By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Pedaled.

How many bikes is too many?

In the past I had a clear rule: anything more than two bicycles in my life at one time was a recipe for disaster. This spring I'm up to 4.5, the most I've ever had; my apartment is like a train station for bikes. Everywhere you look there's one, waiting to go somewhere.

The newest is an Opus Stelle, a pearly white 'cross machine, brand-new from the sponsor; then there's the Blue TR250, my bad-ass track racer I've had lying around since this winter, followed by the road bike (Allez Comp) with the new wheels, and the old steel beater track bike for the bad weather. The .5 being my de-commissioned Schwinn road bike w. Campag Athena brakes, now boxed up in the closet. It's just frame, fork, handlebar, and derailleurs at this point and I should really get rid of the damned thing, minus the brakes.

I have a photo of them all jammed into the hallway, that should really be in this very post, but alas it is not. Meanwhile in China, eight million people have no where to live post-earthquake. See? We all have problems.

The Effingham Hill Disaster

(Effingham Hill, last year.)

I went down to Niagara, and rode the race of the day. The skies were clear to start, a chilly spring day in the green hills and dales of wine country, and when the rains came they were gentle enough.
We were eighty in the race, and things stayed together nicely till the fourth lap or so, when the pace was upped and and I spent a good while chasing back on in the wet, the flashing red lights of the neutral service vehicle (a pickup truck full of spare wheels) just up ahead. I pushed onwards, caught the main field and stayed in at last. On the final kick up Effingham Hill, I felt okay, just kept it steady in 39 x 26 and down in the drops, like Marco Pantani. A few riders passed me, and I didn't contest it. What I was not aware of was what lap we were in - I thought we had two laps still to go! You don't win battles without a good look at a map of the terrain now do you?

Well, I had a map printed off at work, but what the race didn't have was a person ringing a damn bell for the last lap. Twelfth place, 37 seconds behind the winner. Still, I finished delighted with my race, the pain instantly gone.

A Trip to the Isle

A trip to the Isle indeed was made by me this Sunday past.

Whatever did I find there? Nought but gusty breezes, under-insulated juniors with teeth aclattering, whitecaps sea-spraying the ferry-boat, and myself a forgettable sixth. Yes, I was off to the races as per usual, going out of my way for a bit of Sunday morning cycle-sport suffering. And suffer I did.

I never cease to amaze myself at my capacity for self-sabotage when it comes to many things in life, including bike races. Having carefully planned my whole weekend around this event, Ziggy's "Islander Crit" on Mother's Day, having stayed home the Saturday night carefully observing the state of my derailleur while others were perhaps out enjoying life as still-living people should (and having given the miss to the work-weekend at my place in the country - Wa-hoo!), still I managed to land myself well behind the eightball.

Did I underdress for the raw maritime weather? No.

Did I forget to bring $ for the ferry and make myself late? No.

Did my bike not work in the crucial moments of the race? No.

Did I do a 120 km training ride the day before, with an hour in the headwind? Yes.

Somehow I can't seem to restrain myself - the old phobia against all success-based-planning struck again and off I tore on Saturday a.m. when saner folk lie abed, counting their blessings in a dream. It's the regimen my body adhers to: Donut Time. So off I went to my doom, as it were, without even pumping up my tires for a 4.5 hour ride the day before race day. As my old dad said over brunch on Sunday, 'You left victory on the road to King City'.

Now why do I do these things? To have a built-in excuse for failure? Out of a misguided notion of race-day preparedness? A total loss of short-term memory? All of the above perhaps. In any event, despite being a flat course and no more than 45 minutes or so, the race was pretty hard as the field was very small and the cross winds intense. Bike racers just don't fancy trips to Toronto Island it seems - must be the lack of car access. You have to take a boat, which could sink, for crissakes. That (and Ziggy constantly picking holidays for his race days) makes for small fields and more work for everybody involved.

It is more exciting though - you can see the front of the race because you're constantly at or near the front, and so you feel your chances are really good. My big idea was to attack the race from the gun, with M3 cross champion Dennis Thang. We did that, got a gap right away, and lost it after two exhausting laps, two little guys trying to act like Jens Voigt. Dennis figured we'd gotten respect from the field for doing it nonetheless. I spent the next five laps trying to recover and eventually mostly did. I was just damned tired of there never being a breakaway in an M3/S4 race and I wanted to make one happen for once. But two of us were not enough. In the end I took sixth place out of thirteen.

