Five years ago — by which I mean “between three and seven years ago” — Utah was in the middle of a serious water shortage. This crisis deeply affected me in several ways, including (but not limited to):

• I watered my lawn only once per day, instead of the normal twice.
• I stopped going to Lake Powell, because it had dried up completely. Just kidding; it was easily still 15-20 feet deep in some places.
• My favorite mountain bike trails became incredibly loose and dusty.

These problems, however, suddenly seemed trivial when my favorite bike trail in the world — Frank — got caught up in the path of a fire that chewed up and spat out mountain after mountain near my home.

 

Perspective

Just so you understand how important Frank (yes, everyone I rode with spoke of this trail as if it were a person named “Frank”) was to me, I should also point out that this same fire also threatened my house. But while I was concerned about my potential property loss, my indignation — my hate-filled rage — was reserved for the likelihood that I was about to lose my trail.

And then the day came: Fire trucks and firefighters were stationed at the trailhead. Helicopters were slurry-bombing burning trees just a few hundred yards away from the ride I had done hundreds (no exaggeration, for once) of times.

There was no question about it. Frank would burn.

 

I Was a Bland Youth

I’m now going to shift focus, both for a break in the story’s incredible dramatic tension and to give you a little bit of my personal backstory.

I think we can agree that most teenagers express their individuation via some sort of rebellion. Here are the things I did to rebel:

• I grew my hair so far down it very nearly touched my collar.
• I listened to Oingo-Boingo and DEVO, occasionally at volumes of which my father did not approve. I also wore out (literally) a copy of Pink Floyd’s The Wall.

I bring this list up by way of demonstrating that in general, I am a law-abiding type, one who does not cause waves.

 

Doing What Must Be Done

Knowing that Frank would never be the same, and knowing that access was both blocked and forbidden, I did the obvious thing: I got on my bike and got on the trail anyway, using a lesser-known trailhead that had three essential benefits:

1.      It was not blocked by firefighters.

2.      It was not on fire.

3.      It was easily accessible, if you happen to know the trail so well that you can close your eyes and imagine the whole thing in perfect detail.

I wasn’t thinking about the fact that I was breaking the law or putting myself in danger or about anything else, really; I just wanted to ride my favorite trail one more time before the fire took it.

 

The Ride

I expected the smoke to be a problem, but it wasn’t. In fact, Frank seemed perfectly normal during the climb. Two switchbacks, both of which I had mastered. A hard scrabble up a loose, rocky section: I cleaned this maybe half the time (I can’t remember whether I cleaned it this day). Then, a nice, steady singletrack climb through scrub oak. Then I got to the top of Frank, a rock cairn where the fastest guy gets to sit and wait for everyone else to regroup. As such, it’s more of a throne than a simple pile of rocks.

This time, though, I was riding alone, so didn’t care about the rocks. Also, I didn’t care about the rocks because there was a fire coming down the mountain, about 300 yards (I’m guessing so wildly that I may as well be picking a number at random here) away. I couldn’t see beyond the fire to what it had done, because the smoke was so thick.

Better keep going.

Before the fire, the first part of the descent down Frank was a group favorite. How could it not be? You’re blasting through a tunnel of brambly trees. The trail, which had been nothing more than a deer track before we started riding it, was smooth and fast. There were embedded boulders and trees to dodge, but you could really open it up and fly.

And that is the real reason why this last pre-fire Frank ride is one of my favorite memories. Because after the fire, the tunnel would be gone. And then, a little while later, several days of rain would come, and without the thick brush and grass on the mountain to slow it down, the water would briefly form a running stream along this part of the trail, turning it from a hang-on-let’s-fly section of downhill to a rocky riverbed: a bumpy, rattle-your-teeth-out section. It’s still good trail, but it’s totally different.

For some reason, I get tremendous satisfaction that I was the last person to ride this trail as it was, before it got turned to a charred, stark, naked-looking thing that smelled of smoke for years afterward.

Finishing my ride, I dropped off the trail near the water tower. There were several firefighters and vehicles there, getting ready. I didn’t look at them, employing the “I don’t acknowledge you, therefore I don’t exist” technique. Amazingly, it worked. I just rode by them.

There were a couple kids straddling bikes on the side of the road, looking at me as I came off the trail. “Are you that guy?” one of them yelled at me as I approached.

“What guy?”

“The firefighters were talking on the radio a little while about some stupid mountain biker, riding up into the fire, about half an hour ago. Dude, they said you’re an idiot.”

A fair point.

And yet, this stands out as maybe the only very stupid thing I have ever done that I do not regret at all.

 

The Banjo Brothers Messenger Bag Giveaway: How Stupid Are You?

OK, for this week’s Banjo Brothers Giveaway – and this is for a messenger bag (regular-sized, not the enormous ones they’ll be rolling out next year), folks – tell me about something stupid you’ve done on a bike. But not just any old stupid thing. Tell me about something stupid you’ve done on a bike that you would gladly do again.

I won’t be posting again ‘til Monday (11/28), so I’m going to let this contest go through Sunday. I’ll announce the winner in Monday’s post, although I’ll very likely be dropping into the Comments section between now and then, making snarky remarks about how stupid everyone is.

Also, I reserve the right to post something before Monday, if I feel like it.

 

Happy Thanksgiving

You know what I’m thankful for? I’m thankful for everyone who stops by and reads my blog. You make writing this thing a lot of fun.

Not that I ever hold myself up to any kind of journalistic standard, but today’s headline is particularly flawed. I didn’t, for example, go out this weekend and buy a bunch of different kinds of energy gels and try them out. That would be gross.

Further, I didn’t go on the Web to find out what kinds of energy gels are out there right now, and which kinds experts recommend. If you want to do that, though, I’d be interested to know what you learn (but only mildly interested, to be honest).

Instead, I just dug into my years and years of being a gullible gel consumer. I’ll base the strength of recommendation for each gel on how weak of a gag reflex the memory of that gel inspires.

And the thing is, that’s a totally unfair way of reviewing gels. I mean, Hammergel in particular is going to get a raw deal out of my review; my aversion to their stuff is due entirely to my own stupidity.

So, let’s begin: my subjective, non-scientific, unfair, and totally non-comprehensive review of gels I have tried.

 

PowerGel

This is the energy gel I started with. And I stuck with it for years, for two reasons, neither of which I’m especially proud of:

• Taste: PowerGel Lemon Lime flavor tastes better than any other gel, by any other brand. On one hand, that’s not a half bad selection criterion. On the other hand, admitting that I like the taste of lukewarm key lime pie is not something I’m all that enthused about.
• Cost: PowerGel seems to be free. Oh, sure, you can go into your bike shop and buy it for a buck a shot, just like any kind of gel, but if you race at all, you’re bound to have noticed that organizers always seem to have boxes and boxes (and boxes) of free PowerGel just lying around. And the organizers don’t want to take it home after the event. So, while I have consumed more PowerGel than any other brand, I have spent less on it than on practically any other brand.

I have no science at all to back this claim, but it seems to me that PowerGel hits you faster than any other gel. This is both good and bad. It’s good because just a few minutes after you suck it down, you’ve got a big spike of energy.

It’s bad because I chose the term “spike of energy” in the previous paragraph very carefully. PowerGel drops you off a cliff, energy-wise. If you haven’t queued up the next boost of PowerGel 15 minutes after you took one, you’re in for a sudden and discouraging energy sag.

 

Clif Shot

When Clif Shot first came out, it came in little toothpaste tube-like containers, with a resealable twist cap. It also made a big deal of using brown rice syrup, and so didn’t have that same spikey surge of energy that other gels had.

The problem was, it tasted so bad that nobody ever finished a single tube. People would buy one sample tube, tried it, twist the cap back on, and never twist it back off again.

Clif came out with a second iteration of Clif Shot, this time in the single-serving foil pouch. And this time they did something really clever: they put a little connector between the top tab that you rip off and the main pouch, so that you don’t accidentally lose the top tab and litter.

