02.14.2011 | 12:55 pm
Today’s post is about luggage, and some very persuasive and scientific theories I have about luggage. Cycling road trip luggage, to be precise.
To set the stage for my theories, I offer to you the following photographs as evidence.
First, here is a photograph — taken yesterday — of the backseat area of my BikeMobile:
As you can clearly see, two road bikes fit in that area easily, without the necessity of removing any wheels.
Next, here is a photograph — also taken yesterday — of the bed of my truck:
And here is another, to give you a bird’s-eye view of the contents of that truck bed:
Looking at all that, please take a moment to answer the following questions:
- How many people are on this trip?
- How long is this trip?
I know that you’re waiting on tenterhooks for the answer, so I’ll get straight to it.
It was a two-day trip (to Saint George, UT) for two people: The Runner and me. Here’s. Here’s a picture of us somewhere on the Goulds / Jem / Hurricane Rim loop yesterday:
Don’t we look happy? Well, of course we look happy, because we are happy. How could we not be happy? After all, by driving for 3.5 short hours we got away from winter to a sunny, warm pavement and desert-singletrack paradise.
But still. All that luggage? For just two people? For just two days?
Which is what brings us to the heart of today’s post.
Bike Stuff Is A Gas
As anyone who has ever farted in a room knows, gas expands to fill all available space. Which is why I have to believe that bike stuff is a gas. I mean, a few months ago, I went to the Ride for the Roses weekend in Austin, then directly from there to work for a week in Chicago, and I fit everything I needed into a single suitcase.
Because that was the amount of space that was available.
Last weekend, on the other hand, The Runner and I had The BikeMobile all to ourselves and — sure enough — our stuff exactly filled the truck.
Hence: bike stuff is a gas.
A Closer Look
Let’s look a little deeper into what what, exactly, filled the truck. This time, however, we’ll number the various items, for easy identification.
Item 1: The Backpack. This contains food items, such as PRO Bars and Fruition bars, and Honey Stinger fruit chews. And Salted Nut Rolls. And Dried Mangoes. And cashews. It’s also got a number of non-bike-specific food items, such as Chex Party Mix. And chips. And Oreos. Gee, I wonder why I’m not losing weight very fast this Winter?
Item 2: The Large Black Samsonite. This suitcase contains all of The Runner’s clothes for the trip, both for cycling and for non-cycling. I’m a little bit embarrassed to admit that The Runner is a more efficient packer than I am.
Item 3: The Small Yellow Tote Bag. This bag contains The Runner’s non-clothes-related items for the weekend. And now suddenly I’m not feeling so bad about the fact that all her clothes fit into a single bag.
Item 4: The Large Grey Tote Bag. This bag contains all my biking clothes for the weekend, and is almost certainly the most perfect example of my theory. Since I knew I had plenty of room, I filled this bag with a pair of bib tights, knee warmers, arm warmers, three pair of bib shorts, three long-sleeved jerseys, three short-sleeved jerseys, a wool base layer jersey, three pair of lightweight wool cycling socks, two pair heavy wool socks, shoe covers, one pair lightweight cycling gloves, one pair middleweight cycling gloves, and one pair cold-weather cycling gloves. And three different beanies, of varying weights and colors.
The thing is, when all was said and done, what I actually wore, cycling-wise, was two different pair of bibshorts (one each for the two rides we did), one long-sleeved jersey (I wore the same jersey for both rides, because I love my new Fat Cyclist Long Sleeve jersey so much), two pair of socks, and one pair of gloves. In other words, the cycling clothes I actually used could have fit in the side pocket of The Runner’s suitcase.
Item 5: The Purple-and-Brown Tote Bag of Hideousness: I have owned two very ugly nylon tote bags for about 17 years. I’d get rid of them but they are pretty much bombproof, and incredibly practical. For this trip, the purple-and-brown bag contained four pair of cycling shoes (two each for The Runner and me) and two helmets. The side pocket contained spare tubes (both road and mountain), lube, CO2 cartridges, a triangle hex wrench, and an oil rag.
Item 6: Ice Chest. I make no apologies for this item. There’s nothing better than a cold drink after a ride.
Item 7: The Purple-and-Teal Tote Bag of Hideousness: This bag contained all my non-cycling clothes. This, embarrassingly, contains enough clothing to last me a full two weeks. I threw in multiple pairs of pants and about half the t-shirts I own. I could have done just fine by bringing two t-shirts (and the second one would have been just in case I spilled salsa on the first). I mean, it’s a biking trip, after all. Not a fashion show.
