Race Across The Sky: FAIL

I made the arduous river-crossing into Boston last night and headed over to the Fenway theater for what would ultimately be a futile attempt to see Race Across The Sky 2010.

Race Across The Sky Part Two...this time it's different. Sort of...OK, fine...not really. It's pretty much the same except Lance didn't do it...which sucks, we know. Wait! Come back. Please?

I rode my bike in the rain to the subway, got totally soaked, then sat next to a woman on the train who stared at my soggy crotch, probably thinking I'd wet my pants. I wanted to explain to her that, for once in my life I hadn't really wet my pants, that it was just water. But I couldn't pull myself together and stop bawling long enough to do so. I'm always happy to ride the train too, it's such an ideal place to catch the plague. So when I got to Fenway, I was already 100% stoked and ready to watch another movie about what, to me, seems like the worst mountain bike race on the planet short of La Ruta. More on that in a minute.

Things started off well enough, Dave Towle was up there on screen hosting a panel discussion with JHK, Levi, Rebecca Rusch, Dave Wiens, and some other dudes in front of a live audience. I guess the deal was that, last week, when RATS (hey, that's the appropriate acronym) 2010 premiered, this panel discussion was actually live...that's my understanding anyway. (I'm good at understanding things too. It only took me five viewings to figure out the plot of Anchorman.) Problem with the "live" business was that the movie was coming to the theater via satellite and it got disrupted somehow, leaving the 50 people in the theater staring at a blank screen, listening to broken audio...or nothing.

50 people...I found out that RATS 2010 (I'm just going to keep saying it now, like a two-year-old that just learned the word "cucka.") was premiering last week, just a few hours before the show time. On any other night I would have jumped on it, because I would have been sitting at home like my loser-self, waiting for something to do, but no! On that night I had plans to go (by my loser-self) to the premiere of Life Cycles.

The only two mountain bike film premieres, in theaters, all year-long, that I know of...and they're on the same feckin' night. Who plans these things? It was like the Gallipoli of mountain bike movie premiere planning.


And, apparently these sort of aforementioned technical problems don't just arise when the film is live, because the same crap happened again. Did I say "staring at a blank screen, listening to broken audio...or nothing" back there? Because we weren't listening to nothing; we were listening to the incessant whining of several of the other theater goers, a couple of whom were shell-shocked veterans of the previous week's fiasco. You'd think the theater manager has turned off their heat and hot water and told them that they could only send text messages that were 140 characters long.

What is it with the direct messages on Twitter? I have a hard enough time making any sense at all in 140 characters, and generally all I'm trying to do is share a link to some stupid thing I've written or come up with a slightly disturbing and (hopefully) funny one-liner. My Twitter direct messages look something like this:

Cdelinks,

My apologies for conveying to the internet the one horribly offensive
act you committed this week that you did not want publisi—

It doesn't really work for me.


Anyway...

The service the RATS 2010 folks are using to convey their film to theaters is called Fathom and apparently it's kind of total shit. This fact is driven home when the picture freezes and what you end up looking at is not all that dissimilar from what you see when you pause your DVR at home.
These days, when you're paying $12 or more to see a movie, the suspension of disbelief must be maintained...the suspension of disbelief that you are not watching a slightly-larger-than-normal-television.


After about the third time the film stalled, I decided to take the free pass and the refund of my admission that the flustered manager had been offering for a while. I think some of the other patrons held out for compensatory and punitive damages. The manager did tell me, as we walked out, that they had successfully shown a LIVE Bon Jovi concert using the same service that had failed so miserably for RATS 2010. I told him that, even though we had only seen a cumulative fifteen minutes of this film, that it was still more of a success than showing an ENTIRE Bon Jovi concert. He didn't get it.


I debated with Natasha and Chris for a while as to whether we should take the free passes and head to a showing of Red, but we opted for the guaranteed good time of Beer instead. Probably a wise choice given we could only come up with three Bruce Willis movies, between the three of us, that didn't suck...that's one per person...and one of those was The Fifth Element.

At one point, over beers, Chris asked me if I'd ever done Leadville or if I'd ever do it. "No and no fucking way" I replied. "It's a stupid, overrated, hyped-up, out-and-back, gravel road race, with zero singletrack, all above 10,000 feet, that you have to enter a lottery to get into. There are plenty of hundred milers out there that don't suck that you can actually get into."

"Wow, you're kind of a dick" Chris thought to himself.

If I were as witty in person as I allegedly am in print, I would have gone on to say:

"People who think Leadville is awesome are like the Tea Baggers of the mountain bike racing world, they think that if they keep saying something that isn't true over and over again, long enough, it will become true — "Leadville is the BEST!" "Global warming is a HOAX!" "Leadville is AWESOME!" "Obama is a MUSLIM-SOCIALIST-FASCIST!"

Wow, I am a dick.

"You're not pirating this are you?"

"Yup, do you realize the street value of videos of blank screens taken with point and shoot cameras?"

Michael Patrick 1965-2010

Michael Patrick was like the Lance Armstrong of New England mountain bike racing. He was a guy that people very often referred to as "The Man," whether it was for his incredible ninja-like prowess on the bike or the multiple ass-kickings he laid down on brain cancer, he was definitely that: The Man. He fought back from repeated bouts with cancer, regaining top form and even stepping onto the top of the podium more than once. He'd look like he was down for the count and then he'd rise back up out of the ashes and keep on rolling.

Even if he wasn't feelin' it, even if the chemo had him dragging ass, he'd still come out to race, he loved it that much. He was someone I always looked forward to racing with and someone I always sought out in the parking lot afterward for a debriefing. He had an amazing way of complaining without sounding like he was whining...it was always hilarious to listen to his animated post-race rants.


