02.2.2007 | 1:13 pm
Those of you who follow the Fat Cyclist (by which I mean the blog, not me personally), know that I’ve been investigating having a Fat Cyclist jersey made.
More recently, I’ve been hinting at how cool this jersey is going to be and how excited I am to tell you all about it.
Well, as of late last night, I can finally tell you what’s going on.
Sort of.
When Stalking Pays
It’s been no secret at all since late last November when I put together my list of 50 Gift Ideas for Cyclists that I have become a fanboy of the jersey designs Twin Six has been coming up with.
What you may not have known is that back in December I started pestering them.
“Hey, you know, I’ve got this blog where I talk about cycling and stuff,” I told them, very convincingly, articulately, and — above all — frequently. “You should totally advertise on it and give me a jersey to give away in a contest.”
“OK, we’ll do it, on the condition you promise to stop emailing three times per hour,” they said.
“Fair deal,” I said. And that’s how the Twin Six ad and the Twin Six jersey contest appeared on this site.
Encouraged by the knowledge that they could be worn down, I then pressed my case. “You know what? I need a jersey designed and made for my blog. You guys make jerseys, right? You should design and make my jersey,” I said.
Twin Six compared the cost of designing a jersey and of getting a restraining order against me.
Turns out it was cheaper to do the jersey.
So yes, while it’s of course totally obvious by the time you’ve read this far, I still want to make the announcement official: Twin Six, the designers of the coolest jerseys on planet Earth, is designing and producing the Fat Cyclist Jersey.
Huzzah!
I Should Probably Show You The Jersey Now, Shouldn’t I?
So, last night Twin Six emailed me the first round of jersey design ideas (the jerseys you see above, by the way, are the designs Twin Six sells in stores and stuff. Click ‘em for more info).
I expected to like them.
I didn’t, however, expect I’d be so giddily in love with them. Out of the four jersey designs they sent, I could have been perfectly happy with any one of them.
I contemplated picking one of them and saying, “That’s perfect. Let’s make it.”
But there were a couple of little things I wanted to make sure of.
- That I got the most awesome color combination possible. Red/Silver? Black/Blue? Red/Black? Orange/Black? Hard choices.
- I asked them to insert a reference to Dr. Lammler.
So you’re going to have to wait until Saturday or Monday to see what the jersey looks like.
Hint: It’s awesome-tastic.
Thank You #1
Have you seen how many photos have been submitted in this week’s Photo Contest? 142, so far. And I love a lot of them. So a couple of thank-you’s are in order:
- Thanks, Kenny. My friend and riding buddy Kenny Jones of Kenny’s Photo is the one sponsoring this contest. Please show him you appreciate it by giving him some love — as his ad says, use the “Fatty” code at checkout and get $10 off your order. That’s a screaming deal.
- Thanks, Everyone. I always enjoy the comments in this blog and especially the work people put into comments on contest days, but having this huge number of really great photos to look at has been a real pleasure.
Hey, just for fun, here’s a small sample of some of the photos I like:
(Hey, nice jersey!)
Awesome perspective, and I love the way the road and sky meet.
Look at this guy fly, on a ‘cross bike yet!
It’s the smile that makes this one great.
I like the moody, old-school-through-and-through feel of this one.
If you’re going to have a crash like this, the only thing that can make it worthwhile is if someone caught it with a camera. Believe me, I know:
Having this photo is worth the price. Easy for me to say now.
Thank You #2
I’ve done a lot of begging for votes for the Bloggies awards this week, and I appreciate everyone who’s voted for me. If you haven’t, today’s the last day.Â
I should point out that the other candidates for the Best Kept Secret award are all pretty dang cool. In fact, I have bookmarked three of them as new frequent reads. Check them out:
- To Whom it May Concern: You know how I sometimes write open letters? That’s what this blog does all the time.
- The Gilded Moose: This is the blog I would (try to) write if IÂ knew anything about famous people. Excellent satire.
