Today, I have some great news, some good news, and some more good news.

Great News

About two years ago, my wife found out she had breast cancer. About a year ago, she finished up her treatment: surgery and chemo. Yesterday afternoon, she got back the results of her 1-year followup appointment.

She’s clean!

Of course, she’s still high risk for the next four years or so, but decreasingly so. I hate to say we’re out of the woods, but it sure feels like it.

Huzzah!

Good News

My wife’s actually feeling a little under the weather today, so I took the day off for her to rest and recover, and for me to play with the kids.

Later this afternoon, she’ll probably go to see the new Sense and Sensibility movie with a friend.

Why is this good news? Well, since I’ll be watching the kids, I don’t have to go see Sense and Sensibility, of course: I get brownie points for being a good husband and  I get to avoid a movie I desperately want to not see.

More Good News

The only thing is, I’m not going to have time to write the Fat Cyclist entry I had planned for today. Luckily, yesterday Dug sent me an email talking about finding out what his wattage output is. I think that most cyclists — and especially anyone who has read Lance Armstrong’s War (recommended, by the way) — have wondered what their wattage is, so I was interested in what the test was like.

Plus, Dug’s a good writer, in spite of his churlish nature. And when I asked him nicely, he even cleaned it up, adding proper capitalization and punctuation.

Take it away, Dug.

Wattage Testing For Dorks

When Lance Armstrong won the Alpe de Huez time trial a few years ago, he maintained a sustained wattage output of over 400 watts, for something like 32 minutes. The rest of the top 20 in the elite pro peloton average about 10 percent less. I only mention this as a way of pointing out that you and I both suck. It doesn’t matter how much better than me you are, or how much better than you I am. Comparatively speaking, we all suck. But sometimes we forget. Well, I do anyway.

Last night, I was forcibly reminded.

My wife signed us up for a 4 month winter spin class at her gym. I’ve never been one for structured classes or exercise, but this was something we could do together, and would help me maintain some fitness through the winter. Plus, she has just finished some kind of personal trainer workout/eating program, and she is taking great delight in the fact that her body fat percentage is lower than mine. So I agreed to this spin class, knowing they’d test us for wattage, and I’d be able to lord my wattage numbers over her.

I’m pathetic.

I hate tests. When they made me swim a mile at scout camp, they had to throw me in the lake and guard the dock so I wouldn’t get out of the water; I did the sidestroke, just so they’d have to stand there for entire two hours while I swam. But this wattage test was also something I could email to Fatty, and tell him I had more voltage — or ohms, or amperes, or whatever — than he has.

State of the Art Facility

Kim and I went to the trainer’s house for the test: me with my Cannondale RX2000, Kim with a friend’s Bianchi Pantani special, and our new heart rate monitors (still in the box). They oooh’d and aaaah’d over the Bianchi…until they realized it was borrowed. And too big for Kim. They took Kim downstairs, and put me in the laundry room. They had a trainer set up (next to the dirty clothes hamper), hooked to a laptop (which was resting on the Maytag washing machine).

Really elegant, very professional.

Coach put my bike in the stand, hooked a backup heart rate monitor to my earlobe, and told me to warm up. While I was spinning, he asked if I’d done any racing lately, and I told him I’d done the Snowbird hillclimb in September. Based on my finish time, he guessed I could do about 290 watts. I had no reference for this number, except Lance Armstrong’s numbers on Alpe de Huez, which didn’t really make me feel good.

All Is Vanity

I got set up in the right gear, big ring, about 5 down in the back, and coach told me to spin at 16mph (the laptop on his washing machine in front of me gave the speed). I found myself trying to control the mph minutely, embarrassingly trying to impress the coach with my ability to spin at the exact speed he wanted, and I also attempted to keep my heart rate really low, and still maintain the pace.

He paid no attention at all.

Every 60 seconds, he told me to increase my speed by .5 mph, and would periodically ask me to rate my perceived exertion, which I faked as “very comfortable” every time.

At around 21mph, I found myself looking around for a place to blow my nose. On a typical ride in the canyon, I think I expel several quarts of mucous, but I wasn’t ready to foul his laundry room — yet. Clearl, he had been waiting for this, since he immediately handed me a tissue. I guess all cyclists are alike in this regard.