Items 8 & 9: Gary Fisher Superfly, Superfly SS: Our bikes, plus of course the road bikes (Orbea Orcas for both of us) inside the truck. I don’t feel bad about bringing these, because we did in fact go on both a road ride and a mountain bike ride. But if we had less space, it would have been easy to just bring one bike per person.
Item 10: My foot. As I perched precariously on the top of the bed of the truck and taking photos of the contents therein, looking like a fool to anyone in the parking lot who might be curious as to what I was doing.
The Consolidation of Stuff
So, suppose we hadn’t had all that room? Well, Item 1 could have been eliminated altogether, by stuffing whatever food we wanted into our helmets for the trip. Item 2 — OK, Item 2 stays as-is, but Item 3 could maybe have been pared down?
Okay, maybe not. I don’t want to go there.
Items 4, 5, and 7, however, could easily have been combined into a single bag, as long as The Runner was willing to share her toothbrush. And doesn’t mind me smelling a little bit bad by day 2 of the trip.
I’ll have to ask her about that.
So sure, we could have easily fit everything we needed into a smaller space for the trip. But you know, there’s something luxurious about lazy packing — just throwing stuff in there, so you know you’re covered, no matter what the weather or your mood.
And besides, there’s no fighting physics.
Comments (35)
02.9.2011 | 12:50 pm
Before I (eventually, as usual) ease into today’s topic — The interview Paul Kimmage conducted with Floyd Landis in NY Velocity — I’d like to dive into caveat-land for a moment. Specifically, I’m not well. Nothing big, just a sore throat that’s probably evolving into a cold. But I’ve been dealing with sick kid issues — some short term stuff, some long-term stuff — and that, compounded with a coughing jag that lasted for a big chunk of the night has left me a little bit exhausted.
So the hilarity quotient — at least the intentional hilarity quotient — of this post might be a tad low.
Or maybe it wouldn’t have been all that funny anyway.
The Joke That Didn’t Happen
My original plan for today’s post was to do an absurd “Gems from the Kimmage / Landis” interview. My premise was going to be along the lines of “this interview is so impossibly long that there’s no way people are actually reading it in its entirety, so I took one for the team and read the whole thing, and here are the amazing things I’ve uncovered.”
And then I would go on to reveal that deep within the interview are things like:
- A recipe for a really good Southwestern grilled shrimp marinade
- Winning lottery numbers
- The GPS coordinates for Elvis’ current residence
- An elegant, face-palmingly-simple, common-sense solution to Fermat’s Last Theorem.
As “research” for my post, I decided that I’d better go ahead and read the whole interview, published in NY Velocity.
Way before I finished reading it, I decided it wasn’t something I wanted to joke about.
Addle-Brained Observations
Now that I’ve read the whole interview, I kinda think maybe what I should do is go back and read it again, this time liveblogging the thing. And I don’t mean a jokey liveblog, either. I mean that as I (re)read it, I should detail what I think of the question and answer.
I dunno, maybe I’ll do that sometime next week, when I feel up to it.
For right now, though, I’m just going to give a few general impressions, and then open up comments for the Vitriol Squad to talk about how this interview proves for sure that Lance Armstrong doped.
- Floyd is messed up. He still hasn’t worked through the embarrassment, humiliation, and loss he’s suffered for the past several years. No matter whether you believe or doubt everything he says, I’m pretty sure you’ll agree with the conclusion that this is a guy who is hurting pretty badly inside, and is nowhere near the end of the tunnel.
- Floyd has twisted logic. Floyd says that if given the chance to do everything over, “I would do everything the same and I would just admit it, afterwards.” And yet he is trying to position himself in an anti-doping stance, so that others won’t have to go through what he has gone through. His justification of what he claims to have done is in direct conflict with his mission to rid the world of this doping problem. I don’t honestly think he sees the paradox, which goes back to my first observation.
- Floyd still thinks he was in the right. The most amazing thing about this interview is that Floyd felt he was genuinely ill-used by the system. That even though he was a doper, and was caught for doping, he got bad treatment, because the lab caught him for the wrong offense. Kind of like getting mad at cops for arresting you for having a corpse in the trunk of your car (which you may or may not have put there) when you expected them to arrest you for the suitcase full of counterfit bills hidden in your apartment.
