Fiasco Day

Q: "Do you ever get a good night's sleep before you leave to go somewhere?"

A: "No, no I guess I don't. I think I like it this way."

As you can see above (above right, not above left...we'll get to that thing on the left in a minute) I have very important things to do the night before I go on a trip — things like loading 80 Guided By Voices songs onto my ipod.

Oh what a grand adventure I did have today. As I mentioned, my bike is in pieces. The frame, front wheel and other bits are in Carrboro at Cycle 9. The fork and rear wheel are still with me. Today I had to go into the shop to throw my fork back together and re-build my rear wheel. Can I just say that I hate, I say HATE those three little bastard ball bearings that reside inside a Fox lock out lever. Their mission in life is to get lost and make a mechanic's life hell. If ball bearings could die, I would kill them. If they could feel pain I would torture them first.

The plan was to either ride over to Newton and get my shit directly or wait for the van to shuttle it over to Boston, if the time-frame worked out.
I spoke to the van driver at our Newton shop before he left, "you got the Fox seals, the spokes and that rim?"
"Ya dude!"

But when I got to the Boston shop the seals and spokes were there...but no bumba-clot rim. I threw a little bit of a hissy fit. I had obligations in the early evening, my window to get the wheel and fork done was small. Not quite knowing what to do, I went about dealing with the fork and trying to calm myself and devise a plan of action, "do I ride my bike to Newton, get the rim, bring it back to Boston (that's a 40+ minute roundtrip), there's no way I'll have time to build it, so I'll have to throw the rim, the fork, and truing stand in the B.O.B trailer, and cart it all home, so I can build the wheel until midnight...oh that's just fucking great! I am PSYCHED!"

While I was finishing up the fork I got a call from the van driver, he was on his way back with my rim. There is a god...and his name is Chris Agee. He's a pagan god who listens to lots of Bahaus and owns a Pegoretti covered in skeletons, but I'll take him. Actually I'll take him because of that.

And...go! Um, no, not so fast. Someone had, perhaps, quickly measured the spokes on their existing wheel, and this someone had, perhaps, not taken the time to note that the Bontrager 240 based hub employs two disparate flange sizes, so this someone had to make do with spokes which were about 5mm too short, and this someone now has the unenviable task of re-re-building their rear wheel when they get back from North Carolina. Oh fun.

The wheel and the fork got done in time for me to make it to my early evening obligation. The stock cotter pins on my B.O.B. trailer did attempt to thwart my progress, opting to eject somewhere after the footbridge leading down to Lower Allston. I don't use the trailer all that much, I like riding as unencumbered as possible, but I knew there was a reason for the two little hose clamps on the stays of the B.O.B.. They were there because, years ago, while riding from San Francisco to Cincinnati (That was my intent too. The hell with riding coast to coast, I just wanna ride from S.F. to Cinci-fuckin-nnati!) my tour-mates and I developed a better systtem than the crappy-stock-fall-out-and-kill-you cotter pins provided. We used spokes bent over and secured with mini hose clamps. I think B.O.B. has improved upon this design since then. I hope so.

OK, off to bed and then off to North Carolina in the AM.

Time to make the stories.



Above, top to bottom left to right: 1.) Encumbered 2.) Welcome back Cotter 3.) The rest of my bike in a wheel box...and my fat, hairy belly 4.) Too hot to handle too cold to hold

I'm A Mess

I leave for North Carolina to do The Swank at 6:30 tomorrow morning. Half my bike is already there, the other half is still here, in pieces: the just overhauled yesterday hub is sitting in front of me on the desk; the fork is completely dismantled, lying on my bench at work, waiting for seals and wipers to be sent over from the other shop. One issue is that the new rim will come in sometime today, anytime really, could be this morning, could be late this afternoon, I don't know. I'm expecting a call when the rim does show up, at that point I will hop on The Ugliest Bike Ever and hammer over to Newton to retrieve the rim (and the seals and wipers for my fork) and then hammer over to Allston to build my wheel and reassemble my fork.

OBR posted this quote today: "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail."

I say: "poor planning is the mother of adventure."

And wow, what an adventure I am going to have today, riding around the suburbs of Boston putting the pieces of my bike-puzzle together.

