No, this posting is not about a city in France.  It’s nice outside. Super nice.  We had a cold front move through last night.  Since it was hot and muggy all day, the front touched off some nasty thunderstorms.  Once the storms moved away, the temperature dropped and the air was clear. 

During the muggy part of the day, I installed a new computer mount on my handlebars. It went on pretty quickly and the computer is now working properly again.  I did a helmetless test ride to a bank on US 1.  About a half mile from the bank, I made eye contact with the driver of a new Corolla that was on the access road to the immediate right of the highway. The driver looked right at me then pulled out directly into my path. I came to a stop about a foot from her door and asked the rhetorical question, “What the f%% are you doooooo-inngggg?  Her window was down so she got the message.  I am guessing that she was preoccupied with learning the nuances of her new car and I didn’t register in her mind. Well, now I knew that both the computer and the brakes on The Mule work.
 
I woke up before dawn and made my way to Indian Head Maryland.  The drive took only 30 minutes or so.  I did walk up registration for the Southern Maryland Century. Actually, I did the metric century which was a little shy of 100 kilometers.  I am forever grateful to the science wonks who came up with the metric system.  I can say I did a century and not have to have endured the last 20 miles of a 100 mile ride.

Except today, I half wished I had done the full 100-mile ride. As I started riding I wished I had brought arm warmers. The route took us directly into the rising sun.  With the clear air, it made it hard to see more than a few feet in front of you.

It took me about a half hour to get the lead out of my legs.  Then I locked in to a 15 mile per hour pace, giver or take a mile per hour.  I’ve done this ride twice before but both times it rained so it was nice to not have to deal with wet roads.

The route took us through Charles County Maryland. Charles County was known for having legalized gambling many years ago.  Today it’s an exurb of Washington with miles and miles of tobacco fields that no longer grow the leaf. It’s also where John Wilkes Booth tried to escape from the law after shooting Lincoln. Booth was headed for Virginia via a crossing to the south.  He was cornered in a barn and turned into barbecue. 

For some reason, I think of this area as flat, but there are plenty of pretty challenging hills in the ride.  I rode The Mule, which has very forgiving gearing.  I suck at climbing so I was chuffed when I rode past two roadies walking on their clipless shoes up the biggest hill on the course, 48 miles in to the ride.  It’s bad enough to have succumbed to a hill but to have to walk like a duck all the way up is pretty sad.

The weather was so nice that I didn’t let the things that bother me get under my skin. At one point I was clipping along at 20 miles per hour when I heard a voice say, “Passing left.”  He blew by me in an aero tuck in the silliest helmet (it looked like a sperm – I kid you not). I could have stiff armed him; he was pretty close. Of course, the next 6 or 7 riders who were drafting him didn’t say a word. A couple of them came within inches of my left arm.  At over 20 miles per hour. With a car approaching from the front.  Maybe they were confident in what they were doing, but I thought they were being reckless and putting other riders (i.e. ME) at risk. Dudes, as a famous doctor once said, “It’s fun to have fun, but you have to know how.”

End of speech.

For the remaining 59.9 miles, the riding was glorious. Puffy white clouds floating in a perfectly blue sky. Like summertime in upstate New York or Vermont. Along the way I did a half dozen descents at over 30 miles per hour. I couldn’t hear anything but the wind in my ears. 

After about 4 1/2 hours my ride was over and I headed home.  I stopped twice. Once to get a drink at a gas station. As I waited in line a total stranger starts telling me about his dental problems. He didn’t have $250 to pay a dentist to pull his aching tooth. He was going to have his buddy yank it for him. Good luck with that.  The second stop was at my local bike shop. It is next to a fast food place. I’m waiting in line and a guy who is not quite all there starts telling me how he got kicked out of the fast food place. I started to wonder if I had worn my “Tell me your problems, odd people” shirt on.

I had planned on putting new brake pads on The Mule as a reward for a job well done, but it was so nice out I put my feet up and chilled on the deck instead.

Well, today was a big milestone for your humble bike commuter. Today was my 100th bike commute of 2012. Now if you think about it, people who commute by car or subway don’t bother to count the number of times they commute by each method. Basically, they are content to wallow in their daily misery. I, being a numbers wonk, prefer to quantify my daily habit.

Today’s bike commute was extraordinary because not once but twice I was actually warned loudly when I was passed by high speed bike commuters.  Normally, they just buzz me within inches of my left shoulder but apparently in celebration of my bike commuting century (It just dawned on me that I hit my bike commuting metric century some time in June and didn’t brag about it. Dang.) these two commuters actually gave me plenty of time to move to the right. 

