Jim Hodgson | Let's go write bikes!

How to Pee in Cycling Bibs: The Hunch-N-Flop

By jim | Published: August 19, 2010

If you’re going to ride bikes, you are very likely going to sweat, especially if you live in Atlanta. I love my city, don’t get me wrong, but the humid air here can be heavy, annoying, and detrimental to athletic performance, like carrying a drunk uncle over either shoulder. Your body’s natural response to the temperature, which is not to mention the too-much-info things a drunk uncle is prepared to say to you, is to sweat profusely.

Those fluids must be replenished, and that, in turn, means that sooner or later you are going to need to pee. If you’re a man, this means fun times swishing the pee stream around, or perhaps writing your name. If you’re a lady, I have no idea what it means. Cheryl says that when girls go to the bathroom rainbows come out the front and blueberries come out the back, and I am totally prepared to believe her on both counts.

Needing to pee when one is inside one’s cycling bibs, however, is a little bit of an issue. You have to get your gear out so it can do work, but what’s the best way? Also note that this guide is not for people who wear shorts instead of bibs, as those people just pee all over themselves and their bikes. Looking at you, triathletes.

If you are housebroken, however, you have two options. The first is to grasp the elastic at the bottom of one of your leg holes, pull it away from your leg, and dangle your gentleman’s bits down and out. This move is known as the Dangling Wrangler. It can work just fine, but there are a few problems with it. First of all, cycling has a pronounced shrinking effect on a man’s kickstand. Whereas you might have had the length to perform a pee-on-the-leg-free Danging Wrangler when you got on the bike, chances are that after a vigorous ride you’d have trouble making it around the corner, let alone down the street, if you catch my drift.

I prefer, instead, to perform a maneuver that I call the Hunch-N-Flop. It has five simple steps.
1. Hunch over
2. Flop out your business
3. War cry
4. Pee
5. War farts

Now, I’ll grant you, some of these steps might be considered superfluous, but trust me when I tell you that it’s with your best interest in mind that I include them. Here’s the detailed breakdown.

1. Hunch – Basically you want to bend your spine unnaturally in the worst mockery of good posture, giving the straps of your bibs a little slack to work with. This should be done with sufficient force to make you emit a throaty grunt.

2. Flop – Hook the thumb of one hand into the waistband of your bibs in the center of your body, and pull down. Use the other to scoop your fleshy niblets up and out like you’re cleaning out a jack-o-lantern.

3. War Cry – I’ll be honest, I recommend this step any time you are getting out your tackle. There are precious few occasions when it is acceptable to present yourself, as my arrest record will attest, and those occasions should be marked with a bone-chilling war cry. It lets people know that you’re about to do work. Serious work.

4. Pee – You should know how to do this.

5. War Farts – There’s no better way to conclude a Hunch-N-Flop than to rip a chamois-burning cheek flapper. If those nearby aren’t already cowering in fear from your war cry, this harbinger of doom will have them running scared, no question.

Everything after this point is left up to the pee-er himself, but basically amounts to performing the Hunch and Flop portions of the maneuver in reverse. You may wish to add a “Ta-daaa!” and a flourish at the very end, but be careful if you are wearing your cycling cleats on a tile bathroom floor or you’ll find yourself on your back in whatever pee didn’t totally go where it was supposed to while you were farting and screaming your head off. Ta daaa!

That should wrap it up, friends. I hope this guide has been helpful, and please do remember to let me know when you’ve performed the Hunch-N-Flop and had those around you remark on its effectiveness. They definitely will!

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The Clothes Make the Bike

By jim | Published: August 18, 2010

Someone once told me that if you want to know if a man is well dressed, look down. I tried this on myself, and realized that I’d left the house with my fly unzipped, but I think in general it means that you should check to see if the man in question is atop an acceptable bicycle.

Like clothes, everyone has their own opinions about what constitutes acceptability in a bike, and people of differing opinions will vehemently argue their side ad infinitum, which is latin for “even though no one cares”.

Consider the following photo, which features a lady of scant clothes in the foreground, and some bicycles in the background. I have used a popular image manipulation program to hide her shameful nudity and greenish tattoos behind a ball gown, and also to detract less from the real focus of the photo, which is the bikes.

