Personally, I blame the dog.

No, not for that.  Well, OK, sometimes I get away with that too, but this is altogether different.  I blame my wife's new bike…2 new bikes, really…and the fact that we are signed up for three centuries next year, and the fact that I now have to consider my wife when I plan a mountain bike ride…that all falls on the dog.

It all started when my son and wife were at the animal shelter for some thing or another as my wife was volunteering there for a time.  Our dog, Moots, was getting pretty old and we like to bring dogs in the house so they overlap a bit.  It helps the new dog settle and figure things out.  Anyway, my son calls me and asks me to hurry over after work as he has found a dog and "it will not be here for long".  Little did I know.

As I loaded this Black Lab/Greyhound looking mix into the car, already named Sophie by my son, I did not know I was in for it.

Now my wife had ridden bikes years ago but had given it up for horses, then Jazzercise, Aerobics, the gym, etc.  She was never a passionate rider, just a social rider.  That was fine.   I was the passionate cyclist.  But when Sophie came along, she was a dog that required a regular, heavy workout or there would be hell to pay.  None of us are runners, and they don't like dogs in Jazzercise classes, so my wife asked if I could dust off her old 26" hard tail and get it running.  It was a handmade steel frame right out of the 90s, brakes, shifting, etc.  We worked out some way to tether the dog's leash to the head tube and off they went.  Sophie was stoked.  This dog was on a mission.  Do they have Strava for canines?  If not, they should.  She would QOM that thing.

In time, I came into a 29er hard tail that fit my wife and gave her an upgrade.  We live within a 1/2 mile of a trail area so it became a regular thing, this dog exercise deal and we improved the bike/dog interface.  Then my wife began tracking her times to certain parts of the trails.  Hmmm.  Then she started keeping heart rate stats and calories burned…gear selection in various parts of the course…oh my.  Jazzercise stopped.  More riding replaced it.

Last year I bought her a flat bar road bike, inspired by the fun I had on my new road bike last year.  Before that we would go do some simple bike path rides, maybe 30 miles at the most, but we would do it on our MTBs.  Not bad, but not great.  So when she got on her new road bike, she was inspired.  We could ride farther and faster now.  It was easier to be social too.  It was not long after that we did a metric century on a short weekend away.  I had helped her train for it.  Afterwards she said she would have liked to go for the full hundred and that her training needed to step up.  Oh oh.  I smelled trouble.

So when she said, during a ride, that all she wanted to do was ride bikes all day I knew I was in deep chain lube.  I had created a monster.

"Will a helmet ruin my hair?"

So we have been testing saddles and swapping to shorter cranks and tweaking this and trying that to fine tune the road bike.  But I really ratcheted up the noise when I began to build her a new MTB for the times we ride sans doggie.  It has been kinda' fun and kinda' painful as I/We pick parts together based on cost, color and fit -- feng shui meets the engineering dept.

Parts are tickling in as we speak.  The good thing is, when your wife is the accountant and you are buying it for her, it is darn near carte blanche.  "Did you order my new _____ (fill in the blanks) yet?".  Yes, sweetie.

Actually, all this is awesome.  I mean, there must be thousands of men out there that long for their 'significant other' to be an enthused cyclist.  I have seen that tried and failed many, many times.  So when I gained a mutt, I did not know that included in the deal was a new riding buddy who I just happen to be married to.

And for that, I can blame…and thank…the dog.  Good girl.

JeffJ is turning 100.

Miles that is.  I am not sure when the mad plan was hatched, but it sure was incubated as our road miles accrued and his fitness increased.  The day we pedaled to 80 miles he said to me that this was the farthest that he had ridden on a bike...ever.  Cool.

Let's go farther, yes?

So the 'century' ride, as in 100 miles in a day, was the next thing to shoot for.  The route was determined...nothing wild, just reasonable and coastal to avoid the late in the year mid 80s temps that the inland areas were seeing...and the invites went out.

The attendees were his daughter, JenJo, who was a CAT2 road racer until not too long ago, a young man she knows named Andres, Ed the Tall, Stevie Ray and yours truly.  I was not sure about the new guy, Andres, until I saw his bike.  It was a Specialized Venge with carbon wheels and Di2 shifting.  Oh.  Ok.  The team kit he wore (and races for) said the rest.  I think he will make it.  I knew JenJo would be fine and Ed the Tall is always strong.  Stevie Ray is a CAT1 MTB racer, or was when he raced and he is still a grey hound even though there is more grey than there used to be.

