now that's racing

Six kegs, scantily clad cheerleaders on the podium, a late nip at the line when the leader paused for a beer grab, a "tequila shortcut" on the course, and a heckling contest. Sounds like fun. Sounds like the inaugural Single Speed Cyclocross Championships.

OK, it's old news (a month old). But after wrapping up the last weekend of the 'cross season, I came across this and realized...*that* was the race I wish I were at. Once upon a time, mountain bike racing was the antithesis of the road racing scene, for better or worse, with a number of racers indulging in "a rolled one and a cold one" right at the finish line (and some before the start line). Even a couple years ago, 'cross was sort of the bastard child offspring of the two, and the racers reflected it, in a bit of laissez faire racing, if there could be such a thing. Now it seems 'cross is the fastest growing segment in competitive cycling (the NY Times is weighing in on it no less) and with it, the fields are twice as crowded, and there seems to be more of an icy roadie vibe.

I saw a couple of Cat 4s nearly come to blows over some mid-race skirmish. Another guy was taunting a fellow racer after beating him, and not in a friendly "nice race man" kind of way. I thought, wtf? Cat 4? You just came in 2oth in Cat 4 and you're taunting someone? Why don't you go find some middle school and challenge some kids to 3-on-3? For the record, I finished 17th (on less than three hours of sleep, but that's another story), and while I rode a pretty clean race, it quickly became a 3-way battle for me, only half a lap into it. Maybe it's just me, but if you're in the FIRST LAP of a race, and you're watching a gap open up in front of you, I think you need to let somebody by, somebody that will close that gap. Sadly, the 3-4 inches of snow off the course prevented normal passing outside of a couple areas.

So instead of staying in the "ant march" at the front of the pack for as long as I could, I got caught up in a grudge match. I eventually dropped the other two guys, but not before we were well out of sight of the leaders. All because a single speeder couldn't mind his gap. I'm not blaming it on his single-speedness (mind you, I was riding a solo and I had no problem putting him away, and a couple of geared guys to boot), but a decent racer should know when he's holding up the field (IN THE FIRST LAP), and be decent about it. Of course, I could have been a little more vocal, like "Close that gap, man, or let me!" Oh well, racing's all about learning what to do better next time, right?

Still, reading about the SS 'Cross Championships in Portland, it made me realize that I was at the wrong race. Yeah, we had our share of castaways, like the guy who still cross-dressed, even though it didn't get double series points this year, and a couple of messenger types who were dressed for work and still made top ten, but there was just a lot of that bitter roadie energy this time around. Whatever dudes. It made me hungry for a winter alley cat.

stop the madness already

The mainstream media seems to be piling on in the wake of the death of a fixed gear rider. This article, from Seattle's Stranger, is a surprisingly in-depth analysis of the situation. A newbie FG rider, who may or may not have been hotdogging, was run over by a dump truck. Even if he were hotdogging, he still didn't deserve to die, but because the community perpetrates this meme that having a brake on a FG dilutes the purity of the experience, he was riding a bike that significantly contributed to his death.

Unfortunately, the article misses some key opportunities to set a few things straight. The author, an experienced cyclist, tries out a brakeless fixed gear and finds it to be more or less the most dangerous and terrifying experience he's known on two wheels. OK, that's fine...but there's no real attempt to clarify the skillset involved. It's either "you have quads of steel and you can track skid" or "you'll get thrown into traffic." It just ought to be pointed out that it's possible to ride fixed gear bikes in traffic, and do so extremely safely, but two things are critical: a front brake and some experience.

The lessons to be learned, before another sheep is slaughtered at the altar of hipster transportation: Put a front brake on it. Learn the principles of a nose wheelie. Even if you never pull a nose wheelie day to day, if you panic brake, you will instinctively learn to soak up the bike's inertial efforts to rotate around the front wheel. If you stiffen up your legs in that panic, the entire bike will rotate around the front wheel and all of those lovely foot*pounds (that could be used to hold your front wheel down, multiply the friction coefficient and therefore shorten stopping distance) will instead be translated into an "endo" or a "faceplant."

