I posted this elsewhere, but thought it had relivance here...

I just don't understand what manner of insecurity evokes people to yell out of the window of a moving car towards a cyclist.

DNA and I were at some local bars tonight and on my way home I broke the chain on my fixie (try to avoid this if you can). For some reason, after retrieving my broken chain from Durston avenue, a drunken gentleman in the passenger side of a half-ton Chevy pickup felt the need to yell 'there's no blahblahblah in Bozeman, you Fuck'. In general, this would elicit a U lock thrown though the window from me, but on this particular night I only felt disdain tinged with ambivalence, yes I'm serious, I felt completely ambivalent.

The normal anger this act would elicit any other time just wasn't there. In that moment I went past feeling anxiety about drunken idiots driving motor vehicles to feeling far superior to those insecure enough that they feel the need to yell obscenities at people on bicycles. I don't really understand why people think driving a particular type of mechanical conveyance is reason to feel important. You bought a car? Great. That says nothing about your character, it only speaks to your credit rating. If you're not sure what the difference is between your credit rating and your worth to society, well, you prolly shouldn't be reading this blog.

I will state emphatically, at this point, that people who ride a bike to work every day do, in fact, think that people who drive everyday (you) are weak. You're not just being insecure, people on bikes feel superior to people in cars. We've tried to hide it for years, but to no avail. After enough passive-aggressive incidents, it's bound to come out. We think daily drivers are soft and pathetic, and that you have made yourselves unwitting slaves to that which makes you ripe for enslavement. Granted, that's harsh, but the world's a harsh place. Now, slowly take your foot off of the accelerator and put the power to the pedal. It'll be ok, I promise. I've done this for hundreds of miles now.

I am ambivalent to someone issuing inanity out of the window of a car because I find those who drive daily beneath my concern. So, pay four dollars for a gallon of gas America. You are weak, and soft, and you deserve to reap the reward of your slovenlyness.

C-Note

Last night at 317 we had our final night of RockySprints. Amidst teary goodbyes we all did a big group hug and reminded each other that, yes, in a mere few days, we will be getting back together for some


Bike Polo!


So let's get together at the basketball court behind the school across from the old library. Is it the Hawthorn school? I sure don't know. But it's on Rouse, and I'm pretty sure that it's the only elementary school on that road, so if you're the slightest bit unsure then just keep riding up and down Rouse until you find it. Meet there at 6pm. If you're goin to be drinking then keep it really discreet, going so far as to bring your empties with you- our buds down in Boise had an issue with beer cans being left in the trash at a school.
EDIT: Saturday. This Saturday. Ok?

So the final night of RockySprints- Went well, with a slightly reduced crowd. I did a great job of planning the final night on a holiday, so we didn't get too many folks in to race, despite the article in the Chronicle. Squeaks (Ian) won the Men's division (again) narrowly beating out Guido. Sprout (Sprout) bested her formidable opponent, Tits McGee (yes). Winners got, for all their dedication and pain, a pint glass, sloppily etched by me.

Now the serious part:
I'd like to thank all those that made sprints possible. Wiley at the Practical Pedal for lending a projector and cantankerous laptop AND providing prizes a few nights; Specialized Bikes for donating one of the bikes; Adam and Paul for volunteering to be Code Monkeys in my basement; C-Note for buying wood, metal, and magnets for the bike mounts, for schlepping the stuff over to 317, for being loud, and for running the show at the bike swap when I had to work; to Steve for providing one of the sets of rollers (uhh...you want those back?) and for having the sprints on stage at the Emerson during the Seasons movie; to 317 for letting us play stupid bike games in the bar on Mondays; to Girls Outdoors and Bangtail Bikes for prize donations. I'm sure that I've forgotten someone, and I apologize. Honest.

Seriously, this would not have happened without all of your help. I'd have given up the third time the program made my computer crash.

And very sincere thanks to everyone who showed up to race, and everyone who wanted to give it a shot 'cuz damn they're racin bikes in da bar!! We're all working to make Bozeman a bike town, and all it takes is everyone sharing a bit of their passion.

ok, I'm done with the sentimental shit. Better watch your back Saturday at Bike Polo.