- Woof Woofington: OK, I’ll be honest, I just can’t get past the premise of this one (a dog writing a blog). I’m sure it’s a fine blog, but I don’t think I’m the target audience (as a child, I had a very traumatic experience while watching The Shaggy D.A., and now get shakes and shudders at the mere thought of talking dogs).
- Confessions of a Pioneer Woman: This is the blog I would (try to)write if I lived on a farm. And were a woman. And knew what “hiney tingle” meant.
We’ll find out who won March 12. I predict it will be me, because a comedy blog about the cycling lifestyle for the chronically overweight has huge appeal to the general populace.
PS: Today’s weight: 168.0.
PPS: I recommend checking back Saturday to see if I’ve posted the final jersey design. If I haven’t posted it by then, I’ll definitely post it on Monday. At which point, you can bet I’m going to be begging for some pre-order love.
Comments (24)
02.1.2007 | 11:35 am
A Self-Serving Note from Fatty: Today and tomorrow are the last days you can vote for the Bloggies award (I’m in the Best Kept Secret Category). If you haven’t, please do. And if you have, make sure that you click the link in the confirmation email you got, or your vote won’t count.
I make a point of not getting particularly attached to my bikes. I don’t name them. I don’t obsessively clean them. I don’t anthropomorphize them. I ride them until I think it’s time to replace them, and then I sell them.
The ride is what matters. The bike is just a tool.
Right?
But yesterday a couple of coincidental things happened that made me get all wistful and nostalgic.
Brad posted pictures. One of Brad’s entries for the photo contest (you’ve still got time to enter, by the way) shows Kenny and me on top of Beaver Mesa while riding the Kokopelli Trail — click the picture for a better version. Here, I’m propping myself up with my old Sugar, a terrific full-suspension mountain bike I originally bought for my wife and then took over as my own when I realized what a fine machine it was.- I had a conversation with Rick. I was instant messaging with my friend Rick M when I found out the fate of that Sugar, which I had sold to someone about a year ago. “About two weeks after she bought it, she had the bike on the rack when she rolled her car,” Rick said. “It died instantly and without pain.”
My Sugar — which I rode in at least two Leadville 100s, in countless local races, on hundreds of miles of local singletrack and across the Kokopelli trail — died underneath a car?
That’s no way for a bike to go. Certainly not for a bike that lived the way it did.
It’s just not right.
So, today, I’m going to indulge myself and describe what I hope all my old bikes — the ones I’ve sold to make a down payment on the next bike — are doing in their new homes.
The Bridgestone MB5
The Bridgestone was my first mountain bike. I rode it once, got a concussion, and vowed never to ride mountain bikes again. Not long after that, this bike disappeared. I have a theory that it knew it was headed to a fate of rust and dust and dust, and ran away to find someone who would ride it. I hope that it did, but I also hope it still feels ashamed for bucking me off the first time I rode it and then abandoning me.
The Specialized Stumpjumper M2
This was my first “real” mountain bike. M2 stood for “metal matrix,” which meant that it was aluminum with some ceramic in there somewhere — the miracle metal of the moment. It was equipped with LX components, with — originally — a rigid fork and SoftRide stem (some of you will recall SoftRide stems, others will not). I replaced the stem with a RockShox Judy SL, which people ogled over. However, suspension forks were still a relatively new phenomenon (seriously!), and the geometry of the bike was not meant to accommodate it — the suspension adjustment knobs at the top of the stanchions would knock against the downtube.
It also came with the stupidest dropout ever conceived. Yes, the dropout was aluminum. Soft as butter. I replaced four of them within a couple months. A bunch of other people must not have had any better luck than I, because Specialized finally came out with a chromoly dropout.
I rode the Stumpjumper for two years, riding it daily. This is the bike I learned to love mountain biking on. I then sold it on MTBR.com to some guy in Alaska. It is my fondest hope that someone in Alaska is still riding it, though I personally doubt that the combination of aluminum and pottery as a frame material will have stood the test of time.
