How could I not post a photo giving props to our my [current] favorite big haired, flat billed hat wearing, super fast XCO racing, lady-type Jolanda Neff for winning her third UCI XCO race of the year on Sunday in Méribel, France, AND celebrating her overall Women’s UCI Mountain Bike World Cup series title???
Old habits are hard to break; like limiting myself to riding during daytime hours since I left my (cash paying) job in March of 2009. I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, but it’s funny how true it really is and what other habits–good and bad–have come to replace a post-work ride on a weekday evening.
Let me say, this blog post was NOT supposed to be this long, it was just supposed to be a few photos from last night’s ride, but then I got thinking, wandered more than a bit off track and found myself “on the couch.” The short story is that I had a great ride on Wednesday evening (as illustrated above), the long story below is to be filed under Too Much Information or Never Has So Much Thought Gone Into Deciding To Go For a Fucking Ride. I don’t encourage you to read on, but do so if you wish.
My plan for Saturday morning was this: get up, drink 2 to 14 cups of Bust Ass Coffee, eat some sort of lame breakfast, watch football (YES!!!) and then head out to ride some singletrack north of town. All of that was on course to happen until I checked the radar on Weather-dot-look-at-all-these-ads-and lame human interest videos-dot-com and saw that my trails appeared to be getting pissed down on with rain by the uncontrollable, loose bladder of Ma Nature.
Plan B was activated.
Plan B was to grab the El Mariachi and head out for a couple of hours or so of pavement and dirt roads. Obviously not my first choice (made fucking obvious by the fact that it’s Plan B, NOT Plan A. But dirt is dirt, miles are miles, calories burnt are calories burnt and a fat, crap cyclist is a fat, crap cyclist).
Upon fetching the El Mariachi (my current “go-to” gravel road bike that is really just a hardtail mountain bike) from the Not-So-Stankment®, I realized that in a raging fit of laziness [surprised?] I failed to rinse the bike off after Tuesday’s muddy dirt road ride. No big, I sort of like riding around with what amounts to an extra 2 to 5 pounds of dried cement on my frame. What’s a few extra pounds of dried cement on my bike when I’m already sporting at least 15 extra pounds of beer, pizza and general fuck-up-ness around my ever broadening and bouncing midriff??? Nothing!
I am a firm believer in what an old bike blogging sensei once told me in a hazy drunken dream atop a rain-soaked and muddy Pennsylvania mountaintop : “If you can’t think of anything worthwhile to blog about, just post some crap photo you took while your were out riding, no one reads the shit anyway, and if they do–especially in your case–they probably think you’re a complete and utter fucking wanker.”
And so I have. ‘Cause no matter how many miles of the same freaking trails I ride, I find something that I dig and want to make mad, passionate, retinal love to. I have never said that about a road ride. Nothing against road riding, I dig it, and I’ve had some pretty freaking awesome road rides, but no matter how hard the road tries, it just ain’t as kind on the eyes.
Lately I’ve been thinking about the magical metamorphosis that took place when cycling went from being a hobby for me to lose weight and stay in shape to something that–in many ways–defines me as a person today.
Some Background
As a kid, the extent of my bike riding was rolling around town on my black and yellow Mongoose BMX bike wishing I had the skills, speed and balls to race BMX with my friends Scott and John. The bike was cool, with sweet yellow mag wheels, checkered bar and stem pads and even though I never did race the bike, I rode around with a number plate on it. I was #4, paying tribute to then Pittsburgh Pirate shortstop turned coke-head Dale Berra. A tribute paid only after buying the #4 decal and being asked why the hell I was #4. If eleven year old kids called each other poseurs back in 1982, I would have surely been called one, and deservedly so.
After the BMX days, I sold my bike, stopped playing soccer, stopped playing baseball and turned all my attention to my new hobby; eating. Through my teens and very early twenties, I ate myself to a robust, ruddy cheeked, lonely and depressed 300 pounds. It wasn’t until I was on the brink of exceeding the maximum girth of my size 42 pants and lacked the funds to make the move up to 44s, that I finally did something about my weight (it seems it’s cheaper to lose weight than buy new clothes).
After years of saying I was going to “diet,” I finally just changed my lifestyle. I no longer attempted to starve myself, try diet pills or Slim-Fast shakes. For the first time in my life I started eating healthier foods, cut out between meal snacking (which were actually between meal meals) and started exercising, and IT WORKED!
Keep in mind, that at 300 pounds, my “exercising” consisted of long walks seeking out the biggest hills in town while listening to my Walkman, and that when you go from doing nothing to doing something, things will start to change; regardless, I was stoked to see the pounds start to come off. Then one day while sitting in my room listening to sad bastard music and flipping though a magazine I saw an ad for a mountain bike. It looked cool as hell and on top of that I remembered that this really hot girl I had gone to art school with had one. Cool looking bike… hot girl rides one…. OH, I’M GETTING ONE!
In light of her complete and utter domination of this past Sunday’s UCI XCO race in Mont Sainte-Anne, Quebec, Canada, I would be remiss if I didn’t give another shout out to Jolanda Neff (Liv Pro XC Team) and her continued “Neffness.” It was pretty amazing to watch as she took the lead in the opening lap and never looked back. In the end she took the victory by over a minute on Canada’s own Catharine Pendrel (Luna Pro Team). With two races remaining, Neff leads the series with 900 points, 310 points over the second place Emily Batty (Trek Factory Racing).
I recently found this photo amongst the hundreds of unused, crappier than most, photos I take while riding my bike. It’s obviously not all that good, yet I find myself liking it. I like it–if for no other reason than–because in the past, every time I have ever crossed over this particularly heavily trafficked intersection (heavy for being out in the middle of Bumfuck, Michiganderburgh) where the North Higgins Snowmobile Trail crosses a Roscommon County seasonal road, I have been forced off my bike to walk. The sand is too soft and the numerous tire ruts from trucks, ATVs and dirt bikes too deep.
Last week I was putzing around in woods and realized that most of the photos I take of the trails I ride look like smooth ribbons of easy riding dirt. So, I got down and took a few shots of the trail to highlight why I so often opt for my full suspension bike.
As you can see I’m not talking about trying to smooth out Pennsylvania mountain rock gardens or technical descents, I’m simply talking about the ability to ride smoothly over trails that so often appear to be smooth and buff (and thankfully are in some places) but upon closer inspection beat my 43-year-old body up without the aid of some sort of suspension.
It was during this impromptu photo shoot that I starting rapping with the trail. Before I knew it, snapping a photo turned into a short interview that gave me a little insight into the life of the trail I ride so much, and you an insight into me losing my mind.
You probably think that I have already reneged on my promise to no longer follow Cycling Writer Law 26/3.7 and that I am writing yet another post about riding a fat bike and using the word “fat” in the post title. Well, you’re wrong fool! This time I AM talking about me being fat and rolling fast enough to use the word “flying” (in my feeble mind) to describe it. So take that!
In an ironic twist of fate (or at least vocabulary) the UCI has eliminated the Cross-Country Eliminator (XCE) races from the 2015 calendar. With a growing number of top racers choosing to skip the XCE races to save themselves for the XCO main event later in the weekend and the UCI and promoters apparently not making any money from the event (always a motivating factor), it’s really no surprise. The format had its pros and cons, fans and detractors from the first race.
