Time Passes

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.