However, the real asshat proves to be Lloyd Tamura of Velo Bicycles, who sells a lot of fixed gear bikes but doesn't "advise one way or another" about a front brake, adding "you can't tell people 'You're not experienced enough to ride this.'"

You can't, huh? You just take their money and what they do with the product is their problem? Great idea, why don't you sell motorcycles and loaded weapons while you're at it, Lloyd? If you were clever, you'd have a FG clinic every week where skilled riders could demonstrate how stopping quickly can save your life. You could hire a hipster and I to ride down the street at the same speed, and when someone opens a door/steps into traffic/cuts us off, the flavor of the month will be looking for fragments of his teeth, and I will be 20 feet back, well out of harm's way, maybe doing a one-hander.

I keep trying to let this go, but when I read about some kid on an FG who got run over because it's not "cool" to use a front brake, I have a hard time shutting up about it.

fight the gearmonkey urge

I thought it was a bit absurd when gear manufacturers made a big deal of going from 7 to 8 speed rear cogs, then 8 to 9. Yes, you increase your range, but the fact is, you have to be a pretty accomplished rider to use the full range, and you have to really be in some odd spots to need most of them. One of the reasons I originally went to single speed is because as I got stronger, I started using three gears tops...then two. I got tired of dropping my chain and it seemed silly to drag around a bunch of parts to shift every once in a while, so I dropped to one. I can understand a granny gear on the front is critical on say, a loaded touring bike, but if you can't close your ride on 14 gears, and you think you need 21, 24, 27...well, guess what, you're probably just a gearmonkey and the bike industry loves you.

As a matter of fact, this is one of the ways the bike industry has moved backwards. In the 1970's, even amateur European cyclists could show up at a race and assemble their rear cog out of the trunk, based on the scouting information about the day's route. Next year, Campy expects to release wireless shifters. I'm not saying we have to go back to cobbled parts and sketchy builds, but can't they just make it strong, light, and aero (or some combination of that at a couple price points)?

Instead we have the gearmonkey machine. The gearmonkey comes home sore, possibly beaten, and rather than think "I got beat today - I need to train" they think..."I got beat by a guy with a thumb-activated carbon fiber seat post height adjuster...I need to find one of those." OK, maybe I'm being a little snarky, but the fact is, it's hard to be an accomplished athlete, and it's usually easier to buy better equipment.

The gearmonkey machine certainly isn't limited to the bike industry, just check out the last ten pages of any sport magazine. A runner buys a pair of shoes. A gearmonkey buys a pair of shoes, performance socks, a couple of coolmax jerseys (short and longsleeve), running tights with built-in circulation-promoting knee supports, and a bandolier full of tiny bottles and pockets for gu. I'm not saying there aren't advantages to be had from advanced gear, but you need to be an advanced athlete to maximize those advantages.

But wait, you say, your bike costs $200 a pound, and is loaded with carbon fiber bling...how can you take the high road? Well, I don't have a bulletproof response for that, except to say that I wanted to build my dream bike, and once I did, I haven't changed much on it. I am in the process of beating the tar out of it. When it breaks, I'll replace something. In the meantime, I have about 20+ patches on those tubes. It may look like a million bucks, but it's built to last a million miles, not to show it off until the next flavor of the month part comes out.

I'm not saying you can't buy the best gear for your bike, but if you find that you spend more time searching for parts than you do riding them, you might be a gearmonkey. If you love trying new sports, but immediately identify a slew of "must haves" before you've accomplished much, you might be a gearmonkey. (As an aside, I realize I'm a bit of a guitar gearmonkey...but I'm buying cheap, often crap gear, to learn on, which is something else altogether.)

