This post has been moved to fatcyclist.com.

You know, I'm a very fortunate person. I have a great family, a bunch of very good friends with similar interests as mine, an excellent job, good health, and -- believe me, I appreciate this -- a blog that a lot of people read and tell me they enjoy.

Also, I have all these things within easy driving distance of a ridiculous number of mountain bike Meccas:

• The Ridge Trail Network: Out my back door.
• Moab: 3-hour drive
• Fruita, CO: 4-hour drive
• Gooseberry Mesa: 4-hour drive

Yesterday, Kenny, Brad, Botched, Rick M, Dug, Gary and I got out our singlespeeds, and left Utah County at 6:00am for a one-day roadtrip to Gooseberry Mesa.

It was a perfect day. Really. And the fact that there were several flat tires, a (hilarious) mechanical, and a gasp-inducing fall only made it more perfect.

Here are some pictures and moments from the day.

Big Moves
I've only ridden my singlespeed a handful of times, so really didn't expect that it is even possible to do big ledge climbs, drops, or otherwise handle seriously technical trail. So I was astounded at what my friends are capable of doing.

Please note: all of us were on singlespeeds, so the photos you see here are -- without exception -- of guys doing stuff with just one gear.

 
Let's get started with what I consider my best photo of the day. Here's Dug, evidently defying gravity. His front tire is not touching rock, and he's behind his rear wheel. Certainly, he's about to tip over backward, right? Nope. He's actually mid-wheelie, has serious forward momentum, and will clean this move.

And here's Rick, just finishing a tough, long vertical move. This photo isn't fair to him; you'd have to see the eight feet below he just cleaned to get to where he is to really appreciate the insanity of what he's just done.

You wouldn't know it to look at him, but this is BotchedExperiment's first extended ride on a singlespeed, ever. That didn't stop him from consistently cleaning moves on the first try, usually before I had a chance to get my camera out. And in fact, this is the second time Botched did this drop (please note this is a fully rigid hardtail, folks). I made him do it again, so I could get a picture.

Botched routinely did drops off walls and ledges that nobody else would even consider. Once, very early in the day, he did a drop that I wouldn't have even thought possible. "That was kind of stupid," said Botched, and then he went and did it again. Meanwhile, I had poop in my pants.

 
OK, here's Kenny and Brad, each dropping down off a freaky scary wall. In each case, I was tracking them with my camera, trying to get a shot as they went down. Both times, sadly, I did not get a shot of how far down they had to go. (I have a lot to learn about action shots.) You can get an idea of how far they have to drop, though, by looking in the bottom-right corner of the photos. See the plant, there? That's the top of a tree.

Rick's Crash
One place we always spend a lot of time at in Gooseberry is a move we have dubbed, "The Toiletbowl." You drop about 15 feet on a steep slickrock incline into a sandy flat, where you then have to execute a sharp 160-degree turn and try to climb back up another way. So far, nobody has been able to complete this move on a singlespeed, though many of us have made it numerous times on geared bikes.

After you climb out of the toiletbowl, you've got to muster enough energy for a sprint up an 8-foot-tall ridge, with total vertical exposure on the right.

Rick made us all think he was a dead man when he fell off that part, bouncing his head on the rock below. Amazingly, though, he didn't break anything, with the only obvious results of the crash being a busted helmet and a scraped-up leg:

Dug Does an Imitation of the Exxon Valdez
A couple days before the trip, Dug turned his bike over to Brad to try to tweak his bike into being a little lighter (Dug's Surly is probably the heaviest singlespeed on the planet, close to 30 pounds). One of the things Brad -- a self-taught mechanic -- did was remove the V-brake bosses from dug's suspension fork. What good were they, after all? Dug has disc brakes.

Oh, well it turns out those bosses also hold the stanchions together. Here's Dug, unhappily realizing his fork is coming apart, midride.
 

We turned the bike upside down, hammered the stanchions back into place with a rock ("I wonder if this voids the warranty," quipped Dug), and then -- lamely -- tried to thread some extra brake cable through where the bolt would normally go, hoping that this would hold the fork together.

It didn't. At all.

Soon, the oil started bleeding out of Dug's fork, leaving a puddle everywhere he momentarily stopped (you can see the oil on his rim and tire in this photo). This oil did a fantastic job of keeping his front disc lubricated, rendering the front brake completely useless.

Within an hour or so, all the oil had bled out and the fork would move up and down freely, making the "clang" of a hammer on anvil whenever Dug wheelied up onto a ledge, which is pretty much constantly on this ride.

Also, a completely-compressed fork changes the geometry of a bike pretty significantly, giving Dug a leaning-forward, eager-to-endo look.

To his credit, Dug did not complain about this at all.

This Place is Beautiful
Looking at my pictures, you'd get the impression that Gooseberry is just another Slickrock trail. But it's not. Connecting up the slickrock playgrounds is a beautiful -- meaning not just that it rides well, but is genuinely eye-poppingly gorgeous -- desert singletrack network. The thing is, when you're on your bike and zooming along, you don't feel like stopping and snapping a photo. So I didn't. I wish I would have, though.

There are gorgeous vistas from the top of the mesa, where you can look out and see Zions National Park, the Vermillion Castles above the Virgin River, and an enormous valley that stretches on forever. If I were a good photographer, I'd be able to show you what I mean. But I'm not. I'm a guy with a point-and-shoot digital camera. Still, you get some sense of what we saw with this shot, which also features Gary eating lunch (salmon, for crying out loud) and trying to cool down a little in the shade -- it got into what felt like the low-to-mid-90's.

But What About Me?
I was pretty timid yesterday, not trying a lot of the moves that my friends were doing. I did, however, try and succeed at a couple, and I did ride the whole trail, which is pretty darned technical in its own right.

I had a great first long ride on my singlespeed, and think I'm beginning to see what my friends love about it so much.

And today, my arms are so tired.

As of Saturday, the Autumn weather has turned into what it's supposed to be. In the morning you need to ride in tights and long sleeves, but in the afternoon, it's just warm enough to ride in shorts and short sleeves, provided you keep up the pace. The sun's bright; the sky's clear. There are dozens of hang gliders and paragliders in the air off the point of the mountain (I've got to try that some day).