The Ibis Steel Mojo
I used to get paid insane amounts of money to write magazine articles and books about WordPerfect (seriously!), so thought it was time to buy myself an exotic bike: the Ibis Bow Ti. I sold the Stumpjumper and ordered the Bow Ti, which promptly failed to arrive for six months.
Luckily, the guys at Ibis are very cool. They understood that I was bikeless, so loaned me a steel Mojo — their hardtail mountain bike — until they could build my Bow Ti.
I totally fell in love with that bike. Anyone who rode it did, too — four people I know bought steel Mojos after trying mine out.
So even when the BowTi arrived, I kept the Mojo. In fact, I sent it back to Ibis for a custom “Tequila Sunrise” paint job — red at the bottom bracket, fading to a bright yellow on the top tube.
I loved this bike for a long, long time.
Eventually, I sold it when I got an Ibis Titanium Mojo. But I didn’t lose track of it, because I sold it to my sister Kellene. She rode it for a while, then handed it down to her daughter as a college bike and has suffered mightily from neglect. From what I know, that Ibis is still in the family. I keep thinking I should buy it back and restore it. That bike was a beauty.
The Ibis Bow Ti
This was the most expensive bike I have ever owned. Totally tricked out, I think I had about $6000 into it (seriously!). The parallel titanium downtubes acted as a leaf spring — the whole frame was the suspension. Anybody who knew anything about bikes wanted to check it out whenever they saw it, because it was so crazily exotic and high-tech.
The thing is, it wasn’t that great of a bike. The suspension tended to rebound you up and forward, making me even more endo-prone than I usually am. Plus, the bike was wide.
After riding this for about two years, I got tired of pretending that it was the most awesome bike ever (when you spent $6000 on a bike, that’s a hard admission to make). I sold it on MTBR.com to finance my next bike, the Ibis Titanium Mojo. I frankly can’t remember where it went after I sold it, though I keep hoping to see one of these on the trail someday, just so I can ask, “So, how do you like the ride of that thing?”
I haven’t seen one in years, though.
The Ibis Ti Mojo
Having realized that I loved the Ibis Mojo, but wanting a high-zoot material, I went for the Titanium Mojo as my next bike.
That was a dream bike. It climbed like no other bike I’ve ridden before or since. Good in the tight stuff. Not so great at descending, but that was probably more my problem than the bike’s.
It was the only bike I’ve ever just stood and looked at. It was that pretty. Titanium has a soft, mellow sheen when given a matte finish. I bought a watch (Citizen Titanium Ecodrive) and had my wife buy me a new Titanium wedding ring with the same finish, to go with my bike.
Yes, seriously.
I sold this bike on MTBR.com, and used the proceeds to buy the full-suspension Sugar I talked about earlier and a hardtail Paragon.
What a fool I was!
Of all the bikes I’ve owned, this is the only one I truly regret selling. I don’t know where that bike is, but I hope it’s being well-loved, treated like the work of art it is, and that it’s forgiven me.
The Fisher Paragon
This light, stiff aluminum hardtail was an awesome and efficient machine. I bought it just before my finances took a turn for the drastically worse, and so ended my string of extravagant bike purchases. I put more miles on this mountain bike than any other.
And so I feel a little bad that I killed it on a mountain bike ride a couple years ago.
Still, if you’re a mountain bike and you’re aluminum, you know you’re not going to last forever. Wouldn’t you want to at least die doing what you do best, with dignity, out on a trail?
The Bianchi Something-or-Other
Like most dedicated MTB’rs, I decided at one point that I ought to try road biking, but didn’t want to spend a lot of money on it, just in case I hated it. So I bought the cheapest decent road bike I could find. It was a Bianchi, but I can’t even remember the model name. I’m getting old, I guess.
Well, it turned out that I do like road biking, so I replaced this bike with an Ibis Road Ti. I sold the Bianchi to a friend and neighbor who was interested in trying out road biking, too. From what I understand, he still rides that bike. It makes me happy to know it’s in good hands.
