Today is the birthday of Belgian cycling great Roger De Vlaeminck and another cyclist of far lesser talents whose name should never be mentioned in the same sentence with the man nicknamed “The Gypsy” and “Monsieur Paris-Roubaix.” The rest of this day will be spent on a long celebratory ride.
Saturday’s ride was a 60-kilometer round trip from Ann Arbor to South Lyon. I rode most of it with a huge grin on my face. The road was mostly flat with some mild undulations. It took me past farm fields, red barns, rural mansion ranchettes and plenty of funky signs and street art. There was some mechanical drama and nasty weather on the later half of the ride. Overall, it was just the kind of mellow, mind-clearing outing that I needed.
I wanted to stop at the German Park to fill my bottles with hefeweizen and grab a brat or two for the road. It’s just a few kilometers from my home, and on Saturdays they have a German-style picnic. Admission is $5. I plan to take the family next weekend.
The German Park’s gates are guarded by these jolly axe-wielding German gnomes. I wonder if they could beat a Belgian gnome in a bike race.
Last week, I went for an after-work ride and passed this place just after they had fired up the BBQ pit. The air was full of the sugary, smokey, savory smell of BBQ that drove me insane and nearly knocked me off my bike. It appeals to our most primal tastes and appetites. There’s an outdoor dining section, and a bunch of people were already digging into an early dinner. If I had any money on me, I would have ditched the ride and ordered some food.
I’m a huge sucker for painted plywood sides on country roads. Nice detail: the eyelashes on the pig. I also liked the way they painted the flames. They almost look real!
Barbecue. Weddings. Toy soldiers. China. Much more! I can’t figure out the name of the “chef de cuisine.” Where might he be from? I’m also not an expert on scary-looking bird logos. Is this German or Russian or something else?
Michiganers love big barns. They take good care of them, too. I guess the winters are so harsh that the barns have to be big enough to house every head of livestock.
Homegrown fast-food joints are cool, especially ones that are more famous for their root beer than anything else.
Welcome to quaint little downtown South Lyon, near the turnaround point of my ride.
Tuscan food in southern Michigan. I’ll probably stop here for a cup of coffee on chilly autumn rides.
Another cool manhole for my collection.
The Spiderman motif seemed unusually popular. There was a pawn shop that used it, too. They didn’t use Bob the Builder, though.
The shopowner offered to sell me the Pee Wee Herman-style cruiser bike for $60.
A great country allows its citizens to take to the skies. Not possible in China for most folks.
Cider and donuts – two important building blocks of the food pyramid. Fruits and breads.
If you can’t think of a cute or clever name for a road, just call it what it is. I like this no nonsense rural approach.
When life looks like easy street there is danger at your door. My bike tire goes flat just after the turnaround point. Luckily, I have a nice place to fix it as rain starts falling.
A fragment that looks like piano wire pierces my Specialized Armadillo Roubaix tire. They’re fantastic tires, but they’re no match for something like this. A simple repair becomes complex when I realize my spare tubes are the crappy tubes I bought at Decathlon in Guangzhou. The stems are ridiculously short, and my Topeak hand pump can’t grab onto them tight enough to inflate the tube. I spend 20 minutes wrestling with them before I walk the bike two blocks down the road to South Lyon Cycle & Sports.
A friendly mechanic let me borrow a Shrader valve stem that screwed on to my Presta stem, extending it so a pump could inflate the tube.
A monster truck! God bless America. It’s always great to see someone who has a hobby that’s 100 times more expensive and ridiculous than mine.
The skies were overcast the entire ride and a hard rain fell for the last 30 minutes of the outing. It was my first rain ride of the summer and I welcomed the change.
We like to think about Hell on Sundays at Waffles & Steel. Not the fiery place for evildoers. But the cobbles and heroism well documented in our favorite cycling movie, Jorgen Leth’s masterpiece, “A Sunday in Hell.” We’ll pick up the action from last week:
The camera lingers over a crowd lining the streets, cheering the riders as they spin by at the start of the race. Some fans are snapping pictures. There’s a tiny old lady in a black overcoat with her head covered with a scarf. She claps rhythmically with glee. How many of these races has she seen? A boy in a white cycling cap stands by his father, who’s decked out in a blue zip-up warm-up jacket that was so fashionable in the 70s. Team cars roar by, their roofs and trunk doors loaded with bikes and wheels. Their horns are blaring: “Bee da bee da beep da bee da beep!”
