This festive red and green guacamuffin goes great with those Christmas Eve morning tequila shots you sneak between lectures from Uncle Buster, the BLM pensioner on Social Security and Medicare who serves as the family Paul Revere re: the evils of the all-pervasive feddle gummint.
Ho ho ho, etc. Sanity Clause* has delivered an early gift — a Giant ToughRoad SLR 1.
Well, it’s more of a loaner than an actual present. But still.
The brain trust at Adventure Cyclist thought we were getting a little fixated on steel drop-bar bikes and thus I’m reviewing this alloy flat-bar bike, which starts our journey together with three strikes against it.
First, it has hydraulic disc brakes. Second, it rolls on tubeless tires. And finally, it has an aluminum frame and composite fork.
OK, so four strikes. When I was loading it into the Furster for the drive home I bashed my noggin on the rear hatch lid, which hadn’t opened all the way (old struts, cold weather). If I hadn’t been wearing a hat I’d probably have been scalped. As it is I look like a Giant PR flack took a swing at me with a pedal wrench.
But what the hell, it’s all baseball, que no? It will be interesting to take all my biases for a ride at once.
* And yeah, yeah, I know, I know: There ain’t no Sanity Clause.
Twenty-something when we walked The Boo this brisk winter morn. Yow, wow, ow, zow, etc.
Naturally, I wore my Wobbly watch cap to keep ice off my dome. Later I plan to brew a batch of my famous green chile stew to repel any sniffles, flus, and pneumonias trolling the neighborhood for the unprepared and ill-fortified. Even Che found smashing the State a formidable task when his pipes were clogged.
Betimes I fear the Ó Grádaighs intercoursed the penguin when they fled County Clare for Americay.
Were we still on the auld sod we’d be kings, or druids, lighting bonfires, rubbing up against the mistletoe and singing up the dawn on solstice instead of watching helplessly as brigands, highwaymen and landlords make off with every salable item in the Republic.
Well, maybe not. We’d probably be on the dole, trading our excess offspring for drink and stealing the neighbors’ pigs.
Still, damme if I feel like singing up the dawn on this side of the pond this morning. ‘Tis only the rising of the moon will have me tuning up so.
Yesterday I had occasion to remind myself what an utterly incompetent mountain biker I am.
A neighbor mentioned that he’d been riding his mountain bike during the recent cool spell and asked if I’d be interested in joining him, so out of an abundance of caution I lubed up the 1995 DBR Axis TT and took it out for a short trial spin on the singletrack around the Embudo dam.
Hitting the trails on a Sunday afternoon is almost always a bad idea, but my neighbor wanted to ride today, and I hadn’t experienced the old dust-buster with its 26-inch wheels, eight-speed XT/Sachs/SRAM drivetrain, and RockShox Judy SL fork in quite a spell.
After a few klicks I was reminded of why. The wheels are too small, the top tube is too long, and I find suspension confusing, like Australopithecus confronting an ATM.
In short, I was blundering along like a Republican under an FBI grilling, and it didn’t help that the trails were filled to overflowing with hikers, bikers, dog-walkers and dog-runners on bikes. I want to be funny for reasons of my own choosing, especially if there is an audience.
So if the neighbor and I make it out today I’ll probably ride my Voodoo Nakisi MonsterCrosser®, which shares a comforting rigidity with its owner-operator.
Speaking of me, I ain’t going anywhere. It seems a few of you took yesterday’s post to mean I was surrendering the blog. Nope. It was the “Mad Dog Unleashed” column in Bicycle Retailer and Industry News that got put down, not this old hound, which remains very much at large. Thus you may expect me to continue barking to no particular purpose in this space for the foreseeable future.
