Questions and Answers
(And a Contest...shh)

Yesterday I started responding to the questions in my comments section, and thought myself:

"Hey douche bag, you could make a post out of all this crap." So that's what I've done.

Oh, the above photo montage...you don't want to know about that. I just made it because I needed something to eclipse the weirdness of the naked nachos photo.

Ah yes, The Contest:

If you can guess the inspiration for the above image, you will WIN a Big Bikes Mix Tape (which is actually a CD). This won't be some MP3 massive file dump with thousands of songs on it, totaling hours of haphazardly selected music. It will be comprised of 90 minutes of well thought out music. Just like we made 'em back in the olden days. Of course the cover will be the above image (or the naked nachos photo, your choice).

Wow, that is a HUGE incentive to twist your brain inside out trying to figure out what the hell is going on in that creepy, creepy picture. But really...I make sick mix tapes, it's the only thing in life, about which, I will actually stand up and say: "Dude, I am wicked good at this shit."

This contest will run as long as it takes to produce a winner, or until I get bored with it like I did Fat Tuesday and stop talking about it. Good luck!

And now...Answers for you!

Fatmarc Vanderbacon said...

I gotta couch, and free entry if you feel the need to race Granogue down in delaware...

just sayin'

respect
fm

8:40 AM

Big Bikes said...

Fatmarc,

That event occurs while I'm still in school and working weekends; that said,
a theme of this season may be going to races where:

a.) The entry is free

and

b.) There is a couch for me to crash on

What I'm saying is — anything is possible. Appreciate the offer. I'll be in touch.

rosey said...

wasn't the darkhorse 40 less than $35 recently? are all these mtb races trying to copy battenkill? more than $1 per mile? it's a far drive for these but to top it off with the high entry fees really stings.

i guess i will stick to $10 outlaw races with all you can drink beer.

10:21 AM

Big Bikes said...

Rosey,

But The Darkhorse 40 is a race that's actually worth it. They feed you and beer you and make sure you have a good time. It's not like dropping $60 on some Kenda Cup or somethin'. And by all means, keep having outlaws races, hopefully I can make the next one.

Amanda said...

naked nachos?

i can't seem to get to reading Matt either...

10:57 AM

Big Bikes said...

Amanda,

damn, I guess Spanish isn't as hard a language to crack as say — Navajo. (I do wonder how you say "nachos" in Navajo.)
Post ride, in a bonk, couldn't wait for dinner, couldn't decide whether to shower or eat first, got halfway to the shower, doubled back for the recovery nachos, and ate them in the bedroom, hunched in a wooden chair...normal.

David Alden said...

Yo. I'm in the same boat (how appropriate with this weather) in terms of the weight loss, though I suspect I had more to lose. I'm about 20lb down with 10lb to go. I signed up for Wildcat--should be a fun one. The burning question is--gears or no gears?
http://beardedbiker.blogspot.com/
http://www.racer-x.cx/

11:31 AM

Big Bikes said...

Dave,

Ya, I'm going on a weather-based training schedule right now. I ride when it's sunny and sit on my ass and eat when it's rainy. I can't say that it's working, but I am more sane than I normally am in late March. There must be a correlation between fat cells and sanity, that's all there is to it. I'll be on gears at Wildcat, good luck with the SS if you decide to go that route.

Emily said...

this Stoopid 50... will it be fun? or just stoopid? is it like all the good parts of W101 without the fire roads? I'm bummin I'm gonna miss Wilderness this year, maybe I should come up for this one?

1:20 PM

Big Bikes said...

Emily,

I hear it's Stoopid fresh! Just like the 101 without the gravel. Everyone I know who went last year liked it a lot. And only some of them used to huff a lot of glue.

Fat Chance said...

DH40- great race and you should bring the girl. Hopefully we wont have the super strong heat this year.

The picture: one really needs to shed some light for the enquiring minds...

3:37 PM

Big Bikes said...

Georges,

Don't know what the girl's plans are. If she's racing mountain bikes this summer, I'll try to convince her to do it...because it's awesome. Mike and those guys put on a good show. The heat, wow, that was rough. I'm packing a coffin sized cooler of ice in the car, so I can dive into it after the race. Oh, and hey...when is the NYCMTB Highbridge Classic race?

Big Bikes also said (as he wiped a tear of exhaustion from his eye)...

I'm goin' to bed.

Thanks for reading youz guys.

-t

Nachos Desnudo

With insomnia riding me like it's the Kentucky Derby, and my name is "Green Monkey," I do believe I will forgo the building up of a landfill of gibberish from which to segue out of to begin the continuation of my Things I'm Thinking of Doing monologue and just get right to it.