To cap it all off, Tuesday a group of us -- Kenny, Gary, Dug, Brad, Rocky, the three Richards, BotchedExperiment, and I are going to ride Gooseberry Mesa, a serious contender for one of the top 10 trails in Utah, and therefore one of the top 20 in the US.

In short, my mood is as good now as it was bad last Friday. Maybe that's why, as I rode to work Saturday (got a big project due Friday; if I'm going to take Tuesday off, I had to put in some weekend hours -- a reasonable trade), I noticed all kinds of things I love about riding my bike.

Little stuff. Stuff I normally don't even think about, but which I'm pretty confident anyone who rides knows what I'm talking about.

• Catching up with a car at successive lights. Off the green, you're the first person, until maybe just a few feet past the intersection. Then you get swept up and passed by traffic. But wait a second, there's the next light, and it's red. You ride past everyone who just passed you, back up to the front, getting there just long enough to trackstand for three seconds (which is about as long as I can hold a trackstand) and you are once again the first guy, in front of the same group of cars.
• Having someone wave from a car. For every jerk who honks or swerves, trying to unnerve me, I'll bet there are ten people in cars who wave, or -- once in a while -- yell some encouragement (I can never tell what they're saying). And you know, only about half of those cars have bike racks on them.
• Carving a fast left turn. A good supple road tire on a good road bike on a good road can lean at crazy angles at crazy speeds. I get every bit as much of an adrenaline rush from hitting a left turn at speed -- no brakes -- and coming out of the turn as fast as I went in as I do successfully cleaning a technical move on my mountain bike.
• Drip. Riding in a nice, straight line on a road bike, sometimes it's nice to just put your head down and focus on the effort. As I do this, the sweat runs down from my forehead to the tip of my nose, and then drips, regular as clockwork. I like watching that drop of water fall to the left of my top tube (I've never thought about it before, but for me it's always the left of the top tube), thinking about how cool it is that because the water's going the same speed as me, it looks like it's falling straight down. Then it hits the pavement and -- zing! -- seems to shoot backward as it stops and I keep going.
• Fresh, smooth pavement. I rarely think about the texture of the pavement I'm riding on unless it's especially bad. When Kenny and I rode the Nebo Loop a few weeks ago, though, we hit a five mile stretch of brand new pavement that was just elegant. It was so smooth your riding effort dropped perceptibly while riding it. I notched it up a gear and looked at my speedometer: 27mph. The speed and silence of a well-tuned road bike on perfect pavement is something to be savored. 
• Being 90% up a hard climb. I seek out rides with climbs, whether I'm on a road or mountain bike. I've often wondered, though, why I do this. These climbs hurt, after all. Last Saturday, though, as I came to the final stretch of the north side of the Suncrest climb, it hit me: I love the last 10% of a climb, where I know I'm going to finish, and feel like I can open it up and put my heart into the final push. It's strange how it both hurts like crazy and feels like victory, at the same time.
• Putting the bottle away perfectly. You're in a paceline -- or maybe you're by yourself, but thinking about the next time you're going to be in a paceline. You want a drink. You grab the bottle without looking -- while still pedaling. That's easy. Then, you put it away. Again, without looking, you push the bottle back toward its cage. Most times it kind of hits the rim of the cage and you've got to nudge it left or right a little bit to seat it. Once in a while, though, it just sinks right down the middle, as if it had been vacuumed in. Nothing but net.

There are more little things -- lots more -- to love about biking.

Tell me what they are.

I've mentioned before: Autumn is my favorite time of the year. I love when the weather cools off, so I can ride in the middle of the day without bursting into flames. I love being able to leverage the fitness I've earned during the season into fun, long rides in the mountains. I love the way the trees change color. I love the way most people don't realize that this is the best year to ride a bike -- whether mountain bike or road bike -- and have left the roads and trails empty, so that those of us who know this secret have it all to ourselves.

In short, I love Autumn.

Except this year. This year (so far, at least), there has been no Autumn. We went straight from Summer into Winter.

(Not) A Nice Day for a Ride
Take last Saturday, for example. Excited by the thought of beautiful colors in the canyon and the dusting of snow I saw on the peaks of the nearby mountains, I put on a pair of tights, a long-sleeved jersey, wool socks, and windproof gloves, and headed out on my roadbike. I figured it would be a great day to ride the Alpine Loop, and maybe touch snow for the first time in the year.

Yeah, I touched snow all right. About 2/3 of the way up, it started raining and blowing. And then, as I hit 7000 feet (yes, exactly 7000 feet, according to my GPS's altimeter; weird, huh?) the rain turned to snow. Within five minutes, the snow started sticking to the road. My mind's eye quickly conjured what it would be like to descend this road with rock-hard road tires when the road was covered with a thin layer of wet slush.

I stopped, made a tiny snowball, ate it, and turned around. I felt cheated, not getting to ride to the summit.

Luckily, the snow stopped (turning back to rain) as I dropped below 7000 feet. Unluckily, the rain soon turned to hail.

You know what hurts? Getting pelted in the face by hail when you're rolling along at 40mph.

I should point out: last Saturday, it was still technically Summer.

My Bikes are Warm and Dry
At least I got to ride my bike to work on Monday -- it was cold, but it's easy enough to dress against cold. And Tuesday, I got to go on a nice singlespeed mountain bike ride with Gary and Rick Sunderlage (not his real name).

Every other day, though, the weather's been crummy. Cold, wet, dark. Blech.

In short, it's Winter-like here. I haven't been on a bike in three days, counting today. Oh, sure, I could get out and ride if I wanted to be hardcore about it, but the point of Autumn is that it's the exact opposite of hardcore. I'm supposed to be having the fun, mellow, beautiful, mild, cool rides I've been dreaming about during the blast-furnace season we call Summer. Not this cold, wet, dark, snow, slush drizzle stuff where you can go out and ride if you're in the mood to be punished or tell other people how "not that bad" it was afterward.

I am not ready for this.

Can you tell that I'm getting a little grouchy? Someone, please get Ma Nature on the horn and let her know that if this isn't corrected soon, she's going to hear from my people.

I'm getting grouchy. I want to go ride. No, strike that. I need to go ride.

PS: Dug Goes Sledding
At 8am this morning, I drove (grrrrr) to work, crossing over the Suncrest climb at about 8:10. It was just starting to snow.

