A Case of the Blahs...

I'm typing this one-handed because right now George is sprawled in my lap with his flat muzzle nested in the crook of my left arm, contentedly snoring away.  I'm still in my pajamas, I've finished a bowl of granola, and a mug of coffee is cooling by my typing hand, next to the keyboard.

And I'm not on my bike.

I'd planned to head out on an early-morning ride.  I just put on some skinny tires to roll just a little bit faster, and changed my cassette to a tighter gearing.  I even cleaned and lubed the chain before I went to bed last night.  But when I awoke to yet another raw, rainy morning I decided to stuff it.  I'm sick of this.  I'm not going to get cold and wet on my bike yet again, not on my day off.   I'm gonna watch downhill videos on the interweb instead.

At least George is happy.

Songs to sprint to

Everybody hates the Stone Roses' second album, but I really like this song.  Their only flat-out raver:

I can pedal all day to that James Brown beat, I swear.

     

The Cassandra complex

I hate being right all the time.  If you ride city streets for long enough you get a fatal sense of predestination, where you anticipate the worst occuring yet feel helpless to prevent it.  Riding to work in yet another grey, rainy morning of this dreary April, I watched a car blithely rolling into the intersection a few dozen yards in front of me.  I knew he was looking to make a left turn, since he angled the front end of his car in my path and I could only see the back of his head as he peered intently to his right, looking for an opening to fit into.  As I slowed down considerably, I could see a steady stream of cars in the oncoming lane, giving him no quarter; I also knew that the light a couple of blocks behind me had probably changed from red to green by now, loosing traffic that would soon be upon me.  Upon us.

He was halfway into the intersection, blocking my way, but I couldn't swing around him because I knew he might accelerate at any time.  I was trapped.  I knew this would happen.  And I knew there wasn't a goddamned thing I could do about it.

So I slowed to a stop, standing on my pedals about ten feet from him, from his car in my path, from the back of his head which never turned to me.  Until I barked, "WHAT are you DOING, MAN?!"  I must have sounded like I was yelling at him from his back seat, because I saw his face then - finally - as he snapped his head around, showing me his eyes opened wide like a startled cat.  The worst was what happened next, though: he raised his hand from his steering wheel and waved me on, in magnanimity.  I took personal offense and held my trackstand and wagged my head, urging him to complete his turn or get out of my way.  Which he did, after a few more absurd seconds of us screaming at each other in the falling rain, finally reversing his car back behind the crosswalk.  I thanked him loudly in a sarcastic voice two notches above propriety, and rode on my way.

As I made my way to work, I seriously considered becoming one of those militant commuters, who mount a nightclub's worth of strobe lights to their handlebars and sport day-glo safety vests in the daytime, but then I realized that the problem wasn't just that he didn't see me.  No, the problem was that he didn't look for me.  I'm sure he probably looked to see if there were any cars coming towards him when he pulled out into the street, but he didn't look for any cyclists in the road.  He didn't see me coming right at him.  All the flashing lights in the world wouldn't matter if I'm permanently in the driver's blind spot.

So what do we do as cyclists?  How can we make them see the dancing bear?  The short answer is, we can't.  But we can anticipate that they won't see us, and hopefully avoid the worst case scenario even as it looms up before us.  And we can pray that they may someday start to look.

Solitary ride

So I'd hoped that I'd be in my first road race today, but my category filled up before I could sign up.  As penance, I got up early this morning to join in another group ride, but as I pedaled through the raw, cold wind and the stinging rain I began to wonder if this was such a good idea.  I was running late and didn't see any sign of any other riders, so I either clean missed the ride or else good sense got the better of them and they stayed in their warm beds.  Trying to ignore the wet rivulets running down the back of my collar, I veered east towards the lakefront path, hoping to get a few good miles in before my own mindgames got the best of me.  As mental exercises go, solo rides are by their nature un-complex: how long can you turn the cranks over while your mind pleads with you to turn around?

Riding by yourself is difficult enough, but it's made exponentially harder when you're fighting a headwind that feels like a fat kid on roller skates who's hanging on your handlebar, straddling your front wheel, and sticking his tongue out at you.  No fun.  But I kept surging south, as the rain slowly saturated the seams of my raingear and my feet turned to blocks of wood in the cold.  Every day on the bike isn't going to be a glorious one - but that's okay, as long as it leads to yet another day on the bike.  And so far, I haven't yet run out my string.

By the way, big ups to Mike Capello, my co-worker at the shop for taking third in his category at the Leland Kermesse under what must have been grueling and truly hardman-type conditions.  Good on ya.

Songs to sprint to

Showing my age again, but damn the Wax Trax! back catalogue is so good!

Besides, these guys are Belgian, so every cyclist is required to love them, right?

Songs to sprint to

Because how good are the drums on this track:

The guy is amazing.  Try and keep up.

I'm just the chipseal spread out across the road to hell

Now believe me, I had every good intention of writing a post this weekend, but you know what they say about good intentions, right?  As it turns out, bikes were at the heart of the events that conspired to keep me away from the keyboard until now, so I feel somewhat vindicated.  I also have an uncanny ability to justify my own bad behavior, I am a very deep sleeper, and yes the two are inextricably entwined.

