The Super Commute Circa 2006

I had this brilliant idea (these things are relative). I'd just toss up a bunch of old photos from Cali and go to bed. Then of course it became a mega-involved-project where I'd be comparing and contrasting my epically (there, I said it again Solo & Rooter. And in reference to a road ride too) huge and beautiful commute in Marin to my current epically frustrating and dismal commute to Newton from Somerville. So I went out and took 1,000 (Actually 999. I'm not kidding, Helmet Hero set on "Picture every three seconds mode all the way to work) photos today. Half of them were useless because the lens was so caked with slush...as we shall see tomorrow. For today we go extremely verbose photo caption style.

Clickety clickety click

In the winter of 2005/2006 I was living in Fairfax, CA, 25 miles north of San Francisco with my friend Pete. I was working at a small, now defunct shop called Road Rage (great name eh?) in SOMA. My commute, four days a week, was a minimum round-trip distance of 50 miles. Not one of those miles could be classified as "junk".

Golf Course on Pine Mountain

The commute could basically be done in three different ways depending on how tough/stupid I was feeling on a given day. Option one was to head straight down the valley through Kentfield and Larkspur. This was the "flat route". Just two major climbs totaling fifteen minutes of sustained climbing, in each direction. Part of it was on The Tour of CA route, can't say that about my current commute.

Alpine Dam

If I was feeling super-tough I would head straight up Pine Mountian on Bolinas-Fairfax Road which leads you up and over Mt. Tamalpais, A.K.A. "Mt. Tam". The start of the first twenty plus minute serious climb was about 45 seconds from our door so to warm up I would do a couple laps around town beforehand. It still hurt for some reason.

I was riding up the thing one day and overtook what looked to be a small, Euro-Pro, a homunculus like Roberto Heras. It was, in fact, a kid. His set up was dialed, all Shimano DA, white booties, shaved legs...actually he probably didn't to shave them because, he was, as he told me, 12 years old. He was cranking up this hill too. As we picked up the pace and passed other groups of riders he told me that he raced. I said "Man, you must kill people!". "No" he said "It's really competitive around here, I maybe get top fifteen...top ten". Twelve years old. Jesus Krispies.

I let the wee bugger go as I stopped to shed a layer of clothing, one of the guys we had passed came up breathless, "Hey, your son is an animal!". "My son? Oh no, he's way too old to be my son, heh!". Wait...he really wasn't. Yikes.

Tam Ridgeline

That's the Pacific to my right. This is a section of the Tam Ridgeline called "The Seven Sisters". (some call them "The Seven Bitches"). It's really the toughest part of the climb; it's windy as hell and the rollers kick up HARD. I once got caught out there in the driving rain, I had to lie down to avoid getting knocked off the ridge by 60 mile per hour winds. Another time I found myself up there in a freak snowstorm wearing nothing but arm warmers and a rain slicker. By the time I got to Pete's house I couldn't shift my gears or operate the door knob. I had grown frozen flippers where my hands should have been.

The Pacific

The super-tough-guy commute took about 2:45 and boasted a huge amount of climbing. The decent into Marin City on Route 1 was incredible. Over 40MPH through the corners, so technical that cars couldn't come close to keeping up. Just had to watch the run off from the eucalyptus trees, that stuff is slicker'n hell.

Paradise Drive

The slightly less nutty commute took me out to Paradise Drive In Tiburon. This was an all big ring stomp down winding, immaculately surfaced roads. Except for the time when a mudslide took a huge chunk of the road out.

This does not happen on my ride through Watertown

The awesome thing about this was that it cut off all but walking and cycling traffic to miles of amazing road. For months. You could ride in the middle of the street, blaring your music, paying no mind to cars. Kind of like heaven.

Seriously

The storms that did this to the road wreaked havoc on the trails as well. Some of the destruction I witnessed was staggering. Homes and cars turned upside down by the mudslides. That's the thing. I'm sitting here, pining over California riding while the weather is so far from clement here, it's ridiculous. Fact is, March 2006, it rained for 28 days straight in San Francisco and Marin. Not showers. Not sprinkles. Deluge. The reason I only have sunny photos is because I didn't want to ruin my camera taking shots in the rain.

I want to go to there

Tiburon

Bike Path Through Tiburon, good place for sitings of The Man Himself.