The Test

When we got to 25mph, I was starting to breathe pretty heavily, and was losing my form on the bike, bobbing and weaving like a dork, my heart rate up around 185. In other words, pretty standard for me. He had me pedal at 25mph for about a minute, and just as I was prepping to up the pace to 25.5mph, he told me to gear down and cool off. I protested that I still had plenty in the tank, that I could go longer, faster. He just smiled, and said, “I’ve done thousands of these, believe me, you’re done.”

“But I haven’t even gotten out of the saddle yet, I can go faster,” I pleaded.

That’s when he explained that he was measuring maximum sustained output, not just maximum output. What you can do for about 15 seconds in a sprint isn’t the kind of fitness being measured in the wattage test. It’s what you can do over a long climb — or into a headwind — that counts.

I felt a little let down, since I’d expected to go so hard I would throw up and fall off the trainer, and need to be resuscitated. I expected drama. I expected to really show how I could push myself into dangerous territory. This was all so…genteel.

Or as genteel as it could be in a laundry room.

For My Next Feat of Strength, I Shall Challenge My Kids to an Arm Wrestling Match

But I got the payoff. Kim came upstairs, and the woman with her was gushing about how well she did (Kim’s never ridden a road bike before: only mountain biking, recreationally), and how great she looked. “Yeah, but what was your wattage?” I asked.

“175. What’s yours?”

“287.” (I snickered, but only to myself—I’m not completely insane.)

“That’s great,” Kim said with a yawn. “Hey, can we get going? I’m a little light-headed; I did the test without using my asthma medication.”

I swear, I could have done 295. I swear.

I learned a lot from the comments posted yesterday. Specifically, I learned that:

• Of all the places in the world from which a bike can be stolen, a bike rack seems to be the least common.
• If you steal a bike, the bike will do its utmost to kill you and return to its rightful owner.
• You people get distressed over the loss of a bike in much the same way most people get distressed over the loss of a beloved friend. Which makes total sense to me, by the way.

Truthfully, yesterday’s comments on bike theft were uniformly outstanding. Except BotchedExperiment’s, who needs a little work on his begging skills. So, while I can only give a messenger bag to one person, I’d like to hand out several honorable mentions, which are as heartfelt as they are non-negotiable.

Grand Prize

The Banjo Brothers Messenger Bag winner is Al Maviva, with his story of theft, rage, revenge, triumph, and a bunch of crying.

Hell Hath No Fury Like a 10-Year-Old Who Has Just Had His Bike Stolen

When I was a little kid, 10 years old or so, we lived in a semi-rural area on a road that was bordered by forest and corn fields. A lot of teenagers would drive up our road, park and get stoned. We weren’t supposed to ride on the road.

One day I was out with one of my sisters, who was about 7, tooling around on the road on my little red and white Schwinn with coaster brakes and 16” hard rubber tires. This green stationwagon with about 5 teenagers in it pulled up, and a couple kids got out while two or three stayed in the car. One kid blocked my forward progress, and the other knocked me off my bike and then rode away.

My sister started crying and screaming, I started crying and screaming, and I was pissed and scared and totally freaking out, in an enormous hysterical rage. Taking isn’t nice, I guess.

Just then, I noticed these big rocks about the size of bread loaves or a little larger just off the side of the road, adjacent to the cornfield. In a total Hulk fit, I hoisted a good sized rock and threw it — soccer throw-in style — over my head with two hands, onto the hood of the car. It bounced across the hood leaving a basketball-sized dent and some scratches.

The two or three teens in the car started freaking out. While they discussed the situation and shouted to their bike thief friend, I kept screaming and crying, and I hoisted another big rock and heaved it, putting another huge dent in the hood.

The teens were shouting at each other. Meanwhile, I hoisted this enormous rock that was almost too big for me to lift. I was still crying and screaming and blubbering, “I hate you I’m gonna tell on you I hate you,” and so forth.

