Attack of the San Diego Yeti!

I’m home again after travelling to San Diego for work. With 5 long days of scheduled meetings inside a stuffy hotel, and the weather outside a beautiful 80 degrees and sunny, my emotional status quickly declined into a state of mental constipation. I started to feel like I did as a little kid on Sunday mornings in the summer, when my mother would force me to put on stiff, uncomfortable long pants over my sunburned and scabbed knees and go to church. I had considered renting a bike out there, but knew I would have precious little time to actually use it – so figured it was pointless. Therefore, in the small moments between meeting obligations, I tried to get out and run along the busy road that ran outside the hotel and north toward the beach to get my exercise fix. As I painfully plodded along on the sidewalk watching cyclist upon cyclist zip by me in the bike lane, I felt my frustration grow more and more. It’s not that I don’t like running. I do. But I can only enjoy it when I don’t have to see cyclists. If I’m slogging along and have to be overtaken by a bunch of guys on road bikes, it feels like I’ve been suddenly thrust into a recurrent nightmare where I’m running the 200m sprint in the Olympics but am suddenly struck by some slow-motion force field the instant the starting gun fires, as all my competitors dash away from me. The second part to the nightmare is when I look down, still in slow-mo, and realize I’m not wearing any pants.
Anyway – while running between meetings on Saturday, I began to hear footfalls approaching me from the rear. With every other sound of a foot-slap on the pavement behind me was a simultaneous and increasingly audible exhalation “HEEEEEEE” wheezing sound like one would expect from a suffocating asthmatic. Don't get me wrong - I suffer when I run too.  But making such noises is simply unnecessary. I don’t care if you’re running from a pack of feral hogs, have the dignity to suffer in silence, I say. As this fellow passed me, I was struck by the entire spectacle. He was shirtless, a good head shorter than me, was completely covered in thick body hair and appeared to have scoliosis as his spine listed ominously to the left. His feet slapped the pavement as though he were wearing a pair of flippers and he continued to “HEEEE, HEEEE, HEEEE” as he passed me. Just then a group of 3 guys on Pinarellos whirred by us, heads cocked toward us with quizzical looks on their faces, all clearly trying to ascertain where the wheezing sound was coming from. They all looked to me for whatever reason, and it was as if I had just exited an already pre-fouled bathroom on an airplane to a line of waiting people, all looking at me as if I were the one responsible for the emerging stench. The cyclists passed, the shirtless ape ran on, and I fumed deciding to employ my only course of revenge by snapping a photo of the scoliotic simian and posting his picture here.

Although I was forced to continue to look forward at his hairy and sweaty back for several moments more, hindsight, they say, is 20/20, and as I look at this photo now in retrospect, it smacks of something oddly familiar.

Now I am left wondering if what the Pinarello Princes and I were actually looking at was an elusive San Diego Yeti.

At any rate, once the camera was out, I began photographing cyclists as they passed by, which was actually enjoyable, as though I were on safari on the La Jolla Serengeti. 

My first "kill" was a fixie rider sporting a couple of fashion foibles that I'm not entirely comfortable with.  First is the male shirtless look (as opposed to the female shirtless look).  Now I realize, this is southern California, and it is 80 degrees out, but I still contend that no one wants to see male nipples on a bike.  Secondly - this guy was wearing slippers EXACTLY like my grandpa used to wear to pad about the house.  Initially I was impressed with how he was humping up a fairly steep hill in what appears to be a substantial gear ratio, but then i caught a glimpse of the sag of his feet over those pedals and my own plantar fascia began to weep.

I think the good people of San Diego require some cycling footwear education, because not two minutes later I captured this.  The dreaded Flip-Flop.  Again - please take particular note of the subsequent 'foot-sag' and weeping plantar fascia.  I wonder if I could actually invent a carbon-soled cycling flip-flop - because I think I could make a killing. 

In assessing his foot sag, I notice that he has also been stricken with "canklosis" or the "condition of possessing a cankle" which, if you are unaware, is when no definition exists between the calf and the ankle.  Thus, the two structures unfortunately merge into one entity, called the cankle.

Every good safari must have a "one that got away" story.  Thus, I bring you the next "cyclist" who came from behind a eucalyptus tree and took me by complete surprise.  So much so that I fumbled with the camera and blew my chance to bag a picture of the beast.  I have done some subsequent internet research, however, in the attempt to identify it.   You will just have to take my word that I actually saw this:

This thing is apparently called an ElliptiGO and is a mutant offspring of an eliptical machine and a bicycle.  As though it weren't unsightly enough, the contraption is a good 50% longer and positions the rider a good 50% higher than any other bike around - to maximize the "HEY EVERYONE - look at ME effect".  I feel especially privledged to have seen one of these as they are not even set to be officially released from the San Diego-based company until January 2010.  If you are brave enough to actually ride this one, I think all previous fashion suggestions are null and void and you should go for the full faux-pas monty on this one.  Go shirtless, wear your flip flops, wheeze like a mo-fo, and bask in the glory of being a complete douchebag. 