Often this path looked like the Autobahn for cyclists

2006 was the first time I got really god damn skinny. 12 hours a week minimum, before you even start trying on the bike a week'll do that to a fat guy. That and basically eating like a Macro-biotic.

San Francisco Bay

The bike path along the bay. I'd be riding all laden with my pack, some days I'd just be dragging. Often I'd get lucky and fall into a group ride and just draft for miles. The wind on this stretch could be brutal. One of my favorite characters I'd run into was a German guy named Rolf who worked at Bicycle Odyssey. He rode a Lemond set up as a fixed gear just like mine. He would chase me up the Camino Alto climb then struggle to follow me through the corners on the way down. I'd never seen someone lay it down on a Fixed gear like that. Totally sick.

Sausalito Ghetto

First view of the city on the way in

Coming back down the hill into this section was probably the closest I have ever come to dying on the bike...

to be continued.

It's Such a Perfect Day

Sleep, that's what I need. Can't stay up thinking of crazy gibberish tonight. As much as I'd like to. We're basically going photo caption style, then I'm basically going to bed.


A bunch of us got out and did a big-ass-proper ride today. It was nigh on 60°, which felt downright hot relative to the utter crap weather we're used to by now. Before the ride, very aerodynamic (I'm just jealous because I'm a human wind sock on the bike) IBC racer Kim needed a little pick me up, so she grabbed a coffee. She offered it up to the rest of the crew with the sales pitch "Who wants some germs? Wait...let me get my sip first".



Matt was our designated ride leader. He knows the biggest and best routes. This because he eats Brevets for breakfast and rides across entire states for dinner. He eats Veggie Meat sandwiches and Kettle Chips for lunch. He showed us some stuff that was totally new to me and absolutely epic.

Hi, I have a big fat head! It's great for storing bad ideas and stupid things to say.

Going for a ride on beautiful day with a bunch of nice folks was pretty awesome but the whole "Perfect Day" thing refers more to the fact that we rolled straight back to Soundbites for brunch afterward where we ate until we felt weird and talked about bikes, bikes, bikes. I like people who aren't too cool for school and want to talk about what they love to do as much as they do the thing they love to do. Which means I should probably like myself more than I do because all I do is talk about what I do...with bikes.

Shortest...post...ever.
It's hard to keep up the blistering blogging pace I have set lately. ZZZZ.

When it's over,
when it's over,
when it's over
When this is over,
I want sleep

-Big Black

Bike Games That Schools Have Not Bloat

Yup, that would be another bizarre key word search which brought some weird, weird person to Big Bikes. Having trouble putting two words together tonight. Must have ridden my bike properly today or maybe I just didn't eat enough while I was doing it.

I went with an alternative interval system today, entirely music based. I've never understood why intervals are done in such arbitrary, unimaginative blocks. I guess that's why I was always partial to workouts like "The Pyramid". Much more organic...or something. During a race do you go Hard for exactly five minutes at a time, then at a Middle Effort for ten minutes, and then 20 minutes at a Light Effort? Do the guys you're racing against respect the fact that you are accustomed to hurting in a very specific way for a very specific amount of time?

Racing is chaos, so too should your workouts be.

What I wanted to achieve today were some good blocks of Tempo with smaller blocks of recovery in-between. As I said, music based. Here's my very organized workout.

Artist followed by Rough Estimation of combined Duration of Songs:

Red = Effort
Blue = Recovery/Warm Up/Cool Down

• Air - 20 Minutes (Thanks Uri)
  
• Thievery Corporation - 15 Minutes
• Led Zeppelin - 15 Minutes
• Neil Young - 10 Minutes
• Van Halen - 15 Minutes
• Iron & Wine - 10 Minutes
• Run D.M.C. - 15 Minutes
• Talking Heads - 10 Minutes
• Misfits - 10 Minutes
• Fu Manchu - 10 Minutes
• Iron Maiden - 15 Minutes
• Motorhead - 15 Minutes
• Bon Iver - 20 Minutes

You don't need any type of bio-monitoring device to know you're riding at a solid Tempo-Pace while listening to Achilles Last Stand. Riding hard to Neil Young or Iron & Wine would probably cause an aneurysm. And note how it ramps up to Motorhead- the pinnacle of motivational music for getting your legs moving in circles really fast. People would pay good money for the coaching advice I am dishing out here. Lucky you.

