Looks like a god damn Tim Burton movie out there this morning.
The secret word for today — and for the rest of the week, it seems — is “cold.”
The weather wizards say temps in the Land of Enchantment should be 15 to 20 degrees below normal for a while, which means those of us who review bicycles for our bacon and beans will need to bundle up, if only to protect our bones against the inevitable spills.
And no, I’m not talking about spilled beverages.
Also, moreover, furthermore, and too, it’s snowing again.
And now, the good news: Al Qaeda is making a comeback. I’m starting to wonder whether Stan Lee is scripting geopolitics for Disney. We’ll know for sure if Hydra suddenly pops up on Exile Island, led by the Red Skull.
I was using the other hand to punch the snotsicles out of my beard.Heated fenders. Has anyone invented heated fenders yet?
The first ride on the Salsa Marrakesh is in the books. You may be amused to recall that Marrakesh is in the Kingdom of Morocco, where the average temperature would have the devil pitching a bitch and snow pops round about as often as democracy.
There is a “ski town” about 45 miles south of Marrakesh, in the Atlas Mountains. I’ve been saving all my money to take you there.* But its chairlift is a donkey and I hear the Mexican food sucks.
My rigid Jones 29er plays a lovely moonlight sonata.
A neighbor couple had invited us to join them for a full-moon Christmas ride on the Sandia foothills trails (.pdf), and while the field was halved by start time last night — his wife was recovering from a cold, and mine thought her headlight gravely underpowered — Phil and I soldiered on.
Alas, the moon likewise declined to participate, and my lighting system also proved less than illuminating (an elderly, AAA-powered trinity of Cateye Opticube HL-EL450, Princeton Tec EOS, and Princeton Tec Remix). Happily, Phil was content to lead the way with his new Cygolite, so we got around and about without issue.
My “lighting system.” Not pictured: The Princeton Tec Remix I wore as a headlamp.
I was reminded how much fun it is to do something different, and how good this can be for the bike industry, because you discover how woefully clapped out your equipment is.
There was the lighting issue, for starters. Also, my old Pearl Izumi winter gloves seem to have gone walkabout in the move, I have no clear lenses for my prescription Rudy Project Rb-3 cycling glasses, and my decrepit Kucharik toe covers no longer cover all 10 toes.
And which bike to ride? I ride these trails on a cyclo-cross bike in the daylight, but that seemed unwise in the dark, with old snow and ice likely to be lurking in any north-facing bits. The old DBR Axis TT mountain bike seemed an ideal choice, until I found a big hop in the rear tire that no amount of inflation, deflation, removal, replacement, and yanking this way and that could resolve.
The Co-Motion Divide Rohloff? That would have been fun, but I didn’t fancy fixing a rear-wheel flat in the freezing dark (the Rohloff hub and Gates belt drive complicate that chore a bit, and I was out of practice).
Thus, the Jones. It’s the perfect bike for this sort of outing. Big-ass Maxxis Ardent 29×2.4 tires, a Shimano XT drivetrain with a low end of 19.3 gear inches for creeping through icy rockpiles in the inky blackness, and Avid BB7 discs with 200/180mm rotors for knocking down the MPH as necessary. Plus you could hang 12 headlights on that H-bar, if you had ’em, which I did not.
Speaking of which, I’m taking recommendations for a reasonably priced headlight. Sound off in comments if you feel so inclined. And a happy Boxing Day to one and all.
It doesn’t look that cold out there, but it is. Can’t you see the tree shivering?
All right, which one of you wisenheimers swiped my sun-splashed Southwestern desert?
It never got over freezing today — the average for the day is supposedly in the mid-40s — and I was very much not interested in logging miles on any of the review bikes in the stable.
Instead, I made soup. That’s exercise, right? All that washing, peeling, chopping and stirring?
Sure it is.
The candidates for the GOP pestilential nomination will be making something else entirely in Vegas this evening, something not unlike a shit soufflé, but I will not be watching. Life is already far too short for that sort of cookery, even with the media trying to whip up an MMA steel-cage death match out of what amounts to a clone army of your drunk Uncle Buster carpet-bombing Christmas dinner.
Speaking of bombing, Los Angeles collectively soiled itself today over what is now believed to be a hoax involving attacks on school districts in large cities.
Thank God Al Gore hadn’t invented the Innertubez when I was a malchick. If my droogies and I had had smartphones back in the day, school would have been in session like, never, dude, sir.
“OK, hold the bong for a second and check this out. Hey, how do you spell ‘Klingon bird of prey?'”
Mad Blog Media 