Dennis likely felt better about the whole failed escape because he won the S4 (from a field of two!), and put in a great move before the final hairpin to be fourth overall. He gave me his prizes, which included a pot of flowers - there you are Mum. Our new plan is to go to Niagara next Sunday for a proper road race - my first ever.

#404 = No. 1!

Ah, the sweet taste of victory.

Really and truly there is nothing like it. Robbie McKewen, when asked what motivates him now that he's won three Green Jerseys in the Tour, and who has been a pro sprinter for ten years + , did not hesitate - "I still love winning, it never gets old".

I can understand why. Last night I nipped out to Midweek for the first time since last July, did the short, early race of 25 laps, and won it. It felt very nice, very nice indeed. Even though it was only the early race and early in the year to boot, it was a huge boost to the ego as I've never won there before in say, twenty races over the course of a couple of different seasons - about half of them the late race, i.e., elite.
It was criterium racing near its lamest, I admit. I think they skipped laps 10 and 8 just to get the whole thing done in the alotted 30 minutes, that's how tortoise it was. Its the same old same old: nobody wants to work off the front, and any breakaway attempt fails instantly, and anyone left at the front refuses to work at all so a 30 minute race seems to get progressively slower, all in anticipation of the final lap where carefully conserved energies will be spent of a sudden.

What this ultra-conservative racing strategy lead to last night was... a minor disaster. A fattish middle-aged guy in Brampton Cycle Club shorts, who I had spent the race keeping a close eye on (he was whipping the bike side to side for the most minor accelerations), started his sprint and cut off another guy hitting him and sending both down. I had a front row seat for guy number two, at 40 km/hour, as he flew head-first over handlebars, his bike jackknifing sideways, so that I was just able to avoid its back wheel. Then I decided to take leave of them all and bolted to victory unaccompanied as the other racers who'd had position ahead of me post-crash simply faded away.
They gave me #404 for the season. I love that - reads the same in either direction and reminds my of my number when I was in Little League.

I look forward to moving to the faster, safer late race.

Alley Cat Racing: Springtastic!

Springtastic went off Saturday night as per schedule. For the first time, I didn't race but served as a checkpoint. Hayward had promised me Casa Loma but did not deliver, so I ended up with the Glen Road bridge in the riches of Rosedale, on a quiet, wet Saturday night.

And there my troubles began.

I settled in, armed with rain hat, rain coat and a few cans of beer + stickers, one for each racer manifest as they stopped by. There was plenty of time to hang about in the semi-darkness, small mansions all about me, and I admit to feeling a little paranoid about being there, just hanging around doing nothing with a beer at my side and a red light blinking away. Would some paranoid manion-owner call the police on me? And what would be my story if they happened upon me? 'Doing a traffic study officer', I could have said flashing City ID if I had had it with me. Pretty ludicrous.

The only harassment I got was from a racoon who kept emerging from his side of the bridge, as though he wanted my can of beer, which annoyed me thoroughly. I hissed at him enough and finally Racoon stopped coming around.

After seven racers showed up (1/2 the field), I had a new problem: I was in the wrong place. The proper checkpoint location was the Glen Road pedestrian bridge. Smitty and Kuz went away very pissed with the race organizer who shall remain nameless (but who answers to Tofu), who had never given me a manifest where this proper location was written, along with all the others.

Off I went to the correct location, and started waiting again. Eventually a few more racers rolled in, some admitting that they'd gone to the other bridge. I said nothing.

Alley cats, for all the excitement and adventure, tend to have a very small buffer where chaos often reigns. For instance, this race had the added feature of three separate phases in its structure. The first phase was five checkpoints to be done in any order, with a secret location to be asked for/told after the racer completed all five. From there a time trial started (200 Queens Quay East ending at 388 Carlaw); after this race-within-the-race, three more checkpoints had be completed, including the finish, where finishers posted their names on the wall. The secret within the secret of the time trial was that it featured a separate prize entirely, discreet from the main race.