Around 9am, Dug left his home at Suncrest to head to work. Here's what he said happened:

We have several inches of snow here. As I descended the topmost hill at Suncrest, about a 15% grade, I slid downhill, off road, and drove down a drainage ditch for about 100 yards, trying to avoid the stalled cars coming up the hill. I had no control and bounced through the ditch like Bo and Luke Duke, knocking over about 4 reflector poles. I totally expected to roll, driving at 45 degree angle, in the ditch, bouncing off small trees, sewer grates, and big rocks. Finally, I got enough control to drive out of the ditch.

I decided to pack it in, and work from home. Welcome to Utah.

I have, in times past, talked about how I never ride with an iPod. How I intended to never ride with an iPod. How I simply did not comprehend why anyone would want to ride with an iPod.

This was before I got an iPod.

Since then, I have reversed myself. Hey, I'm willing to admit when I'm wrong. And -- luckily for you -- I have quickly become one of the world's foremost authorities on proper bike / iPod use and etiquette.

Hence, today I present a clear and simple set of rules and guidelines on the proper way to use your iPod whilst on a bicycle.

Where to Put Your iPod
To simply say you should put your iPod in your jersey pocket is to be both insipid and asinine (By the way, I was once called this very thing -- insipid and asinine -- on a call-in religious program on the radio. Considering that I had called in pretending to have a serious question and then started quoting Frank Zappa lyrics once I got on the air, I daresay it was a pretty accurate assessment. Hey, I was 15.). After all, you've got to consider which jersey pocket. And you've got to consider the possibility of a messenger bag or backpack.

Hence, these guidelines:

• If you're wearing a jersey and no pack: the iPod goes into the pocket of your "bad" hand. Ie, if you're right handed, the iPod goes in your left pocket. If you're left handed, the iPod goes in your right pocket. That way, when you go to adjust volume or skip songs, you've still got your better hand controlling the bike. It's a matter of priorities.
• If you're wearing a pack: the iPod goes in the pack. Find a playlist you can live with for the whole ride (or shuffle, or whatever), put the iPod on "hold" so it doesn't switch off or randomly skip and volume-adjust on you, and go. Stopping your bike to fish around in your pack so you can change songs or move to another playlist is strictly forbidden.
• If you're neither wearing a pack nor wearing a jersey: Start wearing a jersey, for crying out loud. You're a sweaty, stinky mess in that t-shirt, and you've got no viable place to put the iPod. And don't start telling me that the armband thingy works, because it just looks dumb. Stop it.

What Headphones to Use
There are two kinds of ears in this world: ears that work with the cheap, tinny cheesy earbuds that come with an iPod, and those that don't. I have seen people who seem to have custom-designed ear flanges into which the iPod earbuds nestle comfortably. My ears are of the latter sort, which means that the included earbuds fall out of my ears constantly. Indeed, I believe my ears actually repel the earbuds. It's as if the earbuds are magnetized to the positive pole, and my ears are, too.

For people whose ears do not work with the standard earbuds but who are loathe to get expensive surgery to make them do so, I recommend the Sennheiser MX75 Twist-To-Fit In-Ear Stereo Sport Headphones. Basically, these suckers cam into your earlobes, so that special machinery is required if you ever want to extract them again. But they don't pop out while you're riding. I really wish they weren't acid green, though. 

When to Sing Along With Your iPod
When Billy Idol's "White Wedding" comes on, you're going to want to sing along. Or at least you're going to want to sing along if you're me. Which I am.

And that's fine (to sing along, I mean, not to be me, although I further assert that it's OK for me to be me), provided you observe the following rules:

• There must be no buildings visible in any direction
• There must be no people visible in any direction
• There must be no easily-startled livestock in any direction
• If you are riding with another person (or worse, with multiple people), you must make it clear that you are either singing for comic effect or that you understand you are a goober.

Note that the above rules do not apply if you are going faster than 30mph. At that speed, the wind whips your voice away, effectively putting you in an isolated, soundproof chamber in which it is OK to sing your heart out. At speeds of 50mph or greater, it's in fact a good idea to sing, because it will lend you courage.

Exception 1: Males cannot sing along with any female vocalists, ever. And especially not in a falsetto. Show some dignity, man.

Exception 2: Nobody at all ever gets to sing along with Whitney Houston. Or with Celine Dion. You may, in fact, wish to have these artists removed from your playlist, because they suck very badly.

When to Leave Your iPod at Home
Is it always appropriate to bring your iPod on a ride? No.

• When You're Racing: If you need music to keep you entertained and engaged while racing, you're not racing hard enough. And you're not able to hear me yell "on your left!" as I rip by you at roughly twice your speed because you are twiddling with your volume control. Leave it at home, pal.
• When You're Riding with One Other Person: To bring an iPod when you're riding with one other person is just rude. I mean, I'm taking time out of my valuable day to ride with you, riding at roughly half my normal speed so you can keep up, and you're listening to music, making it impossible for you to hear the very interesting stories I have to tell. What, precisely, is the point of us riding together, might I ask?

The Two-Pause Rule
If you are wearing your iPod and someone you are riding with starts talking to you, you are obligated to press pause. As a courtesy, the person who is talking with you is obligated to start over so you can hear what s/he has to say.

If, two minutes later, someone (doesn't matter who) starts talking to you again, you should be aware that this is a chatty group of riders and it's time to turn off your iPod for the rest of the ride. The person who is talking to you has the obligation to start over so you can hear her/him, but s/he does have the right to roll her/his eyes.

If a rider has to start over while talking to you a third time on a ride, s/he has the right to yank the headphones out of your ears and throttle you with them.

The Oblivious Rider Rule
If you either cause a wreck or nearly cause a wreck in a group because you were wrapped in your own little world of audio and couldn't hear warnings or traffic, the only way you can hope to save face is to immediately crush your iPod as a sign of contrition, then never ever show up at a group ride with an iPod again.

Additional Rules
While I am the final authority on the rules of riding with an iPod, I am not an unreasonable despot. I therefore welcome your suggestions for additional iPod / cycling rules to be integrated -- at my discretion -- into the final draft of this document, which every cyclist shall be required to memorize, as well as carry a copy on a laminated card.

PS: What to Buy Me
You know, people often say to me, "Fatty, your blog has brought untold joy into my life. I really wish I could somehow give you a gift, as a token of my appreciation." Well, you can. I really want the new iPod Shuffle. I think it would clip onto the front zipper of a jersey beautifully.

