I accidentally entered a bike race

“Withnail & I.”  Classic film by any measure.  Yet almost entirely ignored Stateside.  Everybody’s loss, I suppose.  Because the “we’ve gone on holiday by mistake” line is only one of what seems like a billion killer lines from the movie.  Quotable films extend beyond Will Ferrell’s fare, you guys.

And that’s the scene that conjured up in my head this morning.  This morning that came far too quickly after a night celebrating a friend’s birthday the night before.  The night before wasn’t conducted with a great deal of consideration of what this Sunday morning was going to bring.  It was, after all, a friend’s milestone birthday and we were going to celebrate it properly.  A catered dinner, wine that gushed from many bottles, coolers filled to brim with PBR, and a firepit out back that welcomed everyone outside on a frosty late-summer night.  And of course, there were cigars.  Of course.

So I got to bed at around 1am only to have to wake up around 5:30am.  Why?  Because weeks earlier, I had signed up for the Tour de Greenwich 20-mile ride.  What the fuck.

So, groggy, tired, and carrying a mild hangover, I hitched a ride with some friends up to Greenwich for this ride.  I didn’t mind too much because it’s only a 20-mile ride, and it’ll be a casual morning ride.  I was forewarned of a “nasty climb” at one point of the ride, but I shrugged it off as no big deal.  I mean, it’s not Alpe d’Huez, it’s fucking Greenwich – what’s the big deal.

When we got to the event, I looked around and saw the obligatory collection of rabid cyclists.  You know the sort.  The sort who shave their legs, who wear fully synchronized bologna suits; they ride carbon bikes that cost more than my car, and they nerd over their wattage, VO2 max, and electrolyte intake.

If somebody needs to nerd over shit that like, better them than me.  ‘Cause I fail to follow any of those cycling rules that govern such discipline in the sport.  I ride on the road with baggy shorts, I use mountain bike shoes and pedals, I rarely shift gears, and my bike has a flask holder.

So, when I rolled up to the registration table, I was given a number to pin on with the instruction, “You’re in the second heat.”

Wait, what?  What second heat?  What “heat”?!  Turns out, the Tour de Greenwich wasn’t a casual ride through Greenwich at all.  Not at all like the NYC 5 Boro ride, or any of the other individual borough tours.  This was a fucking race!

I had accidentally entered a bike race.

I looked around and started to take stock of all the people around me.  Guys were on their bikes doing short sprints in the parking lot.  Other guys had shot off to do a recce of the start of the course.  Some guys had hauled out their rollers and trainers and were spinning in place next to their cars.  I was in a sea of spandex.

Holy shit.

Realizing there was little I could do about this, I decided to that I was going to ride this the way I had planned to ride it all along – cruising around the 20 miles or so around Greenwich to admire the mansions, the huge tracts of land, and take in the morning scenery.  Fuck the race, I wasn’t prepared for a race, I wasn’t going to even try to “race” this thing.  The last bike race I did, it was a mountain bike race, and I came in about 20 minutes after everyone else.  I’m not cut out for this racing bollocks.

Around 7:45am, the second heat were called up to the start line. Thick silence all around me.  Everyone was taking this serious as shit.  I started to giggle at how out of place I was.  I took a swig of scotch from the flask on my bike.  After about 3 minutes, they sounded the start, and the rapid clack-clack-clack of everyone’s clipless pedals accompanied the forward motion.  The road went straight, then a 90-degree turn to the left, and it immediately started to climb uphill.  Oh, for fuck’s sake.

I would later learn that the entire course was effectively 10 miles uphill, then 10 miles downhill to the finish.  Since I wasn’t going to race, I slinked to the right and let everyone fly past me.  Then I cruised along the course around lovely Greenwich and took in the sights.  And worked off the hangover.  And it was magnificent.  These enormous mansions all around me.  Some mansions had adjacent cottages.  Some of those cottages had their own cottages.  There were horses, there were farms, there were houses that looked like Hogwarts.

And the whole time, I kept thinking, what’s the fucking rush, you guys?  If I had ridden faster (I couldn’t ‘cause I’m fat and slow, and was still coughing up my cigar from the night before), I’d have missed all these sights.

I took the time to slow down, wave, and say hi to all the course marshalls and cops.  No one appreciates the thankless job they do.  Instead of tucking in, I would use my brakes on the downhills because I wanted to check out the ‘hood.  The only time I put the hammer down was when I got to this so-called “nasty hill”.  And holy shit was it completely ridiculous.  I checked the map and it says that it’s a 10.6% gradient.  I don’t know what the fuck that means, but it was every bit like climbing a wall on your bike.  Straight up.  Thankfully it wasn’t a long climb, and I just pounded my legs to crank up that sumbitch.  When I got to the top, I felt like my heart and lungs were going to explode out of my chest while I simultaneously shit my pants (I didn’t).

After about an hour and quarter, I reached the finish line.  Naturally, my other friends had all finished much earlier and had posted massively respectable times.  They’d docked their bikes on top of the cars, and they were already breaking out the coffee, the donuts, and they had the music was cranking from their cars.  A genius amongst us had the foresight to bring beer.  Now, since this was 9am, the beer was flavored with maple bacon.  Breakfast beer, perfect!

So, in the end, the ride finished exactly how I had treated the whole thing.  To earn an excuse to stuff my face with donuts, drink beer at sun-up, and treat the whole thing as a goof.  Because I fucking goofed up by not realizing that I’d signed up for a goddamn race.

The next time, I ought to do a better job reading the descriptions to these things.

