Riding & Writing, Writing & Riding: It's All About the Bike (And the Underwood)

By C. M. Krashenfall

Essays and short stories about the pleasures and pit-falls of riding a bicycle and other facets of life as we know it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 12, 2011
• ISBN: 9781257595884

Book preview

Krashenfall

Headwind

March 1999

Slow Release

As he struggled to undo the axle wingnuts The pain in his frozen fingers told Tullio Campagnola that something better was needed.

Thus was born the quick release.

You just got back from your ride. At least you've always thought of it as your ride until today when everything seemed to go wrong! Well not for you personally. I know you and you know me and I'd have to say you're just about the best riding partner I ever had--you don't bog a ride down by going back for something you forgot, you never have flats but always carry the community frame pump, the catholicity of your food preferences would shame a dog and you wouldn't admit to the pace being too hard if your legs broke off at the knees. But there is a limit to even your patience. Today there were all those riders you've never seen before and will never see again ( if there's any justice in this world). The lady whose left pedal spun itself completely off the crankarm; what was that about? And this guy with the BikeFriday–24 front wheel and completely unable to understand why none of you could lend him a tube. You discovered that the words nonstandard wheel size" do not exist on his home planet! You really need to get some things off your chest, don't you? For that matter, don't we all!

What's causing your misery? What you've got to understand is that your playmates Ditzy Bikr and the Martian share something in common with all recreational cyclists, even you! Think about what you like about cycling. Yeh, I know, you like the wind in your hair and the endorphin buildup and you once went 35 miles an hour UPHILL. Take this seriously for a minute; you like cycling because it's easy, cheap, accessible. You can pack up at a moment's notice; crowd it into your spare time--maybe your lunch break. The equipment is simple (in theory), and the venue is everywhere there's a sidewalk, trail, or decently paved road. You like a hobby that's relatively harmless to the environment and relatively beneficial to your fitness. You don't like complications-- the headaches of preparation, maintenance, filing a flight plan. Just you and the open road. You carry this desire for freedom from care and complication like an atom carries its valence; it's the charge that brought you to cycling and the charge you get from cycling. So you're beginning to see what I mean. It's such a simple, carefree activity with such simple, no worries equipment. No need to check that peddle spindle for tightness and hey, BikeFriday--BikeSmiday, it's a bicycle, ain't it?

You see, you got to smile through it all because at bottom we're all pretty much alike--some of us are just more carefree than others. One of these days you'll be on a ride and a guy'll have a flat and you'll discover that the patient is a department store hybrid with nutted axles. The guy'll mumble something about he thinks he maybe used to carry a totally devoted wrench just for this eventuality but you won't see his legs moving like it's occurred to him he could borrow an adjustable from the Last Gasp Garage directly across the street. You'll wonder if you still have that rusty pair of slipjoint pliers that you picked up from the road. Take a deep breath and exhale slowly; it's going to be a slow release. Your consolation: you're not a complete fool and neither is he--if not for this innocent you might have carried your sock full of rusty junk 40,000 miles for nothing.

April 1999

UPWIND

with Colida Carré

Bad Moon Riding!

There once was a cyclist named Tim Whose shorts had grown transparently thin. The ladies behind him Said It's fine, we don't mind him. And each wore an ear-to-ear grin.

--Anonymous

April is the crudest--er--I mean cruelest month. At least that's what I think after talking with my riding buddy Chuck Krashenfall. I'm sort of filling in for him because something came up. Said he intended to contribute another thought-provoking and insomniacuring commentary on the behavior and habits of Homo Pedalis to the TAILWIND but is having to spend more and more time in Special High Intensity Training at work. Last year he declined to take all of it. As a result, he found himself in the Departmental Employee Evaluation Program, Special High Intensity Training. He was finally relieved of this odorous--oops--I mean onerous burden by learning a good deal of the Basic Understanding Lecture List, Special High Intensity Training on his own time and staying late to discuss his newly acquired skills with his boss. However, he felt that refusing to take it this year might mean he would be sent to Employee Attitude Training, Special High Intensity Training. He says that, after just a few weeks in the program, he's already been given more than his share of Special High Intensity Training, but he's afraid to say so for fear of being transferred to a permanent Special High Intensity Training job, and he can't stand to be near the Director of Programming, Special High Intensity Training with whom he would be working closely.