You want to know how bad ass Mike was? His last two posts for the 29er Crew blog were entitled "Looking Forward to 2010" and "I'm Back." To see all his posts and to get some idea of what he went through during the run in to that final finish line, go HERE.

The last time I saw Mike was at the EFTA Treasure Valley Rally in August 2009. He got 4th that day in a large, strong field. In his race report he talks about the seizures he had DURING the race and I recall, vividly the one he had while we were talking after the race. He might be the toughest man I have ever met.

That's Mike on the right. BMX was where he learned his mad, mad skills and it showed any time you were behind him in the singletrack.



Yeah Mike! Is right.

All I know is that I will miss Mike on the start line next season.

More Bikes, Less Babbling: A Review of Life Cycles

Life Cycles OFFICIAL Trailer from Life Cycles on Vimeo.

Before I get on to yammering about whatever else I am going to yammer about this week, I have to do a brief review of the film Life Cycles, have to.

My first impression of Life Cycles was "Wow, that was short. I think I paid the same amount of money to see Inception, and that was over three times as long and in IMAX...what a rip off." But, in the realm of cycling films in general and mountain bike films in particular, brevity is usually a good thing. About forty minutes into the average free-ride, huckin' type film, I start getting anxious and bored, there's only so much watching of dudes doing things I can't or won't do I can take (which is why I usually only watch Jason Statham movies, because I can do that shit). The problem with those films is that they focus everything on the riding and nothing else. That, and they usually have horrible soundtracks (Ya, I'm looking at You Kranked 4), which Life Cycles doesn't; it's got kind of a subdued, semi-palatable score. The guys at Stance Films, the makers of Life Cycles, give the impression that they aren't actually bike people at all, that they are focused more on the general aesthetics and cinematography than the riding, which is refreshing for a while...then it gets all annoying. Like a splash of cold water in the face that keeps hitting you throughout your day with little to no warning, often at entirely inopportune moments...like when you're trying to light your crack pipe.

This Statham tribute is set to Metallica's version of the Misfits' "Die, Die, Die My Darling." Somebody out there gets it.

There's the shot before the first riding sequence that goes on forever — this dude is driving his vintage pick up out of the city into the woods to ride and we are beaten over the head with the juxtaposition of the urban environment with the natural environment until we are like "Hey, film makers...stop beating us over the head with this juxtaposition, we get it already!" I mean, the film work is amazing, just gorgeous stuff, but it's all over the place and nowhere at all at the same time.

The title of the film Life Cycles, refers to this alleged cycle that a bicycle goes through from it's birth to its death, but I really only saw it as a four step process, not a cycle:

1. The bike gets made in a factory surrounded by lush, green, jungle in Taiwan or western China or somewhere. Inside there's lots of molten metal flying everywhere, and it resembles Isengard, Saruman's hangout in Lord of The Rings.
   
   
2. The bike gets ridden in slow motion off of dirt jumps and cliffs as the seasons change via hokey computer generated effects.
   
   
3. The bike gets serviced, because apparently riding through a computer-generated change of seasons wreaks havoc on suspension pivots and fork seals.
   
   
4. The bike dies — it is left broken at the bottom the trail.

It was nice to see the bike maintenance scene mentioned in step 3. I gave an audible "damn" when the dude taps open his shaft bolt and suspension oil begins spilling into a tub containing HUNDREDS of spent fork seals. So I liked that bit.

I didn't like the overbearing change of seasons (you'll see it at least once in the trailer) thing. It looks OK in a couple scenes, but a little threadbare in others, and it ends up being repeated over and over until we're like "If you show another rider going down a trail in the summer as the leaves change around him, I swear to god I am going to burn this theater down like that chick in Inglourious Basterds did that time."

And it's not just the CGI stuff that gets repetitive: in one scene we see a lovely wheat field, and then BAM! Cam McCaul (I think) comes blasting out of nowhere, airing out way over the field (in slow-mo of course). Throughout the sequence, we never see the jumps that are allowing him to roost so high above the field...it's spectacular, it's dream-like, but it goes on WAY TOO FREAKIN' LONG.

The whole "life cycle" concept in Life Cycles is really driven by the cheesy narration. It sounds like stuff a bad Yoga instructor says at the end of class: "Your breath is not from the east, it is not from the west...it is not Christian, it is not Muslim...it is not chocolate, it is not peanut butter..." I had a hard time with it and it definitely took away from the overwhelming visual beauty of the film, and I don't feel that the whole cycle idea got at all wrapped up in the end.

And speaking of wrapped up in the end...have you ever seen a Mummy's ass?

Sorry, that sounds like a joke to me right now. I think I need more coffee.

What I meant to say was: And speaking of wrapped up, I have to wrap this up, so I'll just say that despite my bitching, Life Cycles is actually an incredible thing to watch, even with the sound on (except for when the narrator's talking). And I'll go on to say that maybe the whole "cycle" thing would have been driven home a little better if a kid from some (hi, I am Thom P. and I am wicked ignorant) tribe near that Isengard-lookin' factory came wandering up at the end of the film, picked up one of the broken bike frames, fashioned it into a hatchet, busted into the factory that made the bike, screamed "Hey! Stop fucking up my forest with your industrial bullshit you dicks!" and butchered everyone in the place.

Stance Films, I am awaiting your call, you know you want me to direct Life Cycles 2: The Wrath of Some Pissed Off Kid With a Hatchet Made Out of A Bike Frame.

USAC Helmet Cam Ban, Barry White, And Unicorn Babies

I'm glad USA Cycling came to their senses momentarily on the subject of helmet-cams. There was talk there for a minute that helmet-cams were going to possibly get banned. I thought it was crazy talk. I thought that USAC was just trying to better the UCI in a "being backwards and anti-any-kind-of-fun contest," but, if so, they lost...this time. USAC explained their motivation for the alleged ban like this:

“It’s more from a risk management perspective and the recognition that it would have to affect the safety aspects of the helmet, just by definition. In a crash, if you do a header right on top of your helmet cam, you’re going to drive it right through your helmet into your head.

