The Anti-Santa Has A Gift You Don't Want

Germ Infested Cyborg aka Your Cousin's Offspring

This is Billy. We cyclists call him the Anti-Santa. He make look like a fun, comical kind of guy, someone you might feel obliged to hug, kiss or play tootsies with this Christmas, but he wants to kill you. Billy is a germ infested cyborg disguised as your cousin’s child hell-bent on destroying your winter training by making you sick for the next two weeks. I’m almost certain Billy is a relative of that Mayhem guy on the car insurance commercials. I avoid Billy every holiday and take drastic measures up to, but not including, wearing a hazmat suit to the annual holiday family get together at Auntie Sherry’s house. At this very moment, Billy is a virtual human backpack of 3 different types of influenza, 5 types of colds and a few things that medical professionals have yet to categorize. Billy is a bad boy.

Billy's Favorite Hang Out Spot

Ya see, just before you walked under the mistletoe, Billy picked his nose, gave it a taste, then wiped it on his cheek.  You may want to think twice about where you plant that smooch and whether you want to stick a finger and let him give you a handshake with his adorable pudgy little baby fingers.  While his mom wasn’t looking, the dog licked his head; right after it licked its own butt.  So, a pat on the head may not be the best idea either.

The problem is that ignoring Billy is rude.  He’s grown so much since the last time you saw him.  His parents are proud.  Look!  He's got your eyes!  He knows his ABC’s.  They’ll be disappointed if you don’t interact with him.  After all, he needs to see his Uncle Joey.  He wuvs Unkie Joey.  He’s irresistible.

You may have noticed some family members have wised up to Billy and his evil posse of toddler anti-Santas.  When you walk into the house, there’s always a few people just sitting in the family room, in a chair, by themselves, with a drink and either chatting with a neighbor or watching the game.  You may think of them as the anti-socials.  That couldn’t be farther from the truth.  You should really get to know them better.  They're your type of people, doing their best to be a part of the party without being a part of Billy’s booger bash.

Guest of Billy's Booger Bash

Back to the mistletoe, here are a few rules to make nice-nice with Billy without getting infected with a disease you haven’t had since you were 14 months old:

1) Make no direct body contact with the Anti-Santa.  DO NOT KISS ANY BABY/TODDLER/CHILD.

2) Avoid being in the 90 degree cone of carnage that surrounds the Anti-Santa’s nose and mouth.

3) Stand to one side, at least 2.5 feet away of the Anti-Santa.

4) If you feel the need to have direct personal contact with the adorable germ infested cyborg, interact only with his/her clothing.  Grab that socky-foot and wiggle it.  Gently poke that sweater covered jiggly tummy.

5) Wrap up your interaction quickly by saying, “Oop, I’m almost empty.  I gotta get a refill on my drink.”  Then go to the bathroom and wash your face and hands up to your elbows. 

6) In the bathroom, do not use the community towel.  Find a fresh one under the sink or in the linen closet.

7) Repeat after every encounter.

The Anti-Anti-Santa

To prepare for your inevitable encounter with these sirens, stock up on the following:

1) Multi-Vitamins and Vitamin C.  I’d say take one everyday and before every new house you enter.

2) Drink DanActive by Dannon every day.  It’s got probiotics that will defend your body against an attack by Billy’s biological weapons.  Start today and let it build up in your system.

3)Do not accept accommodations in a child’s room at a relative’s house.  Sleep in a hotel or with family that has adult children.  A $100 hotel room is worth the price in co-pays and Sudafed.

4) Carry and use hand sanitizer after every encounter.

5) Billy’s Mom and Dad are covered in Billy juice.  Treat them like Billy.

6) Never let your drink get out of sight.  Billy is on the prowl and I think I just heard him sneeze. 

Enjoy your holiday the best you can!  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The Toe Fist

It’s taken me about 15 years of white bloodless cold on-the-brink of frostbite bitten toes to figure out a process of getting dressed to keep my feet from turning into lifeless bricks on cold winter rides.  It is much more effective than dancing like Beyonce’ on the side of the road.  I’ve got friends who insist on a number of other comical solutions, like putting Saran wrap their forefeet.  After trying it, evening using the red color thinking it’d be hotter, I’m come to the conclusion that I’m not into the Saran Wrap foot fetish.  It doesn’t solve the real problem and disrupts the foot-sock-shoe-pedal connection too much.  Chemical toe warmers and foot beds work, but they are only a variable in the happy feet equation and require air to keep working their magic.  The real key to keeping your feet warm in the winter is maintaining good blood flow in your piggies.  It’s science dammit!!  Everything else is just icing.  Dedicated winter cycling shoes work fine, but snug them or regular cycling shoes up too tight and no amount of SIDI Italian leather goodness is going to get your core body heat to reach the ends of your pistons.  So how do you keep air in your shoe and avoid cutting off your circulation?  The toe fist my friend…the toe fist. 

