The more I read of the news, the more I want to ride my bicycle.
That said, holy hell, it’s getting hot again. The Heat Dome must be coming back for round two.
Another day, another century.
I was out for about three hours yesterday, down to the bosque and back again, and by noon I was starting to feel like a parched lizard in need of a shady rock.
My insulated Camelbak Podium bottles will keep water cold — OK, so, cool — for about two hours. But three hours in, what remains tastes like warm flu.
Today Herself and I got out early for our weekly leg-stretcher, about 90 minutes of pooting around in the foothills, and that was fine. Afterward we finished off the last of the tasty egg salad I made yesterday, in sandwiches of homemade bread, and I am not ashamed to say that we added some hipster potato chips to the mix.
Strictly to replace lost sodium, you understand.
Elsewhere, doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s hot, cold, up, or down, Mark Cavendish just keeps winning stages at the Tour. Dude is better at finding the hole than Ben Crenshaw.
The Paseo del Bosque was lush and green, even humid.
That’d be a good name for a band, hey? “Monsoon Weekend.” What kind of music, do you think? Blues? Shoegaze? Emo?
We’ve had a bit of a tuneup for what is supposed to be a dampish Saturday and Sunday, so when I rolled down to the bosque yesterday for the first time in quite a while I was aboard the Soma Saga disc, which still wears its fenders.
Good call. I had to surf a few puddles. And the extra weight of themoplastic mudguards, rear rack, and dynamo hub made it good training for … for … for what, exactly? I have no idea. I am neither racing nor touring. Just riding.
Taking a break in the Elena Gallegos Open Space
It was a nice change from my usual loops through the foothills, though. It’s easy to build a 20-mile circuit with 1,500 to 2,000 feet of vertical out here, but you know what they say about familiarity and contempt.
To disrupt the monotony I’ve been switching bikes — Soma Saga disc, Saga canti, New Albion Privateer, Nobilette, Co-Motion Divide Rohloff, even the Bianchi Zurigo Disc, the only alloy-and-carbon steed in the stable — but sometimes an old cowboy needs a new trail.
Speaking of which, I was doing a casual road ride with a couple other guys today. For no particular reason I was on a Steelman Eurocross, and it goes without saying that pretty much whenever a dirty alternative to asphalt presented itself I was on it like a dog on a bone.
I never jumped off and ran, though. That would’ve been rude.
Harris Cyclery — yes, that Harris Cyclery, the place where the legendary Sheldon Brown served the cycling public — is no more.
I stumbled across the news while scanning Bicycle Retailer‘s Twitter feed (I hate to admit it, but occasionally Twitter actually serves a purpose). The folks at road.cc fear for Sheldon’s voluminous website as the shop closes its doors.
As a ham-handed, thumb-fingered dolt, I’ve relied on Sheldon’s how-to archives to solve many a problem that otherwise might cause actual mechanics to laugh at me for all the wrong reasons. It would be a tragedy of cosmic proportions if this treasure trove were to vanish into the dim mists of velo-history.
Road.cc is trying to reach Sheldon’s people for the deets. Here’s hoping they plan to survive yet another sad passing.
Beats me how I wandered off into the garment district. But here we are, so let’s just roll with it.
I was searching various hard drives for background on my soon-to-be-history Voler jersey racket. Then I was telling someone the bee-in-the-jersey story from Back in the Day®, when we lived in Crusty County and VOmax made my team garb.
Anyway, at some point in the excavation I unearthed a Bicycle Retailer column from 1999 that discussed this very kit. And as Le Tour is due to kick off next month, I thought I’d brush off the dust and cobwebs and trot it out for inspection.
• • •
Maillot Jaune vs. Yellow Jersey
— The First Draws Cheers,
Bui the Other Prompts Jeers
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.— Mark Twain
With Marco Pantani, Jan Ullrich and Bjarne Riis skipping the Tour de France this year, look for yours truly to be wearing the yellow jersey.
OK, not the yellow jersey. But a yellow jersey.
Specifically, the new Team Mad Dog Media/Dogs at Large Velo jersey from VOmax Team Apparel. It just happens to be yellow. Bright yellow. A vitamin-C-megadose, kidney-stone, construction-vehicle kind of yellow, festooned with black and white graphics. Perfect camouflage for ambushing Californians from a meadow bright with dandelions.
