50!, Part II

Single-speed mountain bike, but on the highways (the proverbial roads less traveled near Mammoth Cave, Kentucky). Many hills. The picture says, if not a thousand words, at least fifty miles worth of words (however many that might be).

50!

Frozen thumbs. That's why I'm not a pro rider: at the first sign of thumb freeze, I head for home, where I can put the extreme lack of warmth in my hands to good use by wrapping them around a couple of bottles of Guinness. Oh, well, to the victors go the spoils; to the rest of us, beer.

However, inspired by the True Grit 50 in St. George, Utah, (http://www.mtbracenews.com/view_article.jsp?id=274), I'm planning to oil the chain on my Fuji 29er tomorrow, air up the tires, and see how close to the big five-oh I can get. I've done a couple of 30-35 mile rides on my single speed so far this spring, but there's a vicious little hill that I don't really want to tackle again without gears. The Fuji has three in front and nine in back, and does a blazing four miles an hour on the lowest gear combination. Meanwhile, for inspiration, some bits from MTB Racing News (URL above):

"Even the mud could not prevent Cannondale rider Alex Grant from throwing down an impressive race. Veteran of countless endurance races, Grant has proven himself in the never-ending rain and slop of La Ruta as well as the crippling cold of Leadville.

[Alex] Grant used his profound technical riding skills to establish an early lead in the jaded-rocks and demanding descents of the Zen trail then used his experience and determination to carry on in the demanding conditions.

Grant finished the slightly shortened course in just over 4 hours. By then things had gotten so bad that officials had to shut the course down. Only 11 riders were able to finish before the course closure.

After the race Grant said, "It was pretty bad. I was so cold by the end that I had to walk the final climb even though it's a road. I had to use the palm of my hand to push the shift levers. Both my thumbs were frozen and didn't work anymore."

Grant was followed by Chris Holley (Trek 29er)."

Fifty miles, just over four hours. That's almost 12.5 m.p.h. Not bad for pushing a heavy mountain bike through unholy weather.

Flax !?

This just in! Schwinn announces frame made of flax (mostly). No need to carry food on long rides. Just eat the bike.
http://www.bikerumor.com/2011/03/09/schwinn-vestige-flax-fiber-bicycle-that-lights-up-at-night-plus-ride-review/

Of bikes and ponies

Random question: why do the people who will correct you if you call your bike seat a seat, not a saddle, nevertheless refer to the part of the bike the seat stem fits into as the seat post? Shouldn't they call it the saddle post? and the saddle stem? Or perhaps "saddle post" sounds too much like something a Pony Express rider had to clean and feed before he went to bed. As everyone knows, bikes are not ponies. Or if you doubt it, you can take my word for it. I had a pony when I was a kid, and I can tell you it's much harder to change a flat on a pony than on a bike. Ponies don't come with quick releases. Not unless you're feeding them the wrong thing.

If you sit on it, it's a seat. One syllable, like one speed, is usually enough.

The geriatric chicken, or why I hate cars (but drive one anyway)

Yesterday, I started to rescue a geriatric chicken. Why the chicken needs rescuing is a whole other story. Suffice it to say, she’s too old to lay eggs, and yes, I’m one of THOSE types who don’t like to see animals suffer, not even geriatric chickens. Who knows, in my next life I might be a chicken; so I went in my car to fetch her. Along the way, I stopped to look at a used truck for sale, since, while I have no problem with geriatric trucks suffering, I thought one might be useful for hauling my bikes around in—which is one reason I hate cars (and trucks): if there were fewer of them to contend with, I could ride my bike instead of hauling it to more places without fear of mortal danger. However, as the saying goes, if you can’t beat ‘em. . . .

Anyway, my car refused to budge after I determined the truck was too geriatric for even my taste. Fortunately, a nearby auto mechanic was ready to render assistance, or some semblance thereof. Precisely, he managed to remove the faulty starter motor yesterday, but has yet to install a new one, to my knowledge. After hitching a ride home, I discovered to my dismay that I had left the keys in the car, including the keys to the garage where the bike I would prefer to ride back to the mechanic is stored. This assumes, of course, that I should be so fortunate as to receive a phone call to the effect that my car is repaired. Like any good bike nut, I have several other bikes, but my good floor pump is in the trunk of the car in question, stored there, ironically, to keep me from not having it whensoever I might need it. So I jimmied the door to the storage shed with an expired credit card, where yet another cache of bikes is stored, and one of them appears to have enough air in the tires to get me where (I hope) I’m going.

Which brings me to the other reason I hate cars: for the cost of one year’s insurance payment on the car (not to mention gas, oil, tires, and starter motors), I can buy two or three bikes of ordinary vintage that will get me where I need to go. Repairs can, if I am sufficiently motivated, be effected at home, or obviated by buying another bike of ordinary vintage. Damn’ you, Henry Ford!

Why I love cycling computers

As Bike Snob often points out, most of us use our cycling computers to keep track of information that catalogs our mediocrity and has less relevance to the ultimate meaning of life than the pulsations of the supernova remnant at the heart of the Crab Nebula. Okay, I made that last bit up: as far as I know, Snob has never mentioned the Crab Nebula, which is what astronomers fear they will come to resemble if they visit Las Vegas and frequent an unlicensed brothel. However, as cycling is for me an activity done largely to justify my existence to myself, to unstrand my dopamine receptors, and to burn the calories contained in my daily indulgence of Twinkies washed down by unholy quantities of Guinness, the numbers that rack up on my computer have a direct bearing on how much pleasure I can find in the ultimate meaninglessness of life.

Then too, there’s the fact that I hate math. It would be possible, as Tim Krabbe points out in The Rider, to calculate the distance one rides by keeping track of the numbers of cranks and rotations of the wheels and then working some arcane math problems that in the Middle Ages would have exponentially increased one’s risk of being burned at the stake for witchcraft. Actually, in the Middle Ages, the math might have been impossible, as Newton and Leibniz had yet to invent calculus. However, disregarding anachronism, it turns out that my feelings about math are neatly summarized by a character in Don DeLillo’s Ratner’s Star:

“‘So you do mathematics?”
“‘I’m the one.”
“‘The very word strikes fear into my heart,” Evinrude said.
“‘Mathematics?”
“‘It goes back to early schooling. The muffled terror of those gray mornings getting out of bed and going to school and opening up a mathematics textbook with its strange language and letters for numbers and theorems to memorize . . . math struck terror. Everything about it. The sound of the words. The diagrams and formulas. The look of the book. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that humans actually do mathematics, considering what’s involved. It’s like a branch of learning in outer space.’”

So there you have it. If for no other reason, humankind’s ventures into outer space before many of us were born were worthwhile just for the simple reason that they encouraged advances in miniature electronics that led to powerful microcomputers that can be manufactured at ridiculously low cost in China and shipped to this country and mounted on my bike handlebars to tell me how many bottles of “Irish” beer manufactured in Canada I can consume and still fit into my cycling shorts. Three cheers for the military-industrial complex!

"Only God can judge . . . ."

Only God can judge him:
http://www.cyclingnews.com/blogs/filippo-pozzato-1/only-god-can-judge-me
Turns out, God doesn't really give a s**t.