Big Bikes

Something For The Weekend

An incredibly long day of riding calls for an incredibly large number of photos.

Free-form photo captioning (and not talking about Floyd Landis at all) begin:

In the above photo I'm driving out to school to drop off my final final of the semester. This was exciting to me, hence the stunt-driver, I'm Jason Statham in the Transporter one through three stance there. I'm easily excited, like a bi-polar Jack Russell in a manic phase.


After I delivered my final (I had a nightmare last night that I never actually did drop it and woke up in a panic) I drove over to MKR and C(don't know her middle initial) R's house to drop my car and cooler of beer off for later...

Then I hit the bike path, woo! Sick dude, I railed that thing on my cross bike. Not like THIS, but in my own way. (If you haven't watched the video linked back there — do it! Stevil linked to it earlier this week, but I just wanted to share the love in case you missed it. But don't miss it, go watch it, it's some real inspirational shit. Gorgeous.) I don't know a better place to drop this litle gem of bike path wisdom, or riding wisdom in general, so I'll drop it right here —

BARK AT SQUIRRELS, IT COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE

You see the little bastards skittering this way and that at the edge of road or path as you approach at twenty-plus miles per hour. They're nervous, they're making you nervous, you have no idea where they are going or go or what they are going to do. There is one way to make sure that they don't run directly into your front wheel — bark at them, like a schizophrenic, like a crazy person. They will move and you will potentially avoid an unenviable occurrence like this:

I still don't know why they don't make forks out of squirrels. Squirrels are obviously stronger than carbon fiber.

On the way home from Bedford, I stopped off in Lexington to check out the now open Ride Studio Cafe, a bicycle shop/cafe. In the above photo you can see one of their customers heading in to get a fitting for her new, custom Seven.


I got some great shots of the interior with my Go Pro Helmet Hero. I can't wait to get a new camera.


There's a Pete's Coffee in Lexington center. I always look forward to going there, I am a huge fan, but now that I can get Diesel Cafe quality coffee in Lexington center I'm afraid that Pete's will not be seeing too much of me. Sorry Pete. I milked my coffee with soy milk all the way from Lexington down to Arlington center. Nothing pisses off recumbent riders more than seeing a "Wedgie" rider rolling down the path no-handed, drinking an ice coffee. It's the kind of pissed-off that cats get when they see humans using their opposable thumbs. I once had a conversation with a cat that went like this:

Mittens: You know what I would do if I had opposable thumbs?

Me: (operating can opener, opening a can of cat food) I dunno...open all the cans of cat food in the house?

Mittens: No.

Me: What then Mittens? What would you do?

Mittens: I would take a gun and shoot you right in the face.

For some reason it was really unnerving.

When I got home from bike-path-raging, I took some recovery time on the porch.

A short while later Dan Barry showed up all a-rarin' to go after his three hour morning road ride.

Randy Jacobs' bike was coming apart like a meteor entering the Eaarth's atmosphere on the way to the meet up in Arlington center. We got his grips electrical-taped back on and we were rollin'.

We learned that riding up the front-side of the Turkey Hill water tower is stupid. On a single-speed it is insanely stupid. Won't do that again.

Then we climbed up Whipple Hill. I still think I climb better on the SS.

Fueling for this long, hot day was key. After Randy whupped our asses and then peeled off, Dan and I hit a convenience store for Cokes and Gatorade. Like that shot? Just be happy I didn't post...

This one.

All that riding was just a pre-ride before meeting up for a brutal beat-down ride with MKR and company.

"Hey Thom, follow us into the pain cave!"

A do-over session on this rock provided a rare respite amongst all the relentless hammering.

Keith cleans it.

And so does MKR.

Then Calhoun Roker's quickly-cobbled-together bike broke. In an email exchange earlier that day MKR had said:

Your date is your date, which means if you bring 'em to the prom,
you dance with them and make sure they get home

I don't know If Colin, er, I mean "Calhoun" was technically my date, but I decided I should make sure he got home anyway. At the very least I didn't want him to end up getting date-raped under the bleachers by some football player (prom metaphor...). Colin's problems involved bad chainline and bad chain. Just say NO to Shimano chains on singlspeeds. More on that in a future post.

I did a great job leading us out of the woods: "Ride this way" — CLACK! — "OOF! Ow...ow...ow."
I'm still icing my hand.


And long story not quite so totally unnecessarily long...
we ended up back at MKR and CR's house for beer and barbecue and talking about bikes and biking and some watching of some Cat-tro-batics.

Altogether a great way to celebrate the end of the school year.

I hope your weekend is as good as my Thursday was. My EFTA Weeping Willow report will be on your desk first thing Monday morning.

-t