In a minute, baby, let's see the bikes first

Normally I would have some disdain for a beach cruiser style bike, especially one with a step-through frame, but if Scant Clothes Lady (SCL) lives near the beach, that bike would suddenly find itself totally acceptable. Being in a state of undress on the internet, however, is acceptable no matter where you live these days, since the sex tape is slowly taking the place of the resume. In fact, I lifted the above photo from SCL’s LinkedIn account.

Some people play dress up with their bikes as well as themselves, as demonstrated by this sultry off-fender number on another step-through frame:

I think it’s probably wise to keep the clothes off your bicycle and on yourself unless you’re certain that its naked time. Should you want to prance around in a $5500 tailored three-piece suit made especially to be bicycled in, however, it seems that Rapha in conjunction with Tommy Everest can help you with that. I might spend that money on a bicycle and just wear my team kit to ride it as per usual, though, but I can’t even be relied upon to zip up my gentleman’s flap, so what do I know?

In fact, one of the best things about cycling bibs is that they do not have a fly for me to mistakenly leave open, much as one would come in handy sometimes. It would be nice not to have to perform the maneuver that I call the “Hunch-n-Flop” whenever nature calls, but life is fraught with tradeoffs, I suppose.

Hm, I should do a detailed series of instructions on the Hunch-n-Flop. It could be the contribution to cycling as a whole that my lackluster racing is not!

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Sticks and Stones: My Trackstand Unclipped

By jim | Published: August 17, 2010

It is a marvelous facet of humanity that, at those moments when we think we are the coolest, we are, in fact, at our most buffoonish, and perhaps even most vulnerable. One incisive comment at these moments can turn the sweetest victory aside like a chamois turns aside a rider’s banana farts.

This is precisely what happened to me last night. Allow me to set the scene.

I was returning from a short ride with The Bobbler to check out the Grant Park crit course I’ll be racing on Sunday. During the ride, we ran into a handful of other riders out doing the same thing, as well as Twotone, who wasn’t on a bike, but merely airing his baby, Otto.

Otto took a long look at me and then cried a bit.

During our ride I was employing my “mad” track standing skills at each stoplight, as is my wont. Since I have declared myself against the practices of running lights and of slipping past cars, track standing gives me something to do while I wait for the light. Note that I have never employed it during an actual track event. In fact, I would probably have no small amount of trouble doing this since I am used to track standing with the riding surface sloping up to the left along the crown of the road, and the track slopes up to the right.

Still, as I say, it gives me a balancing game to play while I wait for lights, as well as a sense of smugness when I see other riders debasing themselves by taking the sidewalk.

So there I was, last night, riding home in the hot, wet breath of a summer’s evening, when I was confronted with a poem inscribed on a wall in front of me in the neighborhood known as Cabbagetown. I paused in trackstand mode long enough to read the poem — but not comprehend it — and then rode on to catch The Bobbler, who was a block ahead of me by this point. There were two cute girlies crossing the street ahead of me, and I could swear that I saw in their faces a measure of surprise that a man could stop a bike at will, read a poem, and then ride on with nary an unclip, let alone a dismount. I might even have imagined them to be impressed!

I don’t know why I would think any two cuties would be interested in such a maneuver, though. My poetry and my bike riding have both been met with equal disinterest over the years by Cheryl, and that’s when they’re not met with outright scorn.

Still, like any self-important oblivious buffoon who fancies himself interesting in this day and age, I began to compose the twitular transmission that I would broadcast about it when I got home. I came up with this, and sent it from my writing desk:

Just laid down a rock solid trackstand long enough to read a street art poem in full view of two Cabbagetown cuties. #hipstar

Pleased with myself, I headed to the rear of my windowless underground lair to start a shower. No sooner did I step away from the computer though, than my friend Carleton posted this:

Just saw some dork doing a track stand while reading some emo poem in cabbagetown. Sheesh #LATFH

Damn and blast! My moment ruined! Oh well, into each life a well-crafted burn must occasionally fall, I guess. I still think those girls were impressed, but now there is no way to know without polling the inhabitants of Cabbagetown for their whereabouts one by one. I can see the Craigslist Missed Connections post now:

You were dressed as a multicolored sausage, balancing on a two-wheeled thingy and staring at a concrete wall. Then you rolled away, but not before leering at my friend and me. Tell me what I was wearing!

