So I'm not very good at updating this thing, am I... Today is November 26th, the day after Thanksgiving and the 24th day after election day. Hey, at least it's half over... I haven't written since August because of, um, well, I don't know. I'm lazy. Or maybe I've been paying attention to the things I'm supposed to be doing, like schoolwork. Nah!
Speaking of school, I've been commuting to class on my bike two or three days a week (I only have class three days a week). My house is 9.7 miles from school, so it's a nice 45 minute ride if I don't hurry. I think my fastest time was 33 minutes, but that was busting my ass and not carrying a pack. It makes me feel good to be doing something real about the parking problem at URI. As with most colleges where the majority of students commute, parking is a disaster here. You lay out $100 a year for a parking permit, but the school oversubscribed them so it's tough to find a spot within 15 minutes walk of my building. There are easily twice as many cars as there are parking places. If I don't arrive by 7:30 in the morning I have to park WAY far away. So far away, in fact, that it is about ten minutes faster to ride my bicycle to school than it is to drive if you consider door-to-door times. That's not really the reason I ride, but it is a fun fact to share with my car-burdened friends.
The weather is getting cold now, what with it being November in New England. As a result, I've invested in all this roady commuter crap I swore I'd never get. I have a windbreaker, but that's no big deal except for it's all trim fitting and bright orange. It's the shoe covers I'm talking about. I always believed that only dorks and racer-head poseurs wore shoe covers, but now I have them. What does that make me? Dork for sure. It's worth the self inflicted humiliation, though, because my feet really do stay warm now. Combined with my lobster-claw gloves and my skully, I'll be able to ride to school all winter.
The down side to where I live now is that there isn't anywhere within easy riding distance to go mountain biking. When I lived in Providence, it was a quick 15 or 20 minutes up to Lincoln Woods. Lincoln is a great place to work on skills, not so great for XC cruising. Anyway, it was easy to ride up there and rip around for an hour or two, then ride home. No driving, no feeling of guilt or absurdity over DRIVING somewhere to ride a bike. In Narragansett, there are no such easy opportunities and as a result I haven't ridden my mountain bike much. This makes me a little sad because I know my mad Lincoln skillz have atrophied. Yeah, skillz with a "Z." I was getting comfortable with winging myself off of two or three foot drops at the end of the summer, but I'm pretty sure it will be back to square one on that. I actually drove my bike and myself out to Arcadia back in early October, right before hunting season, but it felt weird. It takes 40 minutes to get there because of traffic, and once there I always get lost. I'm sure there's cool, challenging stuff in Arcadia, but I don't feel I can justify that much driving to access it.
After some thought, I've decided to deal with the skill atrophy issue by setting my mountain bike up for trials riding. I bought a pair of Kona Jackshit pedals from Cambria Bike online, and it's easy to drop the seat. I've also put some fat-assed tires on, a Nokian NBX 2.3 in the front and a Specialized Enduro Pro 2.3 in the back. I'm slowly turning my bike into a freeride hardtail... Actually, if I put a decent fork on it I think it would be o.k., but that's money I don't have right now. Where was I... Oh, trials. There is a park full of benches and ledges and stairs a half mile from my house. There is also a natural boulder area nearby. I plan on taking advantage of these spots to rebuild my skillz so I'll be able to ride for real when I move back to Connecticut.
Well, that's all for now. Keep riding, for this is the best way to subvert the machinery of the AutoOilRightWingNutJob Complex that the other half of the country has put in power. You can clearly see what a clusterfuck they've gotten us into when you're riding along, wind in your eyes, trailing an H2 with a "Pray to End Abortion" sticker on it. Yeah, you understand how the world works, and you are right to feel obligated to extend your middle finger to the idiot in the wannabe assault vehicle. Visit www.FUH2.com for inspiration, and have fun.
Friday, November 26, 2004
Monday, August 30, 2004
eBags Sucks!
Recently, while preparing for a bike ride, I discovered a hole in the bladder of my hydration pack. I was upset because hey, nobody needs a hole in their bladder. On the other hand, the bladder had lasted through five years of almost daily use and cushioning several back-first crash landings. Hooray for Platypus, but I digress. I need a new bladder for my pack. The problem is that I don't think they make Ultimate hydration packs anymore, and none of the replacement bladders I could find are narrow enough to fit my pack. Shit!
So, I realize it might be time to replace the whole pack. I never really liked my Ultimate pack anyway, but I hate having to buy new stuff when I'm broke. I took a trip down to my LBS and discovered that a Camelbak Lobo would be the perfect pack for me. Problem was they cost $65. "I can do better!" I thought, so I looked online. Sure enough, there's my new pack on eBags for $44 and free shipping. Order goes in, everything will be great, I can't wait.
Time passes, the expected delivery date comes and goes, no pack shows up. I didn't even get the promised email confirmation of shipping. I waited an extra day for good measure, and then I waded into the Customer Service department at eBags. It took them a day and a half to respond to my inquiry, only to tell me the color I wanted was out of stock. No problem, just send me the other color. Four more days elapse before word comes back that they're out of all of them, regardless of color. Fuck!
So, what's the point here? I don't know, but I'll never order from eBags again. They blow, and I encourage them to go fuck themselves. Failing that, they should at least improve their customer service so that they might address customer problems in a more timely manner. Assholes...
Anyway, two and a half weeks have elapsed since I busted my bladder, and now I'm back at square one. I guess I'll have to lay out for the full price pack and just suck it up. Grrr...
So, I realize it might be time to replace the whole pack. I never really liked my Ultimate pack anyway, but I hate having to buy new stuff when I'm broke. I took a trip down to my LBS and discovered that a Camelbak Lobo would be the perfect pack for me. Problem was they cost $65. "I can do better!" I thought, so I looked online. Sure enough, there's my new pack on eBags for $44 and free shipping. Order goes in, everything will be great, I can't wait.