The new Tifosi glasses were just thing for this sunny/gray day. They've got that crazy Fototec technology so they change tint as you go. I wore them until just before sunset (My ride went a little over). See How serious I look. This was a very serious workout today.

The UD!

Since I've been riding the Fix-ed gear and the single speed so much, when I get on the road bike I try to keep my cadence very consistent. Sitting and spinning up hills instead of mashing, standing and lurching up them. I also try to concentrate more on the scenery and the music, not on the miserable act of riding a road bike. By rides end, I am still out of my god damn gourd no matter what.

I was really hoping to get out on another ride on the Superfly but after we got buried with snow again, that option was out. We got so much snow that a Sunday Otis ride is probably out as well. With the road conditions the way they are around these parts, riding on the road isn't that different from mountain biking right now anyway. But somehow not anywhere near as fun as actual mountain biking. Strange. I guess it's like going out to the woods on your mountain bike, only to find that the woods have been paved. Because that would suck.

If you have to ride a road bike, Water Row Road in Sudbury (?) is as nice a place to do it as any

Take a Nap Fight Gear Jenny P.

"Hey Lee, there's something I never told you about me: I hate fuckin' cops"

-Boris (The Blond Body Guard with the pony tail in
the Mexican stand-off scene in True Romance)

Replace "Cops" with "Cars" and you'll get how I'm feeling today.

I try, I really do. I leave my house listening to nice, mellow music like Bon Iver, and then, shortly, it all goes to hell. I'm talking to you Mini-Van driver who couldn't deal with the fact that I was riding at traffic speed behind a slow going Semi-Truck coming out of Harvard Square this morning. You kept revving your engine and honking which was a combination of impotently pathetic and mildly annoying. You people.

But this made me feel a lot better, Governor Patrick signed a Bicyclist Safety Bill into law. Check out the Mass Bike site for more info. Most of the stuff is obvious, but the following two items are awesome:

3. Don't "Door" Bicyclists : Motorists (and their passengers) can now be ticketed and fined up to $100 for opening car or truck doors into the path of any other traffic, including bicycles and pedestrians. "Dooring" is a frequent cause of bicycle crashes and bicyclist injuries, and while motorists could already be sued in civil court or charged in criminal court under certain circumstances, they could not previously be ticketed and fined on the spot by a police officer.

4. Don't Cut Off Bicyclists After Passing : Motorists used to be required only to stay a safe distance to the left of a bicyclist (or any other vehicle) when passing; now, motorists are also prohibited from returning to the right until safety clear of the bicyclist.

It seems like pretty common sense stuff, but it's not.

This one is pretty good too:

7. Hey Douche-Bag Mini-Van Driver From This Morning : Suck it!

I think that's about all I've got unless I share with you the absurdity and ghetto-not-so-fabulousness of my current road bike situation. Let me see if I can get this straight. Miriam had a trainer incident a few weeks back. She hadn't swapped out the lightweight rear quick release for a crappy steel one. Mid-session it let go, she teetered over sideways, quite possibly knocking herself briefly unconscious. I am not kidding, hard to believe, but true. This process left her rear wheel in a far from rideable state. When spun it would hit the frame. Destroyed.

I grabbed her a wheel which was damn near un-road-worthy from The Shop. This was fine while she was still riding the trainer exclusively. When a nice weekend came and she wanted to go for a proper out of doors ride I grabbed the wheel off my De Rosa "The UD", realized I had to swap the cassettes (I am a 9 Speeder, she's a 10 Speeder) to get the job done...nuts. This was fine the first time, but the second time? Or the third time? Pain in the arse. I'll get that business sorted out someday damnit.

And get this. When I put the UD back on the road I had to dig in the basement for a set of brakes. Found a Shimano 105 or something and a Campy front brake. This was all well and dandy until I went to put the bike in the car. I needed to take the front wheel off. Here's the rub: Shimano has the release which allows you to open up the caliper to get the wheel out on the brake itself, Campy has that release on the lever, the caliper has no release mechanism. I had to deflate the tire to remove the wheel because I have Shimano levers and a Campy brake. And the Japanese and The Italians got along so well during WWII.

