pink baby doll

Apparently, no matter how hard I try, it’s not going to go away. And everyone’s buzzing about it anyway. So, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, right?
Yeah, that’s right Valentine’s Day; you’re getting an undeserved shout-out. Happy now you fucked up, poor excuse for a holiday?
Now, now, don’t say I’m bitter, BECAUSE I’M NOT. No, really, I’m not. But judging by the sheer number of newspaper articles [whether this is really newsworthy is a completely different question, of course] advising the masochistic boyfriend on how to appease the Valentine-zilla that girlfriends tend to morph into come February 14th, the “holiday” consistently degenerates into the absurd well in advance of its celebration. Attached girls scramble to buy lace contraptions that will simultaenously push up and together while their single counterparts buy gallons of ice cream and too many cheesy movies on-demand. Meanwhile boyfriends try to devise ways not to get the life squeezed out of their balls, knowing full well that most things they do won’t cut it.

Why can’t this weekend be like any other? More importantly, why in God’s name did I have to choose this cursed holiday as the day I put down payment on my track bike frame almost a year ago?
And then I had to go with the pink cranks and rims. As if I needed another reminder of that one Valentine’s Day when - armed with courage that can only be derived from a persuasive best friend - I somehow ended up in a Victoria’s Secret dressing room in a pink, lacy babydoll. Patches of reason and logic did seep through from time to time [“what in the world am I doing?”], but it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Yeah, I know. How many bad frat boy stories have you heard that started with that line?

I suppose it applies quite well to my track bike, too. It seemed a good idea at the time to choose one gear over 21. It seemed a good idea at the time to spend too much on pink anchors for rims and a powdercoated front brake that’s just going to come off when the bike hits the track. It all seemed like a good idea at the time. Which is just another way of saying now that I think about it, what kind of drugs was I on?
Maybe a little bit of stupid, and a little bit of crazy. Or a lot of both, given the fact that I’m probably looking at a good year - two, if I stick to what I want - until I can afford to buy a solid road bike. But it was Valentine’s Day, and while I might think it’s ridiculous, no one said I was immune.
Besides, unlike that pink babydoll, I'm going to keep squeezing every drop of my investment out of that track bike. At least until knee failure.

perpetual bonk

On the verge of an academic bonk, I was guzzling an Americano at 5pm while he was sticking to tea at our weekly meeting, when he said,
“Keep to what you can manage, you know? Otherwise, you just end up looking like an idiot.”
We weren’t talking about me, or even him, really, but the gears in my brain finally started turning. Shit, I thought, maybe I’ve been doing this completely wrong. Maybe spending huge chunks of time wishing my stem was a pillow was actually not normal. Maybe being exhausted was something that should be happening after I get off the bike, not before. Huh.

I understand this is old news, but I’m going to point to childhood trauma on this one. My Asian parents beat into me the philosophy that if you suck at something - other than math, that didn’t get through to me - you just have to try harder. Put in twice the effort as normal people. Never mind that I probably have a VO2max of 2; push the pedals hard enough and maybe I’ll be able to go faster than 20mph one day. Maybe even sprint for more than 30 seconds. And if that effort wasn’t enough, try three times as hard.
Yeah, I really shouldn’t have applied a philosophy that my parents only intended to apply to academia to bicycles, but I never said they taught me common sense [the fact that I don’t have one is a total genetic fluke, not due to a failing of theirs, though]. So instead of taking off days, alternating between cycling and running/strength training, I was trying to do it all. At once. And while I am somewhat multi-talented - as in I can wash the dishes and talk on the phone at the same time - I am not quite that adept.

That didn’t keep me from trying, of course, but it only resulted in me bonking in pretty much every area of life. I was tired all the time. I wasn’t eating enough and sometimes I hated more than just the first five minutes on the rollers. I barely had time to write, much less design. I was starting to get apathetic about class. Things were either not getting done or else going into the shitter. Awesome.
Small wonder, then, that when my trusted confidante snorted and made that statement, the lightbulb in my head sputtered and blinked and I thought, “I am such an idiot.” In my eagerness to be somewhat competent on a bicycle come spring, I was essentially demolishing myself. Worse, immersed in my newbie status, I forgot to look to the pros for guidance. Because even Victoria Pendleton has a rest day. In fact, her training regimen consists of lifting, riding on the track, avoiding hilly routes on outdoor rides, never running, and minimizing even standing on her off days. And while I’ll never be a world champ, that sounds like a hell of a lot more fun than what I’ve been doing for the past few weeks.