Of course, I only need one of these. Well, OK, really I need two, because my wife wants one, too. But once a couple of you have bought me these, the rest of you are going to feel left out. Don't feel bad, though. You can always send me iTunes Gift Certificates (send them to eldennelson@hotmail.com, please).

I shall now go sit in front of my computer, watching as the gifts pour in, as I'm sure they most certainly will.

An interesting thing happened when Floyd Landis went from Ultra-Hero to SuperGoat after the 2006 Tour de France:

I stopped caring about pro cycling.

No, it wasn't an act of defiance, or a boycott, or a statement. I just really stopped caring. I stopped following the races, stopped wondering about who would be transferring to which team, stopped reading about all the doping scandals.

I just lost interest.

Why did I lose interest? I think it has to do with why I also don't follow pro baseball, football, basketball, or any other sport: I've got nothing in common with the players. They're living in such a different world, with such completely different motivation for doing what they do, that I just don't relate to them. Which is to say, I used to think that pro cyclists and I had a lot in common -- hey, we're just the same, except you're 20x faster than I -- but it turns out I was wrong.

The Vuelta Thus Far
And so, with my newfound apathy toward the pro side of cycling, I have completely failed to follow the Vuelta. I have a sneaking suspicion I'm not alone in this.

And you know what? That's just not fair. I shouldn't take my malaise out on what is, after all, a Grand Tour. Never mind that the most recent winners of all three of the Grand Tours have been implicated in doping scandals (Heras, Basso, Landis), making it so you never really know who won what anymore. It's still a great race.

So, as a public service to all my readers who have neglected the Vuelta, I have gone back and thoroughly researched this year's Vuelta. I hereby provide the following recap, so you can be more diligent in following this exciting race to its exciting conclusion:

• Carlos Sastre started out with the leader's jersey, then gave it to Thor.
• Thor held onto it for a couple days, until the race turned uphill. Then Danilo Di Luca got it. Then Thor got a stage win -- finally -- but didn't get the leader's jersey back. Sorry, Thor.
• Alejandro Valverde won a stage, and some kid from Slovakia who's evidently Discovery's great new Grand Tour hope -- now that everyone realizes George Hincapie isn't -- but who I have never heard of before now, took the leader jersey.
• The leader's jersey is a delightful golden color, which is also known as "yellow."
• Hey, Vino won stage 8. Awesome.
• Hey, Vino won stage 9, too. That's also awesome. You know, now I wish I'd have been paying more attention. I think I could get behind this Vino character. Until I find out he's doping, anyway.
• By stage 10, Valverde's in gold. Gold, baby. Gold. He might've been in it before stage 10, but I can't be sure. He stays in gold until stage 16. That's a long time in gold.
• On stage 14, David Millar won a stage, which either proves he can win clean. Or that he's better at cheating now.
• On stage 17, Tom Danielson -- Discovery's other Grand Tour hope -- won the stage and Vinokourov took the leader's jersey. Hey, nice work, Vino.
• On stage 18, Vinokourov extended his lead by a smidgen, and today, everyone stayed put.

So there, now you're up to speed. I don't know about you, but I can hardly wait to follow this race more closely for the next several days. Except for during the weekend, during which I won't have time to post. Apart from that, check back here often for your daily Vuelta update!

Oh, it ends this Sunday? Okay, never mind.

An almost ridiculously special note from Fatty: Since, last week, I made the last-minute decision to not do the Lotoja ride/race/doohickey, choosing instead to do a big mountain bike ride, it seemed appropriate that today I would post both Dug's writeup and mine, telling the tales of two distinctly different rides.

The problem is, I don't have much of a story to tell. Kenny, Brad, and I did 38 miles / 8000 feet of singletrack around the Alpine Loop. All of us were strong the whole day. Nobody bonked. Nobody crashed. The trail was in excellent condition. The weather was perfect and the changing colors of the mountain were beautiful.

The most amazing thing about this ride, actually, was that at two different places during the ride (once on the Ridge trail, and once on the Provo River trail) a couple of riders/Fat Cyclist readers recognized me, thanks to the fact that I was wearing my Reeses Peanut Butter Cup jersey. Which is, to tell the truth, too big for me nowadays, but it is bright orange, which is reassuring during hunting season around these parts.

The End. Of my story, anyway. But Dug's got himself a nice, long story, which has considerable drama in it. I planned to publish it, unmodified, for your reading pleasure, until I actually read it. Then it occurred to me: Dug likes to include obscure literary and pop-culture references. Dug likes to use subtext. Dug likes to use subtle literary devices.

In short, Dug's story needs some plain-English commentary, to make his meaning clear. Helpfully, I have done so, embedding my friendly and useful comments throughout his story.

You're welcome, Dug.

Dug's Lotoja Story
My story of Lotoja has two heroes, and I’m not one of them. [Note the dramatic tension immediately created in this story. Who are the heroes? Why doesn't Dug consider himself heroic? Did he do something contemptible? I must read more! -FC] Lemme esplain. No, there is too much, lemme sum up. [Surprisingly, Dug doesn't seem to realize that he could have simply backspaced over the "Lemme esplain" sentence, rather than retracting it. -FC]

It went like this:

1. I finished.
2. I finished faster than I expected to.
3. The weather was perfect.
4. If not for my brother in law, Rick S., I almost certainly would have quit half way.
5. Justin Jensen is the toughest cyclist I’ve ever met in my life. [Here, Dug employs a literary device known as "foreshadowing." Right now, we don't know who Justin Jensen is, nor why is the world's toughest cyclist, but we suspect that we will know by the end of the story. For now, we have to guess: will he demonstrate his ability to crush walnuts with his bare hands? Will he bench press 400 pounds at a rest stop? Will he wrestle a bear? Stay tuned and find out! -FC]

Lotoja is a road race, 206 miles and almost 8,000 feet of climbing, from Logan, UT, to Jackson Hole, WY. The first 50 miles or so are mostly flat, the next 50 or so cover three mountain passes, one after the other, and the last 100 miles are constantly rolling, with no passes or significant climbs. I don’t know if that adds up to 206 miles, and I don’t care. [Here, Dug is demonstrating that he is 1) not concerned with petty things like mileage; 2) world-weary and disaffected; 3) too lazy to go to the website to get his facts straight. -FC]

