KB wanted to go for a ride. She offered up Church Rocks and the bike path as the two options. Seeing that I apparently took her on the absolute worst ride of her life last Wednesday, I let her choose.
I knew I was in trouble when she put on her road clothes.
Normally, I have no problem riding the skinny tire type of two-wheeled love machine. Nope, I can put on some spandex, let the knuckle out of the closet and spin the shit out of a road. I’m one of those roadies that still hasn’t converted to compact and hits a 25 in the rear. But alas, my road bike is sans a shifter as I loaned it to a customer as they waited for their replacement shifter to arrive.
I thought, “No problem. I’ve got lots of bikes and in fact, I’ve got another semi-skinny tired bike that I have ridden lots of times on the bike path. To and from work and stuff. This will be fun.”
I had an ulterior motive as well. I wanted to do some more testing of the Mooseknuckler Alliance Cutoff Cycling Shirt, in conjunction with another prototype that I’m not quite ready to release to the public. I may or may not have mentioned that I am very thorough when it comes to product testing. In fact, I spent over three thousand hours testing the MCA Flask before releasing it into the wild. This is why I am absolutely positive that it is the best flask your money can buy.
That semi-skinny tired bike was my cross bike. Seeing that I have failed bike maintenance 101 and wore my tires completely out on all of my mountain bikes (that’s three bikes for those of you who are counting) I’ve been rocking the cross bike in a pinch. After a couple of rides a few weeks ago, I decided that my road days were over and swapped cogs. This put my cross bike with the same exact gear ratio as my Stumpjumper (SW SJ HT SS, for those who care). This didn’t dawn on me until everything was ready and we were coasting down the hill from the house en route to the bike path. I was coasting and KB was pulling away with little effort. I tried to pedal but there wasn’t any resistance.
Have you ever heard of a wind sprint?
This is when you get on a trainer, and then spin as fast as you can for a predetermined amount of time. The first one is easy. The second one you might feel some burn. Third one you are feeling a bit of an effort and the sequence continues as the suffering increases exponentially with each repetition.
I’m no fan of wind sprints.
Seeing that the bike that I had chosen to ride was geared in a way that offered zero resistance once I hit about 12 mph, my entire ride was a wind sprint. KB quickly found herself in the lead and it was all I could do to hold onto her wheel. I would spin as fast as I could and then coast, tucked in as closely as I could behind her to get the most out of the effort I just exerted. Then she would start to pull away and I would start the process over again.
One thing about doing wind sprints on a bike that isn’t attached to a trainer, you will notice how unstable your hips are during high cadence. Unless you constantly ride over 100 rpms, hit about 90 revolutions and your whole body becomes a slave of the rotation. As your hips drive the pedals downward, they counter down and then pop back up creating a heavy side-to-side action. This is great, unless your tires are set for riding dirt and every up and down motion leaves you worried that you will pinch flat.
I suffered through it. After all, there was a greater cause and that cause was creating the absolutely most effective bicycle riding shirt available. I am currently onto my second prototype and feel like I am moving in the right direction. One of the few flaws of Prototype 1 was the fact that it left no where for phone storage. As I was creating the second prototype, I decided to go with a slightly larger pocket. And I’m glad I did.
Running my legs ragged at a cadence well over a 100, I quickly found having my phone in my short’s pocket was uncomfortable at best and downright annoying at worst. Whilst busting out some serious repetitions, I reached down and unbuttoned my shirt pocket. As I was happy with how easily this was done. I then popped my phone into that shirt pocket that I had previously thought only useful for carrying pens. Not only was the pocket perfect, but I learned that even with the button unlatched, my phone had no desire to jump to its death. This made me very happy. I am proud to report that the Mooseknuckler Alliance Cutoff Cycling Shirt is bike path friendly.
It had been a while since I had been on a bike path with lots of other people. I had forgotten how lovely the absolutely absurd amount of crazy shit you can see in five miles of bike path can be.
A few thoughts on bike paths while we’re at it.
1. If dogs have to be on a leash, so do your kids. I am positive that my dogs are less likely to run directly in front of a bicycle than your kid is. Today was a fine example of that fact. We passed several children, every single one almost jumped in front of us. I thought I was going to die or kill a child. Not sure which would have been worst.
2. Roller blades do, in fact, still exist. I thought these were part of the nightmare that was the 90s and that we all woke up from a long time ago. Unfortunately, they are apparently still available and people use them to cock block traffic on bike paths.
3. It is my strongly held belief that there is no group in greater need of a bike fit than bike path cruisers. They aren’t serious, but seriously could use some help. Knees to the chin, handlebars way to high, bar ends that would break a wrist just for looking at ’em, and no I’m not exaggerating. Raise the saddle, oil the chain and don’t buy a Schwinn.
Next week, I will be certain to insist on some dirt.
P. L. and R.