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Atlanta Bicycle Scandal: Font Mixing

By jim | Published: August 16, 2010

When I started writing this blog, I never thought I’d be the first to break an actual local news story. I also thought it was okay to write poorly and swear a lot, but that is neither here nor there. What is here and there, is that Atlanta Bicycle Coalition is scandalously mixing Helvetica and Myriad Pro fonts in their header. Scandalous!

True, Myriad Pro and Helvetica can be mistaken for one another, but as a trained graphic designer and webular site constructor, I have the power to discern them. More importantly, I have sufficient nerdiness to care. Most importantly of all, it doesn’t take any training whatsoever to call yourself a graphic designer or a web designer, but I digress.

Behold, Exhibit A:

And here is the area of concern, highlighted ( highlit? ):

Again, if you’re not a font nerd the difference may escape you, but trust me when I say that this is a grave error on the part of my friends at ABC. I only want to warn them before this gets out of hand because they do a lot of excellent work for cycling in Atlanta.

You see, like a new dating partner, every font brings a certain amount of baggage with it. Some baggages can be easier to live with than others, but each suitcase and shoulder bag must be considered before a lasting partnership can be formed. In the case of fonts, this baggage is the font’s unspoken connotations. Here is a short guide to the connotations of these fonts in easy-to-refer-to form:

If you use Myriad Pro you (or your project):

probably walk around all the time with ipod earphones in your ears
put Apple stickers on your iPhone for extra brand recognition
Wear a lot of white belts

If you use Helvetica you (or your project):

wish for some of Helvetica’s hip city dweller style, thanks to its wide use in the New York MTA subway system, to rub off on you
might have watched the Helvetica documentary
wear colorful hosiery instead of pants

In short, Helvetica is the Brooks saddle of fonts. Both find themselves highly fashionable once again and in use in the city despite being considered passé by some. In fact, if you want to move in hipster circles, your Brooks-equipped fixed gear bike and the Helvetica font are going to be your second and third most important tools after you yourself. Myriad Pro lacks this cachet.

What I recommend for my friends at ABC is that they get ahead of the curve. Sure, Brooks saddles and Helvetica are cool now, but what out-of fashion font will be coming back to prominance? Thanks to my years of slaving over Photoshop in an effort to make a few dollars, and perhaps also to alter photos of my friends to include some very inappropriate farm animals, I can tell you that the coming font is, without a doubt, Papyrus.

In fact it’s already back thanks to James Cameron and that movie he made about the giant blue people who don’t have nipples.

Here is the Papyrus connotational baggage:

Wholesome green eco-friendly holistic herbal organic (use any of these words interchangeably, the more the better)
Family friendly, nipple-free, but still scantily clad
Attending, possibly even instructing a yoga class

Here’s the ABC header edited to include the soon-to-be-hip Papyrus font. I think you will agree that it is a great improvement.

I’m just glad that I have the sufficient font skills and interest in cycling to come to the aid of ABC, and it also makes me feel good that this otherwise specialized — which is to say, uselessly nerdtastic — knowledge can stretch its pasty legs in the light of day. I once got into an in-depth discussion of bracketed vs slab-serif fonts with Cheryl and her eyes glazed over so hard I think she was technically comatose for a second and a half.

Damn it, Cheryl! Why can’t we talk about things I’m interested in?

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Holding On Too Long, a BikeMate Lite Review

By jim | Published: August 13, 2010

Sometimes, hopeless romantics like myself hang to things for far too long, such as a dating partner who doesn’t read very much, or who dislikes bikes. Sometimes it takes a clear signal to remind us that we need to move on. Such was the case with my love affair with the Blackberry.

I had been hanging on to it mostly because I didn’t have a great reason to toss it, though I’ve been wanting an iPhone for years now. Thankfully, the Blackberry, named Nietzsche, leapt out of my hand and splashed down into the filthiest pub toilet in the neighborhood, providing me with an excellent excuse to chuck it, as well as a great reason to wash my hands.

Okay, full disclosure: it is also true that some weeks ago, upon seeing me using Nietzsche, an iPhone-addicted Cheryl remarked “They still make those?”, but this had no bearing on my loss of interest in RIM products, I assure you. It was mostly the urine.

At any rate, a few days after splashdown, my brand spanking new iPhone 4 arrived and was christened Hemingway. With Hemingway came the opportunity to try out some of the GPS-based cycling applications in the much-vaunted App Store. There are a ton of these, but seemingly none with a clear lead in terms of reviews. I downloaded one of the free ones, BikeMate Lite, and tried it out on the Faster Mustache Imminently Terrible Grind of Atlanta (FMITGA for short) last night.

