Posts from the ‘Bikes’ Category

Dec 10

ghost in the machine

They drove into the woods in a van with suspect wiring, the night black among the trees, the passing landscape a blind country. At their last stop, the van hadn’t started. They’d sat, dumbfounded, until suddenly, it had roared to life. They really had no idea what was wrong with it or why, as if on a whim, it had chosen to turn on again. Their minds had already been far ahead down the road, chasing the vanishing horizon.

They’d left California earlier that same day, but it seemed like they’d traveled several times around the sun in the course of that single long day of gas, food, and yet one more coffee stop. Coffee fueled their progress and their laughter down the arrow straight interstate, “the 5,” in the peculiar parlance of Californians, whose intimate relationship with their freeways is both unique and necessary.

The 5 runs north-south the length of California, passing through Oregon and Washington, and until it eventually reaches British Colombia, mountain biking’s promised land. Traveling north, the freeway follows the gentle upward tilt of the Central Valley. It feels intuitively right that we should travel uphill when heading north up the map and the Central Valley obliges. The climb is imperceptible, though, and out the window of the van, it’s all flat farmland as far as the eye can see.

Then the terrain changes. Suddenly they were into the southern Cascades under the panopticon gaze of Shasta’s hollowed out peak. The van wallowed through the curves like a ship in heavy seas and soon enough, they discovered that the brakes didn’t do a hell of a lot. They shimmied between big rigs and campervans, swapping non-stop stories the way mountain bike people do. There was that one time — the cadence of anticipation echoed through the stories as they hurtled northward up the highway.

Mar 12

on a bike

20120530_untitled-00024

This story originally ran at The Toast about four years ago. A slightly different version ran in Adventure Journal Quarterly. What I love about it now, actually, is that some of the commentary about culture and gender seem almost out of date. Like ideas about women and sports and what we can and can’t do, that terrain is shifting fast. So I guess what I’m saying is maybe there’s a glimmer of hope in these things. Either way, I still like this story. It has a lot of bikes in it. And bikes are good.

***

I’m working in my kit again. I thought I could escape, but then the phone started nagging. So I sat down to answer it and to answer that other thing, and to edit that one thing and to make that other thing. Sitting still is hard. I just want to go ride. The internet is such a dick sometimes.

So here I sit, my padded shorts feeling like diapers in my cushioned office chair. On the bike, I don’t notice the padding. Off the bike, it shifts and bunches like an over-sized maxi-pad. Finally, I pull up the straps on my bibshorts and zip my jersey.

If you’ve never seen bibshorts, they look like shorts with suspenders attached. Before the time of lycra, cyclists wore wool shorts with actual suspenders. These days bibshorts are a weird, one-piece contraption, the parts sewn together painstakingly by women in a factory somewhere in Romania. The sewing process is not easy. The lycra is pieced together and the seams placed just so. No one wants a seam in the vagina.

I’m a Title IX girl. I swam in college, my team funded because the law required it. Eventually I got bored of chasing the pool’s black line and turned mountain bike racer. My friends and I used to say that women’s participation in sports was one of the last battlegrounds of feminism. We were more optimistic about feminism then, and in truth, about life.

The wheels thunk as I ride down the stairs to the sidewalk and shoot through the grass to the street. The bike doesn’t really stop. Somewhere between the emails and interview transcripts and editing corrections and can you just do this one thing, I need to adjust the brakes, but I haven’t gotten around to it. It adds excitement to the whole thing to ride a bike that doesn’t really stop. You just go faster.

Oct 10

postcard

Morning light, Tunnel Trail, Santa Barbara.

Apr 29

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Coffee Drinkers’ Guide to the Amgen Tour of California, Vol. 2

blue_espresso

Welcome to the Coffee Drinker’s Guide to the Amgen Tour of California.

This is the second annual Guide, which is to say, we’ve reached the terrible twos, screaming and teething and drooling all over the joint. If this is your first time, don’t worry. Everything will be just fine. Also, you can find last year’s edition at Paved, may it live forever in our espresso-blackened hearts.

So you’re going to the Amgen Tour of California and you like coffee. You are totally in the right place. We’re going to tell you where to get your fix at every stop on the race. That’s it. It’s all so terribly simple.

This year’s race begins in Sacramento on Sunday, 5 May and finishes in Thousand Oaks on Sunday, 18 May. That’s a whole lot of coffee right there.

Stage 1: Sacramento

“Love what you do. Life is short, so celebrate it!” The people at Old Soul sound like our kind of people. They roast coffee and make bread in a wherehouse in Sacramento. We could not confirm the existence of a La Marzocco, the sure sign of good coffee. But there is a photo of their roaster, which is a very good start. The building has bricks. This is also promising. Life is risk, but we’re feeling pretty good about this one. Go to Old Soul, drink all their coffee.

Jan 15

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the laughing group

The jokes are better at the back. That’s what I’ve learned. There’s time to look around. There’s time to tell silly stories and laugh at one another’s jokes, even when they’re stupid. Especially when they’re stupid.

I used to ride at the front. I used to surf my way through the field, slipping through the gaps between riders until I found just the perfect wheel. Following the right wheel will cover any number of fitness sins. I’d put my chin on the stem and just go.

And there’s sweet satisfaction in making a bike go fast. The pavement blurs beneath your wheels. You can hear the guy next to you breathing and the thunk of the gears as the pace ratchets up. You come home thrashed and glowing.

But you also miss a lot along the way, because going hard on a bike is the same no matter where you are. You pedal hard. The world streaks by in abstract lines. There isn’t much time to look around, and there’s certainly no time for jokes. The other riders are just riders, a wheel to follow or an obstacle to pass. They aren’t people, really, just riders.

Last week with a fast group ride looming, I decided it was a good day for a grupetto. The route promised great scenery and beautiful roads. But in truth, this was a decision driven by necessity. All the group ride savvy in the world was not going to cover for three weeks of surfing and no biking.

So I set to work rounding up a group of likely suspects. This is a key step in forming the grupetto. The perfect grupetto riders say they’ll ride slow and actually mean it. When the group starts to go hard, they can sit up and let it go. This is suprisingly difficult, actually. Our cavepeople brains don’t like to be left alone. There’s bears out there, you know. The perfect grupetto riders also know a lot of good jokes.

Oct 11

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how to ship a bike

method

The Skateboard

what you need

A skateboard. Ipod. Packing tape. A bike box full of bubble wrap. Also, a bike.

soundtrack

The Offspring, Days Go By. This is no time for artistic merit. Volume is the only thing that matters. It all sounds the same if you turn it up loud enough.

how you do it

Put all the bubble wrap on the bike. All of it. Do not skimp on this step. Run out of bubble wrap. Buy more. Keep wrapping the bike. Put the bike in the box. Tape shut. Use lots of tape. The bike might escape if you don’t.