Another odd ball aspect of my commute today was seeing a horse on the Mount Vernon Trail.  This normally only happens when a riot is about to break out or the former mayor and convicted racketeer of Providence Buddy Cianci is in town.  I was expecting to dodge some piles of processed hay but apparently this particular horse was not yet feeling his oats, as they say in equestrian circles.

My morning commute started out with a nice tail wind that inexplicably became a headwind within two miles of my office. I wanted to complain but there is really nobody to complain to. Curse you, weather gods! Just for good measure, the gods reversed the winds so that I had a nice stiff headwind all the way home.

I stopped on the way home to buy a bag of bird seed. I buy the kind that is coated in cayenne pepper. It’s very expensive. For many years it seemed like a good deal because gold finches love it and the 50 squirrels living in the massive maple tree next store wouldn’t touch the stuff.  Apparently we have some new TexMex squirrels next door (probably blown in on the derecho) because these little hombres love my bird seed. 

Last weekend I drove my lawn mower to college. After another couple of years of edjumacation, I expect he’ll be the world’s most learned Lawn Boy operator.  Of course, his departure means that I get to mow the lawn. This is complicated by the fact that I arrived home tonight totally soaked in sweat because the relative humidity was, as they say in Le Tour de France, hors categorie. I pulled out my Sears lawn mower which is literally held together with zip ties, and proceeded to bring in the crop.

I won’t need to water my lawn this week. I sweat gallons while I was mowing.

The weather gods owe me a tailwind in the morning. If I don’t get one, I’m putting EPO on my Cheerios. 

In terms of weather, August is one of the best months for riding a bike, if you don’t mind the swampy air in DC.  Ironically, I usually have a mileage dip in August because of family obligations.  While it is true that I missed an entire week of riding on a college safari with my daughter, I still managed to rack up a mess o’miles.  For the month I rode 653 miles. 111 of it was from the Hoppy 100. Most of the rest was from 17 bike commutes. 

I rode The Mule 491.5 miles including 13 times to work. Little Nellie came in second with 100.5 miles and two commutes.  Big Nellie came out of the shed for another 61 miles and two commutes. 

My year to date totals are 4,582 miles and 98 commutes.  Soon I will buy a new seat for Big Nellie and she will start getting some serious use.

September is already in the hole because of a trip to Saratoga NY to drive my son back to college.  For all you folks looking for a place to go to escape the swampy DC weather, I highly recommend upstate New York.  I’m not talking about Westchester County which is upstate for people in New York City. What I mean is the Finger Lakes region, the Erie Canal, the Adirondacks, and a little further to the east the Champlain valley.  The weather is superb, the shoulders are wide and paved, and there’s any kind of terrain you could ask for. 

This is not about politics. This is about a politician who pressed one of my buttons, big time.

In my younger days, after I lost 70 pounds and kicked a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit, I went to grad school and started running. (I was cycling, but, once autumn arrived, it was too dark to do much riding in Providence).

When I started I couldn’t run more than a half a mile in my Chuck Taylors. That first run is seared in my memory and my lungs.  Gradually I built my endurance and ditched the Chuck Taylors for some honest-to-god running shoes. Over the course of the school year I managed to get my daily runs up to 5 miles, sometimes a couple more. 

I moved to Berkeley for the summer and ramped up the running. I challenged myself to run to the top of the Strawberry Canyon fire trail in the Berkeley hills near the university.  It took me many tries but I finally made it, a very hilly ten-mile round trip. I kept running for the next year or so, until I quietly decided to run a marathon.  26.2 miles.

In early November 1981, I ran and finished the Ocean State Marathon in a time of 3 hours, 10 minutes, and 18 seconds.  Note that I remember the exact time like it was yesterday. I remember the hills of Ocean Drive in Newport, the incredibly unforgiving concrete made out of a substance not found anywhere else on earth of Bellevue Avenue, the cold winds coming off Rhode Island Sound and the old man, a local cross country coach, imploring us to relax and “keep it smooth.”  I remember the tunnel of cheers at 20 miles as I turned off Bellevue and headed for the last 10 kilometers.  I remember the bear jumping on my back at mile 23. I couldn’t move my damn thighs. They wouldn’t go. I persevered. It HURT, dammit!!!   I turned to run the last half mile to the finish line at the high school and there it was, the biggest damned hill on the course. I was so  pissed that the resulting adrenaline rush allowed me to sprint up over the hill and straight into the finishing area, where I promptly cramped up like nobody’s business. My girlfriend and my roommate each put a shoulder under my armpits and helped me inside the school.  