If you're nice, I might tell you what's going on in the above photo. If you're not, I'll post the one of me standing up a few seconds after that shot was taken tomorrow.

Where was I, let's see...about to the end of May.

Hold on a second, it is, technically, Fat Tuesday, the day I normally talk about my alleged weight loss, but truthfully, I am just really bored with that premise for a blog post. I've lost about eight pounds since the start. Now that might sound impressive (not as impressive as it would be if I were a...I was going to say Capuchin Monkey, but I have already reached my monkey-reference-quota for the day, so I'll say Tree Shrew) but it's not that impressive really; I just had a lot to work with.

Another reason for the loss of impetus on the talking about my reduction of blimp-idness. Hey, that rhymes...kind of. You'd think I could do a better job of making up rhyming words, like Humpty Hump from The Digital Underground — "I get stoopid, I shoot an arrow like Cupid,
I use a word that don't mean nothin', like looptid."

Now "looptid" rhymes a whole lot better with "stoopid" than "impetus does with "blimp-idness."
Which, oddly enough and as unintentional as it was (I swear) leads me right back into the discussion of my prospective race schedule — but wait! — I was going to explain why a loss of impetus occurred. You see, the thing is...I can't read. I have no time, I read way too much for school, not to mention all the Trek University "Web-in-ars" I have to watch for work, so that I can stay current.

It's like Mark Twain sort of said:

"The man who does not read good books (because he's too "busy" watching The Pacific, Top Gear, and The Colbert Report) has no advantage over the man who can't read them (because he's so burnt out from reading stuff for school, every time he looks at the printed page, his eyes tear up with blood)."

And I'm both of those men.

My point, as obtuse and obfuscated as it might be, is that I haven't had time to read Matt Fitzgerald's book Racing Weight for a couple weeks now. That's all. Maybe I'll get back to it at a later date.

Um, ya and now for that supposed nice, clean lead in to the Things I'm Thinking of Doing discussion.

The Stoopid 50 is something I want to do this year. My back exploded at an inopportune time last season, side-lining me for that one...on the sidelines of the bicycle race, where all the bicycle race bench-warmers are, watching the starters. When will be people realize that bicycle racing, particularly mountain bike racing, sucks much less than most other sports?

Due to the timing (ooh, some folks are not going to like this) I will likely bow out of Singlespeed-a-polooza and make my trip down to Stewart State Forest for The Darkhorse 40 instead.

Doug gave me the heads up about The Wildcat Epic a while back, I do think I will check that out. Back to back 50 milers, not too far from home, out in New York...sounds pretty sweet to me.

Before I go, about the photo...oh! — Would ya look at the time, and the word count, oh my. Looks like I'll have to fill you in on that one tomorrow.

-t

Fuzzy's Dream

I ran into John Fuzzy Mylne a while back. It was the night before SSUSA in Tucson. We were at "registration" at The Surly Wench. He told me that he had just recently had a dream about me, in the dream, I was Vince The Slap Chop Guy. I forget if he told me what I was doing in the dream, but my mind was blown. I had just a week or so before sent in my blogger grant application for The Breck Epic. On the application form I was asked who would play me in the Breck Epic movie. In the past, people have told me I look like everyone from whiny wuss-bag Billy Corgan to squinty bad-ass Clint Eastwood.

Of course Corgan is not an actor, he is a washed up musician, and saying that Clint Eastwood should play me would be poor form. You can't say that you want someone awesome to play you, you have to choose the lamest possible option. It's the law.

Guess who I chose to play me.
You got it — Vince The Slap Chop guy.

BUT, the crazy thing is that it had never occurred to me at any time prior to this that I bore any kind of physical resemblance to MR. "You're gonna love my nuts!" This coincidence was just straight up eerie. And yes, the resemblance is uncanny as well. It's more in the lanky-un-muscled-cartoonish-gesticulations and twitchy-nervous-energy than anything. We also both have a proclivity for beating up prostitutes (and getting a little beat up ourselves in the process) but that's another story.

Despite all my rage, I am still just a whiny-douche in a bad sweater

I'm not sure what's up with the blogger grant thing. As far as I know it's happening (I don't know if I'll actually be a contestant). They said they were going to post the contestant entries on March 1st. I have no concept of time, but I think that date has come and gone. I'm keeping my fingers crossed though, Breck would be my big race of the summer, which segues nicely into a discussion of...

Things I'm thinking of doing.

EFTA kicks of their season with the King of Burlingame off-road time trial this coming weekend...I will not be there. Though I did it last year, and it was awesome. Here's my deal. I am in school five days a week and working the other two until mid-May. I will not be doing much in the way of racing until school's out. There will be exceptions, such as my trip up to Vermont for George W's Gravel Grinder race on April 18th.

