League Night

It's Tuesday, and the trails are soaked. It's hot, dark, humid, wet, and windy. Those just happen to be terrific ingredients for a gigantic city ride. Grab the bike with the fenders and a bell, strap on the lights, and grab a rain jacket. Pack tons of food and drink. Stir and bake for four hours. Whoila! The recipe for an urban classique. We started downtown, headed through Fountain Square, took a fast lap around Garfield Park, and then took the Pleasant Run through Irvington. We headed northeast and rode counterclockwise around the outside of Ft. Ben and grabbed a cup of Fourbucks at 56th and Emerson. Then we took Fall Creek to the Monon and back downtown for a couple of laps around the circle and a post-ride beer on the river. Whoosh. We rode all types of surfaces; pavement, concrete, brick, gravel, packed gravel, grass, mud, slurry, deep water, and pothole minefields that made me appreciate my sturdy steel bike with durable tires. What a fantastic ride. We worked like dogs, mixed it up with traffic, and had an absolute blast. Not bad for a league night trail substitute.

Oh, Victory of Vicissitudinous Vicariousness!

One of the best aspects of my job is the ability to live vicariously through the numerous adventures of my customers and friends. Whether it's a cross country touring trip, a hut-to-hut mountain bike trip in Colorado, or a ride with a throng of 20,000 riders along Chicago's lakeshore, the preparations and the stories supply me with endless inspiration and joyous mind-fuel. At this moment, Claudia is probably somewhere in Iowa on her way back from the west coast. Nancy is planning a three-week touring trip in the Canadian Rockies for this fall. John leaves tomorrow morning to drive to Colorado for a 100 mile mountain bike race. Mike just got back from days and days of singletrack riding around Durango. Most of these folks are just about as crazy as I am about bicycles and the experiences that they can bring to our lives. Being around them is great, and the osmosis of energy is contagious.

My good friend Alex is taking the bicycle adventure to new heights, and I, along with you, can go along with him thanks to the transcendent wonder we call the internet. This is a picture of his bike that he and I designed for the trip. While carefully thinking through each individual piece we had to create the situations that he might encounter in our minds. I was almost giddy picturing him roaming all over Asia as we mulled over the mundane pros and cons of sealed bearings and bottom bracket interfaces. And, in a way, I am there with him right now too. Thanks for the daydream fodder, man.

The Great American Road Trip

What is it that sparks a road trip wanderlust in some of us? I had my first coast-to-coast road trip when I was only five years old. That summer my family and I drove all the way out west in a '67 Plymouth Barracuda. The back seat folded down to create a space where my sister and I could lay down and stare up at the stars through the expansive back window. I can still remember so many things from that trip and the myriads of others that I went on as a child. How many kids can say they've stood in four states at the same time, watched a bear climb into the family car, or fed chipmunks on a chilly mountain morning somewhere on the outskirts of Durango, CO? These road trips and all of the experiences I had on them went a long way to shaping the person that I am today. It gave me perspectives on our country, it's people, and its places that I will forever be thankful for. My parents were smart enough to know that some of life's best lessons are not learned in the classroom, which is ironic considering that both of them were teachers. In today's age of brief vacations and relatively cheap airfares, it appears as if the traditional American road trip is a bit of a lost art form. I will forever sing the praises of an open car window and an open highway over the fish-bowl window of a jet plane at thousands of feet in the air. Even though most people scoff at the fact that my vacations involve left-arm tans and hours upon hours of windshield time, I know that nothing compares to the amazing feeling of leaving it all behind and hitting the open road.