And that was all well and dandy until I went to pump up that deflated tire. The valve on the tube was a little 38mm job. None of the pumps at my house would do the trick. I had obviously thrown a tube in at The Shop and was able to inflate it with the aid of the compressor. I think my fingers just feel asleep...out of boredom. This is the lamest story I have ever told, but it's almost over. My fix for this was to grab the front wheel off my fixed gear, leaving the Lemond with its fork dropouts planted on the floor. This perverse little dance of swapping of the front wheel, rear wheel and cassette has been going on for weeks now.

I'm going to quit bikes and start running. Barefoot. Naked.

Are you still here? I guess I'll explain the title of the post. I was stumped for a title so I searched through the list of search engine Key Words which lead people to Big Bikes. That was one of the weirder ones, but they get weirder still. As you shall see in the future.

March Madness, Anger and Frustration

Hey March, you kind of suck. In like a Lion, out like a Lamb, my gritty road spray covered ass. More like in like a Polar Bear, out like a Bucket of Ice Water. Wait, that sounds more like The Wonder Twins. One of the dumbest things you will ever hear anyone say (besides what I just said, or something I am about to say) is "Well, winter's almost over, it's March, not bad weather in March really". Have you ever met March? If March were a person it would be the guy who comes to your house, gets blacked out drunk, pukes on your dog, passes out on the couch, then sleep walks into a closet in the middle of the night, sits on a stool and uses it as a toilet.

Great Month, March.

I did ride The Superfly called Precious Thing Sunday. Tried to anyway. Things looked good as I hit the trail, started really railing right along, got up to top speed. We'd had a dusting of snow so I couldn't see what was going on underneath. What happened next was exactly like what happens at the 10 second mark of the video below.

Expletives and everything.

I hit the deck three times - hard. Beneath the snow it was absolute glare ice. Each fall was one of those lying on the ground moaning for nearly a minute deals. I decided to bag it before I broke a piece off my body that wouldn't grow back. With the amount of snow we got over the weekend, the only hope of getting a decent pedaler in on the new bike is another attempt an Otis Air Force Base trip this coming Sunday.

Paul Harvey died last Sunday. I had never heard of him. Apparently he was famous for reading Ads on the radio really, really well. He would also sometimes say brilliant things like:

"Without advertising in this country, my goodness, we'd still be in this country what Russia mostly still is: a nation of bearded bicyclists with b.o."

With all due respect to the memory of Mr. Harvey, I'd rather be a bearded cyclist with B.O. than an obese SUV driver with...B.O., because no matter how much deodorant I baste the vast expanse of my underarms with, I can't possibly mask the reek emanating from all the nooks and crannies contained in the drooping flesh covering my prodigious carcass.

I don't know what got into me. It's all March's fault. March has me so mad. Stupid March, I'm moving to North Carolina.

My Name is Thom Parsons and I'm Here to Recruit You

Before I get on with whatever I'm going to yammer about today let me throw this out there. International Bicycle is looking for a couple good folks for our Service Department. If you yourself would like to work for IBC (which I have to say is a really, really great place to work) or you know someone who might want to work there, jump on over to our website and hit the "E-mail us" tab.

And something else while I'm at it. The IBC Elite MTB Team is looking for one, maybe two female riders to fill out our roster. It's a pretty damn good deal. We're putting our clothing order in soon so email me at thomp at internationalbike dot com if you're interested.

This is really important, I probably should have mentioned it first. The film Wanted is totally unrealistic. I mean there's one point in the film where the protagonist, Wesley Gibson, Googles himself to illustrate what a totally meaningless and inconsequential life he has lead up until that point. The result comes up 0. No occurrences of the name "Wesley Gibson" appear on the entire world wide web.

0? Try 2, 200,000. That's a lot of zeroes.

I Googled "Wesley Gibson" and you know how many results came up, minus any related to the film Wanted? 2, 200,000. That's how many. That is pretty damn far from 0. My suspension of disbelief let go at that point in the film. My disbelief crashing into the icy, shark-infested waters below. If not for that piece of ridiculousness I would have bought all the lateral flipping of cars with people shooting out of their sunroofs, bullets "bending" around sides of beef, and Angelina Jolie brutally beating people with her arms of sagging skin stretched over chicken bones.