Of course, when I call Lotoja a race, that really only applies to about 10 guys. Just like at Leadville, or 24 Hours of Moab, the Boston Marathon, or whatever “race” you like to do, 90% of us are just riding to see what we can do. That goes double for Lotoja. As for me, I have a LifeList, a check list of things I want to do. Climbing Mt. Everest is NOT on the list. But Lotoja was. I have now crossed it off. [Am I the only one who wants to know what remains on that list? And why isn't Mt. Everest on it? What have you got against Mt. Everest, Dug? -FC]

I ride a lot with my brother in law Rick S., and with Elden. All of us signed up for Lotoja. Elden bowed out last week in favor of doing an epic mountain bike ride with Brad and Kenny, and, not least, in favor of not hanging out with me and Rick and our wives for 3 days while we got all cuddly. He chose wisely, I’m thinking. [Middle-aged people acting like newlyweds is gross. I wanted no part in this spectacle. And by "this spectacle," I am using a literary device called "foreshadowing." -FC]

Rick rides with a bunch of other guys who live nearby, some of whom have done Lotoja before. In fact, Rick, Adam, and Tony all finished last year when half the field dropped out due to a freak snowstorm. [Yes, it was actually snowing freaks. -FC] Justin drove support for them, and John rode Lotoja the year before. All of us started together at 6:54 am in Logan. All of these guys are younger than me, and faster than me. I fully expected to ride most of the day alone. [Hey, we all ride alone. Except if I'd have come along, you would have had me as company the whole day. "Make your choice," I said. "Me or your wife." Imagine my dismay when you chose her company to mine! -FC]

I don’t want to go on and on [Too late! -FC], so I’ll break this down into 3 easy parts.

Part One: This Is Fun! [Just in case anyone missed it, Dug is using that exclamation point ironically. -FC]
Lotoja starts a field of 1,000 racers, and we start in waves of 50 riders. The opening 35 miles run across table top flat farmland, shrouded in fog on back roads. Our group, the 5200s, started fast, and accelerated from there. On the other hand [What other hand? You haven't given me the first hand yet! -FC], when you’ve got 10 or 15 really antsy fast guys at the front of a 50 rider pack, sitting in is pleasant, and you feel invincible [More foreshadowing, this time at multiple levels. Is everyone in this pack truly invincible, or shall one or more fall? What shall be the cause of their presumed fall(s)? I am at the edge of my seat. Very nicely done. -FC]. We caught the wave ahead of us within half an hour, making our pack almost 100 strong, moving at a brisk ["Brisk?" There are around 25 million adjectives in the English language and you chose "brisk?" -FC] 25-30 mph.

So here’s the lesson for Part One: It’s really really (really really) hard to re-catch a large group moving fast when you stop to pee. I mean, REALLY hard [OK, I'll bite: How hard is it? -FC].

But we did. [Hey, I thought you were going to tell me how hard it is to catch a large group. I am disappointed. -FC]

We pulled into the first feed zone at 32 miles feeling fresh, spry, confident. My feelings of dread I had been experiencing all week began to fade. So go ahead and cue the creepy, ominous music already. [This is a variation of foreshadowing -- evidently the only literary device Dug's chosen to use today -- called "explicit foreshadowing," where the author doesn't just hint at what's to come, but actually comes out and says, "here's a hint that something's coming up." And about time, too. -FC]

Part Two: This Really (Really Really) Sucks
Somewhere around mile 40 the route began to roll, and roll up more than it rolled down. And sometime before the road really started pointing up, many of us stopped for another pee break. This time Justin and I got caught with a little too much liquid in us, and our proverbial, um, items in our proverbial hands, and the chase back was fairly intense. For a bit there, I thought I had seen the last of my friends. But Justin is a giant of a man (literally, he goes about 6’3’’ and easily over 200 lbs), and in the giant draft created by his slipstream, I managed to regain contact. Whew. [Say, that Justin guy is tough. I can hardly wait 'til he wrestles the bear! -FC]

Unfortunately, I regained contact just as we started the longest climb of the race.

Now, I’ll be the first to say, I’m half the man I used to be, and I’m old and under-prepared. But all I do is climb. I live at 6,000 feet, every ride I do has by definition at least 1500 feet of climbing, usually more like 4,000. [By "definition," Dug means "necessity," because he lives at the top of a mountain with a 1500-foot descent on one side and a 1700 foot descent on the other side. So every ride ends with one of those two climbs. Just thought I'd clear that up. -FC]

But as soon as the road tilted hard up (I first used my lowest gear, and not just any low gear, but a 27, at mile 53), I felt like I was dragging a loaded dogsled behind me. [This is a simile. Dug didn't really have a loaded dogsled behind him. He's just getting older and hasn't trained properly. Glad I could clear that up. -FC]

You would think during a race with a thousand participants in it, you could never be alone. Well, I climbed alone. [I think I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: we all ride alone. -FC] Long stretches of not seeing anybody. And once I headed down the backside, I descended alone, and even rode about 5-10 miles of valley alone before I got swept up in a very large group [OK, I'll bite, again: How large was it? -FC], where I could finally get some shelter. [Like a yurt? -FC]

As I rolled into the feed station between the first and second climbs, where Kim was waiting for me with chicken-and-stars-ready-to-eat soup and V-8 [Seriously, V8? Forget Justin. You're the toughest cyclist in the world if you could ride with V8 jostling around in your stomach. I'm getting queasy just considering the combination of soup and V8. -FC], I found Rick S. waiting for me. The S is for Saint. And Superman. [It occurs to me that if he was that great of a guy he would never have left you in the first place. -FC] I was grateful, and not for the last time [Hey, more foreshadowing! You've got a lot of foreshadows to live up to now, pal. -FC]. He had summited quite a ways ahead of the rest of the group, and let them roll on without him from the Montpelier feed station and waited for me. I’m getting all weepy just thinking about it.

