother checking it when I head out for rides. You could replace my co2 pump with a rubber chicken and I would never know until I shoved a presta valve through one of its eyes. I even pack an extra chain and tire when I ride my mountain bike so that I'll always be prepared for the bicycle armageddon and never be stranded anywhere. Planning a ride to Skyline honestly doesn't take that much. A few bottles of water, some food, a car, and you'd be set. You might even be lucky enough to bribe a good friend with enough beer to drive a sag wagon. But then you still have to coordinate with the other riders about dates, distances, a rendezvous time and promise each other you won't constantly attack and try to make the other bonk first. Personally, I'm not really hip to the whole "communication" thing. Nor am I even remotely likely to behave myself on any group ride. So I guess the entire ride was doomed from the start.

And probably the worst part about futilely planning a ride is the second-string ride. Still longing to make the most of the day, you head out for a quick spin only to spend the entire ride grumpy, wishing that you had mustered up the cojones to ride. Dammit...

Power Tools

2009-04-27T09:23:00.007+08:00

Can someone please explain to me what the fuck a "Power house" is? I generally associate this term with a prolific basketball team or someone who can easily smite a peleton in the final 20km of a cycling monument. I do not understand this term in reference to inanimate objects, least of which being a crappy "tri" bike. And yet I am constantly presented with these aggravating and disturbing situations at work.

Today some guy came in and said he was having an issue with the front shifting on his TT bike. Of course he didn't call his bike a "TT bike" but said something along the lines of "triathlon," "race," and "bicycle." I chose to ignore this part of the conversation; "shifting problem" was all I needed to hear. Then he said something about not being able to maintain his top-end speed. I also ignored this comment because had I thought too much about it, my head would have exploded. But to my dismay he continued talking and even pointed to his "power house" the lower half of the bike in the general area of the crankset and bottom bracket shell. He prefaced his next question by telling me that he checked his brakes and wheels to make sure they weren't rubbing and also that the shifting was fine. The next words that came out of his mouth were "Everything seems fine, but I'm still having trouble keeping my top-end speed. Do you think there's something wrong in the power house?" [points to the bb assembly]. Humoring him, I checked to make sure the bb was spinning smoothly and there weren't any binding or loosening issues. I even checked his brakes and wheels to make sure they were in decent working order. There was nothing wrong with the bike, but he kept mentioning this mysterious "power house" and pointing to his bike. Within 3 minutes, I ran out of bullshit to check on his bike and words to say to make this Tri-dork leave my shop. All I could do was make a face and admit "defeat." I told him that "It was something I couldn't fix" but didn't go as far as telling him that by "it" I meant the absurd level of ineptitude for cycling and general athleticism that I was currently present with. At the end of our conversation, he finally gave in and took his bike back, adding that it was "probably just his legs because he hasn't been on the bike in months." I subsequently smashed my fingers in the vise to keep me from choking this guy out.

"Power house" could possibly be a pseudonym for "legs" and a horrible stroke could have cause this poor miscommunication, but I'd say that's meeting this customer more than half way.

Oh, and if you're wondering why he said his shifting was fine but still brought his bike in for shifting issues, it's because his left bar-con wasn't clicking like his right one and he is "100% sure that the left shifter was indexed and not a friction shifter." And yes, he was completely wrong.

This Idiot Reviews: EAS Catapult

2009-04-24T08:41:00.003+08:00

Last Sunday at the Carl Dolan Memorial, I sprinted for a prime that nobody contested. Like an idiot, I went all out for it, not even knowing what it was. As it turns out, I won some EAS nutritional supplements. I got a box of EAS Myoplex Lite, which is a post-ride protein bar that tastes like a cinnamon rice krispie covered in frosting, and a 23-oz. bottle of EAS Catapult: Pre-Race Energy Fuel, that does not taste nearly as yummy. I have chosen to a do review on the latter product because I have nothing interesting to say about a protein bar that tastes like candy (other than mmmmMMMMMMmmmmm!).

