wind hungry

I left on my usual lunch break walk Monday afternoon planning on crafting a lame excuse for a small break. It would go something like this: "Hey guys, sorry work/life has been hectic. I may not post anything this week but I'll be back soon!" I was thinking about how exactly to word this cheerful, open-ended, white lie, because neither life nor work has been hectic. I've just been having trouble crawling out of some life stuff - bike included - and it's all been starting to feel like quicksand.

It's been unseasonably cold out, and Monday was windy enough to have me walking a little sideways. The insides of my ears started to hurt as the crosswind turned into an enthusiastic headwind. I wasn't expecting it, and it shoved the air I was trying to breathe out back down my throat. The suffocating pressure felt like an appropriate analogy to my current life situation: functioning on a day-to-day basis has started to feel like riding into a considerable, seemingly-never-ending headwind on extremely weak [non-Dutch] legs.
In the context of the bike, it's familiar and sometimes inevitable. Shit happens, and sometimes it comes in the form of currents of air that like to mess with your front wheel, your inertia, or both. There is a stretch of windy, gusty days every year in the spring here; early enough in the year that there are cobwebs and dust bunnies still lingering in my legs from long, steady efforts all winter, but late enough that I'm practically begging weather.com to ride outside. The timing is always perfect, because I'm never ready. And so I spend a few weekends pedaling against a wall of air, sometimes doing the walk of shame while trying not to get my steel bike ripped out of my hands and down into the Tama River. It's frustratingly unpleasant and if I'm hungry enough, can shove me into an abyss of hopeless helplessness. If I'm honest, it's never not scared me.

Pushing my cold hands deeper into my pockets, I'd turned my head to try to breathe last Monday, glad that I wasn't trying to ride outside that day. As chance would have it, I was next to a small Japanese cafe I'd taken Alex and Tim to last February. It had been windy, then, too, and we'd found good ramen after riding around the Imperial Palace. Tim - like all cross addicts - skipped around sidewalks and curbs on his Super X, Alex was relaxed and steady, I'd tried to keep up without blowing up.
"I hate wind," I'd cringed to Tim.
"Bend your elbows," he'd said, "lean into it. And keep pedaling. If you coast, you're fucked."
I filed that into the mental "practical things to know about cycling" folder and pulled it out a month later when the wind predictably picked up again. It worked, and like most good advice, it's seeped into other moments, like when I feel the need to mash down on the life panic/pause button...for about five weeks...to get fat and feel really sorry for myself. I remembered, then that while slamming yourself into a brick wall won't always be productive, easing up too much on the pedals - like I've been doing - can be just as silly. In the end, it just makes it that much harder to get back on the bike.

That realization of what I've been doing [or, more accurately, not doing] hasn't gotten me tearing up the sides of mountains on one gear, setting PRs or otherwise accomplishing anything other than sitting in my trainer [and finally completing a workout, to the virtual cheers of my coach]. I've already broken my promise to cry less, but I haven't self-medicated with chocolate in three [!!!] whole days. It's not much so far, but I'm trying not to coast. I'm calling it "active recovery" - of the mental and physical kind - with fingers crossed that a Type A personality and the demotivatingly boring hell that is easy spinning will get me a little closer to hungry.

travel lust and the biknd helium

Like most young, single professionals with just enough money to spare if you’re okay with eating eggs and canned sardines every day, I’ve fallen pretty hard for travel. That itch to fly to faraway places, to breathe new air, and be herded along to world heritage sites with crowds of Chinese tourists. It seems to be a common thing for most half-interesting people; perhaps the product of unconsciously wanting to escape the dry, fluorescent lighting of corporate environments that are the just the right touch of too warm or too cold to keep you consciously uncomfortable. It’s such an easy expense to justify – the opportunity to explore a new culture and locale! The self-exploratory experiences! The beautiful things to see and people to meet! – that no one ever questions whether you simply want to escape the reality of your current, very real life. Instead people tend to express their approval at travel plans, bestowing you extra points on the life scale if “travel” also includes “helping the less fortunate” or “spectating something humanitarian.”

I would be lying if I said I didn’t love the romance of the idea of eternal [albeit, underfunded] travel. But I would also be lying if I said the idea of living out of a suitcase for months on end was appealing or otherwise seemed tolerable. Instability and unpredictability are concepts I am familiar with, but only as facets of my personality. I still struggle with situations in which they manifest outside my psyche. I’ve gotten better [I keep an umbrella at work, now], but it's been a process.
And yet I arrived at JFK airport last month with a suitcase and my bike, throwing caution to the wind and TSA the opportunity to fuck my paint job, again.

When good things happen to me when I least expect them to, I'm inclined to believe that tempting fate and acting like an asshole will actually yield results. Come at me, TSA, I mentally taunted while I checked in my bike, damage my paint again so I can kill you. My mouth was frothing in premature anger at the thought. But thousands of miles, a taxi ride and four flights of stairs later, I unzipped my Biknd Helium case to find my bike, safe, sound, and unscathed.

True, the condition of my bike is more likely due to the bike case than anything involving my questionably aggressive attitude towards airlines and transport security. An expense I managed to make room for a few weeks before I left for New York, the Biknd Helium case has turned into that friend who insists, "just one shot, I'm buying, anything you want," and suddenly you're stumbling around Harvard Square so drunk you don't even know how drunk you are until you get pulled over by the cops on the way home. It whispers that you should never be without a bike, wherever you go, and since it holds two sets of wheels, a wheelset purchase would be optimal, or, more accurately, necessary. In other words, it's an enabler.

But it's also like the kind of enabling friend who has your back, will make sure you're always safe, and stays surprisingly mobile when fully loaded. It took me 25 minutes to pack up my bike the first time, including the time spent Youtubing videos of how to take off my rear derailleur, and it rolled smoothly from my apartment to the taxi to check-in. The fork locks into the frame, the bottom bracket sits on a foam cushion, and the inflatable bags on each side provide substantial cushioning. There's no need to bubble wrap your frame or swaddle it in your sweaters. You'll take some risks, sure [doesn't fun always include that, though?] but you'll know that, barring some disaster, you and your bike will get to Paris, Marrakesh, Tokyo, New York City or wherever in one, pristine piece.
My Biknd Helium case is currently sitting quietly in a corner of my apartment, waiting to be pulled out, packed up, and rolled through an airport headed for exotic or familiar destinations. But like any true and good enabler, it goads me to do random searches for flights to all the places I've wanted to go and isn't beneath judging me for wanting to save up/stop my bank account from bleeding to death for a little while longer.
"Come onnnnn," it pretends to plead, "let's just gooooo. There are places to see, mountain passes to climb, cafes to ride to! The travel constipation will be totally worth it!"

And I think, as my hair trigger finger scrolls through flights to Budapest, Istanbul, and Reykjavik, yeah, yeah, you're right. It totally would.

october selection

All the treats from last month...
- I've never been into wooden bikes, but a Tokyo shipwright making pretty bikes? I like this man's versatility. [via T Magazine]

- "Ride with people who are excited, happy" and lots more food for thought in this interview by Velonews with Tim Johnson.

- The Cannondale p/b Cyclocrossworld.com Team has a video out, with more coming soon! It's really well done. Go watch.

- And because I could happily live in Lululemon for the rest of my life, even if I'm not an indoor spinner [if only these Ride Inside Crop pants had some super invisible low profile chamois...]

- And if yoga pants don't turn you on, this should:

On to November...!