A couple of years later, I ran my fastest race ever, what runners call their personal record or PR.  I was running in my usual grad school rags. The liner in my fancy running pants had worn out so I cut it out and wore a jock strap.  The race began along the Hudson River in Troy New York. One hundred yards into the race something went SNAP in my pants.  All I could think of was “I hope that’s my jock strap and not a part of my anatomy.”  (Stopping to check was not an option. As it turned out, it was a wardrobe malfunction.)  After a flat mile we turned up a steep hill toward RPI, then right back down to the river and north toward Waterford.  It was flat and the future Mrs. Rootchopper was riding with my father and sister along side yelling encouragement and embarrassing things like “Look at those sexy legs.” (I am not making this up.) We crossed the river and ran up a steep hill following the lift locks of the adjacent Erie canal.  Then we headed south along a ridge line.

As we descended back down to the river, I could feel blisters all along the balls of both feet.  I knew if they tore open I was a goner so I slowed down and tried to land on my heels. This easily cost me a couple of minutes.  Once on the flats we ran south until we reached the Watervliet arsenal. It was heating up and he sunshine made the corregated metal of the arsenal buildings radiate heat. After running through the oven. I stopped at a water station and drank some water calmly, then headed off for the finish, gingerly running to protect the balls of my feet. I crossed a bridge back into Troy then turned right, down to the finish line. I finished in 3:04:29. After we got back to my parents house, I spent a good half hour lancing blisters all over the bottoms of my feet. 

So, even though these events took place about 30 years ago, I remember the details of the race and the times down to the second. Which brings me to Paul Ryan.

In an interview Paul Ryan bragged that he ran a marathon well under 3 hours.  Fact checkers found that he was stretching the truth. In fact, Paul Ryan has never broken 4 hours in a marathon. When he was called out on this discrepancy, Ryan claimed that it was along time ago, that he forgot, or was confused.

Bullshit.

Excuse my language. 

Forgetting your best marathon time, especially one under 3 hours does not happen.  It’s like forgetting your birthday or your kid’s name. 

I didn’t have to look up my times to write this blog. If I forget my first marathon time or my PR, you can assume that I have had a stroke or some other serious neurological problem.

People who lie about their marathon times are pond scum. Remember Rosie Ruiz. She crossed the finish line at the Boston Marathon before any other women. Bill Rodgers then men’s winner took one look at her and shook his head. “No way.” It turned out that Rosie took the trolley then jumped onto the course just to see what it felt like to cross the finish line. She probably didn’t expect to be the first woman. Oops. Her name is synonymous with “Cheater”.

Should we believe Ryan?

Of course, there is the possibility that he can’t tell time.

Or that he’s had a major neurological problem.

Or maybe he’s so arrogant that he thinks you don’t much care what he says. 

Doesn’t matter to me. I ran literally thousands of miles to get to 3:04:29. My advice to Paul Ryan:. drop the P90X and hit the roads.  When you break my PR, call me. Then we can talk about my vote.

I spent the last several nights changing bike tires. The back tire on Big Nellie was transferred to the back of the Mule. I was shocked at how easy the tire went on. No struggling. No blisters. It just popped right on. The Mule now has two Schwalbe Marathon 700×32 tires.  It looks spiffy.  Then I put a new 700×32 Panaracer Pasella with Tourguard on the back of Big Nellie. Big Nellie has been neglected lately so I planned on riding her to work today. 

Last night I put a 406×1.5 Schwalbe Marathon on the front of Little Nellie. (Note to readers: bicycle tire sizes make absolutely no sense whatsoever.  And even the same numbered sizes vary from one manufacturer to the next. It’s a bit like clothing sizes.)  Now Little Nellie has matching front and rear tires, too.  I wore my cotton gardening gloves to get the tire on and it was still a bitch to do. At the end I learned a little trick.  Instead of trying to push the wire bead over the edge of the rim, push the sidewall up and over the rim. For some reason this makes the bead glide right over the rim.  I also got a bonus from this tire installation.  I had used a dollar bill to boot the old tire after a flat.  A boot forms a barrier between the hole in the tire and the new tube.  Dollar bills make good boots but they disintegrate over time.  This particular dollar bill no longer resembled legal tender. I probably got much more than $1 worth of tire wear out of this bill so it was a dollar well spent.

