Is there anything less surprising in the world than a cyclist getting hit by a car? I mean, sure, it’s a big deal to the guy it actually happens to, but it’s so common of a story it’s almost not worth telling, right?

But I just can’t get my head around what happened on my commute yesterday.

The Setup

It had rained most of Tuesday night, but Wednesday morning was really nice: cloudy, but no wind. I finished writing and posting my entry for the day, got my bike out, cleared the pine needles out from between the tires and fenders (it’s amazing how many collect there in just ten miles, and how much of a braking action they cause), and headed to work.

The stoplight at the intersection of 228th and Inglewood Hill meant that, as usual, I was first off the line. There’s a nice shoulder on the side of the road, though, so people had no trouble passing me. I got up to speed and was cruising along at about 20mph.

The Crash

Then, about 200 yards after the stoplight, a bronze Toyota Previa passed me and then immediately turned into the parking lot to my right, right in front of me.

I grabbed my brakes and veered right, but there was no where to go — no way to avoid the van.

I thunked hard into the rear-right of the van with my left shoulder and ribs, then crashed to the ground on my right side. My right hip and knee took most of the fall. Stunned, I laid there, looking at the van that just hit me.

The Followup

I expected the van to stop, immediately. I expected someone to jump out of the van and apologize, profusely — after all, this was clearly the van driver’s fault, pure and simple. It was a classic "Right Hook," Collison Type #4 as defined by www.bicyclesafe.com (Thanks to Mytzpyk of the excellent MinusCar blog; I’m just stealing his link). I expected, in short, the very most basic human courtesy.

Instead, the van continued into the large parking lot and parked at a far corner, near a building.

Maybe it says something about me that I assumed whoever did this would come over after parking. I got up, checking to see how bad I was hurt. Not too badly, as it turned out. My left shoulder and ribs hurt, and my right hip and knee stung, but nothing felt serious. While I waited for this person to come over, I — shakily, due to the adrenaline rush — checked over my bike. The fenders were a little out of alignment, but they wouldn’t take long to fix. Otherwise, it looked like my bike was OK, too. I was sure the person who had caused this crash would be glad to hear that.

Speaking of which, I still hadn’t seen anyone exit the van.

The Not-Very-Surprising Conclusion

I had meant this story to have a twist ending, but the way I’ve been telegraphing details, I assume you’ve figured out by now: Tired of waiting for this person to do the right thing, I finally went over to the van myself.

It was empty.

I assume that the driver either bolted into the building while I was checking my bike or exited from the passenger side of the van and used cover from the other cars in the lot to get to the building.

You had figured out that something like this had happened, right?

But I still do have one little twist I’ll bet you didn’t see coming: the building this driver snuck into was a church.

Nice.

The Letdown

I got on my bike and left. Within a few miles, it occurred to me that I should have left a sarcastic note on the van’s windshield — something like, "Hey, unorthodox interpretation of the Good Samaritan parable you’re using there." Or I could have given a bike shoe cleat-enhanced kick to the car where I had crashed into it. Or I could have gone into the church, asking everyone whether they knew who was the person who thought hit and runs were OK.

I always have those kinds of ideas, and they always come too late to be of any use. And maybe that’s for the best. Or maybe it’s not.

The Questions

So, here are the questions for the day:

• What should I have done differently, if anything?
• When you’ve been either hit by — or forced into hitting — a car, how have you reacted (assuming you were conscious and could react at all)
• Is this slink-away-undetected hit-and-run behavior as mind-blowingly strange as it seems to me? Or is it more common than I thought?

The Winner of Yesterday’s Banjo Brothers Bike Bag Giveaway

First off, I should apologize for not replying to comments yesterday. I was not in a cheerful mood, and didn’t want to put a damper on the hilarious bike rack-related postings that were flying around. Here’s my favorite:

While preparing to race the 12 Miles of Hell in Lawton, Oklahoma, my friend had pulled out her fancy trailer-hitch-bike-rack-cum-repair-stand from the Jeep. It’s one of those jobs that swings out away from the back of the vehicle so you can open the tailgate without removing or folding down the rack. Hot stuff.

I came around from the side of the Jeep, full of excitement and pre-race jitters, and CLOSE-LINED the HELL out of myself on the extended rack. I was actually knocked on my butt from the impact. I had bruises for weeks. The best part of it all? We were camped right at the starting line, which was, at the time, crawling with the Pro/Expert riders who were getting ready to begin the day’s racing.