So this brings me to today's link: the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (and a host of other blogs, I'm sure) report that the Chequamegon Mountain Bike Festival 40 Mile race was won by a guy on a single speed. This is pretty significant, in that it's no Sunday afternoon race. It's one of the grand-daddies of the mountain bike movement, especially if you're stuck living 600 miles from a proper mountain range.

This guy shows up and races a bunch of gearmonkeys, but more importantly, a bunch of athletes to boot, and kicks the field on one speed. Even his sponsor, ole grand dad Gary Fisher himself, reacted somewhere along the lines of "groovy man, but how are we supposed to sell geared bikes?"

Amen brother. Stop the gearmonkey machine.

hero of the day: Ironfred

Frustrated by finding the Hawaii Ironman crowd "too serious," Cory Foulk decided to make a statement, that is, you don't need ten grand to do the race. How did he prove it? By riding a 61 pound single speed beach cruiser, barefoot, with ten pounds of Jolly Ranchers on board.

I don't know what's funnier, the fact that he called in race reports to a local radio station from pay phones (wiki that, kids, if you've never seen one), or that he bombed through the downhills with his feet on the handlebars, with other racers trying to draft him. (Not only is that illegal, but wouldn't you be just a little embarrassed by the fact that you let such a ride get ahead of you?)

Read TFA at the floridasports.com.

pimp your ride & rep your hood

I'm generally not one to rave about "this year's model" of anything, especially when it's last year's model with a new paintjob. However, I saw this in my LBS and I have to admit it looks pretty good.

The folks at Specialized just realized that there isn't a lot they can do to differentiate their single speed from anyone else's (how wrong they are, but more on that in a mo). So this year's Langsters come in a few flavors: the Boston, the London, and the NYC (pictured).

The Boston looks a little dull (maybe that's the point, so it won't get nicked?) and it's only marginally different from the usual crop in that it has a brake lever on the flats. Woohoo.

Its polar opposite (in terms of flying under the radar) is the London. With an Austin Powers inspired paint job, I'm almost impressed...though I'm sure I'll change my mind for the worse when I see a local Fixed Gear Poser atop one, replete with a Freitag bag.

As an aside, I love Freitag bags, when they fit. Old and tattered, well used in all seasons: good. Shiny and new, on a vintage-cycling-capped, retro-band-t-shirted, heavy-metal-tight-jeans-wearing FGP: bad. I'd get one myself, but I've been sporting my Courier Ware bag for 17 years and counting, and I'm kind of attached to it. A mom we know recently moved to Switzerland and came back for a visit, sporting a Freitag bag that looks totally appropriate. My wife mentioned that I should get one, since my bag is so raggedy, and I had to explain why that just wouldn't fly.

Back to the subject at hand. The NYC model of the Langster is little more than a paint job, but it scores a few points. First of all, the straight bar is 40cm wide, which is pretty narrow for a production bike. The fact that the chainstay sports the message "Driver carries less than $20 in cash" really nails the courier entendre. (Never mind the fact that a real courier would lift the sticker from a cab, spraypaint an old peugeot canary yellow, and save $700.) It looks good, though I suspect it would wear thin if a crowd of FGPs show up on them. It's pretty damn flashy, so you'd better back it up by using that bar to cross up a power wheelie off the line.

Still, you have to give them points for trying. Why not more? A real NYC bike would be made to look like a '78 Sears Free Spirit, without any decals, and it would come with an 8 pound Kryptonite. The Chicago would have all weather tires and a 54x16 since there aren't any hills to speak of. The SanFran would have a psychedelic paint job and a 2:1 gear ratio. {Note: Apparently I was even ahead of the Web team at Specialized, who had not updated their site with the '08 models. It turns out there are Chicago (bullhorns) and a Seattle (fenders & mildly swept straight bar) models.}

I think there's really so much more to be tweaked on these bikes, since half the fun is personalizing them for yourself, gearwise. Someone ought to set up a flash-heavy web site where you can pick a frame (italian lugged steel or titanium), a paint scheme, some combination of bullhorn, straight bar, fg/fw/both, 0/1/2 brakes, velocity/hi-performance rims, clips/pedals, carbon fiber/retro campy....etc. You could sell bikes from $500-3,000 without worrying about distributing to bike shops.