To get a 0 result from Google these days you need to really contort yourself to make something up which is so made up that no one in the entire world, no matter how much paint they have huffed or how many head injuries they have had, could have ever thought of it. Something like"Borgledonk Geegleblatz".

And even then you get the "Did you mean" message, Yes, you're right Google, I am remiss. I did mean "Borgledonkgeegleblatz". Silly me, it is one word, isn't it?


No, no it's not. 0 results for "Borgledonkgeegleblatz". Until someone else Googles it and they find themselves here.

I did have things that aren't totally insane to talk about today...
let's see.

I wanted to point out how awesome it is that Mass native John Foley is also a member of the 29er Crew this year. So it's Andrew, John, Michael, Brad, Rickey, and Me. If we all show up to the same Root 66 race at the same time (which will likely happen at least once this season) that might be kind of terrifying. We could potentially make up over half the Pro field. The statistical likelihood that the win will be had by a 29er Crew member is incredibly high.

We'll have to talk MTB team tactics before the season starts. "OK, so you go really really fast while I try to go faster than you and then I'll pass you and then you try to go faster than me and then maybe you'll get tired and I'll go faster than you but them maybe you'll rally and start going faster than me again, but then maybe you'll flat or I'll crash or...". Johan Bruyneel would be proud.

One last piece of super-wicked-awesome-importantness. I shot an email to 29er Crew member and Endless Bike owner Shanna Powell and basically said "I really, really, really like your products, I use them, I think they're awesome, I ride a single speed against geared riders so I have an excuse for why I suck so bad, and I have a blog that three people read". She was like "I talked to Marshall and he says you talk way too fast, you looked like a gaping idiot on Farlow Gap during The Swank 65, but you don't seem to be a USDA Approved Grade A total douche, so ya, you can be on the team".

Now I've got a killer Cog sponsor for '09. I'll have even more potential gear combos to geek out about. Lucky you. If only Dunkin Donuts and Dale's Pale Ale would sponsor me, my life would be complete.

Flight Test

What I probably should have done was have someone record all the crazy crap I said when I got back from my first ride on The Superfly yesterday. I do remember saying things like "It's like that thing where you throw a medicine ball up in the air a bunch of times and then someone throws you a basketball and you can't help but throw it through the roof".

That was the feeling I got when I went to hop a log by going "wheel to wheel", but instead of my front wheel bonking the log and then my rear wheel doing the same, I just lofted right over it, the bike snapped up underneath me. It seemed like the gravitational pull of the earth weakened momentarily.

All Net

I think I said something else about being used to driving a Prius and then getting behind the wheel of an Audi R8. You stomp on the gas going up the Highway on ramp and it goes BAM! Instead of going fzzz...ttt (Prius drivers don't mind the lack of pick up, they are too busy looking at their iphones and buying carbon credits online). That one is totally hypothetical, the closest I've come to driving an R8 is watching Jeremy do it on Top Gear. I have driven a Prius - my bike has better pick up.

I loved my two Rigs and I still love my Ferrous (called Dunderchee) but this bike is on another level entirely. The feeling when you stand up on the pedals is just so damn positive. I mean it GOES. You can feel that there is no energy being wasted. Let me put it this way; kind of by default I ended up running a big (to me, but my quads are a measly 20 3/8" in diameter) 34 X 17 gear with a large tire (2.25). This, I would consider a rather large race gear under normal circumstances. It did not feel like a big gear on this bike. It felt like a 32 X 18.

Human...nature. The Charles River. Millennium Park. On the Superfly adjustments

The area I was riding in, Cutler Park is generally pretty flat but the conditions were bizarre. A combination of super-muddiness, dry leaves, deep snow, deeper snow which was totally un-rideable, and vast expanses of solid ice covered in water which looked treacherous but due to the high temps, were completely traversable. Big tires with 25 Psi in them helped me stay upright.

In other non-Superfly-related news, I've picked up a great new sponsor; Tifosi Optics. The way I approach sponsors is like this. I look at the products I already use and pay good money for and then say "Hey, I wonder if I can get a deal on this stuff or maybe even get it for free?". Sometimes (but not often) folks return my emails and I get hooked up. I've been using Tifosi glasses for a couple years and I think they're awesome.

