To Cheryl, Atlanta

Springlands Hotel, Moshi, Tanzania, Aug ?? 2010

We touched down in Moshi just now and were shuttled the short distance to the hotel by a cab driver who was a lot friendlier and more helpful than any I’ve encountered in Atlanta. It is around nine PM here, about 2:00PM your time.

I had intended to try to stay awake during the second leg of our air travel so my body clock would be closer to Tanzania time, but the crushing boredom just made me want to sleep for as much of it as possible. Instead of feeling rested, however, the confined spaces and upright position have left me in a zombie state which will no doubt put me at odds with the locals. With any luck, they’ll wait till I’ve had a shower to judge me fully. I wish to represent my family, and indeed the whole of America, the best I can.

Just cleaned up a bit, being careful not to let any water go in my mouth as my doctor instructed me. Mike found some bottled water and I used it to brush my teeth. That made a world of difference. I then went for a stroll around the hotel to get a sense of the place. It is small, but clean and brightly lit. No sign of flamingo attack so far.

I also met another member of our climbing party. I saw him in the television room — there is a television room… one television, one room — and noticed that he had shaved legs and a touch of grease on his right calf, which are telltale signs of a cyclist, albeit a cyclist with a filthy drivetrain. Noticing these, I started up a conversation with him, and I got more than I bargained for by a lot.

He introduced himself as Sheldonstein, and told me he’d been chasing a stolen bicycle from South Africa clear across the heart of the continent. I was skeptical of course, but he seemed glad to have someone to vent to, and I must say I was pleased to make a new friend as well, the state of his drivetrain notwithstanding.

According to him, he’d been doing some crazy experiments in Johannesburg, mixing aero bars and road parts, etcetera. When he started talking about putting triathlon specific parts on road bikes I became nauseated, but the really weird thing is that he talked as though the bike has a mind of its own… as though it wanted to be stolen. I think we all feel that each bike has its own character – perhaps even its own soul – but certainly not its own free will.

Anyway, with his permission, I made notes as he was talking, and the following updates will reflect the tale he told me from his own perspective.

To Cheryl, Atlanta

Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Aug 29th 2010

You will be glad to know that I have made it safely to Amsterdam without incident. I have been telling Mike for many months that during our trip he would surely get a seat on the plane next to an endlessly-squawking chicken in a cage, as one is likely to see on any third world bus in a movie, but this proved not to be entirely true. Instead, he was next to a snoring, drooling buffoon who shall remain nameless, but who is devilishly good looking.

As I walk around the airport, I am reminded that Europe is where fashion comes from. You can tell because the people here dress in all the shades of the fashion rainbow. Yes, from the dourest gray to the blackest black with occasional splashes of white, these people really know how to ignore color.

Truthfully, I am thinking of you and hoping that you are well. I have reflected deeply upon your suggestions of what to do should I come under attack by a pack of flamingos in the Ngorongoro crater, and I am very glad for your perspective on this grave issue. You are surely right that the best thing to do would be to grab one flamingo and use it as a bludgeoning weapon against the others, but the question remains: do you grasp it by the feet end or the beak end? I will experiment and report back.

I have taken to singing a little song as I take each one of my malaria pills. Since they cost $6 apiece and I was prescribed a bottle of 20, I think each one should go down with a little ceremony to mark the occasion. The song goes like this, to the tune of the inimitable TLC hit “No Scrubs”:
No, I don’t want no bugs
a bug is a thing that can’t get no blood from me
like a small turd in the sky
I hope it dies
And don’t give no diseases to me

In a few hours we get on the plane again headed for the heart of Africa. I’m planning to take an Ambien and drool on Mike some more. I don’t mean to be rude, but I hope you are missing me terribly.

Intrepid explorer,
Future writer of the Great American Novel,
Jim

I am finally getting close to being totally packed for my trip from the loving arms of my beloved Atlanta to the highest peak in Africa. Just now I have performed a preliminary packing of my gear into the two bags that will take the trip with me, a process not unlike attempting to wedge my own body into a cycling kit.

A quick look at the web site of the hotel where I will be staying at the base of the mountain reveals that it rents bicycles, which is interesting. I would love to be able to say that I rode a bike on Kilimanjaro, or even just around Tanzanian city streets, but I’m not willing to risk being photographed on anything but a road or a track bike. I have an image to consider, after all. I can’t have the local Tazanian population thinking I am a scrub.

Due to an overload of work requirements which sprang up at the last minute, I was forced to forego my usual Thursday night ride, and it has put me somewhat out of sorts. It could be worse, though. At least I’m not off the bike for weeks because I’ve been shot in the ass on Atlanta public transit.

The good news is, though I was not on my bike tonight, I did get my work engagements all tied up, and I also located another Atlanta cycling blog thanks to the magic of the Great Google Oracle, or “Googlecle” which is a good thing to say loudly if your throat itches and you are handcuffed.

What can I say? Mistakes were made.

As I mentioned before, check back while I’m away for a series of posts that I’ve been working on in secret here in my windowless underground lair. They will be farted automatically onto the internet with all the gusto that this blog can manage, and believe you me, my friends. If there is anything this blog can manage, it is farts with gusto as this YouTube link will illustrate.