 

 

You know what, fuck these guys

 

“Head of Ideas.”  Check out that link.  Not a terribly long post, but so much to work with here.  It might’ve been a slightly more dignified post if it was all butthurt.  But it’s not.  It’s a fucking pathetic.  First of all, this guy actually acknowledges the job title that he’s been given: Head of Ideas.  In a supposedly creative industry, this fucking guy actually embraces the notion that he’s the grand arbiter of ideas in his shop.  “Hey, fuck the rest of you, I’m the boss of all the ideas.  The rest of you can suck it as far as ideas are concerned.”  Head of Ideas – what a colossally douchetastic title.

Second, this fuckwit is actually trying to validate the advertising industry against the motherfucking Onion.  “We don’t deserve to be called talentless.”  What a jerkoff.  Every industry on the earth is overrun with talentless fucks – why the hell should advertising be exempt of that?  If anything, advertising is probably leading the brigade.  We’re surrounded by fucking hacks.

And then he tries to formulate his argument by creating pathetic movie parodies that are neither interesting nor witty.  I don’t even know what point he’s trying to make with those examples.  I swear, whomever’s hiring his agency, fire that agency immediately.  Then fire him immediately after that.  Then fire the people who fired him because they were the probably the ones who hired him in the first place.  (Sometimes Monty Python have the right ideas for everything.)

You know what, fuck that guy.

 

 

The Ramen Burger.  Hey asshole, this is not your cronut.  And before I go any further, I just need to acknowledge this cronut bullshit.  Upon advisement from Serious Eats, I ventured to Yonkers to get what was supposed to be a pretty good knock-off of Dominique Ansel’s cronuts.  The knock-off cronut was a far more modest affair.  No cream filling, not cream ring on top.  Just a sugar coating.  And it was such a fucking letdown.  A letdown not because it was missing all that creamy goodness.  But because it tastes exactly as a cronut had been described – a buttery croissant shaped like a donut.  And because it was all buttery and fried, the thought of one of Ansel’s originals gushing with cream just fucking grossed me out.  It’s probably like 1,000 calories per cronut.  Fuck that guy and his ridiculous pastries.

But wait, back to the ramen burger.  Just look at that fucking thing.  It’s such a forced concoction of stupidity.  Ramen should not be molded into hockey pucks, asshole.  That’s not how you eat it.  You don’t see me taking a burrito and putting it in a blender to make burrito soup, do you?  Then why the fuck are you molding ramen noodles into hockey pucks?

People like ramen.  People like burgers.  I get it.  That doesn’t mean that people need to have the two together.  This is the just the most insufferable Brooklyn version of asshole food that chains like Chili’s puts out there – “Hey, people like ribs, people like cheese… let’s smother our baby back ribs with cheese!”  No, asshole, no.  There is no redeeming reason to put ramen noodles and burgers together.

You know what, fuck that guy.

 

 

AUTI5M.  That was on the Maryland license plate of a car I passed when I drove back from Baltimore this past weekend.  Before I go on, let me get this out of the way – third only to Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, Maryland drivers are colossal assholes.  You’ve got some work to do if want that podium spot, Connecticut.

Anyway, I was gunning the pedal trying to get the fuck out of the shithole that is Maryland when I passed some white 4×4 with “AUTI5M” on the license plate.  This wasn’t some state-issued special edition license plate like those celebrating your stupid fandom for the Yankees or something like that.  No, this was a vanity plate in which some jerkoff paid a premium so that his license plate would read a goddamn medical condition.

What the fuck does it even mean?  Presumably, this fuckwit’s trying to raise awareness of autism.  Fine, I get it, the intent is noble and warranted.  But the means?  Is that really the way to go about it?  Does the rule apply to other disease states also?  I mean, next we ought to have a car driving around with a license plate that reads C4NC3R, right?  How about HERP3S?  It doesn’t work, asshole.

You know what, fuck that guy.

 

 

Ten grand for a hubby.  So some account broad in some dopey agency in San Francisco can’t find a man and is putting up reward money?  How fucking original.  Read the self-satisfying tone in that letter.  How proud she is to have written something so “witty” and “interesting”.  Ugh, puke.  Everything about that letter screams “bullshit” and “go fuck yourself”, and not necessarily in that order.  If you claim to resemble Charlize Theron, and you live in a major metropolitan market (granted, it’s San Francisco, which means your typical choices in companionship are either “dipshit” or “smug douche”), you wanna tell me you can’t find a single asshole who’ll hook up with you?  How much of a nightmare must you be for no guy – NOT ONE! – to want to put up with your bullshit?  I tell you what, if Charlize Theron was a total bitch on toast and she wanted to go out with me (shut up, it could happen), I’d put in the effort.  You fucking bet I would.  You fucking bet YOU would.  Charlize fucking Theron, you guys!

So this dumb shit can’t meet anyone decent and she puts the burden – sorry, reward – on her idiot friends to hook her up?

You know what, go fuck yourself.

 

 

Me.  Short of blowing a shit load of cash I don’t have on a new 911, I can’t think of a more pathetic attempt at a midlife crisis than what I’m going through right now.  I bought myself a road bike (a two-wheeled equivalent to the hot convertible).  Next thing I know, I’m riding all over like I’ve got something to prove.  I’m trying to beat other riders up hills and shit.  Now all these obstacle course mud runs are all the rage, and I signed up for one.  At my fucking age, I could fucking die in one of these things – even if I did sign up for the most creampuff version of such races.  Which means I’ve now started running, too.  I fucking hate running.  I tried it once right after Hurricane Sandy and it was as stupid as it was painful.   Yet, despite my eternal loathing for running, I signed up for a creampuff running event and I’m now running on a almost a daily basis.  Because I can’t bear to show up to this event like a waddling schmuck.

The lengths I will go through to try and preserve some little youth I have left.  Like I’ve got shit to prove or something.  That’s a lot of horseshit, and I fucking hate myself for being this way.