Rick and I rode together over the second climb (not nearly as bad as the first, but still, kryptonite enough for me), and as we approached the third and final major climb, I realized that when Rick had described these climbs, he only talked about the final steep pitches. The climbs were really closer to 10-20 miles long, when you count the long, but relatively mild approaches. Telling me a 15-mile climb is really only 4 miles long, just because only the last 4 miles are over 8% is like that guy in Poltergeist who moves a cemetery, but only moves the headstones. Very bad things are bound to happen. [I'll bet you weren't thinking those "superman/saint" things about Rick Sunderlage (not his real name) at this point, were you? -FC]

I’m pretty sure I was passed by over 50 people on the climb to Salt Creek Pass. And I’m also pretty sure the only two reasons I reached the summit alive are:

First: When Kim and Rachelle (Rick S’s wife) drove by me on the way to the top, Kim was hanging out of the passenger side window screaming encouragement. Remember that scene from The Sure Thing, when Daphne Zuniga gets a citation for driving with the load not properly tied down? It was like that. Thanks babe. [So, does your wife know you wrote a story for my thousands of readers that includes a mention of her baring her breasts? -FC]

And second, yup, again, Rick S. was waiting for me at the top. Had he not been there, I am certain I would have ridden straight for the car and gotten in, leaving my bike in the road. I wanted out of the Tunnel of Pain. But how could I quit when Rick had let the group go ahead once again in order to shepherd me onward? [OK, I'm not going to poke fun here, because we're starting to get to some pretty darn good storytelling. -FC] (Not to mention Kim risking prosecution for her moving violation).

I was at mile 110 in a 206 mile race, completely cooked, and, coincidentally, already farther in one day than I had ever been on a road bike [Dug is using "coincidentally" ironically here, folks. He realizes there's no coincidence. -FC]. Ever.

But the next 94 miles were flat or rolling. And with Superman pacing me, anything was possible [I know that you were using Superman as a metaphor for Rick Sunderlage (not his real name), but it occurs to me: I wouldn't want to ride with the real Superman. His cape would always be snapping behind him, making it hard to draft. -FC] So, once more into the breach, dear friends, we few, we happy few, we band of brothers. [Readers: This is the second movie reference that I'm aware of, and we can assume that there are more to come. It's best to just pretend they aren't happening. Above all, don't encourage him, or he'll just do more. -FC]

Part Three: Gonna Make It
So we did about 50 miles of very fast flat and rolling terrain, until we were finally maybe a mile or so from the final feed zone in Alpine Junction. All I’m thinking is that I have one more chance to suck down some ready to eat soup, another V-8, and load up on another raft of Shot Blocks. And suddenly, everything changed. We came upon the other four guys we started with on the side of the road, Justin bleeding badly from his elbow, someone holding his bike, on which one side of the handlebar was dangling from the bar tape at the bend. [Holy crap. -FC]

Riding in a large fast group has its downside. The speed does not really remain constant, despite everyone’s best intentions, and so if you don’t pay attention, even for a second, and you touch wheels, um, well, that’s bad. [Yeah. Really bad. -FC]

Earlier in the race, before the big climbing, on a slight uphill, someone in the front dropped their chain, and the resulting “chain” reaction was felt all the way to the back. I remember seeing one guy toward the back swerve sharply to the right to avoid the massive slowdown, and careen down the embankment and over the bars into a ditch. Life in the peloton. [You're going to get back to Justin eventually, right? -FC]

Now it was our turn. The slowing in the front came just as Justin reached for a bottle, and he crossed wheels with Adam. Justin went down hard, breaking his collarbone and handlebar. [Again I say: Holy crap. -FC] Tony, riding on Justin’s wheel, ran right into Justin, and fell hard on him and his bike, but was miraculously uninjured. [Perhaps because he just landed on a 200-lb guy, instead of on the road? -FC]

Of course, Justin’s race was over, and he got in the car with his wife to meet us at the finish. [Naturally. -FC]

Oh, wait, nevermind, that’s not what happened. Justin put his bike in the small ring up front, hardest gear in back (since there was no way to shift while riding, what with the handlebar dangling by bar tape), mounted up, and away we went. Seriously. 45 miles to go. [Well, whaddaya know. You weren't kidding about him being the toughest cyclist in the world. -FC]

Justin got two flat tires in Snake River Canyon, and we had to change his flats for him since his arm was hanging uselessly at his side. I tell you we changed his flats for him, not because it was a chore, but to underscore that HIS COLLARBONE WAS BROKEN IN TWO PLACES AND HE HAD NO SKIN ON HIS ELBOW. [I know I've said this before, but: holy crap. -FC]

The fact that I had lost (that loving feeling) every scrap of feeling in my taint and left hand became less and less important. The fact that every time the road tilted upward I struggled to remain in contact with the guy with the broken collarbone was simply spurious. I had spent the day riding with Superman (Rick S.), and now, apparently, Batman decided to make an appearance. I am a boy among men. [Now how am I supposed to tease you when you're teasing yourself? -FC]

As we passed Jackson Hole and made our way across the 12 flat, easy miles to Teton Village and the finish line, I’m pretty sure Justin started going into shock. But after 11 hours in the saddle, and the finish line so close you could hear the crowds, there was no way in hell he wasn’t crossing with all of us together. He scrapped and clawed, and we all rode across the line together, in just over 11 hours. Kim and Rachelle had arranged to have Dominos Pizza waiting for us. Kim, I love you babe. I now revise my count, FOUR heroes that day, Kim, Rachelle, Rick S, and Justin. [You've got one warped scale for heroism, man. Either crash out hard and finish the race anyway, wait for you at the top of sundry mountains, or bare your breasts and buy a pizza? -FC]

And Now?
Well, now I can cross Lotoja off my LifeList. Done and done.

You know, I am tired, but I am not beat up in the way a Leadville beats you up (with apologies to Justin and that guy who went down into the ditch). I can walk normally, I actually want to ride my bike this week.

One thing though. I love Shot Blocks and all, they probably saved my life. But I’m pretty sure this morning, I excreted an entire, whole Shot Block, intact [You're supposed to chew them. -FC]. You’ll be happy to know I let sleeping dogs lie. [Um. Ew. -FC]

A word of caution from Fatty: I'm not at all certain that this kind of post belongs in a goofy cycling humor blog, but it's what I want to write today. For what it's worth, there is a part about biking, so this story isn't entirely out of context here. Of course, I understand you may be coming to Fat Cyclist for relief from today's 9/11 media inundation, in which case I recommend reading Review of Several Items I Recently Purchased from the Hammacher Schlemmer Catalog, which I just posted in the Random Reviewer blog.