*sigh* I should not be allowed out of the house some days…

— k

"Why is K the winner?" I hear you ask, in a petulant tone. Here’s why.

• Originality: It described how a bike rack can be dangerous not just to a bike, but to a person.
• Relevance: When I read this comment, I thought to myself, "D’oh! I forgot to talk about all the times I have stood up after fastening a bike to the rack with a bungie cord or Velcro strap, whacking the crown of my skull into a sharp metallic corner of the rack in the process."
• Hilarity: I love the image of someone getting clotheslined by a rack right at the starting line of a race, as long as that image is not of me.
• Braveness: Willingness to describe an episode where you are clearly the buffoon is not an easy thing.

K, email me your mailing info and I’ll send you the Banjo Brothers Seat Bag. And everyone else, thanks for submitting your stories. You’ll get another chance next week, so don’t whine about losing, OK?

BONUS: Important Next Week’s Banjo Brother’s Giveaway Info

Last night I emailed the Banjo Brothers and asked if we could mix things up a little for next week. "Instead of giving away a seat bag," I proposed, "could we give away a full-on messenger bag?" They said yep. Because they’re cool.

Most cyclists will agree with me on this, I think: the best way to start a ride is from your own garage. Click in, roll out. It’s a nice, smug feeling: The world is your oyster. You’re self-sufficient. You’re eco-friendly.

Sadly, a lot of the best rides just don’t work out that way. To get to the ride, you have to become a rolling irony and drive there.

And that means, eventually, getting a bike rack for your car. Which is why I respectfully submit this, “The Fat Cyclist’s Guide to Ultimate Bike Rack Happiness.”

Okay, I admit: today’s headline oversells what I have to say. But I just couldn’t bring myself to call today’s entry “The Fat Cyclist’s list of rack-related misadventures and resulting mildly-useful advice.”

Even though that’s what it is.

Don’t Use a Temporary Fix as Your Permanent Solution

You know those racks that can be mounted on the trunk of your car using nothing but a few plastic clips, some aluminum tubing, and an infinitely long tangle of nylon straps? Those suck. If used for more than a month or so, they will bust. They will trash your car’s paint job. They will self-destruct when your car reaches 72 miles per hour.

Actually, I have no idea if any of those things are true. I’ve never owned one of those temporary trunk-mounted jobbies, for the following reasons:

• The House of Cards Effect: Bikes on temporary racks always look like they’re in a precarious position.
• The Excessive Effort Effect: If you own a temporary rack, any time you want to take your bike somewhere you’ve got to first put the rack on your car, and then put your bike on the rack. For lazy people (ie, me) that crosses the “too much work” threshold and they’re (I’m) likely to find a reason to bail on the whole enterprise.
• The “Steal Me” Effect: Temporary bike racks give you no security. After you’ve been on this epic ride and are on your way home, say you want to get something to eat at Wendy’s. Crazier things have happened, right? So you go to Wendy’s and then realize that your bike is connected to your car using nothing but nylon webbing, aluminum tubing, and plastic clips. All it would take to steal your $6000 Colnago is a good pair of scissors.
• The Real Reason: I know myself well enough to realize that while I would fastidiously follow the directions for hooking up the rack the first time, after a couple times I would get sloppy and do it wrong. The thought of watching my bike in the rear view mirror as it bounces along the road higgledy-piggledy at freeway speeds is terrifying enough to be a deal breaker.
• The Other Real Reason: Not that you need more than one deal breaker, but I’m confident that if I put a hinged contraption with yards and yards of nylon straps and clips in my garage, it would immediately become so tangled that even the original manufacturer would give it up as a lost cause.

Don’t Put Your Bike Up Top

I do not know a single bike owner with a roof-mounted bike rack and a garage who has not plowed their bike (or, often, more than one bike) into the garage at least once. Myself included. In my case, I had four bikes on the roof at the time. Since, however, two of the bikes were rear-facing, my moment of neglect damaged only (!!) two bikes: two new handlebars, one replaced frame, two new suspension forks, two new headsets, and two new stems set me right as rain. That cost about $1800.

Except this event also damaged the car. Insurance covered most of that, after my $500 deductible.

Oh yeah, I also needed to replace parts of the bike rack. That cost about $400.

And, finally, let’s not forget the damage to the brickwork on the house. $600.

