I read this bicycle design blog and for a while that dude started every.single.post with something like 'i'm so busy I can't write too much, but here goes...'
I'm not that guy. But somehow school is over, summer kicked in and I find myself being a handyman from 9-5, sweating balls off all day then jump on the bike for 3 hours, eat then sleep. That simple little algorithm has made this summer just fly by.
Plus, I'm starting to get annoyed with every hipster design kid trying to redesign a bike for 'normal' people or some super amazing new and highly improbable commuter bike that will change the face of America once and for all. I love to make fun of hipsters as much as any of us (since you are probably a hipster, too, right? I mean who isn't?) and the most satisfying hipster bitch-slap happened at a lecture earlier this year by a researcher from Ideo. She basically said during the development of the Shimano Coast system, they realized that people where sorta freaked out walking into a bike shop and being told by some tattooed hipster kid that they needed this and that in a bike. At that moment, the sea of hipsters (all dying to show their cred, tight jeans and cute obscure cap) froze, and some coughed. Hopefully their thick-with-irony persona allowed them a small personal snicker.
That was a highly tangential rant about nothing.
So I rocked a cannonball trip up to PA for a surprise family visit[slash]Trans Rockies training camp in my beloved Rothrock and newly beloved Raystown Lake trails. Holy DANG! 32 miles of the most fun singletrack-I swear 30 miles of it is downhill. If you get a chance to make a day trip, don't hesitate. Plus you get to watch complete hicksters drive either faux cigarette boats or pontoon boats around the lake. You know how fun it is to stop on a ride and start making fun of people you don't know or understand.
Ohh-and I got to ride a stage of the Tour de Burg. Next time its gotta be the whole stage race, but hopefully I don't have to get a hideous haircut like the locals. Look for an article in Bike mag sometime in the future. Although Vanity Fair and The Economist are the only magazines worth reading, really.
I'd totally give you my weekend TSS and average power and modified beefcake outputs but, NOBODY CARES. But more importantly: I had a super fun time with some of my favorite people (chipper, dr.thorne and richie rich the pussy bitch). And I saw a rattlesnake.
Remember: the best parts of bike riding you just can't quantify.
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