You know what, fuck me.

 

 

Have beer, will ride

 

At times, a fortuitous confluence of events will lead you to crack some hare-brained scheme that seems like a good idea at the time, when in the fact…

 

Since picking up a road bike in the late winter, I’ve been plotting different ways get more saddle time, either through frequency or distance.  Or both.  Right around the same time, I became friends with a neighbor down the street who’d been into home-brewing his beer, which alerted to me to the fact that these days, in the New York City area, there are more craft beer breweries than ever.

Now I, for one, have long held a particular disdain for this whole microbrew or craft beer movement.  Mostly because it seemed in the ‘90s that every other shitty microbrewery was bottling any manner of brown effervescent swill that seemed to taste like anything but beer.  You had beers that tasted like peaches, bubble gum, chocolate, you name it.  Fuck you, that’s not beer.  Beer shouldn’t taste like cherries.  Or bacon.  Or whatever the fuck they were putting in these beers and selling them to shitheads around the country who had an appetite for candy in a bottle that could also get them fucked up.

Fuck you, beer should taste like beer.  End of argument.

What’s turned it around recently for me is how these craft beer breweries seem to have abandoned the stupid fruity flavors, and have gone back to making beers that taste like fucking beer.

So, one day, I hatched a plan in which I’d ride my bicycle up 15 miles to Elmsford, NY to visit the Captain Lawrence Brewery to taste their wares, then shoot 10 miles eastward to the Craftsman Ale House – where they not only carry over hundred types of killer beers but they also brew their own – followed by a 10 mile ride home with a slight detour to the famous Walter’s Hot Dogs joint in Mamaroneck, NY.

I also knew the inherent risks of trying to do a 35-mile bike ride with two pitstops for beers.  I needed wingmen, so I recruited two buddies with equal senses of depravity to do this ride with me.

We chose a Saturday, and set off at 11am.  I figured it would take us about an hour to ride the 15 miles to the Captain Lawrence Brewery.  We kept a decent pace, around 15mph for the first 12 miles of the ride.  As we got towards Elmsford, the massive criss-crossing array of highways and winding country roads caused me to veer off the planned route, and we were suddenly – and painfully – faced with a hot and slogging climb up a mile-long hill.  It looked like an asphalt wall.  20mph speeds ground down to about 8mph.  Gears shifted to the smallest ratios, legs churned so slowly, and halfway up, all three of us were ready to puke.  And we hadn’t even had a drop of beer yet.

When I fuck up, we all suffer.

When we reached the peak, we welcomed the downhill rush down to the brewery, which was set in some industrial park.  It didn’t look like a brewery in the traditional sense at all.  More like a warehouse with a picnic tables in the back next to a bocce ball run.

“Hey, are you guys here for the beer?” a portly fella greeted us behind a table at the entrance.  Was this the stupidest question ever asked?  Possibly.  We told him we intended to have a quick pint or two before setting off again.

“Sorry, today’s a pig roast event, and it’s $40 to get in.  You can’t get beer today without paying for the pig roast.”

Are you fucking kidding me.  If it wasn’t for that ludicrous hill we just climbed, I might’ve had enough energy in me to dish out a cockpunch or two.  We still had 20 miles to ride, the last thing I need is to stuff my fat face with pig and beer – we weren’t even halfway through our ride, for fuck’s sake.

After a lot of negotiations, they let us in to “discuss the matter with the manager.”  We walked into the tasting room, and were made to stand around for about 15 minutes before the manager graced us with his presence.  The whole while, pints are being poured liberally for pig roast patrons in front of us.  Not one drop came our way.  Not even a sympathy pour.  Fuckers.

After 15 minutes, some bespectacled hipster with a metal bar through his septum came to speak with us.  “Sorry, we’re only doing the pig roast event today.  Each of you have got to pay the $40 if you want any of the beer.  It’s all you can drink.”  Which would’ve been a stellar deal if we were going to park our asses at the bar and didn’t have another 20 miles to ride, fucker.  After going back and forth with the beer overlord, he relents – “Your only choices are to pay the $40.  Or if you want, we can sell you bottles to go.”

WHY THE FUCK DIDN’T YOU SAY THAT IN FIRST PLACE, DICK?!?!!  Why the fuck are you guys making it so hard for us to buy your fucking beer?!!

After I calmed the fuck down, we grabbed three large bottles, some cups, and settled into one of the picnic tables outside to quench our thirst.  It didn’t take long for one of their staff to come harass us about sitting at the picnic table without paying for the pig roast.  What the motherfuck.  After a brief negotiation, they left us alone to finish our beers, then off we went to the next beer stop.

While this leg of the ride was along considerably flatter terrain, it wasn’t an easy ride by any means.  The humid, midday sun was beating down hard.  The three large bottles of hoppy nectar – on empty stomachs! – weighed us down.  We coasted slowly through the next 10 miles.

At the end of the 10 miles, I promised the lads a second oasis of craft beers.  Craftsman Ale House in Harrison, NY boasted their own collection of brews in addition to hundred of other primo beers.  When we got there around 2:30pm, the place was empty, and we were more famished than buzzed.

As a stark contrast to the Captain Lawrence joint, this manager couldn’t possibly be more welcoming.  We pushed our collection of carbon fiber and titanium rides into the bar, and pulled up to three adjacent stools.

Polite banter, perusal of the massive beer list, three even more massive cheeseburgers (including one unceremoniously and viciously halved), and quick brew samples ensued.  Here’s when our next installment of downers took place: turns out that while the Craftsman Ale House brew their own beers, they do not sell their brew.  What the fuck.  So we were left with their confounding list of beers brewed by other folks… and this fucking thing on the right.