For the record, two people were dq-ed for missing the time-trial, and Charlie Randall, youngster with the legs of fire, won the race proper. Most eveybody thought it was a great time and were thoroughly entertained. Wish I'd have been one of them.

Pinning on numbers once more.

L. vs J., c. 2001, with both running downtube shifters to save the grams.

The sun shone without heat, the wind was calm by the lake and being some kind of glutton for punishment, I went out and spent $45 to race for less than an hour last Sunday, in criterium race a five minute ride away from my place. But I had my reasons.

The course was actually our lakeside bike path, meaning it was damned narrow, ie, three metres across if that, and featured not one but two hairpin turns. Naturally the second turned onto the final straightaway and meant that good position was crucial in the final lap, as there was no breakaway group to be in.

And so it went that I found myself a good thirteen or more wheels back going into that turn, and sprinted to an uninteresting 11th place out of twenty-five. It was a thoroughly unsatifying conclusion to $45 worth of nervously sitting in the wheels, trying not to get run off the path into a tree by some over-zealous junior.

And it makes me wonder.

Alley cat races are vastly more fun, creative, and dynamic. They seem to win on every front: cheaper to enter (ie $10), you get to see people you know and like, all sorts of creative curveballs can be thrown in (ie, store checkpoint where you have to buy a can of beans, or park where a particular plaque on a statue must be found), and the sponsors' prizes are vastly cooler as well. There is also this complete lack of equipment sport snobbery and attitude that road racing is notorious for, and which I continue to find nauseating.

So why do I even think about sanctioned races, all of which are hill-less around here and meant only for sprinters anyway? Just because.

Hincapie Enigma Revealed

So I had been wondering what made George Hincapie keep ticking what with all those broken wrists and heartbreaking losses, and now thanks to the power of the Internet I know: his line of sportswear.

The man is not so busy he can't give the cycling public a chance to get inside his very own shorts, for a mere $189 + tax and shipping. And just what lies inside these specials? Why ceramic panelling no less.

Whilst you absorb the cultural implications of the leap ceramic has made from wheel bearings to inside leg, let me say this - George, you must be racing too much, because your hand looks like it is made of carbon fibre. I know carbon is all the rage these days, but really? Carbon fibre hands? That's just going too far. I'm sure they're not cheap either, a pair of those, and that's perhaps why Hincapie is selling his shorts to the general public.

G.G. '08

It was time for Global Gutz 2008 this past Sunday aft. This time I was out for racing enjoyment and not winning, and to baptize the new track bike. And I was three for three!

It was really a blast to be back in the saddle again, careening around like a semi-madman, following a few others from Lakeshore Blvd to St Clair to Dufferin down to College over to Unie, down to the Roundhouse for the big finale. I decided to ride 'within myself' as they say, and finished 10th, which was good enough for me. The fact that Hofman made this one go uphill and then downhill did not favour the track bikes, but it was still a great time.

I wasn't going for it; once you've been off the road a good while, getting the timing right through intersections becomes a whole different thing, and it was all just too committed for the bike I was riding. There was also a big east wind to contend with on an otherwise lovely day, but that only made the battle feel like a proper battle. I beat Toby anyway, which isn't saying that much.

The cameraderie of those races and afterparties is the real joy of it - a big adrenalin blast and then the laughs later on (i.e., Pete Brewer falling on his ass crossing Lakeshore on foot - a classic ciertes).
Worldwide ranking aganst 220 riders in twenty-six cities:
105 (Pappy) Toronto 0:44:06.

And I'm fine with that.

Scottish city, Cuban playa.

Untruth: R. Remembers the Beef & Calixto Garcia (Rush Hour, Holguin)

Babies, Baby Sprocket, Scotland.

Winters of Canada.

Winter, T.O.

Purple Face

Afghanada

Another coffin is loaded up in Kandahar:

What are we doing in Afghanistan?