Take care of yourselves in my absence, ride safe, and whatever you do, do not go near the velodrome. If I can’t be racing and earning points, no one should be!

Preparations are in full swing for my Kilimanjaro trip, and I am running around like an even crazier than normal person. Still, I have vowed to post every weekday for the whole year of 2010 and I am highly reluctant to fail at this, or in fact, anything. Luckily, I happened across the following video depicting some pretty creative additions to bike lanes in the Portland area and it made for a great short update.

It seems that some Nintendo-loving vandal has painted some Mariokart-themed symbols in some of Portland’s bike lanes, echoing the Portlander’s well known propensity for video game themed tattoos which I’ve just extracted metaphorically from my hind parts.

I have no more reason to believe that Portland’s fine citizens are more likely to have a Nintendo tattoo than I have to believe that Cheryl is stealing my bathroom tissue a roll at a time. I just spent an hour numbering them, however, for science.

Behold, the upshot: One of my favorite things about the internet is that there is so much information about so many people who are so deeply bizarre that you can make up pretty much anything at all, google it, and then find out that it exists. It is as though Google is a Schroedinger’s Cat of human peculiarity, except that nearly every time you open the box the cat is alive and has been doing some highly embarrassing things on video.

In this case I googled “portland mario tattoo” and got this:

Then I googled “Toilet Paper Theft” and came up with this:

MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa — Police blame a woman named Butts for stealing toilet paper from a central Iowa courthouse, and while they’re chuckling, the theft charge could put her in prison.

With all that in mind, look forward to regular posts from me over the days I’ll be absent. I’ve been squirreling away some fun posts that will be auto-posted and auto-tweeted while I’m away.

Huzzah!

A while ago, the Chrome Bags company ran a promotion on yonder Facebook during which they accepted old crappy shoes in return for a free pair of their new ones. It seemed too good to be true, but I sent them a pair of my very most craptasmic Chuck Taylor slip ons anyway. I also included a pair of Swiftwick Faster Mustache racing socks, though, to even the trade up a bit.

Chrome Bags make what is probably the world’s most coveted messenger bag, and somehow manage to stay in business despite the fact that bicycle messengers, for the most part, do not. I suspect that messenger bags are being worn by people who aren’t actually messengers in approximately the same proportions that Sport Utility Vehicles are driven by people interested in neither sport nor utility. In my case, I’ve worn a messenger style shoulder bag for almost ten years now and the only thing I’ve ever delivered to my destination is my own carcass and a few sarcastic remarks.

I also suspect that Chrome Bags are doing well right now thanks in large part to the Internet, which allows them to easily spread their message electronically. In this way they benefit directly from the very thing that made hand delivery of documents unnecessary. Isn’t the world an interesting place?

Still I’d love to have one of their bags. They have a cool seat belt buckle style feature in their shoulder straps which allows the wearer to shrug the bag on like a coat. Lacking such a buckle, I have to throw the strap of my Timbuk2 bag over my shoulder, which can be annoying when wearing my ActualCat helmet.

Also, the juxtapositon of the iconic safety item (a seat belt buckle) and the lack of helmets on heads or brakes on the bikes ridden by the people who wear Chrome bags should not be overlooked. If this irony irks you, then you’ll be glad to know that all you have to do to annoy someone wearing one of these bags is jab a finger at their seat belt buckle, thus disengaging it and dropping their bag to the floor. It’s kind of like the hipster version of the heart plugs the Harkonnens had in the David Lynch version of Dune.

With all that in mind, I was excited when I mailed off my craptacular old shoes and could not wait for a free pair of Chrome ones to take their place on my flippers. Lo, and, in addition, behold, some days later I got the very box I was waiting for, and I unwrapped a sweet pair of new shoes.

You’ll notice that they have an elastic band in the lace area to help contain your tied laces, thus keeping them from winding around some important part of your bike and sending you skidding down the street on your face. It’s a great feature.

I was lucky in that my Kursks fit my feet just fine. They’re very sturdy, and I’ve already put a lot of rides into them with no noticeable wear. The only drawback to their sturdiness was that it took a while longer than usual to break them in, but that’s to be expected.

What I like most about them is that their sole is nice and stiff. It makes pedaling in them a lot easier, and a lot more like pedaling in an actual cycling shoe. Here’s a photo of my right flipper in a pair of Chuck Taylor slip ons.

Notice how bent in the instep my foot is there? It’s something that gets really annoying after a while of pedaling in my old shoes, even though I’m usually only going short distances on my Peggy. Here’s the same flipper in the Chrome Kursk shoe.

It might be kind of hard to tell in the photograph, but the extra stiffness in the sole is really nice to have. The toe area is also nice and sturdy, which keeps the clips and straps from digging into my feet. All things considered, I get the impression that Chrome designed these shoes to be worn and used in exactly the way I am wearing and using them, i.e. to pedal a bicycle with clips and straps.

I like these shoes a lot and I can’t believe I got them for free. Chrome obviously worked hard to make a shoe that would appeal to their existing customer base.

My only complaint is that they do not close with a tiny seat belt buckle, but I suspect the Chrome engineers are hard at work on adding this even as I sit here. I can’t wait!