I used Clif Shot for about two years in this second iteration, because . . . well . . . because I got it for free. I got about a truckload as partial payment from a race organizer for building him a website. I love the bartering system.

The best Clif Shot flavor is to mix Razz Sorbet with Viva Vanilla. The vanilla tones down the insanely sweet taste of the Razz Sorbet to something nearly tolerable. Wow, that’s quite a recommendation, isn’t it?

My final observation on Clif Shot: while it isn’t as obvious as it used to be, the brown rice syrup flavor is still back there, and it leaves a molasses-like aftertaste.

 

Hammer Gel

I have always understood the cardinal rule of endurance racing: don’t try anything new on race day. No new clothes, no new equipment, no new food. Especially no new food. So I have no excuse for why, a few years ago, I bought a big Apple-Cinnamon Hammer Gel jug the day before the Brian Head 100. Maybe it was because of all the positive recommendations I had heard. Maybe it was because it seemed so convenient to be able to just put the bottle the gel came in in the water bottle cage. Maybe it’s because I had gotten cocky from having done a lot of endurance rides, and thought the cardinal rule no longer applied to me.

It still applied to me.

Within an hour of the beginning of the race, I had decided that I hated the taste of Hammer Gel.

Within three hours, I had decided Hammer Gel hated me. I was experiencing stomach cramps in a unique, almost exquisitely painful way.

So I stopped using the Hammer Gel. And of course, in the absence of a nutritional Plan B, I bonked in a manner most colossal.

I finished the race, but I have only one enduring memory of that year’s Brian Head 100: Hammer Gel = pain.

Which is unfair to the Hammer Gel folks, of course. I shouldn’t have tried it for the first time in a race. I should have found a flavor I liked. And it’s totally possible that the cramps were due to something I ate the day before.

But that doesn’t change the reality: I can’t even think about Hammer Gel without shuddering.

 

Honey Stingers (Warning: Website has Very Annoying Audio)

I love honey. I confess, as a kid I would secretly get the honey bear out, upend it and suck out a mouthful (Note to parents and sisters: sorry ‘bout that. Also, sorry I did the same thing with the milk jug. And the Hershey’s Syrup). And so having a company come out with a “gel” that is really nothing more than honey with some flavoring and salt seemed like pure genius.

There are just a couple problems, though:

• Sticky: Any gel is capable of making a sticky mess. However, honey is stickier by an order of magnitude. And it spreads, somehow. You get a little on your lip and soon it’s on your glove, then on your handlebar grip, then on your jersey. Soon, gnats and road debris are sticking to you. It’s less attractive than it sounds.
• Does Not Play at all Well With Others: Most gels mix badly with some things, but as near as I could tell, honey mixes badly with every single kind of sports drink that exists.

I tried making my own honey-based energy gel by diluting honey with water, adding a little salt, and microwaving it to make it easy to mix together. The result tasted really good, but the 5-serving gel flasks I used to hold this honey didn’t seal well, with predictably disastrous results involving me stuck to my saddle.

 

Gu

Gu is the gel brand I’ve settled on for now. Specifically, Vanilla Bean Gu. The way I stumbled on this flavor underscores how subjective these preferences are. My riding buddy Nick had bought a box of Vanilla Bean Gu and hated it so badly he asked if I’d take it off his hands. Always the scrounge, of course I said yes. Turns out, I can tolerate it just fine.

Here’s what I like about Gu: I can slurp one down with a mouthful of water, and it’s gone. The energy pick-up comes quickly enough, but doesn’t pitch me off a cliff immediately afterward. It is, in short, moderately good at everything a gel needs to be good at.

I declare Gu the Honda Civic of energy gels.

 

PS For DIY Types: Kent's Choco-Peanut Goop

Cycling guru and expert at keeping things simple Kent Peterson shares the following recipe for making your own Reeses Peanut Butter Cup –flavored gel in a randonneuring ride report. I haven’t tried it yet, but Kent’s ideas are generally worth investigating. Plus, I like chocolate and peanut butter a lot.

• 1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
• 1/4 cup chocolate syrup (like what you'd put on ice-cream)
• 1/4 cup water

Take the ingredients listed above and put them in a mug. Heat the mug in a microwave for about 30 seconds and then stir everything up. It should all blend together nicely and and have a thin, creamy texture. Spoon it into one of those refillable Gu flasks. Be sure you taste the leftover Goop that's stuck to the mug and the spoon. If you don't like the taste of this stuff at home, you probably won't like it on the road. But I find it delicious. Unlike commercial Gu which is basically just carbohydrates, Goop has some protein, fat, sodium, niacin and vitamin E in it as well.

 

PPS About All Those Brands I Didn’t Mention

Yes, I know. There are a lot of brands out there I haven’t mentioned. Carb-Boom, for example. If they’d like to send me a batch, I’ll try it and even write about it. Same thing goes for pretty much any other brand (except Hammer Gel, which I’d have to give to someone else to try).

The first time I tried an energy gel, I fell in love. Certainly not with the taste: it was a lemon-lime PowerGel, which tasted like a key-lime pie that had been sitting in the sun too long. And certainly not with the texture, which is somewhere between gelatin and toothpaste.

I fell in love with what it did.

About ten minutes after sucking down a gel, you get a sudden, obvious, wonderfully useful boost of energy. If you're climbing, you're able to climb faster. If you're on the flats, you're able to put the hammer down. It's 100 calories of pure energy, a guarantee that you are not going to bonk for the next twenty minutes.

I was hooked.

In the ten years or so that have elapsed, energy gels have been an integral part of my cycling life, mostly for good, sometimes for evil. And I have, without really trying, picked up an absurd amount of knowledge about them: how well they work, how to carry them, tricks for using them, things to watch out for.

And now I will share my precious wisdom with you.

 

Pros and Cons

The benefit of an energy gel is simple and obvious: it gets calories into your system faster than just about any other method, short of an IV. You suck the little packet dry, take a swig of water, and then a few minutes later, you have energy. You can suck one down without stopping or even slowing down. In an endurance race, they're practically indispensable.

But that little packet of energy has a few "gotchas," too:

• Slippery Slope: Once you've started sucking down energy gels, you don't get to stop using them until you either finish the ride or get something more substantial to eat. That little packet o' power is going to drop you back on your butt just about twice as fast as it picked you up. Twenty (or thirty, tops) minutes after you use one energy gel, you've got to take another (and then another, and then another), or you're going to notice your legs have stopped working.
• Does Not Play Well With Others: Since most energy gels are really nothing more than super-simple carbohydrates (ie, sugar), you wouldn't think combining them with other foods or drinks would ever pose a problem. And you would be completely — and sometimes, painfully — wrong. The wrong gel, eaten at the same time as the wrong energy bar, washed down by the wrong energy drink, and then nicely shook up on a bike, is a recipe for … ummm… gastric distress. Which ones should you not combine? Everyone seems to react differently to different combinations, so I'm afraid you'll have to experiment, preferably on a day on which you do not later have pressing social engagements.
• Tastes Horrible: The very best energy gel in the world would be one that somehow has no taste at all (or, perhaps, one that tastes like chicken). As is, though, no matter what flavor the gel packet advertises, the overwhelming sensation of every single gel is of extraordinary sweetness. And if, over the course of a long endurance ride, you suck down enough of these energy gels, you will stop noticing any flavor other than sweetness. Seriously, I recall riding on the Kokopelli Trail and sucking down a PowerGel, without looking at the wrapper. I then asked myself, "Was that lemon-lime or Strawberry Banana?" I had no idea. It was just sweet. So the next time I sucked one down, I made a point of not looking at it, and tried to tell which flavor it was. I couldn't. Just sweet. Sickeningly sweet.
• Loss of Humanity: Once you start using energy gel, you have admitted that you are willing to eat something nasty, just for the calories. You’re no longer eating like a civilized human, you’re feeding a machine. The next step on this path is the consumption of Soylent Green (Assimilation into the Borg Collective is the step after that).

