Vignettes

Don’t you hate it when….

Riding bikes is awesome. But still, shit doth happen.

Clipping In. Or not.

I’ve been riding clipped in since forever and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Once a few years ago after I broke my ankle riding my mountain bike (clipped in…hmmm…), I had to use flat pedals for a while. It was absurd. I couldn’t get away from a stop sign, couldn’t get started to save my life. My feet kept flying off the pedals and I looked like a giraffe on skates.

That being said, once in a while things go a little non-linear. I was on my road bike with my fancy road shoes—carbon on the bottom—at a streetlight in Sausalito. I got the green, and instead of deftly finding the sweet spot where cleat meets pedal, the cleat sailed past the awaiting aperture. Because of the last little umph you gotta give it to make that satisfying “snap” indicating you are in, my left foot went hurtling forward with gay abandon and lots of weight came slamming down on my tender nether region. I yelped, swerved, and nearly crashed. And of course there was an audience for this—slick roadie-bros commuting into the City. Yay for me.

I’m So Cool?

Yeah, I was feeling pretty smug. I got on the BART train with my bike after riding 21 miles to the station and people were kind of looking at me. “They must be thinking-‘wow—that lady has a nice bike and is in good shape and is also saving the planet all at the same time. I should be like her.’”

I did start to think it was a little bit overkill, but hey, when you’re cool, you’re cool, right?

I got to work and went to the bathroom to change my clothes and there in the mirror was me with black grease marks from cheek to chin, remnants of a roadside repair.

Graceful

I was recently finishing the Monarch Crest and Rainbow Rim trail in Colorado on my mountain bike. It had been a huge day and I was about a mile from the end. My left pedal had been fussy all day and I kept meaning to fix it. A guy I had been leapfrogging with for the past 15 miles was sitting on the side of the trail waiting for a friend, and a runner was coming toward me. I pulled left to let the runner by and share a quick hello, and whatdya know, I’m slowing, I’m stopping, I’m falling right the hell over. Not quite into his lap, but almost.

Of course it took about 27 minutes to reach the ground so I had lots of time to think about the whole scenario and I’m laughing my ass off as I fall cause it’s just so dumb. Meanwhile, the runner for whom I have given way looks at me, on the ground, and says “that was graceful.” Totally deadpan. Now, perhaps my laughing like a hyena tipped her off that I wasn’t hurt, so that’s fine, but seriously? I’ve clearly pulled over to give you the trail, I crash while doing it and all you’ve got is “that was graceful?” What a cow.  

Excuse Me Sir!

I was riding in a group on a paved road on the way to the trail. Beside us was an old, stone-lined ditch. There was no traffic so we were three-abreast going up a hill. My friend—we’ll call him ‘J’—was a big fellow. 6-feet, 190 or so? He was an excellent rider. But now he seemed to stutter somehow, like there was an interruption in the space/time continuum. He sort of track-standed for a brief moment, then fell over on me like the world’s tallest Jenga that had just succumbed to the laws of physics. He fell on me then I fell into the stone-lined ditch that had pointy edges.

I emerged with a few minor scratches. He emerged so mortified that he might have died on the spot were I not able to assure him—46 times—that really, I was fine. So…what happened? He was on a single-speed with a belt drive and the belt broke. This confirms my assertion that single speeds are dumb.

Core Values

Don’t you hate it when you’re at the race start, and you decide to quickly top off your air pressure and instead you pull the core and that sickening hissing sound makes everyone turn around and gasp at you in empathetic horror as they roll off the line and way away? I hate that.