Prior to putting my feet in my shoes, I make a fist with my toes and then lightly cinch up the straps/laces.  Combine this with some or all of the other bright ideas out there, even dancing and singing the chorus to “Single Ladies” and you’ll be golden.  The downfall is that, well duh, your shoes aren’t on tight.  However, you’re not trying to win a summer crit sprint or make the holeshot at the local MTB series.  I have tested my theory through cyclocross season and on both road and mountain bike rides this winter, works every time.  The longest ride I’ve had so far has been nearly 3 and a half hours, plenty for winter.  Cinder block feet are no longer the reason I start heading home.  Chances are some other ailment will get me first; such as being too out of shape to ride more than 3 hours, frozen water bottles or my suspension fork busting a seal. 

Here’s how I get dressed for winter and implement the foot fist technique using embrocation, winter cycling underwear, Toastie Toes and winter booties.

1 Starting naked, grab your warm weather cycling underwear, a towel, your cold & wet conditions cycling embrocation and your thickest warmest newest winter hiking style socks.  Go to the bathroom.  I don’t mean just go there, go there and do your business.  Trust me this is the best step one ever. 

2 Next, don warm weather cycling underwear.  This is the best step 2 ever.

3 Standing on the towel in your skivvies apply embrocation on your legs, feet, toes, forearms.  Use whatever is left on your lower back.  It’ll feel like magic fingers mid-ride.  I won’t get into all the details with embrocation, but there’s a reason you put on underwear and went to the bathroom first.  There are few things in life more painful than accidently causing your junk to catch fire in the middle of nowhere because you dredged your underwear through burning hot chili-pepper embrocation an hour earlier.  Do yourself a favor, when you’re finished wash your hands with soap and keep your hands off the giblets, out of your eyes and away from other tender areas for a while. 

4 Put on those socks.  Affix your Toastie Toes if you got ‘em. 

5 Put on the rest of your winter cycling related gear except for your shoes.

6 If you’re into wrapping your toes with Saran Wrap, do it now.  Then, put on a shoe. 

7 Make the biggest fist you can with your foot inside the shoe. 

8 Starting with the one closest to your toes and with your toe still in fist mode do all the straps and buckles on your shoes.  You should be able to wiggle your piggies inside your shoe and your shoe should be relatively secure on your foot.

9 Repeat with the other shoe.

10 Put on your warm winter weight cycling booties.

 Ride my friend.  Ride.  Unless you’re in freaking Siberia, Alaska or somewhere north of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, you feet will no longer be the reason you come home from a winter bike ride.

Dear Mother Nature

Who’s your daddy now?!  Huh?  In yo face beotch!  I ain’t skeert of you.  You’re a ho in thigh-highs…trying to lure me from a rest day with a 58 degree January forecast.  Yeah, I took the bait and delt with your lame attempt at turning a promising day miserable.  Now chalk up a few hard-guy hours for us.  Bam!  So what if you got me to trade the knee warmers for a layer of leg oil?  It made me ride harder when I saw the rain bead on my quads.  So what if your call for scattered showers made me reach for the jacket but leave it on the hanger?  So what if you got my buddy to wear short finger gloves in wind driven 40 degree rain?  So what if the one rider we saw was coming into town while we were headed out?  So what if I broke out my Lycra team shoe covers instead of the warm Pearl Izumi booties?  So what if we had to clean the wet road grit off our drive trains when we rolled back in?  I just read “A Dog in a Hat,” so you can make it feel like Belgium all you want and my smile will only grow wider.

I know you had my bib number the second I put the bikes on the roof rack.  Don’t think I didn’t notice.  Ooh a little mist, I’m soo scared.  Ooh, let’s make it cloudier on the drive over to my buddy Tony’s house.  Whatever Mother Nature.  You forget so soon that only weeks ago I raced cyclocross when it was blowing snow and 28.  I raced Mentor to Maysville in Northern Kentucky a few years ago in February and still finished even though my fingers were so wet and frozen I couldn’t shift for the final climb and had to have a teammate unzip my jersey.  Turning the mist into a full-on drizzle on the first climb?  Bring it on.  I just wiped the clinging drops from my arm warmers at the top.  So what if we couldn’t pace line without drinking wheel spray?  The side-by-side ride conversation just got better.  We became even better teammates.  Listen ya old bag, you ain’t going to make us cut a ride short. 

You couldn’t muster a little thunder or drop the temperature to make freezing rain?  All you had was that 20-minute blast of full-on driving rain and a ten degree drop?  That just made the vista of valley fog on the Point Pleasant climb even more spectacular.  The machismo just grew stronger when we splashed through the road river and muscled up the switchback.  Just for reference, in case you’re getting a little forgetful in your old age, I’ve ridden in sloshy shoes and have felt the wheel spray run down my crack countless times.  So listen up grandma, the next time you want to try to put down the Northern Kentucky beat down on us, you better get paw-paw’s belt.