So the only doubts were the two old guys...JeffJ and I.  Even money bet for both of us.

But in the end, we rolled back to the car with 101.xx miles on the clock and most of our faculties intact.  It was a fun day and once again showed me that cycling is a boundary crossing activity.  We were wide spread in ages, fitness, backgrounds, education, gender, and abilities yet we all supported, encouraged and strengthened each other.  In the process we became more as a whole than we were as individuals.

In short, it worked.  We won.

The big guy came rolling in next to Ed the Tall with a big ol' grin on his face.  He hit a milestone along the good old 'path of life' and did it on two wheels, 27 gears, and next to friends and family.  We could have done much, much worse with our Saturday and I would not have wanted to be anywhere else.

Congrats, BMOC (Big Man On a Cannondale).  Thanks for sharing your life with us.

What a Difference a Cheeseburger Makes.

Those words were said by JeffJ as we uploaded calories of a greasy kind after a 65 mile road ride.  We had spent the day riding with a group of triathletes as they prepared for an upcoming Ironman event in Arizona.  It was an interesting day.

I had never met any of them before but we had an invite to the group through a friend of my wife.  I had pretty good feelings about the group dynamic and the route so off we went at a ridiculously early hour on a Saturday morning, pointing ourselves toward the promised cooler temps of the So Cal coastline.  JeffJ was a bit more concerned that he would be a pariah, seeing that he tends to ride in baggies and a visored, bass boat green MTB helmet.  A bit Freddish, but we are all mountain bikers at heart anyway.  Introducing himself as "Jeff, or you can call me Fred" did not register at all with the group and just resulted in nervous laughter and odd stares.  Exit, stage left for Lippy the Lion and Hardy Har Har.

So we were pilgrims in a strange land, this try-ath-a-leete deal.  And as the bikes were unloaded and clothing assembled, I was struck by the complexity of the bikes.  Oh my!  There were angles and wedges and bobbles and bangles and widgets and bottles and wings and bags all over those bikes.  They had handlebars that reached waaaay out in front so you could, I presume, steer with your elbows which makes some sense as I do not recall ever using my elbows much on a ride anyway, so they should do some work too.

I had an extra tube strapped to my bike.

I asked the group where the button was to transform the bikes into Optimus Prime.  No one laughed.  Serious folks, these tri people.  No Fred jokes, no Transformers jokes.  Got it.

Be careful what button you push or...

...you get this.

Rolling out into the quiet of the morning coastal fog, we began at a nice, friendly pace.  This, I was told, was 'Zone 1' training.  Later we would get into Zone 2 and 3.  Hold on...what is a zone?  Is it like a zip code for cyclists?  I am not sure I have zones.  When I am riding the SS up some stupid long climb and my tongue sticks to the stem, what zone is that?  There is more to this tri stuff than meets the eye, and that is saying a lot as the bikes were just so complex looking, but still cool in an odd way.  I am thinking that tri-folks are the golfers of the cycling world, always looking for that new 'thing' that will give them the edge.

Riding alongside the leader, a very fit lady on a very carbon bike, I asked her if that bike was comfortable to ride as it looked pretty stiff, all those airfoil shapes.  She glanced at me with an odd look and then said, "it goes real fast in a straight line".  Then she clicked up a gear or two, got onto the tri-bars, and showed me how that worked.  Well, I guess so.  See ya!

Seriously, that was pretty cool.  She would just ride away from me with what looked to be barely any increased effort and I would have to up the wattage dial to just hang on.  I guess riding the cycling equivalent of a Cruise missile aerodynamics study has its advantages, even if comfiness is not one of them.  Zoom zoom.  I considered tossing the extra inner tube strapped to my seat stays to see if that would help but I think I was just entering zone 2 and I did not want to mess that up.  I might not ever get there again or if I do, they will not let me in.

So here we were, JeffJ and I, on our round tubed, old school road bikes, having a very nice ride at a very decent pace along with a very nice group of very well equipped people pedaling two wheeled airplanes.  At some point we split the group as most folks were heading out to get some required training work done that apparently we had not done enough of and then they had to run across the county or some such thing and we better not stop too long here or we will drop into Zone 1.65 and that could be fatal.  Whew!  Close call, that one.

