Ice Cream Alley

Yesterday Kitima and I fit in one loop of the bike course and headed back to our place. I took a three-hour nap. After two hours though I don't think it qualifies as a nap. It is sleeping.

We met up with Bill, Sharon, Jeremy, Glen and Rich at the Brew Pub and were lucky enough to beat the Tri-Life gang so we didn't have to wait at a table. We discussed with Rich, who had just done his first century ride, the finer points of chamois butter. I suggested the Euro version, or as I like to call it, the "party in your pants" version.

Jeremy did the ol' "drop the grape" scam on Kitima at dinner. It was awkwardly executed but for further details ask him...I'd like to keep this blog's rating at PG.

Thoroughly stuffed we hobbled into town on tired legs. Not too tired for ice cream though.


Glen was psyched enough that they had the rare flavor "coffee coffee buzzbuzzbuzz" that he called his wife, another fan of the flavor, and did sort of a "nananabooboo" to her.

Instead of sitting on the side area with benches we migrated towards an alley/driveway replete with crumbling pavement, industrial kitchen exhaust fans and window-mounted air conditioners. Every fixture seemed rusty and dripping with a rusty, oozing liquid. Bill and Rich stretched out on some steps and actually made concrete look comfortable. Jochen found us and we all discussed the finer points of euthanizing deer, where to buy on sale bike clothes in Placid (Placid Planet), Sharon's new bike, Hannah's need for aerobars and Jeremy's upcoming shopping spree at EMS.

We all ambled back to the cars except for Glen who jumped into the street and did some intervals. If you listened closely you could hear him saying "buzzbuzzbuzz".

Wallyworld is closed

If you are a Seinfeld fan you remember the episode where Elaine dances: horribly and replete with thumb thrusts and spasmodic kicks. Jerry finally calls her on it.
"But I love to dance," she said.
"That's not helping!" Jerry admonishes.

I love climbing on my bike. Not sure if I've got some subconscious tic going on with a stray left elbow or wayward tongue jab but if I do would someone let me know.

This morning I headed out of Lake Placid and descended the hills into Wilmington, hung a left and started climbing the Whiteface Mountain Highway. It was cool and cloudy: arm warmer weather.

About fifteen minutes in I hit Santa's Workshop. It was desolated. I think the elves had to take a few forced weeks off due to the economy.
"All I want for Christmas is the ability to climb."

I continued to climb until I arrived at the toll booth and I saw the sign prohibiting bicycles. The polite toll booth lady informed me I could only climb it before nine in the morning or after 5:15 at night. I had to turn around.

"You made it up the steepest part," she said with that infinite cheer of a Disney employee.

Off I descended and then made the ten or so miles back to Placid climbing the hills that are on the last ten miles of each IMLP bike loop.

The Au Sable river was loaded with people drowning flies.

I'm thinking that if you do the Whiteface Mountain bike race you might want compact cranks or at least a 27-tooth cog in the back. Bring your road bike or descending will be a bit dodgy.

Kitima got back from her ride and now we are off to scope out some lunch.

Placid Digs

We got into Placid last night around eight. The ride was uneventful except for some foul watermelon, a brief RV convoy and a few loud and fragrant "berry burps".
We are staying in town at an apartment on Mirror Lake that is owned by one of Kitima's friends. It is on Main St. and there isn't a need for a car...other than moving it from one parking lot to the next. I don't know how new this is but all parking on Main St. is now metered.

Kitima takes in the view on our second story deck. Is that a loon? No, just someone from Tri-Life.

We didn't bring our wetsuits but the water didn't seem insanely cold.

This is looking back towards the IM swim start.

If you wanted to get up you could've seen the sunrise.

We went to the Downtown Diner for breakfast. I had the chocolate chip pancakes and Kitima had eggs Benedict...probably no need for gels on the ride now.

Kitima is doing one loop of the course and I'm riding over to Whiteface for a climb. I'll snap a few photos from the top and post them later.

Juicy Lucy

Lucy (may she rest in peace) was an amiable prostitute that used to ply her carnal trade on Monroe Av. under the professional title rhyme of Juicy Lucy. She was by all accounts successful at her chosen career.

Gary Fisher is the man behind his eponymous bike company. His company having recently been purchased by bike giant Trek you could say he is also an occupational sensation.

I recently purchased a Gary Fisher Hi Fi Pro 29er full suspension mountain bike. It is a fun ride.

I'll let you, gentle reader, have some merriment listing common attributes that would make a prostitute and a mountain bike worthy of kudos (see sentence above to get you warmed to the task). As I age I find double-entendre humor a lazy literary device. Get a few beers in me at a party though and I believe it to be the height of oral hilarity (the last two words would send me reeling in a buffoonish pratfall into the french onion dip).

To assist any dim readers who haven't bunny-hopped to any conclusions the nom de bicyclette is Juicy Lucy.

Several pictures from it's maiden voyage are below.


Post-ride at Ontario County Park or as the cool kids say, "The OCP"; sounds like a show on the Fox network.

The overlook at OCP. That's route 33 below. I'll be doing a review of the bike soon.

Stid Hill Pics

Someone left a walking staff at the trail head. I briefly considered bringing it along to tilt quixotically at my metaphoric windmills but concluded it would be detrimental towards climbing.

One of the switchbacks on the ascent.

Time to climb. Why o' why did I eat all those creme de menthe brownies this winter?

It is a multi-use area. I heard one gunshot but wasn't sure if it was in anger. Don't wear your brown Carhartt cycling jacket in here.

Bristol mountain's trails reminded me of several skunks' backs. You could probably grab your crud skis and hit some sweet spring corn snow. If you were willing to walk to the top.