It came more from the risk management side than any particular accident that we know about."

I need the USAC like a Phish sticker needs to be on my bicycle (I spent the entire 2010 season racing a whole bunch of races that were sanctioned by neither the USAC or the UCI...and I had a lot of fun doing it), so I couldn't get all that worked up about whatever idiotic thing they were planning on doing, because it didn't really affect me. Although it does affect my favorite sport — it could snuff out the one flicker of hope mountain biking has to regain some of its former popularity...which opens the door for me to bitch briefly (and probably off-basely) about it.

This whole "if you do a header right on top of your helmet cam, you’re going to drive it right through your helmet into your head" business is hypothetical, I can't say that it's not what might happen, but USAC can't say, definitively, with science, that it IS what would happen —

"It came more from the risk management side than any particular accident that we know about."

So some dude at USAC thinks that if you crash on your helmet-cam, it will get driven right through your skull...

and I think that if you put a narwhal and a white horse in a room with a bottle of wine and Barry White on the stereo, you'll get unicorn babies.

You can't prove me wrong (unless you have the means to procure a narwhal and a white horse for testing) and the random union of the aforementioned creatures is unlikely to occur in nature, mostly because rooms with a bottle of wine and Barry White playing on the stereo don't often occur in nature. Likewise, until someone does some testing involving helmet-cams and helmets, or someone happens to ram his helmet-cam through his skull in nature...or whatever, the banning of helmets based on this rickety-ass premise remains ridiculous, and while I am not an expert on...anything really, I do know something about ridiculous.

I rest my case, but, Jesus, think about it for a minute...do you realize what you could get for a unicorn baby on the black market?

Way More Than A Feeling

I looked out this morning and the sun was gone
Turned on some music to start my day
I lost myself in a familiar song
I closed my eyes and I slipped away

- Boston "More Than A Feeling"

Sometimes I like to wake up to that song. It gets me stoked. I'm not kidding. Seriously. Shut up. No really. Fuck you then.

And what's crazy is that it's a song about a guy turning on some music to start his day. I should stop now, I'm freaking myself out. It was one of the first songs I remember hearing, while lying on the thick, brown and orange shag carpet in my parents' room. I never stopped loving the song. This wasn't the case with all the songs I heard around that time, songs like "Don't Bring Me Down" by ELO (Electric Light Orchestra). I liked that song when I was between four and maybe six-years-old. The first time I heard Talking Heads, I forgot all about that ELO crap. But I never forgot about Boston. Well, I kind of did, until I saw The Men Who Stare At Goats a while back. When George Clooney's character, Lyn Skip Cassady, is talking about astrally projecting, or "remote viewing," Ewan McGregor's character asks him, basically, how he gets in the mood.

Bob Wilton: So what do you use to remote view?
Lyn Cassady: I drink. And I find classic rock helps.
Bob Wilton: Any music in particular?
Lyn Cassady: Boston. Boston usually works.

Then there's this great editing cut where suddenly the camera is flying over the ocean. The song comes in at about 1:25 of the trailer below, but doesn't quite have the same effect.




In 1991, when Nivana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" came out, and people were all freaked out about how great it was that the song was all, like, slow and quiet and then it got all, like, fast and loud, and it had that wicked awesome riff. I was in art class and I was all like "Dudes, these guys totally didn't invent this shit. I mean, the Pixies totally did the soft/loud thing first. And that riff...they totally, like, bit...totally, uh, bit..." "Totally bit who? Totally bit what?" "Um, nothing...you guys are right this song is totally rad...I'll, like, shut up now...a mosquito, my libido...woo! Yeah! This is totally sweet!"

I felt like I was taking crazy pills.

But what I wanted to say was "They totally bit fucking BOSTON," but I couldn't because the other kids would have strangled me with the flannel shirts they had tied around their wastes for giving credit to such a lame, mainstream arena-rock band. And, of course, back then we couldn't just Google-up facts to make our critics look like dumb-asses, so they wouldn't have bought it anyway, but now, to back up my feeling about "More Than A Feeling," I can Google stuff like this up:

Other critics have noted that this song's main riff is referenced in the Nirvana single "Smells Like Teen Spirit".

Ha! So suck it you kids in my art class in 1991. In your face! If I had a Hot Tub Time Machine, I would come back in time and Wiki the shit out of you bitches.

I know these anti-Nirvana comments will come across to some as infinitely more offensive than my anti-high tube sock, short khakis, and large T-shirt comments from yesterday, maybe, I say maybe even more offensive than my response to Marshall Hance's comment where I said:

And just remember...

arguing with me is like scamming your way into the Special Winter Olympics and competing against me in Special-Curling — even if you win...I'm still retarded.

Damn, that is pretty offensive. Of course what I meant to say was:

And just remember...

arguing with me is like scamming your way into the Special Winter Olympics and competing against me in Special-Curling — even if you win...I'm still retarded AND so is curling.

But shit...it's Saturday morning — no one's looking at this bull crap, not even my grandmother, so I can curse, offend entire third world nations, and self-deprecatingly make light of my own mental disabilities.

If I got you all worked up and pissed off, just watch the video below of men playing noodly jazz on bicycle seatpost clarinets (thanks Eliot). You'll feel better. At the very least you won't accuse me of being a Grunge-ist.

