[screen]shots of the 2011 tdf

Some favorite/memorable moments.

Now that the tour is over, I'll be back with some more posts soon-ish!

mrs. kaiko eisel

A typical gchat conversation between me and Josh, who, once when I was feeling blue, sent me every single picture of Bernhard Eisel that he could find on the Internet. And last night, patched together the following masterpiece...
Yeah, I know, my friends spoil me rotten.

[This also made Paris-Roubaix for me this year. Lucky number 7!]

Josh: should i go to the santa clarita stage? me: yeah! Josh: haha perhaps its just the start though hmm and no cav :( me: BERNIE? Josh: he'll be there i can get pix for u me: OMG THEN YOU HAVE TO GO Josh: get me a cardboard cut out of you and i'll bring it me: AHAHAHAHAHAHA just give him my number Josh: 1800-HTFU-HOE me: ... more like 1800-PLZ-MARRY-ME Josh: TOO MANY LETTERS BRO BE REALISTIC me: FINE how about just 917-361-XXXX

Josh: hahaha i'll go chills me: will you hunt down bernie? Josh: if you fly out me: WHAT Josh: you could meet him me: i know Josh: AND HANG OUT WITH HIM BRO me: ugh i know I KNOW tell him i'll meet him in france ahahaha Josh: DO YOU HAVE A LAWYER BERNIE? SIGN THIS RETAINER NOW BRO me: AHAHAHHAHA Josh: PRO BONO me: SIGN THIS MARRIAGE CONTRACT AHAHAHAHHAHA Josh: and by pro bono i mean FREE BONING me: AHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHA Josh: hahah me: god imagine Josh: stop jizzing me: MRS. KAIKO EISEL Josh: lollll
NB: Yes, I was listening to Justin Beiber's "Baby" while putting together this post. Bernie, Bernie, Bernie, ohhhhhh....

the red hook crit

If you ride a track bike in New York City, and you have a pulse, you’ve probably heard of the Red Hook Crit: track bikes only with no brakes, raced in the middle of the night. What you probably don’t know is that this year it's going to be more awesome than usual. So awesome, in fact, that I am seriously considering putting off my usual old person bed time of 10.30pm to attend.

This year, G+D is not only a sponsor, but also the exclusive retailer for Red Hook Crit t-shirts, and leading the EMS Group Ride to Red Hook on Saturday night. So basically you can go to one guy to both dress you for and lead you to the event. What's more, I folded those shirts, so you will be purchasing vicarious contact with the triple whammy of G+D & Red Hook Crit & Pedalstrike!

But I digress. Come cheer on the racers this Saturday night before wrapping up the morning hours partying with like-minded bike people in Red Hook.
Because this is what riding a track bike in New York City is all about.

linguistics, omloop, and kbk

Hello. Goodbye. I love you.
The trinity of phrases you first learn in a new language. Not that it gives one any real handle on which to cling when the rest of the language comes flooding through, but there’s the hope that you’ll at least recognize the linguistic bookends. The last is usually thrown in to anchor the hope of a foreign love, possibly to entice the naive linguophile to visit the mother country and contribute to its economy. It unfortunately didn’t come up in the Rosetta Stone program for Mandarin that Mike and I were trying out, but given that we were having difficulty remembering “goodbye,” that was probably for the best. And besides, for me, “I love you,” never sounded right in any other language than English.

The reasons for this are many, but can be reduced to the fact that languages escape me. Always a bit of a dull child, despite the dreams of success as a fashion designer, as an adolescent I never had the imaginative capacity to dream of Europe. My mental Paris had only room for tall, cultured women with bright red lips and skinny cigarettes, capable of balancing on cobblestones in four-inch Loubutins. These women would be impossibly, casually stylish; a hungover French woman who hadn’t slept in 48 hours would have such je ne sais quoi, that I was unable to even entertain thoughts of a French romance. What could I possibly have to offer a French man who could tell the difference between a 2005 Chateux Lafleur and a 2000 Chateaux Cheval Blanc, from birth? A quirky “American-ness,” that would be misinterpreted as a strange mental disease? An inability to be coy and sophisticated that would bar me from the elite Parisian parties other than in the role of “cette bizzare fille”?
Ironically, despite years of studying the French language, my mother once pointed out that I probably had a natural aptitude for sign language, after witnessing an imitation of a sign language intrepreter on TV. She actually encouraged me to study it, possibly to get me to stop talking, but by then my resistance to languages, even those that required no speaking, had solidified.

Of course, at a point when the language-learning side of my brain [or whatever there used to be of it] had atrophied, I had chosen to take up not le triathlon, a uniquely American sport, but du velo. A sport that, even after [because of?] Lance’s seven-time victories, resisted translation into the English language. I always knew I should have learned Flemish, Dutch, Austrian German, or Luxenbourgish. How much simpler would it have been to rub shoulders with the likes of Bernhard Eisel, the Schlecks, or Tom Boonen? How much more at home would I have felt, sitting back avec du cafe, on Saturday and Sunday morning, had I had the foresight to master Flemish?
A lot more, that’s how much. Fussing over [read: screaming at while punching the refresh button repeatedly] a grainy, choppy live feed of Omloop and KBK this past weekend, with Flemish alternatively barking at and cooing out of my speakers, I felt more lost and confused than if I had landed in my adolescent vision of Paris. Except had I found myself in Paris, I wouldn’t have felt any incentive to breathe “je t’aime,” to a dark, handsome, stylish stranger. On the other hand, I really wanted to know what the hell was going on in Omloop.