Then, a jolting change of scenery. The camera leaves the crowded streets of Chantilly, and we suddenly find ourselves looking at the empty stands and banked track in Roubaix, where the race will climax with a thrilling finish. The narrator says, “At the municipal stadium in Roubaix, preparations are already being made to receive the race, still over seven hours away.”
With a cigarette dangling from his mouth, a man in a white painter’s jumpsuit and black shoes is painting “BNP” on the track, using an old brush to push the white paint over a stencil in a perfunctory manner. The narrator says, “BNP stands for Bank National de Paris, the principal sponsor of this year’s race.” I like how they waited until almost the last minute to put the bank’s logo on the track. The paint barely has enough time to dry. The scene makes me nostalgic for the days when sports weren’t so commercialized.
The camera cuts back to the peloton. The narrator says, “The field is neutralized through the streets of Chantilly until it reaches the official starting line, then it’s a free-for-all outside of town.” Next week, the “free-for-all” finally begins!
We’re going to try to be a one-car family. My wife will drive the car, and I’ll get around on bike. I don’t want to use my two road bikes because I know they’ll either end up trashed or stolen. So I’m in the market for something that will be inexpensive but reliable. It also needs to be good in all weather conditions. I’ll use it for riding to classes and running errands. Here are some of my options:
A. Entry-level new cyclocross bike for $900 or so. 
Pros: I’ve always wanted to try ‘cross, and I would be killing two birds with one stone with the bike. It would be fast and fun to ride, and it would do well in the snow and other hostile conditions.
Cons: I’ve just spent a bunch of money on my new Moots this summer and I hate to shell out so much more for another new bike. Bad for my finances and marriage. If I liked ‘cross, I’d immediately start lusting for a better bike. The bike snob within me generally dislikes entry-level stuff.
B. Used ‘cross bike.
Pro: I could get a decent rig at a great price.
Cons: I might have to replace components soon, and I don’t need the extra headache and expense. Also, I’ve put an ad on Craigslist and no one is responding.
C. A new city bike.
Pros: It would be easy to maintain, basically a worry-free, bomb-proof reliable ride. Kona has a good one called the “Bike,” and my local REI store has a comparable rig. They cost between $450-$600.
Cons: I’m still not sure if I want to spend that much money. It would be nice to keep the cash in my special savings fund for carbon race wheels.
D. Used vintage cruiser for $80.
Pros: The price is right. It would be a steel workhorse that would serve me well. I might even have money left over to buy a decent used cross bike.
Cons: After spending so much time zipping around in a Ferrari, would it be a huge letdown to drive a Ford Taurus? It would certainly be hard to impress the ladies with this machine.
E. A used Lemond Ti bike.
Pros: I’ve always wanted to own a Lemond bike! When will I ever find a used titanium model in my size for $800, maybe less if I can bargain successfully? I could build it up with some entry-level SRAM or Shimano components, and it could serve as my commuter rig and my rain bike. I’ll hate myself later if I pass on this opportunity.
Cons: I’m not sure if I want to spend $1000+ building up another bike. I also don’t have the time for it. Also, the seller hasn’t responded to my e-mail. It might be sold already.
F. A vintage Gitane touring bike for $250.
Pros: Wow, a real conversation piece. It would be comfortable, classy. I could hang racks on it for hauling groceries. The gearing would be easy on my legs. The price is right. It looks like someone really loved this bike.
Cons: The bike has Huret components. I’m having a hard enough time finding spare Campagnolo parts. How hard would it be to service Huret machinery? What if the rear derailleur broke down tomorrow? Would I need to replace the entire group?
As always, I welcome advice and suggestions from everyone!
I was spreading out my pathetic collection of cycling tools on my new workbench the other day when I got to thinking about how cycling requires a lot of space. Not just on the road. It demands a lot of space in your home. You can say this about all sports. But it’s especially true of cycling. That’s why I’m really going to love living in my own house.
For the past 12 years, I’ve been living in apartments in New York, Taipei, Hong Kong and Guangzhou. The last one in Guangzhou was a decent size for a family of four – as long as no one was obsessed with cycling. I had to park my two bikes in our small entry way, something my wife constantly grumped about. My repair space included half a shelf in our tiny pantry, where I had enough room to keep a small tool box and a plastic basin full of old bits- stems, seatbosts, pedals and a mangled cookies-and-cream Powerbar I got at the breakfast buffet at the Beijing Olympics. Mechanical work would be done outside on the deck’s cold cement.