I have one more new tire, another 406×1.5 Schwalbe Marathon for the front of Big Nellie, I was going to put it on, but the old tire that’s already on looks to be in good shape.

This morning I went to ride Big Nellie and her bike computer fell into my lap.  The computer mount is held on to the handlebar using a rubber O-ring.  Big Nellie’s O-ring looked more like a C-ring this morning. I’m thinking of changing Big Nellie’s name to Challenger. Or, maybe, Feynman.

I rode Little Nellie to work instead. Bikes ride better on new tires and Little Nellie felt great. I fiddled with the saddle and handlebar height today because I was getting leg cramps earlier this summer. I attribute the leg cramps to having the saddle set to low. When I got home tonight – after picking up a couple of O-rings at a hardware store – I had a sore lower back. Ugh.

Tomorrow Big Nellie gets the call after spending a couple of months alone in the Rootchopper Institute for Bicycle Storage.  I still need to order a new seat and a new fairing for this bike but, for now, it will get me to the office.

My daughter Lily is a rising senior in high school. She’s trying to select a college and one of her criteria is that it be far from home.  Last Spring we drove from DC to Auburn, Alabama to check out a bunch of colleges down south.  This week we flew to Los Angeles to tour colleges in the L. A. area.

The flight out via Phoenix was uneventful except for the fantastic views of the high mountains of the desert southwest.  We landed in LAX which is one gawdawful mess of an airport.  We jumped into the rental car van and arrived at the rental car place expecting, at most, a 20 minute process. We were in line to talk to a rental car clerk for 45 minutes.  After several more minutes during which time a clerk tried to upsell me the sun the moon and the stars, I finally got the paperwork that should have been ready when I walked in the door. We were sent into a garage to get our car. Except there weren’t any cars there. We waited another 30 minutes to get our metallic lime green Kia Soul.  After 90 minutes, we were finally on the road. If you have a choice I highly recommend staying the hell away from Dollar Rental Car. I will never use them again.

We drove north to see some sights on a pleasant Sunday afternoon. After some time meandering in various towns (I can’t quite figure out where Los Angeles city is and where the county is.  It’s all just one urban mess.)  We ended up with Lily’s helpful navigation on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. This famous retail strip is like Bethesda on steroids. The only people walking were tourists which makes me wonder if the stars don’t shop at TJ Maxx in Encino. 

After cruising around we started heading east (Directions here are difficult. My mental map had east being toward the ocean; west coasters have it the opposite way.)  We decided to track down an In and Out Burger joint after being told by my friend Erika that it had the best burgers in the universe. In the process we stumbled on Hollywood and Vine, Graumann’s and the Pantages theaters, and other Hollywood landmarks that were positively swarming with tourists. It was like Manhattan for three blocks. Crazy.

The In and Out Burger was across the street from Hollywood High which sounded impressive, even if it looked mundane. The restaurant was a madhouse with lots of yelling (Number 23!!!! Number 22!!!!) It was a little too noisy and the food was nothing special. (I’d take BGR or Ray’s Hell Burger over this any day.)

We hopped on the highway and promptly missed a turn, sending us north when we needed to go east. I do believe the highway sign was missing.  In any case we recovered and spent the next hour crawling toward Eagle Rock which is close to Pasadena.  The next day we toured Occidental College.  Unfortunately, my back decided to go out sometime during the day and the trip was off to wonderful start. Oxy was where Barack Obama went to school before transferring to Columbia.  It’s also where Jack Kemp went to school.  I was impressed with the political range of its alumni. My back was unhappy that Oxy is on a hill.

From Oxy we drove to USC for an afternoon tour. Here we saw our only semi-famous person of the day, Gary Tuckman, a CNN reporter who was moving his kid  into school.  (I see more famous type people at a high school sporting event in DC so I refrained from pointing and saying, “Look a famousy type person.”) 

USC has a lot to brag about.  It has a marching band with a a gold record (Tusk by Fleetwood Mac), the George Lucas film school which includes the Hugh Hefner exhibition hall, a boatload of olympic athletes, and a professional football team.  On display in their sports hall of fame, with four other winners, was OJ Simpson’s Heisman trophy. If you got it, flaunt it.

After seeing the new light rail station (it’s about time LA), we drove in rush hour traffic to Claremont California to get ready for the next day’s adventures at Pitzer and Claremont McKenna colleges.  The drive took forever.  Ugh.