I staggered over to the car holding the enormous rock, getting ready to take out the windshield. The kid driving the car gets out of the car and I noticed he’s crying. “This is my father’s car! He’s going to kill me! Stop! Please! Stop!” So I blubber, “Gimme my bike back,” and stood there with the rock over my head, basically holding the windshield hostage.

The thief finally saw what was happening, and started riding back to the car. I backed off a couple steps, the teenagers started getting into the car and yelling to the thief, “That little kid is &%$@ing crazy, give him back his bike.” The thief threw the bike past me into the field and jumped into the car, and they peeled away, and I eventually dropped the big rock.

When I finally stopped crying and freaking out and hyperventilating, my sister and I agreed to never speak of this to our parents.

Honorable Mentions

There were lots of good stories, and the only reason I’m not including more of them is because at some point it’d just start to look like all I did today is copy and paste the comments section from yesterday’s post.

Which I guess is what I did, but I’m also adding this clever introduction, not to mention witty award titles. Hey, cut me a little slack, would you?

The "I Had No Idea My Brother-in-Law Is So Bizarre" Award

I have this riding friend who, in an effort to upgrade his lackluster skills, upgraded his lackluster bike. Actually, he bought the Specialized S-Works Enduro in 2003—the whiz-bang super cool anodized one with the Talas fork and the "itch-switch™." Price tag: $5,300.

Geez, it was a nice bike. And geez, he wouldn’t stop yacking about it. So, when he went on vacation for a week, leaving said bike alone at home, I slinked into his garage (actually, I had the super skinny 9 year-old slide under the cat-sized opening for…well…the cat, in the garage door) and I stole the bike.

After he returned, I had it in my home for three days before he noticed that it was gone, and before he noticed the ransom note taped to his front door, replete with disturbing photographs of the bike, bound and gagged with me cleverly disguised as a terrorist with a hacksaw preparing to lop off some critical parts.

The ransom demands were simple: A block of sharp cheddar cheese, a Metallica CD, a copy Mein Kampf, and $25. He thought that I was kidding—obstinate fool. He held out for a week until he realized I was serious. He delivered the goods, all but the block of cheese.

"No bike, monkey boy—not until ALL of the demands have been met."

Later that day I ate cheese, had a good read [editor's note: ?!?!] , and some head bangin,’ whilst he got re-acquainted with his now-tainted aluminum buddy.

—Rocky

Award for Most Secure Bike Ever

I have never had a bike stolen, but I have a good reason why. I put my bike in the company bike rack like everyone else, and I don’t even lock it up. However, I do sit about fifteen feet from the bike rack where I occupy my post as a security officer. We are required to carry a firearm for work, so I figured I can skip the lock.

— uncadan8 

Karma Award

I had put my road bike on my bike rack one day after a ride and, due to the ride-induced malfunction of my brain, forgot to lock it. I went to run an errand and came out of the store after being away from the car for 10-15 minutes max. Not only was my bike gone – but my rack had also been stolen. It was not a particularly valuable bike – but it was what I could afford at the time – and I was ripped.

I’m a nurse and had to be in to work that night – and was assigned to work in the ER. My 3rd patient of the evening was a young guy in his 20’s who came in with a fractured collarbone and quite a few scrapes. We got to talking about biking and the rides we had both enjoyed in the area. At that point, he told me that he’d had a bike vs. motor vehicle encounter that had brought him into the ER.

His girlfriend says "You’ve got to see the bike – it’s on the rack but it’s totally messed up!" I went out to the parking lot – and of course, it was my bike, my rack, and my helmet – which I hadn’t even realized was missing!! Guess that vehicle was one of those newfangled karmas…

— Joanie

Award for Most Shameless Plea for a Bike Bag

Can I PLEASE have the bag? I’ve had 2 bikes stolen. One from university rack, other from car in university parking lot.

—BotchedExperiment

Award for Laziest Entry

Can I PLEASE have the bag? I’ve had 2 bikes stolen. One from university rack, other from car in university parking lot.

—BotchedExperiment

Award for Most Un-Stolen Bike

I had a properly locked superbe pro/columbus slx road bike go missing from the university racks in 1985. I put in a report with campus security and the police. About a week later I saw a bike suspiciously like mine in the rack behind the science labs. I sidled over and had a look.