You heard it hear first. Alas, I always have more ideas than time...

geezer files, part I

I was riding in today thinking about tricks. I'm not much for tricks, myself. I can trackstand all day on a fixed or free, 1-handed most of the time, and if I have a good bank, I can no-handed for a while, but I've never really done the one-footer; my style just isn't suited to it.

The only real trick I can do is a high-speed nose wheelie, which is nice in that it can potentially save your life, and as I've mentioned before, allow you ride hot into tricky spots with the confidence that you stop quicker. I guess I can catch a mean tow; either by flat-out grabbing a vehicle (pickups are easiest), though more accessible are wheel-wells. The best are those bars used on swing-out spare tires on SUVs, or after-market whale tails on hondas. Though I've gotten mini-tows from leaning on car trunks, digging my fingernails into a seam on a body panel, or simply palming a bus. Ah, good times. I don't do that much anymore. About 6 years ago I caught a 45 mph tow on Clark...from what turned out to be an off-duty cop. He flashed a badge, I split, played cat and mouse, eventually got caught, and got off only by mentioning I was on my way home to see my baby before she went to bed for the night. I was rather amused by the whole thing, however, my wife was not, and insisted that activity be put in the "can't live like that anymore now that you have kids" list. I grumbled, but generally gave it up, since I really don't want my kids to grow up knowing dad got whacked pulling a tow....unless it was pulling a tow to deliver a heart transplant or nuclear secrets or something.

I've always believed that if you make sort of a spectacle of yourself, you're less likely to get hit. Unless you're being a hotdog, and you make people want to run you over. But generally, I feel like, even though I may look a little "posenger," as long as I'm laying it down hard, cars will generally give me some slack.

But anyway, it got me thinking about tricks, and a couple in particular. I knew a trials master in Boston who, according to rumor, when he got disrespected in traffic, would ride up on to the hood of an offending car. I saw him do this to a parked car (even up to the roof, bouncing on one wheel the whole time), though I always suspected it was an urban legend that he did it in traffic. I knew a couple guys who could ride a track bike backwards for a ways, but that's not too tough. But I knew a couple guys who were in another class.

Clay was simply a sick athlete. In his 20's, he looked like a high school football player, and you'd never expect him to be able to pull off such massive airs, but he had some sick skills. He had a 24 inch cruiser (sort of an oversized bmx bike), like a PK ripper or an OM flyer, and he really knew how to work it. I can pull maybe a 8-10 inch bunny hop with clipless pedals, and I thought I was the bomb, but I saw Clay do a 360 bunny hop over a fire hydrant with flat pedals. Between him and his bike, that was about 200+ pounds, spinning 3 feet off the ground. Sick. Bunny hopping up 3-4 steps at speed, and when eventually getting a flat, riding 3 miles home while sitting on the bars and pedaling backwards, as not to punish his back rim.

His racing stories were equally legendary: with another early-90's Atlanta messenger, coming in first and second at an elite mtb race, and celebrating at the finish line with one or both of them puking, draining a Budweiser, and lighting a cigarette. Good times. Also, back when downhill racing was in its infancy, and there were literally a dozen guys in the Southeast competing on $5k rigs, he showed up on his OM flyer, flat pedals, no shocks, single speed, and took the top spot. The rest of the guys were pissed, and they had him disqualified from the points race because technically, your bike had to have 7 speeds. So of course, he dug up a 7 speed internal hub and came back the next time and repeated the feat.

