This little creek was burbling just east of the Hampton Inn in east Cañon City. While I was snapping pix a coyote ambled past.
CAÑON CITY, Colo. (MDM) — Enough, it seems, was finally enough. After too many consecutive days of working for a living (however do you people bear it?), I decided to hit the road.
I had considered blasting down to Arizona, where the sunshine is plentiful and the cycling excellent … and then I started thinking about the two days of driving there, and the two days of driving back, and all the cycling I would not be doing as I herded the rice-grinder through the American Southwest. Plus that shit costs money, and the weather was not too shabby right here in Colorado.
So instead I loaded up the Soma Double Cross and rode down Highway 115 to Penrose for a soak at Dakota Hot Springs, then continued on to Cañon City, where I spent the night at the Hampton for freesies thanks to banked-up Hilton Honors points. Fifty miles with 25 pounds of crap — not bad for an old feller.
My iPhone 3GS spazzed out en route, so this morning it’s off to the AT&T store to find out how come (I suspect the SIM card got jarred loose) and then I’ll head west to Pueblo via Lake Pueblo State Park and the Arkansas River Trail.
Maybe I’ll take another soak at Dakota en route. Fifty miles with 25 pounds of crap — not good for an old feller.
The venerable Bianchi Volpe gets another makeover for 2013, including a nifty powder-blue hue and retro decals.
BIBLEBURG, Colo. (MDM) — The times, how they do change.
Once upon a time my bicycle sprang from sound racing stock — first steel, then aluminum and finally carbon fiber and/or titanium — and the gearing was as manly as the showers at Paris-Roubaix. 52/42 and 12-21 constituted the standard until I moved to Santa Fe, where I was informed that 53/39 and 12-23 were better suited to the hillier terrain.
The fabled straight block came out for pan-flat time trials, of course, and for truly insane climbs one kept a cogset with a 25 or even a 27 handy.
Tires, naturally, were 700×25 — sewups for racing, clinchers for training — though I kept a pair of 28s around for one race that involved a half-dozen miles of dirt-road climbing, and for no good reason occasionally used 19s in a race against the clock.
But this was long ago, and that man is no longer with us.
Today if the bike is not steel it’s probably not mine. And the gearing — good Lord, the gearing! — has devolved to 46/34 and 12-28 on some machines. Two sport triple-ring cranks and mountain-bike rear derailleurs.
Tires likewise have ballooned. 700×28 is now a minimum rather than a maximum, and the max has gone all the way to 700×45, though the sweet spot lies somewhere between 32 and 38.
And the coup de grace? Racks and fenders. Got ’em on three bikes. Oh, the humanity.
There were lots of utilitarian machines like mine at this year’s Interbike show, from the likes of Co-Motion, Bruce Gordon, Yuba, Pashley, Velo-Orange, Bianchi, Opus, Volagi and others. And more companies are tooling up to hang useful bits on them, such as racks and fenders, panniers and trunks, bells and whistles.
What’s behind all this? Beats me. Maybe folks are sick of watching unrepentant dopers perform impossible feats on otherworldly machinery. Perhaps someone figured out that the Adventure Cycling Association has 45,000 members. And don’t forget Peak Oil — it might be nice to have something to ride to work when the last well starts farting dust.
All I know is, if this is a trend instead of a blip, I like it. A guy gets tired of staring up at lug nuts while inhaling a snootful of fragrant particulates.
At left, the 2012 MacBook Air. At right, the 2006 MacBook.
Well, shit. After railing against Apple in comments for relentlessly driving us toward machines we can’t repair, upgrade or otherwise alter without a visit to the Genius Bar and/or the Devil, I’ve gone and bought myself a 2012 MacBook Air, the top-shelf 11-inch model.
So, yes, I’m a hypocrite. But I’m also the new owner of a pretty cool mini-laptop.