If you look at the domestic media, you'd think we are there for completely self-involved reasons: to strengthen our military (Stephen Harper), to honour those who have already died fighting there (Man in the Street), to keep Canadians safe from terrorist Islamikaze attack (General Hillier), and to finish what we started, that is, 'operational objectives' (Lewis Mackenzie, ex- general whoes expertise consists of having presided over one long screwup in Bosnia in the 1990's).
And what exactly is it we started? There is the securing civil society angle - can't leave until little girls can go to school without threat of violent retribution - that'll keep us there for a good 140 years or so, at least. Then there is the security of the periphery, or something, that is Kandahar Province. We can pronounce it, but we can't secure it. After six years in Kandahar city, people are still suicide-bombing the place, people recruited by the Students.

The Students are our lethal enemy. They weren't our enemy until we brought a war to them. Ah, that is, joined a war brought by our friendly neighbour to the south, USA. Which brings me to the central military objective, the eradication of the Students, who previously ran Afghanada when it was Afghanistan and nobody cared about it besides Pakistani military people and heroin dealers (that is, Pakistani military people). The fun thing about a counter-insurgency war of occupation is that your presence causes the problem - the longer you are there the greater the motivation of the resister (the Students) to kill people, any people, in order to sabotage all progress being claimed on the 'security' front. Sort of like bombing fish in a barrel, but not exactly.
After six years occupying Kandahar city, we've secured a limited perimeter that is commonly called "the Wire" by our boys (I mean, media) - that is that base they live in. The governor of the province is a warlord who has been personally involved in torturing his enemies, etc. - now how can he behave this way?
Perhaps it is because he is like all the other warlords who ended up in top jobs in the Kharzai (I think that's Pashtun for 'puppet') government, as USA did not want to struggle with these guys while fighting the Students, who are hard enough to find let alone fight. Yes, what we have here is a farce, and the central motif of this farce is political, not military: the idea that we can make Afghanada last longer that a week or two after we leave, if that long. This gender equality- loving, constitutionalist-government thing we like is just not what that country is about, let's face it. The Afghans do things differently. Very differently.
The only solution we can really offer those who want to live with our rights and freedoms is simple: immigration papers for the model country upon which Afghanada is based. You know the place - the home of the Timbit. Or the home of the giant pretzel.

(By the way, I must have been in Mexico or somewhere when it happened, but since when did the French join NATO? I have been mystified about this for months, as all this talk of France sending a thousand soldiers to Afghanada has been bouncing around, then finally I saw a TV5 show about the Champs Elysee and there was the acronym, stuck on the automatic doors at Navy headquarters: 'OTAN'. Perhaps they confused me by spelling it backwards.)

Track Bike Revolution.

Yes, the track bike is now sort of ubiquitous, seen on the streets of the developed world's great cities from ___n to ____k. So what? Naturally one grows to dislike the overweening nature of fixed gear style properly mocked in the above illustration.

Yet it all came from a good, solid place, that of the working class pride of the bicycle messenger. I'm thinking of all this because I've finally got my hot-ass new track bike set up and rolling. At first I felt exactly like one of these posing twenty year old hip-ster people, over-matched by an ill-setup machine meant purely for the velodrome. Now I've got my old school toeclips on, and a proper seat that doesn't keep tipping up and down, so I'm feeling good about my totally over-the-top Blue TR250, complete w. removable dropouts and gleaming Major Taylor handlebar, set up high on a flipped over stem Hayward gave me.

If only I had a) a normal stomach and b) proper form then I would be getting the proper kick out of my riding. And c) Global Gutz 2008 is ten days away...

My Weekend of Hideousness & Ikea.

Here are two micro-shots of Cuba that I nabbed off of Google in the absence of my own. I did hire a bici-taxi, and I did ride up to la Loma de le Casa, Holguin city, for the record.

In other news, I'm in my worst physical condition in approximately two years. I will not be racing bikes any time soon. Ever since the Jet Fuel Party of April 1, the stomach has been abnormal. Then there are the legs, both of which are devoid of strength at this point. Then there is the bike, of which the carbon seatpost is refusing its seat pin since I took it apart Saturday on the advice of my surly mechanic.

My second Donut Ride this year on Sunday was how shall we say, a mitigated disaster, that is, mitigated by no crashes or parts falling off but disastrous in terms of my horrible form, and the seatpost constantly sinking into the frame when it wasn't moving from left to right. It makes me want to hang my bikes in a closet and take up walking once and for all.