- Floyd has a credibility problem. With me, anyway. I was one of the guys who believed Tyler Hamilton. I was one of the guys who believed Floyd. I am one of the guys who believes Lance. This isn’t just obstinate naivete, this is part of my life philosophy: expect that people are good and honest. Does this mean that sometimes I am taken advantage of? Yes, but not as often as you might expect. Once, however, Floyd admitted that he had lied, a lot, even a guy like me has to doubt anything and everything he says. He tricked me once for motives that I didn’t guess at; how can I possibly have any confidence he’s not tricking me again, for motives I once again am not guessing at?
- Kimmage does not act like a reporter. I’m no journalist. You can tell from my interview with Phil Liggett that I’m just a cycling fan with a blog, and I don’t even pretend to try to be impartial. But Paul Kimmage’s interview with Landis seemed — even to me — remarkably un-reporter-like. Especially toward the end, where in email exchanges he starts telling Floyd how personally involved he is, and begins giving Landis career- and life-affecting counsel. I’m glad that Kimmage is at least open about his bias (as opposed to trying to camouflage it), but there’s no way to read this as objective, impartial, multiple-sourced journalism. It’s more like two friends, reinforcing their shared worldview to each other, over beers.
You know what? On second thought, I don’t think I’ll liveblog the interview. Like a lot of pro cycling news these days, it’s just too depressing.
Luckily for us, all of that nonsense has nothing to do with the reason we love riding.
PS: I’ll be back Monday.
Comments (88)
02.7.2011 | 1:18 pm
Until this very second, I have spent all my available time today taking care of sick kids. Not sick as in the kind of sickness you get by reading too much (i.e., any) Stephen KIng, but the kind of sickness you get from being around other kids.
Symptoms include fever, sore throat, and coughing, mostly. And grumpiness. But that’s me, so it doesn’t count.
What I would like you to do, then, is please pretend I have just written something very funny and clever and insightful and maybe even bike-related, and then leave a comment about that really awesome post you imagine I just wrote.
I shall then read your comments, and my heart will swell with pride over the way I somehow managed to write such an excellent and thought-provoking post today.
Comments (93)
02.3.2011 | 8:52 am
A Note from Fatty: Today’s post is another in the ongoing series of “Short posts during an intense workweek.”
I’m probably the first person to alert you to this fact — and believe me, I take my responsibility of being the first to share important news items very, very seriously — but it’s a darned cold winter. Right now, for example, it’s 6 degrees (fahrenheit), but weather.com tells me it feels like -7. And who am I to argue with Weather.com?
What does this mean? It means that, in order to avoid completely losing my mind due to inactivity, I’m riding the rollers. A lot.
And so is The Runner (except she rides a trainer, not rollers). A lot.
And we watch a lot of movies and television to distract us from the fact that we are riding our bikes in our bedroom and not going anywhere.
Here’s the problem, though: when you’ve got a set of rollers going, the noise is so loud you can’t hear what’s going on on the TV. Add a trainer to the mix and you may as well be watching a silent movie for all the dialogue you can hear.
Why I Love My Sennheiser RS 140 Wireless Headphones
For years, I got around the “I can’t hear anything” by wearing corded headphones. This was a terrifying solution, mostly because I have an excellent imagination and could easily imagine myself getting the cord wrapped caught in the wheel, wrapping it — in the space of 0.001 second — around the front axle about forty times, which would then suck me into aforementioned wheel and grind off my nose.
All while making a fearful racket.
So I tried a few different kinds of wireless headphones. Never with great results. Until, in autumn 2009, I bought the Sennheiser RS 140 headphones (which have subsequently been replaced with this newer model).
(Full Disclosure: I bought these headphones on amazon.com. I got no special deal on these headphones.)
They were kind of expensive, but they’ve turned out to be worth it for the following reasons:
- No-brainer charging. The “rack” you sit the headphones on when you’re not using them charges the headphones, so I’ve never gone to use them and found the battery dead.
- They sound great. There’s no lag at all, and very little buzziness. Note that there is some buzziness, and these would not be great headphones for listening to hi-fi music. But considering the background noise I’m generating, the slight buzz from the headphones is no problem at all.
- They’re adjustable. There are controls on the headset to adjust the volume and the L/R balance.
- You can have multiple headsets going at once. For Christmas, I bought The Runner a second headphone set — but not another transmitter. So now we can both put on headsets when we ride nowhere at the same time.
