A week from today, I’m heading to Moab to ride the 2006 edition of Kenny’s annual “Ride Around White Rim in One Day:” RAWROD ’06. For those who haven’t been keeping up with my blog since it began (that would be all of you, since when I started writing, the only hits I got were my own, along with a few sympathy clicks from family), it was RAWROD ’05 that woke me up to the fact that I was fat, in desperately bad condition, and needed to do something about it.

The number of people who attend this ride has exploded from the six or so the first time we did it to about forty this year.

Which brings up a question: How do you know when your annual group ride with a few close friends has gotten out of control? When you start doing t-shirts for it. (This t-shirt, by the way, will be the first place anyone will see the Fat Cyclist logo I recently had designed. Expect to see it on stuff I give away before long.)

So as I’m getting my stuff ready for the trip, I realize: this is one thing that I’m really good at. I have done so many long rides that I know pretty much exactly what to bring and what to eat for an epic ride. So here’s a little bit of actual useful knowledge. Use it to whatever degree you like.

 

Your Bike
Have a mechanic you trust do a serious tune-up. Tell your mechanic what you're going to be doing, how important it is to you to not have any serious mechanicals while on the trail, that your life is in his/her hands. Have the mechanic thoroughly check the spots that, if broken mid-trail, could be especially problematic, including:

• Bottom bracket
• Hubs
• Chain
• Headset
• Frame
• Rims, rim strips and tires: Nothing is more annoying on a ride than getting a bunch of flats. If you've been getting a lot of flat tires on rides, like one flat every two or three rides, check (and if necessary, replace) the rim strips, and/or buy a new set of top-notch tires.
• Shifting and brakes

Then make sure you tip that mechanic well. And if your bike rides beautifully the whole time, tip him/her again when you come back.

 

What to Wear

Wear what you’re used to wearing. Do not ever wear new shorts, new shoes, a new jersey, or new anything on a long ride. It’s not fun to discover during a long ride that due to the abrasive nature of your jersey, your nipples are now bleeding. Yes, I have had that happen to me. It looks stupid.

Anyway, here’s the checklist of stuff you absolutely must have with you. It seems silly to have to make this list, but I’ve arrived at long rides and seen people who have forgotten one or more of these.

• Helmet
• Glasses
• Jersey (+ jacket if it’s cold)
• Shorts (+ tights if it’s cold)
• Gloves
• Socks
• Shoes
• Camelbak or water bottles: full

Your Gear
It's not easy to find the right balance between riding light and having everything you need. Since epic rides are (rarely) about being super fast, though, it's better to have a little too much and ride a little slow than to die in the desert. Just an opinion, mind you. Here's a basic checklist, which would need to be adapted for terrain and climate:

• Water: 2 ounces per mile is a good rule of thumb, but can go up to 3 ounces if it's a hot day. It's a good idea to have water in a bottle as well as your CamelBak, so you can squirt water onto any wounds that need cleaning.
• Food: You can get by with energy bars, but it's nice to have a real meal some time on the trail. For myself, I like chicken soup.
• Energy gels: Nothing can prevent--or bring you back from--a bonk like these. Carry more of these than you think you'll need (at least 5), because one of your buds may need one.
• Pump: Duh. If you haven't changed a flat in a while, check and make sure that pump works. (You can go with CO2 instead, but for a long ride, a pump is the safer bet.)
• Tubes: Two. Make sure they're good before the trip begins (replacing one flat tube with another sucks).
• Multi-tool: There's a million different brands, lots of them very good. Make sure you know how to use yours.
• Patch kit: Enough to change another two tires.
• Extra Chain Links: If you don't have extra links, fixing a broken chain shortens the chain, which means you may lose a few gears.
• First aid kit
• Money: You never know what you'll need it for (food? water? a ride?), but it doesn't weigh much.
• Duct tape: It's got a million uses. Wrap a couple yards around your seatpost. I promise, you will at some point use it, and when you do, you will feel incredibly smart for having that tape.
• Chamois Butter, or other chamois cream: It feels creepy (or, depending on your tendencies, strangely erotic) when you first put it on, but it prevents saddle sores in a big way.
• Sunscreen: Especially toward the beginning of the season, a full day in the sun can mean some serious reddening and suffering if you don't slather yourself.
• Camera: If you've got a small one, take it.
• Map: If you don’t know the terrain.
• Lube: If you use a wax-based lube, it won’t last for the entire ride, so you’ve got to bring extra. If you use Dumonde Tech, the lube will last the whole ride, so you can forget about it.
• Extra clothing: If your ride has large changes in elevation, especially in spring or fall, keep a shell and tights with you just in case the weather turns nasty. 

