Off the back as usual, I didn’t get around to my first ride of the year until today.
I’m road-testing a couple of bikes for Adventure Cyclist — a Pashley Clubman and a Bike Friday New World Tourist Select — and today it was the folding bike’s turn under the fat bastard. I was gentle, inflicting only an hour’s worth of light spinning on the poor little thing.
Despite some unseasonably warm weather following our last snow there was still a fair amount of ice and snow on the deck, and I found myself wishing I’d ordered up a set of fenders with the NWT. But what the hell? I’ll take a wet butt outdoors over a dry one indoors, especially after a heavy morning of networking via Facebook, Twitter, website comments and phone.
All was going swimmingly until the homebound leg when I heard a tick … tick … tick … coming from down below. I thought I’d picked up a goathead, and saw what I thought was one on the front tire, but it seemed lodged solidly in there — and this was a Kevlar-belted tire, mind you — so I kept on going rather than stop to pull it and then deal with the roadside flat repair.
When I got home, what I thought was the ass-end of a goathead wiped right off the front tire. So I checked the rear tire and found what looked like a homemade, half-assed caltrop in there. Kevlar, Schmevlar — that sucker shot right through it like a small beer through a tall Irishman. I pulled it out and psssssssssshhhhhhhhh. …
So tomorrow I get to fix my first flat on a teeny wheel. Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?
Mad Blog Media 
Okay, “caltrop”. According to Google it’s either a twisted piece of metal designed to puncture tires and feet, an “industry leader in providing construction management and inspection services”, or a source of free music downloads. I think I can figure out which it is, so I learned something new. Which creates a problem: damnit, PO’G, I want to finish my on-line blog reading just as ignorant as when I start. Now look what you’ve done.
Have fun pulling that tiny tire off that rim, and more fun putting it back on. Now aren’t you glad you don’t have kids, and therefore kids’ bikes that you have to work on? Just another advantage of being DIWC (double income with cats).
Also, no kids means that you don’t really, absolutely HAVE to have a real job.
John, I didn’t know what a caltrop was, either, even with a photo.
OK, I wish I could take credit for a top-shelf education and the brains to make use of it, but I first learned of caltrops via Ed Abbey’s “The Monkey Wrench Gang.”
Doc Sarvis described his made-to-order caltrops, “an object the size of a golf ball with four projecting spikes,” as an anti-cavalry weapon, “an ancient device, old as warfare. … These will puncture any tire up to ten ply, steel-belted or whatnot.”
Sure did the trick on my tire. Keeps cops off your ass, too, if literature is to be believed.
I’m going to have to re-re-re-read “the Book”, especially since I’ve been down to Abbey’s old work site, Arches NP, twice in the last month. But I think the reason I can’t recall Doc’s description of caltrops is that it got a bit overshadowed by Hayduke’s use of thermite at the bridge at White Canyon.
By the way, if you ever happen to be down that way and find yourself on Hwy 95 at Hite Crossing, stop for a moment and take a gander under the south bridge abutment. There, someone has scrawled “Hayduke Lives!”. I think UDOT has painted over it several times, but someone keeps coming back and doing it over. Whoever it is must live not too far away.
Say, Khal, you live not too far from there, don’t you?
I live in Los Alamos, NM. Not sure where Hite Crossing is.
Hite Crossing is in southeast Utah, where the highway crosses the Colorado River right about at Lake Powell slack water, depending on lake level. The crossing is upstream of the old town site of Hite, Utah, now usually well under the waters of Lake Fowl. By Colorado Plateau distances, that’s not too far from where you’re based out of.
A thorough re-read of Monkey Wrench Gang may provide a
nice reminder. Once (if) the snow falls you may have time to get in some quality reading, it would make a good one for the list. And if you haven’t read “The Book”, well then you have a treat in store for you.
Caltrops are also known as “jackrocks” in southwest Va., where they have been known to appear on the roads during coal miner strikes, and to be discovered by State Troopers sent to “restore order.”
_Monkey Wrench Gang_ is one of those fine works, like Orwell’s _Politics And The English Language_, which we would all do well to re-read periodically. Too bad the current state of the country makes both read like fantasy.
little tires might be hard to work on. next time in addition to learning a new word, add a dime or penny to the phot and we can determine the caltrop size. Cool!
O’G quoting scripture and in Aramaic at that! It is a new year…. I wonder what other wonders this year brings!!!
Bruce, it could be a sign of the End Times. Either that or me stumbling around through my cranium turning over furniture until I finally unearthed Mark 15:34, which I remembered from Michael Moorcock’s “Behold the Man.”
Thats what is so great about this site. You don’t know if you are in for a dose of profanity and bicycling rantage or a discussion of the parallels between urban riding and ancient Hoplite/Roman combat. Small wonder O’Grady got bored and frustrated with VeloSnooze.