So yesterday, I resisted. Even as my bike seemed to stare back at me in hopeful anticipation of being ridden, I kept my butt planted on my chair. And while the complete lack of physical activity involving massive amounts of sweat was foreign enough to induce a slight level of paranoia, when my sister asked how “Perez,” my “flaming, gay, pink bike,” was, it didn’t seem like so much of a lie when I said, “oh, good,” in response.
I may not have ridden “Perez” yesterday but I’m pretty sure we’re both the better for it. And of course, there’s always today.

girl crush

Embrocation Monday, again.

You know where to go.

existential exit

Denial can only last so long, and when your rear brakes start to sound like metal grating on sand, it’s time to install new pads.
Or at least to install new pads within the next two months. On auditory notice that my brake pads were nonexistent, I still managed to forget about buying new ones for about a month. Visual notice that my brake pads actually were no longer there, combined with the increased inability to stop had me nervously watching Andy while he dug through a box of pads. Luck smiling down on me for once in my life, I was able to claim the last ‘cross set in his inventory.
Because stopping’s important, you know?

I’m not talking about the ability to slow down or stop in the middle of the West Side Highway, River Road, or Central Park, with one foot clipped out to wait patiently, because quite frankly I’m the one that can hardly keep up. My rear wheel isn’t ever going too fast; at best it feels sturdy and reliable, at worst like an anchor with a dead body wrapped around it. Ascents are painfully slow. Descents are faster but still akin to a walrus lumbering lazily towards water. But it’s comfortable despite its inhibiting weight, and kept me fairly grounded.
The first time I rode Mike’s Cyfac to New Jersey, though, the only thing I felt was pressure on my feet and exhaustion tugging at my thighs. It was like riding on air, like flying. The kind where even your brain stops screaming and all you can do is blink.
And even though it was heavier than that Cyfac, potential memories flashed like strobe lights through my brain as I took my sister’s new Bianchi Via Nirone on an unauthorized spin down 2nd Avenue last weekend [HAHA I RODE IT BEFORE YOU, oops, i mean, sorry Kak!]. Built up and exactly my size, it was sitting pretty in NYC Velo and I couldn’t resist jumping on to shift the gears and coast down the street. The brifters bent inwards under my curious fingers, the derailleur clicked, and the cassette spun. I was jealous and a small part of me - okay, more like at least half of me - was tempted to pick up the damn thing and throw it into oncoming traffic. It just didn’t seem fair. I’ve wanted a road bike for so long now that it almost seems like I’ve been biking forever.
But that’s not true [clearly]; I’m just spinning out of control.

It’s almost too easy to do, too, which makes those jumbled up feelings of envy and bitterness simultaneously more tolerable and more frustrating. There is a lot of teaching of need, of powerful learned wanting that manifests itself into an exchange of things, stuff, whatever, for the motion of sliding plastic and a signature. It’s everywhere, even in an industry fueled by human muscle and grace. And when people told me that this was cool, this was pro, and that this would buy me membership into the exclusively cool, I - an ignorant newbie who is about a billion miles from even trying to emulate Cat 4s - bought into it.
Unknown at the time, and realized only a few days ago, the foolish purchase of that mentality also bought me quite the existential crisis. Deadset on chasing a false sun, I had turned into the modern day - albeit cliched - Icarus, vanity and the desire to fit in shadowing the blatant signs that my wings [or wheels, as the case might be] were melting. Right before I fell, I asked myself why I started all of this - the bikes, the blog, the obsession - in the first place, and unable to come up with a clear answer, I fucking crashed.

But it stopped me, too. Maybe with a few more psychological bruises and a lot more self-disgust than I had anticipated, granted, but no one ever said this sport was easy. It was never supposed to be; at least not as easy as cutting a check or typing in your credit card number. And I forgot that, even in the company of legit racers who didn’t give a shit what they were riding as long as it worked [and, okay, wasn’t steel], friends who didn’t need to spend money to look like they could lead a breakaway because they could actually do it, and win. Meanwhile, I was trying to hide the weakness of my legs by covering them in money; and in that game, there’s never any winning.
I crashed again yesterday, for [sort of] real this time, first bouncing into the right side of the doorway before smashing into the left side before I did the tumble-slide-fall onto the rollers, my feet still trapped in the clips. My shoulder - skinned and turning an angry red - burned, and I remembered that was where Jared, a Cat 1 track and road racer who will entertain my stupid questions about optimal gearing for the track, punched me last weekend. We were with Andy who once [snobbily] told me that I had to work on my bike snobbery, Chris who does triathlons without training for them, Justin, whose quiet acceptance of everyone as they are is as comforting as his nickname of “Hot Chocolate,” and of course, Mike, the expert of tough love who, unmoved by my emotional meltdown, dared me to give it all up. And I remembered, I really love those guys.
I got up, checked the bike, and climbed back on. And I remembered, I really love this, too.

weekend warrior

I suppose, in a way, that it was completely appropriate to be feeling up a roadie's legs last weekend.
Actually, I felt up two different sets of legs, and the hard substance that the denim was covering up was foreign enough to have me almost groping. In a totally platonic way, though, and we were all doing it.