Time flies when you’re having fun and before you knew it, all three of us were getting buzzed on our phones.  Text messages galore, each with similar queries from our old ladies – “where the hell are you guys?”

Over an hour after we settled into that bar, we grabbed our bikes and started the final leg of our ride – the 10-mile slog home.  10 miles is nothing.  Correction: ordinarily, 10 miles is nothing.  It’s a ride that most cyclists can do on autopilot and barely break a sweat.  But 10 miles on belly full of hearty craft beers, cheeseburger and fries – that’s a different story.

Fuck, was that a sloooow slog home.  In our opening leg to the first brewery, we averaged just under 15mph.  On the final leg home, we average 8mph.  That is some pathetic decline in pace.

So, 6 hours later, we all finally returned back to the spot from where we started our ride.  6 hours later, we had made 2 lengthy stops for beer.  6 hours later, we had no interest in that final detour for hot dogs.  6 hours later, nothing had worked out as planned.  6 hours later, we were 3 hours late because I’m such a fuck up.  6 hours later, each one of us was in the fucking doghouse.

6 hours later, we decided we’re gonna do it again.

 

 

Bitchin’ out is bitchin’ good

 

In Louis CK’s latest HBO special (I know that’s not Louis CK in the picture above, so calm down), he talked about saying unthinkable things – horrible, unimaginable curses – at others, all from the safe confines of his car.

Worthless piece of shit.

Hey, FUCK YOU!!!

I hope you die!

Hell, I’d done the exact same thing only a week before.  I was in a multi-level parking garage, trying to quickly find a parking spot so I could dash into a clothing store to pick up some stuff.  Naturally, given the common denominator of humanity, the parking garage was full of imbeciles who were indecisive, clueless, or clinically retarded.  The words that came hurtling out of my mouth at all the shitty drivers were startling even to me.  I literally said out loud, “Holy shit, what did I just say.”  All because these awful drivers dared to get between me and some shitty linen shirts and a couple of pairs of trousers by about 12 seconds.  I’m a terrible person.

When I watched that Louis CK bit, it was cold comfort that I wasn’t the only one who could get offended by myself.

Then a week goes by, and more different circumstances can offer you an entirely different perspective.  Let me explain.

This past weekend, I went on a 20-something mile bike ride with my friend.  He’s a long-time roadie, and I’m a road noob, so it was good to have some company on a road ride as the New York weather began loosening its icy grip.  In fact, the weather was fucking spectacular by anyone’s standards.  Just the best day to be out riding.

With about two miles to go from the end of the ride, we were riding single-file along a high street when, from behind, I heard a persistent series of beeps.

*beep-beep*…*beep-beep*…*beep-beep*…*beep-beep*…* beep-beep*

As a rule, I fucking hate it when drivers blow their horn at me while I’m riding my bike.  More often than not, they’re being assholes.  But even those who think they’re being helpful by blowing their horn to let me know they’re there, it fucks me off to no end.  I’m attuned to my surroundings and I’m aware of cars in front of me and in the back of me – because I can hear the cars coming up behind me.  Blowing your horn to “alert” me does absolutely nothing but piss me off.

Anyway, back to this persistent horn.  I was already hugging the shoulder on the right, and who passed me but some crazy old fuck on a yellow three-wheeled Harley.  It wasn’t even a proper Harley.  It was a fucking tricycle.  And it was lemon yellow.  Motherfucker.  Naturally, I shot him my middle finger as he rode by.

[Picture at left was plucked off Google images for illustration purposes only; not the actual asshole in question]

The Harley fuckhead then proceeded to tailgate my friend ahead of me, and harass him with the same series of beeps.  The old fuck zipped by him and I caught up to my friend.

“I’m gonna fuck this guy up, I swear” I said.  (I wasn’t really sure what I meant when I said that.)

“’The fuck was his problem?”

“He’s an asshole is what his problem is.”

We approached the traffic light at the intersection up ahead and old fuck Harley was stuck at the light, but inching forward.  I sprinted towards the light and hollered out, “Hey, asshole, don’t you fucking go anywhere!”

I caught up to him.  “What the fuck is your problem?!  Go fuck yourself, fuckface.  Fuck you, fuuuuuuck you!”  I’d never stringed that many fucks in a row before.

His response?

*beep-beep*…*beep-beep*…*beep-beep*…*beep-beep*…* beep-beep*

I peeled off, turned right, and left him while the light was still red.

My buddy rolled in to help himself to a second dose of bollocking on this guy.  While I did a slow roll by and bitched out the Harley asshole, my friend was more patient.  And sadisitic, I think.  He rolled up next to the yellow Harley, stopped, and unloaded an ungodly serving of verbal beatdown for what felt like an eternity.

Every manner of profanity in the known universe was unleashed on this Harley asshole.  And I do mean every fucking word.  “Fucking” might’ve easily been the kindest word in that tirade.  That bollocking made Satan cup his ears, blush, and say, “Woah, dude, language.”  It was masterful.  It was fucking poetry is what it was.  I swear if he could’ve taken a shit on this guy, he would’ve.

Farther down the road, my friend and I collected ourselves to deliberate what had just happened.

“What the fuck was all that about?”

“I dunno, was he high or something?”

“Could be.  Ahh shit, part of me feels bad bitching out a crazy old man.”

“I gotta tell you, though… that felt good yelling at someone.”

“You’re right, it does feel fucking awesome bitching out someone when you’re totally in the right.”

And he was too fucking right.  It’s soooo exciting to bitch someone out when you’re totally in the right, and they’re totally in the wrong.  I mean, the ability to justifiably yell at another human being without restraint – and without repercussion – might be one of the last underappreciated experiences you might ever have.  God, it’s so hard to put into words just how satisfying it is.  Delicious is the only word I can conjure up.  It so is.  And when you’ve had a taste, you want it all the time.

