Different Hemispheres

I like the people from Marketing, those free spirited right brained folks who are unhindered by practical concerns from plans they sketch out on bar napkins. My job is to fret over those practical concerns. Their phone calls all start the same way: "Neil, I know this is an odd request but..."

In that brief pause after "but" my mind goes back to school, back when I was a landscaper. God I loved that job. I'm not bragging or anything but I was a very good landscaper. The gentle witness marks left on lawns from my Bunton walk-behind mower were so straight and even that builders could use them like chalk lines to stake foundations for homes they were building. I liked working on the lawn equipment and the smell of cut grass and gasoline. I liked working outside. I liked the total lack of responsibility. In college I had to take an aptitude test to see what job would be best for me. I took this test during my last semester so results were pointless. It said I should be an Arborist. I was curious enough to look up what an Arborist was. It’s like a tree doctor. I remember thinking “oh hell, that makes sense.” Perhaps I should have taken that test in high school.

Back to reality. "Neil, I know this is an odd request but [insert some super complicated half baked scheme, like changing the engine in a car to one that the car wasn’t designed for yet]."

Last weekend I stopped by work and got one of those calls. "Neil, I know this is an odd request but [I take a deep breath] can you get a hold of a bicycle, put it in the back of a (prototype) Encore, and take pictures?" Marketing was working on a commercial and they want to make sure a bicycle actually fits. Finally a request that I can get my little mind around. I keep a bicycle in my truck in case an opportunity to ride opens up.

So I bring my bike into the garage, spend about 2 seconds figuring out the best way to get it to fit, and send them pictures. I wrapped this project up in less than 5 minutes. All week I have been getting emails thanking me. A silly number of emails really. My bicycle might even make it into a commercial. The techs think I just made this request up so I could make sure my bike fits; I do like the new Buick Encore and made it clear to everyone I am getting one once they are in production. It was a good day; Arborists don’t get paid to put a bike in the back of a car.

One Year Later...

Thursday would have been a good day to ride; Emilie was in New York on a class field trip and Allie was spending the night at her mom’s. The Poto chapter of the MMBA just started their Thursday night rides but I was tired and didn't feel like socializing. A friend from work and I talked about riding at Island Lake but he dropped me so bad at Pontiac on Tuesday that I was still embarrassed. I drove to Maybury to quietly ride by myself. I fought falling asleep on the drive there then sat in my truck near the trail head wanting to curl up and sleep more than I wanted to ride. I decided to go home.

Sleep deprivation is one of the unexpected side effects of my divorce. It was final a year ago. I realized it was inevitable long before then but my brilliant plan was to stay together until the girls where done with high school; that would have been the classy, standup thing to do but apparently I didn’t do as good of a job isolating them from reality as I intended.

Filing was the right decision for me but I feel horrible about it. Allie who, like me, doesn’t talk much is finally starting to ask questions but there is nothing satisfying in my answers. I’m glad I didn’t fully comprehend all the ramifications of my divorce because if I had, I may have procrastinated longer. I may have continued trying to fix a problem that was unfixable. Unfixable problems is a concept Engineers have difficulty grasping. We aren’t allowed to respond to a Technical Incident Report by saying: “Well, shit happens” but the reality is sometime shit does just happen. Hardly a mantra to live one’s life by but it’s true nonetheless. Sometimes shit happens for the best.

Want it Wednesday: Fox Float Forx

I see Want it Wednesday is gaining momentum. Anyway, I finally have the Fox Forx I always wanted. The SID on my Inglis single speed locked up at the end of last season. Rebuilding forks is something I am not real comfortable with so I decided to just hang that bike on the wall and deal with it some other time. That time is now. I started to rebuild the SID. I read the manual. Apparently the first thing I needed to do was grind down a ¾” socket. Great. I had a nice upright grinder once but it, like most of the things from my big garage that wouldn’t fit in my little apartment, ended up at Bill's. Figuring there must be an easier way to deal with (i.e. avoid) this problem, I looked at the MMBA classifieds. Someone was selling a Salsa frame with a Fox Float. I sheepishly gave him a low offer for just the fork. He accepted. It was beat up but held air and worked fine.

