Just Angry

My retirement from cycling has made it harder for me to be an angry cyclist. Angry, yes, I can still do that – but cycling not so much. As such my blogging hasn’t been very blogtastic lately, but what do you do?

For over a week I have been meaning to write about my first 5K fun run. The obvious point to start is the oxymoron ‘fun run’ – but that is so lame I couldn’t bring myself to write it.

I have always thought that running was a survival skill, not a sport. Running is what you do when confronted with danger, not when you need a pleasurable past time. Anything that can make your body ache like that can not be good for you – and should probably be avoided except for emergencies. I guess that retiring from cycling is an emergency.

I have been running for a few weeks now. I decided to try a 5K – the Vandal 5K because I heard that 99% of people would never run a 5K. If I could do something that 99% of other people couldn’t (or wouldn’t) do that would be good! Good for my man ego at least, I always need a reason to think I am better than other people?

So I did the Vandal 5K run to raise money for Vandal athletic scholarships. Vandal athletes are obviously not very athletic this year, maybe a little scholarship will at least help them be scholarly. Probably not.

So I did the fun run. I finished in 23:57. It was kind of fun. Actually more funny than fun because I finished in the top 10 out of 100 or so – and I suck. Of course it is a Vandal athletic event. I’ll take what I can get.

The best part? There was a beer ticket attached to the race number. Go Vandals!

Trouble with Tribulus

Yep, that time of year again. The days are shorter, the weather is cooling, the goatheads are goatheading.

Or at least that’s what I thought until I saw this…

The official Idaho Noxious Weed Guide. It lists all of the misplaced plants in and around Idaho. When a plant grows somewhere you don’t want it, it is called a weed. If a plant is particularly good at growing where you don’t want it I guess it is a noxious weed.

Anyhow, I turned to the goathead page (aka puncture vine, Tribulus terrestris, monkeyfist, bikers bane, the weed of doom, effing goathead) and was pleasantly surprised to see that there are not goatheads in Ada County. Note the infestation map.

That is most excellent news. Can you imagine if we had that stuff here, boy that would suck. Imagine if it grew along the side of popular bike routes like Hill Rd, or the Greenbelt – what a pain in the ass that would be.

Well I guess we narrowly averted that disaster. There are apparently goatheads in Canyon County though – sucks for them, Elmore County too, Valley County – bummer, significantly below average. I will try to stay here in good old Ada.

So if you think you got a flat recently from a goathead you are most decidedly mistaken. You must have been out of Ada County. Or ran over some glass. Or imagined it all-together.

Open Letter to Phone Book Guy

Dear Phonebook Guy,

Thank you for delivering the latest version of the Phonebook Guy Phonebook. I really needed something to put under the front tire of my bicycle while I ride on my bicycle trainer this winter. However, I don’t really need the Canyon County edition as well as the Ada County edition. Thank you in advance for retrieving it from my doorstep.

You see, I really don’t like Canyon County and I don’t intend to go there seeking services. In particular, I don’t intend to seek services in Canyon County using a phone book. As a matter of fact, I don’t really intend to use the phone book to seek services in Ada County either, but I do need a good wheel holder upper – so thank you again. In case you were wondering, the Ada County edition makes the best wheel holder upper when you open it to the legal section. Last year I sweated on Holzer & Edwards all winter and it worked quite well for me.

I guess the reason I don’t use your phone book to seek services is because of this new invention I discovered recently. You may have heard of it. It is called the internet. Al Gore invented it. It actually pretty much makes your business model obsolete – like the post office. Sorry about that. You see, the way I figure it, if a business hasn’t embraced technology enough to have a web page (even a bad one), they probably don’t embrace other technology either - you know? I mean I could end up with a doctor that thinks using lasers for surgery is a fad and prefers butcher knives – that would be bad.

So now that I think of it, I probably don’t need the Ada County edition either. I will gladly use it as a wheel holder upper this year, but I don’t need another next year. I will just buy one of those plastic wheel holder uppers – that way I won’t risk offending someone by sweating on their add either.

Thanks in advance for not delivering next years phone book. By the way, could you please tell your friends Phone Book Dude and Phone Book Man that I don’t need their phone books either – Yes, even if it has a glossy BSU football cover. Thanks.

Sincerely,

Mike

Chicks Dig It

Finally, my last cycling event of the season. After a long year of downs with a few ups here and there I am very much ready to quit cycling forever, or at least until next week – whichever comes first.

The last event is the Bogus Basin Hill Climb. Optimistically it is a short 13 mile ride with only one hill. Pessimistically it is a 15 mile 3,500 vertical foot bitch with a few short sections of respite. Realistically it is just a hill, not that steep, but kind of long.

Usually I know that things are going to go bad from the beginning. Saturday was different. I lined up reasonably close to the front – there were probably only 100 riders in front of me. I felt pretty good for the first couple miles. Then reality hit. The reality is that I am fat, and out of shape, and have a chronic hip injury. Reality really kind of sucked.