The money, though, wasn’t the worst part. The worst part is that when you hear that noise, you suddenly and clearly remember exactly where your bikes are and what your garage clearance is, and what that noise means. There’s no getting around it: you have just made an incredibly boneheaded error, and it is going to cost you dearly.

I remember when I heard that noise I slammed on the brakes, put the car in park, and then had to let the wave of nausea pass before I got out of the car. I almost couldn’t bear to look at what I had done.

After that, I came up with a pretty reliable system: any time I had to put a bike on the roof rack, I first put the garage door opener in the glove compartment. Then, when I got home and went for the opener in its usual place and found it wasn’t there, that reminded me of where my bikes were and what I needed to do before driving into the garage.

Don’t Over-Rack

I once bought a compact SUV (a Honda CRV) because I had a vision of how many bikes I could carry with it. I outfitted it with a roof rack, which easily accommodated four bikes. I also set it up with a spare-tire-mounted rack: that was another two bikes. Yes, I could transport six bikes, along with five passengers and their stuff. I had built the ultimate bike road trip vehicle.

There was just one problem: the car didn’t have the power for that kind of cargo. With four or five people and a bunch of bikes up top, the poor little CRV strained to keep highway speeds, even on the flats. If we went into the mountains (a distinct possibility, considering we were usually going mountain biking), my car could barely stay above 40. 41 if you turned off the A/C and stereo.

When I sold the CRV, I was left with lots of extra rack. Dug came over to see if the Cadillac he had just stolen from his mother (Dug, alas, has no scruples whatsoever) would work with the CRV’s roof rack. I had my doubts, but thought we could check.

One of the most amazing things I have ever seen was when we lifted the rack from my CRV, still locked down for that car’s dimensions, onto the 80’s vintage Cadillac and snapped it into place — with no adjustments whatsoever.

Dug and I looked at each other, jaws agape. There were no words to describe what we had witnessed.

I gave the rack to Dug, no charge. Clearly, the bike rack gods wanted Dug to have that rack; who was I to interfere?

Put the Rack in the Back

If you’re going to be putting bikes on your car on a frequent basis, you need a rack that mounts to a 2” hitch receiver. It’s that simple. The receiver will have a loop that lets you lock your bike — including the wheels — to your car, making it at least inconvenient for thieves to take your bike. Your bike won’t be any higher than your car, so you can still get in the garage. And your bike won’t be way up there in the air, so it’s easy to put them up on the rack and take them down.

“But,” I hear you say, “my car doesn’t have a 2” receiver hitch.”

Well, neither did my old Honda Civic hatchback (a wonderful, practical car which I should never have sold). A quick trip to a welder solved that problem.

Also, I should mention that I believe I may currently be the world’s only owner of an Acura RSX Type S with a 2” receiver. In the interest of embarrassing overdisclosure, I should mention that I customized the rack for this car by shortening it from a 4-bike rack to a 2-bike rack. You know, because it looked cooler.

As if once you mount a bike rack to a mid-life-crisis-mobile you have any chance of salvaging any coolness whatsoever.

Miscellaneous Wisdom, Acquired the Hard Way

• Secure the Bikes: Once you have the bike on the rack, make sure it can’t sway, especially if you’re going to be taking the bike a long distance. I made the mistake of not doing this once, and the bike rocked back and forth for the entirety of the seven-hour drive. Sadly, the downtube grazed a bolt on the rack with each sway. By the time I took the bike off the rack, the downtube — which was not mine —  had a nice little groove carved into it. I have since purchased that frame.
• Simple is Good: I’ve had a number of different kinds of racks. The most secure are the fork-mounted kind. My favorite, though, are the kind that clamp onto the top tube.
• Goodbye, Elegant Paint Job: The problem with the clamp kind, though, is that each time you clamp the top tube, you scratch the bike’s paint job a little bit. For a long time, I never noticed this effect, because my own bikes were both titanium, and hence had no paint job to scratch. When I got the Fisher Paragon (RIP), though, it wasn’t long before I had completely removed the paint in the clamping area.
• Trust Nobody: It is a widely accepted tenet of rack-based bike transportation that you are responsible for making sure your own bike is secure to the rack. If your bike flies off the rack while in flight, it’s nobody’s fault but your own. Unless the entire rack flies off the car, in which case a reasonable argument can still be made that you should have driven your own stupid car if you’re going to be a crybaby second-guesser. Not that I have ever had a rack suddenly fly off the roof of my car while at freeway speeds.