Life Cycles: A Very Serious Film Review Without Any Inane Segues About Racism

It's pretty terrible, even though the spelling is different, every time I write the word "segue," I can't help but think about the dude who owned Segway, dying on a...Segway. And then I think about how George W. Bush was, apparently, one of the only people in the history of Segways, other than the owner of Segway, capable of crashing the idiot-proof Segway. And then I think about how, one day, as I was rolling into San Francisco after my 25 mile commute from Fairfax, I was coming through...I guess it's Fort Mason Park, and there was a group of tourists on an audio-aided Segway tour. They were, for the most part, morbidly obese people wearing khaki shorts that were too short, white tube socks that were too high, and white T-Shirts that were too large, and they all had gigantic headphones on. Maybe I was a little grumpy that morning, maybe I hadn't had enough coffee or something, but I didn't hesitate to yell: "Oh my god, it's an expedition from the planet LAME!"

And that reminds me of how stupid racism is...wait for it.

The other day I did that post over on Bike Rumor about stealing air from car tires with a home made hacked-pump. There were a whole lot of angry, sort of "I'll kill you if you try to steal air from my truck tires you hippie!" comments below that post after a few days. My friend Uri told me he intended to start a fight with one of the irate-commenting dudes who had said:

This is kind of silly. I thought cyclists were against laziness. Hell you give us moped riders a hard look all the time. Buy a Co2 inflator, those work really well. Oh wait, Oh gee! CO2 causes global warming! HAHAHHAHHAHHAHA. Trees and plants use carbon dioxide. You hippies are so full of yourselves you slosh when you walk!

but, after checking out the guys "scary website" he thought better of it — It's a full-on white supremacist site. Now, I don't usually walk on the dark side of the internet street, I kind of play it safe, and what I'd done here was overturn a rock, exposing a dark place on the internet that I knew existed but hadn't spent any time exploring. The guy had also posted a video that day of former presidential candidate and former Grand Wizard of The KKK David Duke, where Duke twists a story about black basketball players gang-raping a white cheerleader into a thesis for why multi-racial societies don't work.

It was interesting to see how Duke has changed his tune (or maybe cranked up the volume) on his racist ranting over the years. I just remember the Ku-Klux-Douche from his horribly-failed run for president and how he took Westwood, Massachusetts and all of New Hampshire in the primary. Something I will never forgive either of those places for. Back then he had toned his Klan-type-talk WAY down, but now, although he's not tossing the N word around (unlike his followers) he is still pretty blatantly fucking racist and antisemitic.

As if I wasn't freaked out enough by the angry commenting dudes white supremacist rants on his site and David Duke's ever-so thinly veiled racist tirade, I then made the mistake of actually looking at the comments below the video. Holy crap. A few samples:

"Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the difference between a Black MAN and a nigger, but there are sadly FAR too many of the latter."

"yeah, if there was Islamic rule, those damn niggers' heads would be off... I mean offfffffffffffffffffffff......­....!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

And my favorite:

"savages abetted and enabled by filthy homosexual bagels"

Oh, and how can I leave out:

"FACTS Cant be rasict!!!"

What is it with people with dumb ideas expressing them in such a dumb way? I'm sure Mr. "Rasict!!!" wants everyone to speak English...the language he has so obviously mastered.

What's funny is that I made the HUGE mistake of deciding, for the first time ever, to comment on a Youtube video. Apparently my Youtube account was set up in such a way that all the subsequent comments went directly to my gmail account. They were brilliant, I loved the one about how my children should be raped...but after the first 40 or so, I changed my account settings. What's extra-funny is that my comments got deleted event though they didn't contain profanity (the N word is A-OK though) Maybe irony is seen as profanity in white supremacist circles. My first comment merely said "It's nice to see Dave hasn't strayed too far from his KKK roots." And that got me in trouble, so I asked "How did you guys know I wasn't being earnest? Can you just smell a non-racist?" It got ugly. I couldn't help but follow along as the comments developed over the course of the day, it was like watching a ninety-car crash on the freeway in slow motion.

Before sliding the rock back in place and covering up this dark, scary, stinking hole in the internet, I made one last comment (that was deleted) that went something like:

"What are you people going to do when you're living on your all-white, all-Christian, rape-free island? Who will you direct all your hate toward? What excuse will you have to stockpile assault weapons? Who will you be protecting yourselves from?"

There was some other stuff but I forget how it went...you get the point.

I did glance back over my shoulder to read one response to that comment where the woman said something like:

"Fagot, fagot, libral-faggot, WHY WOULD'NT I WANT TOO LIVE ON A RAPE FREE ISLAND you nigger and homosexual-bagel loving fagott?"

One problem with these people (I like to use their terms against them) aside from their lack of grammatical skill and their inability to grasp reality in any way, is that they have no sense of irony. They wouldn't recognize irony if it took the form of a hot iron and hit them repeatedly in the face.

Which doesn't mean that someone shouldn't try that tactic with them and then post the video on Youtube.

And what does any of this this have to do with Segway Scooters? Shut up for a second Chatty Cathy, and I'll tell you. Bike Rumor angry-commenting dude, Dr. Douche, uh, I mean Duke, and all his fuck-wit followers on Youtube have one thing in common: they think that being white gives them something in common. But I'm white and I look at white people like those bloated, white, creatures on the Segway scooters in San Franciso and I think "Wow, do they belong to the same species I do? Are we even from the same PLANET? I have nothing in common with the people...or things on those scooters. If being large and white is a prerequisite for membership in this club...can Beluga whales join? I probably have more in common with a Mareki tribesman from Vanuatu than I do with these wheeled-leviathans with their too-high white tube socks covering their bulging blue varicose leg veins."

So ya, about that Life Cycles review....maybe Tuesday for that? Wednesday? Is that good for you?

Hey, at least my segues were about Segways. OK, and maybe a little bit about white supremacy.

Life Cycles and 500 Feral Macaque Monkeys In Heat

Life Cycles is good, definitely the closest thing to Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance, I've ever seen in a mountain bike film, both in a visual and auditory way. But I'm not sure I want too much Koyaanisqatsi mixed in with my mountain biking. A little bit is alright, but throw in too much Koyaanisqatsi and you've got an unwatchable, arty, piece of crap.

