The Face of Jesus in Matt’s Saddle Bag

Look!  I think I see the face of Jesus.  Like the shroud of Turin, inside his saddle bag, the spare tube and Allen wrenches were wrapped in a tie-dye-esque aged rust stained cloth.  I unraveled the wrenches and held out the cloth.  Behold!  That might fetch a few bucks on eBay.  They’ve been in the seat bag a long time, not quite B.C. old, but maybe before Bieber.  25 miles from home, I was helping Matt from Smitty’s Cyclery in Cincinnati replace a broken shift cable.  Yes.  He carries a spare.

Wrapping your tube and tools are just one of the lessons I learned from Big Matt’s saddle bag.  A former racer on the track and on the road, I’m sure Matt’s no stranger to weight weenie tendencies.  Matt proved you can pack a lot and still pack light.  The bag was packed with the expertise of an Everest climber, the necessities of survival in a few cubic inches.  I’ve had a day to think about it, and there’s not a mechanical incident that would’ve had Matt calling for a ride home.  Inside Matt’s saddle bag: tube, mini-tool with chain breaker, select 4-5-6 Allen wrenches, patch kit, brake and shifter cable, a five spot, a zip tie, and a chain pin.  I wouldn’t doubt there were a spare cleat and/or bottle cage bolt in there somewhere.  He kept the mini pump in his jersey pocket.

The black thing is the free hub body.

Matt explained the zip tie was in case your free hub body dies.  The free hub body is the thing your cassette rides on.  Its ratcheting pawls allow you to coast and engage the gears.  When it dies, and they do occasionally, you’re left…coasting home.  To fix on the fly, you can zip-tie the cassette to the spokes and get yourself home in a fixed-gear sort of way.  A zip tie can also fix a broken bottle cage, keep a busted derailleur out of your spokes or can be traded to the locals for corn and beads.

Wrapping your spare tube and tools in cloth accomplishes two, three, maybe four things.  For one, it prevents you from being the annoying Mr. Jangly Bag on group rides.  Two, it keeps sharp edge tools from serrating your spare tube.  Three, I would hedge a bet that it keeps spare tubes from drying out and/or prevents the valve-tube junction from becoming oxidized.  Lastly, it never hurts to have a rag for sweaty hands or keeping gooey chain greased hands from messing up white bar tape.

The black thing is a zip tie.

While Matt worked to get the broken cable end out of his shifter, I reached over his bike and undid the fixing bolt on his Dura Ace rear derailleur.  Matt’s got many miles in his legs, no stranger to being 2 hours from home with a mechanical.  He’s a mechanic at Smitty’s Cyclery in Cincinnati.  Yet even he packs a spare derailleur cable and a spare brake cable in his seat bag.  I scratched my head.  His Land Shark bike was impeccably clean and well maintained.  Having worked at a shop myself, I take pride wrenching on my own bikes and used to have a relative comfort in thinking that my cables are new and all bolts are properly fixed.  I don’t need to bring a multi-tool or anything beyond a tube, cartridge, mini-pump and five-dollar bill.  There on a flat road, 2 hours from home, Matt snapped a cable, fixed it with a spare in the span of 5 minutes and left me questioning my minimalist logic.

The Exploding Gear Bag of Race Day

A stinking frog pond of Lycra, denim and North Face lily pads filled my Toyota 4-Runner from dash to tailgate. On top lay a film of tools, water bottles and helmets. Yeah, we had 5 people in the truck, but I said pack light. They abided. Each person only had a single backpack or bag. I was the only one with a cooler bag. On the way down, there was plenty of room so we packed in spare wheels, a bike stand, a pump and even two camp chairs. It was organized and tidy, everything had its place. Aside from the bikes on the roof, you would never guess that five people were traveling in the same car. Someone even commented how roomy it was in the back.

Now, the gear was two feet deep in my truck. About 45 minutes before my race, I stopped back at the truck to grab a water bottle and I had to reach through the window or risk a waterfall of stinky chamois cascading out the door. Nate apologized that his helmet had rolled off the passenger seat mountain and into the valley under the steering wheel. Like a trailside cairn, a pair of shoes and a tub of chamois butter sat on top of my small cooler bag. A multi tool in three pieces now sat atop Mt. Nate. The back seat looked in as much disarray as the clearance T-shirt bin at Wal-Mart, if Wal-Mart carried North Face and Verge gear.

Harry, a teammate, calls it the exploding gear bag. This post was his idea. I’ve seen his truck midway through a race day and you would’ve thought he crammed 4 guys in his old pick up, but Harry usually travels solo. He too will swear, but in an Appalachian drawl, that he reckons he only packed one bag, a spare set of wheels, a small cooler, a trainer and a thermos of red beans and rice. Somehow the bed of his truck and inside of his cab looked like he got divorced the morning of the race.

It doesn’t seem to matter how organized the people in the car are at home or in their career. Harry’s an electrician by trade. I’ve seen his work van and the organization of tools in the back would make Bob Villa jealous. Of the people in my car, Amanda’s a journalist, Jake’s an engineer, Brian’s a pilot, Nate’s a salesperson and I’m a creative radio production dork. The only common thread is that we’re all cyclists and we all seem to handle race prep the same methodological way. You arrive. You sign in. You scout the course. You eat a bit. You tweak the bike. You pin on you number. You warm up. You down a Gu. You race. The seemly disorganized pile of gear is simply a byproduct of racing.

I guess racing is a sport of needs. There’s not a whole lot of giving. Bike needs lube. I need to register. I got to take a crap before I put on the skinsuit. Aside, from the occasional help given to a teammate to pin on a number or quickly change a warm-up flat, if it doesn’t directly have an impact on the outcome of the race, it can wait. And so, from the tool box, the wheel bag, the backpack, and the cooler…the debris from the exploding gear bag flows through the car.

Facebook Friday: What's THAT In Your Jersey Pocket?

It’s Facebook Friday on The Best Bike Blog Ever*. Every Thursday Facebook friends answer a burning cycling related question and every Friday the answers are posted here. If you’d like to join the fun, send a friend request with a note about “Facebook Friday” via the facebook link on the right side-bar. Today’s question is:

It's not a tool, money, ID or key...What is the oddball thing that you must carry on your ride?

ERIC:

My sarcastic wit

MARTY:

I rode Mohican with my recently deceased cat’s picture mounted to my handlebar! Moe-hican I called it...

BRIDGET:

Wet naps.

SHANNON:

Don't know about oddball, but I carry a very tattered photo of me and my daughter from when she was about three months old. It's a talisman.

KATE:

Chapstick and Tums.

SUSAN:

An old short pencil wrapped with 3-4 feet of duck tape. Ya never know. Usually I use a piece of it at least twice for something on a ride every year. In 98 we used it in W. Virginny to stabilize my friend's dislocated shoulder and ride (slowly) back to the car.

RYAN:

A pen and a little note pad so I can write down license plate numbers on the fly, Would carry a 9mm, but then I'd be in jail.

JAMES:

A Holga camera — it's lightweight and makes everything you shoot look 30 years old.