10.7.2007 | 8:24 pm
Last week, I ran a contest asking for you to relate your surreal moments on bikes. Really, it was just a lame ploy to get you all to write my blog for me while I try to hammer out a big-deal report for my job.
I got 134 replies.
That, my friends, is a lot of stories.
Clearly, my ruse to get in an easy post has backfired: I have spent hours reading your stories, probably another hour choosing a few finalists, and I’ll still have to go to the post office to mail out the prizes. Yes, prizes — I decided I didn’t want to choose just one winner.
I swear, I need an intern. Anyone want to be the Fat Cyclist intern? I’ll let you do all the stuff I don’t like to do. I won’t pay you, but I’ll make up for it by also not giving you any credit. Doesn’t that sound great?
So, out of all the great stories — a surprising number of which were about suicidal deer and rodents and evil magpies in Australia — I picked a horror story, a sublime story, a bizarre story, and a haiku.
All are excellent examples of the surreal.
When Teenagers Attack
by Kim
One cold fall night I was doing a night riding with a male friend in the Pandapas area outside Blacksburg, Virginia. We stumbed upon a big bonfire party of about 20 teens with several 4-wheel drives, parked all around on a fire road section of the trail.
Instead of back-tracking 4 miles to get to the end of our ride, we decided to pass by the party in the edge of the woods, just off the trail.
We turned off our lights and waited until the timing seemed good. As far as we could tell no one had seen us. We had about 1/4 mile to go to the trailhead and hoped that we could cover the distance without any trouble.
Then, about 200 yards into the run, a full beer can whizzed by me, then another, then another. I rode hard, until I felt like my heart would burst. Then I heard the trucks starting and I was sure I would die — either from pure exertion, adrenalin overdose, or death by the hand of a drunken teen. All I could think about was mob mentality and that I was a girl and that there was no way my companion could protect us. It occured to me too that many people carry guns in their trucks in the area and it was hunting season.
This was bad.
It became glaringly apparent that we could not get to the trailhead before the trucks with their spotlights caught us. In the name of survival we knew that we had to get into the woods and that did not mean on our bikes. I ditched my bike in the edge of the dense woods and lost a shoe in the process.
From there we ran as fast as would could down off the ridge into the pitch darkness. We took cover under the downhill side of a large fallen tree. The trucks drove back and forth spotlighting the woods as we called 911.
Within a half hour the sheriff’s department came to the rescue, busted the party, and let us know it was safe to come out. After another half hour of searching I had both bike and shoe back.
The sheriff could not get us and our bikes back to our car so we finished the ride. I shook the whole time and well into the night as I tried to sleep. I sported one very bruised foot for a while, and still to this day I get creeped out on night rides but can’t resist.
The Owl’s Leading Now
by Phil in VA
This happened on a dusk descent of Massanuten Mountain in western Virginia. Picture a warm Spring evening, almost dark, decending the last 3 miles of forest road. It’s a nice, easy, double-track downhill, which is good because we’re tired and it’s already dark in the woods and we don’t have lights. It’s the time of day my Grandfather used to call “rabbit dark.â€
Cruising along, quiet, lost in our own thoughts, when an owl silently overtakes us from behind and drops in about 20 feet ahead. He’s coasting too, matching our pace, about 12 feet above the trail. He’s big. Probably 3+ foot wingspan.
Nobody says a word.
We just keep riding, and he just keeps flying. At this point, your sense of time becomes skewed simply because of the experience. Minutes seem extended, but suffice it to say he led us for at least a mile. Then just as quickly as he appeared, he veered off and was gone. Surreal. Dare I say religious? (Yes, I do.) My thought was he was hunting and using us to scare up game. If anyone has another theory, I’d love to hear it.
A Simple Question
by Bryan
I was propositioned by a hooker … while on my bike, waiting at a stop light, on the way home from work.
I didn’t even know what to say.
Lucky Squirrel, Unlucky Rider
by Glenn
Riding side by side
Chris never saw the squirrel
Face Plant Squirrel lives
Congratulations to the Winners
I don’t think I’ve ever given away four things with one contest before, but I’m going to this time. Winners, please email me with your address, the size of T-shirt you wear, and the size of socks (S/M and L/XL are your only two options). What I send you will depend on what I have available.
PS: You know, I don’t think I’ve ever posted a poem as a blog entry, which is a shame, because I am an awesome poet.
Comments (32)
10.4.2007 | 8:19 pm
Today, I shall begin by talking about something that has nothing to do with bikes, and then I will magically transition over to bikes. That is my game plan, such as it is.
Stress
I am currently a tangled snarl of stress, wrapped up in a burlap bag of stress, being pounded by Thor’s Hammer of Stress.
