The Joker & Cycling Heaven: A Milwaukee Area Group Ride With Team Extreme

There’s a joker on every group ride.  I love him, in a bromance kind of way.  With impeccable timing, the joker’s the one who “accidently” drops a 4 letter bomb at the top of the climb to Holy Hill.  He’s the guy who wonders out loud why a road would be named Amy Belle and how promiscuous she might have been in a rural Wisconsin tool shed.  He’s the one who stands on the pedals before a ripping downhill, bursts into an Irish accent and liltingly shouts “time to bomb down frickin’ Donegal.”  Inappropriate but innocent, the joker keeps the ride alive.  The joker makes late winter’s cropless windswept farm roads and the first four hour ride of the season bearable.  It is just one of the reasons I try to hook up with a local ride when I travel.

When you travel with your bike, there’s no need to pour over maps, ride by yourself, and stop every few miles to make sure you’re on track.  Next time you travel, email a few local clubs or teams wherever you’re going and inquire about riding with them.  Cycling is a social beast.  Name a cyclist who doesn’t enjoy riding with new people.  Just be honest about your ability and remember that you’re a guest on someone elses ride.  This past weekend I hooked up with Team Extreme Cycling in Thiensville, WI for their regular Saturday ride from Extreme Bike & Ski to Holy Hill and back.  It all started with a simple email from one cyclist to another.

To: patrick@teamextremecycling

Got your email from the wicycling.org website.  I’m a cat 3 rider in Cincinnati.  I race for BioWheels bike shop here.  My family’s in Mequon and I’ll be in the Milwaukee area Saturday for a reunion.  Was wondering, since you look like you’re located in Thiensville, if there’s a group ride on Saturday that I could latch onto.  

From: teamextrememtnbike

Hi Joe - Thanks for the email. (Here’s the info on our group ride Saturday.)  Hope you can make it.

Saturday March 14 Afternoon Edition Group/Team Ride

Departure Time: 1:30pm

Departure Location: Extreme Ski & Bike (the Shop)

Route: Holy Hill and Back including the Rustic Road Sections (40-45 miles); no drop!

I did make it.  The ride with Patrick & Team Extreme to Holy Hill was the highlight of the weekend, no offense to my family party which was the focal point of my trip. 

The ride met at Extreme Bike & Ski in Thiensville, WI, a great shop, well stocked and for lack of a better term extremely friendly.  I would never have discovered it had I not ventured out of my cycling travel cocoon.  As the riders gathered, chatted, filled bottles and tires, I realized I was a few cents short of enough cash to pay for a CO2 cartridge.  Kindly, the woman behind the counter re-rang it up with one of the team guy’s discounts and all was good.  When’s the last time something like that happened on your road trip?  I was just one of the regular guys on the regular group ride.  Its little things like that that’ll make me pop in there next time I need something or recommend the shop to someone I know in the Milwaukee area.

The bike path behind the shop led to the farm roads just north of Milwaukee’s suburbs of Mequon, Germantown and Richfield.  They were flat by Cincinnati standards, but had enough curves to keep it interesting.  I barely remember seeing any cars till our double paceline crossed over the freeway.  The pace was perfect, just hard enough where the guys at the front were working hard, the guys behind could talk and the joker could poke fun at joggers and innocent landmarks.  The gradual incline of the farm roads gave way to the rolling hills of the lake country surrounding Milwaukee that make up a stage or two of the International Cycling Classic a.k.a. Superweek.  Hogsback was a favorite that bombed, rolled and twisted its way between the farms and Holy Hill.  The highlight was the climb to Holy Hill, 900 vertical feet of switchbacks topped with a cathedral in the boondocks.  Holy Hill is cycling heaven.

Shooter McContador

Maybe it's just me, but I think someone needs to drop a DVD of Happy Gilmore to Alberto and Team Astana at the Paris-Nice bus and maybe he'll get the hint that the finger-gun is sort of, how do you say in spanish, jugado?

Bending Over In Front of Strangers: Cycling Fashion Tips

Call me a metro-sexual-cyclist, admitingly; I know who Stacy and Clinton are.  I wish they rode bikes or at least could magically appear as a pop up when people try to buy day-glo yellow and green tree frog jerseys online.  I wish TLC could do an episode of What Not To Wear about cyclists.  How cool would it be to nominate “that guy” who showed up on the last group ride?  Man, what I wouldn’t give to have Stacy and Clinton put them through the 360 degreee mirror of shame, throw out their entire cycling wardrobe, show them some examples of stylish looking cyclists and let them loose with a bankroll to spend. 

I only want you to look good on your bike.  Stacy and Clinton would say look the part, get clothes that fit and dress it up, pure and simple.  You don’t wear dusty fuzzy slippers to church, sweat stained clothes to a job interview or ripped jeans to your grandma’s.  Granted a group ride is no where as formal as a job interview, but I can't think of another sport where you spend most of your time bending over in front of strangers.  I shouldn’t be able to see the Grand Canyon through your threadbare shorts.  No one at the pre-ride chat should ever have to smell a week old funk from your trunks, even if you rode to the start of the ride.  Maybe there should be a shelf life sticker on cycling clothes, like: the specialness of this pro team jersey will sour upon the dismantling of the team.  Or, there could be warning labels such as: WARNING, this oversized yellow jersey may appear “comfortable,” but it will make you look like Big Bird. 

Look the part.  Riding with the racers, look like a racer, but don’t be a poseur wearing sponsor clothing if you’re not a sponsored rider.  Riding with the clubbers, skip the logos and find something that fits snug and matches.  Yellow and Black only match on Taxi’s.  Quit embarrassing Jimmy Page and save the Led Zeppelin jersey for the trainer.  Going to the coffee shop?  Wear what people wear at coffee shops, like uh, maybe, something not spandex.  No one sipping mocha wants to see how big your swizzle stick and beans are. 