After that I'm going to try to hold off until the end of school, kicking things off a little later than usual with Doug Peckham's demented Glocester Grind race on May 16th. This is a race I really enjoy, although it kicks my ass.

I also can't pass up a race like the Weeping Willow, which is a half hour from my house at a new venue that happens to be one of my favorite places to ride. From then on out I'll be trying to do as many EFTAs as possible. The past couple seasons I concentrated more on the Root 66 races, this season I'll throw a couple in, but the focus is on EFTA, at least as far as local stuff goes.

I'd love to do The Lumberjack 100, but just as I did last year, I completely blew it and forgot about registration and now it's sold out once again. If there's someone out there who can pull some strings or have somebody killed to get me in, I would jump at the chance to do the thing. I promise I'll write a rave review of the event...because it really needs to be more popular.

Ah look, it's bedtime and I have already far-surpassed my temporary word count cap, I will try to find an opportunity to segue back into things I'm thinking of doing later in the week.

-t

Serious

Today started off on a bit of a low note. I went on the internets this morning where I was confronted with the news of Tony Kornheiser's comments about running down cyclists. Something like that wouldn't usually get under my skin, but shortly afterward I received an email on the 29er Crew list about the hit and run accident that left Fisher rider Adam Little dead. On any other day I would have brushed aside any anger I felt toward a moron like Kornheiser and gone for a bike ride...not today. I got all worked up and fired off an angry email to ESPN:

The other day Tony Kornheiser, during a tirade against cyclists, said "it's all you can do not to run them down!" At another point in the show he said more directly: "Run em' down!"

Like this Tony?
http://www.wbtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=12155467

There's dead cyclist for ya, how does that make you feel? He was a good dad and husband. He was just trying to get to work and stay fit and now he's dead because of an irresponsible driver.

I ride a bike in Boston just about every day, and I know from experience that there are plenty of people out there who are ready to literally run cyclists down. I've had cars aimed at me more than once. These people don't need someone to whip them up into a frenzy or validate their antisocial, belligerent attitude toward cyclists.

Cyclists are people — humans made out flesh and bone, they break easily, and often people driving their armored SUVs forget that. Please don't encourage them to do so.

In a perfect world, a copy of this email would end up on Tony Kornheiser's desk.



So that's what I wrote. If you want to tell the ESPN management what a douche bag you think Kornheiser is you can go do it HERE. The guy is catching some serious heat though, and it's coming from the direction of Lance Armstrong. Hopefully this is the nail in the imbecile's coffin. Hell, his employer suspended him for two weeks just a month ago for saying something obnoxious about his coworker's tight skirts. He had just gotten back to work and he goes off on a rant about killing people with cars. This is guy is a frickin' genius.



Oh, it's about freedom of speech is it? How would people react if some other radio personality "joked" about killing human beings in another manner.

"Shoot drivers in the face...with a gun!"

That would go over well. How about:

"Take a cinder block and smash roller bladers' skulls in!"

Thing is, someone could joke about committing acts like that on the radio, because no one would ever do anything like that (well, most everyone). Drivers do turn their cars into weapons, swerving 6,000 pound SUVs at and into cyclists on a regular basis. But unlike picking up a desk stapler and wielding it at your boss, this behavior goes unnoticed and un-prosecuted unless it results in serious injury or death.

Muddy Water

Mary, take the child, the river's rising
Muddy water taking back my home
The road is gone, there's just one way to leave here
Turn my back on what I've left below
Shifting land, broken farms around me
Muddy water's changing all I know

- Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds

Today was monumental in more ways than one. I rode without arm warmers and even without leg warmers (albeit briefly). That's HUGE for me. I have knobbly old man knees, they turn purple when it drops below 70°. They begin to creak audibly when it gets below 65°. And they become progressively more riddled with veins and then explode like that dude's head in Scanners when it gets below 62°. I also rode without a 16 pound pack. I'm still fat, but I felt like Alberto Contador on the climbs.

Another reason for the monu-mentalness was the fact that I rode with my friend Jane. Jane is a person, who is not me, which means I actually rode with someone else. While I don't mind riding by myself almost all the time, it's nice to ride with other people sometimes. Well, I imagine it would be nice to ride with other people all the time. If only everyone else would adopt my strange schedule that might happen. Or maybe I could adopt their normal schedule. Nah, that's crazy talk. I hate crazy talk. Nothing makes me crazier than crazy talk.