It wasn't completely out of context; the season is already under way for those on proper teams and for the Cat 1 and 2 whose legs I prodded, groped, and pushed, their legs are fueling up while their cyclocrossing counterparts have peaked, raced, and sprayed down their bikes one last time until fall. But all in that in-between phase where sitting on a couch for two hours without feeling guilty about it is permitted, roadies, 'cross fanatics, and even those like me who don't fall anywhere on that scale, were collected around a TV on Sunday morning.

Because the Cyclocross World Championships was showing. And because NYC Velo promised yummy baked goods and freshly pulled shots of rich, dense espresso.
Which is why I was in NYC in the first place...for the fourth weekend in a row. But while fun is never lacking in the city, like those times when you've fully given up on finding anything worth dating and something perfect walks in the door and hands you their number, weirdly cool things happen when you're not really expecting it. Like learning how to slip a number to a guy who's attached, what hand-pulled beer tastes like, how hard a Cat 1 can punch, and debating the expected ROI on a Diet Coke. Saturday night, Andy was buying first rounds at d.b.a., and totally comfortable about partying on his dime, I had my first Diet Coke in the city with the guys who purposely mis-pronounce my name when I'm in Boston and are under the impression that I'm about the size of a Pomeranian.

And Sunday, we were back at it; this time I came loaded with vegan peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, Andy with espresso and these giant bombs of non-vegan delicious from Birdbath Bakery. Marco even showed up with donuts, which assured that everyone would be in insular shock by noon.
And on a sugar and espresso high, I even met a few twitter friends, met up again with some Rapha Continental riders, and dropped some cash on a cycloputer [my first!], all before I fought through Chinatown to get on a bus back to Boston. Sitting in an old, slightly dirty, crammed bus, I was wired and tired. Somehow, though, I managed to fall asleep, dreamed of bicycles...and woke up near Boston, where schoolwork awaited [sigh].
...Is it the weekend yet?

frozen slow

There are usually two choices when you're stuck out in the frigid cold on a bicycle in too little gear: 1. go as fast as you can while hoping that the resulting body heat you create will somehow overcome the wind that you've also created, or 2. reduce your speed under the theory that less wind means less cold.
I've tried both, and neither work. The results seem to be about the same: blood refuses to circulate to my feet, fingers, or face. To add to the general discomfort, snot will start pouring out my nose; and to add to my general embarrassment, I can't feel most of it dribbling down until almost too late. At that point, there's nowhere to look but up. At least you're on two wheels and you'll get home. At least you're not walking.
But yesterday, I was walking. And it was about 1F.

All the pretty snow earlier in the day turned to the kind of weather that has your ears stinging and your face hurting as soon as you get outside. That balmy weather that made rides outside slightly tolerable? That was the equivalent of God releasing a teaser for a movie that won't come out for another 5 months. Thanks for letting us know what we're missing, big G.
So even though I wouldn't have ridden outside this weekend anyway - given my wind allergy, I think it's safe to say that I tend to prefer riding indoors - I still felt indignant about the weather. Temperatures were low enough that I was looking at a weekend of sitting around my apartment, simultaneously feeling lazy and stressed. The kind of weekend where, unless my pantry and fridge were completely bare, and there was nothing left to eat except wood and toilet paper, I wasn't stepping foot outside.

But then friends down south in the Big Apple decided to put together a party to watch the Cyclocross World Championships taking place in Tabor, Czech Republic, and it would be early enough on Sunday to allow my attendance and still ship back to Boston at a decent hour. I did what any reasonable person would do: I packed a bag, left my helmet at home, and hopped on a bus.
Which resulted in me half jogging down Chrystie Street in inhumane temperatures when I finally got to NYC. To be honest, when I felt the cold air slap my face, I didn't really want to get off the bus. I thought about the rollers in my apartment, felt the guilt of abandoning my bikes there for the weekend. But when friends are involved, there's no shame in slowing down a bit.
And besides, it's way colder up in Boston.
[If you're in the NYC area, come out to the World's party at NYC Velo this Sunday. It'll be fun, I promise!]