Big Bikes

Tear It Up

Rode into work yesterday on The Superfly, still rockin' the 34 X 15 from the weekend. You know your gear was hard enough for a mountain bike race when you have trouble getting it up to a decent cadence on the frickin' road. It is just shy of the gear I run on my fixed gear, and I've probably got a wee bit less rolling resistance on that fifi boy.

We had our shop ride at 5:45 (well 6 really, I have trouble getting out of the shop). A bunch of good folks showed including none other than the Old Coot himself, Bill Boles. I joked to one of the other mechanics that Ned Overend, John Tomac, and Rishi Grewal were going to show up as well. They didn't.


Bob K., the man organizing Cutler Trail Care Day on May 16th (details are forthcoming) provided us with the first Mecha-stop-and-enjoy-the-nature-for-a-minute-nical of the ride. Wednesday night ride die-hard, Corey helped him out.



I really have no idea what Alex was pantomiming here. "And then I tried to ride my bike through a hole this big...I got totally stuck, it was crazy that time that happened".


Then she asked the group a question about cornering. She said she didn't know how to do it, period, that she just rides straight through things. I tried to explain how I think I do it, probably not very well. Something about weighting your outside foot, weighting your inside hand, and bringing the knee into the top tube, not angling it out like a Moto GP rider with knee pads. I spent the next ten minutes thinking way too hard about cornering well instead of actually cornering well. Once I get a proper video camera I plan on posting How-To videos on that and a couple other subjects. I bet I can do a really good one on "How to not sleep...ever". I am one of the world's foremost experts in that field.

I predict a comment from PVD on the subject of cornering like a proper madman.

So pretty that I couldn't decide which one to choose. These are undoctored Helmet Hero photos. Just wait for the shot in a few weeks when all flowers are blooming along this stretch. You should probably come out on the ride and see for yourself...unless you have allergies.


When you accidentally leave your helmet-cam on photo "photo every two seconds mode" for half and hour, you get lucky with a few great shots. Ok, maybe not so much lucky. When you take 600 photos you are statistically wicked highly likely to get a few good shots.



Will came out for the ride. He's one of those guys who rides a big, heavy single speed but doesn't really race. He just goes racer-fast and rips through technical stuff all the time.

We had a great ride, Bill Boles showed us an extra little loop at the end of our out and back through Cutler and shared some history about the old Brookline reservoir system which has something to do with the fact that Cutler Park was never developed. The guy can ride a bike too.


After the ride it was back to The Shop for a "Build Party". Me and a few other guys stayed after hours to build up our Demo Bike fleet. We had a few beers and built up some EX 8s, Paragons, and Hi-Fis. I wound up with a 13 hour workday, spun home in my 34 X 18 (which was a little different than the 34 X 15), stopping along the way for a Meatball sub, which I devoured like a starving animal in balled up in a fetal position on the couch at midnight. Then I turned into this:

Hilarious mayhem ensued.