I think i am going to try and do a weekly thing on this here blog. I am going to post lyrics to a song that has been re-accuring in my mind over the last week. Sometimes i will have profound meanings behind these lyrics, and sometimes it will just be something that has been running thru my head non-stop. I think this is more of the latter than the former.
I've kept it bottled up for years
Instead of fighting or shedding tears
Now it's time to let go
My boiling point's about to show
I don't know if I'll lose control
Of my mind, my body, or soul
Boiling Point
Boiling Over
Boiling Point
Now it's over
CREATURE OF THE WHEEL... LORD OF INFERNAL ENGINES...
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Death to false metal pt. 2.
http://rocklobstershop.blogspot.com/2011/04/steel-26-wheel-mtb-frame-for-so-cal.html
Click on the link for the straight shizzle. You don't want to click, it's cool, I'll sum it up for ya. My bike>your bike.
Click on the link for the straight shizzle. You don't want to click, it's cool, I'll sum it up for ya. My bike>your bike.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Redlands Bike Classic Swiss Style Wrench Support: Day 2
Living in southern california, if you race bikes, we get an extra certainty among the ones everybody else gets. Death, Taxes, and of course, Criteriums.
I had to skip out of the second day of the bike classic, Stage 1 the Beaumont Circuit, due to my getting news of the advent of the coming apocalypse, or, my son being born. Dr. said the baby is coming but not for a good week, maybe two, so we may have to coax the harbinger of the end along a little bit. I'm certain there'll be more on that soon...
At any rate, day 2 for me was the Crit. Pretty simple, stand in the wheel pit and look for frantic racers or an arm indicating something was wrong with their rig, OR, a third option i had not really thought about, which was naive due to me racing more than a fair share of crits, crashes. The womens race went off without anything going wrong for a good while. Couple of little scrape type craches, but nothing too bad. One girl had twisted her shifter a little bit in a crash, but ultimately was fine. Pretty sure everybody finished who had the physical ability.
Then, the guys race. The first dude that coasted in at the beginning of the first lap indicated he had a front flat. Bart, being smarter than him on what i'm sure amounted to about 2 hours of sleep the night before changed the rear, because it was in fact the rear that was flat. I asked bart how he was so sure without even checking, then, without even touching me, he choked me from across the room and told me he found my lack of faith distrubing. The second guy that went down asked a medic to tape him up right quick. The medic was NOT prepared. He wrapped him up but didnt have scissors so was trying to tear the guaze. After a little while and while i was going thru his shifting and making sure his rig had survived the scrape. It was good to go thank heavens. I saw how quick Bart put a twisted bike back together and i was a little unsure of my abilities. Then came the snags. Snag number 1: when the race commissar came over she instructed me i had to hold him, which was fine, except he was holding himself up on the fence by an area that was other than the area indicated by bart to push the dudes in. No biggie i would just hold him right there. Official didnt seem to care, so why should i? Snag number 2: He starts barking at me to hold him more to the left. Thankfully i had sense enough not to just to what we said because A) the peloton was moving to the right, so that was dumb, and B) we were on the camber of the gutter, so it gave him a false feeling of leaning to the right. I just ignored him, i was holding him straight. Snag number 3: the official didn't give me instructions on when to push him out, and to be truthful, i was sort of waiting on feeling him take of, then pushing. Well, as soon as the chase came after the break, like, as soon as rider number one from the chase was in sight, secretariat starts to bolt. The official pointed and yelled for him to stop for s second, then take off, and he did. Then she lays into me saying not to push him out til instructed, to which i replied, "there was no push, he just...went..." She apologized and proceeded to lay into the rider's team manager. Then, i saw a guy indacate on his way up to the Lord's corner on olive and cajon he had a flat. He came around, i told Bart. Bart told me to take it, and the proceeded to heckle me the entire time. At least it went off without a hitch, he was way cooler than seabicuit before him. Also, he was an aussie, who while flinty, chatty, and from a country conceived by criminals, are really cool people. I have yet to find an exception.