-DNA

This coming Monday, Memorial Day, May 26th, is going to be the last night of Rockysprints until next winter. I've been working on getting some prizes and like always, I'm making no promises.
However, Expect a couple of these:There's more to be done, but suffice to say that I am only making TWO (2) of these, and if you want one, you need to:

1. Show up Monday
2. Win.

Simple. Ok, I'll see you there.
9pm (expect to stay 'til midnight at least)
317.

-DNA

The brain needs a few moments to boot up completely when one wakes up on the side of the trail.

Eyes open slowly after awareness of the outside world arrives. Hm. I'm sitting upright, thighs numb from supporting the weight of my head via elbows and forearms. Ok, so no wreck, apparently. Slight moistness in the corner of my mouth. Look left, there's the familiar ruddy brown of the trail...a trail. Which one? Some snow to my right, and a mountain bike. The sky's kind of grey. Slight breeze, more than I remember. Oh- and a pervasive foggy pain occupying roughly the same physical space as my head.
How long have I been here? The first memories to return are of sitting down and resting my head on my hands. The next one comes, then another, like reading a book in reverse.
Then the big one. Last night. At Plonk. Bourbon. The thought of that word in my head is a vision of giant Nixie tubes spelling out the letters: B-O-U-R-B-O-N, but as they buzz at 60 hertz (give or take) they radiate alternating shades of orange and green. Ugh.
Yes, I was on a bit of a roll last night. One of those brief times when I can harness some of the cascading thoughts always emulating Niagara Falls, a couple dozen blobs of highly-energized Flubber, U-238 achieving criticality, or a Formula-1 race on Orlando's famed paved figure-eight. Or some combination of all.
So I'm writing and drinking, one feeding off of the other and the very generously poured glasses of Knob Creek on rocks going down at a speed comparable to the value of Zimbabwe's currency or Dante's girlfriend Veronica. Then C-Note dropped in and had a sole mojito, not enough to get him drunk but sufficient to drive his exuberance quotient up a notch or two.
Anyway, this morning I woke up feeling a bit, um..."bleh". Not terrible, but a far cry from all the peppy people on those allergy medication commercials. Well, the ones in high-saturation full technicolor, anyway. I could empathize with the pre-medicated poor saps struggling in their disheveled business attire doomed to toil in their greyscale-with-a-tinge-of-morose-blue environments.
But it's my day off, it's warm out, and I've got work to do for another blog. I cruise to the shop, grab a rental bike, and head to some trails to see if there's any good mountain biking to be had.
Back on the road, the road trip itch getting harder to scratch (patience....patience) as I head up to Grassy Mountain.
I hop aboard the bike and start climbing. The climbing hurts, more than I remember. Much more. I figure it's mine to deal with, I've got nobody to blame, so I'm not going to hide in the confines of a bottle of ibuprofen. Nope. It's water, corn dog, and fried chicken for me. And a good hard ride. Sweat the ick out. Except that it's not working so great today.
Another pedal stroke, another vivid memory of a swig of sin. Finally, after clambering over a big snow pile without any coordination (fell face-first on the bike, on the snow), I reach a wall. The trail's clear, but I can't move on. Must...sit...sleeeeep...

And then I wake up. After a (somewhat) quick location assessment the concept of excise taxes pop into my mind. You know, they're sometimes referred to as sin taxes and are placed by various forms of government on various forms of goods that serve to keep the populace satiated and content. Things like liquor, tobacco, and gasoline. But it seems that these goods also carry along another excise tax that is unspoken and unavoidable. With alcohol, it's the hangover. Your body punishes you for poisoning it the way you did last night. Tobacco; bad breath, yellow teeth, lung cancer, smelly clothes, kisses like ashtrays.

And oil?

Well, we're about to find out. My tack is to ride bikes. It mitigates hangovers. If you smoke riding helps to counter the damage done to lungs (it's still gross, though).
Think of the potential of bikes with oil. Hmmm.....