The Ibis Road Ti
I rode this bike for nine years. I’ve never loved any bike as much as I did this one.
And it repaid me by trying to commit a suicide/homicide. I don’t blame it, though. After suffering the indignity of having been outfitted with fenders and a wacky light setup, I can understand why it started hating me.
PS: B7 competitors, it’s time for you to do your monthly weigh-in and TT. Check in the forum for details. Oh, and I also added a new anti-sandbagger rule.
PPS: Today’s weight: 168.8. I guess I angered the Dieting Gods by making jokes about them yesterday. I shall repent by eating three grapefruit tonight.
Comments (34)
01.31.2007 | 2:00 pm
A Photo Contest Update from Fatty: I’m really enjoying the photos you’re uploading as part of the Fat Cyclist Photo Contest. You’ve still got time to submit your entry, so check out yesterday’s post for instructions on how to Join Flickr, Join the Fat Cyclist group, and then upload your photos.
Once you’ve done that, you ought to just look at the photos as a slideshow (click here). I’ve done that a couple times, and I’ve gotta say, it’s one of the most rewarding contests I’ve ever set up. Thanks for your photos, and keep ‘em coming!
I Am Not Superstitious
I am a very clear thinker. I behave rationally, and entertain no superstions. For example, while it is true that I will never cross the path of a black cat, I do this because I simply do not like the path the black cat has taken – not because I see the path as ominous.
Similarly, I do not believe that walking under a ladder causes harm at a psychic level. Rather, I choose to never walk under ladders out of safety concerns.
If I knock on wood, it is because I like the texture of woodgrain against my knuckles, not out of some silly notion that I can ward off bad luck.
If I wish on a star, it is merely because I have empirical evidence that stars have magical wish-granting powers.
As I said, I am purely rational.
As a clear-headed, logical person, I can also assert with perfect confidence that the following items — each of which I unreservedly believe — are not dieting superstitions, but are in fact self-evident, reproducible scientific phenomena, each impacting how and whether my diet works.
Grapefruit is Magical
Of all the diet-related things I believe, this is the absolutely most important one: grapefruit is magical. I have found, time and time again, that grapefruit has the ability to make me lose weight. I eat a grapefruit before going to bed, and my weight is down in the morning.
I’d say it’s “just like magic,” except for one thing: it’s not like magic. It is magic.
Of course, there are rational explanations for this, in addition to the fact that grapefruit is magic. Here are the reasons:
- Grapefruit is acidic. You eat this fruit with lots of citric acid in it and the acid starts dissolving your fat. Like battery acid on butter.
- Eating grapefruit is hard work. To eat a grapefruit, one must expend considerable energy. One must cut the grapefruit in half. One must cut around the circumference of the grapefruit for each of those halves. One must then attend to the labor of spooning out each of the sections (I’ve broken into a mild sweat at the mere prospect of this labor). By the time one has completed this effort, I estimate that one has burned more than 2750 calories.
Some people (by which I mean “stupid people who look for arbitrary reasons to disagree with me) make the foolish counterclaim that eating grapefruit before bed actually only helps me lose weight because instead of eating a bowl of cereal and bag of chips, I’m eating a grapefruit.
Those people are fools.
Grapefruit, I praise you, and thank you for your magical ability to help me lose weight.
Dieting Gods are Vengeful
Another absolute truth in dieting is this: As you diet and train, you begin to attract the attention of the Dieting Gods. As you fastidiously follow the religion of self deprivation, they reward you with your heart’s desire: weight loss.
If you cross the Dieting Gods, they will make you pay.
As an example, suppose you have been strictly adhering to your diet for three weeks, as I have. The Dieting Gods would reward you with some significant progress — I am down 11 pounds.
I know, however, that — having shown faith and devotion — if I were to slip up (eat half a candybar, say) I would reap the dieting whirlwind, in the form of these three punishments:
- My appetite would increase threefold. Once I have shown dietary fecklesness, the Dieting Gods would curse me with a wild abandon. The Hunger would come upon me and I would eat anything that came within my easy reach (everything in both the fridge and the pantry are to be considered “in easy reach”).