A Progressively Bad Drive to the Airport
Back in 2001, I worked at Fawcette Technical Communications. I lived in Orem, UT, but made frequent trips to Seattle to meet with Microsoft. On September 11, I was driving to the airport for just such a trip, listening to the morning show on an alternative music radio station. I had only gone a mile or so -- I wasn't even on the freeway yet -- when the DJ said a twin-prop airplane had hit the WTC.

That barely registered with me. I don't think I thought anything more than, "Stupid pilot," and continued on.

Then, during the next traffic report, the woman said a second plane had hit the WTC. "We already talked about that," said the DJ, thinking she had her story mixed up -- there was no way two separate planes had hit two separate towers.

They finished the traffic report and then went on to their "Really Stupid News" segment.

I changed the channel, surfing for a real news station on the radio. Turns out there wasn't anyone with a better idea of what was going on. Lots of conflicting reports, lots of confusion.

So I finished my drive to the airport.

At the Airport
By the time I arrived at the airport, parked, checked in, and found my gate, it was obvious that something was going on, though I had no idea what. Flights were being delayed, but not -- technically -- canceled. Everyone was standing around the TV monitor at an airport bar, transfixed.

And that's where I saw Dug. He also worked for Fawcette, was also scheduled to travel that day, from the adjoining gate.

So at least I was standing by someone I knew when I saw the first tower collapse.

I called my wife, who I knew for sure would not be watching the news at that moment -- eight months pregnant with twins and getting two boys ready for school, she'd have her hands full with other things. "Turn on the TV," I said. "Doesn't matter which station."

I went to the gate counter to confirm what I assumed was obvious: flights would be canceled for the time being. I was behind a woman who was completely panicked -- she was demanding a refund immediately; she was never going to fly again, she had to get out of there. I remember feeling bad for her, but also a little bit amused. If my flight had been available, I would have gotten on without concern.

Things hadn't really sunk in, yet.

Back Home
I drove home, switching radio channels. Now they were all talking about what was going on, but the quantity of misinformation was incredible. Cars were exploding. The White House was on fire. No, the White House wasn't on fire, but something in DC was. Another plane had crashed, this time into a field.

I got home, and my wife was crying, watching the towers collapse, over and over. Watching the smoking hole in the Pentagon. Wondering what the deal was with the plane crashed in the field. Wondering what was coming next.

We watched for a couple hours, then I said I may as well go to work; we weren't going to learn anything else. I got there, and an hour or so later, Dug got there too. Like me, I think, he didn't have the stomach to watch any more.

Of course, neither of us got anything done. We either surfed for news -- I remember that news sites were slow because of being overwhelmed with traffic -- or talked about what we knew. Which wasn't much.

Get Away
Eventually, I had had enough. "How about we leave early and go ride Timpooneke," one of us suggested -- I don't remember which of us it was, but it sounded good. Of course, we channel-surfed the radio as we drove toward the mountain. Of course, we didn't learn anything new.

We got to the parking lot, got dressed, and got our bikes ready without saying much of anything. Then we started the four-mile dirt road climb.

And I started feeling better. Somehow, getting away from the media, being in the mountain, on a mountain bike, on a beautiful late-Summer day, helped things. I started going faster. Dug did too. I don't think we were racing, but we were both going for it.

By the time we got to the top, I felt clear again. I hadn't forgotten what was going on, but I no longer felt like I was in shock.

The descent down the Timpooneke singletrack requires your full attention. Hairpin turns come out of nowhere. Waterbars surprise you. You've got to descend through gauntlets of loose, fist-sized rocks.

It was just what I needed. Forty minutes of insanely good singletrack downhill, punctuated by three gut-bustingly-difficult climbs, is a good reminder that life is good. When Dug and I got back to the parking lot, we were both smiling.

We put away our bikes and started driving home. I didn't turn on the radio, and Dug didn't ask me to.

On Wednesday I asserted that I would write on both Thursday and Friday. I had very specific topics in mind for those days. Here are the things I planned to talk about:

• Thursday: A fun new contest. I expected more participation in this one than in any contest I have done to this point. Not so much because the prize was great (although the prize was in fact pretty great) but because I was pretty sure that the idea of this contest would catch everyone's imagination. However, the contest required the participation of a certain outside party, whose partner did not give permission to go ahead with this contest. I am being vague about what the contest is, who the certain outside party is and why permission from a partner would need to be granted, because I hope that at some point in the future this contest will still happen, and I don't want to spoil the surprise. Anyway, that's why I didn't write yesterday. Sorry.
• Friday (Today): Today, I was going to write about my plan for riding in the Lotoja event, and about how it would be an interesting experience to go do a ride where I seriously had no finishing time goals or completion ambitions whatsoever. That is, I didn't care how long it took to do the ride, or whether I even completed the ride; I was simply going for the sake of a roadtrip and a long ride with friends.

Then, Wednesday afternoon, I crunched some numbers and made a decision, which means that today's topic changed, too.

Why Do I Race?
Until Wednesday, I had never considered the "why" in "Why Do I Race?" It didn't seem a question worth exploring. The thing is, though, take a fast guy who races (Kenny) and a slow guy who races (me). Kenny's reasons for racing are bound to be different than my reasons for racing, right? And my reasons for racing, while compelling for me, must not be very compelling to someone who chooses to not race at all.

So the question is: why do I race? What benefits do I get? In order of importance:

• To spend time with friends: preparing for, talking about, and doing the race. Yeah, believe it or not, the road trip aspect of a race is my favorite thing about racing. I like the trip there, the trip back, and hanging out. This is perhaps one of the main reasons I look forward to the Leadville 100 each year: it's a big trip where I get to hang out with my friends for four days. And because I've been doing this race for so long, I've made a lot of friends associated with that race, and make more every year. For me, going to Leadville is like going to Cheers.
• To test myself. At some point in every race I've ever done, there comes a point where I am in pain. In short races, that pain is mostly in the legs and lungs, and is pretty intense. In long races, the pain can be everywhere and anywhere -- including and especially in my head -- and may even migrate around a bit. I like this pain, because I am pretty good at living with it, which to me feels like I'm pretty good at beating it. Even while I'm suffering, I get an enormous amount of satisfaction thinking, "This hurts, but it's not stopping me."
• To have an adventure / to have a story to tell. While I expect that most people have at least an aspect of the first two items I listed as motivation for racing, this one may be a little less common. The thing is, though, even as I ride, I'm usually composing pieces of the story in my head. I'm usually writing the conclusion to the story in my head, too. That conclusion changes several times during the race.
• To win! No, just kidding. I know I'm not going to win.