Easy Access

The whole point of using an energy gel is to get calories into you as quickly as possible. You don't want to stop or slow down. So where do you keep them? Well, that depends on how many you need to carry. I put one under the elastic of each leg of my shorts, with just the tab showing. The gels stay put that way, and I can grab one with one hand, tear it open with my teeth, and suck it down in just a few seconds.

If I'm doing a big ol' race — 100 miles or so — I'll get around the whole problem of opening those individual packets ahead of the race by emptying them (you can also buy energy gels in multi-serving packets) into a water bottle. 20 servings — 2000 calories — only fills a water bottle about half full. I'll then dilute the gel with water and shake, so I can easily squeeze it through the bottle's valve.

The sad thing is, at about $1.00 / serving, that bottle's now got $20 worth of "food" in it. For that much money, it ought to taste much, much better.

 

Disposal

If you’re going to use single-serve packets (and most of the time, you are), you’ve got a problem right off the bat. What are you going to do with it once you’re done? Well, during a race it seems like most people’s answer is, “Discard it on the trail, as a gift to the locals who live nearby, and the volunteers who will clean up after my selfish piggishness.”

OK, that was harsh. I’m sorry. And actually, I did once see someone who was glad for those discarded gel packets, in what is easily the most disturbing biking anecdote I know. And I’m about to share it with you! Oh boy!

I was in the final 25 miles of the Leadville 100 — I can’t even remember which year. As a cruel practical joke, the organizers have a five mile climb in this section, which is so difficult that most people have to get off and walk big portions of it. It was during this hike-a-bike tour that I first noticed someone about 100 feet ahead of me, stooping down and picking something up. After another twenty feet, he stooped again, and picked something else up.

I was actually feeling pretty good, so was on my bike. Curious, I stepped up my pace. It didn’t take too long before I had nearly caught up with him, since he was pushing his bike. I was going to ask what he had been picking up, when he stopped again, and picked up an empty gel packet.

“What a great guy,” I thought. “He’s picking up other peoples’ litter, even during the race.”

And then I saw him put that gel packet to his lips, trying to squeeze something out of it. He wasn’t doing litter control. He was so far bonked he was scavenging discarded gel packets.

I looked away as I rode by. (Yes, yes, I would have given him one of my own, but I only had one left and that was for me.)

I will pause for a moment for you to let that sink in. Once your heebie-jeebies have subsided, I will continue.

You OK now? Good.

So, there’s a proper technique for putting an empty gel packet back in your jersey pocket (or under your bike shorts elastic, if you’re me): roll it up or fold it up, but start at the mouth of the packet. This keeps gel from dribbling into your jersey pocket, which is good, because since it’s sticky and gross-looking, and you don’t want it on whatever else you’ve got in that pocket.

I guess I should mention I learned this the hard way. Back when gel was new to me, I used it all the time — I’d suck one or two down even during two-hour rides. Once, mid-ride, I asked Dug to take an empty packet — my jersey didn’t have pockets. He took it, and of course by the end of the ride, his jersey was glued to his back.

Until then, I had never thought Dug had it in him to give a cross, schoolmarmish lecture on gel packet etiquette. Turns out, though, he does have it in him.

 

When Should You Use Gel?

When I first started using gel, I used it practically every ride. I relied on that little rush of energy to get me over the next hill, even during ordinary training rides.

At a buck a pop, that gets kind of expensive — I was spending $10 / week on that goop.

And also, after a while, I started to get really sick of gel, to the point that I’d get a minor gag reflex when I saw a packet.

So, here’s the reasonable course of gel action: don’t use it during your training rides, except when you’re training for a race or big riding event. In that case, you’ve got to find out what kinds of gels you can tolerate — both from taste and intestinal perspectives — and what kinds of food and drink work well with that kind of gel. You don’t want any nasty surprises during the race / event itself.

 

Oh, I’m Just Getting Started

You know what’s pathetic? I know more — a lot more — about energy gels. Monday, I’ll give a subjective, non-scientific, unfair, and totally non-comprehensive head-to-head retrospective review of gels I have tried.

It promises to be the gooiest blog entry ever.

Congratulations to Rocky for winning yesterday's contest. Yeah, he's my brother-in-law, but he still had the best story. And I figured, the fact that I'm his bro-in-law is punishment enough; it shouldn't stop him from winning a contest: 

My second real moutain bike was an Ibis Mojo. It was a steel wonder. I decided that I would build it up myself, since I needed to learn bikes. I did. Along the way the bottom bracket began to creak a little. I pulled the crank and tightened the bottom bracket--super snug it was. The sound went away and I was happy. Then it came back. "Hey, it worked once, I'll do it again." After three or four of those episodes, the bottom bracket d finally just gave out. I tried to remove it, but it would not let go. I took it to the bike shop to have them look at it.

They tried every which way to get it to let go but to no avail. I returned at the appointed hour to pick up my bike and there it was, still in the mechanic's stand awaiting some badly needed repair. I asked if there was anything that could be done to remove it. The mechanic reached under his table and pulled out a 4 ft. "cheater pipe." He said that he would not try it, but that I was welcome to. He didn't want the liability. He helped me set it up, and then, like a loving mother that cannot standby and watch her dying child suffer, he went to lunch. I wrestled with it there in the shop alone for ten or fifteen minutes, only to discover (when he returned) that I was turning it the wrong way--I was further tightening it. You know, that left-hand thread thing.

The good news is that all of that wrenching in the wrong direction had broken the vise grip that the bottom bracket had on the frame. With only significant, monstrous effort did it let go competely when I was finally turning it in the correct direction. At last, I was free of that infernal creaking.

That day I learned two things. I first learned that some graphite powder or some grease should go into the threads of the bottom bracket and the frame prior to tightening it. Second, I learned that the mechanical stuff should be left to the mechanics.

All Apologies

I have a crushing headache and am swamped at work. So while I tried to write something this morning, tried again at lunch, and tried again after work, I'm simply not funny today. You'll just have to believe me when I say that everything I wrote was better off deleted than read. It just didn't happen. At all. As you can see.

I'm going to go ride my bike home now and get a good night's sleep. I may also show a pint of Ben and Jerry's who's boss.  

 

Today, I have some great news, some good news, and some more good news.

 

Great News

About two years ago, my wife found out she had breast cancer. About a year ago, she finished up her treatment: surgery and chemo. Yesterday afternoon, she got back the results of her 1-year followup appointment.

She’s clean!

Of course, she’s still high risk for the next four years or so, but decreasingly so. I hate to say we’re out of the woods, but it sure feels like it.

Huzzah!

 

Good News

My wife’s actually feeling a little under the weather today, so I took the day off for her to rest and recover, and for me to play with the kids.

Later this afternoon, she’ll probably go to see the new Sense and Sensibility movie with a friend.

Why is this good news? Well, since I'll be watching the kids, I don’t have to go see Sense and Sensibility, of course: I get brownie points for being a good husband and  I get to avoid a movie I desperately want to not see.

 

More Good News

The only thing is, I’m not going to have time to write the Fat Cyclist entry I had planned for today. Luckily, yesterday Dug sent me an email talking about finding out what his wattage output is. I think that most cyclists — and especially anyone who has read Lance Armstrong’s War (recommended, by the way) — have wondered what their wattage is, so I was interested in what the test was like.

Plus, Dug’s a good writer, in spite of his churlish nature. And when I asked him nicely, he even cleaned it up, adding proper capitalization and punctuation.

Take it away, Dug.

 

Wattage Testing For Dorks

When Lance Armstrong won the Alpe de Huez time trial a few years ago, he maintained a sustained wattage output of over 400 watts, for something like 32 minutes. The rest of the top 20 in the elite pro peloton average about 10 percent less. I only mention this as a way of pointing out that you and I both suck. It doesn’t matter how much better than me you are, or how much better than you I am. Comparatively speaking, we all suck. But sometimes we forget. Well, I do anyway.

Last night, I was forcibly reminded.

