Big Bikes

Kind of a Douche

That's something I often say to drivers. Like the van driver who cut me off today after making eye contact. Now, I'm not gonna launch into some rant about f—in' drivers this, f—in' drivers that. No sir. What I'm going to talk about today is what a douche I am. That's right, I'll be the first one to admit, I'm kind of a douche.

Thing is, I rarely get to be the first one to admit it because the line is so long.

I have examples. Like this one: this morning I rode down to the end of my street to the busy intersection with the (look at my eyebrow) beautiful Alewife Brook Parkway (you ever notice that anything called a "parkway" is an ugly-ass piece of shit?). I usually roll down the sidewalk (that no one walks on because the road is such a...) to the stop light to snag the walk signal and not die getting across the too-narrow-four-lane-high-speed-street. This road is so bad that when I see cyclists riding on it when I'm in my car, I roll down (what's rolling? I'm pushing a button...) my window and scream at them: "Yer a frickin' idiot!" When I'm across the road I double-back and ride past the mouth of my street on the other side along the mystic river. Yup, that Mystic River.

BUT, once in a while, on only the rarest occasions, there is no traffic coming either way (or at least a big enough gap for me to squeak through) when I get to the end of my street, so I shoot straight across the road, bunny hop the curb, air it out over the grassy embankment, and slide onto the path. Woo! I am nuts. And as I ride away triumphantly all the drivers who saw me perform my majestically executed stunt are in awe. In that moment I feel like I rock so hard...

and then self-awareness washes over me like a tsunami of lameness, and I come to the realization that all those drivers who witnessed my feat of incredible awesomeness are going: "What a douche."



In an effort to be slightly less of a total douche, I went down to the meeting of my local NEMBA
chapter Monday night. I didn't really have anything to offer (which was kinda douchey of me) but I did learn a little bit more about what's going on with advocacy in my backyard. That and they had pizza. It was hosted by Brian McInnis of JRA Cycles. Hence the lovely sticker (which I will leave on, thank you Brian) behind my bottle cage.

I've been meaning to go visit Brian's shop for oh, I don't know...five years. But I'm a douche and I haven't. I'd also been meaning to go to a NEMBA meeting for years, but I always had some excuse (and I'm a douche). Well, I got this sweet sticker in my Sram XX sticker kit that tells me that there are "No XXcuses." I really put it there to remind me that now that I'm not "rockin'" the single-speed, I have no excuses for sucking at the bike races. There won't be any more "my gear was to high'"or "my gear was too low" bitching. Now my race reports will read "and then I dropped off Monte's wheel because I'm slow (and kind of a douche)."

I did ride my bike to school every day this week, which makes me feel less douchey.

Note the odd sticker placement on the fore portion of the top tube. It is sure to anger bicycle aesthetes who think bicycles are too be looked at and talked about, but under no circumstances actually ridden. The sticker serves a purpose — it's there to protect the paint when I lock my bike to a pole...my so expensive I don't even want to talk about it bike.

And we're just going to fade it out into the weekend with some random shots here.


This is one of my favorite pieces of trail, and mostly because it overlooks Route 3. I'm up on this cliff, riding my bike while all these suckers are driving their cars below. Ya, I'm the douche bag who waves to the bumper to bumper traffic on 95 as I breeze by on the bike path above every morning. When I'm driving I like to imagine that someone has cut trails along any highway I'm on, I picture myself blazing through them as I...plow into the bread van in front of me.


This is the first section of trail I see when I hit the Fells, about five minutes from my house. This photo was obviously taken in the fall. It looks a little different now, but no less inviting.


And this is the photo at the other end of iphoto library, at the opposite end of the new stuff. I always click through my latest additions and run into this thing. It's a cool shot and I don't know that I've ever used it for anything. At this point I can't remember what race did that to my brake pads. Which reminds me...order Elixir pads.

Have a nice weekend doing whatever it is you non-douche bags do.

-t