Playboy Fixies

As I sit and write this tonight, I have the Vuelta playing on Universal Sports, and am listening to the commentator criticizing Alexander Vinokourov for a new blog he’s just started because according to him "The blog is so yesterday.  TWEETING is where it's at now."  Let's hope for my sake he's wrong.  But the discussion of Vino is an interesting one.  This is the same Vino that was once called the “bulldog” for his tenacity in relentlessly attacking Lance Armstrong and his Discovery team in trying to get on the podium in France in 2005, was later busted for doping, retired saying he would never race again only to pop up this year, days after his suspension was lifted, demanding to be let back on “his” team while wearing this kit: A jersey with his own picture on the front in his former Astana uniform with the words "Vino-4-ever".

By the very nature of a professional cyclist’s kit, he or she is a walking billboard, an advertisement for the sponsors. So what does it say to wear an image of yourself on your jersey?  Vino was criticized heavily for this kind of seemingly shameless self-promotion.  But doesn’t Superman wear a giant “S” on his chest?  Granted, a large “S” is a little more subtle than a silkscreened massive visage of his own dippity-dooed hair and cleft chin, but still, would the good people of Metropolis have preferred if Clark had logos for the Daily Planet all over his uniform?

This is not to say that Vino is like Superman.  Far from it.  If I had to pair him up with a superhero - I think it would be more like Aquaman with the blonde hair and the constant slimyness.

Vino's jersey reminded me of when I was about 12 years old and for my birthday, my grandparents got me a sweatshirt with a reproduction of a photograph of myself on it.  As if it weren’t bad enough, the picture they used to have printed on this cotton monstrosity had been taken about 2 years previously (again on my birthday) when I was eating a big piece of cake.  This was the same summer when I spent many of my days on my bike on some trails in the woods by my house.  It was in these very woods that I stumbled upon a hidden stash of Playboy magazines owned and secretly stowed away by my neighbor, an asshole high school kid who once had shot in me in the ass with a BB gun, and was thus due for some well-deserved retribution.  Therefore, I moved the stack of skin-mags to my own secret location, and proceeded to spend the rest of the summer learning what naked women looked like.  I came to appreciate the early 80’s naked female form  in all of its natural, un-enhanced, tan-lined, occasionally imperfect splendor.

Earlier this year, a friend of mine bought a current edition of Playboy (yeah - that's right - a friend) and being curious, I took a peek through it.  I’m not sure what I was really expecting, but what I saw was strangely foreign to me.  Nothing but flawless oceans of evenly-amber tanned skin stretched over silicon and collagen implants and injections (respectively).  Where were the real women?  I felt like a COG (see Question #3).  Looking at photographs of some industry fixies on display at the Eurobike 2009 this week was oddly reminiscent of looking at that recent Playboy - with all of it's amber-toned shiny fakeness.

This one looks like some little kid just puked up a bunch of cotton candy after being on the tilt-a-whirl all afternoon at the local fair.

And an obnoxiously brightly colored Cinelli....available in all the colors of the rainbow!

The irradescent metallic paintjobs on these Tange's make them look like a piggy pile of Japanese beetles in a love fest.

I'm left wondering where are the real bikes?  Is it just all this fake fluff? 

And it seems like everybody is trying to jump on the fixed gear craze these days.  Check out the bicycle line from Urban Outfitters: a clothing retailer for the individual who wants to be a hipster RIGHT EFFING NOW!

Not only can you design and order your brand new fixed gear and have it shipped to your door in 7 days in any array of flourescent putresence,

Exhibit A

But you can also order a range of clothes to make you look like a complete hipsteresque tool.

Exhibit B

And just in case your new slime-green fixie and rakish chapeau don't clue in all the kids that you are, in fact, too hip to be square, you can also get this:

Exhibit C

But I beg to differ, Mr. Hip.....some bikes do pollute.

Pedal on....

