Video: Oprah Lance Code Red Promo Parody

If It Weighs Less Than Poo, It’s Not 4 U

Cyclists are the only American’s that can convert grams to pounds without using Google, masters of the metric.  So don’t tell me you’re grossed out and never considered how much “it” weighs.  If you drop your shorts and barefoot the scale the 2^nd thing in the morning, you are sooo guilty, but oh so smart.  If you’re going to drop 25 hundo on the new Sram Red to save 150 grams off the previous version, wouldn’t it be worth it to make sure you read the graffiti in the port-a-poddy before you roll up to the start line?  There’s cheaper and surprisingly pleasant ways to shed grams.

I’m considering a new Hydrapak hydration system.  My thought is that a lighter pack over the course of the 100k of the Mohican 100 MTB race in May will make for a faster Joe.  The Hydrapak Alivia tips the scale at an impressively sexy and svelt 7 ounces, 198.446 grams…definitely according to Rain Man.  The website says it nearly disappears on your back.  It should.  7 ounces is less than the weight of a spare 29er inner tube, listed at Competitive Cyclist at 219g.  However, if my hypothesis is correct, I can save pretty close to 7 ounces every day of my life by reading a couple pages of Road Magazine on the cold white chair next to the bathtub. 

Now I’m not going to fish it out and plop it on the scale, but I’m pretty certain the typical water breaker has to weigh 7 ounces, a bit shy of a half pound.  If not, I’m sure eliminating some incidental weight would do the trick, such as some of the electrical tape under my bar tape.  Yep, there’s more tape under that bar tape and you probably don’t need to have it double or triple wrapped in 14 places.  Pause now, if you need extra time to digest the term "water breaker."  

Throw Away The Broccoli and Keep The Band

Incidental weight is the weight of the things you never even consider when pulling the trigger at the local bike shop for a lighter weight bike-a-ma-jig.  It’s the dead bugs smashed and sunbaked on the front of your suspension fork and the mud caked under the crown.  It’s the big fat pink broccoli rubber band on your spare tube, the best rubber bands known to man.  It's three glopping fingers full of chamois cream when 1 finger full would do the trick on your taint.  It’s using a seatbag instead of your middle jersey pocket or the 7 inches of extra seatpost below the clamp.  It’s wearing deodorant for a bike race, because it's not about how fast you ride but how effortless it appears.  

For weight weenies sake, “Take a poo!”  It’s what we say to each other flipping through the pages of the latest Colorado Cyclist with the credit card by our side.  It keeps things in perspective.  It keeps us from dropping $300 dollars on a carbon railed saddle.  If it saves less than a poo it’s not for you.

Want Some Fancy Salted Mixed Nuts?  Boing!

Is that tube going to spring out of your pocket like a toy snake in a can if you don’t lasso it with that giant rubber band?  What difference does the 150g savings of new Sram Red make if you roll up to the start line with a typical 160g seat bag full of stuff you could fit in your jersey pocket?  Did you knock the caked mud from the bottom of your shoes?  Are you really going to be able to drink two full water bottles in a one hour crit?

Anyone of us can probably drop at least a half pound off their race-day set up without spending a dime.  Sure it’s not quite as sexy as a Sram Red solution, but now you know why cyclists really shave their legs.

The Cycling Miracle of Cincinnati

The light hath shown through my garage door, deep into the recesses where my man cave bike workshop resides. I have seen the light of the Madonna del Ghisallo, the patron saint of cycling. As of today, when I walk into a bike shop, mechanics with permanently blacked fingernails should bow their heads and raise their arms for I have performed a near cycling miracle. Eddie Merckx once said miracles don’t exist in sports. Eddie Merckx never saw the image of Christ in his morning toast. But, harketh! A miracle may hath taken place on my IF Planet X. Before I call Archbishop Pilarczyk to initiate the miracle confirmation, and start charging admission to pilgrims to witness the site of my miracle, you should know that this could just have been the simple discovery of a mortal’s initial mistake. I could be nothing more than a doof who undid a goof that went unnoticed by those with more expertise than thou. I prefer the former. All hail! Behold the Cycling Miracle of Cincinnati!

Almost as if Satan had possessed my Sram Red derailleur, since the beginning of the 2009 cyclocross season when I swapped the Sram Red from my road bike to my CX rig, I have had a devil of an issue with shifting on my steel IF Planet X cyclocross bike. The top 5-7 easier gears shifted okay, but the derailleur couldn’t move the chain to the harder gears of the cassette, as if the spring in the derailleur didn’t have enough tension on it to pull the slackened cable. The only way I could get it to shift into the harder gears was to manually wrangle the derailleur to pull toward the harder cogs on the cassette.