It was simple enough to use; I merely pressed “START” and then dropped Hemingway into a jersey pocket, protected by a high tech plastic ziploc-style iPhone condom I happened to already own. I then commenced to crank myself up Atlanta’s least enjoyable hills, choking back sobs all the while.

Halfway through the ride, I checked on the application, whose main interface looks like this:

I am doing 0mph at my desk.

I realized that the application was recording everything in metric units, so I touched the “option” button to change this. I was met with this screen, which consists of the real “Option” button and a long list of advertisements for other app store products in addition to the advertisement ever-present on all Bike Mate Lite screens.

Now, I realize that whoever made BikeMate Lite wants to get paid for their efforts, and I support that, but this kind of seems like overkill to me. The application also lacks any elevation data for rides, as far as I could tell, which is a feature I missed sorely.

To my way of thinking, the “Lite” version of a program should be an excellent preview of what the full version will be like in the same way that a first date is a preview of what actually dating someone will be like, outside of whatever they are glossing over or exaggerating, of course. With that in mind, I just don’t feel that BikeMate Lite and I are a match.

I believe that you get what you pay for, and since I paid zero dollars for this application, I should be pretty happy with the fact that it recorded my position and speed just fine. It even saved the route and will show it to me on a little map whenever I want. As far as I know, the full version of BikeMate is the greatest GPS-enabled cycling application ever conceived, but I don’t feel like spending even a couple of bucks to find out as my overall experience with BikeMate Lite could be summed up with a shrug and whatever consonantless noise one chooses to make in these circumstances. I suggest “Uuoee”.

If you want an application to record your route, speed, and to show you as many ads as it possibly can, then BikeMate Lite might be for you, but in terms of GPS-aware cycling applications, at least, I’m continuing my search for a better option.

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Cipollini and the Art of Tuscan Saddle Massage

By jim | Published: August 12, 2010

How does one know when something momentous is about to happen? Can we rely on our spines to generate a tingling sensation, or the hairs on the back of our necks to stand up? Are those just things we’ll say later to make our lives seem more interesting? Life is uncertain in the real world, of that there can be no doubt. Thankfully, in the world of product release DVD at least, we can still rely on the howling wind of cliche to portend.

Witness this scene, which we are told by some white-over-black smallcaps lettering is “Tuscany-Italy A.D. MMX“:

An ominous wind blows, even though the underbrush in the video is stock still. There are some low bass tones from the soundtrack, taking the ominousness to heights previously only attained by Kubrick and Strauss. Sweet heavens, I can bear it no longer!

Suddenly, a lone figure appears, after neatly folding his paper and ignoring a nearby platter of fruit. He hears the breaking Tuscan wind, and he heeds its call!

Holy sweet Mary mother of God, it’s Mario Cipollini himself! Il re Leone has returned! From Tuscany! Which is… uh, where he lives I think.

Well anyway he’s back, and he’s suiting up. We now see him putting on a jersey and zipping it straight up to his craggy Tuscan chin, which is dotted with low underbrush just like the austere, windy landscape outside. Now he straps on a pair of three-velcro-strap Shimano shoes. It seems like Cipo could afford some S-Works shoes, or perhaps some SIDIs, but let’s not get distracted.

We now see Cipo’s hands sensually massage his saddle, then twiddle with the barrel adjuster on his front brake, which is set up on the right hand side motorcycle style. The barrel adjuster makes a ratcheting noise for reasons known only to the sound designer.

ASIDE: Does it bother anyone besides me when sound designers get all crazy with sounds for no real reason other than they can? Here’s a tip sound designers: barrel adjusters do not make a clickety clickety sound even when they’re twiddled by the meaty paws of Cipo himself, and guns do not make a pronounced CHK-CHK sound every single time an actor moves them. Stop distracting me, damn it!

Where was I? Oh yes: saddle massage. Here it is in action, complete with leathery squeaky noises that the sound designer has had laying around for ages.

If you’re wondering suddenly whether Cipo is going to fondle his oddly noisy bike all day or get on the thing and ride, let your questions and underpants be blown away by the following wink:

Cipo then rides past the camera in a warehouse somewhere, and we fade to black again. This time we’re treated to a bank gothic font of some sort, then another shot of a Tuscany valley, and then… paydirt! A shot of a slowly-revolving bicycle frame. Now those of us who were unable to read the title of the movie know what’s going on. Cipo is making bikes!