Did I miss anything?

Last week, BotchedExperiment joined a group of friends I was riding with. It was a perfect day for mountain biking: 76 degrees, and the desert mountain singletrack was in that state where it’s dry enough not to stick to your tires, but hasn’t yet become dusty.

Intrigued to finally meet a guy who consistently has some of the best comments on my blog, I rode most of the way with Botched: talking with him, getting suckered by him (he briefly had me convinced that he was a convicted felon), and frequently falling off my bike for his entertainment.

Also, I noticed that Botched has a fluid, easy style on his bike. He was easily doing tight hairpin turns. He was doing little jumps off rocks. He was doing effortless wheelie drops. He was comfortably hopping sideways across gullies. And he was doing this all in such a way that made it look like he wasn’t really working—like he and his bike had just come to an agreement on what to do, and now they were doing it.

It made me think: my relationship with my bike is not quite so comfortable. I tend to whine and wheedle with my bike, begging it to please—just this once—do what I want it to. “Look,” I say to my bike (sometimes aloud, sometimes in a furtive whisper), “would it kill you to keep traction while I ride up this loose section with the waterbars and boulders? Is that really so much for me to ask of you?”

When you think about it, practically everyone has some kind of relationship with their bike, and it’s pretty easy to tell what it is just by watching them.

 

Master and Servant

When Bob’s on his bike, you know who’s in charge. Bob is, that’s who. Watching him approach a tricky move is vastly entertaining because you get the sense he wants to punish the bike, bash the stupid thing against the rock ledge. Show it who’s boss. Bob wrenches the handlebars side to side, lunges over rocks, lands hard. If the bike ever had a will of its own, Bob soon crushes it.

 

Dance Partners

Brad is the exact opposite of Bob. He rides with gravity-defying grace, not so much riding up ledges as flitting. Obstacles cease to be obstacles when Brad is nearby, and instead become props on the stage for his ballet. A tight, twisty series of turns looks like a waltz when Brad’s on his bike. Sometimes Brad leads, sometimes his bike does.

It doesn’t look as fruity as I just made it sound, though.

 

Enthusiastic Readers of Steven Covey Books

Rocky and his bike seem to be imbued with a “can-do” attitude. They’re highly effective. They’re both firmly in quad 1 (“This move is both Urgent and important!”), and work enthusiastically and efficiently to accomplish their primary objective: to clean the current move. Then they modestly act like it was no big deal, because modesty is a desirable attribute of highly effective people, too.

 

Bickering Old Married Couple

That’s Kenny. He’s on his bike so much that it’s developed aches and pains—I’ve been with him when a frame has cracked (“Oh, my aching back!”) and earlier this week I mentioned how a crank dropped off (“I think I broke my hip.”). Still, they understand each other better than anyone else ever will, and you can’t imagine them away from each other.

 

Indifferent Strangers

Dug doesn’t care what bike he’s on, and it shows. He barely acknowledges that the bike exists, and when asked how he likes his bike, he says, “It’s fine,” regardless of what he’s riding. The bike, for its part, does what is asked of it, sort of the same way a stranger will scoot over for another stranger on a bus, perhaps giving a mild, noncommittal smile: “Well, since we’re together for the trip, we may as well make the best of it.”

 

That About Does It 

I'm pretty sure that covers it for bike/rider relationships. In fact, i'm so sure, i'm willing to wager a Banjo Brothers Pocket Messenger Bag that nobody could possibly come up with a better one.

Most people don’t know this, but bikes have personalities. And as everyone knows, an important part of having a personality is having moods. Usually, most bikes are in the mood to go out for a ride, which works out great, considering they’re bikes and all.

Once in a while, though, your bike wants to stay home. It can let you know that it would just rather hang out in the garage or on the rack by doing one or more of the following:

• Having a mysterious flat tire.  You know there was air in the tire when you rode yesterday, but now it’s flat. So now what are you going to do?
• Just put more air in the tire? That’s asking for trouble; the tire will probably go flat during the ride.
• Try to fix the flat? The problem is, with a flat like this, the culprit (tiny thorn or shard of glass, probably) is going to be so small that you won’t find it, and then you’ll get another flat during the ride.
• Stay home and abandon the ride? Yep.
• I am aware that I have just created a nested bullet list. I feel I should apologize.
• Convincing your helmet / bike shoes / glasses / lube or other essential bike component to hide. Your bike knows it’s difficult for it to hide itself, but it knows that if it is able to persuade enough of your ride-related stuff to disappear, there’s a good chance you’ll lose your bike riding window of opportunity.
• Changing the weather. Not many people know this, but bikes control the weather. Usually, they just leave it alone, when forced, but they’ll make it rain, or be unbearably hot, or — if they really don’t want to go out — bring on the rain, followed by freezing temperatures. Black ice, anyone?
• Suddenly looking unappealing. If your bike really doesn’t want to go out, it will make itself look frumpy, essentially trying to get you to take a different bike out. “Don’t ride me,” it’s saying. “Wouldn’t you rather go out on the fixie, anyway?” The danger in doing this, bikes know, is that if they do it often, they run the risk of being sold or — worse — garaged forever.

