Retro-grouchery

September 24, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

I don't know why that hand is in there. I bet this bike can stand on its own, drink a couple of Belgian ales and maybe jump over the moon like Elliott's bike in "E.T." (Stolen from tech editor Zack Vestal at VeloNews.com.)

Katie Compton, the Beast of Bibleburg, blew everyone’s doors off at CrossVegas last night. I was reading a piece on her crazy quilt of sponsorships yesterday — Stevens frameset, Dugast rubber, Zipp wheels, bars and cranks, SRAM Red drivetrain — and scoping out all that bike jewelry got me to thinking.

Remember the good old days, when a cyclo-cross bike was a beast of burden instead of a thoroughbred?

Like a lot of us, I rode my first few cyclo-crosses on a mountain bike. My first “real” ‘cross bike was a steel Specialized Sirrus road frame that a framebuilder acquaintance in Santa Fe doctored with a torch, adding cantilever braze-ons, removing the chainstay bridge and shifting the seatstay bridge up a bit. My second was a real ’cross bike, a neon-yellow steel Pinarello with bar-end shifters, MA-40 rims and Wolber 28 Cross Extra rubber, Weinmann cantis and a Shimano 600 drivetrain straight out of the gack box like the Sirrus before it, ’cause I knew from experience that it was going to take a beating.

I got a little more disco as my skills and resources improved, stepping up to a series of Steelman framesets in Excell, Reynolds 853 and Dedacciai zero-uno, his venerable CC first of all, followed by a succession of Eurocrosses. Instead of generic Shimano cantis I stepped up to Paul’s Neo-Retro and Touring brakes. And I raced at least once with a Voodoo Loa ti’ bike sporting a one-off Marzocchi suspension fork and a pair of Zipp 530 carbon clinchers, because I got ’em for free from Andy Ording and thus wasn’t emotionally invested in their long-term viability.

But after a while I started to feel like a fat bald guy driving a Maserati in hopes of picking up chicks.

First to go were the tubies, ’cause I got sick of losing a pair every weekend to the Chatfield Reservoir goatheads. The ti’ bike went away shortly thereafter (though I held onto the oddball fork). And the Zipps went back on the time-trial bike where they belong.

My final race, in 2004, was on my Reynolds 853 Eurocross, with a clincher wheelset and no spare bike, not even spare wheels; I rode to the course from the DogHaus, and when I flatted midrace, I replaced the tube and rode back home.

If I were to stage a comeback, I’d do it on that bike. Like me, it has a ton of miles, dents, dings, scratches and scrapes, but somehow it keeps on keeping on. I wouldn’t trade it for a six-pack of Stevenses. No disrespect intended.

But still, damn. Look at this thing. I’d hang it on a wall and bow to it six times a day, maybe pray to it. But race on it?

Housecats gone bad

February 8, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 1 Comment

Cyclo-cross, schmyclo-cross, lemme sleep.

I used to be hard core. Lately I’m all brittle exterior and soft interior, like a Tootsie Pop, but not as sweet. Why, there was a time not so long ago that if the temperature rose to the freezing point, I was out the door like a congressman fleeing the vice squad. I had my own private cyclo-cross course, and at 8800 feet, too. Used sunning rattlesnakes for obstacles and carried a pistol just in case the course decided to redesign itself in a hostile fashion.

Somewhere along the road from there to here I turned weaker than 7-Eleven coffee. Maybe it was moving from the mountains back to town, or switching my pet preference from dogs to cats. Dogs must go out, we will go out, let me out, for the love of God. Cats find the one sunny spot in the house and cover it like Sherwin-Williams. Fuck a bunch of winter, I shit in a box. What’s t’eat around here, anyway?

But there must be some small, vestigal hint of a whiff of mutt in me somewhere, because today I ventured out for 90 minutes on the Eurocross despite a high pegged right at freezing and a dampish breeze that took the wind chill 8 degrees lower. Rode the sonofabitch over to Palmer Park and zipped around the single-track, skirting the occasional icy bits when possible and generously yielding trail to various porky nitwits sporting headphones and unleashed dogs.

Then I rolled home, whipped up a skillet full of peppers, potatoes, chicken, parsley, onion and garlic, topped it with some hard-boiled eggs, and gobbled it all down, refusing to share so much as a single solitary nibble with the housecats. Stand back and let the big dog eat, you pussies.

Dog day afternoon

February 5, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments

Gave myself the day off in honor of William S. Burroughs’ birthday. I can do that, because Mad Dog Media is a one-dog shop. Unsnap the leash and off I go.