Time passes, the expected delivery date comes and goes, no pack shows up. I didn't even get the promised email confirmation of shipping. I waited an extra day for good measure, and then I waded into the Customer Service department at eBags. It took them a day and a half to respond to my inquiry, only to tell me the color I wanted was out of stock. No problem, just send me the other color. Four more days elapse before word comes back that they're out of all of them, regardless of color. Fuck!
So, what's the point here? I don't know, but I'll never order from eBags again. They blow, and I encourage them to go fuck themselves. Failing that, they should at least improve their customer service so that they might address customer problems in a more timely manner. Assholes...
Anyway, two and a half weeks have elapsed since I busted my bladder, and now I'm back at square one. I guess I'll have to lay out for the full price pack and just suck it up. Grrr...
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Ouch
Today is Wednesday and my ass hurts. On Monday I fell off my mountain bike in Lincoln Woods and landed squarely on my tailbone. It was the dumbest thing because I was just spinning along, climbing a fire road sprinkled with baby heads. I've been up this way many times before. I guess I spaced out or something, but both my tires hit rocks at the same time. I felt the fork compress as the back tire spun out, and down I went. It happened quickly. Usually I fall well, laying the bike down and rolling onto the ground to spread the impact, but this time I fought it and landed awkwardly. Ass to rock impact, but at least it was a round rock instead of a sharp rock.
Tailbone shots are a special kind of pain. It seems like every muscle in my body is attached to the sore spot so it hurts to do just about everything. Yesterday it was bad enough that I would just break out laughing at my misfortune and that would only make the pain worse. Laugh, swear, laugh more, swear more, laugh, cry. Today is a little better, I can move around more easily and I think I'll jump on my road bike today and see how it feels.
I have three bikes. My mountain bike is a 2001 GT Avalanche 1.0. My road bike is a 2004 Specialized Allez Sport. I also have an old beater bike, a 1990 Trek 830 with a bunch of mismatched parts on it. Almost every day I battle internally against the commercial forces washing over the bike industry. One obviously can only ride one bike at a time, and I have three, yet I want more bikes. I wish I had a trials bike, a big "freeride" (I don't really like that word... everything is freeriding unless somebody is pointing a gun at you and telling you where to go...) bike, a cruiser bike, etc. etc.. The magazines tell me I need the newest, the greatest, or the next, and I believe it. I hate that, but I love it too. It's like my own little fantasy world but it doesn't involve dirty, socially taboo stuff. The problem is that a) I'm a grad student and therefore broke, and b) I can't reconcile always wanting new bikes with my environmental/life philosophy of living lightly on the planet and being comfortable with as little as possible. I go through cycles of trying to rationalize putting another two thousand dollars on my credit card and then feeling bad about even thinking about it when I should be saving my money for a ring for my girlfriend and who needs four bikes anyway. Maybe I should just ride the bikes I have more. Then I would become a better rider and would fall on my ass less.
Tailbone shots are a special kind of pain. It seems like every muscle in my body is attached to the sore spot so it hurts to do just about everything. Yesterday it was bad enough that I would just break out laughing at my misfortune and that would only make the pain worse. Laugh, swear, laugh more, swear more, laugh, cry. Today is a little better, I can move around more easily and I think I'll jump on my road bike today and see how it feels.
I have three bikes. My mountain bike is a 2001 GT Avalanche 1.0. My road bike is a 2004 Specialized Allez Sport. I also have an old beater bike, a 1990 Trek 830 with a bunch of mismatched parts on it. Almost every day I battle internally against the commercial forces washing over the bike industry. One obviously can only ride one bike at a time, and I have three, yet I want more bikes. I wish I had a trials bike, a big "freeride" (I don't really like that word... everything is freeriding unless somebody is pointing a gun at you and telling you where to go...) bike, a cruiser bike, etc. etc.. The magazines tell me I need the newest, the greatest, or the next, and I believe it. I hate that, but I love it too. It's like my own little fantasy world but it doesn't involve dirty, socially taboo stuff. The problem is that a) I'm a grad student and therefore broke, and b) I can't reconcile always wanting new bikes with my environmental/life philosophy of living lightly on the planet and being comfortable with as little as possible. I go through cycles of trying to rationalize putting another two thousand dollars on my credit card and then feeling bad about even thinking about it when I should be saving my money for a ring for my girlfriend and who needs four bikes anyway. Maybe I should just ride the bikes I have more. Then I would become a better rider and would fall on my ass less.
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
The Beginning
O.k., this is new to me so it'll probably suck for awhile.
Why "The Cycle?" That's easy. I spend alot of time thinking about riding bicycles. I spend alot of time riding bicycles. Bikes are cool, and they will save us from all of the social and environmental problems around us. This thought leads to the other part of "The Cycle," the part that includes life, philosophy, politics, news, art, beer, whatever else is on my mind. Everything ebbs and flows, comes and goes, begins and ends and begins anew. Round and round we go in a giant cycle of, um, everything. What? I don't know. I'm just using bike riding as an excuse to write about everything else in the world. We'll see how it goes.
Why "The Cycle?" That's easy. I spend alot of time thinking about riding bicycles. I spend alot of time riding bicycles. Bikes are cool, and they will save us from all of the social and environmental problems around us. This thought leads to the other part of "The Cycle," the part that includes life, philosophy, politics, news, art, beer, whatever else is on my mind. Everything ebbs and flows, comes and goes, begins and ends and begins anew. Round and round we go in a giant cycle of, um, everything. What? I don't know. I'm just using bike riding as an excuse to write about everything else in the world. We'll see how it goes.
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