Bike Smut / Return to Mass

After my AV fistula surgery right around a year ago, I had so many neuropathy issues with my left arm it just wasn't any fun to ride the bike. By the time the issues resolved, I was out of the habit of getting up early enough to ride to work. It was so easy to stay in bed another hour and drive.

I was going to ride to work this time for Critical Mass. But I didn't get up early enough to pull that off, so I put my bike on my car, drove to work, and then parked my car near the Bike Smut Film Festival and pedaled my way to Scumfresh for the ride.

This was my second Bike Smut. I went to the only other one I think Kansas City has ever had a few years back.

Bikes and smut, two of my favorite things. How could I miss it?

The last Bike Smut seemed to have more material that made me squirm a bit. I don't mean that as a criticism, I think I'm pretty broad minded when it comes to sex. We all have our kinks and fetishes, I don't think we pick them, they just happen. But the last Bike Smut had more moments where I cringed.

Not having biked much the past year, I was pretty gassed trying to keep up with the herd on Critical Mass. Which is pretty drag-ass slow.

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But then I caught up with the festival after riding myself embarrassingly ragged in only 11-ish miles. And it was all good. Gabe's girlfriend Steph even hoisted her Lucy-meets-Charlie-Brown skirt to show off her Bike Smut panties.

Big Grin IV

It's been four years since my friend Joel, aka The Big Grin, died of that all too common, you'd never expect it but probably should, accident in the home. I believe he was trying to fetch something from the loft above his workshop when he fell. He had a young son, and his wife had just gotten pregnant with a daughter he never even got to meet. Incredibly sad.

But the memorial ride we've had for Joel each year since the tragedy is not sad. It is a celebration of a goofy guy who touched a lot of people. An avid cyclist, he would post things to Facebook like, 'Just so you know, riding to work in the snow is super awesome fun!' (on a day when he knew damn well the bike shop would be closed, but he rode to work anyway because it gave him a chance to ride his Pugsley in the snow). He loved to explore the city, he loved to push his own boundaries and see other people do the same.

A couple years ago, it was five degrees Fahrenheit and we rode anyway. Joel would have been delighted to see us all out there despite it being stupid cold. This year, it was warmer but snowy.

And for me, snow is a challenge. A little bit of snow, no big deal. But refrozen snowpack can be like a freaking skating rink and I don't have a sense of humor about falling down. I fall with the grace and dignity of a sack of dishes.

Gravel is hard for me too, and while it's pretty tame gravel, the Big Grin ride always includes a bit of it along the levy. Fitting, since Joel was one of the founders of the Dirty Kanza, one of the premier gravel grinder rides in the world. I remember one year he got hurt right before Trans Iowa, which is another of those. So someone who thought it was good fun to attempt 200 or 340 miles of gravel roads in a race, you gotta do some gravel on his memorial ride.

Gravel with snow on it, yeah. That's even trickier I learned. Fortunately someone hung to warn me of a frozen puddle that had put a half dozen riders down by some railroad tracks, and I managed to stay upright but there were a few patches where I was pretty terrified. I kept telling myself, these other fuckers have stayed up, you can too.

Riding in the wet snow on pavement was tiring, too. It was in the upper 20s, so the snow kind of clumped up on the tires and made them heavy and sluggish. I didn't make the start of the ride, that seems to be a tradition. I got to the Trek Store for the first one right as they were leaving, and every year since I've met them somewhere on Merriam Lane. I guess I've heard that I will be late for my own funeral, so I guess it's fitting that I'd also be late for my friend's funeral.

I was proud of my beard-cicles. I don't think I've ever grown a good set of ice on my facial hair before, even though I've ridden in much colder temperatures. My friend Jones who has a gnarly, grizzly bear type beard is always a great one for icing up. I've always been jealous, but mine this time was pretty decent.

I was also really touched that Jofess, Joel's son, asked me to pick him up at this party. He's not shy, and he's never been standoffish with me or anything, but I think this is the first time he's really engaged with me on this level. I picked him up, and he asked where my hair had gone. Hilarious.

So I told him straight, my hair went to the Eyebrow Farm where people get eyebrows and ear hair and big long nose hairs. I mean, you're not gullible enough to think eyebrows just grow on faces, right kid?

Sub Zero

Set a personal record today. A record I'd just set yesterday. Prior to that, in February of 2011 I rode to work when it was 2ºF, that was a record that stood for almost seven years.

So New Year's Eve, in my neighborhood, there is an unfortunate tradition of shooting guns in the air starting about 11:00 p.m. and going into the wee hours. It's asinine and dangerous and enough idiots do it the cops really can't do anything about it. So while Corinna and I were stoked at the prospect of setting a new record for a cold bike ride, we weren't going to try a midnight ride on New Year's Eve. A roof will do a lot more to stop a bullet than a bicycle helmet.

So we figured we'd try a short ride about 8:00. It was in the low single digits as we got dressed to go get ice cream from Tropicana. Here's the thing: people on Facebook and whatnot have been asking me if I'm insane to ride in such weather, and the answer is no. Not if you dress for it.

The Hawaiian shirt is mainly for aesthetics, it doesn't provide a whole lot of warmth, but everything else I put on serves a purpose. Wool socks, then think layers: bike shorts under light thermal underwear under heavy thermal underwear under pants; long sleeve cotton t-shirt under cycling jacket (mainly a windbreak) under a heavy virgin wool sweater under the Aloha shirt. Heavy balaclava, extra face guard, ATV goggles (ski goggles would work but they have tint, and winter riding tends to be riding in the dark). Mittens (I have some Carhart mittens that get downright sweaty even in single digit cold, a pair of black mittens almost as warm, and some army surplus sniper mittens from the Korea/Vietnam era that pair a heavy wool inner mitten with a leather and canvas outer mitten.