I recognised the scratch on the down tube. Then I recognised the lock. Then I remembered that I had visited a friend on the way to lectures on that fateful day. And had arrived from a different direction, and used a different bike rack, and had a memory like a sieve.

—BIG Mike

The "You Traded it for What?" Award

This one is visceral for me. When I was a lad of 8, my Mom bought me my big person’s bike; a new Raleigh Gazelle. I rode my Gazelle throughout the neighborhood in the early mornings and thus established a deep and life long habit of early morning rides that is attached at my core and I follow to this day. One day, I was at the "gully" in our neighborhood finding lead pieces (treasure) from a target shooter long past, when I heard a couple of big kids laughing. I looked up and noticed that the bike they were riding (away from me quickly) looked familiar. It was my Gazelle.

Needless to say, my existence was , well, shattered. I eventually resigned myself to the loss and got back on my 20" Schwinn hand-me-down. Many weeks later my big brother spotted what he thought was the Gazelle in the bike racks at the junior high he attended. He noted the serial number and indeed it was my bike. The police and my brother and my father all waited for the thief to come to the bike and confronted him. I got it back, fenders missing and the handle bars turned upside down. It was cool. I was happy to have my bike back.

I rode it for years and eventually traded it for banjo lessons when I was sixteen. I wish I hadn’t. I miss my Gazelle to this day and I sometimes think I should find another one for old time’s sake. Nowadays, I only leave my bike unattended outside of grocery stores in small towns where I have stopped for treats. I haven’t had any problems. 

—jimserotta 

The "If It’s Not Locked Up, It Must Not Be Worth Stealing" Reverse-Psychology Award

After 30+ years of riding bikes ive noticed if i lock up a bike, it gets stolen. If i dont lock it up, it stays. Ive never figured it out but it just works for me like that. Andits always the cheap bikes i own that always get stolen. My K-mart special, gone. my discount Diamondback, gone. My Cannondales and S-works, never move. Even all my bmx bikes never got stolen if i left em sitting around, but the minute i locked em up, Gone. 

—Donald Carter 

The "Dude, the Stolen Bike Was the Least of Your Problems" Award

I have a story of a stolen bike but it is, alas, deeply sad. The first real bike, a Trek 320 or some such number, a tourer with the nifty shifters in the drops, champagne. Bought it with my high school graduation money in 1979, rode it everywhere, moved in with a girl I thought I loved, possibly drank too much and certainly engaged in mild drug abuse. Wandered out of the apartment to drink too much, left the door ajar, returned to an emptied out shell of a place.

 —alas

I’ve never had a biking trip quite like the Moab trip last weekend, and not just because of the weather or where we rode or having a great group of friends to ride with. I’ve been trying to figure out what made this one different, and I think I’ve got it figured out: It was great because I was determined to make it great. Now that I’ve got four kids, a fairly intense job, and live several states away, it’s not that easy to get away for a weekend. So I told myself I was going to make the most of it.

Yesterday, I talked about how other people rode. Today, it’s all about me.

Auspicious Beginning

Leading up to Moab this year, I have ridden my mountain bike a whopping five times. I knew I was out of practice and that the mountain bike would feel awkward at first. I also knew, though, that I had been riding my road bike every day; my legs were in good shape. I decided that I wouldn’t worry about whether I made lots of moves, but that I would at least try.

The first day, we rode Slickrock, which is possibly the most popular mountain bike trail in the world. It’s a massive sandstone playground. You can ride the entire loop in a couple hours, but we all preferred to go from one move to the next, with everyone getting as many attempts as they like.

The first move is located at a 20-foot-high round dome of sandstone, with an overhanging ridge at the top. The idea is to climb the dome, go under the overhang and then hop the final lip at the top. It’s a finesse move.

I should point out that the fact that most of the group cleaned this move within a few tries does not make it an easy move. I’ve been to this move with other groups and think I can safely say that most people would not clean this move, ever.

