It's a two-for-one today, boys and girls:
Because it's Sabbath. And, God, listen to that guitar riff...
But let's not forget this amazing cover:
Gotta love 1000 Homo DJs. Whatta killer name for a band, huh? Yet another Al Jourgensen/Wax Trax! band but fronted by Trent Reznor (maybe).
Saturday, May 28, 2011
I'm such a hack...
Went out on the long weekly Spidermonkey group ride this morning. The last couple of rides, I'd tried to hang with the fast group when they detatched on the last leg of the ride, and had been found sorely wanting in both leg and gearing. When my turn had come up to pull at the front, I couldn't spin the single middling chainring mounted on my 'cross bike fast enough to maintain the speed of the pack, and was slowly spat out the back. I wasn't the tip of the spear, but more like the skinny leather strips that lashed the spearhead to the shaft. Oh well.
So I changed my setup, installed a front derailleur like a real grown-up, and armed with two chainrings and its attendant wide range of gears I set out ready to spin to win. Except I was undone by my own goon riding. I might as well admit it now. I'm a lead-footed, ham-fisted hack. I'm a stomper. The only thing separating me from the big ol' Baby Huey-looking guys that walk into bike shops clutching mangled wheels with broken spokes protruding at every angle is that I happen to remember to inflate my tires to the proper psi. And even then I manage to give myself rear pinch flats. Lots of them.
I wish I could blame my mountain biking background, where often times the fastest way through a rough rock garden is to point and shoot your front wheel and hope for the best. But I managed to give myself rear flats even on a full-suspension bike with four inches of travel in back. And today, while navigating the torn-up streets of the north shore, with its potholes that belonged more in Beirut than tony Winnetka, I slammed my rear wheel into a deep crevice hard enough to dislodge my water bottle from its cage. As I pulled over to retrieve it, I heard the telltale and all-too-familiar 'hssss' of a pinch flat. Nuts. I waved the group on as I hunkered down to fix my flat.
I guess the upside of my hackdom is that I can replace a tube pretty quickly, and in a few minutes I was rolling again. But I knew that I was doomed to a long solo ride ahead of me. A pack of twenty-plus riders taking turns drafting for each other is going to roll exponentially faster than I ever could by myself, and I knew I had no chance to catch up to them. So the challenge was to see if I could navigate up through Fort Sheridan and down to the traditional rest stop at the coffee shop in Highland Park. I'd only been up there a couple of times, and both times I was basically following someone else's wheel. After an interminable amount of time (I wouldn't let myself look at my watch or bike computer) punctuated by a couple of wrong turns and lots of soul-searching I made it up to the Fort and down to the shop, where the rest of the 'monkeys were off their bikes and sitting in the cafe chairs, soaking in the intermittent sun and sipping their drinks. Judging by the progress made on the half-eaten scones and blueberry muffins, I figured that they couldn't have been there that long. One minor moral victory for me.
On the way home, I was glad to be back in the fold. I'd stayed in my small ring to save energy for the breakaway that inevitably happened on the way home, and my legs felt good even as the speed ramped up. I remember thinking that I was glad I had the big ring in my pocket, wondering when I should shift up into the 52t, when true to form I caught a jagged edge in the pavement, slamming into it full-tilt with my rear wheel. It was entirely flat before I'd even rolled to a stop. Enraged, I dropped the bike on its side beside the road and stood over it, loudly cursing and wildly gesticulating like a bitter old Italian widow at the graveside of her long-philandering husband. I just couldn't believe it. I was out of tubes and CO2 cartridges and I was miles from home.
Luckily, Derek - a Spidermonkey who I'd only met hours earlier and knew I'd flatted previously - pulled up next to me while I was in the midst of my conniption fit, and had already taken out his spare tube and tire levers. As I gratefully took them off his hands, he was already threading on his inflation cartridge for me. "Shit happens, man" he said. Indeed it does. But riding with someone who carries extra gear just when you really need it makes the shit storm easier to deal with.