What does the above photo have to do with Koyaanisqatsi...I mean Life Cycles? First off, why do I keep linking to Koyaanisqatsi? Well, because I can't spell Koyaanisqatsi to save my f—in' life, so it's way easier to just cut and paste the already linked word. I'm not being clever, it's not that I've linked each, individual one to some random (probably illegal Belgian midget porn) site...except maybe that last one there.

Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Cycles. That's what they should have called the film.

So ya, the picture. I'm covering the Cyclesmart International Cyclocross race in North-AMP-ton on Sunday. Mr. Cyclingdirt himself, Colt "45 It Works Every Time" McElwaine dropped his pretty pimped out Jeep at my house so I could get out to western, Mass. It was pissing rain earlier tonight so I opted to take the Jeep to the theater for the premier of Life Cycles (that we will eventually get down to talking about...someday). That, is my "I'm driving Colt's car like Kowalski" face. It's the same face I'll be using while I'm getting sweet footie of the races at CSI (that's what they call Cyclesmart International) by driving Colt's Trail Rated Jeep all over Look Park, chasing racers around the course, making sure to run down lapped riders who fall victim to the 80% rule.

There just isn't enough Death Race 2000 (Carradine, not Statham) in modern cyclocross. And for that matter, there's never been close to enough Commando: The Musical in cyclocross. Shoot, that one deserves an embed.

Thanks Unlikely Words

I don't think there's much we can do about all that, but, all I know is that if I were Adam Myerson and I were running CSI, I would run the scale-model train they have at Look Park DURING the race...and I would fill it with feral macaque monkeys in heat...and douse the riders with buckets of macaque monkey pheromones...and just see what happened. But, of course, I'm not Adam Myerson, I don't have 2500 Facebooks friends, most of whom I have not only met in real life but totally boned (even the elderly heterosexual men and lesbians), so I don't get to make calls like that. Or, in his case: texts like that.

"Hi, itz Jazzy. I'd lIk 2 ordr 500 feral macaque munkEz n heat
& 40 gallons of macaque pheromones."

But Life Cycles was gorgeous, not without serious problems, that require serious talking about... but I think I'm going to quit while I'm ahead, and do a post 100% dedicated to actually talking about Life Cycles in real life later...perhaps later today even.

Movies and Michael Patrick

I think today is going to be one of those days where I feel compelled to post more than once. We'll see. Spent the better part of yesterday up in Wenham, MA interviewing Christopher Igleheart. I'll be transcribing and editing all the killer material I got into something print worthy over the next couple days. That interview will be looking for a happy, print home...I'm just sayin'.

First order of business: Tonight (Thursday) at 8PM is the local premiere of Life Cycles at Kendall Square Cinema in Cambridge. More info HERE. If all goes according to plan I will be there for sure.

Life Cycles OFFICIAL Trailer from Life Cycles on Vimeo.

I picked up a link from Fisher Bikes on the Twitter just now. It's a story about long time Fisher rider Michael Patrick and his initial fight with brain cancer back in 2001. Mike has been on the New England racing scene since I first got out there. He was always a ninja on the bike, amazing to watch, and he was also an awesome guy to talk to in the parking lot — outspoken and hilarious, a great representative of the sport.

I know from talking to Mike over the past couple years at the races, that he has had a couple of relapses. He recovered from those relapses and came back strong, but I've heard from others, more recently, that he's having a pretty tough time. I haven't heard anything for a while though and I'm not sure what his current situation is. If anyone reading this knows anything, please use the comments section to fill us all in on Mike's progress.

Brain Tumor Can't Stop This Mountain Biker
From usacycling.org February 24, 2004

For some, it’s the thrill of competition. For others, it’s a love of the outdoors. For Michael Patrick, mountain bike racing is the sport that saved his life. With his speed, determination, and agility, the 38-year- old turns heads in all three disciplines. When he won the 2002 NORBA National at Mt. Snow, nobody would have guessed he underwent brain surgery in 2001 and was told he would not race again.

While leading a cross-country race in 1999, Michael had what he
thought was a heat stroke. His sight and hearing faded in and out, and the instances became more frequent. While on a computrainer in 2000, he suffered a petit mal seizure. The EKG showed abnormal electrical patterns, but Michael went about his normal life. Finally realizing that his brain did not function properly, Michael decided to have an MRI. The MRI found a growth that required surgery to remove.

Michael was taken to the Sloan Kettering Institute on Jan. 23, 2001. An egg-sized tumor was removed from his left frontal lobe. The doctor estimated that the tumor had been there close to 10 years. If Michael had not been a competitive athlete, he never would have seen a symptom. Even though it was benign, it would have killed him, and thus Michael credits mountain bike racing with saving his life. “Now I can help those who need it,” Michael said, “because my life was saved by cycling.”

After the surgery, Michael lost much of his short-term memory and was not allowed to ride for 30 days. Most of his sponsors, along with his insurance, dropped him after the surgery. Gary Fisher, GU, Michelin, and Tony's Bikes held on though. “They’ve (Gary Fisher) been beside me through everything,” Michael said. When he did start riding again, he was easily exhausted but not discouraged. “I knew that would be the thing to make me feel good again,” he said. Happy to be back on his bike, Michael talked with NORBA and decided he would begin racing again in April as an expert. Within weeks, he was placing and by June, he won two Connecticut series races.

The beginning of the 2002 racing season seemed dim as an already frail Michael was unable to eat or train due to anti-seizure medications. He weighed a mere 128 pounds, but with willpower and resolve, he powered down the trails to claim the 2002 NORBA National at Mount Snow, Vermont.