What zone are YOU in?

And so when JeffJ, seated outside the pearly gates of In-And-Out, said that immortal statement of truth-ness..."What a difference a cheeseburger makes!", it struck me that this revelation born of beef patties and grilled onions on a toasted bun was about more than just a much needed celebration of un-holy calories.  No, it also was all about the day and the dynamic of the ride.  JeffJ and I were just riding with no agenda than to see some new roads and ride our bikes hard in the company of some new faces.  At least one other lady rider was out for fun as well, but all the others were there for a singular purpose - to be in Zone 1, Zone 2, Zone 3, etc for the required time to get the required data to get the required result.

Now I respect that, even though it may not seem like it, because if you have a serious goal then you need a serious plan.  And a full Ironman is no joke.  I can throw a rock farther than I can swim.  Running?  No thanks.  So I do understand the world of a serious athlete and the dedication it takes to make it happen, especially if you are making a living at it.

But.

If you are just Joe and Jill average and you do not own a bike without a PowerTap hub and deep dish carbon wheels guaranteed to slice .006 seconds off a 2 kilometer time trial, then something is wrong.  Because all the data downloads in the world cannot make up for missed opportunities like where a deer bounds alongside the road in a woodland echelon and you missed the sight, being so wrapped up in 'the zone'.

There are roads never taken that beckon a hard right turn just to see where they go.  Close the laptop and be your own Google Earth.  Pause long enough at a rest stop to rest.  Life is a mad rush at the least.

Zone zero is OK every so often.

And a cheeseburger, when it is all said and done, makes all the difference in the world.

Although I still wonder how you steer with your elbows.

Fools with tools.

It should have been no big deal.  A flat tire on a road ride.  In town.  Ten minutes tops.  But that assumes we were prepared as well as we thought we were.  Oh no...not even close.

JeffJ and I.  That is me on the left.

JeffJ and I were about 70 miles into an 80 mile loop and we were just beginning to feel the strain of the day.  I had some time constraints, so when we pulled out of the gas station/mini mart after tanking up on water, I was not real happy about feeling that soft and squishy response to pedaling.  No, not a fully loaded chamois, just a rear flat.

So we pulled over into the shade of a gas station across the street and set to fixin' things in the grass of a planter area.  No biggy.  We had three tubes between us along with two sets of quick fills, two pumps, one patch kit, etc, and it is not like this is my first rodeo with an airless tire.   So I whipped off the rear wheel and opened up my tool bag to find no tire levers.  Really?  No idea where they went.  But JeffJ had some so that was fine.  It takes a village you know.  Buddy system and all that.

Tire removed, I set about finding the source of the leak.  A thin piece of wire had pierced the casing in the tread and about ten minutes later I had it out of there with my fingernails.  Note to self:  Add metal tipped tweezers to road bike tool kit.

I grabbed my spare tube, which I keep carefully wrapped in a baggie so it survives rot and rubbing, and went to put it in only to find that the valve stem barely made it through the rim.  When I swapped wheels it had not occurred to me look at the valve stem length of the spare tube.  Rats.  OK, we had grabbed a spare tube out of JeffJ's garage before we left and that was in my jersey pocket.

JeffJ's garage

I install that and grab my pump but JeffJ's pump is a bit more full-figured so he hands me that.  It does everything I ask of it except put air into the tube.  Why?  Dunno.  So I go to grab my pump and JeffJ offers his quick fill.  Ok.  Sheesh!  This is getting to be quite a circus and time is passing by.

A quick blast and we are at pressure.  Into the bike the wheel goes and about the time I close the QR, I realize the tire is flat.  I ask JeffJ, "was that a good tube?"  He does not know.  Take any bets on it?  So he grabs the tube out of his bike's seat pouch.  In that goes and I try my quick fill.  The dispenser will not move, like the plunger is frozen but I only find this out after I pierce the cartridge.  I have never used this device and it must have gotten wet in the bag and so here we are.  I grab the frozen, non-air dispensing device of dismay and, holding it both hands, press the nozzle against the sidewalk and push HARD.

'paaaaWIIIISHHHHhhhhhhh' goes all the cO2 in a frenzy of frosty air pressure escaping into the mid day heat.  The valve, once it got moving, stayed open.  Nice.  I could just cry or laugh and I stand there, staring at the comedic circumstances unfolding before me uncertain which is the most appropriate response.