Discombobulation

Of course, if you really want to go out riding, you’re going to ignore your bike’s petulance and head out anyway.

And that’s when the bike’s really going to make your life miserable.

I shall provide examples.

A few weeks ago, a friend and I met to go mountain biking. He showed up twenty minutes late, frustrated and out of breath. His tires had both been flat, and the kevlar bead on his tires had been surly beyond all reason about going back on the rim. Finally, though, after bullying his tires into compliance, he was ready to go.

Except his helmet had vanished.

But he came anyway.

After riding for about five minutes, his chain dropped to the inside of the cassette, jamming between the cassette and the hub. Chain suck. Bad.

We spent about five minutes coaxing the chain free. I recommended he stay off the granny gear, and we continued on.

Or rather, I should say we continued on for about twenty feet, after which his bike got chainsuck again, the likes of which I had never previously seen. Working together for twenty minutes, we were still unable to ever get the chain out.

I believed, at that moment, that the chain and hub had become bonded at the atomic level. Fused.

Eventually, we broke the chain, and — by doing a tug-of-war between the bike and chain, managed to separate the two.

And by then, I needed to get home.

 

Mr. Jones Does Not Admit Defeat

Last week, back in Utah, I saw another bike that was not in the mood to go out. Riding with a group of about six of us (including A-List Fat Cyclist Commenter BotchedExperiment, about whom I will talk tomorrow), Kenny was out front, as usual. Even though he was riding technical, steep singletrack on his singlespeed.

And then his left crank fell off.

No warning, no cause. It just fell off. Plop.

Of course, everyone in the group was very sympathetic and offered our support, mostly in the form of witty remarks about what a great upgrade those expensive new carbon cranks were turning out to be.

Kenny went to work, trying to figure out why the crank fell off, and how to put it back on.

No dice.

Kenny started coming up with more imaginative fixes, including:

• Hitting the (carbon fiber!) cranks with a rock.
• Wrapping tape around the crank bolt, then pounding the crank arm over it, hoping the jamming effect would make the crank stay on.
• Doing the same as above, but with grass. No, I’m not kidding.
• Just putting the crank in his jersey pocket and finishing the ride one-legged.

Here’s the thing. Kenny could have easily bailed at a number of different places. But he didn’t. Kenny was not even willing to consider letting that bike get the best of him.

Kenny even tried to put a positive spin on it: “It’s kind of fun! It makes the ride totally different!”

Uh-huh. Anything you say, Mr. Jones.

Still, he did finish the ride — in fact, there was general concern for a little while that Kenny might finish first even with just one crank.

Sure, Kenny suffered. But in the end, his bike learned a valuable lesson: Next time it wants to stay home, it’s going to need to come up with something a little more debilitating.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was in Utah a full 30 hours before I went on a mountain bike ride, so you’ve got to admire my personal restraint and single-minded focus on my new job.

 

Preparing for the Ride

I met Kenny, Bry, and Rick at the parking lot of the Grove Canyon Trail. We all just call it “Grove,” though. Kenny was putting the final touches on my brand new, never-rode-it-before bike: a Fisher Paragon. And by “final touches,” I mean that he had put about fifteen extra reflectors on it.

Cute.

By getting a Paragon, I had completed my assimilation into the group. All four of us were riding 29" Paragons. Two yellow (this year’s color), two deep red (last year’s color).

Sadly, Rick had forgotten his helmet and bike shoes. This would not have happened if Rick would learn and use what I like to call “The Mountain Bike Checklist Ditty.” It goes like this:

The Mountain Bike Checklist Ditty

Air pressure, lube and tube

Don’t forget the CO2

Water in the bottle too

Always wear a helmet!

 

Shoes and socks and shorts and shirt

Cell phone in case you get hurt

MTB, ride on the dirt

Now you’re set to go!

copyright 2006 Fat Cyclist Productions. All rights reserved

OK, I admit: I just made up that ditty. But (I’ll further admit), I’m now rather smitten by it. I think I’ll memorize it and start using it.