The 2003 season proved Michael’s resilience. He took the crown at Mt. Snow again, won the Connecticut Point Professional Series, and was the first American to finish at the Masters World Championships in Quebec. In May, Michael participated in and spoke at the Ride For Research as a guest of the Brain Tumor Society.

After a brilliant recovery and comeback, and being upgraded to pro in February, Patrick has a new outlook. “The brain tumor is the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said. While the Connecticut native still loves to win, mountain biking is fun for him again as he realized how lucky he is. “The importance of life has been magnified by 1000 at least,” Michael said.

Review Of VeloCB's Seven Cycles Sola: Little Wheels Are Slower I Have Proof

A few days ago, I read Zach White's column on Velonews where he talks about how 26" wheeled bikes are ultimately superior to 29" wheeled bikes. I've been riding 29ers for quite a few years now by choice (OK, for the first couple years, Gary Fisher would come over to my house at night, put a gun in my mouth while I was sleeping and say, in a voice oddly like Gary Busey's "Wanna live? Keep riding your 29er.") and I wasn't picking up and buying the stuff he was putting down and selling. Zach has a lot of anecdotal-type proof — based on who was faster or slower during a group ride on a given wheel size — for why 26" wheels are faster. So I thought I would go out and test-ride a 26" wheeled bike to see what I was missing out on, or maybe prove once and for all that 29" wheels are faster and better.

The bike I chose to test ride: VeloCB's titanium Seven Sola.

• Rider's height: 4ft 22in
• Rider's weight: Fat, even for this time of year
  

First thing I noticed was that, even with a reasonable to slightly unreasonable amount of seatpost showing, I was still kneeing myself in the lip with every pedal stroke. Obviously 26" wheeled bikes cannot be made big enough for average height to tall riders.


I also found that my jeans, containing my flabby, off-season thighs, rubbed on the top tube as I rode. This never happens when I'm riding my 29er while wearing lycra.



The flat pedals were a huge plus. The GYROSCOPIC EFFECT caused by the puny 26" wheels is so far less than the GYROSCOPIC EFFECT of gigantic 29" wheels. The bike was so unstable, it kept tipping over. With clipless pedals I would have fallen over repeatedly, hitting my face on mailboxes, but with the flat pedals I was able to quickly put my foot down to save my face from getting hit on mailboxes.

This morning I picked up a heavy mug full of sand and lead several times, then I put it down and immediately picked up my coffee mug...it felt very light, so light that I almost threw it against the ceiling like it was made out of nothing and feathers. I think that was caused by GYROSCOPIC EFFECT.

I just think saying GYROSCOPIC EFFECT a lot makes me sound smarter than I actually am.


One item on this bike that I really liked was the Easton Monkey Lite bars. They were very stiff while I was standing out of the saddle the entire time during my .7 mile test ride that will surely prove once and for all, with science, that 26" wheeled bikes are crap.



The Chris King headset was smooth and expensive. I hear that Chris King's warranty is void on 29ers because the incredible weight of the larger wheel puts too much stress on the steering system.


I found that I couldn't even really use the Rockshox Pushloc remote lockout lever because, whenever I did, I would flip over the bars the first time I hit an acorn or a gum wrapper. It must have been due to the decreased angle of ATTACK of the smaller wheel when confronting obstructions.


The whole 9 speed thing is another matter. I've been on the ten speed stuff for so long now, I don't even know what to do on a 9 speed bike. 9 speed bikes should have a special racing category like single speeds and bikes ridden by old people.


The Ritchey WCS stem...I think the WCS stands for "Wicked Christian Stem." And for whatever reason, whenever I touched it, my hand burned.



I was going to make fun of the wee-bitty wheels, but all that comes to mind right now is how, one time, I ordered something called a "Rocket Ron" out of the back of an American Bear magazine (or was it International Leatherman) and it was most certainly not a mountain bike tire made by Schwalbe.


While riding down the technical sidewalks of Somerville, I was staring at the Chris King front hub going "My god, it's beautiful" until I ran into a mailbox.



The Avid Elixir brakes were of no help, mainly because my hands were nowhere near them — they were occupied with clapping rhythmically to my Chris King hub inspired chant: "Shiny, pretty, shiny, pretty, shiny, pretty, woo!"


And the Chris King Rear hub didn't help matters either; it was too busy doing its best "I am a swarm of killer Africanized bees that want to sting you until you swell up and die horribly" impression every time I stopped pedaling.

Under this vast preponderance of empirical data you have no choice but to concur that 29" wheeled bikes are far superior in every way to 26" wheeled bikes.

Zach White is getting so fired and I am so getting his tech column on Velonews.

Wicked Pissah Wicked Ride Of The East

In case you hadn't noticed, I'm kind of an ass. I live about twenty minutes from one of the best riding venues in the greater Somerville area: Harold Parker, and I get up there just a few times a season. In fact, this season I made it up there exactly once and that was for the NEMBA Wicked Ride Of The East this past Sunday. By the way, have you renewed your NEMBA "membahship?" For $60 you get 4 issues of Dirt Rag and the very satisfying "I have a belly full of pretty flowers and fuzzy bunnies" feeling associated with supporting a great outfit like NEMBA. However repeatedly remiss I might be about getting my sorry-slightly-hairy-white-ass up to Andover to ride throughout the year, I am 3 and 0 for the past three years with my attendance at the Wicked Ride.

Will Crissman practices his position for a new aerial move he's working on

One appeal of the Wicked Ride over some weekday afternoon ride that I have to fight massive amounts of gnarly traffic to get to, is the big-ass marked loop. The NEMBA guys mark out a 20 or so mile course, utilizing the majority of the available singletrack in Harold Parker. It is pretty sweet. The weather for the Wicked Ride has been ideal for the past few years too, just crisp and cool, typical New England fall stuff. Arm warmers and knee warmers are generally a good idea, but not required. The foliage is past peak, yet the woods are still beautiful, all hues of orange and golden brown. The musty smell of freshly decomposing leaves hangs in the air...it's a smell that will later snap your mind right back to a happy place where you're ripping fast, flowing singletrack interspersed with challenging, rocky, technical bits.