So much so that instead of letting my phone go to voicemail, these days I pick up every time my caller ID shows that it’s a telemarketer.  God, I so look forward to those calls.  *Ring ring*… HOLY SHIT IT’S A TELEMARKETER, NO ONE PICK UP, I GOT THIS!!!

I usually let them introduce themselves and just inch their way into their spiel before I cut in with,

“Excuse me, WHO ARE YOU?  Where are you calling from?  Why are you calling me?  I’m on the no-call list.  You’re not supposed to be calling me.  What did you say your name was?  No, I want YOUR name, and I want your company’s name.  I’m reporting this bullshit.  I want your name, I want your supervisor’s name, the name of your company, all of it…”

I usually don’t even get through half that rant before they freak out and hang up.

Mmmmm… delicious.

 

 

Road Noob: Part 2

 

CONTINUED FROM Road Noob: Part 1

 

When I resolved to buy a road bike, you wanna talk about a smorgasbord of simultaneous emotions.  I was fucking bummed because I thought I was “resigning” or “downgrading” to a road bike (because, you know, mountain bikes are fuckin’ ‘ard).  I was thrilled because, holy shit, a shiny new bike!!  And I was dreading the inevitable “WTF, another bike?!” from the missus.  Ugh.

In the end, I bit the bullet and nailed a titanium road bike.  Oooh, titanium… so ‘90s.  Every fucker out there’s on a carbon fiber bike these days.  Titanium is so, so passé.  They’re the harem pants of road bikes.  But because I’d come from a mountain biking background, where everything is about durability – because let’s face it, you’re gonna fuck shit up when you’re trying to ride a bike across rocks and streams and logs and badgers – the idea that my fat and clumsy ass might inevitably shatter a carbon fiber frame scared the living shit out of me (reality check: carbon’ll hold up just fine).  Theory being that I can get titanium re-welded if I fuck it up.  If I fuck up a carbon fiber frame, all I’m getting an ass full of carbon fiber shrapnel.  Fuck that.

Nevermind that it’s impossible to choose from all the carbon fiber bikes out there.  There are thirty gajillion models to choose from, how the fuck do you make sense of it all.  Narrowing it down from only a handful of titanium options made the whole process more manageable.  [Let’s, for the time being, ignore the fact that there’s really nothing wrong with a carbon bike, I just wanted a titanium frame to be different.  OK?  OK.]

So I got the bike.  Off I go, right?  Fuck no.

There’s a lot of shit to work out when you make a wholesale change to what bike you’re riding.  Going from mountain bikes to road bikes is not like going from white toast to whole wheat.  It’s more like going from a rack of ribs to a salad.

As a result, I’ve had to relearn a shit ton of new things about cycling.  Things like:

Helmets.  Mountain bike helmets typically have a bill (visor).  I have no idea why but they do.  All the riding I’ve ever done has been under a canopy of woods, so I have no idea what that bill’s shielding me from.  And I’ve been using the same mountain bike helmet model for over a half-dozen years.  It’s the only helmet I use when riding my Frankenstein bike on the road.  Mainly because I’m already riding a completely unconventional fucked up monstrosity.  A mismatched mountain bike helmet? Perfect!  But roadies don’t wear billed helmets.  Oh no.  Roadie helmets have a billon vents and are made of carbon fiber (again!) and cost a trillion dollars.  Oh no, what to do!  Fuck it, I bought a road helmet.  I’m such a goddamn sucker.

Handlebars.  My Frankenstein bike has these cool flared dropbars (above).  They look a bit weird, but they’re massively comfortable.  This new road bike has conventional dropbars.  Ugh, another goddamn thing I’ve gotta (re)learn.

Saddle.  All my mountain bikes have exactly the same saddle.  That’s what my ass likes, so that’s what my ass gets.  All these road bikes seem to come with these thin wafer saddles.  Different saddles for different rides, I get it.  I guess they have little need for all that taint-saving structure on mountain bike saddles.  But which one to use?  This one’s thin, but is it thin enough?  That one’s narrow, but is it narrow enough?  WTF.

Tires.  So, so many tire choices.  With mountain bikes, I got quite good at understanding the tires.  There’s visual common sense that plays a big part.  Different tires have different tread patterns.  You can make a pretty well educated guess on how different tires will work on different terrains.  Makes tire selection not an entirely complicated affair.  Road bike tires?  There are four trillion models out there and they’re all slick.  How the fuck do you tell what’s a good tire and what’s a shit tire?  Getting up to speed on road tires has been a fucking tedious affair.  Also, I used to be able to score brilliant mountain bike tires for about $30 pop.  Why the fuck do road tires cost $80 a pop?  I blame the overall roadie populace for willingly overpaying for all sorts of shit.

Pedals.  Fuck road pedals.  Road pedals are big and clunky and they all use these massive cleats bolted to the sole of your cycling shoes.  And of course, these cleats aren’t compatible with mountain bike shoes.  Of course.

Shoes.  Fuck road shoes.  These things look like ass, with all the ratchets and straps.  And they all have these slick soles that’ll guarantee you’ll slip and bust your ass when you’re off the bike.  Speaking of off  the bike, those massive cleats on slick road shoes make you walk like a duck that’s just shit his pants.  I’m sticking with my mountain shoes and mountain pedals.

Shorts.  Roadies and their fucking bologna-skin outfits.  Mountain riders wear baggy shorts.  I’ve never worn anything but baggy shorts when I ride.  My ass is too fat to wear skintight lycra shorts without some modesty shorts to hide behind.  Fuck you, I’m riding with baggy shorts.