I encourage you to do likewise.

 

And Now, Back to the Ride

Rick borrowed a helmet from Kenny. This helmet was far too small for Rick’s enormous melon, and perched comically atop his noggin. On the plus side, it did make Rick seem much taller.

For shoes, Rick was out of luck. He wore his street shoes, and did not complain about them even once during the ride. Props to Rick.

Grove starts out easy. Deceptively so. You start by riding along wide, gently climbing dirt road, chatting and joking with your riding buddies. This goes on for about a mile.

Then you take a right turn, and everyone stops talking. That’s because suddenly Grove gets brutally steep, and it stays steep for the rest of the ride.

At first, it’s just steep dirt road, which is not too big a deal. Just scoot forward on the seat, drop down a gear, and pedal.

Then it turns left into a steep gully and gets technical. Hoo boy. I feared this moment. I’ve cleaned that chute maybe 10% of the times I’ve tried it, and I am not currently in the best shape of my life.

I cleaned it. No slipping, no problems. Maybe there’s something to this 29" wheel thing.

Kenny shot on ahead, while I — strategically weaving and blocking the trail — kept Rick and Bry from passing.

 

Shale

After the first set of climbs, we traditionally regroup at a little fire ring. Everyone was really kind, avoiding looking at my gut, not mentioning how Rick was climbing better in his penny loafers than I was in full MTB kit.

Then we started again.

The second half of the climb is even more difficult than the first half. While slightly less steep, it’s absolutely relentless, and it’s almost entirely on loose shale. With serious exposure on the right side. Slip a foot to the right and you’ll be lucky to live. Or unlucky, maybe. Let’s not talk about this anymore, OK? I’m getting queasy.

We got to the bench — someone built a little park bench way up on this treacherous trail as a monument to a lost outdoorsman; best tribute I’ve ever seen — without hitting any snow. That's about 2000 feet of climbing in about four miles (purely a guess).

Nice.

We couldn’t continue on past the bridge, though; the north side of Grove is always a muddy, snowy mess long after the South side is clean and clear.

Time to descend.

 

Scared

I developed a couple theories as I rode down this shale-with-death-inducing-exposure:

• Descending skills get rusty when not practiced
• Rick is completely insane. He descended faster — a lot faster — than I did while wearing penny loafers perched on his clipless pedals. Freaky.

I got to the bottom without any problems, though I’m sure I looked ridiculously tentative. I know I sure felt ridiculously tentative.

I still beat Bry to the bottom, though.

 

Afterward

My legs hurt.

My stomach is huge.

I'm glad to be back.

 

I’ve always been pretty evenly divided on the road-vs-mountain bike riding issue. When reporters ask me, “Which is better, mountain or road?” I tend to dodge the question with, “Who cares, when they’re both so great?”

Last Friday, though, I think I answered the question definitively, at least for myself.

It was a sunny afternoon. I was unemployed, and uninsured. The lack of insurance pretty much made road biking a non-starter; I knew that while I was more likely to get hurt while mountain biking, I was more likely to get seriously injured or killed while road biking.

So I convinced Bob to skip out early on work; he drove over to my house and then we went mountain biking at Tolt-MacDonald Park in Carnation, WA.

“We’ll probably get lost,” I told Bob. See, this park is a near-infinite tangle of twisty, rolling NorthWest singletrack, deep in the woods. And those mossy-colored trees—well, they all look a lot alike.

“That’s fine,” said Bob, nonchalant. When you have orienteering skills like Bob and I have, you come to accept the occasional befuddled stumbleabout as part of the price of mountain biking.

 

Log Pile

Something the NorthWest has in abundance that I have not seen elsewhere on mountain bike trails are logpiles. Logpiles feel odd to ride over because about the time your front wheel rolls over the top log and starts going down, your back wheel is just starting to go up the pile. Then your big chainring high-centers on the pile for a moment, and your rear wheel flops high into the air, giving the exact same feeling you get when you’re about to endo.

Then, if you keep your head and keep pedaling—against your instincts, because of course your rear wheel is in the air—your chainring grips the wood and pushes you forward. Your rear wheel bumps to the ground, and then you’ve done it: you’ve ridden over a logpile.

Here I am, just as the chainring bites into the top log. In spite of appearances, please let me assure you that a large tree branch is not protruding from my rump.

 

Ride The Length of a Log

Riding over a logpile is small potatoes when compared to the move that Bob and I tried probably fifteen times each: Ride up and along the length of a mossy, wet log. I’d guess the distance was about twenty feet.

