Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to flat you.
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?
Thanks to everyone who high-fived this old dog after he hit the VeloDoor a-runnin’.
Mostly a scribe doesn’t hear from the readership unless he’s managed to piss them off somehow. This will certainly come as a surprise to longtime readers, but despite my gentle demeanor I myself have received the odd bit of criticism for an occasional lighthearted, vicious attack on All We Hold Dear. So to read all these cheerful comments on my New Year’s Day post really made my day. Kicked 2012 off on a high note.
Today I had planned to celebrate my deeper embrace of underemployment with a long ride, but quickly got tangled up in e-mails, phone calls and social media. So instead Herself and I went for a short run in a nearby park.
It was the kind of January day the Greater Bibleburg Chamber of Commerce wishes it could bottle and sell at single-malt prices — beautiful blue skies, temps in the 40s and nearly windless — and we discussed strategies for moving forward as we … well, moved forward. Very, very slowly. Ask anyone who’s seen me run. So stay tuned.
Meanwhile, the Old Guy Who Gets Fat In Winter is still very much alive, as is the Mud Stud, who hangs around Bicycle Retailer and Industry News. And if you prefer bicycle travel to industry news, I crank out the occasional piece for Adventure Cyclistmagazine, too. Thanks to Marc Sani and Mike Deme for keeping kibble in the dish.
But for pure filth — rock-bottom, unadorned snark — this is the place to be.
So thanks again for getting the gags, and I toast each and every one of you. May the road rise up to meet you in a fashion that does not require cosmetic facial surgery.
You better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone. …
I started the New Year off with a bang, resigning my temporary commission as a junior officer aboard the sinking ship VeloNews.com.
It may sound impulsive, but it was a decision long in the making. I had been with VeloNews (now Velo) for nearly 23 years, since March of 1989, and had been a contributor to VeloNews.com for some nine years, eventually rising to the lofty post of online editor at large. As the MarketSpeak® has it, I felt some “ownership” of the “brand” and wasn’t eager to simply walk away as some equally frustrated friends and colleagues had done, among them former editor in chief Ben Delaney and former web editor Steve Frothingham.
Your Humble Narrator back in the mid-1990s, working a road race for VeloNews.
But VeloNews.com has been rudderless since Steve moved back to Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, and though I agreed to fill in as web editor five days a week until a replacement unit was located, acquired and installed, I was a having an unusually difficult time getting management at Competitor Group Inc. in San Diego to commit to a basic two-days-a-week contract for Your Humble Narrator as 2012 approached.
Contractual squabbles were nothing new. Rassling management over contracts became an annual Feat of Strength after CGI acquired Inside Communications Inc. back in 2008, and excising toxic bits from their reams of legalese was like unbuilding Frankenstein’s monster.
But before there had always been a web editor or magazine editor standing between me and San Diego. We would exchange pleasantries (“Fuck no, I ain’t signing that. And where’s my check for January?” “Didn’t get paid again, eh? Why don’t you go on one of your pain-in-the-ass strikes?”) and eventually the exasperated intermediary and I would reach a deal that graciously permitted me another year’s earnings (unless CGI woke up cranky one day and decided to sack me), the retention of my copyrights and some limited freedom of speech.
This time around the website was on its own for budgetary purposes, the digital herd had been ruthlessly thinned and I stood alone against the Pirates of Mira Mesa. Repeated inquiries as to future employment were met with: “We’ll take it up with the new cap’n soon’s he’s piped aboard, matey. Now grab hold of an oar, the admiral wants to water ski.”
Well. Call me paranoid, but having seen the cutlasses come out for Charles Pelkey, John Wilcockson and other more senior members of the crew, I was starting to hear the sound of whetstones on steel in my sleep. So rather than wait to walk the plank, I used it as a diving board and went over the side.
The coward’s way out? Maybe. Truth is, I just didn’t feel like fighting tooth and nail for half a chance at the dubious privilege of repurposing magazine content, rewriting press releases and picking a new featured image in an old photo gallery to make it look fresh. I’m too old a salt for that. It’s cabin boy’s work.
I hate to leave the boyos in Boulder behind, facing heavy weather, but I won’t miss the buccaneers in San Diego. It’s a Bounty full of Blighs and not a Christian in the lot.
Mad Blog Media 