The Packaging
This drink mix came in pretty standard form, although now after trying the stuff I would have expected it to be shaped like a lightning bolt or giant exclamation point. Interestingly enough, before I could even access the mix I had to fight my way through two thick plastic-wrapped seals keeping the lid secure and another paper seal under the lid. Having broken into the Fort Knox of sports drinks, I had a slight inkling that I might be getting in over my head so I read the label. It reads like this:

Catapult: Pre-Race Energy Fuel
-Intensify Workouts
-Enhance Performance
-Delay Onset of Muscle Fatigue

and here's the abridged version of what's on the back:

Mix with water. Drink before workout. Do not take late in the day or exceed two doses within 24hrs and allow at least 4hrs between doses. Not for use by individuals under 18 or those even remotely considering pregnancy. Do not use if you have heart disease, angina, arrhythmia, high blood pressure or other cardiovascular disease, recurrent headaches, bleeding disorder, depression or other psychiatric condition, difficulty urinating, prostate enlargement, or seizure disorder. Don't take this shit with any other stimulants. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA

"Holy shit," I said as I poured myself a glass.

The Taste
Against my better judgment, I took the recommended dose. (And might I say that if a particular sports supplements refers to its servings as "doses" you should probably read the label very carefully.) The drink tasted like Lysol mixed in with crushed caffeine pills. Lemon-Lime my ass. I had to chug the rest and chase it with water to get the taste out of my mouth.

The Effects
I won't say that I could really feel the effects of the drink. I did have a pretty decent ride, but that could have been from a number of factors: not being drunk, having a tailwind on the W&OD, eating properly, etc. So the whole "less fatigue" thing will have to be reevaluated in subsequent trials. As far as adding to the intensity of my workout, I'd have to say that that didn't change much either. It was a pretty typical evening at the Thursday night Hains Point sprints. I didn't feel any better or worse than I usually do. I did notice how there were some ignorant jackasses riding in the pack who had no idea what was going on around them. Despite this (and a few unnecessarily close calls), I can't say that I had a heighten sense of awareness due to the drink. Post-ride, I would say the effects were fatigue and extreme hunger, or in other words "how I usually feel after I ride." And I'll chalk up the strange tingling sensation in my heart to a completely random anomaly.

Conclusion
If you're looking for a drink mix that tastes like you just puréed a handful of pills and squeezed the tiniest sliver of lemon over it, this drink is for you. If you're looking for a substitute for your crack addiction, this drink will do that as well. But if you're an average idiot cyclist, I would have to say that this drink did not improve or detract from the quality of my workout. Granted, I've only used this product once, so we'll have to see how well it works in the long term. And in the worst case scenario, I'll mix the powder into a handle of Aristocrat vodka and sell it to college students as Idiot's Magical Study Elixir.

The Quickie

2009-04-23T11:59:00.000+08:00

As much as I like riding bikes, I hate doing quick bike rides. From a training standpoint, the "quickie" makes a lot of sense as an efficient way to meet a certain objective (recovery, intervals, etc.). It also make a lot of practical sense for those that don't have the luxury of going on longer rides due to work and family (all other reasons are cop outs). But despite all these logical explanations for going out for a quick spin, I will never enjoy the Quickie.

The Quickie is a total boner kill. It takes all the fun away from the simple act of riding a bike and is a waste of chamois cream and lube. I'm not saying that riding with a certain objective can't be fun. It's only when the objective is a simple time limitation that all the fun of riding goes erm... soft. Without an epic ride, how is a cyclist supposed to daydream about racing in the Tour of Flanders or climbing in the Pyrenees? How are you supposed to develop those oh-so-pro tan lines, including the enviable raccoon eyes from wearing sunglasses too long? Sure, you could take 'shrooms before you ride and "daydream" about practically anything. And you could substitute your sunscreen for tanning oil, (or in my case, Crisco) to fast track that super tan. But I say that's no substitute for spending 3+ hours in the saddle.

Unlike the Quickie, the focus of the longer ride is to take pleasure in the experience of riding. Enjoy the warm-up, take the time to draw the blood into your legs and tempt yourself with a few quick stomps out of the saddle. Then kick it up a notch to the point where you're going fast but not going to explode too quickly. Maybe you take an intermission and stop for a snack (I usually do). Then you come up to your favorite climb or your own personal sprint circuit and just let loose. Finally, cool yourself down, get some water, and ride home with a giant smile on your face knowing that you've had an excellent ride. Whether you're doing intervals, riding tempo, or just out enjoying the outdoors, it's all about loving the bike ride, not putting limitations on it.

[Ed. - I totally got blue-balled on my past two rides, hence this post. Also, it's late, hence the retarded nature of this post. Long ride tomorrow. Laterzzzzzzz]

Bridging the Gap: Can't

2009-04-22T11:23:00.000+08:00

I can't blog right now. Catching up on Sea Otter tech coverage.

Check this out:
Wonder why this Cane Creek weighs approximately half the weight of a standard headset?

It's because it has half the bearings! DUH!