- They keep working. I’ve had a lot of sets of headphones over the years, and it seems that they never last long. These ones have been going strong since Autumn 2009. And they don’t even smell bad! OK, I lied, they smell pretty bad, actually.
What I Don’t Love
Really, there’s only one thing I don’t like about my wireless headphones. And that’s the fact that from time to time I remember that I look like this:
Which, you know, kind of makes me think I look like this guy:
But I guess I can live with looking like Lobot’s nerdier, less-high-tech brother when I’m on the rollers. It’s a small price to pay for being able to make biking nowhere for yet another cold, miserable day just a little less unbearable.
Comments (34)
02.1.2011 | 8:42 am
I’m in the second day of a busy workweek (a consolidation week, for those of you [ie, my mom] who are interested in what I do for a living). Which means I don’t have much in the way of leisure time right now. Which means I don’t get to write as much as I’d like.
But there are a few things I definitely want to say. Briefly. If, in fact, I can be brief. Which I doubt.
Get Yer FatCyclist Gear Today. Cheap.
My good friends at Twin Six are kicking off a four-day sale today, with everything throughout the store going for truly ridiculous prices.
And by “ridiculous,” I of course mean “cheap.”
It’s worth browsing the whole site to find great deals, but allow me to recommend a few particular Fat Cyclist items that you may have passed on in the past.
First, the Fat Cyclist Wool Trainer. I love mine, and wear it often enough that should I ever be kidnapped, it would be the single best clothing item police should give to bloodhounds to sniff before searching for me.
The thing is, that wool trainer is normally pretty pricey. $190. Right now, though, it’s $99.00. So if you ever wanted one but just couldn’t make yourself spend that kind of money on a non-Assos item, get one today. Cuz once these are gone, we aren’t making more.
Next, if you haven’t got yourself a Fat Cyclist windshell, that’s discounted from $95.00 to $45.00. Women’s bibs are down from $90 to $40. And men’s hoodies as well as women’s hoodies are down from $40 to $25. And all the Fat Cyclist t-shirts are down from $22 to $16.00.
Thing is, with these prices, none of these things are going to make it through the day. So if you want some Fatty gear (and Twin Six clothes) cheap, you might want to get right on it.
Vote For Me. And My Sister. And Ree.
I talk about my (numerous) superpowers pretty often. The thing is, though, most of these superpowers are fake. Yes, it’s true. They’re just rhetorical devices. Hyperbole, even.
I’ll give you a moment to wrap your mind around that.
OK, now that you’re ready to continue, I will say that I do actually have two superpowers. One of them is the ability to eat more than you think I can. The other is to ask people to do things.
The first superpower isn’t all that useful; it mostly just means that I have to keep buying larger and larger superhero costumes.
The second superpower, though. Well, that’s a different story. It’s pretty powerful. I’m proud to say, though, I — mostly — use this power for good. Today, though, it’s all about me. Well, me and my sister and a friend of mine .
Yes, that’s right. I’m about to (once again) ask you to do some Bloggies voting.
This time, it really comes as a surprise, though. While I did ask you to nominate some friends of mine, I didn’t expect to get any nominations for myself.
But apparently, a bunch of you went and nominated me for the “LIfetime Achievement” blog award anyway.
Seriously, thank you for that.
And the thing is, with me hoping to get a “Best of Fatty” book and the Caretaker’s Companion off the ground, it would not hurt my credibility at all to be able to claim a Lifetime Achievement award when I go pitching myself to folks.
Meanwhile, my sister Jodi (Pistols and Popcorn) got nominated for Best Parenting Weblog, and my friend Ree of Pioneer Woman got nominated for practically everything.
So please, do me a favor and vote for me and my sister. And get your friends to. And so forth. Here’s what you do.
- Go to http://2011.bloggi.es/ .
- Scroll down to “Lifetime Achievement” (it’s way toward the bottom) and select me.
- Scroll up to “Best Parenting Weblog” and select Pistols & Popcorn.
- Scroll all over the place and select “The Pioneer Woman.”
- Hey, go ahead and vote for other folks. Why not?
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and type the weird reCaptcha words.
- Enter your email address.
- Submit your nomination
- Check your email and click the link to verify your vote.
- Yay, this has ten steps.
Thanks tons. I promise, I’ll only ask you to do this like fifteen more times this month and then I’m done asking for stuff for me.
Until, I mean, I need something from you again.
Comments (23)
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