You never tested your quick fill dispenser AND your tube has a short stem AND your tire levers are missing?

So we still have my pump and out it comes with the tube number three from JeffJ's seat bag.  He had been bragging to me about how good his tires were and how it had been YEARS since he had a flat and so on and so forth and all this is still ringing in my ears as I pump frantically with air escaping out the tube in every crease of the tube's folds.  Rotten to the core.  Really?  Is someone filming this?

My spare tube is rotten?

Time is slipping by.  I am going to be late for sure for my afternoon appointment, but the bigger thought is that we are fast running out of options here.  So I grab the tube that has one hole in it from the wire and try to patch it but the wind is so strong that I cannot feel the air leak.  I take it all in my arms and go behind the gas station into an area that must be the urinal for every homeless person in Ventura County.  No deal...cannot get enough air in there with a tiny pump to feel the leak and I am fresh out of water barrels, koi ponds, or deep puddles to submerge the tube in.

Amazing.  About now the Mexican gardener comes by and looks at us as he stands next to his running lawnmower.  The lawn he wants to mow is the one we have bikes and parts spread allll over.   Really, dude?  Verdad?  Verdad.

We pile it all on the sidewalk and keep at it.

So as a last resort, in goes the good spare tube I had (with the short stem) and JeffJ grabs his last quick fill and crams it on there, hits the button, but the connection is not good and canned air air goes everywhere but in the tube.  Then he bends the valve core as he pulls the tool off the stem.

KEEEEEERRAAAAAPPPPPPPP!!!!!!$%#&;*^%%%!!!

Plan B.  It was close to this...too close.

I straighten that without having it break and thread my pump on there hoping there are enough threads to get it to seal.  There are, but barely.  It is our last hope before we hit the rescue flares or I ride on JeffJ's handlebars back to the car.  It works and inflates but we are on a wing and a prayer for the last 15 miles back to the car.  One more flat and we are toast.

So some morals to this slapstick comedy of a story.  Check yer stuff.  Do your tools actually work?  Are they in the bag?  Is your spare tube just a long rubber band?  We made it back and after a post ride burrito, discussed what we should do next, what we learned from all this and we came to a decision.

Ah...epiphany!

There really was only one career path for JeffJ and I to pursue. One way for us to help others learn from our mistakes.   Come by and see us some time.  We fix flats.

A cyclist, perhaps?

Not parked...just pausing.

It was somewhere around the mid 1990's.  I was on that road bike pictured above, climbing up a local canyon road along with a small group of friends.  Next to me rode 'Little Ray'.  Ray was Italian by birth and a cyclist by choice.  MTB, road, whatever.  The "little" part of the nickname came from the fact that Ray was small of stature.  He used to be a professional horse jockey.  Seemed to me that he raced with some of the greats until a fall and injuries took that option off the table.  At least that is the way I remember it. One time, on a night MTB ride, in a difficult canyon dirt climb that was known for high winds, we came around a corner with Ray a few bike lengths ahead of me.  The wind hit us straight in the face while we already in our low gear and it stopped Ray dead and blew him over before he could unclip.  He laid there, laughing like crazy as I rode by.  Sometimes it pays to be big and heavy.

He had a temper bigger than his silhouette and was a force to be reckoned with on a bike, being a fierce competitor.  This day he rode up alongside me as we stood and climbed out of the saddle, bikes rocking back and forth, hands lightly balanced on the bars, feet stepping on the revolving dance floor.  He said something I have never forgotten but only recently recalled.  He said, "you are doing well...you are becoming a cyclist".

A cyclist.  Webster's has that as:  One who rides a cycle.

I am a mountain biker.  I bleed dirty blood and wear knobby socks.  It is one of the things that defines me and I am OK with that.  But am I a cyclist?  An MTB is a cycle, right? Yes, but what Ray was saying was that I was transitioning from being just a dirt rider to a more complex animal.  The addition of road riding was expanding my horizons and had me on a journey to another level as a bike rider.  Then, for whatever reason, I backpedaled, if you will, and fell away from anything road related.  I went from a here-and-there century ride with regular group rides to a semi-often road ride with a buddy or two then right to nil.  Zip. It was knobs or nada.