For awhile, I handwashed my clothes in the sink, but my family forced me to stop. My daughters simply wouldn’t use the bathroom if there were a pair of bib knicks soaking in the sink. I would tell them to just spit in the toilet when they needed to brush their teeth, but the little princesses wouldn’t have any of that! So I bought a couple plastic basins and used them for washing. But they constantly needed to be moved when my flatmates needed to shower. In the warmer months, I could hang my kit to dry on the deck. But in the winter, our shower rods would be full of arm warmers, jackets, bibs, leg warmers and undergarments. When the ladies needed to shower, the clothes would end up on the floor.
My cycling addiction required extreme organization, juggling, diplomacy, apologies and promises to do a better job controlling the constant creep.
Now I have a house again. Things couldn’t be more different. In my half-finished basement, I have a long wooden workbench that has more space than I know what to do with. I can finally pursue my dream of collecting a real tool set with an actual repair stand. I’m extremely tempted to buy a mini fridge that would be stocked with micro brews that I could pop open when ever I needed to lube my brain to solve some kind of mechanical mystery. But the environmentalist inside me can’t justify the extra energy consumption.
There’s also plenty of room for a pain cave, where I’ll set up my rollers in front of a TV for those long indoor rides during the long Michigan winter. The finished side of my basement has a small enclosed office space, which I’m converting into a bike room. My wife has yet to discover this, and the project might have to be aborted. But so far, I’ve filled up the room’s small closet with my jerseys and other apparel. The basement also has a large washer, dryer and wet sink that will be perfect for handwashing my kit. There’s plenty of space in the garage to store the bikes, and during the winter, I imagine I’ll move them to the basement.
The only drawback to home ownership is that a house seemed to demand a lot of attention. The other day I was attacking my overgrown shrubs with extreme prejudice. The project was supposed to last two hours, and I was going to transition to a bike ride at 4 p.m. But when 4 rolled around, I was only half done, so I pushed the ride back to 5… I ended up hanging my clippers and handsaw at 6:30. The ride never happened. But it was a small price to pay for the space.
I’m going to call this the “Raccoon Summer.” Every time I’ve put my bike on the road the past three months, I’ve seen at least one of the dead critters. On long rides, I’ve been spotting three or four of them. Once, I saw three carcasses all in a line, as if they were in a raccoon paceline when some vehicle hit them. The number of dead raccoons I’ve seen this summer outnumbers the total I’ve seen in my last 40 years on this planet. It’s strange and breaks my heart because they’re cool creatures. They wash their food. They have stylish markings – the bandit eyes and striped tails.
I thought the dead raccoons were just a phenomenon in the Kansas City area, where I’ve done most of my riding this summer. But now I’m training in southeastern Michigan, and I’m seeing them here, too. Perhaps, there’s been an explosion in the raccoon population. According to the Wildlife Removal Blog, opossums are common road kill but raccoons are relatively rare, possibly because they don’t breed quickly.
What’s really sad is seeing the same animal rotting away in the middle of the road for two to three days. Where are the coyotes when you need them? I think I’m going to start riding with an extra plastic bag in my jersey pocket so that I can put it over my hand while I drag the dead raccoons off the road.
If you want me to buy your product, just link it with cycling in some way and it will probably end up in my shopping cart. I know, I know. It’s childish, stupid and impractical. But I can’t help it. On Sunday, I was in Cost Plus World Market and needed to pick up a bottle of table wine. Just some plonk that will go down with pasta.
I was reaching for a bottle of Penfolds Koonunga Hill shiraz-cabernet – a consistent wine I drank a lot in Hong Kong and is $5 cheaper in the U.S. – when something caught my eye. It was a drawing of a bike on a label on a bottle of the Chilean wine Cono Sur. The deal was sealed with my little reptile brain. I forgot about the Penfolds and put the Cono Sur in my basket. (The $8.99 price tag was another key selling point. I do love my fine wine!)
In a way, being suckered in by a cycling reference – especially one that’s not directly relevant to the product – isn’t all that silly and irrational. I guess I figure that the company could have put a billion other images on its wine label but it chose a bike. That could very likely mean it shares my passion for cycling. We have similar values. Our aesthetics – the appreciation of a bike’s beautiful lines – are the same. So why not try the wine? (By the way, it was only so-so.)