Dress it up.  Realize that cycling fashion and cycling clothes have a shelf life.  Sorry to break it to ya, the purple jersey you got to match your anodized parts in 1992 is sooo 1992.  Not even the pros look good in yellow jerseys.  This year’s cycling shoes don’t come with laces.  Fabric should be thick enough so your hinder hairs don’t corkscrew through.  Jackets shouldn’t annoyingly flag flap in the wind or poof into an incredible hulk of a pup tent. 

If you forget every thing I just said, please remember this one simple last thought.  When you get dressed for your next group ride, ask yourself, “What would I wear if someone’s face was two feet from my ass?” 

For ideas check out the Velo Vogue Blog here.

Getting Dropped Is Not Falling Behind

A bee in the bra is crap sister.  Having a squirrel dive through your spokes or doing a ditch dive is a little higher on the suck-o-meter.  Day-to-day, as far as trying to be a better bike racer, the thing that really haunts the deep inner cycling sanctum of my race brain is getting dropped.  If you road race, I’m sure you feel the same way.  However, I’ve discovered that new riders, more specifically riders new to road racing, aren’t afraid of the drop.  I’m here to say, it may sound barbaric, unsocial and inhumane, but I think new cyclists with intents on road racing need to get popped, dropped, and left sniveling to find their way home with darkness and diving temperatures fast approaching. 

I’ve been racing/riding a long time.  It’s rare to get dropped anymore.  I attribute that to the theory that the incredible side-splitting puking agony of trying to hang onto a fast pack of riders is far better than riding completely bonked solo in the middle of nowhere and using the direction of the setting sun to find your way home.  Getting shot is better than getting burned.

I took one of those rare wicked shellackings Sunday on Cincinnati’s Hyde Park ride.  (9am from Awakenings Coffee Shop if you’re interested)  It was one of those spring training days where mitigating circumstances came into play, a combination of a hilly beatdown the day before, practically eating only meat the night before, 20mph crosswinds and the 6 strongest riders in the city showing up on a 12 person ride.  I got flat backed in the drops, skipped pulls and sucked wheel while drooling and huffing until I finally got waxed and was off the back wheezing like a donkey nearly 2 hours from home on unfamiliar roads.  Thankfully, I wasn’t the only one who popped so I had a companion for the headwind slog back home.  As much as it sucked, I needed that apocalyptic ass whooping to keep motivated, the ego in check and things in perspective. 

Not naming names or frames, I recently rode with someone new to road cycling/racing that has no fear of the drop whatsoever.  Nada.  I’m not sure they even know what getting dropped really is.  New cyclists call it falling behind.  But, getting dropped and falling behind are two different things.  Falling behind assumes that someone will be waiting for you or that you will eventually catch up, the usual etiquette on more social group rides.  Getting dropped is falling behind without a net, the usual etiquette in road racing.  Aside from getting a bee down your jersey and getting dropped, there’s not many things worse. 

It seems cyclists who are just getting into racing aren’t afraid of getting dropped.  It troubled me at first.  When I rode with the new rider/racer, one second they’d be with us, the next moment off the back.  No warning signs like donkey wheezing, a crumpled back, sagging head, dilated pupils, numb left arm, chest grabbing.  They seemingly decided that they didn’t want to go that fast, figuratively threw up their hands and fell behind, like they weren’t afraid of being dropped and expected that they’d catch up somehow or the group would wait.  Completely perplexing to me. 

Cyclists are a kind bunch.  That’s one of the great things about it.  There’s no shortage of vets willing to lend new racers wisdom, tools, a Clif Bar, a lower-back turbo-boost push back to the group or wait at the top of the climb.  However, you can tell newbies all about drafting, pacelines and sitting on, but there’s nothing like the fear of the drop to have it all make perfect sense.  

The Wave Through - Cycling Road Rules

It’s not exactly like being the money bag holding accomplice in a bank robbery, but I’m stilly pretty sure the law would frown upon it.  On the other side, like holding a door open at the supermarket or getting a sympathy card when your pet passes away, it’s a nice little gesture.  I appreciate the thought and consideration, but I also get the willies when I get the wave through.  As a cyclist, courtesy can have consequences.

Last night, I got the wave through.  I came upon an awkward stop sign intersection, Amsterdam and Sleepy Hollow near the town of Park Hills, KY if you want to see it on Google maps.  

The intersection is on the side of a hill.  Traffic heading west on Sleepy Hollow and south on Amsterdam hits a brake standing stop sign on a steep slope.  Traffic heading North and East are going awkwardly uphill, not quite on the brink of rolling backwards without the brakes.  I was headed South on Amsterdam, downhill.  The SUV headed west, got to the stop slightly before me and was next in rotation to cross.  They didn’t move.  I looked at them and the driver behind the dark glass waved me though.  “Maybe they ride bikes too,” I thought.  Before I could clip my foot back in, they waved again.  “Ugh,” I reconsidered, “they're trying to be nice in an antsy way.”  This is where it gets scary.  Hesitation is followed by impatience, which leads to carnage.  Since there was a car across from me and a car across from them in the intersection waiting, I had to act.

I clipped in and zipped safely across.  Thinking about it today, I wonder what would happened if I kept my foot down and gave them a “no, you go and follow the rules of the road” wave of my own.  I’m guessing they or one of the other cars at the intersection would’ve nailed the gas and blown through the intersection in a huff.  I also could’ve just sat there, pretended to fiddle with my equipment at the curb and waited the traffic out.  The more I think about it, it’s was probably best to do the most predictable thing at the moment.  First I waited my turn at the intersection.  When the driver waved me through, the next predictable thing was to just go.  I think predictable gets you home in one piece.  Patience also works pretty good.