Unfortunately, the words on the screen shared no semblance to English, save for the fact that Roman letters were being used. But Flemish announcers apparently have a sense that non-Flemish speaking fans exist, almost punching out the names of Langeveld [who I initially mistook as Lagerfeld], Flecha, and Boonen [although, to be fair, with the incredulity and slight confusion, the “Sutton” was a little hard to make out]. And as if guiding my entry into this world of pro cycling, sans l’Anglais, they even set it up Rosetta Stone style, teaching me the basics of cycling terms in Flemish. Dag. Kop van de wedstrijd. Achtervolger. Tot Ziens. Ik zie u graag.
I was never good with languages but maybe this language of cycling isn’t so foreign at all.

turn left at kissena

“You’re Japanese, you have to do it.”
It was the default nationality reasoning, which, when you happen to be Japanese, gets applied too often to activities that normal people just wouldn’t choose to engage in. Raving? Cosplay? Zentai? Yup, yup, and yup [and no, I did not do all of the above].
But this time, it actually sort of made sense. For once, it wasn’t linked to sexual perversions, a big step in and of itself when you’re talking about being Japanese. It was something that, while there might be quite a bit over overlap between the fans/spectators of uniquely Japanese fetishes and this activity, I found kind of cool. Something that would probably still elicit surprise in Japan if I ever admitted being into it, but vanilla enough to enable one to talk about it openly [loudly, even] in public.

I am, of course, talking of keirin, or track racing.
A sport that, in my home country, is more famous for its status as a betting sport and doesn’t allow women to race, I never thought that I’d end up on a track on a random Sunday in June. I saw it coming, unconsciously, maybe, acquiring a taste for bicycles, dropping bank on a track bike that consequently terrified me, and choosing to spend a winter developing some semblance of balance on the rollers. But “working towards getting to a track” and “getting on a track” are two different animals. I could waste endless hours on the rollers and never touch a banked velodrome.
But cursed with the kind of friends who think that I could “do well” in certain activities that involve physical exertion and a bicycle [never mind if their logic is rooted in my unchosen ethnicity], “riding my track bike around” just wasn’t cutting it. Mike insisted I get on a track. Jared kept asking me when I was going to show up to Kissena. DS was included in plans to accompany me to Kissena one day in sunglasses, mustaches, and matching tracksuits with “SHIMURA” emblazoned on the back, a rising sun beneath it.

With two single-speeds - one a legit track bike - absurd costumes aside, it seemed like a good plan. So when Jared told me about Kissena’s Women’s Track Clincs, I poked around their website, and just in time, signed up for the last 3 hour clinic last Sunday. I BikeReg’d for my first ever event, felt sort of cool because of it, and then proceeded to spend most of Sunday morning repeatedly telling Mike how nervous I was while he got ready to ride in the support car and otherwise do really cool stuff with DS for the Danish team in the TD Bank Philadelphia International Cycling Championships [yes, I was uber jealous]. He told me I would be fine, that DS said I would kill it, gave me a kiss, and left, leaving me weakly pointing at my bike, on the verge of pooping my pants, yet again.
A few hours later, I was sitting in the middle of the first track I’ve ever been to, watching as experienced riders switched out cogs and chainrings, sprinted, and circled. A few minutes later, Joe - the main instructor and organizer - showed up with loaner bikes, and more clinic particpants filtered in. In all, about 10 women showed up, ranging from 10yrs old to 40. All were experienced in racing in some capacity, and I was thoroughly intimidated.

We first rode around the track, getting used to the banked corners, and learning how to use gravity to launch into a 200m sprint, where to stay on the track and how to pass others. After a drink of water and a few minutes of rest, we were then put in a giant pace line.
And that’s about the time when I started to get my ass handed to me. Mostly by a handful of tweens.
Due to my nonexistent pace line skills, and riding behind the probably 8yr old brother of one of the younger girls, I managed to get dropped, then linger in no man’s land for about FOUR FUCKING LAPS. Struggling to pull the rest of the line back to the front, I didn’t so much blow up as slowly putter out from pushing against the wind for what seemed like forever. I heard Jared’s voice in my head - “hey, at most, I’ll only be 399m ahead of you” - and then the wind gusted again.
The pace line broke apart, we drank by-then hot water, and rested before doing individual sprints, lead-out sprints, telephone pole jumps and power bursts, concluding with mock races. By the individual sprints, my legs were pretty much done. Of course, I apparently still had to go around and around the track, attempting to muster up some semblance of speed, while the wind treated us to billows of yellow sand from the baseball diamond adjacent to the track. By the time we were through, my jersey was marked by chain grease [from flipping my wheel] and patches of brownish-yellow sweat where I had wiped the sandy sweat from my chin. My glutes hurt and the sheer thought of climbing up 5 flights of stairs to Mike’s apartment with a bike over my shoulder - much less the ride back from 42nd St - made my head swirl.

I made it, though [an almond butter sandwich helped]. Brakeless, even. I had pulled out the cable in my front brake once I had arrived at the track and failed to put it back in properly. To be honest, I was a little disappointed in myself when I left; even though my riding has recently been limited to my commute, I expected to be a little stronger. I didn’t notice until halfway to the Main St 7 stop that riding brakeless was sort of coming naturally, and that I was totally okay with it.
Rain hit me around 27th St, but feeling bad about pulling out Mike’s Rapha Stowaway with my disgusting hands, I considered it a free shower and toughed it out. I made it up those stairs, jumped into the most awesome shower in recent memory, tried to study for the bar and ended up passing out in my underwear instead.
I woke up to stories and pictures of the Philly race, indulged in a delicious brownie made by Mike’s mom, and passed out yet again, dreaming of turning left at Kissena.