I paced from the front of my apartment to the back, looking for a place where I fit. Finally I found myself among my bicycles. I picked up my tools, but they felt cold and without any humor. I began to root around in my spare parts bin. I realized I had all the parts to put together a bike, and I might as well busy my hands while all my head wanted to do was hang sorrowfully.

Outside a hot, persistent rain pattered against the windowpanes, and thunder rolled overhead like a great bell down a set of stone steps, echoing the clanging fear of loneliness in my own head.

Strewn about my workshop I had a cyclocross frame, a 650C carbon fork, a set of BMX risers and headset, and other various parts. Sure, they’d technically go together to form something that was vaguely bicycle shaped, but the horror of those disparate parts coming together was enough to turn my stomach. Still, I wrenched on, as if building an ugly bicycle would somehow excuse my own ugliness, my own inability to keep Sherril with me.

The next hour passed in a blur. The cries and the fears in my head became a regular buzz, like the 60-cycle hum of the single fluorescent light overhead. All the while, my hands twisted bolts and tensed cables, following their own designs with no direction from my head or heart. I even remember adding a single triathlete-style water bottle holder behind the seat in comical dildo fashion. I am sure I’ve never purchased such a thing, yet there it was.

Finally, the bike was built. I took a step back and looked at what I had done. It was without a doubt the ugliest thing I had ever seen. Even a dog’s anus would wink in horror at this bicycle, and I vowed to dismantle it immediately.

Yes, dismantled immediately – after just one ride.

I am by birth a Massachusian, what some would call a “Masshole”. I began working on bikes when I was but a wee lad, when my beard was not nearly so weird as it is today, though it has always been just as bushy. For most of my life, my tastes in bikes were a tad eccentric, but not overly so. I spent a lot of time tinkering with very old English bikes and multiple speed hubs, the sorts of bikes a man might ride while smoking a Meerschaum pipe, and saying “I say!”.

Soon my tastes swung from multiple speed bikes to fixed gear bikes. I tried anything to build the perfect bicycle, to create the ultimate machine that would give the rider the sweetest riding experience. Some of them were works of art. Others were abominations and had to be destroyed in the hot strobe of lightning and driving rain.

The one I am chasing now, the abomination that it was my unlucky lot to create, it is the worst of the worst.

Oh sure, I made some mistakes over the years, like riding flat bar road bikes in public, but this… this monster… I can not even bear to think of it! It must be caught and dismantled!

What? Oh. Well yeah I mean destroyed, of course. Mostly. Look, bike parts aren’t cheap, okay. Some of them will sell pretty well on Ebay. It has a Chris King headset for the love of god – don’t judge me!

Anyway, the night I created the evil contraption, I was supposed to have dinner with my beloved, Sherril. She’d blown me off all weekend saying she wasn’t feeling well, but wanted to meet for dinner on Sunday night. I rode all weekend alone, sorrowful and with poor pedaling technique as I thought she must certainly be intending to break up with me.

Finally the night came and she met me at my home. I couldn’t help myself. As soon as I saw her I said “I get the feeling we’re about to have a serious conversation”. We both got into her car and she sighed heavily.

“I’m just not feeling it,” she said.

My worst fears realized! She’d even remembered to bring the watch I’d left on her dresser. My world crumbled. It felt as though my heart had become a deep roiling black hole, sucking the joy and the color out of my extremities and leaving me with scant will even to stand.

With the clumsy limbs of a marionette whose strings are being pulled by a drunk balanced on top of a steam locomotive, I tumbled out of her car and lurched in the direction of my front door without a shred of joy or a beam of sunlight to warm my face.

If I had known then what I know now, I would have gone out drinking or taken up heroin, or just found a gutter to lie in, anything to keep myself from my spare parts bin and work stand! You see, it was that night that I created the worst of my abominations.

May God have mercy upon me!

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.

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

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!

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!

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!

First of all, let me say that I am a big fan of helmets. Ever since I fell during a commute to work in 2001 and landed hard enough for my head to bounce off the pavement, I have been sold on the idea of protective headgear. I’m pretty sure that had I not been wearing a helmet that day I would be even dumber and less good to make understanding than I already sandwich.

Unfortunately, at $275, I do not have nearly enough money to buy a Catlike Whisper helmet. This is a tremendous blow to my ego because I think I look really good on a bike and in my cycling gear, despite the fact that there are photographs numbering in the hundreds of me looking like a fat douche. Denial is a wonderful thing, but it is hard to maintain these lies to myself without the latest gear used by the pros.