The only detour from all this self-induced crap was a forced trip to Ikea from my married friends, who'd got hold of someone's car. They bought four miniature wooden pinic tables for everyone else they know with kids. Properly over-exhausted from riding, I stumbled about in a daze, surrounded by cart-wielding Sunday shoppers and playing house with their two-year old, until they took me home from suburbia.

Holguin, mi Holguin

So I up and went to Cuba 22-29 March. Yes I took a bicycle with me, my road racer no less, which got very, very dirty. El camino socialista es muy dura y sucia tambien. Half my luggage never showed when I arrived yet I forged onward, riding with the bare essentials on my back in a stinky little canvas bag, getting sunburned despite my spf 50 block. That's cycling, companero.

I had hoped to throw some photos up on the blog, but two conditions prevent me from doing so - a near total lack of interesting pictures and this damned machine, which saved the first one I threw at it as a .tif, which Blogger won't accept. Normally my personal camera produces jpegs, even from work but this time, no dice. Instead you find a scaled drawing my colleague Ms C. made of a little park in the downtown core of... Toronto. I needed to save it for work and I liked it, so be happy there is something to look at. (In fact what you see here is a special advance rendering of part of a new bike racecourse coming to this town 30 May around St Lawrence Market, final approval pending. It's the staging area.)

If it were more thematically correct, it would be Parque Calixto Garcia in the city of Holguin, pop. 200 000 +. Imagine a big rectange with a statue in the middle of a man on a pedestal and a ring of benches facing inwards. Latinos always know how to make a city park: a place for people to be in, not move through, as they are here. In Mexico you see that to the max - you can't even walk from one end to the other of some, they play out like a sort of maze. They're just not meant for transportation, dogwalking, or athletics. They're meant for socializing.

There are so many unique things about Cuba, besides just the potholes that buses do huge swerves to get around in order to preserve their ball joints. I love the advanced state of decay of almost everything, the absence of commerical propaganda, the women in mini-skirt uniforms, the bici-taxies (tons of them, sometimes all lined up w. parasols), the casual thrown-together quality of things, the uniformed airport customs workers riding home at the end of the day on their bicycles, the dignity of paisanos who really have next to nothing but are too proud to try to rook you. And the piglets boxed up on homemade racks; I even saw a mostly full-grown live cochino tied to a homemade carrier. Marvelous.

In short, I love the sights in Cuba because I am a stinking rich scumbag-person. Why else would I have such an appetite for all that decay and poverty? Because I don't live in it, obviously. When I returned I was feeling spent from my travels and I took the streetcar on its lazy route across the city to see mis padres for the first time in a while. And I was struck by what I saw and was temporarily un-blind to: slick little clothing shops, intense variety of goods for sale all over the place, well-dressed people in sunglasses and cellulars riding the public transit-thingy. All the things you take for granted living in el fabuloso rico pais de Canada.

You can't hire a horse-and-cart to take you and your oversize luggage to the airport in this town, but I did it in Holguin, Cuba for four pesos and four Canadian.

Goodbye Little Friend.

In the fine tradition of internet mourning, I post this picture of Rasmussen tearing into a sandal I got at a market in Puerto Escondido a few years back when he wasn't even a gleam in my eye.

Now he is gone, and my wretched apartment is as empty as ever with only Rasmussen's useless litter box hanging around to remind me, and the occasional busted claw.

Cat-owner's lesson learned: do not remove cat from house unless totally necessary. He most certainly had no desire to leave, I foolishly insisted and Rasmussen escaped en route to his home away-from-home to be, running into the night after my over-loaded bike trailer popped open on a darkened Brock Street over a rough patch of asphalt. I searched in vain for an hour, peering into little alleyways between houses with a bike light, to no avail.

I think of him, in the chilling cold rains that have been coming down lately, and hope for the best.

The Enigma of G. Hincapie

I've often wondered just what makes this man tick. Consider the case of George Hincapie, reigning American road cycling champion and chronic wrist-breaker.