Jane showed me a few new tricks on the roads that are pretty much in my backyard. Trail riding was out today, the waters are still way too high. I saw some incredible floods out in Carlisle, Concord, and Acton. There were ponds, lakes, and rivers where there shouldn't be. Unless you're an evil duck, plotting to take over the world. In that case the the out of place water is right where it should be. If you ask them, the next step is to flood people's living rooms and workplaces. If all goes according to evil plan, evil ducks will be paddling around our couches by July.

If they ally themselves with the Evil Beavers, we're really screwed.

Today was the first time this year that I've ventured out to one of my favorite spots — Nagog Hill. Which means I have not done a three-plus-hour road ride. Lets' just say that I'm taking a relaxed attitude toward training this year. We'll see how that pans out. Mental freshness baby...mental freshness. If I were Joe Friel I might talk about "optimum arousal," but every time I hear that term it causes "optimum skeez-out."



Two things I learned today (hold onto your hats cuz this is real heavy stuff):

1.) Fig Newmans are delicious

and

2.) Setting your ipod to "Shuffle Songs"can cause mild brain injury

Let me explain. Fig Newmans are delicious, they may be the only reason to ride a bike for such a period of time that the eating of snacks is warranted. I'd never tried them before, I don't know how I missed that day at Bike College.

I've been loading my ipod with very well thought out playlists for the past few weeks for all the commuting. After Jane peeled off, I threw the earphones in and shuffled it up. This went well for a long while, it went well until a violent and disturbing segue occurred at just the wrong moment. I was cranking up to the bottom of a climb, spinning my legs at a cadence that was right in sync with The Butthole Surfers, when, suddenly, the song ended, and I was left with the dull, barely audible drone of an interview with author Tim O'Brien (hey, it's the type of thing I listen to while spinning up the Minuteman Bike path in the morning as I sip my coffee on the way to school). I think I had a small aneurysm as a result.

And I leave you with some photos of our banged up bike path.
There was a little boy splashing around in that "new stream" next to the path yesterday. If I were his age, I would have been doing the same thing. Being a demi-adult and having use of most of a working brain, I just thought to myself: "Eww! Kid go home, take some Penicillin and scrub yourself with hydrogen peroxide and a freakin' Brillo pad — NOW!"

Remember, Sully,
when I said I Hated Road Riding?
I lied.

On second thought, no I didn't. I was telling the truth. In yesterday's post I stated that I hate road riding and it wasn't a false claim. Maybe it's just a phase I'm going through, but right now I'd rather drop my drawers, dump a glass of lemonade on my schweed, and throw my leg over an electrified fence, than throw my leg over a road bike.

That part about the lemonade and the electrified fence...that's an old southern saying. My friend Bullitt is from North Carolina, and when he's not busy telling me how racist Yankees are, he's saying down homey things about lemonade and schweeds and electric fences.


It was a beautiful day, but still, the only way I could convince myself to get out the door was to fabricate a valuable and slightly insane mission to complete. What I came up with was a Peet's Coffee ride. I had to drop off a lock I borrowed from my buddy Jason over two months ago (I'm a dick), he was over in Newton at the shop. There's a Peet's in Newton Center. From there I would head over to the Peet's in Wellesley, and then onto the Peet's in Lexington. If it had been earlier in the day and I had been feeling richer, I might have had a coffee at each location. As it was, I only had a coffee at the Wellesley location.

There's something about that stuff. I mean, I'm an addict, I drink more coffee in a day than most people drink in a week, but that stuff...it's like crack laced with PCP. It does something to me, when I drink it I feel like I could chew through cement blocks and overturn cop cars.

But I would never do that, because somewhere deep in my subconscious, there's a voice telling that I can't actually do those things, and that I would damage my teeth and strain my back if I tried.



Obviously I'd have preferred to be out on the trails, but for anyone with even a vestigial sense of responsibility, that is not an option right now. With the record rainfall we've had here in Massachusetts, the trails are underwater. Above you see my tracks on what is normally a dry cut-through — it was a bog today. The lake next to that? That is a carriage path on any other day. For chrissake, the freakin' Minuteman bike path was broken. It had washed out like a Honduran road in spots. It was one of those days where the sky was bright and sunny above me, but I would have been loving life just that little bit more if I'd mounted a fender, so my backside didn't get soaking wet by the time I was three blocks from my house.

And ya, soggy bottom or not, it really wasn't all that bad...for a road ride.

Hey, when did they put in that new waterfall?

The Battle Road and B.A. Baracus

Hi, sorry I'm late. To make up for my tardiness (I don't feel tardy) I have written a very coherent and well thought out piece over on the 29er Crew Blog. It explains, in convincing fashion, how the battle of Lexington and Concord, French Super-sonic jets, and The A-Team are all related. So please GO OVER THERE and check it out.