You start by approaching the dome, turning right as you begin climbing it — it’s too steep to go straight up — then pull a sharp U-turn left to get under the overhang. This is the tricky part, because you’ve got to stay a little crouched to not bang your head, your legs are giving everything they’ve got to make it up the steep pitch, and you’ve got a pretty impressive drop on your right.

I tried this move probably eight or nine times, each time losing traction and spinning out at the U-turn. Finally, it occurred to me: try taking the U-turn wider. It meant more time under the overhang, but I was less likely to spin out.

It worked.

Once you’ve made the U-turn, the rest of the move isn’t very difficult — just scary, because you’ve got a wall going up to your right, rock inches over your head, and a big ugly fall to your left. Then, a quick hop at the top over a small step, and I was there.

I could tell it was going to be a good weekend.

My Head Commences to Swell

Next, there was an interesting move everyone called “The Crack.” The best line is up a crack in the sandstone as you lunge up the four-foot, slightly-inclined wall. You’ve got to be careful, because there’s a sandstone wall on your left side, and exposure everywhere else.

While some people made the obvious jokes (Have you ever wondered how middle-aged men act when they’re together? Just like high school sophomores, it turns out) about “cracks,” I watched others do the move, trying to see what worked. Then, I rolled up at speed, wheelied, and got half way up on momentum alone. I stood up, cranked twice, and was up.

First try.

Oh yeah, it was going to be a good weekend.

Ow! Ow ow ow ow.

The third big move is different — it’s just a steep slope — 70 degrees, maybe? — thirty feet down into powdery, soft sand below. From the top, it looks like you’re just rolling off into space and that you’ll fall the whole way down. Once you’re going, though, the real trick is to just manage your speed. You don’t want to skid, but you want to keep the wheels rolling as slowly as possible.

At the beginning of the day, I had not intended to do this move. It’s a pure “guts” move, and I tend to err on the side of caution.

The first few people had gone, and now there were three or four of us up top, looking at each other.

I decided to try it.

I rolled down, and could tell I wasn’t doing a good job of speed management — I was going too fast. I grabbed more brake, but not enough. I kept accelerating.

And then I hit the sand.

My bike stopped right away, but I did not. I shot over the front of the bike, mostly landing harmlessly in the nice, soft sand.

My right hand, though, landed in a cactus.

I had picked up two kinds of quills:

• Nice, easy-to-extract needle-ish quills: These were very easy to remove. Grab them and pull them out. I probably picked up fifteen to twenty of these.
• Nasty tufts of hairlike quills: I also picked up dozens — hundreds? — of tiny little quills as fine as hairs. These were easy enough to remove, if you could see them. Some of them came in little clumps and could be pulled out together. Others, though, came individually, and stung like crazy whenever I touched my palm to anything. I expect I have not yet removed all of these.

Strangely, this painful episode didn’t do much to hurt my confidence. After all, I had just had bad luck hitting a cactus; it’s not like the fall itself would have otherwise been painful at all.

All in all, I was pleased with myself: I had just ridden my bike down a thirty foot wall.

Gold Bar Rim

Gold Bar Rim is one of Moab’s best-kept secrets. This is because most people don’t understand the right way to ride it. If you ride it as most people do, it’s not a great ride — you’re just climbing, climbing, climbing, and then faced with the Portal trail at the end, which is an evil, murderous trail (there’s seriously a sign at the top with a counter saying how many people have died while trying to ride it).

What we do, instead, is ride as a group from one interesting technical move to another. We then stop and work on trying to clean it, giving everyone as many tries as they like (there used to be a three-try rule, but as the difficulty of moves has increased, that rule has fallen by the wayside).

As I noted yesterday, my technical skills aren’t even close to most of my friends’. But something had got into my head, and I found myself on a quest to clean certain moves.

• Staircase: This is just a massive progression of sandstone ledges, some just an inch or two high, some as high as a foot. Some people cleaned it and moved on, some people tried it once or twice and moved on. According to Rocky, who cleaned it his first try and then waited for me, I tried it ten times, and I had already tried it a few times before he even got there. The thing is, though, I finally got it.
• Grand Finale: I knew, going in, that I wasn’t going to clean this move. It’s three massive ledges (3-4 feet each) you’ve got to climb in immediate succession. Until this past weekend, though, I had never even tried it. Last Saturday, though, after watching everyone else make attempt after attempt, it occurred to me: I would never clean that move if I didn’t at least start trying. So I did. I never even got to the top of the second ledge, but I did make it past the first. For me, that’s a big deal. I probably tried this six or seven times.