In fewer than ten days, I must turn in a report — a report that is the distillation of about three months of intense research and analysis.
It occurs to me: most of you would be surprised at what I do for a living. You’d be surprised at how intense of a job it is. You’d be surprised that I’m actually kind of respected for the quality of work I do. And more than anything else, you’d be freaked out at my methodology. Coworkers walk into my War Room — yes, I actually have my very own War Room — and are startled by the amount and quality of information confronting them. Some begin to experience vertigo and have to leave.
I’d post pictures, but then I’d start getting a bunch of unwanted job offers, and right now I just don’t have the time to fend off the hordes of headhunters.
Anyway, as I was saying: I’m down to ten days ’til that report’s due, and I’ve got tons left to do on it.
Except that ten days is really more like six days, because before I knew my due date would be October 15, I set up a nice little four-day family vacation, going from October 10-14.
Excuse me. I need to throw up.
Bad Timing
Since I am so busy, I have hardly had any time for riding. I’m quickly falling out of shape, but I can live with that, because I know that staying in shape right now would be a futile effort. After all, once I have the shoulder surgery I’m going to be off the bike for a bit anyway. Not much point in trying to stay fast right now, is there?
So: now, when I am so busy I am staying up late each night, when I am so busy I don’t have time to ride, when I am so busy I am fully losing my mind, is a manifestly bad time for me to find a time-sucking work of genius: Bike Snob NYC.
And yet, I can’t stop reading this guy. He’s incredible.
The Difference
I’ve been reading newest-to-oldest, so I may not have the context right, but Bike Snob NYC (BSNYC, as he calls himself) loves his fixed gear bikes, and has a healthy disdain for the fixie foppery fad that’s sprung up around him.
Here’s how far apart he and I are: I didn’t even realize there is a fixie fad. I just have one — my stock Pista — because back when I lived in Washington, I thought it would be fun to race track.
He laments top tube pads on fixies. I have never even seen a fixie top tube pad.
He has an encyclopedic knowledge of the urban fixed gear cycling scene and its foibles. I just think about whether I could possibly climb a big mountain on my fixie without my knees shattering.
He has a treatise on how and when cyclists should greet each other that frankly has me thinking of plagiarizing and submitting it to BikeRadar, so I can take the week off.
I’m gushing, I know. But Bike Snob NYC is that funny.
I admire him, and I fear him.
PS: I now fully expect at least fifteen comments telling me that I am the last person in the world to discover this blog, and that the rest of you have been reading him for months. In which case, thanks for telling me.
Comments (52)
10.3.2007 | 8:39 am
One of the cool things about being a cyclist is you get to experience stuff most people never will. Dug’s seen a cross-dresser casually strolling on a lonely mountain road. My sister Kellene told me that during her trip to Telluride last week, she rescued a woman from a brush-covered ravine who had been the victim of a hit-and-run by a car.
And I’ve been hit by birds. Four times, to be exact.
It’s always quite a surprise.
Kamikaze
The first time was when I lived in Sammamish, Washington, a couple years ago. I was out on a nice early morning road ride out in the countryside, out past Carnation. One of the things I liked best about riding out there in the farmland was how quiet and peaceful the rides were. Green everywhere. Birds singing. Eagles flying above. It’s easy to get lost in a cycling reverie.
And then: WHAM. My left shoulder suddenly felt like it had been punched. Or like I had been hit with a paintball by someone in a passing car (this has happened before) or with a beer bottle by a passing truck (this has also happened before).
But there were no cars around. I was as alone as possible, with fields of flowers on either side of me (Ever wonder where florists’ flowers come from? Turns out there’s such a thing as florist farms).
I — unlike you, because of course you already know what hit me — was so confused I forgot about the pain (which wasn’t really that bad anyway). And then finally I looked around.
There was a bird — a sparrow I think — flopping in the road.
Questions filled my mind. I was all alone in an open field; why had this bird hit me? Was it sick? Blind? Just really, really stupid? Or was it as zoned out as I was, caught in the zen of flying, and it just didn’t see me? I could imagine that happening.
I turned around and rode back toward it. I knew I wasn’t going to take it home — if it was injured, it would become some animal’s meal. But I could at least end its suffering, I guess, although I wasn’t too excited about that prospect.
Before I got to it, though, it got its wits back and flew off.
I admit to feeling relief.
The Second, Third, and Fourth Hits
The next time I had a close encounter of the third kind with birds, I was mountain biking, just a couple weeks ago. Specifically, I was on my favorite ride in the world — Tibble to Joy to Ridge to Mud to Tibble — and riding one of my favorite parts: the buff, forested downhill section we call “Joy,” because it is impossible to ride that trail without a big smile on your face.