I’m not a great reader of the Italian language, but I assume from the next series of white over black bank gothic font words that the bikes are being made in Firenze, wherever that is. I looked at a map of Tuscany, but I didn’t see it. Maybe its suburb of Florence. Anyway, the important thing is that all of us who have been waiting for another carbon fiber bicycle frame that costs a large fraction of a trip to Mars have another one to lust after. Hooray!

That should put Firenze on the map at last!

Here’s the whole video in its awesome entirety:

Any video that dips to black that often has definitely got some important ideas to get across.

Some googling also turned up an analysis of the new range of bikes which casts brave Cipo and one of his riders in a rather unflattering egotistical light. Perhaps I’m able to overlook Cipo’s egotism because I also suffer from high self esteem, but whatever the case, he’s a hero to me.

Now if you will excuse me, I have some saddles to massage.

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Leadville 100 Coitus Interruptus: Lance Pulls Out

By jim | Published: August 11, 2010

Lance Armstrong, famous for starting the world’s first viral marketing campaign by screaming “GO LANCE” at random cyclists until the practice caught on with other motorists, thus generating valuable name recognition, has removed himself from the dusty clutches of the Leadville 100 bike race. He’s wise to do this.

I can only assume that Lance has gotten wind of what I’ve been saying about mountain biking for over three months now. You might as well whack yourself in the kneecap with a ball peen hammer, toss a handful of dirt in your drivetrain, and go on a road ride instead. Truthfully, all my problems with mountain biking stem from my lack of skill at it. I tend to fall off the bike rather a lot while trying it, and that annoys me.

Also, there is the fact that mountain miles count triple vs road miles. Some say they count double, but I think its more than that, unless the road ride is incredibly hilly or the mountain ride is incredibly flat. Either way, its more work to ride mountain.

In fact, sometimes mountain biking seems to me to be a lot like the recent Leonardo DiCaprio movie, Inception, except instead of being a bewildering tableau of dreams within dreams, it is a bewildering tableau of terribleness within yet more terribleness. Instead of waiting for a “kick” to pull you out of whatever current dream you are having, with mountain biking, each successive hellscape is ended when you are pitched off the bike and driven face first into the trail as your bike prances heavily up your spine.

And yet, my mountain bike remains in my sun room. So far I have not summed up the wherewithal to sell it, even though when I ride it I curse at it again and again, and fall off of it again and again. Am I enjoying myself? It doesn’t feel like it, but who can say for sure?

Maybe I should put in one more ride. Just to be certain that I don’t like it.

Let’s schedule something, people. I ain’t doing Leadville though. No way in hell!

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The Grandpa Paradox

By jim | Published: August 10, 2010

I was on the phone with my sister yesterday, trying to plan a time when I could drive the two hours over to her city to join her family and my grandfather for some family hang time. She recently had her second child, and my grandfather is visiting her so that he can eyeball the newborn, such as you do.

“Why don’t you come over on Tuesday, spend the night, then you can drive on Wednesday?” she was saying.

“Yes, that way I can ride Sunday morning and Monday night.”

I am not telepathic and my phone does not, as far as I know, transmit displeasure, but I instantly knew that this remark had not gone over entirely well even before I heard what she said next.

“It’s always about riding isn’t it?” she sighed.

Well… yes.

There are two problems here. One, Grandpa lives down in the nether regions of his state which resemble what would be its reproductive area if it were livestock and not a swath of land, and two, he’s not allowed to drive the car anymore due to a fairly serious case of “old”. My sister went down to get him, and now its my turn to drive him back home again, a round trip of 730 miles.

The problem for me is that track racing takes place on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, exactly when I’m supposed to be visiting and then driving Grandpa home. It’s possible that I could make it back in time for Wednesday night though, I think. Right?

Well, let’s see. Google says the trip should take twelve hours eighteen minutes, and I’ll need an extra hour or two for eating and stopping for gas, so let’s call it fourteen hours all told. Add one hour for the time change between the Central timezone in which Grandpa and the baby reside, and we’ve got a nice round fifteen hours between getting in the car and getting on the bike.