Aftermath

I looked in the mirror today and I have five large bruises on my legs. I didn’t count how many times I fell during the weekend, but I would guess it was close to thirty times. Maybe fifty.

Maybe it’s for the best that I didn’t count.

The thing is, though, I would gladly have twice as many bruises, and fall twice as often, if that’s what it took to earn that feeling of approaching a move, attacking it, and having the uncertainty and apprehension turn to victory and elation as you finally — finally! — make that move yours.

I just — as in 12 hours ago — got back from Moab, UT, where a group of friends and I had what I think most of us would agree was the best long weekend of mountain biking in the history of long weekends of mountain biking.

I’m sure we share a lot of the same reasons for what made it great. The weather was truly ideal; temperatures in the mid-sixties throughout the day, with just enough of a breeze to feel good. There’s a new Mexican restaurant in town that we all agreed was top-notch. There was good consensus on which rides we should do, and most everyone stayed for the whole three days. And those who didn’t stay for all three days had a good reason for going home, except Brad, who is a nincompoop.

I had my own particular, secret reason for why I enjoyed the trip, though: I have fully and completely accepted that I am and always will be the worst rider in the group.

It’s refreshing, really, to finally be able to say to myself, "I may improve a lot, but I will never ever ever be even remotely as technically adept as the second-worst rider in the group." Once I admitted that, I was able to stop competing, and just start enjoying the multitude of ways in which all my friends are better mountain bikers than I am, and how they express that superiority.

I shall give examples.

Ride Brilliantly, Then Say You are Just Lucky

I wanted to start with this one, because many Fat Cyclist readers have expressed interest in how my brother-in-law Rocky would fare, what with his being a karmic black hole and all. Well, as he pointed out midway through the second day of riding last weekend, those kinds of problems only happen to him when he’s on endurance rides.

Rocky, I think it can be safely said, left everyone’s jaws hanging open last weekend. On Slickrock, he cleaned everything, and usually on the first try. On Goldbar Rim, he completely dumbfounded everyone by casually flashing big drops and tall ledges. This is best illustrated by a move that I call "The Grand Finale" — a series of three ledges in rapid succession, each about three feet high. Rocky, without ever having tried this move before, rode straight up it: Bam, bam, bam. First try. Then, after everyone else worked on it for about an hour while Rocky soaked up the sun, he got back on his bike and did it again.

The thing is, after each extraordinary feat, Rocky would always have some sort of weird self-deprecation on hand to explain it away. The following are actual quotes from Rocky, followed by my petulant responses.

• "I did it on the first try, because I knew I didn’t have enough gas for the second try." So, I’m falling down simply because I have energy to burn, right Rocky?
• "I just cleaned it because I was afraid to fall down." I, on the other hand, seek opportunities to crash and burn. Yes, I realize that it looks like that’s really the case, but I’m being sarcastic.
• "I’m just having a good day." No, Rocky, I’m having a good day, because I’m cleaning roughly 40% of the moves after having tried over and over and over. You are having a day unlike any day I can even imagine.

You know what I think? I think the extra kidney was just holding Rocky back.

Do Impossible Moves with the Grace of a Dancer, Using the Simplest Bike Imaginable

Brad is a pleasure to watch. While most people thrash on their bikes, trying to manhandle them up — or down — a tricky move, Brad just seems to flow up and over everything, as if he has obtained a waiver from the people who enforce the laws of physics and gravity. Brad sees a series of boulders, feet apart — something most people wouldn’t even picture as a "move," because clearly there’s no way to ride up and over all those — and then he rides up and over all those.

I don’t even try most of the moves Brad cooks up, in much the same way that I don’t try to speak Japanese: Saying a sentence is out of the question when you don’t have the vocabulary.