We rode up towards Tropicana and when we got to a bank that shows the temperature it was reading 0ºF. We took the obligatory selfies, congratulated each other on a new record (Corinna isn't 100% sure it was a new record for her, she thinks she may have seen -1ºF once a long time ago), then set off to find ice cream.

Yes ice cream. I know it's cold, but think about it, cold weather makes you crave fat and calories in general, ice cream is fat and sugar.

Anyway the ice cream shop was closed when we got there even though their Sunday hours said they were open until 10:00. So we rode home and I toasted my chilly toes by a space heater. The thing about riding in the cold, if something's uncomfortable you figure out an improvement to your setup for the next time. Chemical toe warmers would have been nice, we were only out for about an hour, but I made a note of that, I have a station of them, I just hadn't thought of them. And in the army mittens, I found my thumbs got a little cold too.

So when I woke up New Year's morning and the temperature had dropped to -6ºF, I was excited to set a new record. Not excited enough that I didn't hit snooze a few times and stay in my nice warm bed, but we got up and moving way earlier than we would have if there wasn't a new record to set. So it had warmed up when we got by the bank at 7th and Minnesota. -5ºF. I had my toe warmers in, and my hands were actually sweating up the Carhart mittens.

We delivered a bit of holiday cheer to a friend of ours in Strawberry Hill, and I thought that would be about it for me. But I was comfortable enough I went ahead and rode with Corinna to her office over in the Crossroads district. Hung out there for a bit, drank a hot tea and three coffees (I rarely drink coffee, or hot beverages in general, but somehow they hit the spot today).

Riding home I spotted a few more cyclists out, but mostly I noticed the handful of car drivers giving double-takes that anyone was out riding in such weather.

It was tiring but truly fun. It's challenging, mainly figuring out the wardrobe. But as I've pointed out to people who can't believe someone would ride in such weather, you wouldn't cancel your ski trip because it was cold in Colorado. You'd just harden the hell up and dress for the wether.

Truly, the hardest part is keeping your phone from dying. Those chemical warmers are pretty good for that too, I figured that out today. Two toe warmers on the phone case, then put the phone in a pocket of my cycling jacket shell so it was under a couple of layers and relatively close to my body. Cuz without Strava, it's like your ride didn't happen.

Cranksgiving/Thanksgiving

I love Cranksgiving. It's a food-raiser for want of a better term, for a local church's food bank. You can compete in a few ways: be the fastest to get one item from ten different stores, or bring in the heaviest load, or bring in the heaviest load for a team of eight. Oh, and for the individual, there's gender specific prizes, fastest man, fastest woman, heaviest load dude, etc.

My old friend Eric won heaviest load individual with a Y Chromosome.

But it's a fun deal and a good cause. I felt kinda of embarrassed only bringing in 28 lbs. I didn't even try for fastest rider, I got no chance at that. And heaviest load? I've ridden upwards of 100 lbs in this event and that's not enough to be competitive. Financially, I wasn't really in good shape to play heaviest load anyway this year, plus you really need to be towing a trailer to realistically compete in this category. Or like Eric, a trailer towed behind a Big Dummy cargo bike.

So this was the Saturday before Thanksgiving, and it was a really uplifting experience other than my getting another confirmation that my blood sugar gets out of hand when I drink good beer and eat the sort of food that was on offer at the after party (chili, sweets, breads). As much as I love Boulevard Pale Ale, of which I drank several, the feeling shitty and lethargic for a few hours after kinda makes it less tempting. I allow myself one indulgence a week, a meal or dessert or beverage that's just completely out of bounds for trying to manage my diabetes with diet. I still take the Metformin, I still try to stay active on the bike (though I've been missing a lot of rides lately).

So then several factors including my freelance work, transportation arrangements for the holiday with Mo, a nasty cold, I hadn't been back on the bike since Saturday's Cranksgiving when Thanksgiving Day proper came around. Temps in the upper sixties and no plans on the actual day (my family is doing tons of stuff this weekend, just on on Thursday: I think everyone is so afraid to set up something that would conflict with someone else's plans that nobody ends up doing turkey on Turkey Day). So I put on my cycling shorts and sandals and went for a ride.

Sandals. Shorts. Bare arms. On November 23. Climate change is, as we know because or Maximum Leader said it, is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. Quite the elaborate hoax.

Anyway, I realized I was out of test strips for my blood glucose monitor. These things are proprietary, Walgreens, CVS, WalMart, they all have their own monitors and the supplies aren't interchangeable. Bastards. Mine happens to be the Walmart brand.

So I pedaled my way to the Walmart in Argentine hoping they'd be closed. It's Thanksgiving Day for crying out loud. But nope, they were open, as was the Dollar General and Sav-A-Lot next to it.

I asked a worker if she was at least being paid time and a half for working on Thanksgiving. Nope. I'm like, are you fucking kidding me?

If there's a perfect opposite to the warm feelings Cranksgiving inspires in me, it's seeing that WalMart not only doesn't respect families, it doesn't even think it should have to give a little extra for taking one of the last family holidays away from its employees. I think I might switch to a different glucose tester just so I can shop there even less often. Talk about a work force that needs an effective union.

Cranksgiving set a new record, by the way. I believe it was over 10,000 lbs of food (up from 8,000 lbs last year, which led the nation in Cranksgiving events) plus $1000 in cash raised for St. Peter's social services/food bank.