July 17, 2014
Did you go on the Owl Ride last Saturday? Well, whoop-de-doo-who to you! I hope it was an illuminating adventure. I did not go because I was otherwise occupied
- celebrating a birthday, if you must know.
How was it? Well the birthday was great, what about the Owl Ride?
As I was preparing my mountainous bicycle for my annual ride
out at our fair Tranquility Park, I was (as usual) bitching to myself about something. In this particular instance, I was bitching to myself about how much of a
pain it is to remove my 1.25 inch smoothie tyres from my beefy Rhino Lite rims. Do you feel me, or are you a person who has a
road bicycle and a mountainous bicycle?
If you chose the latter, then perhaps you can still enjoy picturing my
situation whilst you relax and enjoy a snifter of fine brandy in your silken
night robe. I am not in that category
because I am a) cheap and b) low on funds at the moment. Anyway, there I was removing my skinny-ass
tyres
in order to replace them with a wider 2.0-inch tyre I fondly refer to as
“Pythons” (because the tyre is a Hutchinson Python)
when I happened to espy
this creature perambulating around in my immediate vicinity.
I was not pleased with this development because ticks are
supposed to stay out where the long grass doth growest. What’s next, will they be hanging out in
malls? I set aside my usual magnanimity
towards our eight-legged friends and crushed him with my tyre lever. That is one less Rocky Mountain Wood Tick to worry about friends. You're welcome. Then I rode my bicycle around the park, which
was dusty, fast, and enjoyable. If you
are like me, you are a person who likes to go fast on a mountain bike, but who
sometimes crashes as a result. I crashed
my bike by hitting my handlebar on a tree (I just got a new, wider
handlebar).
Then I met up with some
friendly folks who also participate in T.H.O.R.’s trail maintenance and
building activities at the park.
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| Thanks Linda, Paul, and Eric! |
Then my friend Rich got there and he talked me into riding
his Surly Pugsley, which was fun. It was
less different from riding a regular mountain bike than I would have
thought. Not a bad climber. Smooth and stable feeling on the downhill and
bumpy sections. A little easier to hold
a line. Comfortable. I switched back to Shifty for the rest of the second lap and I continued to crash occasionally. I finally let some more air out of my tyres
in order to try to get a bit more surface area on the dusty dirt.
Did you know that RAGBRAI starts next week? That’s pretty neat. Let me know how that works out for you
all. I hear that it is stopping in
Okoboji this year. That sounds pretty
swell. If I were in Okoboji I would jump
into some water and shout “Whhooooo!” just like everybody else does. I have never been there, but I do imagine
mustering the funds together in order to take the family up there for a week of
fun on the water someday.
Did you know that Paul McCartney is on tour? He even stopped here in Omaha for a little
while! As everybody knows, Paul has a
deep relationship with bicycles and he and I were planning on going on a tandem
bicycle tour of town, but then he abruptly canceled when I showed up in my
usual full leather bicycling attire which apparently was not in keeping with
Sir Paul’s vegan tendencies, not to mention his properly British sense of
decorum. I guess that was okay because instead
of bicycling about with a gimp he got to spend some time with hisfine-brandy-drinking buddy Warren Buffett.
Sir Paul went on a bicycle tour of Santiago, Chile recently. Apparently Santiago is the most
bicycle-friendly town in Chile, if not the whole garden of L'America del Sud con
accentes los perros y las perras! It is also near Peru,
home of Lima, which is where the Lima beans that I "just now" (i.e., yesterday) planted in my
garden are undoubtedly from.
PM and I are also no stranger to bike accidents on two
wheels. He told me that he was involved
in an accident on a moped, which is not really a bike. Here are some quotes from an interview that
he did awhile back -
He started to finger his lip, almost without thinking, and I asked him about the reports that he'd broken a tooth.
"You're right," he admitted candidly. "I did it not long ago when I came off a moped. Now I've had it capped... Look."
I looked but I couldn't see anything. A perfect mend. Only a small scar remains on his lip as a souvenir."
"It was quite a serious accident at the time. It probably sounds daft, having a serious accident on a motorized bicycle, but I came off it hard and I got knocked about a bit. My head and lip were cut and I broke the tooth."
I was only doing about 30 at the time, but it was dark and I hit a stone and went flyin' through the air. It was my fault... it was a nice night and I was looking at the moon."
He sipped his tea and reached for a cigarette.
I also sip tea, but instead of reaching for a cigarette, I
prefer cheap vodka.
Do you feel the need for speed? Or at leat the need to see speed? You could hop on a bicycle or a moped. Or you may want to head on down to Offutt AFB to
check out the air show this weekend. You can probably see most of it from the south end of the Keystone Trail. There is even valet parking on the Base for bicyclers. Even if you just have one bike! Funny right!?
Just don’t snort on that expensive brandy.
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