For whatever it's worth, I was at least able to use my big ring to pull as hard as I could for Derek as we chased after the long-gone pack. I figured that the least I could do was kill myself in the effort to catch up to them. So we tore through Winnetka and Evanston and I let out a half-mad cackle as I saw the back end of the pack waiting patiently at a red light on Howard, right on the edge of Chicago.
As we latched on the back, I never knew it could feel so good to be last.
So I changed my setup, installed a front derailleur like a real grown-up, and armed with two chainrings and its attendant wide range of gears I set out ready to spin to win. Except I was undone by my own goon riding. I might as well admit it now. I'm a lead-footed, ham-fisted hack. I'm a stomper. The only thing separating me from the big ol' Baby Huey-looking guys that walk into bike shops clutching mangled wheels with broken spokes protruding at every angle is that I happen to remember to inflate my tires to the proper psi. And even then I manage to give myself rear pinch flats. Lots of them.
I wish I could blame my mountain biking background, where often times the fastest way through a rough rock garden is to point and shoot your front wheel and hope for the best. But I managed to give myself rear flats even on a full-suspension bike with four inches of travel in back. And today, while navigating the torn-up streets of the north shore, with its potholes that belonged more in Beirut than tony Winnetka, I slammed my rear wheel into a deep crevice hard enough to dislodge my water bottle from its cage. As I pulled over to retrieve it, I heard the telltale and all-too-familiar 'hssss' of a pinch flat. Nuts. I waved the group on as I hunkered down to fix my flat.
I guess the upside of my hackdom is that I can replace a tube pretty quickly, and in a few minutes I was rolling again. But I knew that I was doomed to a long solo ride ahead of me. A pack of twenty-plus riders taking turns drafting for each other is going to roll exponentially faster than I ever could by myself, and I knew I had no chance to catch up to them. So the challenge was to see if I could navigate up through Fort Sheridan and down to the traditional rest stop at the coffee shop in Highland Park. I'd only been up there a couple of times, and both times I was basically following someone else's wheel. After an interminable amount of time (I wouldn't let myself look at my watch or bike computer) punctuated by a couple of wrong turns and lots of soul-searching I made it up to the Fort and down to the shop, where the rest of the 'monkeys were off their bikes and sitting in the cafe chairs, soaking in the intermittent sun and sipping their drinks. Judging by the progress made on the half-eaten scones and blueberry muffins, I figured that they couldn't have been there that long. One minor moral victory for me.
On the way home, I was glad to be back in the fold. I'd stayed in my small ring to save energy for the breakaway that inevitably happened on the way home, and my legs felt good even as the speed ramped up. I remember thinking that I was glad I had the big ring in my pocket, wondering when I should shift up into the 52t, when true to form I caught a jagged edge in the pavement, slamming into it full-tilt with my rear wheel. It was entirely flat before I'd even rolled to a stop. Enraged, I dropped the bike on its side beside the road and stood over it, loudly cursing and wildly gesticulating like a bitter old Italian widow at the graveside of her long-philandering husband. I just couldn't believe it. I was out of tubes and CO2 cartridges and I was miles from home.
Luckily, Derek - a Spidermonkey who I'd only met hours earlier and knew I'd flatted previously - pulled up next to me while I was in the midst of my conniption fit, and had already taken out his spare tube and tire levers. As I gratefully took them off his hands, he was already threading on his inflation cartridge for me. "Shit happens, man" he said. Indeed it does. But riding with someone who carries extra gear just when you really need it makes the shit storm easier to deal with.
For whatever it's worth, I was at least able to use my big ring to pull as hard as I could for Derek as we chased after the long-gone pack. I figured that the least I could do was kill myself in the effort to catch up to them. So we tore through Winnetka and Evanston and I let out a half-mad cackle as I saw the back end of the pack waiting patiently at a red light on Howard, right on the edge of Chicago.
As we latched on the back, I never knew it could feel so good to be last.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Songs to sprint to
Because Nick Cave rules all:
And because Ed "Big Daddy" Roth did the album cover.
And because Ed "Big Daddy" Roth did the album cover.