- My despair would take the form of “despondant consumption.” Any of you who have ever said to yourself, “Well, my diet’s screwed today; no point in dieting the rest of the day.” And then, the following day, you find yourself thinking that you’ll restart your diet the next day. And so on, until you are 10 pounds heavier than when you started the diet in the first place.
- I would gain weight. This is a direct curse from the Dieting Gods and is not a result of having eaten myself into a coma.
The Mantra is Meaningful
As I diet, I find myself saying, over and over, “One Hundred and Forty Eight:” my goal weight. This is because if you conciously utter your objective — whatever it is — often enough, that objective seeps into your subconcious, which is where the action really is.
Some would say that the fact that I have never reached my goal weight — nor lost any weight at all for that matter – while using this method is a clear indication that this mantra is useless. To them I say, “Shut up, stupid.”
The Scale is Just Plain Mean
It is widely known that bathroom scales are inhabited by Pixies that have been banished from their magical Faerieland after being convicted of accounting fraud. These Pixies — unrepentant criminals from a folk that are mischievous and unreliable to begin with — then tell us how much we weigh. Rest assured that any time you show a weight loss the morning after a night of heavy drinking and eating, this is just a Pixie giving you a jolt of irrational pleasure so that the following day when you show a nine pound gain, your disappointment and horror will be that much more exquisite.
When You Eat Matters — A Lot
Did you know that a recent scientific study conducted at Yale University proves that after 7:00pm, food actually trebles in its caloric content? Don’t believe me? Look up the study yourelf. Totally factual.
So what very rational things do you believe?
PS: Today’s weight: 168.6. The Dieting Gods are smiling on me!
PPS: Just in case I haven’t been in-your-face enough about it (not super-likely), I’m a finalist in the Best-Kept-Secret Category for the 2007 Bloggies Award. You know how much I want to win? A lot. Please vote for me.
Comments (24)
01.31.2007 | 12:01 am
A Very, Very Frazzled Note from Fatty: When I started this photo contest, I thought it would be cool to host the photos on my own site. It turns out that was sheer foolishness. I used a software packaged called Gallery, which evidently used so much server power as to set off all kinds of alarms at my web hosting service.
They shut me down.
So I spent a few minutes hyperventilating, then I begged to be put back online (see how useful begging is?). They agreed, providing I get my server usage under control.
So I uninstalled Gallery (Stupid Gallery) and created a new group on Flickr (a free photo hosting site owned by Yahoo), called — cleverly enough — Fat Cyclist.
And now I’ve edited today’s post so that the instructions work with this new gallery. For those of you who posted with the old gallery, I’ve already uploaded your photos into the new gallery.
Kenny’s Dilemma
Kenny Jones is one of my best friends, and is without question the hard-coriest cyclist I have ever met. He was one of the four cyclists in The Jack Mormon Militia, the first singlespeed team to ever win the 24 Hours of Moab.
Kenny is also the owner of Kenny’s Photo, a great photo lab that develops prints for both Internet customers and for locals.
Kenny’s had an ad up on my site for some time, and recently I started pestering him that it’s time to give up some schwag. I proposed he sponsor a contest based around one of the following ideas:
- Choose Kenny’s Tattoo: Readers send in their ideas for Kenny’s first tattoo — what it should look like and where it should go. Kenny’s wife, having read the Very Helpful Comments this blog tends to attract, wasn’t super-keen on this notion.
- Get a Pull From Kenny: A random contest entrant gets to attach a bungee cord to Kenny’s bike for the duration of this year’s Leadville 100. The thing is, I would have totally rigged this race so that I win. I suspect there would have been questions about how that happened.
- A Photo Contest: How about if we had the first-ever Fat Cyclist Photo contest, where readers can upload their best bike-related photo, and the winner gets a big ol’ enlargement of their photo and $100 in credit at Kenny’s store? That wouldn’t be as cool as knowing that because of me, Kenny will always have a Fat Cyclist logo tattooed on each of his kneecaps (cuz I would have rigged the tattoo contest), but we can live with it.