So there I am about half way up Bogus basking in the suckiness. So much suckiness that I got passed by a BYRDS kid in baggy spandex – I think he might have been 10. Anyhow, basking in the suckiness – and I think, 'God, this sucks…'

God – ‘Well, yeah, what did you expect?’

Me – ‘I expected a little less suckiness, a little help please?’

God – ‘I think you need a new hobby’

Me – ‘Like?’

God – ‘Like something that doesn’t require leg shaving to start with’

Me – ‘But chicks dig shaved legs’

God – ‘Really?’

Me – ‘No, not really – but I kind of like it’

God – ‘Elmer, there is no hope for you’

Me – ‘Barrack says there is hope’

God – ‘Barrack doesn’t know you’

Me – ‘Maybe you could arrange…’

God – ‘Shut up and ride’

And then things got better. Much better. My legs loosened up, my head cleared up, and I felt pretty good. I started catching people.

That chat with God really helped. It was either that or shifting to my small chainring after for the 4 miles in the big one – oops. You would think you would notice something like that.

I caught and passed the baggy spandex BYRDS kid on the last corner – now that is something to carry me over to next year. It is going to be a hard winter.

I think I am going to take Gods advice an try a new hobby for a while. I’m thinking alcoholic – I think I can do that. I am still going to shave my legs though.

Snidely Electric

I new it would happen. It had to happen. What with $4 gas it was only a matter of time. Given the scootermania and the fact you can buy motorized bicycles on Craigslist it was probably downright inevitable.

So I am on my way home yesterday afternoon on the greenbelt when I come up behind a guy on a mountain bike with funny looking panniers. As he goes around a curve in front of me he looks back with a Snidely Wiplash look on his face. Eeeeeffffffff! Now what?

I had already dueled speed racer girl earlier in the commute when some chick was determined not to let me pass her, and then was equally determined to stay right behind me for a mile afterward. Now Snidely here has some devilish plan to unleash on me when I pass him.

Resigned to subject myself to some devious plan I pass Snidely. Snidely looks over at me (still looking Snidely) and I hear the whine of the electric motor kicking in…

De Ja Vu – I flashback to the last time some electric bike smuck raced me. Yes this has happened to me twice now. I am guessing no one else has raced electric bike guy even once. I guess I am just lucky. Anyhow, last time I raced electric bike guy I got a similarly Snidely look, and a similarly whiney whine. Last time I actually had to shift and go about 20 mph to get around electric bike moron…

Flashback to the present. Electric bike guy guns it. Electric bike guy accelerates. Electric bike guy tops out at maybe 15 mph. Electric bike guys’ electric bike sucks. Electric bike guy might want to try pedaling – it may be faster.

Actually, it would be faster. I slow down while passing electric bike guy to tell him so.

My Mailbox

So I added a new feature to my e-mail box the other day. I call it the ‘blackmail’ folder. I am going to use it to store e-mails that I can forward in order to make the sender and other recipients look bad. I will forward those e-mails for my own personal gain, the detraction of other people, and to make myself feel powerful and intelligent. Yes, that is the type of e-mails I will put in the ‘blackmail’ folder, and that is what I will do with them.

Does this make me a bad person?

Well only if you consider a total lack of class, integrity, and respect for others a bad thing. Or maybe if other people thinking of me as a POS because of it makes me a bad person.

On second thought maybe a ‘blackmail’ folder isn’t such a good idea. At least mine is empty… is yours?

Olympic Recap

So the Olympics have been over for a week and I have had time to reflect about the games and what they mean to me…

-I still think that if you are over 12 and ride a BMX bike you might be a loser. If the most marketed thing about your sport in Olympic coverage is crashes – that’s a bad thing.

-Synchronized diving, and rhythmic gymnastics are for people that weren’t quite good enough to compete in the real events. Also see Ice Dancing in the winter Olympics.

-The Chinese cheated. Well duh! I think that the important thing to remember is that our athletes got beat by 12 year olds. That should put things in perspective.

-Sports with subjective scoring systems suck.

-Have Jamaicans always been that fast? Hmmm…

-The rules about what country you can compete for seem a little loosy goosy. So if you aren’t good enough at a sport in your own country you can switch to another to compete at the Olympics. Maybe next Olympics I can be a cyclist from Djibouti.

-They say the Olympics are about the essence of sport. I call BS. If you are sponsored by VISA the only thing you are the essence of is capitalism. If you want to see the essence of sport go to grade school at recess and watch the kids play ball. Don’t stay long, someone will think you are a pedophile.

-Thank you Kristen Armstrong for making it a little more acceptable to be a spandex wearing biker fag in Boise, Idaho. Now that is a legacy.

-The only thing that would make women’s beach volleyball better is Bacardi Mojito commercials.

-Michael Phelps needs some braces, but he’s so fast you probably didn’t notice.

Wow, I love the Olympics.