I need to be riding at seven PM at the latest in order to get warmed up. So, I’d have to shove Grandpa out of bed at… 4am. 3am to be safe.

Dang, when I read it written down like that it seems bad.

I think I’m just going to have to take a step back, survey the situation calmly, and then twitch occasionally because I don’t get a chance to crush my enemies and break their hearts. The bright side is that I get to spend some time with most of my family members, not to mention some quality time with just me and Grandpa in the car. I already know what to talk to him about: rainfall patterns at his home and black coffee.

All kidding aside, I am glad to hang out with my family’s eldest man and one of my chief role models. Respect for one’s elders is a mark of character, I fully acknowledge, and character is the mark of a man.

Besides, regionals are this weekend and I’ll definitely be in town for that.

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Cycling in the Top Left Corner

By jim | Published: August 9, 2010

A number of my friends have moved out to the Pacific Northwest, and though I understand it to be a great place to be a cyclist, it is not, as I recall from a few trips there, a great place to be a single male. Though I’m sad to see my friends go, I’m staying here in Atlanta. We have hotter girls, and more of them.

In fact, I think Atlanta has far and away the most attractive female citizenry, based on my travels. I’ve been to London, New York, Paris, Miami, Las Vegas… too many major metropolitan areas to list, and I still believe that there are more attractive women here than anywhere else. Granted, I haven’t been everywhere yet, but I’m working on it.

Witness this simple experiment that I’ve just performed to illustrate my point. I typed “Atlanta girls” and “Portland girls” into Google Image Search each in their own browser tab, and have linked here the first results for each. I think the results speak for themselves. Note that your results may be skewed if you are Googling with “SafeSearch” set to “Moderate” or “Strict”. It has to be set to “Off”.

Atlanta Girls

Portland Girls

From http://nerdword.blogspot.com

So what’s the attraction to the Pacific Northwest, or as I call it, The Top Left Corner, or TLC for short? Well, they have beautiful scenery, rugged outdoors, and a Starbucks coffee shop to homeless person ratio of 1:1. More importantly, it is legal to bicycle in Washington state when you’re drunk. Not only that, the cops have to offer to take you somewhere safe should they consider you imperiled.

I’m tempted to go visit my friends in Seattle and get sloshed off my chamois just to see if I can get a ride from the police, although they probably don’t accost people for giggling, or for considering themselves to be writers. I might have to do something actually rowdy, which could taint the results, and no one, but no one… likes a tainted result.

The last time I was in Seattle I got into an exploration of fine whisky and ended up face down in a parking lot, then tossed bodily into a car as I threatened everyone involved with violence. No bikes or cops were involved. I’m game to try again, though.

Anyway, as I say, I’m sad to see my friends move to such a far flung locale, but at least they are playing it smart. They’re moving out there with women they met here.

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Lance Armstrong and the Doping Investigation

By jim | Published: August 6, 2010

I wrote a while ago about this whole Floyd “Scandlis” Landis/US Postal doping thing, the investigation of which is now “gathering pace“. I was trying to make the point that if everyone in the peloton was doping, then it was a fair practice.

A friend of mine read that post, however, and correctly surmised that I don’t know any pro riders personally. He then posed a question:
“What if you trained your whole life to be a pro cyclist, and when you get there, everyone is taking drugs? You’d have to start taking them too or not realize your dream.”

That makes some sense, I admit, but its still a choice, and sometimes people want for themselves things that are going to be very hard to achieve. I’m reluctant to say that anything is impossible, but some things might be harder for some than others. What if you want very badly to be a pro cyclist but you just don’t have the physiology for it? What if you want to be a performer at Sea World, but you’re a hippopotamus?

Let’s not forget that some of the most successful professional cyclists in history have had a few physical deficiencies themselves.

I don’t know how this whole investigation will shake out, but I kind of wish it would just go away. Yeah, a lot of cyclists took drugs, but it seems like its over now and I’m sort of fine with that. More investigation is just going to mean more reporting on the doping, and cycling already conjures up two bad images in non-cyclists minds: doping and having to wait in traffic.

On the good news front, I felt good on the bike last night, though I did get called out for creeping on a red light. In my defense, there was an unexpected turn signal cycle before the actual green, causing me to take off a bit early by mistake, but I was definitely bike shoaling and deserved to be taken to task.

Have a great weekend and ride safe out there friends. Remember, if you start to get tired, just kick it into MEGADRIVE.