I’m trying to fill this hole in my life by listening to George Michael’s timeless hit Careless Whisper over and over again.

It helps, but there’s still a nagging feeling in the back of my mind, which is why I have decided to make my own Catlike helmet replacement, with a few modifications. Chief among these will be the lack of traditional painting methods, and the use of actual cats. Here’s one of my early Actual Cat production models being tested by none other than the people’s cyclist himself, Jens Voigt.

Just think of the benefits! Not only is your head protected, but you get a sense of companionship lacking in other manufacturer’s helmets. Sure there are some drawbacks, such as some yowling noises and possibly getting scratched about the head and neck by your helmet should it be rainy out, but I have solved this issue by wearing a BMX-style helmet under my Actual Cat helmet to protect me from it should it get mad about something.

Needless to say, this idea has real potential. Actual Cat helmets could also be used in the workplace, wherever people need head protection that is itself potentially harmful.

I look forward to making a lot of money on this!

Take, for instance, what is surely the greatest example of a wiggle in action, not to mention the epitome of “whimsical”, the crazy straw.

Never has the simple addition of a little wiggling brought so much enjoyment, except certain kinds of wiggling that a man and his Cheryl perform together. These matters, however, are beyond the scope of this document.

Now let’s examine an example of what I consider to be a bad design wiggle, the forks and seatstays on a Pinarello Prince, or as I call it, the Wigglefork.

E'ry day i'm wigglin wigglin wigglin

That fork and those seatstays remind me of a kris, which is a kind of ceremonial dagger indigenous to some southeast Asian countries. I’ve never seen a real kris, but I have seen a lot of reproductions which are the sorts of things that your weird cousin who drinks way too much Mtn Dew might own.

Mom, I've told you, it is a KRIS not a WAVY KNIFE.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I would love to have a Pinarello, but since I already own a Pegoretti, I think I am pretty much set for Italian bike frames that start with the letter P. I use the Pegoretti, or “Peggy” as I call it, as my singlespeed bar hopper, a fact which would probably cause Dario Pegoretti himself no end of disdainful Italian frowns.

But not all wiggles are bad in my jaded eyes. Occasionally the omission of a wiggle is what causes me consternation, as seen here in the capital R glyphs from the fonts Helvetica and Arial, respectively.

As you can see, the Helvetica’s capital R looks like a gentleman performing a stately bow with his leg put forth in the style of the day, whereas the Arial capital R looks like a douchey kid with his leg stuck out in an effort to trip someone. Don’t get me started on the letter “Z” from Arial – I hate it so much!

This is precisely why design is fun. Some things that will be pretty to your eye will cause mine to quake in its socket and roll around in disgust. Too much coffee also causes them to do that, which is why I’ve had to set limits on my coffee intake lest someone see me and think I am possessed by an evil spirit.

Rest easy friends, I am not possessed. I’m just hopped up on Mocha Java and some serious design snobbery. Wiggle on!

This would mean a surge in power not seen since the Ghostbusters crossed the streams, except instead of plasma or whatever those streams were made of, these’ll be pure green white and red testosterone, and the result will be some very angry sprinters.

Judging by the photo above, these proceedings are going to leave Cavendish looking not unlike Batboy, who was one hell of a sprinter in his own right.

Meanwhile, Lance Armstrong finds his legal peloton growing by the day in defense against the accusations being lobbed by Floyd Landis. Having new members has got to feel a bit like a real life ride, in that it might be both a blessing and a curse. When someone new joins your group in either case, It is a blessing that they can share some of the work, but it is a curse in the case of a rider that they were able to catch you in the first place, and a curse in the case of a legal team that they’re billing you by the hour.

After all, time is money, and speed is change over time. There can be no doubt, therefore, that Lance should hire Mario Cipollini. Yeah, I said it.

Look, Lance is in a little hot water. Not a lot, but a little. You can tell it’s not a lot of hot water because the scandal hasn’t received a cutesy name with one of the approved scandal suffixes yet. These being, naturally, “-water” and “-gate”. This tradition started with Watergate, but then branched out in the Clinton years to Whitewater and Lewinskygate. Google searches for “Dopegate”, and “Dopewater” turned up nothing Lance-related, but I did get a hit for Lancegate on the Slowtwitch forums, which is appropriate as Lance is now a triathlete once more.

With this investigation gathering momentum, real journalists will have to settle sooner rather than later on the cutesy name they wish to apply to it. All I can do as a vile blogger is prattle on and pray someone takes me seriously, but there is good news: at least I’m not posting on a forum!