“Bumblebee,” said my wife.
“Hope ONCE doesn’t sue you,” said VOmax’s Adam Myerson.
“Cool,” said I.
Sadly, not everyone shares my fashion sense in this rustic backwater, where “going for a ride” typically involves a hay-burning quadruped or a rusty pickup and a sixpack of Rocky Mountain brain marinade.
Trying to outrun The Man with the Hammer.
You Look … Marvelous? I badgered a couple of friends into riding with me the other day. When I rolled into their barnyard, clad in my new finery, they commenced to hooting and clutching their sides like hillbillies suffering from a bad batch of white lightning.
Mary phoned my wife, chortling, “You let him out of the house like this?” Hal, a retro-grouch prone to the literary gesture, declined to ride anywhere in the Rocky Mountain West with me unless he could wear his woodland-camo’ jumpsuit and street-hockey helmet as a counterpoint to my flashy Lycra and visored Giro.
These, mind you, are people whose idea of fun is burro racing, a form of dementia peculiar to central Colorado that causes the victim to run marathons on mountain trails while tethered to a jackass. Doesn’t matter what you wear — people are going to shake their heads when they see a guy doing that, whether he’s wearing a T-shirt and shorts or a thong bikini and spike heels.
A Jackass of a Different Color. I tell Hal and Mary that they might find a bike ride a pleasant respite from jackass rambles now and then if they’d acquire some of the new-fangled doodads that make cycling more fun — clipless pedals and shoes designed for riding rather than running; suspension forks to soften our corrugated county roads; garments that wick a little better than a beach towel. But they’d rather be uncomfortable than funny-looking.
Me, I’ve been funny-looking for years, clad in unnatural-fiber garments from Rio Grande Racing Team, Sangre de Cristo Cycling Club, Rainbow Racing and Dogs at Large Velo. Each new jersey always made me feel as though I were a part of something special, somehow set apart from the other Day-Glo geeks wobbling around on two-wheelers. A racing jersey was a garment not just to be worn, but to be lived up to.
So when my sunny new DogShi(r)ts and summery weather hit the Wet Mountains more or less simultaneously, it was if a light had clicked on in a cartoon balloon over my head: “Hey, dude … if you want to look more like a banana and less like a grapefruit in that jersey, you’d better start riding your bike.”
Here Comes the Sun. First, I got a neighbor to brush-hog my rabbitbrush-clogged cyclo-cross course and started hitting it once or twice a week. Between ’crosses, I rode laps on my favorite 10-mile circuit, half pavement and half dirt, with plenty of gradual climbing. I even dusted off the road bike, which sees less daylight than Charlie Manson, and went for a few dirt-free rides to Wixson Divide and back.
It wasn’t all golden. Headwinds and hills reminded me that I’m in OK shape for a 45-year-old libelist, but entirely unfit for racing; no point in shaving the legs for a couple thousand miles yet. A cattle-truck driver played mirror tag with me on a potholed, 45-mph descent to Mackenzie Junction. And a bee who thought I was his mama dove inside my brand-new jersey on a shoulderless plummet down Highway 96, causing me to fishtail to a halt on the gravel shoulder and start peeling like a stripper on speed.
Still, there have been moments. The other day, while I was doing some artless laps on my ’cross course, a passing sport-utility vehicle slowed, then stopped; whoever was inside stayed to watch for a couple go-rounds.
I’ll never race the Tour. But for a few minutes there on a summer’s day, I was in the yellow jersey, people were watching, and no one was laughing.
The Old Guys Who Get Fat In Winter jerseys, available through June 18 at Voler.
My old man was 54 when he retired, if memory serves. It’s taking me a little longer, because I didn’t have just the one job. But I’m getting there.
Today the folks at Voler dropped a note to say they’ll be revamping their print-on-demand deal, which means cutting loose a few underperforming lines, one of which is mine. So I’ll be retired from the Old Guys Who Get Fat in Winter garment bidness as of mid-June.
It was fun while it lasted, and it lasted a lot longer than anyone expected it to, especially me. Thanks to Voler for letting me wheelsuck ’em for all these years.
In the meantime, if any of yis crave fresh kit, or know someone who does, act before June 18. After that, the Fat Guy will have sung.
Mad Blog Media 