-DNA

This got me to thinking.

I commute around 10 miles a day, which is about 300 miles a month. It's actually a little more than that, what with random grocery trips n such, but I digress.

My 4runner gets about 15 miles to the gallon, so that's about 20 gallons of gas per month. If gas is 4 dollars per gallon, that's around 80 dollars per month, just in gas, not counting oil changes, tires, etc, which all add to the price of driving, here's a more realistic calculus for the cost of driving a car.

My xtracycle cost me around 400 dollars back in November. If it hasn't paid for itself by now, it will have by the end of the summer.

Said in the Bozeman Chronicle today:

And yes, we do.
Check out the online version of the full story here. And don't forget, May 26th is the FINAL night of RockySprints until next winter. My goal is to have a good bunch of prizes.
-DNA

So...when DNA first told me about GoldSprints (by way of a text video he sent from interbike) I thought two things. One, that would be f%&king awesome, and Two, that would be f$%king awesome! When DNA first told me that he wanted to get GoldSprints going here in Bozeman, I though one thing, 'ahh...ok, how the eff do we do that'? Well, eight months later and it looks like I was the wet blanket, cuz we's got's GoldSprints, only here we call it RockySprints.






The next installment will occur Monday 5/26 at 317.




We've got one more night coming up. Are you ready to throw down? Here's an idea of what to expect.




And then, of course, there is always the obligatory Beer Race...

Yeah, that's right, we have people chugging beer and racing on bikes. It's awesome here! So come down to three one seven in two weeks and check us out.




Here's a link to more pictures.


C-Note

RockySprints is returning to 317 this coming Monday (5/12/08)

This will be the penultimate night of racing so quit making excuses about why you don'ts gots whats it takes

These guys gots it...



See you Monday.

C-Note

I found a really interesting link on fixed gear gallery. Maybe some of you have seen this...perhaps all of you have seen this, I would gather that most of the readers of this site also check FGG. Ether way, this is an artical discussing the physics of riding fixed. Now, I don't know all that much about classical phisics, I'm more of a quantum guy. But, I do know that John and I were on a ride today, both of us on a fixie, and about midway through we were passed by a dude on a pretty standard road bike while making a sustained push into a headwind. I was in the lead at this point, so I tucked in behind our 'benefactor'. After a mile, I slacked off a bit, but we still hung within twenty feet of the freewheeler. Coming back into Bozeman from the East on Frontage, there's a pretty good climb up what turns into Main Street. It was here that DNA and I blew past the guy on his high end carbon road bike using good old fashioned American muscle (just not the kind you find in a '69 Chevelle) and even though I was dying on the downhill, we never saw the guy again.

So when you reach into the quiver, remember, not only do you look like a badass on that fixie, but you have a ninja-like advantage as well because you and the bike have a spiritual connection not afforded by other 'technologies'. Also, the 'laws of physics' are on your side, although I'm not sure what advantage that is.

C-Note

DNA and I were hanging out in his backyard discussing paltry topics like the meaning of it all, when I noticed a gentleman riding by on a fender-equipped cruzer. That in and of itself would be incredibly unremarkable...except



Hey, at least he wasn't driving a Hummer.

C-Note

A couple weeks ago some locals brought Seasons, the latest film from The Collective to Bozeman. If you've never seen anything by The Collective, go directly out and buy Roam, trust me.

Before the premiere of the movie we held RockySprints on stage. Here's a sample of the awesomeness that occured therein...



Want to get in on the Action? We'll see you at 317 May 12th and 26th!

C-Note

As DNA stated earlier this week Sprints was frikkin unreal last Monday. I'm in the process of gettting some of the video up on YouTube And I'll post a few here as they are available.

Here's Sprout starting her route of the Women's bracket. This girl DOMINATED and she did it with a broken foot/leg/something...





More pictures are here.


I'll get some more posted later...for now DNA just showed up and we've got some drinkin to do

C-Note