It being 60-something and sunny, I broke out Old Reliable, my Reynolds 853 Steelman Eurocross, and rode the trail to Fountain and back. It’s about a two-hour U-turn, if you throw in a few didos on the return leg, like a lap of Monument Valley Park for extra vitamin-D absorption.

A couple largish downed trees this side of Highway 85 require a quick zig and zag; a short pair of run-ups around a washed-out concrete climb follow. Other than that it’s smooth sailing. A guy could do it on a road bike. Not me, though. Not as long as I have five ‘cross bikes taking up space in the garage. Put those fat bastards to work and save the skinny rubber for the streets.

Ike got a fine crop of tulips to keep her company last spring.

A bit of drama greeted me on my return home. An elderly neighbor needed an assist with her equally aged greyhound, which has been having balance issues and today lost control of its front legs. Being creakily past my own prime I commiserated briefly and then helped load the dog into her car for a trip to the vet. She was expecting bad news and got it. The vet prescribed a dose of steroids, but confessed it was a delaying action, the equivalent of locking up the cantis on a sandy descent. You may slow that long downhill slide but you ain’t gonna stop it.

Upset me, it did, in part because I have a beloved cat — Ike, a.k.a. Chairman Meow — buried in the back yard. I miss any one of my departed animal pals more than all of my deceased relatives. So I showered the grit off and went to Trinity Brewing Company for a couple of IPAs and a bowl of their mac’ and cheese. I’d never been there, and the online reviews were not encouraging, but I was not in the mood for my usual haunts, so I took a chance and it paid off. Good beer — the brewmaster used to whip up the popskull over at Bristol Brewing — and a friendly, attentive staff. Just what the doctor — or, in this case, the vet — ordered.

Stupor Sunday

February 1, 2009 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

Another month, another gray, chilly morning. February differs from January just how, exactly? Oh, yeah — it’s shorter.

No Yanks atop the podium at the frozen crit the Dutch called ‘cross worlds, though homegirl Katie Compton got the bronze in the women’s race. The men’s race looked like a Belgian team time trial. Memo to UCI: If there’s no mud on your skinsuit and shoes at the finish line, it is not cyclo-cross.

Thirty-six and windy here in Bibleburg, yet my man Dr. Schenkenstein is already out and about, logging miles. At some point he’s bound to turn up on my stoop, wearing everything he owns and calling me a pussy because I like to ease gradually into my Sundays, like a fat man getting into a hot bath. God doesn’t even get up until noon, so I try not to incur His wrath by starting a ride any earlier than 10 a.m. With everything that’s going on in the world I figure He needs all the sleep He can get.

I understand there’s some lesser sporting event taking place today in Tampa. Alas, lacking cable or satellite we will be denied the dubious pleasure of play, commercial, play, commercial, play, commercial. Talk about your ad infinitum. We get ABC, CBS, PBS and suddenly a couple other off-brand digital channels after scoring a flat-panel TV for a joint solstice present. No NBC. And anyway, it’s wrong to watch TV in daylight hours, unless cyclo-cross — real cyclo-cross, with mud, weather and lots of running — is on.

‘It’s a kid’s course’

January 31, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

Your humble narrator in an earlier incarnation, racing at Chatfield. That's a titanium Voodoo Loa with V-brakes, a suspension fork and Zipp wheels. I had delusions of grandeur.

That’s how Dutch junior Lars van der Haar described the course for today’s world cyclo-cross championships. “It’s not cyclo-cross,” said Van der Haar in a post-race chat with VeloNews‘ Charles Pelkey. “Cyclo-cross takes much more than just a fast start. Barriers, mud, more than one run-up … that’s cyclo-cross.”

Got to concur, Lars. I think ‘cross has become a good deal less interesting since the UCI began restricting a promoter’s natural urge to inflict pain and suffering on his customers. Flyovers and beer tents are all very well and good, but l like insane shit like long, gooey run-ups and multiple dismounts to showcase the riders’ skills at getting on and off the bike.

Chris Grealish was the master of that sort of Colorado course design back in the day, when I still raced. I remember courses at Chatfield State Park that included creek crossings, slaloms through the aspens and muddy run-ups so steep that a guy practically had to toss his bike over the top and climb up after it. Snow was good because it covered the goat-heads.

At one race the dump was so deep that the promoter shoveled a short section for a start-finish area, ordered a LeMans-style start with bikes stuffed into a ragged line in the snow, and sent us off for a couple painful laps of mostly running. I think I got second that time, behind the long-legged Mark Lance; it was one of my few respectable results from that time.

In fact, barring 1999, my one solid season, if the course didn’t call for a ton of running, I’d never see the front of the race until the leaders lapped me. So you’ll understand why I like it dirty. No goo, no glory.