First, you have to get onto the log, which may be the hardest part of the move. The soft, rotten end of the log makes a decent ramp to the top, but it tapers, forming a notch just before you get to the top that grabs onto your rear tire, slowing you down and throwing you off your line. Here I am, stalled out, my rear wheel deep in the notch.

Once you’re up top, you’ve got to keep rolling, without slipping off. There’s a groove you can ride in, but it’s narrow and if you hit either edge, it’s hard to recover. Here I am, bailing out.

And Bob, using a handy tree to get his balance (after which he had to bail out, because he couldn’t restart).

And me, bailing out, again.

 

 

Move Truism Number 1: Take The Long View

After who-knows-how-many tries, I remembered something Stuart Talley (a large hairdresser who also happens to have hundreds of biking-related axioms at his beck and call) taught me about technical mountain biking long, long, ago: don’t look at the obstacles, or you’ll hit them. It occurred that I was staring so hard at the little notch at the top of the approach that I’d never know what to do once I got beyond it.

So the next time I tried riding the log, I looked beyond the notch to the end of the log.

And I cleaned it, including the wheelie-drop at the end.

I admit it: I squealed with delight.

And I regretted that we had stopped taking pictures (in disgust, about fifteen minutes earlier).

 

Move Truism Number 2: Once Someone Cleans a Move, the Stakes Increase

Up until the moment when I cleaned the log, Bob and I could have ridden away from the move, declaring it unrideable. Once I cleaned it, though, the game changed. Bob—a much more technically adept rider than I—could no longer leave until he had cleaned the log.

He got it on his next try. This is due to a corollary of Truism Number 2: Once you know it can be done, it’s no longer as difficult to do.

Plus, there’s another corollary, which I don’t care for all that much: If fatty rode it, it can’t be all that difficult.

 

If I Had to Choose

It was after I cleaned the log that it occurred to me: I don’t experience that kind of elation on a road bike. In fact, the kind of enjoyment I get on a road bike is almost completely different from why I like mountain biking. And if I had to choose just one kind of biking, I’d choose mountain biking, because I love that amazing sense of triumph (rare as it is for a schlub like me).

That said, I’m really glad I don’t have to choose between the two. Come to think of it, I can’t imagine why any cyclist would make that choice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whaddaya say we give away all this stuff I’ve been promising all week? Below are the winning comments (chosen randomly, using www.random.org to select the winners) and what they’ve won. Winners, please email me with your name and address, so I can send your prizes your way.

 

Friday’s Messenger Bag Contest

You can do it Fatty!

I just discovered your blog on my msn home page and as a person who wishes to lose weight by cycling herself about town have found some problems with rain. Lots of record setting rain here.

You have become the new standard bearer for my effort, above Lance Armstrong because of where you are coming from. I much better relate to your effort.

Keep on pedalling.

—Robyn

But you know, Robyn, if you use me as your role model, you’re much less likely to win the Tour de France.

 

Paris-Roubaix Video Contest

Insert sarcastic yet humurous comment about your weight and lack of riding ability here.

—Conejita

Insert sarcastic-yet-humorous comment about how I hope you find this video more watchable than I did.

 

Wireless Desktop

Okay, I voted for you...  Hope you win, I could use the stuff!!!

—gregcolorado

Well, OK, you win. But only because you used three exclamation points.

 

Office 2003 Professional

You want my vote for a $5 bag?  Pah!

Next time please present a bribe in line with my over-inflated sense of self-importance.

—buckythedonkey

Like, maybe, a $500 software package?

 

Prototype Messenger Bag

That was very rude. Just because you aren't good at something doesn't mean you have to put it down and everybody else who does it. I know that it is your own opinion and I respect that. But in my opinon a triatholon is a sport. My defintion of a sport would be something that gets you physically and  mentally healthy. It should also be fun and swimming is. Even if you are doing it in a competetion it is still fun because its heart racing and its a challenge. A challenge is something everyone should want. If you keep winning all the time because its too easy its not fun. Also all sports are dangerous. In cycling you could trip, fall, or collide with someone. Every sports has its risks but that's something you assume to be able to do it.

One last thing Poker you consider that a sport?

—5061

Well, would a poker-playing zombie be life-threatening? You bet it would. Therefore, poker is a sport.

 

The Incredibly Belated Winner of the “Help My Son with His Science Project” Contest

And, finally, congratulations to NicholesTruth, the randomly lucky winner of the 85 people who submitted their results in my son’s Reaction Time experiment. NicholesTruth wins a just-released Banjo Brothers Pocket Messenger Bag.

(And to everyone else who helped on the experiment: thanks!)