Till recently.  I am still not sure what happened.  Seasons, I guess and the timing of all that.  Every summer when the hills get brown and dry and the air temps go up toward triple digits in So Cal, my thoughts turn to road riding where at least you have the potential to make your own breeze.  Then the Tour De France, which I watch but do so with limited knowledge or interest, always peaks my curiosity for road bikes.  I mean, those bikes they ride look so cool!  So I would invest in a new set of road tires to replace the rotted ones, take the road bike off the hook, do some wrenching and hit the road.

And once again I would remember why I did not do this, this road bike thing.  The bike sucked.  The shifting was some odd compromise of a 7 speed Sachs freewheel (yes...7 speed freewheel) on Bullseye hubs and Mavic rims with Shimano bar end shifters.  Horrible combo.  It never shifted right and did not get better with age.  The riding position was just as bad with a gooseneck steel stem welded into quite a negative angle and a bar shaped with more than a good bit of reach and drop.  It put me waaaay over the bars when on the hoods and what used to be OK to me in the 90s was terrifying now.  Add in 53/39 crank gearing and a 12-25 freewheel and it was always a dream-bubble buster every time I got back on the bike.  

So every year I would entertain either a new road bike or updating the parts and correcting the fit on this one.  I was torn.  It was a handmade steel frame from Curtlo Cycles with modern geometry and an SR Prism alu fork.  The parts were mostly Shimano 600 or 105 but it just did not mesh.  Was it worth upgrading?  Then I would get into the pursuit of a new MTB and the road bike would go back on the hook for another year.  Priorities, you know.

That was until last year, when I picked up a set of road bike wheels from JeffJ for 50 bucks.  They were decent but not great wheels, maybe 1800g, and had the minimal spoking pattern that was so popular these days.  But the best part was that they would allow me to go to a proper 8spd cassette from Shimano.  So I figured it was worth 100 dollars to see this along a bit farther.   I paired the wheels and new cassette with an 8spd set of bar end shifters I had around.  Now we had great shifting and a 12-26 gear cluster for a slightly lower gear.  I would have liked brifters, but they are kinda costly.

Fit was another thing.  I did not know what I did not know and I just figured that all road bikes felt like this in the cockpit.  But I would see bikes go by that looked so much different...the hoods were not so far away and low and riding them just had to be better.  But getting there would mean sourcing eBay 8spd brifters and new bars and what about that old quill stem?  I sure would like to get to where I could run the assortment of threadless 1 1/8" stems I had laying around.  So in increments, I pressed on.  I installed an aftermarket adapter (big chunk of metal) into the threaded 1" steerer that let me run 1 1/8" threadless stems for a better selection of options.  That raised my bar position up and I was seeing rays of hope break though the clouds.

So naturally I did the next logical thing...I hung the bike on the hooks again.  Why?  No motivation.  Wrong season.  Timing is key.  There were lots of bikes to be riding and all of them had fat, knobby tires on them.  Till this year.  An event was coming up that would be a difficult day and it would be good to get some miles in to prepare.  But long training miles during the summer in So Cal are hard on an MTB.  Unless you begin at 04:00 AM, forget having any fun there.  Too hot.  And recent fires had closed a lot of the areas that would be tolerable for such efforts.

So it got me thinking.  And thinking (and acting on those thoughts)  led to this pic of the Curtlo resting (not parked) at the halfway point of a 60 mile ride up and around some remote canyon roads.  I have been tweaking the fit a bit more, but that is just for a brief time as I am knee deep into a new road bike build.  It will be a mix of the modern and the traditional and the new bike should settle the fit issues, shed a bit of weight, and get me a bit lower gearing.

WIll I ride it enough to make it worthwhile?  Well this is the interesting thing.  In the process of getting some miles in for this specific event, I have been very surprised by how much I am enjoying the road bike experience.  It is different, for sure, but that is not a bad thing.  Sometimes the rut in the trail gets big enough for us to hide in, more a trench than a rut, and I am enjoying learning about the road side of things.  I am finding myself planning long road rides which has made me chuckle at myself more than a few times.  I have had two weekends in a row that have been right at 100 miles.  Huh!  How 'bout that?

I will always be a mountain biker but if this trend continues I may get back on track to being something else.

A cyclist.

Thanks for the reminder, Ray.