Hello.

Hi, I still write. So you can shut up now, stupid Robot, with your doom and gloom IMs "So you've quit the blog?" I've been crazy busy the last few weeks. But I also did some interesting bike things. Namely made my Swobo into a fixie. When I say "made", I mean flipping the wheel and throwing on a 17 tooth ring, but for a second there it sounded like I was handy with a wrench. Which is cool.

My take on the fixie? I hated it. All the things I liked about my commute were pretty much negated by riding fixie. I like to coast. I like futz with my jacket. I like to reach into my pockets and pull out my phone and look shit up while I ride (I'm a retard). I like to screw up getting my feet in the clips and then coast while I flip the peddle over and slide in. These are things that do not occur with the fixie.

The fixie is always "on". You're either pedaling, skidding, or falling. Any other activity you want to be doing must include one of these. That didn't work for me (see things I like listed above). I feel I gave the fixie a good shot tho. I got pretty competent on the riding fixie. I even stopped trying to coast (don't do this) out of habit and got pretty good at controlling my decent speeds with leg muscles. Actually, I need to stop and relate to you an episode that occurred on the first day I rode fixie.

I was coming down this huge hill and and immediately got going super fast and my legs were just being yanked out from under me as I tried to use my leg muscles to control the speed of the bike. Things were going south fast, so I let instinct take over and I took my feet off the pedals. This is a bad idea. To get my feet back on the pedals, well it was like trying to jump out of a moving car and into a instant sprint to match the speed. I can't do that. (I tried. You just fall flat on your face and it hurts really bad.) So I just went down the hill with my feet sticking out in the air. When I got to the bottom of the hill I was all "Phew! That was crazy!" Never once did it occur to me to actually use my BRAKES to modulate speed. Ugh. Like I said fixie isn't for me. My brain just isn't wired up for it.

So last night I switched my bike back to it's original form. Then I rode it to the bus stop this morning. I coasted down the big hill over looking the ocean, scratched my nuts, and started fucking with my phone trying to see what time it was. This I like.

You won't think this is about cycling, but it is.

Red Fang- Pre-Historic Dog

The continued sound of one hand clapping

I appear to be the only one here anymore. My comrades have abandoned the bloggery. I am sorry. You're stuck with me.

So...one last thing about pro cycling, and then I'll drop it until something really exciting happens. The Amstel Gold Race doesn't count.

Did you see Paris-Roubaix? F'ing crazy. Crashes. Smashes. Attacks. Tactical blunders. Mechanical meltdown. That race is like the cycling equivalent of Thunderdome. Tom Boonen showed he was the strongest (and smartest) on the day. He didn't let any of his Quick Step teammates get too far up the road without him, which is what he did at the Tour of Flanders, and that cost him (but not the team) the win there.

This time he rode on the front, which is always smart in PR, because when the inevitable mass pile up happens, you don't get caught in it. He also attacked at just the right time to break up the lead group. If Pipo Pozzato had really wanted to win, he should have put in an earlier attack. Instead, Boonen made the moves and rode his luck to win the prize.

Luck played a huge part as well. Flecha crashed and took two others with him, also holding Pozzato up, though again, Pozzato should have known better than to be on the back of the group over the cobbles. Then Hushovd crashed into the barrier. I mean, how embarrassing is that? It's too bad, too, because Hushovd probably had a chance at outsprinting Boonen in the end.

Great race. I'll watch it again and again.

Finally, I learned something very, very interesting last week about those Northern European cobblestones. It seems that ships leaving from Belgium and Northern France some centuries ago, would fill their hulls with those cobbles as ballast for the trip across the Atlantic, dumping them in New England and refilling with valuable cargo. The cobbles, or pavé as they're known in France, were then used to pave roads here.

Even on the street I live on, when a pothole goes deep, say 8-12 inches, you can see the cobblestone road underneath. So, it's sort of thrilling to think that, on a daily basis, I'm riding over top of the same cobbles that have been such a huge part of European bike racing for the last century and a half.

Wow. Just re-read that. I'm quite a tool, aren't I?

Roubaix DAY!!!!!!

No video. No trenchant analysis. No fanboy drooling.

It's Paris-Roubaix today, the best bicycle race ever.

Watch it on Versus at 5pm EST.

Or, if you're in Europe, watch it on your television. It'll be on.

Too Goddamned Dope Not to Spread

Steven Hamilton from The Day Is Over (2004) from Elliot Van Orman Productions on Vimeo.

Jealousy

I watch bike videos. I read bike blogs. I follow pro cycling. I cycle. I ride road and mountain. I have a cruiser. I have two fixed gears. I like bikes and bike stuff.

One of the things I see a lot now are fixed gear focused blogs that post videos of various young folks performing tricks on their track bikes. Of course, the track bikes are mostly modified for trick-doing. BMX stems. Beefed up rims, etc.

And I think it's super cool. Totally inspiring to see a group of people doing different things with their machines, pushing the bounds of balance and timing in cool new ways.

I wonder to myself, "What would it take for you to learn to do trick X or trick Y?"

I answer, "It would take riding around all day on my bike practicing and falling down a lot."

And then I think, "Gosh, I sure do wish I could spend my days riding around, practicing tricks and falling down."

Seriously. I wish that.

Back Problems and Messengers

I have not been here for a few days. I have not ridden a bicycle since Friday morning. It was then that I stood up funny and my back went into spasm. This is what 37 years of playing like a five-year-old will get you.

So I've been off the bike. And that kills me, because it's a big week on the European road circuit that I take as such an inspiration in my daily riding. There was Stijn Devolder winning the Tour of Flanders again. Ghent-Wevelgem was today. A Columbia sprinter not named Mark Cavendish won that, and then it's Paris-Roubaix this Sunday. The very best of the classics.

Ah well, I'll be healthy again soon and back to pounding the asphalt.

I wanted to say something about messengers today, too. I don't know why messengers have become such revered bicycle riders. Most of those I see don't seem to know much beyond how to pedal (not that they have to be experts). They're mostly young. A lot of them seem to smoke. They're getting around and delivering packages, and that's cool.

There is nothing wrong with messengers. Don't get me wrong. I'm not hatin'.

I just don't see why people think being a messenger gives you some profound cycling experience that other people don't have. Also, messengers are NOT a homogenous group. Like the broader cycling community, the messenger population runs the gamut. There are roadies. There are punks. There are Freds. There are guys (and gals) who just can't get another job.

But, just as I don't universally respect racers or cyclocrossers or recumbent riders, I can't see that messengers deserve some exalted place either. As near as I can tell, they are almost indistinguishable from urban cyclists generally.

My overall feeling is that everyone who rides a bike is pretty cool, even those older ladies with their horrible hybrids and their neon yellow crossing guard vests. I mean, they're getting it done, aren't they? They're pedaling. And that's cool.