Lying About the Invention of Nachos

I know I spend a whole lot of time talking about what an idiot I am, but sometimes, I have to admit, I'm kind of a god damn genius. Don't look at me like that, just hear me out.

Last week I did a ride where I spent a little more time on the bike/wandering around getting my feet soaking wet in stinking swamps than I had planned to. My fueling plan failed me. The calories provided by the egg & cheese and the small packet of hippy cookies I'd eaten during the first five-and-a-half hours of my day did not prove adequate. Two hours into what (inadvertently) turned out to be a 3.5 hour ride, I was bonked out and depleted. Although I know full well that it only makes things worse, all I could think about for the last hour of the ride was food, food, food.

I like to visualize everything in the pantry, freezer, refrigerator, and various other places I can't name, where I hide all the really good stuff from my wife (um, I mean robbers, raccoons, and terrorists ). I think of which items I might devour first. I think of how these things can be combined into delicious, perhaps heretofore unseen, concoctions. How peanut butter and cheese can be combined into a meal is always an interesting conundrum to ponder.

Of course when I stumble in the door on my faltering wet-noodle-legs, all bets are off: the cabinet doors are thrown open, bags and boxes and bins are pulled out en masse and deposited haphazardly on the counter. Somehow during this process crackers painted in peanut butter find their way into my mouth. Every dairy product is torn from it's home in the fridge. Every appendage reaches for salty snacks and sweet treats.:I grab bags of tortilla chips with my toes, hold jars of salsa between my knees, and grab raisins with my prehensile third nipple. Yes raisins, that's right, vastly exciting raisins.

The snack that was doing it for me was the chipotle salsa and tortilla chips. Trouble was: the chips were pretty much entirely comprised of tiny, pain in the ass crumbs. I needed to shovel salsa into my maw and these little, puny bastard chips were not doing the trick. I had to think fast. I required a binding agent, let me see...what could possibly work? CHEESE and lots of it. I dumped what was left of a bag of some taco blend cheese on a pile of the broken bits of tortilla chips and threw the whole mess in the microwave.

Success! I could now scoop up massive quantities of salsa with my primarily cheese based chip-binding nightmare.

And that, is how I invented nachos.

Dude, Literally Dude,

These Are Legitimate Excuses Dude

No time to write today, my powers are being diverted to other areas. All I'll say is this: now might be a good time to renew your NEMBA membership (if only for your free subscription to Singletracks) and your subscription to Dirtrag (and not just because Dicky now writes for them).

Leave it to Beavers

The plan for today's ride was to connect some trails I "discovered" along Springs St. in Bedford to Burlington Landlocked Forest, and hopefully to connect the trails behind school to the whole chimichanga. I invited some others out, but due to the fact that it was a weekday at a weird time and that I am an entirely disagreeable person to ride with, I had only one taker. It's probably a good thing she had scheduling conflicts and couldn't make the ride. The way the ride ended up going the Fox News teaser might have gone:

"Internationally beloved Cyclocross star dies on a mountain bike death march in a swamp. Police are holding a reclusive, local, hunch-backed, mountain bike weirdo for questioning."

So ya, the trails didn't link up like I'd imagined they might. I did find that the Bay Circuit trail backs right up to the school parking lot, which is cool. But the trail system that branches off of that basically runs in circles and into people's yards, and some of those people have dogs who aren't super-nice. After figuring that out I checked out the next section of trail. Although that section was pretty cool (most of the photos are from that bit) it also ran in circles, only taking me out to the V.A. Medical Center parking lot, not all the way over to route 62 like I'd hallucinated during a peyote-fueled map-viewing session the night before.


As I did before, I skipped over to the next section on the road, cutting into Spring Brook behind the V.A. While I was riding around in there I started thinking about the fact that so much of what appears to be green space on the map(don't over-analyze this one), at least in the metro-Boston area, often turns out to be swamp...er, excuse me "wetlands." Well I think it was mighty white of the folks who developed and continue to develop Boston's suburbs to build their houses around all those fragile, ecologically valuable wetlands...instead of in them like they really wanted, It was just their deep-seated love of ducks and snakes and mosquitoes that prevented them from doing it too.

I mean they totally screwed over the dryland creatures for the sake of preserving the wetlands. "Hey you little dryland fuckers, you can have this...lets' see — parking lot! And what else? This, uh — highway!" Now dryland creatures like coyotes come back down from the wild, wild north country and eat a Pekingese and they're like: "We can't have these aggressive, invasive predators coming around attacking indigenous species!" Those dryland dudes get screwed if you ask me. Who did those wetland critters pay off to get the sweet deal they did?