The sad truth is that I almost put an ugly dent in my gleaming perfect Wicked Ride attendance record. I am not that strong a planner. I don't plan. I had no ride to the Wicked Ride on Sunday AM. Just as I was abandoning hope (like the time I abandoned that baby in that dumpster), I got a call from a creepily-mustachioed Greg "The Leg." "Meet us at the Dunkin Donuts in Medford Square." Now, saying "Meet us at the Dunkin Donuts in Medford Square" is like saying "meet me by the fat dentist with the aero bars, riding a Ti Serotta on the bike path," but I was able to pinpoint the location of Greg "the Leg" and our driver, Will Crissman without too much trouble. Of course GTL called my house about five minutes after I talked to him, "Where the fuck are you?" "Uh, I'm just going out the door." "Hurry the fuck up." While riding down there I called GTL to tell him to grab me some stuff at Dunkin Donuts "Dude, get me a medium coffee, regular with a Turbo Shot and an egg and cheese on a sesame bagel." "You'll get something like that and like it" he politely replied.

As I pulled up to the car, I hopped the curb, causing a banana to eject from my bag-pocket. "Put your bike in the car, I'll get the banana" said GTL.



I had been off the bike for basically three entire weeks coming into this ride. I'd produced more green mucus than watts over that period. So the fact that Robbie "I Am I Am Ted King's Brother" King was in our group was a little scary for me. But I was lulled into a sense of "Ah, he's a roadie and, although he may have tons of RAW POWER, he obviously lacks technical skills because I am 'effortlessly' dropping him in the singletrack." Throughout the ride he had little flashes of technical brilliance, and I started to wonder why he was riding off the back so much. Then it happened: Robbie decided to put two and two together, the watts and the skill, and BAM! He dropped me and the rest of the group like we were a bowling balls soaked in olive oil. I just pray that this dude doesn't start racing mountain bikes.

Pete Melish fuels up

I was hurtin' throughout the ride, but apparently all the mad, mad stage racing miles I accrued in Breck and Pisgah allowed me to fake it for a few hard hours. Monday was a different matter, I woke up feeling like I'd aged fifteen years in a seven hours.


The Wicked Ride is awesome, but there is a whole lot of this, the waiting in line to take a run at a technical sections, which is fine. For the most part people are a whole lot better about letting you pass and not standing in the middle of a trail, blocking the entire thing like a bunch of Quebecois in The Northeast Kingdom or some other people in Mobile, Alabama, staring at a leprechaun in a tree.


A highlight of the day was definitely meeting the mysterious author of the Zen of Cycling blog. He had this to say about his meeting with me:

"He's very nice to me, actually _engaging_. Very cool."

Apparently Zen is not a quick judge of character.

He rode with us for quite a while on his vintage Independent with V-Brakes. Hanging tough through most of the ride before pealing off. It's always good to meet your "blog buddies," people you think you know but have never met in real life. It makes them seem more human, which is good for them, because I tend to take them off my "people I am going to kill and eat when I grow up and become a serial killer" list.

Linnea (pronounced like "linear" with a Boston accent) Koons of Embrocation Cycling Journal

By the end of the ride I was as tired and broken down as a Labrador retriever that had been ridden like a pony at a fat kid's birthday party all day, but in a good way.

I sat bolt upright in bed with an earth-shattering epiphany last night...there are good things to come here at the Big Bikes blog. Hold tight.

If You Can't Handle The Pressure Then Get The F— Out Of The Kitchen

This is one for the much-neglected early rising readers of Big Bikes...or for the vampires (like me) who are still up past midnight on a Sunday. I can't quite figure out how to make the podcast go live and have the link not go dead after a little while without publishing immediately. This only precludes me from pretending that I got up and wrote this crap at 5AM like some Dicky. I also can't figure out how to get the podcast to work without creating a link field and screwing up the whole linked title thing. And I know how you guys love the linked titles so you can just share links to Big Bikes posts all over the place like a bunch of crazy people.

OK wait, maybe I did figure it out...I'm a genius, or not, we'll see. I'll try this "enclosure link" business and see if it works, and being the over-sharer that I am, I will show my work here regardless of the outcome. Peter had the suggestion that I go straight to video, and I tried...I won't share what I tried to do with the video stuff, but it didn't work out. But it would be great if I could work out the video thing, because, at least in my defective mind, it is easier to deal with video than audio. So look for the video later in the week, all you really need to know is that Peter is going to be sorry he requested it.

In today's episode, Ultra Endure Guy drops some major science, real heavy stuff man. Check it out.

"Put Yourself On The Edge Of Yourself" Ultra Endure Guy Part III

Oh, and if you missed out on the controversy I started over on Bike Rumor (just because I made fun of dudes with yellow Hummers and told people to steal air out of their tires...what?), then I suppose you could check that out. Make sure to read all the angry comments. I don't think they get me over there like you people do.

Podcast Experiment #2: Some People Need To Chill

I was going to try to hold off on utilizing my new found audio POWER, maybe metering the podcasts out at a rate of one per week; but I just couldn't do it. Last night, when I recorded the first of my Ultra Endure Guy "podcasts" (I'm still not sure if it is technically a podcast until I get it into itunes...a step that is evading me right now) I went a little nuts, recording maybe five blog post readings in all. And there are more in the works.

I assure you, Ultra Endure Guy is real, he lives in California, and I have no idea why I felt that a Boston townie accent was the appropriate voice for him...I guess it's an attitude thing.