And so it was settled. Today, we’re kicking off the first-ever Fat Cyclist Photo contest.
What You Can Win
The winner of the contest (you, natch)Â – selected not at random this time, but by Kenny — will get a massive print, professionally-enlarged (16″ x 20″ or 16Â x 24″, whatever makes sense), mounted on black foam board, Â and sprayed with a texture spray that also protects it from UV rays. Shipped to your door, as long as you live in the US.
The winner also gets $100 credit at Kenny’s store, good toward Internet print orders.
So this prize is worth more than $150.Â
Nice.
Whatcha Gotta Do To See (or Submit) Photos in the Contest
Whether you’re going to submit a photo or just want to see what others are entering, you’re going to need to register with Flickr. Also, to see all the photos, you’ve got to join the Fat Cyclist Group. Luckily, that’s relatively painless. Just do this:
- First, to www.flickr.com/signup and follow the standard signup rigamarole to get registered. Luckily, it’s free.
- This step is important. If you don’t do this, you won’t be able to see all the photos: Once you’ve registered with Flickr, you need to join the Fat Cyclist group. That’s easy: Just go to www.flickr.com/groups/fatcyclist/Â and click Join this Group. Now you can see the photos for the photo contest at www.flickr.com/groups/fatcyclist/pool/.
How it Works
If you know how to use Flickr, you can skip this part. If, like me, you’re still totally novice to Flickr, here’s how you upload a picture.
- Go to the Flickr Upload page: www.flickr.com/photos/upload.
- Browse for your photo(s) –Â you can enter up to three photos in this contest. Photos are automatically resized, so don’t stress about having it be a particular size before you upload it.
- Click the Upload button at the bottom of the screen.
- Enter captions for each of your photos. Be interesting and descriptive. If you can’t be both, be one or the other.
- Click the Save button at the bottom of the page.
- Now you’ve got to make your photo part of the Fat Cyclist group. To do that, from your “Your Photos” page (you should be there already) click your picture. You should see options of what you can do with that photo above the picture now.
- Click “Send to Group” to make a menu drop down. From that menu, choose Fat Cyclist.
- OK, that’s it.
Your photos should be added to the gallery pretty much immediately.
Kenny will choose a winner this Sunday, and I’ll announce it on my blog on Monday. So you have a few days to enter.
A Plug For Kenny (and For Me, Too)
Whether you enter the contest or not, check out Kenny’s ad toward the top of the sidebar (right below the ad where I obnoxiously beg for  your Bloggies vote). He’ll give you $10 off your first order if you’re willing to admit you read my blog. Is it worth $10 to make that admission? You’ll have to make that choice yourself.
You know what? I’m excited to see what photos you submit.
Though I plan to continue to push Kenny to do the Tattoo contest next time.
PS: Today’s weight: 169.8, which is a loss of 3.2 pounds in one day. This tells me one thing: I must’ve gone to bed dehydrated.
Comments (24)
01.30.2007 | 8:55 pm
Well, that was interesting.
Evidently, the Gallery software I put on my site last night is meant for the following:
- People who have their own webservers and unlimited server cycles and throughput.
- People who have so few visitors that server cycles and throughput don’t matter.
It’s not, evidently, meant for for someone who usually gets around 5000 pageviews per day and is currently getting about 60% more than that because of the whole bloggies thing.
In other words, my web hosting company shut me down for a couple hours earlier this evening cuz I was being a hog.
Sooo, for right now I’ve taken down today’s earlier post and am uninstalling Gallery.
Stupid Gallery.
I’ve stored all the photos so far and plan to put them back up as soon as I figure out a better way to do this contest.
Suggestions on how to do this contest using something like Flickr or Picasa or whatever would be massively appreciated (I don’t currently use those sites and so don’t know an elegant way to have lots of people post and be able to view contest entries).
Comments (6)
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