My wife signed us up for a 4 month winter spin class at her gym. I’ve never been one for structured classes or exercise, but this was something we could do together, and would help me maintain some fitness through the winter. Plus, she has just finished some kind of personal trainer workout/eating program, and she is taking great delight in the fact that her body fat percentage is lower than mine. So I agreed to this spin class, knowing they’d test us for wattage, and I’d be able to lord my wattage numbers over her.

I’m pathetic.

I hate tests. When they made me swim a mile at scout camp, they had to throw me in the lake and guard the dock so I wouldn’t get out of the water; I did the sidestroke, just so they’d have to stand there for entire two hours while I swam. But this wattage test was also something I could email to Fatty, and tell him I had more voltage — or ohms, or amperes, or whatever — than he has.

 

State of the Art Facility

Kim and I went to the trainer’s house for the test: me with my Cannondale RX2000, Kim with a friend’s Bianchi Pantani special, and our new heart rate monitors (still in the box). They oooh’d and aaaah’d over the Bianchi…until they realized it was borrowed. And too big for Kim. They took Kim downstairs, and put me in the laundry room. They had a trainer set up (next to the dirty clothes hamper), hooked to a laptop (which was resting on the Maytag washing machine).

Really elegant, very professional.

Coach put my bike in the stand, hooked a backup heart rate monitor to my earlobe, and told me to warm up. While I was spinning, he asked if I’d done any racing lately, and I told him I’d done the Snowbird hillclimb in September. Based on my finish time, he guessed I could do about 290 watts. I had no reference for this number, except Lance Armstrong’s numbers on Alpe de Huez, which didn’t really make me feel good.

 

All Is Vanity

I got set up in the right gear, big ring, about 5 down in the back, and coach told me to spin at 16mph (the laptop on his washing machine in front of me gave the speed). I found myself trying to control the mph minutely, embarrassingly trying to impress the coach with my ability to spin at the exact speed he wanted, and I also attempted to keep my heart rate really low, and still maintain the pace.

He paid no attention at all.

Every 60 seconds, he told me to increase my speed by .5 mph, and would periodically ask me to rate my perceived exertion, which I faked as “very comfortable” every time.

At around 21mph, I found myself looking around for a place to blow my nose. On a typical ride in the canyon, I think I expel several quarts of mucous, but I wasn’t ready to foul his laundry room — yet. Clearl, he had been waiting for this, since he immediately handed me a tissue. I guess all cyclists are alike in this regard.

 

The Test

When we got to 25mph, I was starting to breathe pretty heavily, and was losing my form on the bike, bobbing and weaving like a dork, my heart rate up around 185. In other words, pretty standard for me. He had me pedal at 25mph for about a minute, and just as I was prepping to up the pace to 25.5mph, he told me to gear down and cool off. I protested that I still had plenty in the tank, that I could go longer, faster. He just smiled, and said, “I’ve done thousands of these, believe me, you’re done.”

“But I haven’t even gotten out of the saddle yet, I can go faster,” I pleaded.

That’s when he explained that he was measuring maximum sustained output, not just maximum output. What you can do for about 15 seconds in a sprint isn’t the kind of fitness being measured in the wattage test. It’s what you can do over a long climb — or into a headwind — that counts.

I felt a little let down, since I’d expected to go so hard I would throw up and fall off the trainer, and need to be resuscitated. I expected drama. I expected to really show how I could push myself into dangerous territory. This was all so…genteel.

Or as genteel as it could be in a laundry room.

 

For My Next Feat of Strength, I Shall Challenge My Kids to an Arm Wrestling Match

But I got the payoff. Kim came upstairs, and the woman with her was gushing about how well she did (Kim’s never ridden a road bike before: only mountain biking, recreationally), and how great she looked. “Yeah, but what was your wattage?” I asked.

“175. What’s yours?”

“287.” (I snickered, but only to myself—I’m not completely insane.)

“That's great,” Kim said with a yawn. “Hey, can we get going? I'm a little light-headed; I did the test without using my asthma medication.”

I swear, I could have done 295. I swear.

I learned a lot from the comments posted yesterday. Specifically, I learned that:

• Of all the places in the world from which a bike can be stolen, a bike rack seems to be the least common.
• If you steal a bike, the bike will do its utmost to kill you and return to its rightful owner.
• You people get distressed over the loss of a bike in much the same way most people get distressed over the loss of a beloved friend. Which makes total sense to me, by the way.

Truthfully, yesterday's comments on bike theft were uniformly outstanding. Except BotchedExperiment's, who needs a little work on his begging skills. So, while I can only give a messenger bag to one person, I'd like to hand out several honorable mentions, which are as heartfelt as they are non-negotiable.

 

Grand Prize

The Banjo Brothers Messenger Bag winner is Al Maviva, with his story of theft, rage, revenge, triumph, and a bunch of crying.

 

Hell Hath No Fury Like a 10-Year-Old Who Has Just Had His Bike Stolen

When I was a little kid, 10 years old or so, we lived in a semi-rural area on a road that was bordered by forest and corn fields. A lot of teenagers would drive up our road, park and get stoned. We weren’t supposed to ride on the road.

One day I was out with one of my sisters, who was about 7, tooling around on the road on my little red and white Schwinn with coaster brakes and 16” hard rubber tires. This green stationwagon with about 5 teenagers in it pulled up, and a couple kids got out while two or three stayed in the car. One kid blocked my forward progress, and the other knocked me off my bike and then rode away.

My sister started crying and screaming, I started crying and screaming, and I was pissed and scared and totally freaking out, in an enormous hysterical rage. Taking isn't nice, I guess.

Just then, I noticed these big rocks about the size of bread loaves or a little larger just off the side of the road, adjacent to the cornfield. In a total Hulk fit, I hoisted a good sized rock and threw it — soccer throw-in style — over my head with two hands, onto the hood of the car. It bounced across the hood leaving a basketball-sized dent and some scratches.

The two or three teens in the car started freaking out. While they discussed the situation and shouted to their bike thief friend, I kept screaming and crying, and I hoisted another big rock and heaved it, putting another huge dent in the hood.

The teens were shouting at each other. Meanwhile, I hoisted this enormous rock that was almost too big for me to lift. I was still crying and screaming and blubbering, “I hate you I’m gonna tell on you I hate you,” and so forth.

I staggered over to the car holding the enormous rock, getting ready to take out the windshield. The kid driving the car gets out of the car and I noticed he’s crying. “This is my father’s car! He’s going to kill me! Stop! Please! Stop!” So I blubber, “Gimme my bike back,” and stood there with the rock over my head, basically holding the windshield hostage.

The thief finally saw what was happening, and started riding back to the car. I backed off a couple steps, the teenagers started getting into the car and yelling to the thief, “That little kid is &%$@ing crazy, give him back his bike.” The thief threw the bike past me into the field and jumped into the car, and they peeled away, and I eventually dropped the big rock.

When I finally stopped crying and freaking out and hyperventilating, my sister and I agreed to never speak of this to our parents.

 

Honorable Mentions

There were lots of good stories, and the only reason I'm not including more of them is because at some point it'd just start to look like all I did today is copy and paste the comments section from yesterday's post.

Which I guess is what I did, but I'm also adding this clever introduction, not to mention witty award titles. Hey, cut me a little slack, would you?

 

The "I Had No Idea My Brother-in-Law Is So Bizarre" Award

I have this riding friend who, in an effort to upgrade his lackluster skills, upgraded his lackluster bike. Actually, he bought the Specialized S-Works Enduro in 2003—the whiz-bang super cool anodized one with the Talas fork and the "itch-switch™." Price tag: $5,300.

Geez, it was a nice bike. And geez, he wouldn't stop yacking about it. So, when he went on vacation for a week, leaving said bike alone at home, I slinked into his garage (actually, I had the super skinny 9 year-old slide under the cat-sized opening for...well...the cat, in the garage door) and I stole the bike.