There's just one thing that troubles me...these folks who were so concerned about the newts and the water rats, they don't care for the beavers. In fact they wrap chicken wire around trees the beavers are trying to fell. Now what's up with that? The beavers just want to drop those trees over areas of running water so they can create more...fragile, ecologically valuable wetlands that these suburban people obviously love so much. The beavers are just trying to further your cause, why you gotta mess with their program huh?

Long story not quite so long, I wound up dead-ending my ride into a swamp. I made a, um...judgment error that lead to my feet getting soaking wet. F-in' beavers, kill 'em all.

Base Exploration

Fat Tuesday isn't really happening today. I did have another good weigh-in — 166 Lbs. Then for some reason I weighed myself fully dressed to ride to school on a rainy-cold day — 188 Lbs., no wonder I feel sluggish on the bike.

I've been lacking the motivation to go out and ride long, boring miles on the road. I do the commute to school because I have to, or at least it's a more sort of pragmatic, utilitarian reason to ride a bike with such silly, skinny little tires. As the trails have been drying out, I've been hitting the dirt a little bit on the cross bike, exploring rather than riding just to ride and put miles in my legs.

I've realized something: riding cross bikes in the woods sucks. Ya you can do it, you'll get the job done, but it's like using a steak knife to cut through a 2 x4. Maybe I'm just saying this because I damn near broke my neck last Friday on my way home.


I saw a trail head off to my left as I was cruising down the road on the way home from class, I doubled back and ventured in to see what I could see. Looking at the map later, I saw that this "wilderness" area was pretty finite. I would have run into neighborhoods if I'd ridden five minutes in any given direction, but this, my first time in there, I was frickin' thrilled. Every junction was an adventure — which way do I go? Where does that trail go? What about this one? Within a week I'll have the place dialed and I'll need to find some new patch of land to explore.


They were really good looking woods, don't take my word for it, just look at the photos. I rode around in circles for a while trying to find different outlets, trying to see how this piece of land fit into the world, trying to figure out how I could connect it to other riding spots. It was the first time I'd ridden on dirt since Arizona, so I was a little excited. I was surprised by what I could pull off on the cross bike, I started to get confident. Then I went to hop a log, I see-sawed over it, my front wheel digging deep into the damp, pine-needle covered earth. My hands were still on my bars when the front edge of my helmet hit the ground, followed by my mouth. And that wasn't the bad part. There was a slight delay before the weight of my 17 pound pack came crashing down on the back of my head, driving my face into the ground. My neck did something funny as it took all the weight of my body, bike, and pack...but it didn't break, so that was kinda cool. It could have been a lot worse.

My neck hasn't felt right since then, maybe that's why this blog post is so crappy. I damaged the part of my brain that governs blogging. Ah, well tomorrow I'm going to try to connect those trails to the Burlington Landlocked Forest. I'm doing it on the mountain bike. The single speed that is, still no sign of the Sram XX that is destined to adorn my new Superfly. Of course you would have been the first to hear had it it shown up.

-t

Things I'm Selling
(So I can Work Less and Write More)

I've been meaning to get this up for a while...mainly because I'm broke and I plan on getting broker before I get less broke. After today I will link this page on the sidebar and keep updating it (hopefully removing items I've sold) and adding new items from time to time.

All prices are plus shipping.

Bontrager Big Earl 50mm 10° stem - $25

This is pretty self-explanatory. It's a brand new 44t White Industries Chain Ring.
I have no use for it (especially if the Lemond sells). $50 and it's yours.

Pretty

This here is an e.13 32 Special chain tensioner. I used it on the Remedy the few times I rode it. It doesn't quite look new (couple scuffs) but it functions like new. What I do know is that it doesn't work very well on a Remedy, but it will work well on hard tail park bikes, and maybe other things. You'll have to review e.13's compatibility guidelines to find out more. I'm asking...I don't know, $75. Make me an offer.




This is just a simple little ISCG adapter. $5 plus shipping. Whoah...look out!

Once again, my email: thomp2000 at the gmails

Top 8 Big Bikes Posts in

The Form of "Tweets"

I had to cancel my Twitter account the other day because it was infiltrated by a virus. I received a direct message on Twitter from ex-Trek/VW Pro and current Trek test-pilot Travis Brown. Of course I was a little bit excited to get this message: "OH MY GOD, Travis Brown knows who I am!" I was stoked, I have to admit. His message went something like this: "You look funny here." And there was a link to a photo "on Twitter," so I excitedly went and logged into "Twitter," with my username and password. Brilliant. I did the same thing once with my Paypal account, it didn't go well. But you know what Ol' George W. said: "There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

Ah, it's an oldie but a goody, I miss that guy. What's he been up to? Can't he just show up on talk shows once in a while and say something stupid? Or at the very least run over a Scottish cop with his bicycle now and then?

