Month: October 2009

Tempo fugit

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments
Herself makes those pedals spin. I'm practically getting trails ... or it could be an acid flashback.
Herself turns those pedals around. I'm practically getting trails off those wildly spinning legs ... or it could be an acid flashback.

Yes, it’s that time of year again — the season of indoor cycling, which sucks a mile of yak dong but still beats ballooning to Orson Wellesian proportions due to one’s fondness for food and drink.

I usually bolt a lesser bike to my Cateye CS-1000 trainer for use in evil weather, but this is an imperfect solution. For one, it sounds like a speed freak with a hand saw trimming up wood for the stove. And that spinning rear wheel is a cat magnet.

Worst of all, it won’t accommodate Herself without much clusterfuckery — fetching bikes in and out of the garage, popping off/restoring front wheels, adjusting the Cateye framework, and so on and so forth. I’m 6 feet tall, she’s 5 feet tall; you get the idea. And anyway, the whole idea is not to go outside, where the garage and the foul weather are.

So, fearing a long and unpleasant winter based on what we’ve seen so far in October, and lacking a gym membership, I bought us a Giant Tempo exercise bike from John Crandall at Old Town Bike Shop.

The Tempo is adjustable without tools — seat post, saddle, and stem/handlebar combo all raise and lower and slide forward and back, using knobs or quick releases. Everything’s neatly hash-marked so you can quickly rearrange the bike to suit the tall or small. The fixed-gear flywheel has a recessed magnet so you can add an aftermarket cyclo-computer (I did), the stock pedals are easily removable for replacement with the pedals of your choice (ditto) and the belt drive keeps things quiet enough so you can hear the old iPod without cranking it to 11.

Like most human constructions, the Tempo is not without fault, especially as regards the stem/bar combo. It could go lower to accommodate smaller riders (a hacksaw can fix that), and it could have a longer horizontal track, which would allow the vertically challenged to bring the bars closer to the saddle (one possible workaround is disassembling the setup and flipping it 180 degrees).

But these are nits I’m picking here. The Tempo is solid, quiet and reasonably priced, and we’ve both ridden it and like it a whole lot more than doing the Ice Capades on two wheels with a critical audience of SUV pilots entranced by the texting capabilities of their Crackberries. It’s not as much fun as riding outdoors, but what is? When you’re wearing clothes, anyway. …

Full disclosure: I got this rascal at a considerable discount, thanks to John and Steve, our local Giant rep. I can see why John might cut me some slack, since I’ve been buying bikes, parts and service from him for a quarter century or so and live within eyeshot of Crandall Manor, but Steve’s assist was entirely unexpected and most appreciated. A tip of the Mad Dog skid-lid to both gents for their generosity.

Let’s us preserve the moment in pictures

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

Howler of the day: The infamous road-rager Dr. Christopher T. Thompson says he never slammed on his brakes in front of cyclists Ron Peterson and Christian Stoehr — he merely stopped to take pictures of them.

This asshole’s lawyer must eat a lot of Chinese takeout, ’cause he appears to be basing his strategy on the advice of fortune cookies. Almost makes me wonder whether he’s written this one off in hopes of getting a conviction overturned on appeal.

Meanwhile, I’ll tell you the pic I want to see — the one of the look on Thompson’s face as the cell door clangs shut behind him.

Speaking of clowns, check this out — and this — and consider whether you’re enough of a multitasker to walk and/or operate a motor vehicle while talking/texting on or trying to find your cell phone. Would you see the clown or the 6-foot orange rabbit on the pedicab?

Blast from the past (and present)

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 1 Comment

The FBI croaked what it described as the leader of a Muslim fundamentalist group today during a series of raids in Dearborn and Detroit, Michigan.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the late Luqman Ameen Abdullah was the leader of a group that calls itself “Ummah, a group of mostly African-American converts to Islam, which seeks to establish a separate Sharia-law-governed state within the United States.”

What caught my eye was that the Ummah is said to be ruled by Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, the former Black Panther leader who is serving big, bad time — as in life without — at the Supermax outside Florence, Colorado, for shooting two cops in Georgia, one of whom died.

You can scope out his New York Times rap sheet here, and his Wikipedia page here.

How long before Flush Limburger links him to Obama?

Boulder Cup relocated

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
Harlow Platts Park circa 2005, when it wasn't buried under a ton of snow.
Harlow Platts Park circa 2006, when it wasn't buried under a ton of snow.

Bummer — Brook Watts advises that this Sunday’s Boulder Cup cyclo-cross will be relocated to the Boulder Reservoir after heavy snow that made it impossible to use Harlow Platts Park.

Says race director Chris Grealish: “The racers love Harlow Platts because of the challenging nature of the grassy terrain, but we have an agreement with the city of Boulder to make a move if conditions there risk long-term damage to the park.”

Too bad. Harlow Platts is a fun venue, but there’s no point in chewing it the hell up. And I wasn’t going to be able to go anyway, as Sunday is one of my days in the Velo-barrel.

Here’s a bit I wrote about the last race I saw there. Well, as usual, there’s not much in there about the actual race, but what the hell, it’s either read this or get back to work, right?