Bike Fashion

Many years ago,  I decided to enter my first road race after reading an article in Bicycling Magazine that was titled "Your first race" or something to that effect.  I remember the point of the article was essentially 'if you haven't raced, you are missing out'.  I got butterflies in my stomach that night reading those words and decided, I'm going for it.  The piece in the magazine provided a checklist of essential items to do prior to the race and I followed it to the very letter.  Familiarize yourself with the course.  Check.  Don't forget safety pins for your number.  Check.  Urinate an hour before....and then urinate again right before you start.  Check.  (I think I actually pissed about 17 times that morning I was so nervous).  When the time came, and all Cat V riders were called to the line, I rolled up with all the confidence I could muster.  I looked around at the pack of about 45 cyclists and marveled at a sea of shaved, well muscled and tanned legs rivaled in shinyness only by the ocean of clear-coated carbon fiber frames.  I looked down at my own hairy, white legs....skinny and ill-defined.  The only thing below my waist (that was visible) that was whiter than my legs was the paint job on my aluminum ride.  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the lean cyclist on my right lean over and snicker something to the guy on his right that sounded just like "albino sasquatch".  But then the gun sounded, the pack rolled off and I was a racer.  Surrounded by the whir and hum of the cyclists around me gave me a surge of adrenaline I'd not felt since I asked Julie Zovath if I could kiss her in the seventh grade.   The peloton hit the base of the first hill and the leaders slowed, the effect rippling backward through the mass of riders until it reached me at which point I actually had to brake to avoid colliding with the wheel in front of me.  Suddenly, everyone around me was surging forward in a whip-tailed response to make up for the loss in speed with such singular momentum, it was as if everyone was connected by a communal telepathy.  Everyone that is, except me.  The peloton flew around me up the slope of the steep hill as though I had slipped into reverse.  I had been dropped one half of the way through the first of three laps around the hilly circuit.  My race was over with 27 miles to go.  I finished DFL.  I learned an important lesson that morning.  The only time you might see the other cyclists in the peloton is at the start line - so you should at least look like you know what you are doing even if you can't ride like it.

With this in mind, I thought today we should discuss some issues of bike fashion.  Important to every cycling subculture is: appearance, appearance, appearance.  As I was about town this past week, I managed to photograph a few rides that are worthy of analysis and discussion.  For each ride, I've posted a non-labelled photograph first so that you can try to spot les faux-pas with me.

Bike #1:

Upon first examination, this appears to be a nice fixie.  Not sure of the type of frame, but has some yellow-taped flop and chops with a front wheel suicide brake.  Upon closer examination, however we see something a little odd at the base of the seat post.  Oh no.

Yup - a bandana is wrapped around the base of the seat post.  Now, some will use this to cover up an unsightly seat post clamp, however to me, it makes your bike look like it's wearing a diaper.  Notice how it is periously perched in a prime mud-flinging area between the rear wheel and your ass.  Did you know that in the UK, a diaper is called a 'nappy.'  I think we'll call this one the 'bike nappy'.

Bike #2:

I caught this hipsteresque chap on 9th street with his fixie.  This one should be a lot easier than the first one.  Let's break it down?

Ok - we'll work from left to right on this one.  How about the non-taped, polished chrome 'flop-no-chops'.  I have no problems with the non-chopped look and think unfettered polished chrome drops can be hot...but as far as practicality?  I imagine that trying to grip non-taped, non-gripped, polished chrome handlebars with sweaty palms prevalent in the heat of a mid-Missouri summer would be about as effective as grabbing a snot-covered door knob.  Secondly - what is up with the flip flops for foot wear?  Completely impractible if he wants to ride with cages on the pedals.  Plus they have no grip on the bottom, thus potentiating slipping off the front of the pedal and raking it up his atrophied, hairy, little calf.  In addition - they are just plain unhealthy as has been reported in the news lately!  Lastly - Mr. 'Flip-Flip-No-Chop' is sporting a hydration system on his back.  Yep - cause I'm guessing the distance covered on this bike in flip-flops and polished chrome flopped bars could really result in some serious dehydration.  On the other hand, he is wearing a wool hat on a day that was around 80 degrees - so that can make you thirsty.

Bike #3:

Everybody ready for the train wreck?

Yup - this is about an '87 Peugeot Mont Cenis PSN10 (I think?) that has apparently been converted to an SS.  And I must say - the bike is incredibly clean and has been clearly cared for and loved.  Kudos for some sweet, sweet bike love.  But what is even more lovely here are all the things that have been added.
1) The kick stand.  Did this bike even come with a kick stand originally?  Does anyone know?  Oh my.  Could this bike have had a kick stand added?
2) A MONSTER 'pie plate' spoke protector; that most useless of bike add-ons that is only slightly easier to remove than a fat kid off of a piece of cake.
3) In place of Bike #1's diaper, this dandy is sporting a plastic flower arrangement attached to the seat stays behind the reflector.  Lipstick on a pig, Mr. Peugeot.  Lipstick on a pig.  (I almost gave this a pass because the flowers are color-coordinated with the stripes on the frame's original paint job.)
4) A locking system comprised of a chain so large it was originally used to hold the anchor on the Lusitania that secures the frame, and yet abandons both wheels.  I'm hoping this chain is a permanent fixture on the outside of this building, but can guess this cyclist carries it around in a fanny pack while riding. (This almost got a pass because perhaps the rider was previously using a bic-pen susceptible U-lock and wanted to bump it up a notch protection-wise.)

That's all for now.  Pedal on.