Man, fall is here with a vengeance. When Dennis the Menace and Dr. Schenkenstein popped round this morning at the start of a cyclo-cross ride, The Menace was sporting ear warmers and a jacket while the good Herr Doktor was in full winter kit, complete with tights.

I was supposed to join them, but there were Saturday-night leftovers to be posted on VeloNews.com and nobody around to post them other than Your Humble Narrator. That’s the bad news. The good news is that I get to ride when it’s 60-something instead of 40-something.

And the question of which ’cross bike to choose for a bracing fall outing gets easier to answer every day, thanks to evil spirits and my neglect of basic maintenance.

The Jamis Supernova has been outfitted with road rubber and press-ganged into temporary pavement duty while the road bike languishes at Old Town, thanks to Ritchey’s inability to provide a properly built fork.

The Nobilette’s Michelins are balder than I am, the red Steelman looks like a dusty relic from some pharaoh’s tomb and the mango Steelman needs brake pads that don’t go skreeeeeeeeeeeeeek when I hit the binders.

The Soma Double Cross is in fine condition, but remains in a loaded-tourer configuration. And the Voodoo Wazoo is still a foul-weather townie, with straight bars and fenders.

So my choices are buy some tires, wash a bike or endure bad noise.

Right. A road ride it is.