But so anyways on Saturday morning I got up early to do my first big club ride.  Spidermonkey Cycling is a local club sponsored by the shop, and they graciously allowed me to tag along with them on their weekly ride.  Despite the fact that I was one of the only riders in the twenty-odd pack that wasn't wearing their kit, the 'monkeys made me feel right at home.  I had seen many of them in the shop, of course, but this was the first time I was able to ride alongside them.  We traveled along the North Shore, beyond the old-money mansions and the intricately-carved Baha'i temple, past the gates of Ravinia and downtown Highland Park, and finally turned around at Fort Sheridan, a small quiet community that looked for all the world like one of those nameless beach towns in northern California - maybe it was just all the incongruous fog and the salt tang in the air rolling in from the lake.

But I was happy to be riding with them.  Besides the fact that I would have been hopelessly lost without their leading me, it felt good to be a part of a pack, accelerating without effort, leaning into turns in unison, stringing out along the front of the group and regathering at lights.  I had fun, although it had its price: I spent the rest of the day in varying degrees of slumber, dragging myself off of the couch only to forage in the kitchen for 'recovery food' (bowls of ice cream and handfuls of red licorice) before napping again.

And on Sunday, I worked.  Hard.  It was the first truly pleasant weekend in a very long time, and the customers came in droves and many rode out on new steeds.  It was all hands on deck for hours straight, and while time flew, fatigue set in as well.  Nevertheless, many of us in the shop had made plans to meet up afterwards at a viewing party of one of the one-day classic bike races held that day: Paris-Roubaix.  Johnny Sprocket's, one of our friendly competitors, opened their doors and turned off the lights after closing and fired up the large flat-screen on their sales floor.  Add a large washtub of ice, a few cases of beer, and a large assortment of bike geeks and you had yourself, well, a bunch of drunken bike geeks.  Not that that's a bad thing.  I had a blast.  Saw friends I hadn't seen in ages, and made new friends who had room in their cars for future trail rides.  I got to marvel at a locally built handmade frame, then got to shake the hand of the really nice guy who built it.  And I got tipsy off of a grand total of three - count 'em, three - beers.  Although in my own admittedly lightweight defense, the last one was a smoked beer from a microbrewery in Wisco and it kinda tasted like bacon grease.  I did finish it, though.  Needless to say, I was unable to accomplish anything once I got home - besides deep sleep, of course.

I can always do that.

The perfect yellow Schwinn

As George and I were trundling down the street on our evening walk, I looked up and saw my wife, Jessie, riding home from work on her Schwinn.  I could see the insistent flashing headlight mounted next to the wicker basket on her handlebars, as she turned the pedals at a measured pace, her work week done. 

And I remembered how happy I was when she first asked me to help her find a bike of her own, a bike she could ride comfortably and easily, a bike she could ride to work or the park or anywhere really, and as I started telling her - just off the top of my head - of models with split top-tube step-through frames, and internal gearing, and hammered fenders, I could tell that none of the bikes were quite right.  None of them were the one.  She was going to have to find her bike herself.

Which she did, a week later.  It was in the window of the tiny bike shop nearest our house.  "And it's yellow," she said.  When we went in and were helped by a sweet old man who clearly owned the shop since the fifties, I knew the deal was done.  Jessie has a fatal weakness for little old men.  I directly went home to grab my Ritchey and we left the shop to go for her first ride on her new bike, and at our very first stop she was immediately vindicated when we dismounted next to a group of little girls on the sidewalk and they were entranced, gathering close, saying in awe, "Oooh, your bike is bee-yoo-tiful."  Jessie just smiled and thanked them, victorious.

Now she rides everyday to work, confidently and easily through the city streets, because even at a deliberate pace it's way faster than the bus.  She declines to ride in the winter, although sometimes her good sense and self-preservation are nearly overcome by her hatred of public transportation.  She patiently waits until spring.  It's simply more fun that way, on the perfect yellow Schwinn.

Songs to sprint to

Ever wonder what would happen if Ian MacKaye and Al Jourgensen played together?  Well, wonder no more:

Starts out slow, but then again so do I on those early morning rides.  Then it builds up strong and finishes fast.  Wish I could say the same about me.

N + 1 = pain and anguish

I love bikes. That's pretty obvious, I think.  But I'm starting to believe that it's not the kind of love poets write sonnets about, that my obsession with bikes is more akin to incoherent fan mail scrawled out on parchment paper and sent in envelopes containing locks of human hair.  And you're like me if you recognize the following formula: that if n equals the number of bikes you own, then n + 1 is the ideal number of bikes one could own.  It's perfectly evil in its utter simplicity.

About a month ago, I was generously given a bare frame from a friend of mine who was moving out of town.  I immediately obsessed over every part of the build, poring over distributor catalogs, sorting through any useful bits in my spare parts bin, scouring ebay for cheap parts, etc.  After hours and hours of comparing prices and hand-drawn spreadsheets, I finally worked out a viable build list, complete to the smallest detail, when I realized I had forgotten one thing - I had no damn money to spare.

Right.

So I gave it away to someone who just the other day was talking about trying to find a frame like it.  Funny thing is, I know that he now has to deal with that sword hanging above his head, that even if I gave him my entirely-worked out parts list along with the frame it wouldn't do him any good, because then the built-up bike just wouldn't be his, that he would have to compile his own list and suffer through himself.  That's just how this cruel cycle works.

As for me, I'm already onto my next project.  See,  if I sell my hardtail which I built last year and buy this other frame, then I can use this wheel I have lying around...