BONUS: Free Stuff Wednesday, Part II

To win a bike bag from the fabulous Banjo Brothers today, all you have to do is comment with your own bike rack story. I’ll pick the best one. And “best,” in this instance, can mean best advice, best horror story, best whatever. Don’t worry, I can tell what’s best.

Last Friday I talked about the obvious physical changes ten years of biking has made in me. Most of the changes I talked about — and most of the comments that came after — were about scars and other injuries.

Which brings up the question: So why do we bike?

Well, I bike because what’s happened in my head more than offsets anything that’s happened to my body.

I’ve Learned I’m an Athlete

In high school, I actually did “letter” — in debate and humor interpretation (yes, reading funny stories to audiences is actually a competitive event in the US, and I took it very seriously). But not in sports. Oh no, not in sports. In fact, I took some kind of cockeyed pride in not being a “jock.”

This is a tragedy, because I went to high school in Fruita, CO, which any mountain biker worth his salt knows is one of the best mountain biking destinations in the world.

As I got older, I rollerbladed (I can admit it without shame) to keep in shape, and played quite a bit of racquetball.

But I was never an athlete until I tried endurance mountain biking at age 30. The discovery that I have a gift for staying on my bike and turning the cranks long after most people would fall over exhausted was incredibly gratifying. It made me wonder: what else have I not discovered about myself?

And who wouldn’t want to find out, three decades into their life, that you’re an athlete — you just needed to find out what kind.

I’ve Learned I Can Suffer Well

I have ridden through the night, I have ridden in the cold, I have ridden when I am completely bonked out of my mind. I have ridden uphill for twenty miles with a jagged seatpost where my seat used to be. I have finished a race with a separated shoulder. I have ridden six hours after falling six feet right onto my chest, forearms, and face. And while part of me despairs (or even screams), I have never quit a race. Even while I am suffering, there’s a part of me that’s grimly amused at what a fool I am. That sarcastic guy has goaded me through a lot, and I now know that I can make it through circumstances that would shut a lot of people down. That’s a pretty cool thing to know about yourself.

I’ve Learned How to Be Smart

Kevin Millecam, a manager of mine back in the old days at Novell, used to give me challenging assignments — he’d tell me he wanted a database that could act as a back end to a shopping cart he wanted created using Java. And he would ask for those things knowing full well I was still just learning Java, and didn’t have database programming experience.

Then he would send me off on a mountain bike ride, during work hours, telling me to come back in three hours or so.

I’d take off, totally freaked out, knowing I was doomed. Within a half hour on the bike, though, I’d have forgotten all about what Kevin had asked for. And then, within an hour, little things would start popping into my head. By the time I got back, I’d have a working plan for how to get started.

Any time I’ve talked with a cyclist — road or mountain — I’ve heard similar stories. You get out on the bike and somehow your difficult problems get pushed into the background. Then, when they’re ready, they come popping back to the foreground…but they’re not as difficult as before.

I’ve Learned to Lose Myself

Every once in a while on a nice long ride, there will come a few miles where I go completely blank. I’m never aware of going into that state, but I’m always aware of coming out of it. And I realize, wow, I haven’t thought about anything for…well…I don’t know how long. Was it a minute? Five? How far did I go? What did I see? What was going on in my head? I never have answers to any of those questions, but I always feel great afterward.

I don’t know anything about Zen, but I’m pretty sure this blankness is a state they strive toward. I know Schopenhauer called it “the sublime,” but he went after it in all the wrong ways. Schopenhauer should have bought a bike.

I’ve Learned I Love the Outdoors

My dad is an avid hunter and fisherman. I — to his dismay — am not. I don’t have anything against either, I just couldn’t get into them as a kid (and believe me, I tried). Somehow, I got that all monkeyed up in my head and thought this meant that I didn’t like the outdoors.

Wrong.

Once I started mountain biking, I discovered I love the outdoors. And I have seen a lot of it. I’ve seen banana slugs as big as bananas. I’ve seen stars while out in the desert; there are a lot more of them than I had realized. I’ve seen wildflowers high up in the Uintas. I’ve seen moose and elk and mountain lions and foxes and raccoons and porcupines and skunks and rabbits and bears and deer (countless deer).

So, yeah. Biking comes with its bumps and bruises. And scars and occasional permanent debilitating injuries and death. But hey. Lots of upside, right?