So much shit to think about.  So many rules…  Ahhh yes, “The Rules”…

“The Rules” are a crowdsourced “sacred doctrine” devised by the brilliant cycling iconoclastic site, Velominati.  Velominati’s “The Rules” are fucking ace.  They’re hilarious.  But they’re also the quintessential road cycling commandments.  I love rules for things.  But while I love how fucking hardcore some of the rules are, there’s just no fucking way I’m adhering to all of them.

Because whether roadies want to admit or not, there’s a roadie mold, and it chaps my taint and I’m not doing it.  I’m not riding with a fucking heart rate monitor.  I’m not measuring my cadence.  I never want to know what a VO2 max reading means.  I sure as fuck am not shaving my legs.  I’m never wearing a bib.  I’m riding with sleeveless jerseys when it’s 100-degrees out.  I’m gonna keep wearing baggy shorts.  And I’ll keep riding with booze onboard.

I’m just gonna go out there and ride this stupid bike.

 

 

Road Noob: Part 1

Just over eight years ago, the missus and I were expecting our first kid.  And as fat and out-of-shape as I am now, I was even more grotesquely overweight then.  I was over my ideal weight by about 50lbs or so.  Absolutely no athletic ability to speak of, I got winded walking up the three steps to the front door of my house.  I was fat, repulsive, and I realized that this was no way to greet my firstborn.

So I bought a $300 entry-level mountain bike and started huffing it around town.  Then I took the bike the dirt and decided that a $300 bike wasn’t something I should use to bomb around these dirt trails.

As I have a slightly obsessive personality, one thing led to another, and eight years later, I ended up with eight bikes in my garage – each one quite different from the next.  Dual suspension, geared hardtail, singlespeed hardtail, geared 29er, singlespeed 29er, the list goes on.  But they were all mountain bikes.

I took pride in riding mountain bikes.  Because mountain bikes are fucking hard.  Mountain bikes are big and burly, not skinny and frail like road bikes.  Mountain bikes have big chunky tires that eat up the earth, not thin little pussy tires that glide on the road.

But I went further.  While everyone’s riding aluminum bikes, I only rode steel frames.  Heavy, tough steel rides.  And I assembled almost all of them myself.  I bought the frames, I bought the bike parts, I bought tools, and I gradually learned how to assemble bikes in my garage.  I was obsessed with building bikes.  If I’m honest, I probably enjoyed tinkering with bikes more than actually riding them.

In that time, I’ve had nothing but disdain and bucketsful of fuck you for road bikes and the sinewy, shaven fuckfaces who ride them.  Road bike riders are goddamn nerds.  And nerds ruin everything.  Road bike nerds are the fucking worst.  These shitheads with their immaculately specced carbon fiber bikes with carbon wheels and carbon parts and their shitty skin-tight bike clothes that are color coordinated with their Kenny Powers sunglasses and matching helmets, and their shaved legs and heart rate monitors, all nerding over their wattage and VO2 max and cadence and GGGAAAARRGGGGHHH, fuck you, fuck you to hell, roadies!

God, I hate roadies.

But the sad reality is that over the past two years or so, my time on dirt trails dwindled to almost nothing.  Trail riding takes time.  It takes time to get all your gear together, it takes time to actually get to the trail, and when you’re there, you wanna take your time to enjoy the trail.  Mountain rides go slow compared to road rides.

Having a couple of ingrate kids with increasing demands (soccer! baseball! camp!) meant time that would’ve been spent on the trails was now rapidly being sucked away.  A three-hour trail ride now turned into a mere hour-long sprint on the road.  To do this, I had to convert one of my mountain bikes for the road.

This bike was a proper Frankenstein’s monster.  I had bought the bike for $50 from my local bike shop and had immediate stripped it of all its shitty parts, then had the whole thing repainted.  Then through some manner of witchcraft and sheer luck, I was able to cram road wheels (which are larger than mountain bike wheels) into the frame, and cobble together something was somewhat roadworthy.  This beast would serve as my road ride for over two years.

But it was far from perfect.  The chain would fall off the bike frequently.  Using road bike parts on a mountain bike frame had its challenges.  Most of all, it was slow as fuck.  The combination of being an older heavy lugged steel frame with only 9 speeds meant that I wasn’t about to suffer windburn on my rides.

Denial: not just a river in Egypt, as they say.  I was in denial so long about needing a road bike, I can’t even pinpoint the moment when I finally did face up to the fact that my Frankenstein bike wasn’t cutting it anymore.  I mean, fuck road bikes, right?  I don’t ride road bikes.  Asshole nerds ride road bikes.  And you know who else ride road bikes?  Old people.  Old fucks whose bodies can’t hack it any longer on a mountain bike.  Because they’ve gone soft.  And old.  I’m not old, I’m still young!  That’s what I kept telling myself over and over again.  Somehow, in my head, I’d conjured up the perception that getting a road bike is a sign of giving up, growing old.  I wasn’t prepared to do that.

But then, I went and bought a fucking road bike anyway.

 

TO BE CONTINUED…

 

 

No, you don’t need that goddamn SUV

This is almost not worth my time.  It’s fucking ridiculous that I’m actually taking time out to rebuff some stupid article I just read.  Because the subject of SUVs is so fucking old and tired, and it’s been done to death, and it’s fucking boring.

Yet, THIS CANNOT BE A REAL ARTICLE.

Surely this is some shitty troll write-up that’s meant to rile up certain gearheads who are stupid enough to get riled up (me).  I mean, most of the time, I love Gawker – Deadspin, in particular – but holy shit, do they come up with some massively pointless articles every so often.  In fact, that’s the problem with a lot of these sites that used to be sites that just reposted someone else’s stories.  Somewhere along the way, they decided that they need to compete as content generators and not just content aggregators.  And in so doing, often they struggle to come up with some minimum amount of original content for our insatiable appetite for said content.

