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.