fixed impressions

The human being’s inspirations towards torture and especially towards friends never fails to amaze.

I’d be darn near ready to…..

Out.

I got the camera thing working again and happened to be in the right place at the right time. Did a few selfish errands downtown and now cheshire cat on the couch red wine is fine and 90 minutes just passed on the 1200’s life is so fine stacey g. I hope you read this flow tonite one time just for a few seconds more and more I think of you churning over that mid-coastal 46 x 16 or whatever i don’t care just turn it over again and keep turning it over and …. oh maybe a trackstand. And then.

This is only number seven I think in my local archive. Mostly I’ve sucked ass and tried to pretend my 2 yr. old rechargeable batteries actually still worked in my dig-cam for more than 10 picts. Doh! I had good luck. Shortly after seeing the above primo Motobecane track bike, I saw this trick fix-muter…suspiciously decked out like my own Uniscorcher….?

Damn fine fix porno from my viewpoint. B-town # 08. It’s just amazing here for such a semi-little town how many derailleur-free bikes you see. And quite a few of these bikes are in derailleur recovery too. I really like to see that. I get off on it.

Sick kudos for the connect from Stevil! at Swobo. Sick F#*%$ you are I know. I have something coming to you that’s very cool. g:promise!

Run fixed gear sprints: become infamous, make friends, influence (crazy) people. I want to start this in my community:

Obviously the Swedes have figured out a good way to dust off the cobwebs of a long winter. The one card they show indicates this is mid-May. Presumably this is springtime? Looks a little chilly to me, though I’m sure they’re used to it. I just think the up and back sprint looks fun, easy to set up….and for my $.02 looks like it can be done just fine on dirt!

Check it.

G:5

I wrote an epic post and pulled a (no offense, Matt) Chester and did some idiotic computer thing like let my session time out. No save as draft or external editor to save my ass.

I don’t think I’ll try to replicate it. I’ll just come up with something else.

I got out for an hour after work. We’ve had some warmer weather the last two days and the snow and ice are backing away from the bike lanes. Legs felt good out there, but of course I got a first reminder taste of headwind on the way home. It’s flat as a pancake the last mile and it was harder going than any hill I hit earlier. I forget about that aspect of riding on the road…I even spaced out for a second to lunge a puddle and got a good amateur-jerker from the cranks. Welcome back to fixed. HA! I laughed at myself. Fortunately, I had completed the lunge when the “kick” reminded me who was boss. My weight was back. Lucky. FUNNY!

Just turning over the cranks was fun. I’m enjoying my cycling like I haven’t in a long time. Maybe living in the west and being able to ride year round burned me out on riding? Go figger. Maybe it’s like the adage: “absence makes the heart grow fonder…” Anyway, I’ve been out on three leisure rides now and am feeling like it could be a big year for fixin for me. I built a fix of my own for the first time in 98, so I guess is my tenth year. Yea.

Wow. I guess I got my first single speed mountain bike shortly after that. Damn. Well I still get kind of excited about all this one speed stuff after all this time. I noted at several points today how I can just ride, hardly any tuning needed for the bike after 7 months. Drivetrain silent. Cranks turn, wheels turn. Simple. Happy. Reverse was really awk. I did a couple rollbacks and didn’t crash or dab, but I was some kind’o'wobbly. I’m gettin’ old guess.

Tired.

K?

G

“Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.”

—Winston Churchill.

It snowed a foot and a half on the weekend. Blizzard, spring, mini-blizzard. Kind of funny really. A co-worker kept telling me that the grass showing through the snow kind of bothered him: “I’m not ready for spring, because when I think about all I have to do and what I should already have done, I’m not ready for it to be spring. The new snow pretend and avoid the reality that spring starts on Wednesday.” I just keep moving. I just go with the weather. Improvise. I’m ready for spring. Some day when I grow up I’ll move to sunny California. Some day.