The Kia Soul was a nice little car to drive. We felt every bump in the road, though. I think the highways are hurting. They are very bumpy and strewn with litter, perhaps a result of California’s financial mess.

We checked into a hotel and ate at Denny’s because it was the closest food and we were starving.

The next day we toured the two colleges, which despite being part of an Oxford-like consortium of schools on a common campus, had remarkably different feels to them. Between tours we hit King Taco for lunch. I wanted to try fish tacos since so many of my DC biking friends seem to like them. Meh.

After the tour we drove further east to Redlands for the University thereof.  The drive was not so bad since Redlands is over 60 miles east of LA.  A friend from Santa Monica says that it is where smog goes to die. What a shame because the mountains just outside of town are amazing to look at.

Our tour of U of Redlands was fine, but by this time my back problem had turned into a full blown muscle spasm and I was looking like Quasimodo in shorts.  It was painful.  Another loverly campus. Our tour guide who swims on the Redlands swim team reminded me of Olympic swimmer Summer Sanders.

Finished with Redlands at noon, we drove to Chapman College in Orange California, about 40 or 50 miles to the southwest.  The highways were dusty, terrain marked by unsightly industrial buildings and sketchy retail places.  We couldn’t park anywhere near campus because it was freshman move in day.  So we gave up on Chapman and drove ever so slowly to Whittier. The next day we toured Whittier College. Like USC, Whittier has an infamous alumnus, Richard Nixon.  The tour guide did not point out the modest memorial to him. Quakers don’t do bling.

Before the tour I experimented with chorizos, a Mexican breakfast dish of eggs and Mexican sausage, for breakfast. One plate of this stuff and I could ride a bike to the moon.  And it was tasty, too.

We left Whittier and sat in traffic for an hour so that we could drive Mulholland Drive in the Santa Monica Mountains. It was curvy and had cool views of the city. The whole time I was driving all I could think of was an episode of the old Superman TV show in which Jimmy Olsen drives with Lois Lane on a scary, windy mountainous road without any brakes (the bad guys sabotaged their car). At one point the steering wheel comes off in Jimmy’s hands.  I wouldn’t be surprised if it was filmed on Mulholland.    
 
After Mulholland we drove into Santa Monica via Brentwood, We promptly got lost and ended up on the Pacific Coast Highway headed for Malibu. We stopped and had a bite to eat then returned to Santa Monica. We checked into a hotel and crashed for the night.  The next day we played tourists.  We people watched on the Santa Monica pedestrian mall then headed for the beach.  The beach was massive and stretched as far as the eye could see.  Not being big fans of deep sand we spend most of our time on the Santa Monica pier, at the western end of fabled Route 66.  We read in the sun, had a very casual lunch, and rode the Ferris wheel.
Then we jumped in the car and drove to a hotel near the airport.  The traffic was so bad that we were repeatedly passed by skate boarders.  After about an hour we made it the 15 or so miles to LAX.  We woke up early, not trusting Dollar Rental Car to take forever to process our car return.  We were stunned when it was the normal three minute process.

Waiting for the plane to board, I discussed politics with a 70 year old Christian tea bagger. He calmly explained to me how everything is Obama’s fault. I calmly disabused him of his simplistic understanding of economics and politics.(You voted for Congresses and presidents that neglected to fund social security, medicare, two wars, and public infrastructure. And don’t forget the positively scary economic mess that Obama inherited, dude. Do you think that John McCain, who was admittedly clueless about economics,  would have done better?)  I doubt that I had any long term effect on his thinking. Any thought that he didn’t agree with was explained away by God and the bible. Thankfully, he didn’t sit next to me on the plane.

The plane home was a 737 packed with more rows than I would have thought possible. We made it home without incident mostly because we were stuffed in our seats like proverbial sardines.

Captain America costume at USC film school

The tour guide at Redlands reminded me of Summer Sanders

The pedestrian mall at Santa Monica

Waay too much food for lunch. (She didn’t come close to finishing it.)

If you have to do summer reading, do it on the pier at Santa Monica

We didn’t stay here. A little out of our budget

We was hungry

OJ’s Heisman

Bike coop at Pitzer College

Serious grub for serious safaris

Whittier College

Jimmy and Lois crashed here

Not me. No way.

No more college tours!

At the airport

We’re going home!

After a week of misery sitting in traffic and looking at smog and an astonishing amount of litter on the roads, I can only shake my head. How do people live like this? Why do people live like this? When we drove home I could not have been happier to feel humidity in the air and see green leaves and grass everywhere I looked.    