Bonus Halloweenage: My eldest is going as one of the “greasers” from The Outsiders, which everyone in his class is reading right now. That stage makeup class my wife took back in college comes in mighty handy when it’s time to make a realistic-looking bruise, no? Second eldest is taking the easy way out: a cap and a pipe can be whipped out at a moment’s notice to make a Sherlock. And the twins (yes, they’re identical) are, naturally, princesses.

Last night I was thinking about how little people change. By which I mean that I was thinking that people in general change very little, as opposed to thinking about whether midgets have the ability to transmogrify. Although when you think about it, that would be a pretty cool sidekick-level superpower to have: “Mini-Metamorph: Able to transform into any compact item at will!”

Wow. It didn’t take me long to get off track today, did it?

Anyway, biking has definitely changed me during the ten-plus years I’ve been riding. Both physically and mentally. Today I’m going to talk about the physical part. Monday, I’ll talk about how biking has changed me mentally.

Unless I forget or change my mind.

First Change: My Ring Finger

Back when I was first mountain biking — maybe just a year or so into it — one of my riding group’s favorite yardsticks was the Frank time trial: how fast could you do the seven mile mountain bike trail? The first time I tried doing it for time, I was as nervous as I ever have been for any race. After all, since Frank has a lot of climbing and a technical descent, your time said a lot about what kind of mountain biker you are.

I took the downhill what I like to call “aggressively,” and what my friends would call “spastically and out of control.” In a banked chute toward the end of the ride I picked a bad line and supermanned off my bike, landing with all my weight on my hands. That hurt.

I was so intent on finishing with a good time, though, that I didn’t even worry about my left hand, which I otherwise probably would have made all kinds of whiney noises about. Instead, I got back on my bike and finished the loop. I remember getting a 1:06, which was respectable for a new rider — I think the fast guys were doing it eight minutes faster.

When I got back to work, I thought about calling a doctor, because the tip of my ring finger seemed to be pointing at an odd angle: up at a 30-degree angle. Then I decided not to bother. It continues to point at that weird angle even today. I think my typing has improved because of it.

Most Bothersome, Persistently Painful Change: My Right Shoulder

Whenever my friends and I go to Moab, you can bet that one of the rides we’ll do is a Reverse Porcupine. This simply means that we ride part of the famous Porcupine Rim, but we ride up the part most people come down. This section of trail ridden in this way is full of difficult moves, and provides an excellent opportunity for technically skilled riders to show off their talents…and for technically unskilled riders to fall a lot.

Guess which category I belong in?

Maybe seven years ago, I was trying one of what I thought was the safest of these moves: do a slow-mo 120-degree left turn around a scrub oak, thread the needle between two tight rocks, and then wheelie up a ledge. I didn’t expect to make it, but I wasn’t scared of trying.

Then, at almost exactly zero miles per hour, as I pivoted around the scrub oak, I lost it. The sand kept me from getting out of my pedals in time and I fell over heavily on my right side, sending the combined force of my weight and falling momentum through my outstretched right hand and up my arm.

The screams were incredible.

I had dislocated my shoulder for the first time, and I can promise you the first time is the worst. And that is where what is now known as the “Elden Wail” was first heard.

After I was able to stop screaming — yes, screaming — I walked my bike (I couldn’t ride with a dislocated shoulder and I didn’t know how to set it back then) back to my car and drove the three hours home to go to the hospital, where the emergency room doctor put my shoulder back where it belongs.

My shoulder now pops out quite easily, thank you, and while it still hurts each time, I now know what to do. But I can’t sleep on my right side, I can’t throw, I can’t rotate my right arm in certain ways or lift it very high, and I always know when it’s going to rain.

And as an aside, I think it’s a testament of my friends’ dedication to their craft — as well as their quality as human beings — that nobody volunteered to go back with me. Hey, at least I know where I stand.

Jerks.

Most Visible Change: My Lip

I’ve talked about this wreck before, but essentially I wiped out on one of my favorite trails (Dry Canyon, coming down off Frank) one day for no apparent reason. I tore my lip all the way to just below my nose. I guess it says something about me that when the doctor gave me suggestions on steps I could follow to minimize the visibility of the scar — as well as a recommendation for a plastic surgeon who could essentially make it disappear — I brushed it off.