Patrick, hah! Sometimes I find myself thinking or even murmuring the same thing: ‘Eloi, Eloi….’. It’s like a reflex – never deliberate and it’s oddly comforting in a self-mocking way.
Blog reading should leave you more ignorant and angry! Damn that’s just not happening here!
A new word, a few new definitions and a touch of irony. Foiled again.
And in other comedy.
Santorum and Romney in Dead Heat in Iowa.
http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/primaries/results/live/2012-01-03
I use the expression in my bicycle mechanic classes and no one gets it either. The concept is genius, no matter which way it falls there is a point sticking straight up. Ain’t Mother Nature smart?
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I picked up a caltrop just reading this festering pile of blog!
Nah, I love this place. New words, literature and heck I might even learn something. Sort of like Fat Albert but without the Bill Cosby-tude.
Hopefully that will be the first of very few flat tires you have this year Patrick. Tires aren’t cheap anymore. And those “bulletproof” ones are damn near mortgage busters!
James, flat tires are a daily hazard in Bibleburg. The place is a veritable festival of goathead thorns. In fact, the whole state is. That’s why I quit riding sewups. A couple double-flats at the Chatfield cyclo-crosses and I went straight back to clinchers.
Adventure Cyclist? I never thought of the camp-stove and tent crowd as a potential market for our Italian cycling vacations but geez, if they’ll hire YOU, maybe I missed something? I went over there and added the CycleItalia blog to their list of travel blogs since between the posts on food, wine, and the joys of Italy some actual cycling-related content finds its way in there now and then. Those tiny-wheeled things are scary-looking, but if that’s the only way you can get a bike to wherever it is you’re going…it’s way better than walking. As to the Iowa caucus, the Repuglicans of Iowa have spoken – they don’t really know who the hell they want! Very happy not to be there at present.
But Larry, don’t you also do paid advising for self-supported bike tourists in Italy? Seems that could fit into Adventure nicely.
“Paid advising” has not been something we’ve done. What often happens is someone contacts us with a logistical nightmare of an itinerary they created and wants US to map it out for them. The on-site work this requires would be insanely expensive were we to do it to our standards and since “good enough” is NOT good enough for us, we usually give them a bit of free advice and wish them good luck. I was thinking more that the tent and camp-stove’rs might figure out that’s not a good idea in Italy and decide to treat themselves to hotels, beds and someone with a van to haul their luggage, either self-guided or joined by us?
Ok, I wasn’t sure what you meant by “self guided tours”. I went back and re-read your web site. The self guided tours are clearly NOT of the long wheelbase and pannier variety, but of the short wheelbase and hotel variety.
At my age, that actually sounds a lot better than KOI (Kampgrounds of Italy) and a tent!
Larry, Adventure Cyclist isn’t dependent upon advertising — it’s a member-supported publication — but they do write up lots of adventures outside the United States and run ads for other tour companies, like Iron Donkey, Alaska Bicycle Tours, Ciclismo Classico, America By Bicycle and others.
Who knows? You might find yourself some new customers there, the sort who prefer supported travel to roughing it.
Me, I like the magazine for a number of reasons. For starters, they pay me. Plus it attracts some solid writers and shooters. And it’s not toy-focused — it’s all about getting there by bike.
Member-supported or not, they’ve hit us up regularly to advertise there and up ’till now I’ve thought since they run their own guided and self-guided tours – why should we support competition, especially when I’ve seen some less-than-positive stuff about cycling vacations similar to ours over the years? But as I wrote, if they’ll actually hire and pay YOU, perhaps it’s time for another look? And as Khal wrote, at some point the “romance” of sleeping in a bag inside a flapping tent starts to wear off, so those folks might decide to join us.
Could be a caltrop, or someone lost their copper-7.
Just realized that your chanting Eloi, Eloi, wasn’t to keep the Morlocks away. Too much H G Well in my past.
Ah, yes. “The Time Machine.” A personal fave. Nothing I like better than a good time-travel story. Many’s the time I’ve wished I had access to that machinery. “Twelve Monkeys” is another good one. Heinlein ginned up a few, too, but they were all kinda creepy.
Have no fear that a Bike Friday product will hold up under a fat bastard. PAC Tour runs a “Bike Friday” camp one week of their 6 weeks of camps in So. AZ. I was along one year (on a “big wheel” bike as they call it) and got quite and education on what was possible with those tiny tire bikes.
One afternoon they got two guys around 250 lbs EACH on a Bike Friday Tandem. 500 lbs of cyclist and boy did they haul ass downhill. Of course climbing up the back way to Bisbee (past the Lavendar Mine) was a WHOLE ‘nother story.