Longtime consumers of the DogS(h)ite will know that I manage a road trip about as often as does Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Still, I do manage to slip the leash from time to time, and when I do, my companion generally is my most “modern” laptop — a 6-year-old, 13.3-inch Intel MacBook that has already blown one hard drive, smells worse than Mister Boo on a hot day and weighs as much as a WorldTour pro’s bike (with the WorldTour pro sitting on it).
I can wrench a bit on this old black MacBook. Change batteries, upgrade RAM, swap hard drives and perform other basic tasks. But it’s not exactly cutting-edge technology.
And as the road test dude for Adventure Cyclist (harumph), with Interbike looming on the horizon like a carbon-fiber meteor from Hell, I do have a certain responsibility to embrace new technology, no matter how ridiculous and/or expensive. Right? Right.
Plus I had the money and Herself said OK.
So, yeah. I have a new laptop. It’s bound to make me smarter, funnier, thinner. Ask anyone in Cupertino.
Life lately seems like an extended intervals session. I could really go for some LSD. And some long, steady distance, too.
Thing is, I’ve soured on all my usual rides. Like a lot of folks, I regularly retrace a number of short, well-worn paths dictated by time constraints. And familiarity, as usual, breeds contempt. There is a road not taken. I’m certain of it. And it’s out there, waiting.
By this time last year I already had one bike overnight under my bibs.
It would be refreshing to hop on a bike and just go somewhere. Ride until the legs complain, then stop for a while. Eat a meal prepared by someone else, sleep in a strange bed, take a bite of breakfast and the morning’s news in some java shop and then get right back after it.
Can you tell that “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” were among the first books I took to heart? Subsequent readings and re-readings of “The Grapes of Wrath,” “Travels With Charley,” “On the Road,” “The Dharma Bums,” “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” “Lonesome Dove” and “Blue Highways” have only fertilized my tinkerish tendencies, rooted in a military brat’s peripatetic upbringing and a perpetual short-timer’s attitude as regards traditional employment.
I had hoped to squeeze in a short cycle tour this summer. Nothing ridiculous, no cross-country excursions, just a few days spent rolling Colorado roads and trails to flush out the headgear, hit the reset button, reboot. But one thing or another kept getting in the damn’ way. Exploding toilets. Spousal travel. Veterinary issues. And No. 1 on the hit parade? Work.
As a professional paranoid I try to keep a number of revenue streams flowing — writing, editing, website wrangling, cartooning — knowing that the slightest change in the journalistic climate could transform one or more of them into a bone-dry arroyo. Thus, though I don’t have a job per se, free time is surprisingly hard to come by. It seems something always needs doing.
So between extended bouts of doing, I finally dialed the deal down to what the Adventure Cycling Association calls a “bike overnight.” Ride somewhere, spend the night, and ride home. I did one last year, right around this time, to Pueblo and back. The upcoming week or two seemed perfect. The Vuelta a España remains ongoing, but the Colorado State Fair is history, Labor Day will be done and dusted and I don’t have a print deadline until after Interbike.
Alas, as the Yiddish proverb has it, “Man plans, God laughs.” The last item in our downstairs-bathroom restoration is supposed to arrive on Wednesday, followed by the plumber on Thursday, and I have to work on Saturday and Sunday. Plus Herself has another professional road trip queued up that will require someone to assume responsibility for critter management. Guess who.
Ah, well. It seems I also have another bike inbound for review, an All-City Cycles Space Horse, so duty calls. The two of us may not see as much new country as Captain Call and the Hell Bitch, but I’m hoping to get bucked off and bitten less often.
Oh, Lord, is this ever looking like a long week. A deadline with one outfit, technical difficulties with another, and Herself dashing from one end of the state to another like a turpentined ferret, leaving me in charge of the menagerie. Plus I am not on my way to Sea Otter. Party time this is not.
That said, the forecast calls for more or less spectacular weather for a few days, so I’ll try to pedal a few pounds off the Large Irish Ass between chores. What the hell? It’s not like I’m gonna be doing any post-Pulitzer interviews on MSNBC. When the hell is that outfit going to devise a category for Gratuitous Use of Filthy Language In a Blog Devoted To No Particular Purpose?
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