Dirty Kanza 200: A Meditation on Self

June 10, 2014

You. You are a frivolous person. A frivolous person with frivolous thoughts that spin and cartwheel on the front lawn of your mind. Legs flinging, knees bent, your thoughts less perfect with each rotation. Less complete and full. This gravel is onto you. It’s not stupid. It sees your nerves as easily as if they were strung across this road at foot-tripping, shin height. That armadillo husk, cracked and desiccated, melon-ball empty like some hollowed-out canoe—it is onto you. It mocks you. You too, it says, shall be a hollowed out shell at the end. Consider this a warning. You. …

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Rebecca’s Private Idaho, the video

September 21, 2013

I present to you a short visual memory dump of the first ever Rebecca’s Private Idaho gravel grinder. I hadn’t intended on making a video, but took a bunch of footage in case I changed my mind. Considering I had no real concept for what this might turn into, this cobbled together piece turned out Aok. Footage is all real-time. No FWWD motion for the bits that look fast. I wrote about my experience here And there are photos of the weekend and from the event here Thanks to Olivia and Victor for the company on the drive (and during …

Rebecca’s Private Idaho

September 12, 2013

Prologue: Sixtyish mile mark, time unknown A crunch of gravel, the sharp ting of small stones against bike underbellies, projectile vomited there by irritated and belligerent tires. Bottles rattle in cages. Skeletons vibrate like tuning forks in our soft, beaten bodies. In the key of E-ouch. “Hey,” I say, looking over at Olivia as she pedals smooth, steady circles, piloting her Crux across the gravel. “Have you ever seen those old ads for the fat loss belt thingie that vibrates your fat away?” Instantly, she knows what I’m talking about and laughs. “Yes.” “How much weight do you think we’ve …

5 x 100 Miles of Nowhere. To Nowhere (Road)

July 9, 2013

The tradition lives on with this year’s installment of Fat Cyclist’s 100 Miles of Nowhere. 5 centuries in five days in four states. BOOM! I’m going to do a day-by-day posts with photos and lots of flair, but in the meantime, this summary will have to do. So, quick flashback to bring you up to speed Year 1: 100 Miles on Rollers Year 2: 100 Miles of Thomas Grade As you can see, I’ve backed myself into an insanity corner. So this year… This year, I found a road in Colorado called Nowhere Road. Brain clicked. It made perfect sense …

Solvang Autumn Double Ride Report

October 20, 2012

My eyes can’t tell my brain about anything it reads that sounds right on the cusp of being a dumb idea, because that’s JUST the kind of thing my brain goes for. Case in point: My eyes stumble across the words ‘double century’ somewhere – on the twitter wire maybe – and Brain plucks the fruity words off that silly tree and plants their idea seeds deep in some juicy grey matter in a corner behind a filing cabinet. There they fester and grow until one day PING! Brain says let’s do it, skin tube! That’s how I ended up riding …

100 Miles of Nowhere: Vehemence of the Suckage Edition

May 19, 2012

I’ve been told I’ve crossed a line. Matador said it. I heard it. And then I watched it sail by my ‘how will I interpret this’ radar toward the ‘just ignore it’ trash receptacle. Sadly, I pick shit out of trash bins if they still look shiny, so it took barely a nano-smidge to realize the Matador meant the line between sanity and insanity. That while riding100 MIles on Rollers was something that could be overlooked, riding 45 times up Thomas Grade was not. Gone too far. Too. Damn. Far. Speaking of radars, there was a blip of ‘shit-idiotic-bad-idea’ green …