This year, Brad did it all on a 29"-wheeled singlespeed, which somehow made his riding even more elegant. On the singlespeed, you don’t get to pick how fast or slow you approach the moves, you pretty much have to do everything at a good clip or lose your momentum.

I used to be envious of Brad’s riding style. Now he’s so far ahead of me that the envy’s gone. Plus, I’m confident that I’m 45% smarter than he is.

Convince Me You are Going to Die Every Single Time You Do a Move

Corey is a mellow, unassuming guy who just seems happy to be wherever he happens to be at the moment. When he’s on his bike, though, you can be certain that he’s looking for a difficult ledge to climb up, or a huge drop to fly down. And you can be equally certain that he will completely disregard any potential consequences of failure, such as falling to his death or ramming headfirst into a rock.

Corey routinely charged at 4-foot-high ledges at top speed, knowing that he needed that kind of momentum to carry him up, and also knowing that if he didn’t make it, he’d crush into the ledge and then fall backward. He’d get big air off a ten foot drop, yelling "That felt good!" afterward, leaving unspoken — unthought? — how double-plus-ungood it would have felt if he would have munged the landing.

I guess that’s what separates the daredevils from the poseurs: Corey sees how well the move’s going to go; I see opportunities for compound fractures.

Convince Me that Fitness and Power are the Answers to Every Problem

Kenny also brought a singlespeed 29-er to the Moab party. And while Brad just seemed to zip up and over thing in spite of physics, Kenny cleaned everything as if he wanted to make an obstinate rebuttal to gravity. So many times during the rides last weekend, Kenny would slow down in the middle of a move. I’d think he was about to go down, and then he’d lean forward, stand up, and pedal through it. I swear, Kenny could pedal up a tree if the tires would stick.

Convince Me that Fitness and Power are Irrelevant to the Problem

Bob’s got middle-age spread to about the same extent I do. He’s been riding his mountain bike no more than I have, and his road bike considerably less than I have. But he was still cleaning move after move. No two ways about it: Bob’s got the skill and experience to make his body do whatever he wants, even if his body doesn’t think it can.

I think, actually, Bob may have benefited from the advice I gave him through the day. I encouraged him, for example, to throw his shoulders back when he attempted a move, or to try to lift his front wheel with more panache. My advice had its effect, and I could tell Bob really valued it, primarily by giving me the extra space a man of wisdom deserves. Some might suggest he was avoiding me, but I know better.

Completely Up-end My Understanding of What Makes a Good Bike

Dug and Rick both rode hardtail singlespeed 29-ers at Fall Moab this year, too. And they were cleaning moves left and right. They were climbing stuff I was doing in my granny gear. They were, in effect, showing me that all the reasons I have for a geared setup were actually just ways that I’m compensating for my weak legs. I’d clean a move and be proud of myself, and then Rick and Dug would easily do the same move on their singlespeeds. I’d be motoring uphill and feeling good about myself, when they’d suddenly pass me. "Sorry, gotta keep moving," they’d say.

Rick let me borrow his bike for a few minutes during a couple of the rides, and now I desperately want a Gary Fisher Rig.

And Yet… 

So, yes. I am the worst rider of the group, and always will be. But you know what? I had some spectacular successes over the weekend, along with some impressive failures. And those are what I will talk about tomorrow.

And, after all, every group needs an omega rider — a guy who can make everyone else in the group feel good about themselves. I’m proud to fill that role.

PS: Who’s in the photos? Here’s who.

1. Bob, cleaning a ledge drop. Then, after the ledge drop, you’ve got to do . . . another ledge drop.

2. Corey, going big. That’s a six-foot vertical drop he’s hucking there, with a nice hard sandstone floor rushing up to greet him.

3. Dug, cleaning a big ledge move. It’s hard to tell in the photo, but that ledge overhangs. You’ve got to wheelie up about 18 inches and then hop your rear wheel that same amount.

4. The group.

     Left to right, front row: Rich, Tom, Brad, Paul.

     Left to right middle row: Rocky, Corey, Rick, Dug, Bob

     Left to right, back row: Kenny, Racer, Fatty