As a huge added bonus Tifosi and my other sponsors, International Bicycle Centers, Gary Fisher, and GU have joined together to broker a deal with Barack Obama to award me the 50 million dollar Dassault Falcon 7X private luxury jet which Citibank was planning to spend their bailout funds on. Obama thought it was not enough to pressure Citibank to cancel their order for the private jet. He felt that they should also be punished by having to watch as a pseudo-Pro Single Speed mountain bike racer jet sets around the world and New England, hopping from race to race in what was going to be their corporate plane, blaring Fu Manchu on the customizable entertainment center, while swilling PBR, blowing saltine crumbs out of the sides of his mouth, and throwing Dunkin Donuts wrappers all over the floor.

Sorry, I don't wake up early enough in the morning to compete with the Photoshopping mastery of The Dicky

Built to Spill (The Blood of my Competitors)

Whoa I drink pots and pots and pots and
pots of strong black coffee
Trying to keep my sleepy soul awake
But the sleepiness still comes along
and when it does its fast and strong
I end up with a bad case of the shakes

- Jared Mees and The Grown Children

Not much time to write. Spent the day building up The Superfly SS and then riding it despite the fact that I have a nagging shoulder injury (Fine! I'll do the frickin' dishes shoulder injury). It's like the fat kid said after he ate his baby sister "I couldn't help myself".

Ran into a snag with the 140mm rear rotor. The caliper mounting system doesn't allow the caliper to move far enough down to fully engage the rotor. I found that if I placed the wheel as far back in the drop out as possible the caliper/rotor relationship was fine. This isn't ideal though, it would prevent me from swapping out chainrings and cogs at will, I would be locked into one chainring/cog combo. Wouldn't work for this gear ratio geek.

As far as I can see there is no way to run a 140mm rotor on this frame (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) so I threw a 160mm rotor and the appropriate adapter on and I was ready to roll.

The official weigh in - 20.5 Lbs. Kind of nuts. That's three pounds less than my last two race bikes and two pounds heavier than my road bike (I don't have a light road bike).

The pink bottle cage. Now Precious Thing, you are mine, all mine.

Below. Big Bike, shot so monumentally. DT RWS Thru-Bolt. I'm going to do a full on, gushing report tomorrow but I'll give you this preview - the RWS skewer worked great, absolutely flawless. It did not budge under heavy torquing in a large gear. It works like a SUPER Wing Nut. The fact that it works at all is the truly amazing part.

More on the conversion to this system HERE.

XTR Crank. I went there. No holding back on this build.

Avid Juicy Ultimates. They feel better than clean sheets after a bath.

Another snag I hit (a pretty foreseeable one) was the tires. I tried to mount up my new Bontrager XR1s Tubeless. They are non-tubeless tires. It did not work. I may try again. They are a super-light tire with a great tread for fast, dry conditions. Problem is, I won't race non-tubeless. Just won't. They'll make a great training tire if I can't make the tubeless thing work on my next attempt.

I wound up using the Jones XRs. They're a great all around, high volume tire and they mounted up Tubeless supah-easy.

Like I said, stay tuned for a full first ride report tomorrow. Thank you for reading the all Superfly all the time News.

Progress

Left to right, top to bottom:

1.) Eating clean. Although I have recently become a carnivore, I certainly don't turn up my pug nose (which contains virtually no cartilage) at Tofu. During the nearly twenty years I was a vegetarian people would ask "How do you get all the nutrients you need?". And I'd say "Go take a flying f-- at a rolling doughnut, taking a flying f-- at the moon!". No I didn't. I thought about it, and I went out of my way to make sure I got what I needed. That's how. Just because you're eating Wendy's burgers doesn't mean you are fulfilling your daily nutritional requirements by default.

2.) Top cap! The most effectual top cap! I keep a stash of carbon Bontrager top caps in my box. Only the most specialist bikes get them. Some people might say that this is one of the only viable uses of carbon fiber. I beg to differ. I collect the carbon dust from below the bench vise and snort it or sprinkle it on my Corn Flakes. It doesn't seem to have any ill effects.