Of course, the bike on the label might also mean that the winery hired some crass marketing company, which advised the winemaker to use the logo because bikes are symbols for hipness now and appeal to a class of shoppers with a lot of disposable income (me excluded).
My budget will be in big trouble if Campagnolo starts selling a line of Chianti priced at $80 a bottle – $20 more than Shimano sake, of course.
(UPDATE: A few hours later, I decided to do some reporting. I committed a common sin in the blogosphere: First, write and ramble on and on. Then do some reporting and check the facts. Cono Sur has a decent Website that introduces the company’s bicycle series of wines. It seems the winemaker does share my values, according to their statement. The site says: “Our bicycle symbolizes our strong and passionate commitment to the environment when making top quality wines. That’s why amongst the lush vines, lots of bicycles can be found, resting against walls and propped up on the end of rows of vines. It’s the way our workers move around the vineyards every day, in order to protect the land where they work in. Relaxed, taking their time, enjoying the journey: sometimes returning to bicycle basics is all we need.”)
Our beautiful sport rarely gets covered in America’s mainstream media. If an event doesn’t involve a ball, it generally gets ignored. So I was delighted to see seven, yes seven, cycling items in the Sunday papers I read yesterday. Some of them are strictly Ann Arbor-related, and I realize that they have little or no direct relevance to the lives of most readers of Waffles & Steel. But I thought I would share them anyway. It’s good to hear about positive things going on in the cycling universe.
Common Cycle volunteer at work. Source: Ann Arbor.com
1. A short feature in Ann Arbor.com about Common Cycle, a non-profit group that teaches people how to fix their bikes. Until it raises enough money for a permanent venue, the group sets up shop at a mobile station at community events in Ann Arbor. It’s a fantastic idea, and I plan to contact them for a more detailed post. Maybe they can teach me the dark art of derailleur adjustment. For more information or to make a donation, go to www.commoncycle.com
2. When the U.S. got into its current financial mess, Washington approved a massive stimulus package. Ann Arbor.com reports the city is using $250,000 of the funds to add nine miles of bike lanes and improve 24 miles of existing lanes. More “Share the Road” signs will be added, at $100 to $150 a pop. It’s wonderful to see that some of the money is being spent on cycling. I support Keynsian economics when it involves funding cycling.
3. Cycling advocate Ken Clark wrote a long letter to the editor – “Law-abiding cyclists can’t control red-light runners” – in Ann Arbor.com. Heeding red lights is another topic that I plan to discuss in a future post. Clark mentioned a couple things about Ann Arbor’s cycling ordinance that interested me. State law allows cyclists to ride two abreast, or side by side. But Ann Arbor’s old cycling ordinance said that if a driver honked at people riding this way, they would have to ride single file. Clark calls this the “harass me with your horn ordinance.” The city council got rid of it last February when the panel also passed a new ordinance making it illegal for vehicles to block a bike lane (exceptions include buses dropping off and picking up people). Longtime readers of Waffles & Steel will remember that in my former home, cars were encouraged to park in bike lanes!
4. My Sunday paper comes with a skimpy inserted magazine called Parade. It had a feature about a family of four (with 10-year-old twins) who cycled 18,000 miles, from Alaska to Argentina. It took them 26 months. A bear almost ate them in British Columbia when they were scouting for a campsite.
5. The New York Times’ had a brief AP story about Levi Leipheimer breaking Lance Armstrong’s record in the Life Time Fitness Leadville Trail 100 mountain bike race. Leipheimer won the race in 6:16.37, beating Armstrong’s record by about 12 minutes. Kudos to the Times for shoehorning in a cycling story. Too bad nobody reads the Times for sports!
6. The New York Times had a one-paragraph item in its “Out Box” section about the five most e-mailed articles during Aug. 7-13. The most popular story was…drum roll please…”Cyclists said to back claims that Armstrong doped,” published Aug. 4. I was too busy with my move to read that one!
7. (I didn’t see this story until Monday because I saved the New York Times’ travel section for lunchtime reading. I still have the NYC habit of carrying the paper around with me until I read the entire thing.) A feature about Google’s new mapping service for cycling. The story, “Google Leads, You Pedal,” is generally favorable but adds: “The reviews within the biking community, notorious for its outspokenness, have been mixed at best.” Are we really that outspoken?