Here is my humble Mule on the Washington and Old Dominion Trail high above the recently expanded beltway in Falls Church Virginia. Count ’em. 16 lanes.

I was recently in Atlanta and saw pretty much the same thing. And I am going to Los Angeles tomorrow to see it yet again.

I am flabbergasted that Americans actually want this. What happens 20 years from now? Do we add another 4 lanes? Transportation policy in this country is simply inane.

A simple solution to this would be to raise the tax on gasoline to the inflation adjusted level it was at in 1993, the last time it was raised and index it (just like your income taxes and social security benefits) to the rate of inflation. That would be about a 13 cent increase. Congress won’t do that because Congress is a gutless, dysfunctional mess that responds only to a populace that has all the fiscal discipline of a four-year old.

There are two good things about this picture. One is the trail that my bike is parked on. We need many, many more of them. We might even reduce our health care expenses in the bargain.

The second good thing is that four of the lanes are HOT lanes. That’s right, they use a transponder to charge for use. How long will it take for Virginia to grant exceptions. They did this on the HOV lanes for hybrid cars. Now the sprawl extends 20 miles farther away from the city.

End of screed.

Twas a sad sight on the Mount Vernon Trail this evening. This Canada goose had an injured right wing that just hung by its side. The goose continued to eat grass and move slowly along but I am afraid it’s days are numbered.

I rode my Sequoia on the Hoppy 100 ride this weekend, and on three commutes this week. In all that riding, I exceeded 30 miles per hour at least 10 times. If this sidewall blow out had happened during any of those descents, I’d be in a world of hurt.

Some times you feel like a carp; sometimes you don’t.

Today was my day. 

If I am going to ride my bike to work and get there at a decent hour (I can only get there at an indecent hour when Friday Coffee Club is involved), I have to leave around 7. This morning at 7 there was a monsoon in my neck of the burbs.  No gills, no glory.

My bike is locked in the Rootchopper Institute for Bicycle Storage (which is abbreviated SHED en Francais) located inconveniently in my back yard.  By the time I made it to the SHED, I was SOAKED (which is French for wet as corpse in the Seine).  I was wearing my reflective vest for two reasons. It would keep me warmer than going without and it would keep me visible. I also wore my 1991 Bike Virginia cycling cap which I earned my riding up the Shenandoah Valley in a series of driving rainstorms.  It is probably the scuzziest piece of clothing I own but it helped keep water out of my eyes so fashion be damned.

Once I was good and wet, I started my commute. Two miles later the rain stopped. Lovely.

Not surprisingly, I had the Mount Vernon Trail pretty much all to myself.

At lunchtime I rode over to Georgetown to cash another check.  I cashed two yesterday. They all came from the company that runs our Flexible Spending Account program at work.  How they can stay in business cutting three checks in two days when one would do is beyond my little brain.  The woman in front of me withdrew $430 in tens and fives.  Carpe Throatum.

I worked late for the second day in a row.  I don’t want to make a habit of this, but at least I can do my Friday Coffee Club thing this week without feeling guilty.  All my evening regulars were long gone. The trail was busy with ultrafit runners in their stylish running gear. When I ran back before most of you were potty trained, I ran in rags. All my spare grad school money went into my Mizuno running shoes.  I loved them and bought ten pairs over the course of three years. Of course, the company decided to stop making them. Some asshat in their marketing department probably thought it would be a good idea if their best customers bought their shoes elsewhere.  Why can’t businesses leave well enough alone?  Didn’t anybody learn from the New Coke fiasco? Carpe Marketing Throatum.

The ride home was a bit windy. I didn’t care. Somehow riding 111 miles and drinking beer has energized my legs.  The same thing happened on my bike tours. The more I ride the better my mechanics get and the smoother I ride.  I don’t use clipless pedals, just toe clips and straps.  They work great if you pedal properly. The problem is that, most of the time, I pedal like an oil well. Down, up.  The right way is to spin your feet and keep from mashing your feet into the pedals. I had clipless pedals once. After a couple of Arte Johnson falls, I decided to go back to what I know.  Any efficiency gain from going clipless would almost certainly be offset by the weeks off the bike waiting for my broken collarbone to heal.

My friend Paul rode Bike Virginia with me in 1991 on a heavy hybrid, with a broken collarbone.  He didn’t have clipless pedals though. He’s just fell down unassisted.  He’s also a bike commuter. I wonder if her wore a scuzzy hat today.