Big Bikes

Wild and Free from thom parsons on Vimeo.

Cross Training is For People
Who Hate Bicycles

My idea of Cross Training is riding different kinds of bikes in different ways. I ride the trainer, the fixed gear, the road bike, the single speed mountain bike, the geared mountain bike...the unicycle (or crash trying anyway). Every winter I talk all big about how I'm going to run more, or Cross Country Ski, or Snowboard, or become a competitive eater, or do something, anything besides ride a bike in the crappy New England weather. Every year I don't do it, I just ride my bike. The reason I do this is because I think I might actually like riding my bike more than doing anything else, even if the conditions completely blow - and I'm lazy.

Fact is, during the mountain bike racing season I go to races and that's about all the off road riding I get done. When the season is over I still have plenty of energy left to devote to my favorite discipline.

I'm not an athlete, I'm a guy who rides a bike.
It's kind of true, without my bike I would be a fat kid blogging about video games and fried snack foods or politics or something - and that would suck because I only know the slightest thing about one of those subjects (that would be the middle one).

I was down at The Redbones one night, years ago, with some friends and my teammates from The 24 Hours of Great Glen. These guys were lifelong, multi-sport athletes and they looked like it. They were big and buff with very formidable looking necks. After they left one of my buddies said "Those guys look really fast". After some discussion I made it clear that I was not, in fact, the anchor on the team. "Wow, really? Because those guys look like athletes and you're just a guy who rides a bike".

At the time I was deeply offended, but after he removed his foot from his mouth and I removed my foot from his ass I walked off and realized (five years later) that without a bike I'm a "Fat-cident" waiting to happen.

Video.
I've posted the video from the Sunday snow ride above. Originally I synced it up to Devo's "Uncontrollable Urge" but found, after some tinkering that Curtis Mayfield's "Wild and Free" worked better and summed up my feelings about the ride and mountain biking in general.