And now! Bay Circuit photos with captions:



Sketchy water crossings were the theme of the day. After Bill took a dive off the first slippery-ass bridge, I was a little gun shy (when I saw him go down, I walked the rest of the bridge, probably saving myself from a cold swim). Andy rode the above left bridge in its entirety, this involved a Philippe Petit type maneuver over a slanted and slimy 2 X 6...I walked it. To make up for my otherwise neutered riding throughout the day, I made the first attempt on the "Dangerous Bridge" (it said so right on the map). My theory was that the submerged , off-camber and dilapidated boards were probably moss-free due to the half a foot of fast running water coursing over them. My theory held fast and the entire group was able to traverse the bridge after I demonstrated that they were not going to die...or get very, very wet and uncomfortable.



I love New England in the fall. I used to associate the cool air, the orange leaves all over the ground, and the warm afternoon light with skateboarding. I took up skateboarding in the fall one year, many, many years ago, and was just glued to that board every afternoon after school. Now I associate fall with long group rides with friends I might not see otherwise all year (and not doing Cyclocross). The wheels are way bigger...that must mean I'm way more mature.



We ran into a few beaver dams. I think it's funny that humans get pissed at beavers for "wrecking stuff." The way I see it, the beaver is just acting human. I can't think of another animal that, like humans, changes its environment to suit it wherever it goes. There is a very small portion of the planet which we can inhabit in our natural state. Let the beavers have their damn dams...damnit! Accept for those consarned Evil Beavers.

Roger tries to make sense of a map that looked more like it was made by termites on acid.

Kenny talks to a local, trying to get us back on track. She told us what we were looking for was "The Old Hojo Trail." "On Sundays, we used to walk through the woods to the old abandoned bridge, and cross the highway over to the Howard Johnson's. " As soon as she said "Howard Johnson's," I developed the most overwhelming craving for Indian Pudding with vanilla ice cream.




Two reasons why Andy Sanidas deserves a Nobel Peace Prize:

1.) The night before the ride, he drove down to the halfway point of our ride and dropped a giant bin of food, water, and root beer out in the woods.

2.) Even after six hours of riding, he will still try to ride over an enormous horse jump. He's one of those guy that's XC racer quick, but then, out of nowhere, busts some sick, Danny Macaskill move.

Oh, that link to Danny Macaskill up there, if you haven't seen it, click on it. It's the ad he did for S1 Jobs. It is beautifully shot and scored. I made the mistake of watching it before hopping on the Superfly to ride to work the other day. Danny Macaskill I am not.

Heading out to NC in the early, early AM, may or may not get a post up for tomorrow, and if I do, it's gonna be WEAK. Not sure if I'll be posting from down south, I may have to bottle it all up and save it for late next week, we'll see.

Swank!

Bay Circuit Trail
Andover to Hamilton
Part One?

Below is a link to Bay Circuit Trail, It is a trail that stretches from Newburyport to Duxbury, 172 miles. I have ridden it with Andy Sanidas from his house in Hamilton to rt 114 in Middleton. The sections I have ridden are a cross of single track and fast fire road. I was thinking it would be cool to find someone to shuttle us to the Andover area and we could ride home. Any thoughts or interest let me know. I was thinking Nov 1st.

- Roger

And that was the email that launched a thousand bikes...and by "a thousand," I really mean seven — seven bikes. This ride had been attempted unsuccessfully earlier in the spring, that unmitigated disaster was documented HERE. They still haven't scrubbed all the blood off the rocks. This time around an elite cadre of mountain bike ninja-super-army-soldiers were assembled for THE ASSAULT on the Bay Circuit Trail.

Above, left to right, top to bottom: 1.)The trailer 2.) We could hardly find our way out of the parking lot at Ward Reservation 3.) Skug River. I think I'm going to have a child just so I can name it "Skug," and then promptly sell it 4.) Twenty minutes into the ride and we spend half an hour locating a lost rider. That is the type of thing that keeps people from completing this route.


Andy "The Man With The Plan (and a bunch of maps and a fancy phone)" Sanidas arranged for us to meet in a parking lot up in Hamilton, MA. strategically located in close proximity to a Dunkin' Donuts (Andy's attention to detail is staggering). His buddy Roger loaded our bikes onto a trailer for the trip down to Andover. We loaded our bodies into Roger's truck and Christopher Igleheart's rolling toaster. Chris was nice enough to drop us off, although he wasn't going on the ride and Roger's wife shuttled the truck and trailer back. This meant that all we had to do was pedal from Andover to Hamilton, back to that parking lot and we would be done. That's right, ALL we had to do was pedal our bikes from Andover to Hamilton.