My first thought, demons. My second maybe the spring in the derailleur was worn out. However, it wasn’t even a year old and it’s freaking Sram Red for cripes sake. I called my favorite mechanic, who happens to have a giant tattoo of Jesus on his chest (for real). He said he’s seen this issue before with steel IF bikes and Sram. He suggested a holy water cleaning of the derailleur, cassette and chain, followed by a redressing of cables and housing. Like a bad pickup line, it sort of worked, but not exactly. So, at his suggestion, I brought the bike in to the shop where he pulled the shades, unbuttoned his shirt, exposed the full on Jesus and exercised the demons with a derailleur hanger straightener and a few other things in his little black exorcism bag.

The bike worked great! Angels sang as the sun pierced the clouds. I had a wonderful ride with crisp shifts in even crisper January air. The next day, I hit the Hyde Park Ride. It was lightly raining, but I needed a ride with the fast boys. It turned into a soaking sloppy sufferfest. Fingers went numb. I looked and felt like I had ridden Paris Roubaix. Near the end of the ride with 3 hours of wet road grit everywhere, my shifting went south again. Dejected, I was so wet and cold I had to ring the doorbell of my own house because I couldn’t get the key out of my jersey pocket with frozen fingers.

After warming up, I returned to the man cave to resurrect the beast. I cleaned everything, cables, pulleys, you name it. I lubed. I shouted, “Dear God why doesn’t a $300 derailleur work on an $1800 frame!” I still only had 6-7 gears on a 10sp cassette. Then I saw the light. If the derailleur spring didn’t seem like it had enough tension to pull the cable, what if I lessened the friction of the cable. I tinkered, pulling on the cable in the direction of the derailleur. Essentially feeding cable to the demonic derailleur, it shifted fine. I took out sections of housing, thinking that if I shortened or made the cable move through the housing easier, the derailleur would be able to pull it. I was getting hotter.

The last step, I unraveled my handlebar tape. The cable stop in the shifter had a tight fit and sort of a bend where it curved to send the cable along the bars. But, alas! With a Sram Red shifter, there are two options to run the cable out along the bars. (see photo) The tighter curved one ran the cable along the front of the bars. The straighter channel ran the cable to the rear of the bars. I switched it to run the cable to the rear of the bars and wah lah! Ten gears smoothly shifted. I heard harp music. Pretty blue Disney birdies sang and circled overhead. I thought I saw Fausto Coppi’s image on a shop rag. A miracle! If not, at the very least, maybe just maybe, a blessing from the Madonna del Ghisallo.

Bikes As Art, Building As An Artist

Making near sighted one-liner observations and more or less doing the blog equivalent of sitting on, is not what I like to do here. If you go back a couple weeks in this blog, you’ll notice a patch where the writing wasn’t really there. Like an attack that doesn’t go anywhere, all I could muster was a stab. It didn’t go unnoticed. One reader went so far as to post the comment “Ur blog is lame” after I poked fun at Bradley Wiggins repetitive tour interviews and compared Alberto Contador to Ryan from TV’s The Office. Touché!

I think there’s a finite amount of creative energy in my camelback. Some goes to my work. I make all the things that make you turn off corporate radio stations and listen to NPR: commercials, jingles and goofy things for commercial radio stations. It might be a step above greeting cards, maybe. What’s left over, I try to drizzle into this blog. Writing about cycling is way more fun than finding another way to convince you to trade in your clunker for a new Yaris. Unfortunately, it doesn’t pay as well. I also think it’s fair to say that creative thought gets spent on building a bike. In a way, it is an art. The process is very similar. Whether it’s audio, a rhyme, paint, clay or stuff from Easton and Sram, you’ve got a bunch of parts that need to get put together in a functional, yet emotional effective way. Between work and the bike, we certainly had a bout with blog lameness a few weeks ago.

Three weeks ago, amongst snippets of cables, ferrules and dead leaves, I sat on my workshop floor for a good twenty minutes stared at the pieces like a kid with a box of 64 Crayolas. Across the room leaned an IF Planet X and a Jamis Nova both with aging Ultegra 9sp, a Jamis Xenith road bike with Sram Red, and (I am so lucky) two sets of carbon wheels, one without tires. How do I get the Sram Red on the IF, CX tires on the 2^nd set of wheels, spend a minimal amount of money on cassettes and cables and brake pads while keeping the inevitable pain in the ass of having two different drive trains (Ultegra 9sp and Red 10sp) on my CX bikes to a minimum? With my hands on my chin, I stewed over needed parts and the costs, only later discovering I had smeared grease on my cheek.