So now I have a nice, white scar that is always visible — increasingly so with every day I skip shaving. I sometimes wish my wreck would have a more interesting story behind it, but at least I got it while doing what I love best. And by "what I love best," I am referring to biking, not wrecking and sliding on my face. I just want to be clear on that point.

The only really unfortunate thing about this scar is that it totally screws up my goatee. I used to be able to grow one of the nicest goatees you had ever seen — when combined with my sinister-looking eyebrows, this beard made me look intense, as well as evil. Complete strangers would stop and comment on how evil I looked. "Hey, fat dude on a bike, you look full-on wicked evil!" they would say.

Now, however, the scar breaks up the beard and makes it look asymmetrical. Alas.

Best Change: My Legs

I sometimes like to imagine the me from the present challenging the me from the past to a bike race. Even though I weigh about ten pounds more than I did when I first started riding, I am absolutely confident I could kick my own past tense self’s butt. "Who is that fast, fat guy with the scar on his lip?" the me from the past would ask.

The thing is, riding a bike for ten years or so changes your legs. Even at my fattest and most out of shape, I could — with total confidence — challenge some generally ultra-fit non-cyclist to a bike race and utterly humiliate him. Or her, I guess, except I’m married and even before I was married was not the kind of person who would casually challenge women to sports contests. Mercy, I am a rambling fool today.

Anyway, this base of leg fitness stays with you. Once or twice, I’ve stopped biking during the winter and picked it up again in the spring. Sure, you hurt at first, but it’s nothing like starting over.

I don’t know: maybe if I stopped riding for a full year, that magical leg strength would vanish, but I prefer to think instead that by biking all these years, my legs are now fundamentally and permanently different from what they were before.

And that change — to me — easily makes all the other changes worth it. Because those physical changes are the entry fee for the mental changes — which I will, as I’ve mentioned, talk about Monday, and which are not, in spite of today’s post, absentmindedness and a tendency to ramble.

We’re Not So Different, You and I

I doubt that any cyclist — especially of the mountain biking variety — has ridden for more than a year or two without getting some sort of permanent personal souvenir (which is my overwrought way of saying "injury"). But we’re all willing to live with the inevitability.

So, two questions for you: what have you got to show for your years of riding, and was it worth it?

Today’s weight: 162.2. Which I’m sure has nothing to do with all the bite-sized candy bars laying around the house, which should be Halloween candy, but which have a low probability of surviving to Halloween.

Bonus Office Entertainment: Apart from general pansiness, I had a motive for driving to work a couple days ago: I was bringing in a chinup bar, which I have installed in my office doorway. My idea is to do 3-5 chinups, several times per day, trying to improve my pathetic upper body strength. What’s fun, though, is watching other people eye the chinup bar as they go by. Some look at it briefly and dismiss it, some stop and test it, then walk away. So far, nobody has actually done a chinup on it. I am currently developing theories on why this is so.

Well.

I’d like to say that I enjoyed reading your comments to yesterday’s post, but that would, sadly, be a lie. Not because you hurt my feelings — far from it. Rather, because the bulk of you are tepid, craven souls, transparent in your greed even as you try to muster the courage to utter an ill-conceived, trite, and usually derivative remark.

But that wasn’t what really got to me.

No. It was how obvious you are. I have laid bare my soul for months now, and the only barb most of you could find had to do with that day’s post? Really, that was all the ammo you could find? You’re as lazy as you are unimaginative.

On the rare occasion somebody made a clever remark, I noticed it was rapidly and shamelessly replicated, with only minor variety. Did you think I wouldn’t notice that? Well, did you? You sicken me.

I hereby award the bag to myself.

Just kidding.

Here are a few of my favorites from yesterday’s contest:

Most Elegant

Fatty,

You lowly sheath. I dignify your baseness by a mere response to your sorry whine. Stand, man, stand by God. Stand and walk as a man from your shame and sorrow. Feign bravery for a moment that we, your sad ensemble of fellow betrayed followers may have just one shred, one scintilla, of dignity. Get thee on your alloy steed and make us proud again. You fatty; sorry, lumpish, and melancholy. You soft and dull eyed fool. Ride, ride, RIDE!!!

Apologies to the bard.

— jimserotta

Fatty replies: This was very nearly the overall winner, but then he had to go and apologize to the bard. If you’re going to plagiarize, go big and bold, Jim.