In the top left of the horizon you might be able to make out Canandaigua Lake. Or this picture might remind you of a Rorschach test. Do you see the lake or an old woman eating a carrot? How does that make you feel?

After getting a bit lost on top of the hill my ride wanted to rest (yeah, right, my ride). In the background just above where the hill starts to slope downward is where we were.

They felt twice the weight when done. Some of the trails were more for boating and I was doing more pushing than riding to keep the trails from too much damage. I was out for almost four hours and only wiped out once. Plenty of deer, partridges, monster woodpeckers and even a skunk were keeping me company. I continued to hear a rooster crowing the entire ride and can only conclude it is a killer rooster and it was stalking me. I did not hear any banjo music in them there hills though.

King of Torpor

I've retired my faithful, almost-10-year-old, yellow lab, Scooby from all runs effective immediately. In human years he is 62 to 70 years old depending on your math, your philosophy on remainders, divisors and quotients and what doggy website you happen to stumble across.

Scooby can't hack even a thirty-minute trot at a noodling pace. His embarrassed countenance is painful to watch. "I used to be able to do this Kevin. Sorry to have let you down. Remember our epic three-hour mountain bike rides on Stid Hill? Those were the days."

So Scooby is getting his American Association of Retired Fidos card (AARF!) and will be relegated to woodsy ambling.

As I'm reading Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling I filter life through it as I normally do when reading. Green Eggs and Ham by Seuss was an interesting seven-week phase for me. Do folks see the world through the written word as they leaf through a particularly challenging and provocative issue of People magazine? In any event the quote to sum up this oncoming doggy demise is: He had fought with that subtle power that invents everything, with that watchful opponent that never takes a nap, with that old man who outlives everything--time itself.

Ol' Soren was a hoot huh?

Scooby's drop in performance seeped into my Id, Ego and Superego. I am currently the only person in recorded history to suffer from plantar fasciitis (I've checked with the paleolithic cave drawings in Lascaux France and, near as I can tell, a few folks had some iliotibial band problems and one fella had "bow and arrow elbow" but the rest, completely free of PF). Also if I've missed someone who has had it, my pain is exponentially more excruciating. Scientific fact.

So I wonder how many more seasons of racing do I have. Is this the injury that makes me a little less active? Will I throw my back out the following year after forcing me off my mountain bike? Will I snap a femur while filming a Mountain Dew commercial? Will I continue to ask myself questions in an annoying manner that is ineffective from a literary standpoint?

I'm 41 and only have a few seasons left at this kid's game. Soon an injury will coronate me the King of Torpor. My throne a leather-clad recliner where I'd rule majestically with a remote control as my scepter. My high-definition TV an infinite court jester. Instead of a regal fur coat of 600 marten pelts and 1,000 ermine skins I would be sheathed in a Snuggie! With sleeves I tells ya! A side table would be stocked with the latest snick-snacks. If by some misfortune (heart attack; stroke; choking on pork rinds) I should perish in my throne there would be no need for a chalk outline of my body as the perimeter of my bloated corpse would be outlined in Cheese Doodle crumbs.

You can see from these past ramblings that Kitima was gone for ten days in the Galapagos. That kind of travel is not for me and good ol' Mr. Sunshine had this to say about nature/adventure travel: People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence and they think they have seen something.

So Soren wasn't a naturalist. Why didn't I go? I'm with Soren on this one: I am not concerned with this.

Soak Up The Sun

It was a burnt-sienna sun simmering across a cornflower sky today. I know those colors because Steve Bingle sat next to me in the fourth grade and had the 64-color box of Crayola crayons with the built-in sharpener. That's too many choices for a ten-year-old.

I was on the dusty and gray crushed stone surface of the wooded Lehigh Valley Trail heading west towards Mendon on my cyclocross bike when I saw them. From a quarter of a mile out it looked like a bike accident. Two bikes were off the side of the trail. One person lay on their back on a bench, surely with at least one broken femur, another was pacing across the trail no doubt suffering from a massive concussion. After a few seconds the situation was downgraded; it looked like maybe someone had a flat, they fought over the best way to fix it and were now in a cooling off phase.

As I neared I could see her long silver hair dangling over the edge of the wooden bench. A zephyr was teasing it. She was on her back with her knees raised bringing her ankles close to her back side. Her hands were clasped on her stomach. As I slowed I saw a relaxed smile and closed eyes on her 60 year old lined face. A straw hat sat on her chest.

I passed the two cruiser bikes with wide tires as they leaned on their kickstands. Not a piece of carbon on them. I'm guessing they were circa 1965. They had shiny metal fenders, chain guards, hers had a wicker basket and his had a metal thumb-operated bell. Both were, in a tribute to Steve Bingle's crayon largesse: a sun-bleached and age-faded periwinkle.

A small stream of spring runoff from the adjacent hill was bubbling across the path. The old man stopped his pacing momentarily and folded his hands across the small of his back and was studying something intently (as opposed to studying something without intent). Apropos of the former railroad line we were sharing he was donning a blue and white-striped railroad cap.

Not wanting to splash him or ruin his chances of spying on the Lock Ness Monster or some newly discovered species of slug I slowed more.

"On your right sir," I said hoping not to startle him.

He slowly looked up, smiling and had the same wrinkles his riding companion had. They had the scope and scale of having been earned together over the years.

"Oh, thank you," he said.

"I didn't want to splash you sir."

"Go slow or you'll get a rooster tail," he warned with an easy chuckle as I rode off.

It wasn't the first stream crossing of the day and I had plenty of mud on me and I was sporting a magnificent rooster.

Next time I see them I'm going to stop and visit a spell.