And that’s why we end up with such a seemingly banal yet thoroughly retarded write-up assuming to validate SUVs.

If you can’t be arsed to read the article, here’s the sum up of what the whole stupid write-up is driving at:

OMG, your mom must’ve gracefully descended from the heavens, with all her hyper intelligence and miraculous supernatural powers, to have managed the herculean task of carting your stupid ass all over town without some swollen, overpriced pretend-offroading vehicular monstrosity.  Just how DID she manage?!  What a saint!  Oh, the humanity!

With all due respect – and complete sincerity – do fuck off.

ZOMG, sedans aren’t “convenient as something with a big tailgate”!!!  WE NEED A TAILGATE!!  Everyone needs tailgates!!  And sedans can’t accommodate large car seats!!  “OMG, these soft, pudgy, fast food-fed kids are too big-boned to fit to a family sedan!!”  “We must pack lightly – the horror of not being able to cram the entire contents of my house into my car!”  “Honey, there’s no way I can’t fit little Maddie’s Barbie dream house, her pack-n-play, the bottle warmer, her DVD player, all her Baby Einstein discs, AND your mega-duty breast pump into our normal car so that we can go to the mall – WE TOTALLY NEED AN SUV!!!”

This writer’s a fucking idiot.

As a father of two, I’ll just say that anything larger than a four-door sedan is completely pointless and unnecessary.  We have comfortably survived – fuck it, thrived! – with only four-door sedans.  Imagine that: a simple sedan, four wheels, four doors, a trunk, and we’ve managed fine.  Car seats, strollers, diaper bags, toys, foldable playpens, all the shit that you *need* (:rolleyes:) when you have little kids – they all fit nicely into our humble Volkswagen sedan.  AND a little dog, too, beeyotch.  I never even had a roof rack on my car until very recently (hey, it’s not my fault that paddleboards are 12 feet long).

I know some families with one or two kids, and they all have some beastly SUV with an enormous engine in it.  They clamp on some equally enormous luggage carrier to the roof rack.  The rear of the car’s got some a massive bike rack.  And it’s got a hitch.  I have no idea if the luggage carrier on top ever has anything in it, but those bike racks are always empty, and everything’s permanently bolted to their SUVs ALL THE TIME.  Really?!  The fuck you need all that shit for?  It looks like a prop from the upcoming Mad Max movie.  It’s like they’ve just bought some monstrous car and they’ve got to further validate this purchase by attaching all these extra bits and pieces on it because “that’s why we needed the big SUV!”

I’ll tell you what this is: fucking gluttony.

So what you end up with is single-digit mpg, a heavy lumbering shit box that handles even more poorly than it already did, awful parking jobs (because, admit it, you can’t park that thing for shit), and maximum carbon monoxide for maximum earth scorching.

I speak from the perspective of having two kids.  And I get that there are many families who aren’t limited to two kids.  God, you feel like such a fucking underachiever these days when you have only two kids.  “You have only two kids?  Fuck that, we’re going for more kids than the Brangelinas, loser.”

Yet, it matters little whether someone’s got two kids or nine.  Fact is, most of you are gonna buy an SUV no matter what.  Because you want more, MORE, MORE, MORE!!!  Just don’t use your goddamn kids as the excuse.

And I’m not suggesting that anyone has to make do with less (though that’s hardly a bad thing).  I’m suggesting that maybe we can all learn to live without so much fucking excess.

 

Help me, I’m stuck in a tree (hugging) house of horror

When the rain is pissing down so hard that it looks like the book of Exodus has opened at your front door, that’s the best time in the world to make your way to a tree-hugging festival in the middle of NYC, right?  Right.

Which is what I did yesterday.  Wifey’s idea, natch.  She was all into celebrating Earth Day so she signed up the whole family for the NYC Green Festival.  Which I suspected was going to be every bit as terrifying as it sounds.   You fucking know it: a fully-sustainable clusterfuck of granola, drum circles, and hemp shampoo.

To help protect Mother Gaia, do we do the right thing and take public transportation to event?  Fuck no, we all hopped into our 250hp fossil fuel-fed four-wheel drive family sedan and gunned it down the West Side Highway.  I may have even hit a bird on the way down.  We then spent another 30 minutes circling the west side looking for a parking lot that wasn’t full so we could park our car.  Fuckin’ A.

Eventually, we got to the event, which was tucked into one corner of the Javits Center.  It was the smallest event at the convention center that day.  It was dwarfed by something else called the International Beauty Show (they used the most unfortunate acronym, IBS New York – I was expecting row upon row of portajohns), and some college fair.  We snaked our way through what looked like a million Snookis and another half-million high school imbeciles.

 

When we got into the Green Festival, it wasn’t entirely what I was expecting.  Being at the Javits Center, this was like a trade show.  But open to the public.  Four massive aisles of booths, multiple stages set up across the floor for talks and workshops, and a floor full of extras from Portlandia.  We started our wander through the booths.

What did the kids immediately make a beeline for?  The first few booths, which had tons of chocolate, all boasting fair trade, organic, small batches made by Nicaraguan cave children or some shit like that.  Kids didn’t give a shit, they just saw open bowls of chocolate and they were encouraged by the nice hippie ladies behind the counter to help themselves as much as they wanted.  Thanks for nothing, bitch, you’re not the one who has to deal with the sugar crash in 20 minutes.

 

Eventually, I came across a booth that didn’t piss me off – a bike shop!  They had some sweet small brand bikes, but in the end, they didn’t really have anything that excited me too much.  The only bike I wanted was the owners fillet-brazed steel fixie.  And he wasn’t about to part with it.