Above: 1.) Slippery bridge, I walked it, Bill went for a swim 2.) First flat 3.) Second flat 4.) Chain break (my powerlink mojo came in handy).

Things started off well enough: one minute in I almost took myself out riding around a fire road gate. Ten minutes in Bill fell off a slippery bridge, soaking himself. Twenty minutes in we lost Kenny and spent half an hour finding him. Less than hour in, we had our first flat. We were not making good time. It has been said that this ride is cursed.

Our ride took us through Ward Hill Reservation, Skug Reservation, Harold Parker S.F., Boxford S.F., Bald Hill Reservation, Phillips Wildlife Sanctuary, Georgetown/Rowley S.F., Willowdale S.F., Bradley Palmer S.F., and Appleton Farms. Aside from wicked singletrack of Harold Parker, most of the ride was comprised of scenic fire roads and hiking paths. The cool thing about it is that you're seeing areas you might not see otherwise...incredibly beautiful areas.

Above: Kenny busts a move in Harold Parker

After some early mishaps and turnarounds, we got going at a good clip, covering some serious ground. The day was gorgeous, over 60° and sunny. I had almost bagged it in the morning, when I woke up to rain. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I'd gone back to bed and missed out on this thing. The trees were past peak, so the ground was strewn with brown leaves, masking many of the turns from us. We spent a lot of time back-tracking and searching for markers. There's a good reason why this ride takes so damn long.

Above: It's that time of year, one bottlecage has been replaced with a flask holder
(still full of Whiskey from SSWC07, Scotland)

I've got a bunch more photos to edit and possibly some more to say, but that'll have to wait until tomorrow.

If you're curious about what we rode, check out
maps two and three: http://www.baycircuit.org/traildesc.html

Things Fall Apart

And they do it with the best of timing too. I have one race left on the calendar this year, The Swank 65 on November 8th. The Superfly has decided to completely unravel going into the finishing straight here. The Fox F-29 RLC has been leaky lately, still functioning, but leaking inordinately. Saturday night, while getting ready for the Big Bay Circuit ride (which we shall speak more about later...in the week) I noticed one of the eyelets on my rear rim was pulling out. To get my bike to North Carolina on time, I had to have it in a box Monday afternoon. With an all day ride Sunday, there was no way I was going to overhaul a fork and build a wheel in time.

The rear wheel of The Superfly is that DT RWS 10mm Thru-Bolt jobby too, which is generally awesome, but in this case, sucks. The Superfly uses a rear-facing horizontal drop-out, it requires a bolt-on hub or a system like the mentioned-afore RWS business. I can't just use some wheel I have lying around the house. I guess I've taken for granted how durable the Bontrager Race X Lite wheels have been. For a couple seasons I had "race day only" wheels like The American Classics or The No-Tubes ZTRs. This season I didn't bother getting a second set of wheels, relying on this set of wheels for both racing and day to day trail riding. I'd say over all this worked out swell...until now.

So two seasons on one set of not the lightest, but pretty damn light wheels — not too shabby. Replaced the bearings once on the rear, the front wheel is still straight as an arrow and the bearings are smooth as one of those weird, hairless Egyptian cats.



See that photo above? That's my bike, or at least the parts of my bike which were functional enough to send to North Carolina...they fit in a frame box. Pretty sweet, $28 for sending "my bike" UPS to Carrboro. The fork and the rear wheel will be flying with me, I'm hoping the wheel box I'll be flying with will be perceived as checked baggage and will illicit no further charges. Who knows, maybe I'll bring the bike back this way. Like a poor man's (total pain in the ass) S & S Couplers.


The Superfly has taken some abuse in the past couple months. Between the five and a half hours of riding in a downpour at The 50 and the Wrentham Cross race, it's kinda hurtin'. In fact I went to pick it up the other night and heard sloshing, like many ounces of water sloshing inside the seat tube. A wise man named Lloyd Graves, one of the founding fathers of Independent Fabrication once said "You gotta let your bike pee." I had not done that. Simply flipping my bike over after either of those water-logged events would have allowed the liquid to drain out. Now I'm not sure if the seat tube on The Superfly is sealed, but I'm assuming, since the water was unable to drain out through the bottom bracket, that it is, which with a carbon fiber frame is not a big problem. If this were a steel frame which had a can of soda worth of fluid hanging out in its seat tube for over a month...we might have a problem.

Pre-drainage weight, post drainage weight. You do gotta let your bike pee.