But ya, you can get fooled again...well I can anyway.

The link was apparently fake, it definitely didn't go anywhere, I was a little baffled...until I started getting emails from friends saying "this link is bullshit, isn't it?" All of them were a lot quicker than I was, they knew some evil robot in Myanmar was after their passwords.

At least this time I only had to delete a Twitter account I wasn't using anyway. During my two months on Twitter I "tweeted" exactly twice.

My two "tweets":

"Not tweetering, until further notice."

and

"There's nothing to see here, it's all happening over here (link to Big Bikes).

So Twitter wasn't really working for me. I don't have an iphone or some other fancy mobile communication device, and tweeting from your desktop computer is like making fried chicken at home and then putting it into a big white and red striped bucket, it's just weird.

So, without further ado, I present to you the top eight (because we can't afford ten) Big Bikes posts condensed into "tweets."

8. Muddy bike race today, got the W!
http://wellonabigbikeya.blogspot.com/search?q=glocester+grind+efta+necs

7. I attacked Tim Johnson while wearing a Sasquatch suit!
http://29ercrew.com/tparsons/04/15/1857/

6. Single speed cyclocross...stupid!
http://wellonabigbikeya.blogspot.com/search?q=totally+subjective

5. Socks?
http://wellonabigbikeya.blogspot.com/search?q=where+do+they+go%3F

4. I made a recovery drink...yuck!
http://wellonabigbikeya.blogspot.com/search?q=another+horribly+failed+experiment

3. Bicycle commuting is crazy...Point like champ kind!
http://wellonabigbikeya.blogspot.com/search?q=steel+cattle

2. Something happened...I don't know...April fools!
http://wellonabigbikeya.blogspot.com/2009/04/april-fools-h-ha-very-funny.html

And finally...

1. I'm stupid...I fell in poop!
http://wellonabigbikeya.blogspot.com/search?q=the+dog+shit+on+my+omework

I have no idea why Twitter wasn't working for me.

This post was inspired by VeloCB

Last night I said Enuff Z' nuff.

With my current schedule the only real opportunity I have to ride is to and from school, which is a minimum of 50 or so minutes each way (so it's not a total joke). Right now M and I are in possession of a borrowed car, this allows me the privilege of being really lazy if I want to be. Recently I've been finding ample excuses as to why I can't ride:

1. It's raining, and there's no place to change at school
   
2. It's raining and my books will get wet
3. It's not raining and my books weigh 20 Lbs and I don't want to carry them
4. It's not raining and I stayed up late writing a blog post and watching Raising Arizona for the ninth time and I want to sleep in
   
   
   

What can I say? I hate the rain. But last night I said...I didn't actually say "Enuff Z' nuff," I said it spelled the normal way. I have got to get on my bike, if that means riding to school, sitting around with damp lycra under my clothes, and getting stared at more than I already do, then so be it.

Then there was the issue of the 20 Lbs. of books, well, problem...solved?

Oh god, I'm one of them

Yes this goofy bastard of a rear rack/pack combo got the books off my back, but I think I hate it as much as rain. I whack it when I swing my leg around to get on the bike, I whack it when I go to get off the bike (which almost kills me), it screws up the balance of my machine, and it looks, what's that fancy word...stupid.

I can't stand having a laden bike. I learned that when I was riding across the country. I will ride my bike all day, just not with crazy crap hanging all over it. This is why I have my doubts about whether I'd make a good Beardo-Weirdo-Milk-Crater, or a Bike Packer.

I did ride to school though. Sometimes that's all it takes, just breaking the ice of indolence. I have got a pretty sweet mostly off-road route home. Just Cross-bike stuff, carriage paths and whatnot. There are trails along the way, but they gotta dry out before I'll hit them on the mountain bike. I've become responsible and lazy in my old age, I don't want to rip up the trails and have to clean mud off my bike.

-t

To hear my litany of very good and sane reasons for naming my new Superfly Hardtail after the The Cult song "Love Removal Machine," please visit the 29er Crew blog today.

Seriously dyude...get outta here, do it!

P.S. - this one's for all the Memets in the audience.