I really hope he:

a.) Has a sense of humor

and

b.) Doesn't feel like using up his frequent flier miles coming to Boston to kill me


In this episode Ultra Endure Guy rules the Serotta forum with an iron fist and sucks womens' cogs "like no other."

"I took some shit today for a classified ad on the Serotta forum today"
Ultra Endure Guy Part Two

Podcast Experiment: Success Or Failure, You Decide

Hey, here we go with the crazy two post a day thing again...wow! Look out! This is my first experiment with Podcasting. It seems to have worked, although I have no idea if I have done everything exactly right. It was more complicated than I thought, not really as easy as recording some audio on my ipod Nano and uploading it to the blog. There are many steps involved, some of which make no sense to me, but if I can figure it out, so can you, so can a six-year-old, and so can a brain-damaged gerbil.

I have no idea if what I have done here is legal, I have no doubt that it is not right, but if reading content from the blog of someone else...in a funny voice is wrong, then I don't want to be right! Here it is:

Ultra Endure Guy Podcast

If this type of thing works for you, I'd be happy to take requests for other blogs you might want me to read content from in a weird voice. And if it doesn't work for you, well, I'll just go choke on a big bowl full of di—didegridoos.

I swear I was going to say "didgeridoos;" even if "a big bowl full of didgeridoos" makes zero sense.

I Give Up And I Give You This

I think I've figured it out...

I've gone into a form of seasonal depression which has been exacerbated by my failure to attend SSWC10 in New Zealand. I know there was some talk way back in February of my attendance at the event. Feeble attempts were made to raise funds...none of it amounted to much, and my delusion that I could work some of my new-found "media-cred" into a free pass to New Zealand did not pan out in any way. Then it got all kind of quiet on the subject around here. Reality set in a while ago, I knew I wasn't going and I came to grim acceptance of that fact. It's not like I was suffering in the getting to go cool places and do cool shit department, what, with Breck and High Cascades, and Pisgah...Lumberjack even. SSWC10NZ just didn't make it into the budget. It shouldn't feel bad though: neither did health insurance, dental work, or eating vegetables regularly. (State of Massachusetts, if you are reading this, that part about the health insurance was totally a JOKE. Now don't fine me because I can't afford to pay for health insurance.)

What does the above photo have to do with any of this? Absolutely nothing. It's from my Granoge trip. Rosey and I had to share a leaking aero bed, during the night it deflated and I rolled onto the floor. Instead of waking up everyone in the house, including the baby, by re-inflating it; I opted to sleep on a small couch which was small and hard as a bus station bench. It was incredibly restful. Especially when I got my legs jammed under the arm rest — nothing like waking up to the feeling of two of your limbs being trapped by an unknown assailant, however inanimate he may be.

So I'm not entertaining today, but you know who is? Chandler Delinks. I just happened upon his blog last night. Of course it took me a while to figure who exactly I was reading, so I could tell you definitively who the CycloWhat? blog belongs to. I found his "Shut Up Milne" post particularly funny. The dude does not hold back, he makes me look like a nice guy, a guy who doesn't take nearly enough of a piss out of his friends, friends like Rooter. Delinks interview, via Gmail Chat, with Rooter is hilarious. I will try to be more entertaining tomorrow, in the meantime you should go check out Chandler's site.

Bye!

While We're On The Subject of Starbucks And Its Sucking Big Time

At one point, a couple years back, I read a blog post by Fat Cyclist wherein he outlined the way to blog properly (if you want 20,000+ hits per day). He basically rehashed what he said at a "Web 2.0 Panel" at Interbike. It was educational and game-changing for me. My Googlin' mojo is weak right now and I can't seem to find the post, but I'm sure you can if you have more patience and skill than I do (which is more than likely the case). The reason why I bring this up is because one of Fatty's rules had something to do with not blogging more than once a day. Up until now I have pretty much adhered to this rule, but now...I don't know what it is, maybe it's the stuff I've been doing for Bikerumor, but I'm starting to feel OK about posting more than once a day. Shorter, less ambitious posts might suit my short little span of attention anyway.

Like I said, anyway....

This relates to last Friday's post, it's a poem that my MOM sent over. Yes, my mom. (You might recall from previous posts that my mom is awesome.) It's about Starbucks and it's really good.

Your Punishment in Hell

by Gary Leising

Someone will douse a cobra in gasoline,
light the sucker, and shove it headfirst
down your throat. It'll speed straight
through your esophagus, unfurl
its hood to fill your stomach
then begin to strike and strike and strike
and strike and strike: fangs pierce
your stomach, venom pours in,
the little burn of incipient ulcers
grows quick, paralysis sets in.
Your lungs stop before your brain,
before your hand, which lifts
to your mouth the plastic-lidded
paper cup holding the caramel
macchiato cappuccino with a double
shot of espresso and frothed soy milk
topped with two shakes of cinnamon
and no, NO (yes, you said no twice)
sugar that was made for you
slowly, while I, already running late,
waited behind you for a simple,
already-made black coffee.
You will lose all motion before
that drink reaches your mouth,
but you recover and the drink,
strangely, has vanished, and barrista
and cobra-douser-slash-lighter do it all again
and again. I know this because,
for my angry impatience,
I am behind you in line in hell
forever, the pot of black coffee
behind the counter steaming,
turning, I know, bitter.

"Your Punishment in Hell" by Gary Leising from Fastened to a Dying Animal. © Pudding House Press, 2010. Reprinted withOUT permission.

Getting The Blood Off The Chicken Suit

I feel bad for all you early risers who used to read the posts I scheduled to go up at 6 AM. Of course, on most occasions, I wrote those things at 1 AM during a bout of insomnia, but whatever. I spent any blogging time I might have had tonight putting together an extra-special Halloween post for Bike Rumor. So that's where the action is today. At least you have something to read while you eat your Boo Berry cereal.