3.) Squeakin' by. Barely 2mm separates my the Superfly SS's top tube from getting gouged by the brake lever during a jack knifing crash. Nothing beating up a hipster and stealing their sweet fixie top tube pad wouldn't fix. What? You don't think I'm tough enough to beat up a boy in girl jeans? I fight like a wallaby or a Kangaroo. Using my scrawny little arms (despite all the push ups) to hold my opponent by the head, drawing them toward me as I kick and gore them with my toe spikes. Then maybe I eat their face. And steal their top tube pad.

4.) The other viable use of carbon fiber, headset spacers. I keep a stash of the slick Bontrager ones in my box next to my stash of top caps. It's the small things that make me happy. Or kicking small things, like Yorkshire Terriers.

5.) Somebody (me) accidentally ordered two rear brakes. So I installed both the brakes on the rear. My bike is going to lay down the SICKEST skids guy! No. I did have to cut the hose and bleed the front brake though.

6.) Going hydraulic. Can't wait to feel the power. I love the feel of Avid brakes, I only use Sram chains (PC 991s), but I hate how much packaging those guys use. I'm being serious, look at my face...it's very serious looking. CD cases for chains? That is way too much plastic, totally unnecessary. The egg crate packaging for derailleurs and other components. Hey, they're not eggs, they're made out metal and plastic, they won't crack. The little bags that Red components come in? Actually those are kind of useful. You can put glasses, cameras, and tools in them. I once had a rommate who lambasted me for using empty soup cans to mix paint and wash my brushes in (back when I actually made art). "Ugh, (tongue clicking sound) Thom! Now we can't recycle those!".

Should have the bike built up today in its entirety. What do you think the first thing I'm going to do once the last component is installed? The scale! The scale! Take it to the scale! You know what I am speaking about.

Precious Thing

You are my precious thing,
thing of speed and beauty
You are my precious thing,
as long as you remain beneath me

-Big Black

Today was a super-good day. A couple hours after I got to work Chris down in receiving came over to my bench and said "Hey dude, there's something you need to look at". I had a pretty good idea what was up, so I grabbed my camera and followed him to the back corner of the shop where a large frame box stood.

Last night I set up my profile over on the 29er Crew site but I had sort of a blogger's block, complete stage fright. Jason at The Shop didn't help assuage my fears "Three people read your blog (if I quit reading it there'd be two, but hey) and thousands of people read the 29er Crew blog. No reason to be nervous". When the frame showed up my first post content was a no brainer. And no brainers are where I do my best work.

I'm stoked that a bunch of East Coast kids made it onto The 29er Crew this year. We got Andrew Freye, Brad Perley, Ricky Visinski, and of course 29er Crew vet Michael Patrick. I was also happy to see NC guy Marshall Hance on the roster. He whupped my ass at SSWC07 in Aviemore, then we ate the best fish and chips I've ever had in my life. Ran into him again at The Swank 65. He whupped my ass, then we had a couple beers by the fire. I sill think I need to bottle some of that North Carolina water and smuggle it up north. There' something going on down there. Maybe the secret is in the Chic-Fil-A sandwiches.

I was so amped up about the bike I will henceforth refer to as "Precious Thing" I turned into a raging blog whore, posting here, there and everywhere.

Don't have much time for the babbling tonight, got to get downstairs and put the parts I need for The Superfly build on the Ferrous (called Dunderchee) so I can ride them to work tomorrow.

And now I will simply quote more song lyrics because I am personally at a loss for words.

Because you're gorgeous I'd do anything for you

Because you're gorgeous our love will see us through.

Because you're gorgeous I'd do anything for you
Because you're gorgeous our love will see us through

-Baby Bird

Hopefully I'll come back to my senses by tomorrow.

Whenever I return to Boston from afar,
the first thing I do is a get a "Regular Coffee" at Dunkin Donuts.

Let's Get Face Down to The Brass Facts

We're not getting paid to do this. If you are getting paid to do this (and by this I mean ride a bike competitively) I am honored that you are reading this (and by this I mean a blog that will fill your head with so many crazy-bad ideas that you won't be able to help but get slower just looking at it. Oops, if you've read this much you're already screwed, might as well keep reading). What this means is that we shouldn't take it so f-in seriously.

