219: Riding...

I am not riding enough. My legs feel blurry. I like when these shots happen. Most of the time it is because my camera is permanently stuck on Macro (surprise) and I am trying to shoot something further away. But they still end up looking kind of interesting. As if the images were actually burned onto a negative somewhere. Which they are not.

At this point I could put up a bunch of photos about how much I have been riding, and with whom (and now that I mention it I probably will) but when I look at the photos it makes me feel like I have been riding enough, but I have not. Know how I know? Cannot sleep.

The riding on the East Coast seemed to start last week. Dan Sharp and I got in to "The City" as they say, and promptly went and picked up some bikes to ride. Simon went with us as well and we rode down the West Side Bike Highway.


Now, I have a tendency to get a little bit aggro. Or at least I always think that I am being overly aggressive, even when I do not know why. Maybe it has something to do with living on the East Coast for a number of years? You adapt. Like Ice-T did in that movie Surviving the Game. Remember that one? I sure do, because it was awesome. And that was me. Of course I have never been a homeless drunkard that turns into a deadly fighting machine, but there is still time for that.

And then got to Portland and went, "well, this is going to be easy." And it is. But it makes you just that oh so little bit softer. This is no more apparent then when some 80 year old lady with huge bags of feed (I have no idea what they were) cruises by the window of where you stand drinking Americano's (Quad.) That is when you realize that you have gotten soft. Or at least East Coast soft.

In any case, I had a good time pretending to ride bikes on the East Coast so far....Rich Bravo was certainly there. You could not miss him in that Pink Stowaway. Want. Seriously, the Rapha Racing NYC cats were out and all wearing them and the jealousy swelled up inside me. Like I had not felt before towards the pink one. Well, the jacket that is. Then it went away because the sun came out, but I am sure that it will be back.

Mr. Spriggs (the Fabs Shirt is DOPE) was there (in the Grey Stowaway) and Sam was there Hott, Hott Hotting it up on his Igleheart Conti bike. I drank some of Sam's Kelso Beer throughout the week, and in fact I have taken to asking for it. They do not have it every where, but they should know that they need to be supporting my friends if they do not have it.

We also rode the the Rapha Condor Sharp guys when we were there. One of these people is Kristian House. He rode his face off at Battenkill, crashed, and then rode some more. But before that happened, we rode through Central Park. I rode up next to him and said, "I'm going to take a picture of your ass now." His response was "Yeah, that's ok, people have been doing that all morning." Well, you know what, if my name was on the back of my shorts, I would roll around practically showing it to everyone. Someday.

Tom Southam was also there. He rode his bike too. If you have not seen the most recent Rouleur, you should check it out. He penned a nice essay about the Tour of Britain. Today, actually he told me the title of his book that he is writing. Dan and I mistook it for a sex shop that we thought he was opening, it is amazing what a colloquial difference can make. If you say something to me, and I do not respond for something like 10-20 seconds, I am processing. It is not your fault or mine, just something that is happening.

One of the best though? Dan Sharp. I know, you have heard it before. But he is absolutely KILLING it out here. I get a little camera shy even. Not me personally, my cameras. They do not feel as big enough, or cool enough around his Twin Murdered Out Cannon Mark 5D's. Twin meaning two, murdered out meaning black. Think about it.

And that is how it goes.

Next stop? Boston and then we do it again.

217: Its a Love Hate Thing.

My brain fucking hurts and I just ate a whole bag of licorice. Some days that is how things go. You know the ones, where everything seems to be going along so well, you are about to take a European Busman's Holiday. And Bam! Like an untimely Volcano erupting, your head explodes. However, I'm not going to let this just up and turn into one of "those days." Too easy, and I have my eye on you brain hurt. And besides, the world looks like it is about to come to an end anyway, what kind of problems could I really have?

Ok, I do have one. I can hear people having sex down the hall. And not the kind of sex that makes you sort of cock your head and listen a little longer than you should. Also not the kind of sex that would make you stop in the hallway of the hotel and tense up and listen. This sounds like grunting, sweaty, traveling salesman sex. Which I am guessing it is.

I love New York City, Oh yeah, New York City. Andrew W.K. could not have been more right. The town is easy to love and easy to get really annoyed with really quickly. That must be what happens when you jam that many people onto an island and hope for the best? You get the crazies along with the not so crazies.


Signature Cycles let me borrow an Ellium Race. Nice little bike there. And when I say little, I do mean little, it was smaller than what I am used to riding, but it gave me the chance to think about fit a little more than usual. Molly, Zac (CBS) and I discussed quite a bit of fit questions a couple weeks ago in Seattle and it was fun to think about them in the context of another bike. Or were we discussing the newest Bounce Society video? Can't remember.

And Paul Levine, from Signature is one of the guys who has pioneered, or at the very least, greatly helped advance the conversation of fit in the bicycle arena, so it is always good to hang around there, have a look and listen to what is going on. Grant showed me one of the most mind blowing commuter bicycles I have ever seen.


And these are all the reasons why I love visiting New York City. Even though I feel a bit more comfortable in a town like Boston, it is still a little tame when it comes to the drama. Maybe there is not a great enough mixture of things in Boston. Wheras in NYC it is not uncommon to talk to people about Bicycle Fit one minute and the next find yourself awoken in the middle of the night to the sound of a woman screaming bloody murder. And I am not talking about funny bloody murder, I am talking about someone by themselves screaming at the top of their lungs. A wild beast with no friends to impress. Only sadness and rage to expel. I covered myself with my blanket and tried not to think of a Medusa head floating outside the door to my room.

And then, juxtapose (not the magazine Lance) that with being up at 5:00 am to ride around town with a bunch of skinnier-than-thou professional cyclists from England and you might start to see what I am talking about. It was great to ride through Central Park (never done that before) and ride up next to James Nord along the way. I had seen his tumblr through Velogogo, which is one that I like very much. And then when you are riding along next to someone and look over and go No shit, that's the guy that geeks out on bikes via the interwebs like myself. We talked for a little bit about those same interwebs and also about just how fucking skinny the ankles of all the Rapha Condor Sharp guys really are. Like it makes you feel kind of pervy and weird to not only look at them, but comment on them as well, but still it was really funny..


Dan Sharp and I are officially on the road with this trip. You can see some of our adventures over on the Rapha Blog. And Damn if he doesn't Hot It Up with the Camera these days. We have been getting each other pumped and stoked and all that neat stuff that you do on the West Coast for weeks. But now that Mount Vesuvius Part 2: The Reckoning is taking place, that might not actually be the case. Our flight over to see Fleche Wallone has officially been canceled until further notice.

Maybe some other sort of trip is in the works if that will not work out? East Coast Bike Tour? I mean I was really hoping for the sunny shores of Belgium, so what would be second on that list? Seriously, ideas? I thought about saying, you know what, I'm going to wait, I'm going to wait a bit and then go to the tour or something to that effect, but then I realized, I do not want to see the Tour. But I do want to see Fleche Wallone and LBL. (ok, I do want to see the Tour as well...damn, it is such a hard line to walk - enthusiasm is)


PS - whomever sent over the below photo is awesome. I could not put the whole thing up because it is owned and shot by my hero Terry Richardson, but you can look at the whole thing HERE. And you should. Over and Over and Over again. The other Fabs. What a guy.