Truly a freak on any bike. He eventually didn't feel like the OM flyer was suited for the abuse, so he built up an old Schwinn cruiser (the kind with twin top rods, and another "swooping" top tube for good measure). He added a front shock, the 7 speed rear hub, flat pedals, and preceded to cream everyone in DH slaloms.

The other trickster, Chris, wasn't quite so accomplished in his racing career, but he certainly took the cake for having big brass ones. When the Olympics were about to come to Atlanta, the PD started having roaming cops on bikes. They would creep up and down Peachtree at the slowest pace imaginable, in a pack two riders wide, taking up an entire lane, thinking they were the bomb. As a messenger, if you so much as passed them too fast, they would take offense and flag you down. One day Chris passed a pack of them, only he did so riding a wheelie half a block long. With his front wheel fully crossed at a 90 degree angle. With one hand. I would get locked up for rolling through a crosswalk, but somehow they just let him slide on that one. This is the same guy that starting catching tows off cars, but again...in a wheelie. Christ, I've done nearly 100k miles, I can barely ride a wheelie for 10 feet, nevermind putting one up next to pickup and casually 1-handing it and grabbing a tow. WTF.

I'm down with trackskids half a block long, but they aren't even in the same league. Anyway, that's my flashback of the day. I'll get back to my Metamucil and shuffleboard now. and you kids get offa my lawn!

Once we were brothers (and a few sisters)

Maybe it's just me, but what is up with the tribe these days?

A little rivalry is always fun, and I've witnessed various factions:
mountain vs. roadie
biker vs. blader
messenger vs. roadie
messenger vs. wannabe

...and then, within these groups (mostly messengers), you had some playful debates:
lifer vs. summerboy
single speeder vs. geared
fixed vs. free
straight bars vs. bullhorns
one brake vs. two
clips vs. cages

...but the fact is, most messengers I've known liked to swap out bars, go back and forth between fixed, free, no dérailleurs, rear dérailleur only, commuter tires, crit tires, one or two brakes, what have you. Eventually you found your groove, the rig that worked for you. Over the last few years, I've finally reached a point where I have that mythical "pile of parts" in the basement, and I can swap as needed, not based on what I can afford, or what I have to borrow from a friend's junkpile until payday. My last conversion was from a single speed 'cross bike to a below-the-radar messenger ride, and the best part? I didn't even have to go to the bike shop for a single thing! I had it all laying around. Ahhh...it only took me 17 years of modding to get there.

While I love the simplicity of a FG with straight bar and one brake, but I keep coming back to homemade bullhorns. Fact is, I even feel a little bourgeoisie on my CF rig these days, like I've finally become that old dude with money to blow on gratuitous bike parts. Maybe I have. Maybe that's why I've been spending all my time on my 72-spoke, ancient phil wood hubbed, platform/clip pedaled, 12 year old saddle with a 15 year old flipped and chopped handlebar, stickerless, freewheeled SS. It's very strong, very dependable, a little heavy, totally filthy, and I think the tubes have at least ten patches in each of them. The best part is, I leave it locked up outside in downtown Chicago every day for about 9 hours, and I don't really worry about having it stripped or nicked, unlike the Velocity rim crowd.

Ah, the Velocity rim crew. Now heavily documented in the NY Times (subscription required to read it now), as well as the Wall Street Journal, SFist (cool photo but it spawned a bit of a flame war), as well as the Independant Florida Alligator, LA City Beat (profiling the Wolfpack, who sound like a bunch of clowns), the Guardian (FG bike polo), the Maryland Gazette (old dude commutes on a FG), and the Philadelphia Enquirer.

This last one is particularly entertaining to me, because it's accompanied by a picture of a grinning "messenger" with a six inch handlebar. I'm down with the "less is more" thing, especially when you're splitting lanes and you have side view mirrors to contend with, but I (and probably a number of other messengers) have cut down a straight bar just a little too much, and discovered the complete lack of control it leads to. Nevermind the fact that you still have to squeeze your ass through those side mirror gaps, you give up little things like stability, power, and control, in favor of....style.