After he returned, I had it in my home for three days before he noticed that it was gone, and before he noticed the ransom note taped to his front door, replete with disturbing photographs of the bike, bound and gagged with me cleverly disguised as a terrorist with a hacksaw preparing to lop off some critical parts.

The ransom demands were simple: A block of sharp cheddar cheese, a Metallica CD, a copy Mein Kampf, and $25. He thought that I was kidding—obstinate fool. He held out for a week until he realized I was serious. He delivered the goods, all but the block of cheese.

"No bike, monkey boy—not until ALL of the demands have been met."

Later that day I ate cheese, had a good read [editor's note: ?!?!] , and some head bangin,' whilst he got re-acquainted with his now-tainted aluminum buddy.

—Rocky

Award for Most Secure Bike Ever

I have never had a bike stolen, but I have a good reason why. I put my bike in the company bike rack like everyone else, and I don't even lock it up. However, I do sit about fifteen feet from the bike rack where I occupy my post as a security officer. We are required to carry a firearm for work, so I figured I can skip the lock.

— uncadan8 

Karma Award

I had put my road bike on my bike rack one day after a ride and, due to the ride-induced malfunction of my brain, forgot to lock it. I went to run an errand and came out of the store after being away from the car for 10-15 minutes max. Not only was my bike gone - but my rack had also been stolen. It was not a particularly valuable bike - but it was what I could afford at the time - and I was ripped.

I'm a nurse and had to be in to work that night - and was assigned to work in the ER. My 3rd patient of the evening was a young guy in his 20's who came in with a fractured collarbone and quite a few scrapes. We got to talking about biking and the rides we had both enjoyed in the area. At that point, he told me that he'd had a bike vs. motor vehicle encounter that had brought him into the ER.

His girlfriend says "You've got to see the bike - it's on the rack but it's totally messed up!" I went out to the parking lot - and of course, it was my bike, my rack, and my helmet - which I hadn't even realized was missing!! Guess that vehicle was one of those newfangled karmas...

— Joanie

Award for Most Shameless Plea for a Bike Bag

Can I PLEASE have the bag? I've had 2 bikes stolen. One from university rack, other from car in university parking lot.

—BotchedExperiment

Award for Laziest Entry

Can I PLEASE have the bag? I've had 2 bikes stolen. One from university rack, other from car in university parking lot.

—BotchedExperiment

Award for Most Un-Stolen Bike

I had a properly locked superbe pro/columbus slx road bike go missing from the university racks in 1985. I put in a report with campus security and the police. About a week later I saw a bike suspiciously like mine in the rack behind the science labs. I sidled over and had a look.

I recognised the scratch on the down tube. Then I recognised the lock. Then I remembered that I had visited a friend on the way to lectures on that fateful day. And had arrived from a different direction, and used a different bike rack, and had a memory like a sieve.

—BIG Mike

The "You Traded it for What?" Award

This one is visceral for me. When I was a lad of 8, my Mom bought me my big person's bike; a new Raleigh Gazelle. I rode my Gazelle throughout the neighborhood in the early mornings and thus established a deep and life long habit of early morning rides that is attached at my core and I follow to this day. One day, I was at the "gully" in our neighborhood finding lead pieces (treasure) from a target shooter long past, when I heard a couple of big kids laughing. I looked up and noticed that the bike they were riding (away from me quickly) looked familiar. It was my Gazelle.

Needless to say, my existence was , well, shattered. I eventually resigned myself to the loss and got back on my 20" Schwinn hand-me-down. Many weeks later my big brother spotted what he thought was the Gazelle in the bike racks at the junior high he attended. He noted the serial number and indeed it was my bike. The police and my brother and my father all waited for the thief to come to the bike and confronted him. I got it back, fenders missing and the handle bars turned upside down. It was cool. I was happy to have my bike back.

I rode it for years and eventually traded it for banjo lessons when I was sixteen. I wish I hadn't. I miss my Gazelle to this day and I sometimes think I should find another one for old time's sake. Nowadays, I only leave my bike unattended outside of grocery stores in small towns where I have stopped for treats. I haven't had any problems. 

—jimserotta 

The "If It's Not Locked Up, It Must Not Be Worth Stealing" Reverse-Psychology Award

After 30+ years of riding bikes ive noticed if i lock up a bike, it gets stolen. If i dont lock it up, it stays. Ive never figured it out but it just works for me like that. Andits always the cheap bikes i own that always get stolen. My K-mart special, gone. my discount Diamondback, gone. My Cannondales and S-works, never move. Even all my bmx bikes never got stolen if i left em sitting around, but the minute i locked em up, Gone. 

—Donald Carter 

The "Dude, the Stolen Bike Was the Least of Your Problems" Award

I have a story of a stolen bike but it is, alas, deeply sad. The first real bike, a Trek 320 or some such number, a tourer with the nifty shifters in the drops, champagne. Bought it with my high school graduation money in 1979, rode it everywhere, moved in with a girl I thought I loved, possibly drank too much and certainly engaged in mild drug abuse. Wandered out of the apartment to drink too much, left the door ajar, returned to an emptied out shell of a place.

 —alas

I’ve never had a biking trip quite like the Moab trip last weekend, and not just because of the weather or where we rode or having a great group of friends to ride with. I’ve been trying to figure out what made this one different, and I think I’ve got it figured out: It was great because I was determined to make it great. Now that I’ve got four kids, a fairly intense job, and live several states away, it’s not that easy to get away for a weekend. So I told myself I was going to make the most of it.

Yesterday, I talked about how other people rode. Today, it’s all about me.

 

Auspicious Beginning

Leading up to Moab this year, I have ridden my mountain bike a whopping five times. I knew I was out of practice and that the mountain bike would feel awkward at first. I also knew, though, that I had been riding my road bike every day; my legs were in good shape. I decided that I wouldn’t worry about whether I made lots of moves, but that I would at least try.

The first day, we rode Slickrock, which is possibly the most popular mountain bike trail in the world. It’s a massive sandstone playground. You can ride the entire loop in a couple hours, but we all preferred to go from one move to the next, with everyone getting as many attempts as they like.

The first move is located at a 20-foot-high round dome of sandstone, with an overhanging ridge at the top. The idea is to climb the dome, go under the overhang and then hop the final lip at the top. It’s a finesse move.

I should point out that the fact that most of the group cleaned this move within a few tries does not make it an easy move. I’ve been to this move with other groups and think I can safely say that most people would not clean this move, ever.

You start by approaching the dome, turning right as you begin climbing it — it’s too steep to go straight up — then pull a sharp U-turn left to get under the overhang. This is the tricky part, because you’ve got to stay a little crouched to not bang your head, your legs are giving everything they’ve got to make it up the steep pitch, and you’ve got a pretty impressive drop on your right.

I tried this move probably eight or nine times, each time losing traction and spinning out at the U-turn. Finally, it occurred to me: try taking the U-turn wider. It meant more time under the overhang, but I was less likely to spin out.

It worked.

Once you’ve made the U-turn, the rest of the move isn’t very difficult — just scary, because you’ve got a wall going up to your right, rock inches over your head, and a big ugly fall to your left. Then, a quick hop at the top over a small step, and I was there.

I could tell it was going to be a good weekend.

 

My Head Commences to Swell

Next, there was an interesting move everyone called “The Crack.” The best line is up a crack in the sandstone as you lunge up the four-foot, slightly-inclined wall. You’ve got to be careful, because there’s a sandstone wall on your left side, and exposure everywhere else.

While some people made the obvious jokes (Have you ever wondered how middle-aged men act when they’re together? Just like high school sophomores, it turns out) about “cracks,” I watched others do the move, trying to see what worked. Then, I rolled up at speed, wheelied, and got half way up on momentum alone. I stood up, cranked twice, and was up.

First try.

Oh yeah, it was going to be a good weekend.

 

Ow! Ow ow ow ow.

The third big move is different — it’s just a steep slope — 70 degrees, maybe? — thirty feet down into powdery, soft sand below. From the top, it looks like you’re just rolling off into space and that you’ll fall the whole way down. Once you’re going, though, the real trick is to just manage your speed. You don’t want to skid, but you want to keep the wheels rolling as slowly as possible.