Thoughts from the crow's nest
Sometimes, in my darker moments, I realize that being a mountain biker in the midwest is much like sitting slumped in the crow's nest on the mainmast of a ship becalmed in the horse latitudes, futilely searching for wind, or a puff of cloud on the horizon, anything that might fill the sail and carry us all away from here. But of course nothing ever comes but the flat bright glare of the unyielding sun and the static ennui of going nowhere fast as you're forced to sit there powerless, a passenger to fate adrift on the dead calm sea.
Of course it's hard to be a mountain biker in the midwest. There are no mountains. Duh. But there are trails, and some great ones at that, which makes it such a pity that they're buried under snow a good third of the year. And when the spring finally comes and the air warms, we are forced to wait yet again, since the thawing trails are still unrideable, as vulnerable to damage as a freshly-cut wound. The only way to let them heal and bed in is to let them dry out, which makes every single day of rainfall an excruciating lesson in patience, since every inch of precipitation on the already-saturated ground equals another couple days of waiting.
And it's been raining here a lot. Constantly. This spring sucks.
Last week, though, I got the chance to ride the Kettle Moraine trails in Wisconsin, a couple hours drive north of Chicago. A pretty rare treat for me, since I don't have a car and my work schedule usually conflicts with everyone else's. My man Zach had a morning free and offered me a ride up. So I threw my trusty steel hardtail up on his car rack and away we went, blasting Stiff Little Fingers songs pretty much the entire way to get us in the proper frame of mind.
Now my whole objective of this first dirt trip was simple: don't get hurt. Because I know how quickly skills erode after a winter of disuse, and I understand that the surest way to kill a starving man is to offer him an endless feast. The longer, outside-running trail was closed off due to (what else?) rain and erosion damage, but luckily we still had the quick shorter loops to amuse ourselves with. Which worked out great for me, since I was able to re-acquaint myself with a bike I hadn't ridden in months, and the sheer repetition of the loops sped along the process. And man! speaking of speed: the trails at Kettle are smooth, well-built, and flowy, letting you keep your speed up with bermed turns and short punchy climbs. After a few runs I was able to anticipate upcoming obstacles, to know the subtle weight shifts to throw the bike into a turn, to rise up from the saddle and power the rear wheel up a loose climb. The atrophied skills slowly returned, and I remembered how sweet the sound of a spinning knobby tire biting into the ground, hunting for traction and then finding it. There were a couple of blurry fleeting moments where I recalled why I do this in the first place, and then they were gone.
And as I write this it's raining here again.
Of course it's hard to be a mountain biker in the midwest. There are no mountains. Duh. But there are trails, and some great ones at that, which makes it such a pity that they're buried under snow a good third of the year. And when the spring finally comes and the air warms, we are forced to wait yet again, since the thawing trails are still unrideable, as vulnerable to damage as a freshly-cut wound. The only way to let them heal and bed in is to let them dry out, which makes every single day of rainfall an excruciating lesson in patience, since every inch of precipitation on the already-saturated ground equals another couple days of waiting.
And it's been raining here a lot. Constantly. This spring sucks.
Last week, though, I got the chance to ride the Kettle Moraine trails in Wisconsin, a couple hours drive north of Chicago. A pretty rare treat for me, since I don't have a car and my work schedule usually conflicts with everyone else's. My man Zach had a morning free and offered me a ride up. So I threw my trusty steel hardtail up on his car rack and away we went, blasting Stiff Little Fingers songs pretty much the entire way to get us in the proper frame of mind.