Which really cuts to the heart of it. It's all about style now. Every city has roving packs of skinny boys with retro cycling/army caps, italiano steel, neon Velocity rims, and skin-tight jeans (don't forget to fold the cuffs up to just below the knees, boys!). A friend of mine was riding on a junkpile bike through his neighborhood, which is part barrio, part Ratbike haven, and part fixie-boy crew. He encountered a pack of about a half dozen of these guys, and one of them made some comment about his bike. He's always quick with a witty reply, and he didn't disappoint: "Do you guys all shop at the same store? Do you swap girlfriends too?" Point is, the biker tribe has gone from "freaks of a feather" to being co-opted and marketed into little clones.

I was riding the other day, and a fixie rider said, with a bit of attitude, "nice bike, but why don't you go fixed?" I responded "because freewheel's faster." What I meant to say was "more aggressive" but whatever. Anyway, that's all it took. The light changed, and he charged, and though he was fast, he couldn't drop me, and I eventually got the best of him, though I pulled a tow off a passing car to really put the nail in the coffin. (Oddly, I saw him two days later on a road bike :) but neither of us raced hard that time.)

There has always been a messenger style, and a crowd that borrowed heavily from it. It just seems to have reached a tipping point.

For the record, I'm not down on fixed gears. I love them, and I have ridden one off and on for years. However, if you're riding one in the city and you don't have a front brake on it, you are a either a poser or an idiot. Not because of your look per se, but you're a poser if you are probably GOING SO GODDAMNED SLOW that pregnant women overtake you. You're an idiot if you're flying along, apparently not concerned about the fact that it will take you twice as much time and distance to stop. If a car were flying at you, and the driver had only installed half as much stopping power on it because "it was cool" I think you might have a problem with that.

Granted, back when I was a messenger, it was difficult and expensive to put together these rides (mostly through mail order parts), but the few guys that had them rode them only occasionally, mostly to do tricks like backwards figure-8s or riding while sitting on the bars. They didn't really work on pure fixed gears, any more than the guy who was a trials star worked on his super-granny gear bike. Because EVERYONE ELSE WAS MUCH FASTER ON BRAKED BIKES.

I have passed about a thousand fixies this season, and only one guy truly dropped me (though it was on the lakefront path, where he didn't have to worry about intersections). For the record, I had already swum 1000 meters and run 4 miles that day, but I'm not making excuses, I was properly dropped. I guess I've just never noticed so much attitude from any block of riders before, save the roadie packs on $5k rigs, but let me tell you, if you go on a group ride with those guys, and you can hang with the top fifth, even they'll lighten up.

I'm not saying I'm a star, far from it. I'm a 36-year-old dad who sits in a cubicle all day. The point is this: ride your own ride, but ride it with at least ONE freaking brake. To brake it down one last time (sic :)...using a front brake, you can go from (any speed) to zero in about HALF the time and distance than a rear-wheel skid. The math is explained in excruciating detail in Bicycling Science, and I'd dare to say that those numbers can be drastically improved upon with true mastery of a nose wheelie stop.

Ergo....you can come into an intersection/split lane/sketchy line twice as fast, and still be able to stop in time. If you don't have to stop after all, you have more momentum conserved (vs. the fixie rider who started backpedaling half a block earlier). More aggressive riding = faster riding. For those of you messengering: faster riding = more money (unless runs pay based on "oneness with your bike" these days?). For the rest: stopping faster = less likely to get creamed. As a bonus, you won't look like such a FG poser creeping down the block at 3 miles an hour.

I don't mean to be so caustic, but my passion has been co-opted into an aisle at urban outfitters, so maybe I am just a little bitter. Just ride a little smarter people, and don't be afraid to step out of uniform, and stop ranting to the papers about how you're "one with your bike." You can still be one with it with a brake, and you get to be one with your brain too.