At the beginning of the day, I had not intended to do this move. It’s a pure “guts” move, and I tend to err on the side of caution.

The first few people had gone, and now there were three or four of us up top, looking at each other.

I decided to try it.

I rolled down, and could tell I wasn’t doing a good job of speed management — I was going too fast. I grabbed more brake, but not enough. I kept accelerating.

And then I hit the sand.

My bike stopped right away, but I did not. I shot over the front of the bike, mostly landing harmlessly in the nice, soft sand.

My right hand, though, landed in a cactus.

I had picked up two kinds of quills:

• Nice, easy-to-extract needle-ish quills: These were very easy to remove. Grab them and pull them out. I probably picked up fifteen to twenty of these.
• Nasty tufts of hairlike quills: I also picked up dozens — hundreds? — of tiny little quills as fine as hairs. These were easy enough to remove, if you could see them. Some of them came in little clumps and could be pulled out together. Others, though, came individually, and stung like crazy whenever I touched my palm to anything. I expect I have not yet removed all of these.

Strangely, this painful episode didn’t do much to hurt my confidence. After all, I had just had bad luck hitting a cactus; it’s not like the fall itself would have otherwise been painful at all.

All in all, I was pleased with myself: I had just ridden my bike down a thirty foot wall.

 

Gold Bar Rim

Gold Bar Rim is one of Moab’s best-kept secrets. This is because most people don’t understand the right way to ride it. If you ride it as most people do, it’s not a great ride — you’re just climbing, climbing, climbing, and then faced with the Portal trail at the end, which is an evil, murderous trail (there’s seriously a sign at the top with a counter saying how many people have died while trying to ride it).

What we do, instead, is ride as a group from one interesting technical move to another. We then stop and work on trying to clean it, giving everyone as many tries as they like (there used to be a three-try rule, but as the difficulty of moves has increased, that rule has fallen by the wayside).

As I noted yesterday, my technical skills aren’t even close to most of my friends’. But something had got into my head, and I found myself on a quest to clean certain moves.

• Staircase: This is just a massive progression of sandstone ledges, some just an inch or two high, some as high as a foot. Some people cleaned it and moved on, some people tried it once or twice and moved on. According to Rocky, who cleaned it his first try and then waited for me, I tried it ten times, and I had already tried it a few times before he even got there. The thing is, though, I finally got it.
• Grand Finale: I knew, going in, that I wasn’t going to clean this move. It’s three massive ledges (3-4 feet each) you’ve got to climb in immediate succession. Until this past weekend, though, I had never even tried it. Last Saturday, though, after watching everyone else make attempt after attempt, it occurred to me: I would never clean that move if I didn’t at least start trying. So I did. I never even got to the top of the second ledge, but I did make it past the first. For me, that’s a big deal. I probably tried this six or seven times.

Aftermath

I looked in the mirror today and I have five large bruises on my legs. I didn’t count how many times I fell during the weekend, but I would guess it was close to thirty times. Maybe fifty.

Maybe it’s for the best that I didn’t count.

The thing is, though, I would gladly have twice as many bruises, and fall twice as often, if that’s what it took to earn that feeling of approaching a move, attacking it, and having the uncertainty and apprehension turn to victory and elation as you finally — finally! — make that move yours.

I just — as in 12 hours ago — got back from Moab, UT, where a group of friends and I had what I think most of us would agree was the best long weekend of mountain biking in the history of long weekends of mountain biking.

I'm sure we share a lot of the same reasons for what made it great. The weather was truly ideal; temperatures in the mid-sixties throughout the day, with just enough of a breeze to feel good. There's a new Mexican restaurant in town that we all agreed was top-notch. There was good consensus on which rides we should do, and most everyone stayed for the whole three days. And those who didn't stay for all three days had a good reason for going home, except Brad, who is a nincompoop.

I had my own particular, secret reason for why I enjoyed the trip, though: I have fully and completely accepted that I am and always will be the worst rider in the group.

It's refreshing, really, to finally be able to say to myself, "I may improve a lot, but I will never ever ever be even remotely as technically adept as the second-worst rider in the group." Once I admitted that, I was able to stop competing, and just start enjoying the multitude of ways in which all my friends are better mountain bikers than I am, and how they express that superiority.

I shall give examples.

 

Ride Brilliantly, Then Say You are Just Lucky

I wanted to start with this one, because many Fat Cyclist readers have expressed interest in how my brother-in-law Rocky would fare, what with his being a karmic black hole and all. Well, as he pointed out midway through the second day of riding last weekend, those kinds of problems only happen to him when he's on endurance rides.

Rocky, I think it can be safely said, left everyone's jaws hanging open last weekend. On Slickrock, he cleaned everything, and usually on the first try. On Goldbar Rim, he completely dumbfounded everyone by casually flashing big drops and tall ledges. This is best illustrated by a move that I call "The Grand Finale" — a series of three ledges in rapid succession, each about three feet high. Rocky, without ever having tried this move before, rode straight up it: Bam, bam, bam. First try. Then, after everyone else worked on it for about an hour while Rocky soaked up the sun, he got back on his bike and did it again.

The thing is, after each extraordinary feat, Rocky would always have some sort of weird self-deprecation on hand to explain it away. The following are actual quotes from Rocky, followed by my petulant responses.

• "I did it on the first try, because I knew I didn't have enough gas for the second try." So, I'm falling down simply because I have energy to burn, right Rocky?
• "I just cleaned it because I was afraid to fall down." I, on the other hand, seek opportunities to crash and burn. Yes, I realize that it looks like that's really the case, but I'm being sarcastic.
• "I'm just having a good day." No, Rocky, I'm having a good day, because I'm cleaning roughly 40% of the moves after having tried over and over and over. You are having a day unlike any day I can even imagine.

You know what I think? I think the extra kidney was just holding Rocky back.

 

Do Impossible Moves with the Grace of a Dancer, Using the Simplest Bike Imaginable

Brad is a pleasure to watch. While most people thrash on their bikes, trying to manhandle them up — or down — a tricky move, Brad just seems to flow up and over everything, as if he has obtained a waiver from the people who enforce the laws of physics and gravity. Brad sees a series of boulders, feet apart — something most people wouldn't even picture as a "move," because clearly there's no way to ride up and over all those — and then he rides up and over all those.

I don't even try most of the moves Brad cooks up, in much the same way that I don't try to speak Japanese: Saying a sentence is out of the question when you don't have the vocabulary.

This year, Brad did it all on a 29"-wheeled singlespeed, which somehow made his riding even more elegant. On the singlespeed, you don't get to pick how fast or slow you approach the moves, you pretty much have to do everything at a good clip or lose your momentum.

I used to be envious of Brad's riding style. Now he's so far ahead of me that the envy's gone. Plus, I'm confident that I'm 45% smarter than he is.

 

Convince Me You are Going to Die Every Single Time You Do a Move

Corey is a mellow, unassuming guy who just seems happy to be wherever he happens to be at the moment. When he's on his bike, though, you can be certain that he's looking for a difficult ledge to climb up, or a huge drop to fly down. And you can be equally certain that he will completely disregard any potential consequences of failure, such as falling to his death or ramming headfirst into a rock.

Corey routinely charged at 4-foot-high ledges at top speed, knowing that he needed that kind of momentum to carry him up, and also knowing that if he didn't make it, he'd crush into the ledge and then fall backward. He'd get big air off a ten foot drop, yelling "That felt good!" afterward, leaving unspoken — unthought? — how double-plus-ungood it would have felt if he would have munged the landing.

I guess that's what separates the daredevils from the poseurs: Corey sees how well the move's going to go; I see opportunities for compound fractures.