Now my whole objective of this first dirt trip was simple: don't get hurt. Because I know how quickly skills erode after a winter of disuse, and I understand that the surest way to kill a starving man is to offer him an endless feast. The longer, outside-running trail was closed off due to (what else?) rain and erosion damage, but luckily we still had the quick shorter loops to amuse ourselves with. Which worked out great for me, since I was able to re-acquaint myself with a bike I hadn't ridden in months, and the sheer repetition of the loops sped along the process. And man! speaking of speed: the trails at Kettle are smooth, well-built, and flowy, letting you keep your speed up with bermed turns and short punchy climbs. After a few runs I was able to anticipate upcoming obstacles, to know the subtle weight shifts to throw the bike into a turn, to rise up from the saddle and power the rear wheel up a loose climb. The atrophied skills slowly returned, and I remembered how sweet the sound of a spinning knobby tire biting into the ground, hunting for traction and then finding it. There were a couple of blurry fleeting moments where I recalled why I do this in the first place, and then they were gone.
And as I write this it's raining here again.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Songs to sprint to
I know most people think of Paul Simon as a soft, reedy-voiced folkie, but this song hums right along:
The percussion obviously (pun intended) makes the song, and it's perfomed by the great Bahian samba reggae drum group Olodum. I love that killer time change at the end.
The percussion obviously (pun intended) makes the song, and it's perfomed by the great Bahian samba reggae drum group Olodum. I love that killer time change at the end.
Where the blue hell have I been?
For as much as I ride - which isn't all that much, all things considered - it seems as though I only find myself on this blog to flagellate myself about not being on the bike. When I first started this sordid exercise of velo-centric navel contemplation, I told myself that disciplined, regular entries would be vital to keeping myself involved and evolving. That I had to maintain my own momentum. But now, after the last time we spoke - which consisted entirely of me whinging about the incessant cold rain and my declining to ride in inclement weather - I find myself yet again blowing off a group ride because it's wet and chilly out.
I love when things turn full circle.
So at least I have the opportunity to ask myself where I've been these past couple of weeks. And upon contemplation, I have to conclude that I was pretty much fast asleep. I had worked out a good riding schedule for myself, with a couple of early morning solo rides to fool myself into thinking I'm getting stronger, and a long group ride on Saturday to demonstrate how deluded I really am; sprinkled throughout the week I went down to the basement and threw some weights around, mainly because I finally figured out how to do a dumbell clean and press by watching videos on YouTube.
But I've discovered that my new, determined routine has two main effects on me: first, I find myself compelled to eat my weight daily, and second, when I'm not eating I'm sleeping. The sofa now seems to exert an inexorable gravitational pull. More than once my wife has come home to find me comatose on the couch, covered with a fine dusting of cracker crumbs, with my dog George happily nosing an empty Wheat Thins box around the floor underneath my unconscious outstretched hand.
Not a pretty picture, I'll admit.
Small wonder that, what with all that sleeping and eating, I haven't found time to collect my restive thoughts in quiet contemplation. But I think I've turned a corner here. I've got things worked out. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll now retire to my familiar spot on the couch with some buttered toast and coffee and watch the end of today's stage of the Giro d'Italia.
And I won't nod off to sleep. See? Progress!
I love when things turn full circle.
So at least I have the opportunity to ask myself where I've been these past couple of weeks. And upon contemplation, I have to conclude that I was pretty much fast asleep. I had worked out a good riding schedule for myself, with a couple of early morning solo rides to fool myself into thinking I'm getting stronger, and a long group ride on Saturday to demonstrate how deluded I really am; sprinkled throughout the week I went down to the basement and threw some weights around, mainly because I finally figured out how to do a dumbell clean and press by watching videos on YouTube.
But I've discovered that my new, determined routine has two main effects on me: first, I find myself compelled to eat my weight daily, and second, when I'm not eating I'm sleeping. The sofa now seems to exert an inexorable gravitational pull. More than once my wife has come home to find me comatose on the couch, covered with a fine dusting of cracker crumbs, with my dog George happily nosing an empty Wheat Thins box around the floor underneath my unconscious outstretched hand.
Not a pretty picture, I'll admit.
Small wonder that, what with all that sleeping and eating, I haven't found time to collect my restive thoughts in quiet contemplation. But I think I've turned a corner here. I've got things worked out. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll now retire to my familiar spot on the couch with some buttered toast and coffee and watch the end of today's stage of the Giro d'Italia.
And I won't nod off to sleep. See? Progress!
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