There you go. Seven items and only one involved doping and none was about the Tour de France.
It’s Sunday so let’s revisit “Hell.” One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when the riders are signing in for the race. The superstars are all shown graciously scribbling autographs for adoring fans who cluster around them. Then the camera focuses on a grinning rider for the JOBO (Golden?) France team (Anyone familiar with them?). He lifts up his 
orange wool jersey and peels back a grungy gray undershirt – probably made of wool, too – so that his trainer can rub something all over his chest. It must be some type of embrocation for the chilly spring morning. After it’s applied, the rider gives a satisfied nod. The camera finds another rider with Moser’s Sanson team sitting in a wicker chair as a trainer massages embrocation into his calf muscles.
Next, the riders are shown pedaling to the starting line. The narrator says, “It’s 20 minutes past 9. The 74th Paris-Roubaix is slowly getting underway. Ahead of them is 166 miles, and the riders are expected in Roubaix in a little more than 7 hours. But how many of them will arrive?”
It’s a good question. There’s plenty of carnage and pain ahead…
What’s the most polite way to decline an invitation to join a paceline with strangers who are riding slow and have dubious bike-handling and group-riding skills? It was a social situation I found myself in recently, and I’m afraid I didn’t handle it well. I stopped to take a photo of something outside Lawrence, Kansas, and as I was remounting my bike, a group of four guys rode past me. They asked me if everything was OK, and I told them
I was just taking a camera break. They laughed and rode on.
Cruising along at 34 kph, I quickly caught up with them and started doing some cycling profiling. I noticed several warning signs. They were all on entry-level aluminum bikes. Their paceline was sloppy. One guy was wearing some type of small backpack. None wore bibs. The rider in the back had to swerve to miss a rock that wasn’t called out.
A guy in the front in a green and yellow jersey saw me and said, “Hey, it’s you. Do you want to sit in with us?” I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to tell them that they were going too slow and that their skills seemed dodgy. So I mumbled something like, “Hey thanks but I’ve got to hurry. I’ve got to be home soon to have lunch with my family.” As soon as I said it, I thought, “What an idiotic thing to say.” I was essentially telling them I thought they sucked. If I rode with them, I’d miss out on a BLT sandwich.
I felt obligated to drop them. So I began channeling Sylvain Chavanel and quickly opened up a big gap. But I was unable to completely lose them, vanish over the horizon. It was awkward. I was showing them that I thought I was better than they are but I couldn’t put my legs into hyper drive. They stayed about 300 meters behind me and started aggressively closing the gap when the road turned right and I was hit with a killer crosswind off a soybean field. I began contemplating the embarrassment of getting swallowed up by this motley peloton when the wind died down and a series of rolling hills saved me. My inner mountain goat kicked in, and I built a commanding lead again.
I was finally out of sight…until I stopped again to take a photo at the top of the last hill. As I was getting back on the bike, I could see them coming. It was obvious they were nearing the end of their workout. The friendly group ride was becoming a hammerfest. The paceline was blown to pieces and the riders were stringing out, with the alpha male in the green and yellow jersey trying to put everyone in extreme difficulty. He went over the hill first and said to me, “It’s you again.” I snapped a photo of him and he laughed as he disappeared over a false flat.
One guy got dropped on the hill and was in agony. As Bob Roll says, he was “pedaling squares” up the incline. I waited for him and said, “Latch on to my wheel! Let’s catch those guys!” This is what I like about group riding. The ad hoc alliances. The teamwork and helping others out. The guy muttered a barely audible, “Thanks.” He was able to stick on my wheel and we caught two other riders, but the alpha male wasn’t in sight. But when we climbed a short roller, we finally saw him. He was on the ground on his side at a stop sign with his feet stuck in his pedals! He said that he stopped to answer his cell phone, forgot to unclip and fell over on his side!
The whole experience was a bit of culture shock for me. Riding in China the last three years, I almost never met a group of riders I didn’t know. We rode in such a small expat bubble that we pretty much knew everyone else on the road. If you didn’t want to ride with the group, you could easily avoid it. I guess my road etiquette has become rusty. Next time, I’ll just tell them I prefer riding solo because I plan to stop to take photos. There’s plenty of truth to that.
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