Best Vocabulary

Dear FC

When this blog began you were fat. Some would say obese. But more importantly, you were indefatigable. Full of piss and vinegar. Now you have become a slightly less fat faineant snob unwilling to risk scraping your knee or slipping on a wet leaf.

”Ohh, Ohh. life is hard. Waaahh!"

Wrong. Life is easy, YOU suck!

Maybe you should be concerned more with learning bicycle handling and less with coming up with excuses for your pitiful self. Sorry to break it to FC, but you are actually just another chaffy cager.

— craig

Fatty replies: "Fainéant?" Who are you calling "fainéant?" (Looks up word) Well, whaddaya know. That’s actually a really good word for me.

Special "Stuffing the Ballot Box" Award

Scared of water. Scared of leaves. Scared of wind. Exactly how much of a sissy are you?

I know why real cyclists shave their legs. And now I know why you do too. You’re a fatty, AND A GIRLY!

— BIG Mike

When we finally meet, I was planning on buying you a coffee and spending a day riding and chatting, but the plan now is to give you a wedgy and walk away laughing.

Between myself, little-d-dug, rocky and the kickboxing counsellor I think we should be able to administer a wedgy that will land you about 3 stories up.

— BIG Mike

I want my PB Oreos back! I thought you earned them but you’re just a spineless charlatan. Your seemily steadfast dedication to all things manpowered and shiny was nothing but a Seigfried and Roy quality smoke and mirrors show.

Price check on check-out 12. Floaties, knee pads, elbow pads, shoulder-pads… AND A DUMMY.

You can either spit it like you did yesterday or suck on it like the coward we have all witnessed you become.

— BIG Mike

I was already good at taking the fastest talkers down a notch or two. Always in fun and never if the victims seemed unstable or suicidal. That was before the deer in the headlights who calls himself ‘The Fat Cyclist’.

You may have had gender re-alignment surgery and not noticed. You should go to the doctor and have yourself checked. Men who run squealing from inanimate objects like leaves, water, wind and stuffed toys (OK, I made the last one up) are not really men.

If you don’t grow a backbone and some cajones in double quick time you will certainly grow a callous on your butt, a gut over your belt and a John Candy chin.

— BIG Mike

You want more? I got more, sissy boy. I just don’t want to be the one that makes you kick the chair away while you’re testing the rope in your basement.

 — BIG Mike

Oh yeah, I forgot.

Who’s going to finish the other half of that sit up you started when you climbed out of bed this morning? Obviously not you. You can’t finish what you start.

I hope your nurse tells you a nice bed time story after lowering you onto the pillow and tucking you in.

— BIG Mike

And the Winner…

Oh, Fatty, where did I go wrong with you? I always tried to raise my five daughters to be strong, and I thought I had succeeded:

Kellene- takes 18 ft. falls and barely flinches. She climbs back up the cliff with her bike on her back and rides home.

Lori- has the cojones to move half-way across this country to pursue her art. Stepping out of her comfort zone to confront her fears head on, like I always taught you.

Errorista- deals with people I am afraid to be in the same county with, let alone the same room, and she remains strong. I won’t even mention the Muay Thai training.

CJ- another warrior daughter. Stands up for her convictions even if it comes with a risk to her chosen career. Oh, she is so strong.

And then there is you, my dear. Sure, I was disappointed when it became obvious you would be the ugliest of my daughters, but when I first saw you ride your little Strawberry Shortcake bike I knew you too would be another strong Nelson daughter. My co-workers would laugh at me for sticking up for my fat, boyish little girl, but I would think about all the good you were doing by inspiring other fat, boyish little girls, and fat, girlish little boys to ride.

And then you began an inspirational blog and inspired many more with your writings of adventurous rides. I would tell my co-workers that you were like the US Postal Service: through wind, rain, sleet, snow, or heat of day you would ride.

But now you have brought this travesty upon our family name, and I can no longer return to work with my head held high. I’m sorry, honey, but I must disown you out of loyalty to the family. I only wish I had had a son, and had the chance to mold him into a man. A man who did not fear wet leaves.

Regretfully,

Your Father

(Actually, by nikared)

Fatty replies: Nice writing, Nikared. Although a part of me is just a smidgen creeped out that you know so much about my family. Email me with your address and I’ll send you that seat bag.

BONUS: New Cyclingnews article published: My story, "How to be a Bike Snob," an excerpt of which I posted here at the beginning of this week, is now online at Cyclingnews.com. Click here to read it now.