 

Convince Me that Fitness and Power are the Answers to Every Problem

Kenny also brought a singlespeed 29-er to the Moab party. And while Brad just seemed to zip up and over thing in spite of physics, Kenny cleaned everything as if he wanted to make an obstinate rebuttal to gravity. So many times during the rides last weekend, Kenny would slow down in the middle of a move. I'd think he was about to go down, and then he'd lean forward, stand up, and pedal through it. I swear, Kenny could pedal up a tree if the tires would stick.

 

Convince Me that Fitness and Power are Irrelevant to the Problem

Bob's got middle-age spread to about the same extent I do. He's been riding his mountain bike no more than I have, and his road bike considerably less than I have. But he was still cleaning move after move. No two ways about it: Bob's got the skill and experience to make his body do whatever he wants, even if his body doesn't think it can.

I think, actually, Bob may have benefited from the advice I gave him through the day. I encouraged him, for example, to throw his shoulders back when he attempted a move, or to try to lift his front wheel with more panache. My advice had its effect, and I could tell Bob really valued it, primarily by giving me the extra space a man of wisdom deserves. Some might suggest he was avoiding me, but I know better.

 

Completely Up-end My Understanding of What Makes a Good Bike

Dug and Rick both rode hardtail singlespeed 29-ers at Fall Moab this year, too. And they were cleaning moves left and right. They were climbing stuff I was doing in my granny gear. They were, in effect, showing me that all the reasons I have for a geared setup were actually just ways that I'm compensating for my weak legs. I'd clean a move and be proud of myself, and then Rick and Dug would easily do the same move on their singlespeeds. I'd be motoring uphill and feeling good about myself, when they'd suddenly pass me. "Sorry, gotta keep moving," they'd say.

Rick let me borrow his bike for a few minutes during a couple of the rides, and now I desperately want a Gary Fisher Rig.

 

And Yet... 

So, yes. I am the worst rider of the group, and always will be. But you know what? I had some spectacular successes over the weekend, along with some impressive failures. And those are what I will talk about tomorrow.

And, after all, every group needs an omega rider — a guy who can make everyone else in the group feel good about themselves. I'm proud to fill that role.

 

PS: Who's in the photos? Here's who.

1. Bob, cleaning a ledge drop. Then, after the ledge drop, you've got to do . . . another ledge drop.

2. Corey, going big. That's a six-foot vertical drop he's hucking there, with a nice hard sandstone floor rushing up to greet him.

3. Dug, cleaning a big ledge move. It's hard to tell in the photo, but that ledge overhangs. You've got to wheelie up about 18 inches and then hop your rear wheel that same amount.

4. The group.

     Left to right, front row: Rich, Tom, Brad, Paul.

     Left to right middle row: Rocky, Corey, Rick, Dug, Bob

     Left to right, back row: Kenny, Racer, Fatty

 

 

Is there anything less surprising in the world than a cyclist getting hit by a car? I mean, sure, it's a big deal to the guy it actually happens to, but it's so common of a story it's almost not worth telling, right?

But I just can't get my head around what happened on my commute yesterday.

 

The Setup

It had rained most of Tuesday night, but Wednesday morning was really nice: cloudy, but no wind. I finished writing and posting my entry for the day, got my bike out, cleared the pine needles out from between the tires and fenders (it's amazing how many collect there in just ten miles, and how much of a braking action they cause), and headed to work.

The stoplight at the intersection of 228th and Inglewood Hill meant that, as usual, I was first off the line. There's a nice shoulder on the side of the road, though, so people had no trouble passing me. I got up to speed and was cruising along at about 20mph.

 

The Crash

Then, about 200 yards after the stoplight, a bronze Toyota Previa passed me and then immediately turned into the parking lot to my right, right in front of me.

I grabbed my brakes and veered right, but there was no where to go — no way to avoid the van.

I thunked hard into the rear-right of the van with my left shoulder and ribs, then crashed to the ground on my right side. My right hip and knee took most of the fall. Stunned, I laid there, looking at the van that just hit me.

 

The Followup

I expected the van to stop, immediately. I expected someone to jump out of the van and apologize, profusely — after all, this was clearly the van driver's fault, pure and simple. It was a classic "Right Hook," Collison Type #4 as defined by www.bicyclesafe.com (Thanks to Mytzpyk of the excellent MinusCar blog; I'm just stealing his link). I expected, in short, the very most basic human courtesy.

Instead, the van continued into the large parking lot and parked at a far corner, near a building.

Maybe it says something about me that I assumed whoever did this would come over after parking. I got up, checking to see how bad I was hurt. Not too badly, as it turned out. My left shoulder and ribs hurt, and my right hip and knee stung, but nothing felt serious. While I waited for this person to come over, I — shakily, due to the adrenaline rush — checked over my bike. The fenders were a little out of alignment, but they wouldn't take long to fix. Otherwise, it looked like my bike was OK, too. I was sure the person who had caused this crash would be glad to hear that.

Speaking of which, I still hadn't seen anyone exit the van.

 

The Not-Very-Surprising Conclusion

I had meant this story to have a twist ending, but the way I've been telegraphing details, I assume you've figured out by now: Tired of waiting for this person to do the right thing, I finally went over to the van myself.

It was empty.

I assume that the driver either bolted into the building while I was checking my bike or exited from the passenger side of the van and used cover from the other cars in the lot to get to the building.

You had figured out that something like this had happened, right?

But I still do have one little twist I'll bet you didn't see coming: the building this driver snuck into was a church.

Nice.

 

The Letdown

I got on my bike and left. Within a few miles, it occurred to me that I should have left a sarcastic note on the van's windshield — something like, "Hey, unorthodox interpretation of the Good Samaritan parable you're using there." Or I could have given a bike shoe cleat-enhanced kick to the car where I had crashed into it. Or I could have gone into the church, asking everyone whether they knew who was the person who thought hit and runs were OK.

I always have those kinds of ideas, and they always come too late to be of any use. And maybe that's for the best. Or maybe it's not.

 

The Questions

So, here are the questions for the day:

• What should I have done differently, if anything?
• When you've been either hit by — or forced into hitting — a car, how have you reacted (assuming you were conscious and could react at all)
• Is this slink-away-undetected hit-and-run behavior as mind-blowingly strange as it seems to me? Or is it more common than I thought?

The Winner of Yesterday's Banjo Brothers Bike Bag Giveaway

First off, I should apologize for not replying to comments yesterday. I was not in a cheerful mood, and didn't want to put a damper on the hilarious bike rack-related postings that were flying around. Here's my favorite:

While preparing to race the 12 Miles of Hell in Lawton, Oklahoma, my friend had pulled out her fancy trailer-hitch-bike-rack-cum-repair-stand from the Jeep. It's one of those jobs that swings out away from the back of the vehicle so you can open the tailgate without removing or folding down the rack. Hot stuff.

I came around from the side of the Jeep, full of excitement and pre-race jitters, and CLOSE-LINED the HELL out of myself on the extended rack. I was actually knocked on my butt from the impact. I had bruises for weeks. The best part of it all? We were camped right at the starting line, which was, at the time, crawling with the Pro/Expert riders who were getting ready to begin the day's racing.

*sigh* I should not be allowed out of the house some days...

— k

"Why is K the winner?" I hear you ask, in a petulant tone. Here's why.

• Originality: It described how a bike rack can be dangerous not just to a bike, but to a person.
• Relevance: When I read this comment, I thought to myself, "D'oh! I forgot to talk about all the times I have stood up after fastening a bike to the rack with a bungie cord or Velcro strap, whacking the crown of my skull into a sharp metallic corner of the rack in the process."
• Hilarity: I love the image of someone getting clotheslined by a rack right at the starting line of a race, as long as that image is not of me.
• Braveness: Willingness to describe an episode where you are clearly the buffoon is not an easy thing.

K, email me your mailing info and I'll send you the Banjo Brothers Seat Bag. And everyone else, thanks for submitting your stories. You'll get another chance next week, so don't whine about losing, OK?

 

BONUS: Important Next Week's Banjo Brother's Giveaway Info

Last night I emailed the Banjo Brothers and asked if we could mix things up a little for next week. "Instead of giving away a seat bag," I proposed, "could we give away a full-on messenger bag?" They said yep. Because they're cool.