As I turned through one of the hairpins early in the ride, I passed a log on my left, startling three little birds that were either behind or inside the log.
All three of them flew right into me: two hit my chest, one hit my face: Puff puff puff. It was like getting hit by three lightly-tossed Kooshes in rapid succession.
They kept flying, gone so fast I didn’t even have a chance to get a good look at what color they were — though my impression was of blue.
It was maybe the coolest thing that has ever happened to me.
Your Turn
I am willing to bet that every single cyclist has at least one story of an unexpected encounter like this. Something that will stick with you for the rest of your life. Something that wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t been there right that moment on your bike.
Tell me about it. I’ll give a Twin Six-designed Fat Cyclist T-Shirt to the person with what I consider to be the coolest story.
Comments (145)
10.1.2007 | 9:35 pm
A Note From Fatty: My weekly BikeRadar article is now up. Here’s a preview, but you can read the whole thing at BikeRadar.com.
Seattle (Fat Cyclist Fake News Service) – PorkoVelo Enterprises, LLC, a heretofore-unheard-of USA biking race promoter, announced today in a hastily-called press conference that it would be offering a proposal for a United States-based Grand Tour, competing with the just-announced Tour of America. The race, according to PorkoVelo CEO Rick Sunderlage, will be called “Ride Around the US a Lot of Times” (RATUSALOT).
According to Sunderlage, “We’ve been thinking, lately, that what the world really needs is another Grand Tour. Except one that’s not so easy. And it should be somewhere where road biking isn’t as popular as it is in the rest of the world. And it should happen right after the biggest, most succesful top-tier US-based racing team ever disbanded, due to lack of sponsor interest.”
“I swear,” continued Sunderlage, “We were, like, 75% finished with our plan when those jerks at Aqu Inc. came out and announced their race, which I guess kind of forced our hand. So we kind of had to rush to get our proposal out the door, which means it’s kind of half-baked, unlike the Aqu idea.”
“Man,” said Sunderlage, a trace of frustration showing on his face, “Those guys have their plan totally nailed. You can tell they’ve thought everything through.”
Click here to continue on to the rest of the article at BikeRadar.com.
PS: My apologies to all Sunderlages for this crass attempt at humor. I wish you only the best in your race promotion endeavors.
PPS: You’ve got to admit, “PorkoVelo” would be a pretty awesome name for a company, if I were ever to create one.
Comments (34)
10.1.2007 | 6:51 am
I’m going to let you in on a little detail of my personal life: I am hugely stressed out right now.
“Why,” you ask? Well, it’s nice of you to inquire. Thank you. Basically, I need to be knocking myself out at work for a little while. In fact, two weeks from today, I need to turn in a document — a Grand Master Plan, if you will — that will literally change the course of history for every person on this planet.
Or it may just affect whether I get a nice bonus this quarter. Same thing.
Why does this concern you? Here’s why. For the next two weeks, whenever I can take the easy way out on this blog, I’m going to. But only if this “easy way out” is something I think you’ll like.
Based on reactions to a prior post, I think most of you’ll like this.
Return of the Biker Babes
My sister Kellene — yes, the professional photographer who once free-fell 18 feet in a mountain bike accident — just got back from Telluride on a group ride with her crew, “The Biker Babes.” Take a look at this photo and then try — just try — to tell me you don’t have a massive urge to head out to Colorado for a long mountain bike weekend:
I’ve got to say, I admire their taste in cycling attire. For those who wonder, my sister’s the one on the left.
And here’s the whole gang. No, don’t bother asking where their bikes are. I don’t know either. I don’t think we’ll ever know if they even own bikes.
OK, I take that back. Here’s the crew midway up Hermosa, which my sister tells me requires more hiking than riding:
Go Ahead and Jump
This next few photos is, frankly, a little bit odd. I have to admit, I wish I would have been there when these were taken. It starts out harmlessly enough, with one person hamming it up a little more than usual:
But what happened then? I can only guess, of course, but I imagine someone said, “Hey! A bunch of us should jump in the next picture!”
This last one, though, is actually startling on a few levels. Take a look at it, and then I have a few questions for you:
OK, ready for my questions? Here you go:
- Is it possible they meant to get this perfect highest-to-lowest effect on their jump?
- At your best, could you get half the air the one on the left is getting? She’s like, seven or eight feet up there.
- How did my sister’s (second from right) quads get so ripped? I’m afraid to ride with her.
And one final question: After jumping around in a parking lot for fifteen minutes, how did any of them have any energy at all for a ride?
Comments (44)
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