Fat Tuesday (Sort of)

Height - 5' 10"
Weight - 169 Lbs. (This is going well))
Weight Goal - 157 Lbs. (Effectively...on the moon, or if I cut off an appendage)

OK, I give up. I actually had a really good day on the scale earlier this week (166 Lbs.) then I ballooned back up just before Fat Tuesday weigh in. Damn! I'm never gonna make weight for the frickin' bike race at this rate. I did read one thing in Matt Fitzgerald's book Racing Weight that I took to heart. He says that your body doesn't tell you that it's full until 20 minutes after it has reached capacity. The way I interpret this is that you should jam as much food in your mouth as you can within a period of twenty minutes, before your body can shut the party down! This goes along with grandfather's saying about car accidents:

"Studies show that most car accidents occur within a mile of your house...so when I leave the house, I just DRIVE LIKE HELL to get away from it!"

Another thing I took to heart was Fitzgerald's suggestion to take fish oil, in some form. I am old, I have joint pain, I think I may even "the Arthur-itis," I try to get my Omega-3s wherever I can. Now, I eat sardines a couple times a week (generally), but it's tough. I'm often not in the mood for them and you definitely don't want to eat them any time close to when you're going to be exercising. I was at Trader Joe's the other day and I saw they had Salmon Oil on the shelf and it was cheap, so I grabbed some, figuring this would be the solution to my intermittent desire for sardines. It was...sort of.

I took the first pill the other day before a ride. About fifteen minutes in it started backing up on me. The instructions on the pills do say to take with food and I had not heeded this advice. I don't eat in the morning if I'm riding for less than an hour. That fish pill was in my gut, washing around in a puddle of orange juice, next to my multi-vitamin. Ah, I can taste it now....

You know it was like? It was like opening a can of sardines, dumping out the sardines, and then tilting your head back, opening your mouth, tipping the can sideways, and letting all that thick, sardine-chunk-filled oil just cascade into your mouth.

Each reeking-of-dead-aquatic-things-breath cut through my minty fresh toothpaste mouth; making my eyes water as I let out an audible: "Oogh."

Maybe when they say: "Take with food," they mean: "Take this wretched, disgusting little capsule of pureed fish guts, place it carefully in a ground beef patty, top it with sharp cheddar cheese, wrap it in a bacon weave shell with hot dog head, legs and tail, forming an edible turtle-sculpture.

That ought to mask the taste. And even if it doesn't do the trick, it'll be a tasty way to try.

(stolen from This is Why You're Fat).

"It's cool. It's an all purpose shape--a box."

Could be anything inside.

Death by Egg & Cheese

A One Act Play

Adrian Fletcher (A.K.A. Randolph Mantooth) as the EMT
Mark Wahlberg (fifty pounds overweight) as the Officer


What would have been a pleasant morning on the Arlington bike-path is interrupted by a macabre scene: a police officer and an EMT stand over the lifeless, awkwardly displayed body of a gore-tex clad cyclist, his face an unsettling shade of blue. Something odd protrudes from his un-quivering white lips.


Officer: Looks like a anutha clea-ah cut case of a bike-ah retahd flippin' ovah his frickin' baahs n' breakin' his frickin' neck. Whaddayathink guy?


EMT: I dunno chief, it doesn't seem like that haahd of a section of bike path, n' what's that hangin' out of his mouth they-ah?

Officer: Aw dyude, it's a egg n' cheese...I think I'm goona baahf.


EMT: Ya, now that I re-look at the situation he-ah, I think the po-ah bastid choked on that shit.


Officer: N' that thing ain't even a legitimate Dunkin' Donits egg n' cheese eith-ah...whatta weah-do*. N' look-it what he's wearin'. My mah always told me to put on clean undah-wears so that if I got in a caah accident er somethin' I wouldn't have no skid maahks or nuthin'. But lookit the faggoty get up this quee-ah's got on. I'd rather die with shit in my drahs** than in some fruit suit like he's got on.


EMT: Seriously, I wundah if his mutha knows he's gay.


Officer: Fuckin' A right!

EMT: Yup, wasn't the broken neck that killed this freak, it was the egg n' cheese.


Officer: For the luv-ah Christ...well, honestly,
I hope that's how I go —


EMT (interrupting): What? Ridin' around on a bike, lookin' like a gay Spide-ah Man?


Officer: Look, I known yuz a long time kid, but if you don't quit bein' a haah-don, I'm gonna smack you in the fuckin' head so fuckin' haahd, yer kids aah gonna come out fuckin' retahded.


EMT: Geez, whatevah dude, c'mawn, I'm just bustin' yer balls fer Chris sakes.


Officer: Alls I know is that I wouldn't mind goin' like that...death by egg n' cheese...but not that weah-do homemade crap, the real stuff from Dunkin's...with bacon.


* Weirdo
** Drawers