So when I get back from North Carolina I do believe The Superfy will be up for sale...just throwing it out there. I'm talking frame/fork/headset/seat binder (maybe a post if you want one) for about a G. I will be posting more stuff for sale soon, maybe even doing an official type thing on the sidebar there. I've got a 57cm Lemon fixed gear, a Large 2008 Trek Remedy...couple three speeds, all sorts of exciting crap. Aren't you excited? I'm excited.

-t

Didn't Care Enough To Hurt,
Canton Cup Cross

That was my answer to Reuters post-race text-messaged question, "What happened today?" He had probably returned to his car after the race to find me and all my stuff gone, it was just like Roanoke, on a Honda Fit sized scale. For all I know he wasn't asking about my race and why I hadn't bothered to finish it. He may have sustained a head injury trying to hop the mini-barriers, and in a state of temporary amnesia, was trying to piece together the events of the day.

The mini-barriers, I kind of hate them. I think I was pre-riding with McKittrick when I took a run at them and pretty much cased them. "You think I'd be better at that, being a mountain biker." Yes I'm a mountain biker, but I'm riding a road bike, it doesn't necessarily translate. I rode the little bastards every lap of the race...I didn't always do a beautiful job of it, but I got it done. Some people have mad-bike-skills, and they can do amazing things on any type of bike, I'm not one of those people. When I'm riding a Cross bike, I feel like a garbage truck driver who got tapped to drive a Formula One car. "He's the best garbage truck driver this city has ever seen, let's see what happens when we put him behind the wheel of this Mclaren! So far so...wow...um...yikes...OH NO! Oh god...the fire, I have never seen so much burning and exploding, I think I'm going to be sick."

If you've ever thought to yourself, "hey, I wonder if eating nothing but Halloween candy and drinking nothing but Dunkin Donuts coffee all day long before a race is a good idea?" I can tell you definitively that it is not.

Am I going to weave this thing into anything like a race report? I doubt it.

Above: Colin with his fore and aft seat cams ready to roll. The Embrocation custom-painted Ridleys look mighty tight. It was 75° out but James Morrison still had embrocation on. I've heard he uses the stuff as toothpaste, caulks his tub with it, and puts it on tacos.

Questions I asked myself before dropping out with two laps to go:

Q: Am I doing at all well
A: No

Q: Am I having anything like fun
A: No

Q: Did I pay for this race?
A: No

Q: Do I want to ride through that windy field two more times just because it is so awesome?
A: Are you kidding me? Stop asking me so many inane questions, it's time to go eat some pizza

I was the only guy in the Elite race in costume; although my costume was a total failure. I was going for Sweet-Fixie-Kid-Hipster, it did not come off that way. According to one news agency I was dressed "as either the Policeman from the Village People or Adam Craig."
And according to the always controversial and far from PC Kevin Sweeney, I "looked less sweet-fixie-kid-hipster and more gay-fat-and-retarded." (Thanks for the beer K-Sweat, if anyone asks if you really said that, I'll lie and tell them no).

The costume would have worked slightly better if I had been able to keep my pants on...my tight, tight pants I bought in the boys section at the Good Will. I have no idea how these kids do it, the boys in the girl jeans, it seems horrible. I could barely get the things on and when I did wrestle them over my hips, I felt as though I was being cut in half. I also felt like I perpetually I had to pee. They had to come off. With them I lost my U-Lock, and, after a discussion with USAC official John Laupheimer, I chose not to bother showing up to the line with my messenger bag full of candy on as planned.

Above: I took this photo, using my camera as a make up mirror, I thought I had smeared my brown Crayola mustache into a giant chocolate-resembling mess. Seat cam. Uri. Trick or Treat, South Natick style...oh, you don't have any candy? Well how about we rip out your toilet and put it on the curb? Ha ha!

The stupid hat I had half-assedly zip-tied to helmet would flip up, acting as wind sock going along the lake on the backside of the course. The wind was strong too, strong enough to cause my head to be cocked sideways as I rode. I even thought it was worthwhile taking one had off the bar to hold the hat down. And that's probably what cost me the win.


Tomorrow: Broken bikes or Bay Circuit Trail, I'm not sure which.

Popcorn balls!