I have been a strong proponent of the previous generation SIDs. The SID's 28mm stanchions feel like wet noodles but the fork weighs less than 3 lbs and nothing else mattered to me. Twice I rented bikes that had Fox Floats with 32 mm stanchions. The difference these forks made was amazing. People who know much more about forks than me tend to like Fox Forx, from riding them to rebuilding them to dealing with the company itself. Even with the two pound weight penalty, I’m sold... but I feel a little stupid using the titanium Chris King cog I bought a couple years ago to save 8 grams.

2012 Florida Photo Essay

Back to work and back to reality. Seven days worth of problems were waiting for me this morning after marinating in their own juices all week. For a minute I considered never taking another vacation but that’s just silly; riding in Florida was really nice.

The weather was perfect. I got a good start on my biker tan.

Continuing on with crazy weather this winter, Michigan was just as warm as Florida last week but Florida has things that Michigan doesn’t, like nuisance alligator trappers,

and nuisance alligators. Yet. It will be interesting to see how this global climate change thing plays out.

Crazy strong South winds created a hard ride as we started down A1A but the return ride felt like riding a moped.

Most people in Florida were super nice but one concerned senior citizen pulled over on the side of the road to force us to stop. He asked why we weren’t riding on the (super crowded) sidewalk. The side of the road was marked for bicycles and it was wonderfully wide and smooth. This scenario seemed odd to me. I asked if he was serious. My question enraged him to the point where he struggled and stammered to verbalize his response. I thought he was going to have a heart attack right there, hanging halfway out of his car in the bike lane. He called me an asshole, gave me the finger, then sped off. There were so many bicyclists using the bicycle lane that he couldn’t possibly stop everyone, or it seemed a silly use of one’s golden years if he did. Sue and I cracked up.

Then I realized what I thought was a bicyclist icon indicating we were on a bike lane was actually an icon of a person in a wheel chair trying to screw a bicyclist and it dawned on me that maybe I was the one mistaken. Maybe he was in fact doing what the icon indicated the lane was for. I felt bad. If you are reading this, bitter driver, I sincerely apologize for questioning your seriousness. Thank you for reminding me that no matter how bad my first day back at work is, I'm not you.

Want it Wednesdays: Magic Eraser

This week’s Want it Wednesday lowers the bar a bit; however, I am in aw how well Magic Erasers work. "Aw" might be overselling it a smidgen. One of the problems with, and advantages of, living in an apartment is my bikes are stored on my bedroom walls. No matter how careful I am when navigating the bicycles through the halls in my apartment, the tires brush against the walls leaving black witness marks.

There is nothing that can remove tire marks off walls like a Magic Eraser.

You get it damp, brush it across the mark and, walla,

just like that, no marks.

It delights me every time I use it. No seriously, I get giddy when I see tire marks on the walls. And for bonus points, Magic Eraser has fought back the urge to market themselves on infomercials. People buy them because Magic Erasers work the way they say they do. A greater compliment cannot be given.

Spring Forward

I have been spending a lot of time in natural light lately. Most of the country will get an extra hour starting on Sunday. I think Daylight Savings started during World War I in an effort to save coal. Energy savings is usually the justification given for continuing this odd plan.

There is an Indian saying about how only the U.S. Government believes you can cut a foot off a blanket, sew it to the other end, and have a longer blanket. It seems to me that the energy we save by keeping the lights off an extra hour in the evening is lost by turning them on an hour earlier in the morning but the fuzzy logic behind Daylight Savings doesn’t bother me in the least. In the same way Easter has transcended from a pagan celebration of fertility into a religious holiday, Daylight Savings has morphed into the greatest of all holidays; starting next week I can, in theory, ride outdoors after work. It ends on November 4th, the day after Iceman. This is no coincidence. Actually it probably is but still, there seems something spiritual about it. I find it's difficult to ride outside and be agnostic.

2012 Iceman Registration

I have a link to my blog that shows me what brings people here. As it turns out, almost all my views are accidental hits from people googling "biker girl tattoos." Still, I feel obligated to post a reminder that registration for Iceman opens on March 1st. Depending on how many times the Iceman site crashes, it will likely fill up quickly. This year you must create an account with USA Cycling first.

It really is a cool race and worth all the hassle, even if you have to drive all the way from Bloomington, Cincinnati, or Medina. Just say'n.