Sell it. Sell the Nova. In less than a day, thanks to Facebook, I sold the Jamis Nova. Friggin’ genius. Sure it was my pit bike, but it was also aging and would be the crux of having two bikes with different drive trains. The fair deal produced enough lettuce to buy tires and a glue job for my 2^nd tubular wheelset as well as purchase new cables/housing, chain and cassette to put the road bike Sram Red on the IF. It also gave a friend an inexpensive way to get back into cyclocross. With the hundred or so I had budgeted earlier to buy tires with, there might be enough to afford a carbon fork and cover incidentals. Sure I wouldn’t have a pit bike. However, traditionally I’ve only used it on average about twice a season. My wife was elated that we actually reduced the steeds in the corral. I now had the makings of one sweet cyclocross bike and two sets of sweet wheels. The first splash of color hit the canvas, and then the 2^nd stewing began, along with a week and a half of non-functional bikes.

Which tires? Which fork? What gears on the cassette? With cables/housing, I should do new bar tape. What color? I sculpted. I arranged. I tried white & blue bar tape, threw it away and went with black. I went with the white saddle over blue. I tore through bins, boxes and file cabinets to find the IF sticker set that came with the bike so I could adorn the fork. I cleaned and lubed. The entire process from the first stew on the garage floor to the finished bike you see pictured took two weeks, help from a lot of friends and made at least one person post an anonymous poke.

Happy Farmer Tan Day

The first week in June is when my farmer tan reaches its prime, when the contrast between my wedding dress white shoulders and Starbucks light roast brown arms causes non-cyclists to point and laugh. The Best Bike Blog Ever today hereby rolls up its short-pants to reveal the border between Pasteville and Tantown and proudly proclaims June 9^th Farmer Tan Day. Today’s the day to stop cowering in a fetal position on the sofa afraid to go out in public, and show off your well earned stripes.

In my early cycling days, I used to be embarrassed about the farmer tan, going so far as to wear a surfer shirt at the pool on vacations. Nowadays, maybe because my youthful quest to look buff has been overshadowed by a middle aged mission to race bicycles, not so much. Instead I revel in the achievement of cycling enough hours to make my arm freckles look like potting soil scattered across Moab slick rock.

However before you go around shocking your coworkers, please note that today is Farmer Tan Day and not freak hand tan day. Unless you’ve somehow been able to cover you entire body in cool polka dots to match the ones the glove hole made on your hands, it’s nearly impossible to rock a freak hand tan. Please, put your hands in your pockets or draw a smiley face on your tan hand freak dot till you can go for a ride sans gloves. The Best Bike Blog Ever has no appreciation for that horrific malady. Mercy will only be bestowed upon those who braved a log hot ride on a sun filled sweat soaked muggy day or a ride where gloves were an absolute necessity.

That said; rejoice in your spectacular stripes that no amount of SPF can strip. Grab yourself a Farmer Tan Red Ale and celebrate the sight of your righteous rice-white skin shorts. You earned it. Happy Farmer Tan Day. Now put on a freaking’ shirt for Pete’s sake! Farmer Tan Day is a holiday best celebrated alone.

A Morbidoni Accordian, A Yappy Dog...

What do the following items have in common?

In retrospect, all of these items could be in my house.  My mom played accordian.  AO Smith had a factory in Milwaukee where I grew up.  The neighbors had a terrier.  I once wanted a bangin' sub woofer in my Honda Civic hatchback.  I used to be really into fishing.  That planter box would make my patio pop!  And I confess, I once had a 156 average in bowling during my youth.  However, Abby the terrier included, according to the listed weights on their respective websites, they each weigh 16 pounds, more than my 15.56 pound Jamis Xenith below.

I told the guys at the shop to shut up when they told me the weight.  We recalibrated the scale and put it up again.  We moved the scale to another hook.  15.56 every time as pictured.  What's even more surprising is that even though this bike appears to have Zipp 404 tubulars, Sram Red and a carbon frame; the tubulars are the CX clydesdale version, it's not really all Sram Red, nor is the frame the lightest in the Jamis fleet.  It also has a Thomson seatpost, Ultegra cassette & pedals, TruVativ BB, Ritchey WCS alloy stem and EA70 bars.  No excuses now I guess.  Hmm...time to clean that bar tape too.