Weekend Preview/Big Bikes Top Six

A while back I asked "my audience" for suggestions for a Big Bikes top ten best of list...I got three responses. It was awesome. I've got them Google Analytics on this bad mammer jammer, I know how many people are out there reading this crap every day. If I was a professor looking out at a lecture hall and I asked the class a question and out of ALL THOSE PEOPLE, only three raised their hands, I would be pissed. I would probably proceed to call on every single one of those MANY, MANY people (OK, it's not that many, not even a third, or maybe even a quarter of what some dudes get), it could take hours, days even.

Imagine Cyrus, from this famous scene in The Warriors, yelling "CAN YOU DIG IT?" At the huge crowd of costumed gang members, only to have three respond, "um, yes, I guess we can dig it." The guy next to one of those three people was going, "I'm not really comfortable affirming that I can dig 'it,' when I'm not exactly sure what 'it' is." That would have been an entirely different scene, and that movie probably would have gone on to suck it big time.

So I took it upon myself to come up with a list, but on top of the three suggestions I could only come up with three posts that I thought stood above the fray, and the drivel, and the pointless babblings. They're over there on the sidebar now, all six of them. I would like to increase that list to a "Top Eleven" list at some point. Now, lets' try this again class, or gang members, or un-trainable Capuchin monkeys (wait, when did you guys get here?) , CAN YOU DIG IT?

In other completely unimportant news, this weekend is The Canton Cup cyclocross race. I'll be down there all day, working for The Shop, and then racing maybe the masters race or maybe the Elite race, I'm not sure which. I might be wearing a costume. I'll definitely be crashing on the hoppable barriers while trying to maintain my Pro mountain biker street-cred.

Sunday I'm taking part in some god-awful massive group ride from Andover to Hamilton. This same ride took the participants nine hours and nine minutes last year. I'm kind of terrified, but it'll give us something to talk about Monday...besides socks.

Where Do They Go?

The socks. where do they go? I have a pile of orphaned socks on my "bike staging area table." Sometimes their mates come back after a short absence, often they do not. I can understand if they disappeared forever...no wait, I can't. I have no understanding of how a washing machine eats socks, if they do at all. I've always kind of pictured the socks slipping through the cracks, getting sucked into the pipes, and washing away to sea. What a nightmare for that poor little sock. Maybe not, I don't know, maybe the little guy has a grand adventure out there — hopping onto a passing freighter and absconding for parts unknown...places I've never been and may never see.

If the socks eloped in pairs, I might never realize they were even missing, but they don't, they never do. They leave one behind...a reminder of the awesome pair of socks I used to have. The bastards. That's the thing, normal folks have normal socks, they buy them in big bags, they usually have piles of socks that are identical, it's not so sad when one goes missing. But bikers, we have very extra-special socks. They cost like ten dollars a pair, they often have some sort of sentimental significance, and we generally don't have multiples of a certain model of sock. Losing a sock is like, no exaggeration, having our hearts ripped out and stomped on.

I generally prefer to enter into discussions like this completely ignorant, with no facts to back up what I'm talking about, just my own delusions and hallucinations to go on, but this time I actually did some "research" (about thirty seconds of it anyway). I googled "where do lost socks go?" This article came up. You can tell it's going to be a humorous piece. You know how? It has the word "seriously" at the beginning of the title. Now that's funny because it's not serious at all.

According to that article the socks don't float off to Alaska and become crab fishermen, they merely get stuck under the agitator ("The Agitator" is actually the nickname of one of my co-workers. Don't worry, he'll never read this, he's too busy over on Glenn Beck's website, getting whipped up into a totally uninformed frenzy of thinly-veiled racism and xenophobia). The author describes how easy it is to remove the agitator to get at what is sure to be a veritable bounty of lost socks. I couldn't take it, I grabbed my camera and clomped down to the basement, hoping to add another chapter to this post, "Oh my god, there are ninety-two pairs of socks in this thing, happy freakin' day! Look, look, it's my errant SSWC 2008 sock...and my Rushin' Revolution sock...and that Swiftwick sock I won at The 24 Hours of Great Glen...I am crapping my pajamas with joy!"

That was not the case.

You know how many socks were in there? Zero. Zero socks, that's how many. What a let down. Do you know what that means though? It means I was right all along, the lost socks are off partying on an island somewhere, drinking boat drinks...boat drinks baby.

The now reduced to 100mm in the front yard Dunderchee and
The Ugliest Bike I've Ever Owned (which actually rides quite well), blocking the exit, creating a fire hazard, or really a "getting fired" hazard. Leaving my bikes in such an obtrusive spot is grounds for dismissal in my marriage.