I spent High School Math class daydreaming, designing skate parks, which I would build from stolen lumber without using a measuring tape or a level. I spent Science class drawing caricatures of the teacher farting and getting bit about the genitals by turtles. No wonder that when I come home from a bike ride I don't want to crunch a bunch of numbers and analyze data. Hey, if that's what's fun about riding a bike to you, knock yourself out. It's just not my cup of energy drink that tastes strongly of something you swish around your mouth at the Dentist's office.

Looking at the wattage or heart rate numbers my body produces during a ride seems about as fun as reading a guide book about Peru while sitting in a hotel room...in Peru.

Sorry, time out. I'm watching all the Tour of California I recorded on my VHS recorder while I was away. They're going up the Tunitas Creek climb near Palo Alto. I've done the thing a couple times, it is magnificent. What I feel right now is akin to what a starving man feels looking in the window of a Waffle House. But god, they make it look so damn easy. Outstanding.

Anyway.
If you're new to the sport, just go ride your bike. Ride your bike with faster people. Get hurt. Go too hard. Bonk. Find your limits. Next time you're up against them, ignore the flashing red lights. Shatter yourself. Ride home in your granny gear - on flat ground, then pull a chair into your cupboard and eat until you feel sick. Let your fitness come up as your skills increase. Buy new equipment as your break it. Don't upgrade it until you earn it. Look like an idiot, a barney, a Fred and then rock the shit!

Enjoy the act. When I was kid my buddy would say "Hey, you wanna go ride bikes after school". That's what we'd do, ride around the neighborhood on our Sears bought Columbia Apaches with their banana seats and chopper bars, no plan whatsoever. Jamming our toes in-between our tires and our fork crowns to do ghetto endos, sometimes getting it stuck, landing on our lips with our foot still wedged in there, our legs twisted at obscene angles. We'd do skids. We'd put a board on a chunk of telephone pole and jump over a trash can. We'd eat shit, we'd get hurt, it was funner than hell.

I'm trying to get myself stoked as much as anyone. I am guilty of losing focus of the fun. Focus. Not on nutrition, abstaining from beer, or the numbers. Focus on the fun. On the act.

Let's go ride bikes.

The Practice

No fun my babe no fun
No fun my babe no fun

-The Stooges

My time at Work Out World, A.K.A "W.O.W."in Medford, A.K.A. "Med-Fid" Mass is almost at an end. Thank god.

The idea that as I age I must become smarter and more organized in my "Training" lead me to spend a portion of this winter lifting heavy (to me) things in a fetid basement room full of grunting behemoths clad in Affliction Wear. If I really had my shit together I would have started all this silliness much earlier. Maybe next year for that. That is if the coming year makes me that much wiser or at least not quite so damn clueless.

Whatever I might be whining about today,

I am doing a whole hell of a lot better than this little dude

As it was I got barely two months of practicing doing things in. It is now time to start doing the things again. That's what going to the gym is "Practicing doing things". "I'm getting in shape", "I'm working out". For what? What are all those muscles for anyway? What are you going to use all that Cardio for guy? Go DO something. Lift something, anything that actually needs lifting. Volunteer as a human escalator at The Mystic Mall. Run SOMEWHERE. How about running away from the gym? If only to put as much distance between you and that insipid, brain cell popping music they play.

Jesus, that opposites song, "You're hot and you're cold, you're up and you're down, you're in and you're out, you're in the Klan and The Nation of Islam...". OK, made the last line of that verse up, that would just be too damn interesting. I heard a four year old freestyle better lyrics the other day. I'm not kidding, really I'm not. I would rather listen to the sound of a splintery chopstick being forced into my ear canal by the palsy-ridden hand of Ozzy Osbourne.

Sylvester Stallone quite possibly said one of the dumbest things I've ever heard (NO, I don't believe it!) regarding sport. Something about how you can go around playing Tennis or Soccer or whatever but the thing that makes you feel really good is LIFTING. That's the stuff. Most serious Tennis and Soccer players lift...then they actually go DO something with their useful, not all veiny, weird, and knobbly muscles. I guess Sly does something too. He lifts heavy things so he can look and act like someone who actually does things when some crack-smoking Hollywood producer hallucinates another loathsome vehicle for him to star in.

This is my way of saying, in way too many words, that I've had enough with the practice, it's time to get on with doing what I do to get better at doing what I do.

Speaking of loathsome vehicles...
The rental agency said we scratched the car. Kind of nit-picky don't you think?