In this sad photo dating from Paris-Roubaix 2006 I believe, Hincapie sobs at the side of the road, his hopes dashed after his bike's aluminum stem broke under the relentless pressure of the cobblestones and spilled him in a heap at the roadside. Hincapie had been in an ideal position in the race; instead he got a free trip to the hospital with a broken something.

Even though I know little about him, never search for details of his career, still I have long wondered what keeps G.H. in the game. He was Lance's loyal lieutenant for all seven Tours de France, somehow having that moment of gloire on the Queen stage in the Pyranees a couple of years ago, when he took victory in the hardest climbing stage of the Tour.

But how do you stay motivated George? After ten years + in the pro racing game, haven't you seen it all? I am reminded of the Hincapie Enigma after reading today of the closing circuits of Tirrano-Adriatico, "the race of two seas" in that sets up the early season in Italy. Needless to say, G.H. took a slam likely due to someone's bad move. There is a great photo of him I am prevented from stealing for annoying reasons, where he stands over his bike in the High Road jersey, a smear on the sleeve and a can of pop in one hand. Clearly, the day is finished for him, yet again.

Now of all people to feel sorry for and to worry about the career choices of, me even thinking about George Hincapie is pretty strange, some might say ludicrous. And yet, life is frequently ludicrous and when the alternative is sifting through a massive accounting database looking for small amounts of money attached to long tracking numbers, thoughts of G.H.'s overall wellbeing seem perfectly reasonable. While George has had plenty of victories, fame, large paycheques, and likely a fancy watch or three, I still see his career in terms of failure. Not that Hincapie is a failure. Anyone who meets his girlfriend on a podium at the Tour de France is not a failure in the world of cycling.

It's more the constant wrist and shoulder blade fractures. How does a racer stay motivated when all the work of training ends in disaster so often? George, if you're reading this, explain yourself in the Comments section. Do you read Nietsche?

The Vital Importance of Being a Suffering Bastard

Another tale of cycling daring-do: On Sunday I jumped out of bed fresh from a night at the cinema and promptly set about readying my road bike for the Donut Ride, my first since September. The Ides of March had been calling my name you see, and here I was, about to answer.

I've been doing this sort of madness long enough to know that 7am is not the time to be switching tires around, etc., but why let the knowledge years of messenger experience provides stop me from a little of the old last-minute-mechanics? (Note the bizarre-scarfwearing going on amidst the Astana team - is it Tour campionissimo Alberto Contador, his lymph glands extra-sensitive from early years of special injections at the old Liberty Seguros team?)

Well, I threw on some layers, including taping my old cheapie neoprene overbooties on over my sleek, formfitting and almost useless new Pearl Izumi overbooties. The neoprenes are so wrecked that the only way to keep them on is either with elastics (a dubious windproofer) or packing tape, and with four hours plus of 0 Celcius + windchill ahead of me I was busting out the Egyptian mummy style, no mistaking. And it did keep them from flapping into my drivetrain too much. Next step is to keep the feet warm, but one thing at a time. It looked ridiculous but frankly I didn't care.

There were 25 or so 'hardcore' people out on the sunny and cold morning ride, and I kept an eye out for wintry footwear; inevitably, some had winter-specific highcut cycle shoes (one or two even 'road' winter shoes). Most had some higher end overbooty thing happening. We had a northwesterly wind against us, making the trip up to King City a very slow and chilly affair. I stayed at the back, suffering mightily and sucking wheel as hard as possible.

There is nothing like the first 100km + ride after a few months off and in the cold too. Forget riding to work and back every day and two hours a week sweating my b-$%s off on the trainer in my apartment. All that is well and good. One hundred and twenty-two km and one post-bonk hamburger later, I was home and stretching out in the tub, invigourated to the full. They call it suffering for a good reason, by Christ. I really didn't help my case by neglecting a) sunglasses, b) a banana c) to oil my f!*#-ing chain beforehand.

A Note:

Was out for a beer with Hayward and the skin-headed trackmaster himself, Tofu, on Friday night. These two were planning a spring alley cat and swore me to secrecy on pain of dismemberment, as to the details of said epic. Apparently, I'll be manning a checkpoint all night, which sounds boring as hell. But perhaps better than the general insanity they've cooked up for the tens of people competing. Good for them.