Then the biggest deal of the day came. BIG crash in the final turn of the final lap. Dude who was second wheel goot pushed into the fence and a bunch of the people who were fighting for wheels went down. It was one of those crashes where there was a bunch of gnarled twisted bodies and then every once in a while you'd see a rear wheel pop straight up in the air if the blob of bodies sucked in another rider. It even seemed like Bart lost his cool a teency weency as he came out of the booth and was yelling "rider down" and motioning like a 3rd base coach telling a runner to slide. Nothing to support there though, so other than a mild cleanup and a short come to jesus speech by bart about the particulars for the next day, that was all there was to it.
I had to skip out of the second day of the bike classic, Stage 1 the Beaumont Circuit, due to my getting news of the advent of the coming apocalypse, or, my son being born. Dr. said the baby is coming but not for a good week, maybe two, so we may have to coax the harbinger of the end along a little bit. I'm certain there'll be more on that soon...
At any rate, day 2 for me was the Crit. Pretty simple, stand in the wheel pit and look for frantic racers or an arm indicating something was wrong with their rig, OR, a third option i had not really thought about, which was naive due to me racing more than a fair share of crits, crashes. The womens race went off without anything going wrong for a good while. Couple of little scrape type craches, but nothing too bad. One girl had twisted her shifter a little bit in a crash, but ultimately was fine. Pretty sure everybody finished who had the physical ability.
Then, the guys race. The first dude that coasted in at the beginning of the first lap indicated he had a front flat. Bart, being smarter than him on what i'm sure amounted to about 2 hours of sleep the night before changed the rear, because it was in fact the rear that was flat. I asked bart how he was so sure without even checking, then, without even touching me, he choked me from across the room and told me he found my lack of faith distrubing. The second guy that went down asked a medic to tape him up right quick. The medic was NOT prepared. He wrapped him up but didnt have scissors so was trying to tear the guaze. After a little while and while i was going thru his shifting and making sure his rig had survived the scrape. It was good to go thank heavens. I saw how quick Bart put a twisted bike back together and i was a little unsure of my abilities. Then came the snags. Snag number 1: when the race commissar came over she instructed me i had to hold him, which was fine, except he was holding himself up on the fence by an area that was other than the area indicated by bart to push the dudes in. No biggie i would just hold him right there. Official didnt seem to care, so why should i? Snag number 2: He starts barking at me to hold him more to the left. Thankfully i had sense enough not to just to what we said because A) the peloton was moving to the right, so that was dumb, and B) we were on the camber of the gutter, so it gave him a false feeling of leaning to the right. I just ignored him, i was holding him straight. Snag number 3: the official didn't give me instructions on when to push him out, and to be truthful, i was sort of waiting on feeling him take of, then pushing. Well, as soon as the chase came after the break, like, as soon as rider number one from the chase was in sight, secretariat starts to bolt. The official pointed and yelled for him to stop for s second, then take off, and he did. Then she lays into me saying not to push him out til instructed, to which i replied, "there was no push, he just...went..." She apologized and proceeded to lay into the rider's team manager. Then, i saw a guy indacate on his way up to the Lord's corner on olive and cajon he had a flat. He came around, i told Bart. Bart told me to take it, and the proceeded to heckle me the entire time. At least it went off without a hitch, he was way cooler than seabicuit before him. Also, he was an aussie, who while flinty, chatty, and from a country conceived by criminals, are really cool people. I have yet to find an exception.
Then the biggest deal of the day came. BIG crash in the final turn of the final lap. Dude who was second wheel goot pushed into the fence and a bunch of the people who were fighting for wheels went down. It was one of those crashes where there was a bunch of gnarled twisted bodies and then every once in a while you'd see a rear wheel pop straight up in the air if the blob of bodies sucked in another rider. It even seemed like Bart lost his cool a teency weency as he came out of the booth and was yelling "rider down" and motioning like a 3rd base coach telling a runner to slide. Nothing to support there though, so other than a mild cleanup and a short come to jesus speech by bart about the particulars for the next day, that was all there was to it.
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