 

Most cyclists will agree with me on this, I think: the best way to start a ride is from your own garage. Click in, roll out. It’s a nice, smug feeling: The world is your oyster. You’re self-sufficient. You’re eco-friendly.

Sadly, a lot of the best rides just don’t work out that way. To get to the ride, you have to become a rolling irony and drive there.

And that means, eventually, getting a bike rack for your car. Which is why I respectfully submit this, “The Fat Cyclist’s Guide to Ultimate Bike Rack Happiness.”

Okay, I admit: today’s headline oversells what I have to say. But I just couldn’t bring myself to call today’s entry “The Fat Cyclist’s list of rack-related misadventures and resulting mildly-useful advice.”

Even though that’s what it is.

 

Don’t Use a Temporary Fix as Your Permanent Solution

You know those racks that can be mounted on the trunk of your car using nothing but a few plastic clips, some aluminum tubing, and an infinitely long tangle of nylon straps? Those suck. If used for more than a month or so, they will bust. They will trash your car’s paint job. They will self-destruct when your car reaches 72 miles per hour.

Actually, I have no idea if any of those things are true. I’ve never owned one of those temporary trunk-mounted jobbies, for the following reasons:

• The House of Cards Effect: Bikes on temporary racks always look like they’re in a precarious position.
• The Excessive Effort Effect: If you own a temporary rack, any time you want to take your bike somewhere you’ve got to first put the rack on your car, and then put your bike on the rack. For lazy people (ie, me) that crosses the “too much work” threshold and they’re (I’m) likely to find a reason to bail on the whole enterprise.
• The “Steal Me” Effect: Temporary bike racks give you no security. After you’ve been on this epic ride and are on your way home, say you want to get something to eat at Wendy’s. Crazier things have happened, right? So you go to Wendy’s and then realize that your bike is connected to your car using nothing but nylon webbing, aluminum tubing, and plastic clips. All it would take to steal your $6000 Colnago is a good pair of scissors.
• The Real Reason: I know myself well enough to realize that while I would fastidiously follow the directions for hooking up the rack the first time, after a couple times I would get sloppy and do it wrong. The thought of watching my bike in the rear view mirror as it bounces along the road higgledy-piggledy at freeway speeds is terrifying enough to be a deal breaker.
• The Other Real Reason: Not that you need more than one deal breaker, but I’m confident that if I put a hinged contraption with yards and yards of nylon straps and clips in my garage, it would immediately become so tangled that even the original manufacturer would give it up as a lost cause.

Don’t Put Your Bike Up Top

I do not know a single bike owner with a roof-mounted bike rack and a garage who has not plowed their bike (or, often, more than one bike) into the garage at least once. Myself included. In my case, I had four bikes on the roof at the time. Since, however, two of the bikes were rear-facing, my moment of neglect damaged only (!!) two bikes: two new handlebars, one replaced frame, two new suspension forks, two new headsets, and two new stems set me right as rain. That cost about $1800.

Except this event also damaged the car. Insurance covered most of that, after my $500 deductible.

Oh yeah, I also needed to replace parts of the bike rack. That cost about $400.

And, finally, let’s not forget the damage to the brickwork on the house. $600.

The money, though, wasn’t the worst part. The worst part is that when you hear that noise, you suddenly and clearly remember exactly where your bikes are and what your garage clearance is, and what that noise means. There’s no getting around it: you have just made an incredibly boneheaded error, and it is going to cost you dearly.

I remember when I heard that noise I slammed on the brakes, put the car in park, and then had to let the wave of nausea pass before I got out of the car. I almost couldn’t bear to look at what I had done.

After that, I came up with a pretty reliable system: any time I had to put a bike on the roof rack, I first put the garage door opener in the glove compartment. Then, when I got home and went for the opener in its usual place and found it wasn’t there, that reminded me of where my bikes were and what I needed to do before driving into the garage.

 

Don’t Over-Rack

I once bought a compact SUV (a Honda CRV) because I had a vision of how many bikes I could carry with it. I outfitted it with a roof rack, which easily accommodated four bikes. I also set it up with a spare-tire-mounted rack: that was another two bikes. Yes, I could transport six bikes, along with five passengers and their stuff. I had built the ultimate bike road trip vehicle.

There was just one problem: the car didn’t have the power for that kind of cargo. With four or five people and a bunch of bikes up top, the poor little CRV strained to keep highway speeds, even on the flats. If we went into the mountains (a distinct possibility, considering we were usually going mountain biking), my car could barely stay above 40. 41 if you turned off the A/C and stereo.

When I sold the CRV, I was left with lots of extra rack. Dug came over to see if the Cadillac he had just stolen from his mother (Dug, alas, has no scruples whatsoever) would work with the CRV’s roof rack. I had my doubts, but thought we could check.

One of the most amazing things I have ever seen was when we lifted the rack from my CRV, still locked down for that car’s dimensions, onto the 80’s vintage Cadillac and snapped it into place — with no adjustments whatsoever.

Dug and I looked at each other, jaws agape. There were no words to describe what we had witnessed.

I gave the rack to Dug, no charge. Clearly, the bike rack gods wanted Dug to have that rack; who was I to interfere?

 

Put the Rack in the Back

If you’re going to be putting bikes on your car on a frequent basis, you need a rack that mounts to a 2” hitch receiver. It’s that simple. The receiver will have a loop that lets you lock your bike — including the wheels — to your car, making it at least inconvenient for thieves to take your bike. Your bike won’t be any higher than your car, so you can still get in the garage. And your bike won’t be way up there in the air, so it’s easy to put them up on the rack and take them down.

“But,” I hear you say, “my car doesn’t have a 2” receiver hitch.”

Well, neither did my old Honda Civic hatchback (a wonderful, practical car which I should never have sold). A quick trip to a welder solved that problem.

Also, I should mention that I believe I may currently be the world’s only owner of an Acura RSX Type S with a 2” receiver. In the interest of embarrassing overdisclosure, I should mention that I customized the rack for this car by shortening it from a 4-bike rack to a 2-bike rack. You know, because it looked cooler.

As if once you mount a bike rack to a mid-life-crisis-mobile you have any chance of salvaging any coolness whatsoever.

 

Miscellaneous Wisdom, Acquired the Hard Way

• Secure the Bikes: Once you have the bike on the rack, make sure it can’t sway, especially if you’re going to be taking the bike a long distance. I made the mistake of not doing this once, and the bike rocked back and forth for the entirety of the seven-hour drive. Sadly, the downtube grazed a bolt on the rack with each sway. By the time I took the bike off the rack, the downtube — which was not mine —  had a nice little groove carved into it. I have since purchased that frame.
• Simple is Good: I’ve had a number of different kinds of racks. The most secure are the fork-mounted kind. My favorite, though, are the kind that clamp onto the top tube.
• Goodbye, Elegant Paint Job: The problem with the clamp kind, though, is that each time you clamp the top tube, you scratch the bike’s paint job a little bit. For a long time, I never noticed this effect, because my own bikes were both titanium, and hence had no paint job to scratch. When I got the Fisher Paragon (RIP), though, it wasn’t long before I had completely removed the paint in the clamping area.
• Trust Nobody: It is a widely accepted tenet of rack-based bike transportation that you are responsible for making sure your own bike is secure to the rack. If your bike flies off the rack while in flight, it’s nobody’s fault but your own. Unless the entire rack flies off the car, in which case a reasonable argument can still be made that you should have driven your own stupid car if you’re going to be a crybaby second-guesser. Not that I have ever had a rack suddenly fly off the roof of my car while at freeway speeds.

BONUS: Free Stuff Wednesday, Part II

To win a bike bag from the fabulous Banjo Brothers today, all you have to do is comment with your own bike rack story. I’ll pick the best one. And “best,” in this instance, can mean best advice, best horror story, best whatever. Don’t worry, I can tell what’s best.