So, there you have them: the benefits of racing, as I see them. Now let's look at the flip side of this coin.

The Costs of Racing
If racing were nothing but upside, I'd be entering every race in the world, right? But there are a couple of things that keep me from doing that, once again in order of importance to me:

• Time. Time away from the family and time off work (especially when you're fairly new in a job and haven't yet accumulated a lot of vacation time) are the biggest gating factors for a race (or for any event)
• Money. Entry fees, gas money (or plane money), food, hotels: By the time I add it all up, most big races cost me between $500 and $1000, depending on how long I have to be gone, and how far I have to travel.

Return on Investment
So, when you think about it, for any given race, the benefits I'm going to gain have got to outweigh the costs: I've got to get good value for my time and money.

And so I'm not going to Lotoja. Here's why:

1. Costs were high. I would be away from my family for three full days to do a 12-hour race that is in actuality not a race at all. I would be spending upwards of $500 in hotel, gas, and food (I am ignoring the entry fee; that's a sunk cost, spent before I had done a cost/benefit analysis).
2. Benefits were low. The "test myself" aspect was never really a component of this ride; I already know I can do this kind of distance and difficulty, and wasn't shooting for a fast time. The "spend time with friends" part was the main driver for me going on this trip, and it turns out that instead of a member of a road trip with the guys, I'd be an awkward third wheel (or, technically, a fifth wheel) on a romantic second honeymoon / double date (which just happens to have a big ride stuck in the middle). No thanks.

Instead
So, instead of Lotoja, tomorrow I'm going on an epic mountain bike ride with Kenny and Brad. I'll be spending time with friends, definitely testing myself (Kenny and Brad are each roughly four times as strong as I am), and should have a great story to tell this Monday. Meanwhile, I'm earning massive brownie points with the wife by being gone only six hours instead of three days, and saving around $500, to boot.

Hey, run the numbers yourself; I think you'll see the math checks out.

At the beginning of August, I unveiled the Weapon of Choice, my highly-modified Gary Fisher Paragon. Here are the things I changed on that bike:

• New wheels
• New handlebar
• New stem
• New brakes
• New fork
• New shifters
• New derailleur

The question I expected someone to ask, but which nobody did (for which I am very disappointed in each and every one of you) is:

So now you've got a really nice set of wheels, a handlebar, stem, brakes, and a fork just laying around, unused. Why don't you spend a few bucks on a frame, a saddle, and some cranks and build a singlespeed?

Which is exactly what I did. In fact, the carbon fork came with the singlespeed frame, and brought the total cash outlay for the singlespeed frame (a Gary Fisher Rig) to close to nothing.

Thanks for the suggestion, Fatty. You're a genius.

[Here is where I would insert the picture of the bike if I had remembered to take a picture of it this morning. Also, I would include a caption along the lines of "Simple + Sexy = Simply Sexy."]

Wherein I Act Like Something Really Great is a Problem
There was just one problem. Racers Cycle Service finished building my singlespeed the same day it finished building up the Ibis Silk Carbon. Well, "problem" isn't precisely the right word for getting to pick up two really awesome bikes the same day.

But still, I had to decide: which should I ride first? I picked the Ibis.

And then I picked the Ibis again.

And then I picked the Ibis again.

You see what the problem is? I loved this new road bike so much that I kept wanting to ride it, while a nagging voice in the back of my head kept saying things like, "You know, you have another brand new bike you haven't ridden even once yet. How long are you going to let that go on?"

Well, I let it go on for exactly a week. Every day, a different ride on the Ibis. Every day, falling a little more in love with that road bike. In fact, it increasingly seems that the problem I'm going to have when it comes time to review this bike for Cyclingnews will be sounding fair and balanced.

Anyway, back to the singlespeed.

How Do You Shift This Thing?
This morning, I finally took the rig out on our maiden voyage. Now, I've ridden a singlespeed before--for about ten minutes. That's a bunch different than riding Hogs' Hollow to Jacob's Ladder to the new Draper trail, which is a two hour ride even on a geared bike.

Now, about half a dozen people were supposed to join in on this ride, but pretty much everyone bailed by 6:00am, when we had agreed to start. It's possible they bailed because it's completely dark at 6:00am this time of year. As in "Hey, look, I can see the stars" dark.

Note to self: no more rides before 6:30am this year. Alas.

So I started the half-hour-long climb, using sonar (Yeah, I have sonar. It's my superpower) and broad guesses about land contours to get me up the mountain. As I got close to the saddle of Hogs' Hollow, I came across Rick Sunderlage (not his real name), whose superpower seems to be always being available for a ride. (Admit it: now that you think about it, that's the superpower you would choose if you could, isn't it? I would.)

By the time I got to Rick, I knew I had a problem: I was already tired. Turns out that if you're used to sitting and spinning a nice light gear up hills, it's not easy to stand up and pedal at maximum effort, while rowing the handlebar for extra leverage, for three miles.

Good Things
On the rare occasion the sound of blood pounding in my ears subsided, I noticed how quiet the singlespeed is. And not just the audible kind of quiet. The bike, by virtue of it not having a cassette or derailleurs or multiple chainrings or a suspension fork, has a quiet litheness about it that I had never noticed my geared bike lacks--simply because I had never ridden anything different. But even on my first ride I noticed: all else being equal (and the geometry of my Paragon and my Rig are pretty close to identical) a singlespeed feels more nimble.

As we started descending, I tried remembering the techniques BotchedExperiment taught me earlier this week: stay back and behind the saddle. Do quick wheelies. Hop forward and up. Rolling through the rough stuff fast is safer than riding through it slow.

And you know what? It worked. I don't think I'm quite as fast yet as with my old style, but considering that this is the first time I've tried riding the way Botched is teaching me, I'm very confident I'll improve and be faster downhill in short order.

Or it's possible that I'll rack myself on the seatpost and will die in horrible, agonizing pain.

Hey, life's full of risks.

Assessment
By the time I finished riding with Rick, my arms and lower back hurt like they never have on a bike. I was totally worked. Without questions, that's a good thing. It seems to me that the strength I build on a singlespeed will translate to benefits on any other kind of ride, too.

So here's the big question: do I love singlespeed riding?

No, no I don't. Not yet. But I can see how I could learn to.