The fix has a new home on the big porch. The new pad has ideal porch parking for the 4 (out of a possible 6) dedicated cyclists living in this duplex. The other half of the duplex has already converted their porch to cycle storage with 5 bikes currently in there. Our porch is framed in and holds me studio…no bikes in there! On our side the bikes are outside, but still under the porch roof. Had to put a plastic bag over the seat for the most recent storm—otherwise the cover is good.

I’m feeling really ready for the warmer weather. It has been a pretty easy winter and even though both the big and mini blizzards were both very big storms, this is VT and we handled it easily. Snow pack is good for VT and reports of great riding have been coming in. Sadly, I think I’m just not so much of a downhill snow-rider type anymore. Sorry to admit it for the first time publicly, but I like going uphill more than I do downhill. I remember an older back-country skier from Utah saying: “When you realize that going uphill is why you’re out there—-then you’ve arrived as a backcountry skier!” I hope he was right and that this isn’t all about rationale….I’m ready to ride bikes. NOW.

Too tired for more.

Back soon.

G:5

It’s like running under a long arching pass…dropping a knee in 10″ of Utah jazz….those moments when the pedals turn over effortlessly as you maintain just better than a lumbering gorilla pace up some normal torture of a climb. I mean it’s silly sometimes climbing hills with like a 15 rpm cadence. We all do it. It’s still easier than walking. I rode 4 laps up the big hill in town. Well, it ain’t much of a hill but you know you’re having a good day when you ride up the same hill 4 times, eh? Seriously, we’ve been under a blizzard thick coat of snow for the last month and the big snow banks and the -15F didn’t help me motivation. We got up to 40F a couple days in a row and it made the bike lanes reappear. Enough to inspire me to do laps off the couch.

The legs are a bit dead today. I did about a 45 minute yoga practice when I got home that felt pretty good. I’m using my “training,” that is my yoga and cycling and nordic skiing, as preparation for my upcoming first trip this summer to the Burning Man festival. I want to play some landmark DJ sets while I’m there. Of course I’m training my live DJ skills as well. —-As a side note, I’m looking for video and/or live physical artists to join my sets—-

Fix was just what I needed after feeling so couped up in February. The winter off riding doesn’t seem to make the legs forget. Fix just comes right back or at least the basic pedaling/non-pedaling aspect. I feel the nature of fix has assimilated itself into my nervous system. A mindful-but-unconscious connection between human and human-created motion machine. Of all man-machine interactions, that of the bicycle and specifically the fix represents efficiency and functionality of the finest kind. From a modern standpoint you’d have to say the “interface” of the device (fix) is pretty good and has been pretty good for over 100 years.

Fix made me feel like myself, when I hadn’t been feeling myself of late.
Fix made me feel the road, when I hadn’t felt the road of late.
Fix made me feel the hill, though I’d definitely felt the hill of late. (nordic)
Fix made me feel my smile, when I hadn’t been smiling myself of late.

I hope I can arrange a fix for the festival….I believe I can.

You just have to believe that now is the future you always dreamed of. Come back to that. Be here. It’s always now, so let’s make the best of it.

Fix

G.

Well, I got the Uniscorcher running for the rest of the winter. Our six foot snowbanks are consolidated down to about 4 feet now and in many places there is a relatively safe bike lane again. I got a couple of errand-shreds in and got the legs re-acclimated to doing the round-and-round thang. All this skate skiing has my brain doing the side-to-side thing. Pre-season training has begun (so-to-speak.) I’m finally breathing normally as the last of the extra lung-liquid leftover from my November bout with pneumonia is finally cleared out. Just go a few months of breathing through clogged lungs to appreciate breathing. I notice it most while practicing yoga, that the excess fluid has finally gone away. Pheeww. Now I just have to get my fitness back. My doctors have cautioned that it might take a year. So, just little steps for right now. More nordic skiing and any commuter or errand running on the bike when it works for me.

Short and Sweet.

Oh Mr. S. G. good to hear back from you….and I’ll do my best to never connect your writings and ramblings with your real identity.

Over and Out

G:5