Right in the back of the hall was this big white bus.  The inside of the bus was a kids’ play area, but the whole thing looked suspiciously like some brainwashing lab on wheels.  I imagined my kids going in as normal kids who eat hot dogs and play with lightsabers, but then coming back out wearing a hemp sackcloth, eating a bean taco, and asking to adopt a goat.

Thankfully, Kid Uno did not disappoint, as he took to their whiteboard and happily predicted the devastation of the earth’s poles (left).  I have never been prouder.  My kids ain’t half bad, after all.

Also not half bad was the centerpiece of the event, an all-electric Ford Focus.  I have a difficult time with Ford.  Being an American car, I can’t be blamed for thinking it’s going to be a piece of shit, but the Ford Focus also has roots in Europe, which means it can’t be completely awful.  This electric version was eye-opening, that’s for sure.  Not only did it not suck, the build quality was quite decent, design fairly ergonomic, and the ripped-off-from-Aston Martin front end was flattering rather than offending.  Downside was that it’s still a short-range, single-speed, 40-grand hatch.  It may be one of the first all-electric cars that doesn’t look like a Tamagotchi toy, but it’s not quite the answer yet.

And in what shape did I emerge from this whole thing?  Fuck if I know.  All I know is that my kids had a blast, wifey enjoyed it, I ate some really shitty food (vegan cheese and kale chips), some not-so-terrible food (corn salsa and vegan macaroons), and I wanted to punch this fucking guy who kept walking around playing a guitar…

 

And I escaped without getting caught up in some tree-worshipping pagan ritual.  Boo yah.

Tour de Frak

Another Fourth of July weekend, another start to the Tour de France.  But c’mon, who really gives a shit anymore.

Maybe if you’re a Yank who doesn’t know any better, it became meaningless once Lance Armstrong dropped out, then became marginally interesting again when he got back in (un-retiring is for assholes), then returned to being completely pointless once Lance fucked off again.  It’s a bit like a comment I read recently about the late Clarence Clemons – people who cite Clarence Clemons as the greatest sax player of all time (to which Kenny G goes, WTF!) often can’t name another sax player.  I’m pretty sure it’s the same with Lance.  With all the stupid Lance worship, most folks couldn’t name another rider out other in the peloton.  So what’s the fucking point, really.

Thing is, the Tour has been utterly pointless for years now.  Before Operación Puerto, anyone who followed the Tour de France tended to have a bit of a nudge-nudge-wink-wink approach to the event.  We all knew what the fuck the riders and teams were up to, and somehow we were all OK with it.  The occasional rider got caught, got banned, but the show went on.  Underneath it all, we all believed that every single rider was hopped on something.  Everyone.  You’ve got to be a complete and blithering idiot to think that any human can ride 200 miles a day for six consecutive days a week – at speed! – for four weeks, and not be hopped up on something.  The only person on earth who can do that is Andy Dick after a week-long coke binge.  And he’d do it in a dress.

Anyway, no one gives a shit about the Tour de France now because there are no longer any interesting characters in the sport.

When Lance was racing with U.S. Postal, it wasn’t just about him.  Yeah, he beat cancer, he has one nut, whatever.  Yet, Lance couldn’t be Lance without the likes of Jan Ullrich, for example.  Without Seinfeld, Newman would just be an dull, fat postal worker.  Luke Skywalker would just be another whiny little bitch if it weren’t for his dad.  And as such, the Tour de France used to be interesting because you had heroes and villains.  Lance was the all-American comeback kid, Ulrich was the cold, methodical Teutonic machine.  Classic Rocky parallels here.  Rocky with one nut… and Drago with a bit of a coke habit.  And Lance beat Ullrich.  Then there was Alexander Vinokourov, the next Ullrich, the cold, calculating Ukrainian machine.  Once again, he fucked up and got busted.  Then Ivan Basso rose up as the heir apparent to Lance.  Like fuck, ’cause he got caught, too.  Basso was non-starter, done before he could properly get going.  No one gives a shit about Basso now.

But in 2009, it got marginally interesting – Alberto Contador forged to the front with a good and proper “fuck you” attitude towards Lance.  He was an enormously cocky douchebag.  He didn’t give a shit, he was racing for himself and no one else.  He wasn’t prepared to be Lance’s bitch.  And because he was the foil to Lance, I didn’t mind him too much – the enemy of my enemy is my friend sort of thing.

But now Lance is gone.  Again.  Lance, who so quickly went from golden child of the sport to the biggest self-righteous asshole on the planet.  Lance, who is probably as clean as Lindsay Lohan, and basically shakes his single nut at the authorities because he know he’s outwitted the cops so far.  The fact I have no doubt in my head that he’s a sanctimonious douchebag who has been up to no good his entire career irritates me to no end.  He’s a dick and he’s gone now.

And since the Operación Puerto shake up, so has every other good/bad guy in the sport.  With no one to love or hate, it’s a struggle to give a flying shit about the Tour de France.  It was never just about Lance.  It was about the Ullrichs, the Bassos, the Contadors of the peloton.  Who the fuck’s going to step up to make you give a shit?  The three assholes who sprint for the green jersey?  I’ll bet not one of them is in a position to win the Tour.  The king of the mountain rider?  I, for one, fucking love climbing hills on my bike, and yet each year I couldn’t give a shit about who wins that polka dot jersey.

There is no one to root for, no one to give a shit about, no one to hate, no hero, no villain, no conflict, and that’s why in July, not a single fuck will be given by me for the stupid Tour de France.

Welcome home, now go ride your bike, fatty

Nowadays, when I come home, I’m instantly reminded that I need to get my fat ass back out there on the fixie.