Not long after talking to Chuck, I got a call from our club editor asking me to be so kind as to sit in for old Chuck in the April issue. Colida, dear, she said, my windbag--er uh--columnist, Charlie Krashenfall, is unavailable this month and I need something funny and unique and bizarre and heartwarming to fill the space and I instantly thought of you. Everyone who knows you thinks you're a real stitch--especially since they put that plate in your head. While I am almost entirely immune to flattery, I wanted to hear more so I said: Linda, dear, while it's true that I have had my share of stitches, I hope you don't think the six months in coma was any picnic! Oh, of course not, silly, she rebuffed, but surely it must have given you time to rest and think! I couldn't exactly remember for sure but it's entirely possible she's right.

I really am very busy. I hardly have time to chat with Martha Stewart when she calls for advice. My husband Bill does excavations all day and works a second job nites. Last week he was just so tired and he said it'd be such a help if I knocked out the link pins and replaced the broken track pads on the CAT D-9. While I was out there in the barn, I thought I might as well weld some scab plates on the trailer tongue I accidentally backed over last week. When I finished I really needed a nice bubble bath but I was just too pooped. Boy, did I breathe a sigh of relief that all I broke was one fingernail. And Bill Jr. will be home for spring break soon; he's Phi Beta Kappa at Penn, you know. It'll be so great to see him but I really dread having to help him with organic chemistry. I really wish the twins weren't going to need orthodontia soon; free-lancing as an accountant isn't the fun it used to be. Don't think for a minute that I don't work just as hard for the bike club. Last month I baked 14 dozen of my special high-test brownies for the Icicle ride. That took a lot out of me but I just beamed when people told me my brownies had a very satisfactory coefficient of expansion. And on top of all this, just yesterday I bumped into my ex at the Acme; now I have to visit him while he recuperates (I don't think he'll press charges) and I better get an estimate on the car before Bill sees it. I don't have time to ride a bike! Where would I find the time to find something to say about riding a bike?

Linda didn't seem to think my busy life was much of an obstacle. Yes, she said, I'm sure we're all very busy of course but if you could do me just this one teensy-weensy little favor? And you don't have to say anything important about bikes or bicyclists; it's all been said before anyway. This is the month when the blood begins to race with expectation of the coming season and everybody gets a little weird; I myself am genuinely looking forward to having flatulent--er-flat tires and just a generally ripping good time. So just jot down your thoughts; something funny and unique and bizarre and irreverent if possible and irrelevant if necessary should fit nicely in the much-awaited April issue. I said I'd do my best but you know I haven't been able to come up with much besides that limerick I cut out of an old magazine. Nevertheless, Linda, bless her heart, was very appreciative of my effort and offered to alter the column head ever so slightly just for me. I thought it very clever of her and quite relevant really. If you're planning on spending much time around bicyclists, you'll find it a good place to be.

May 1999

A Tale of Two Sidis

'Tis a far, far better shoe I wear than I have worn before.

--with apologies to Charles Dickens, Ronald Colman, Dirk Bogarde, et. al.

Italian shoemakers make great bike shoes. The cheapest Italian bike shoe fits somebody's foot somewhere, as does the most expensive. The Italians adhere to the fine old shoemaking tradition of building shoes on lasts--pieces of hardwood carved to the dimensions and shape of actual human feet. It would appear that everybody else (you know who I mean), having learned to manufacture absolutely everything by the gospel according to Henry Ford, stitch leather (or synleather) together on blocks of twobyfour which resemble human feet only in the fact of being longer than they are wide. Yeh, I hear you saying that this is a shoddy and callous exaggeration and old Charlie Krashenfall probably wouldn't know a last from a bedight if one of each fell out of a tree and hit him on the head. As usual, you're half right; I haven't the foggiest from whence you'd procure or to what use you'd put a bedight. Perhaps you can enlighten me? And no, I'm not interested in giving you ten bucks for your old Brancalis which are practically new except where you wore clean thru the left heel using it as an emergency brake. No, I don't care if they're a real Italian design statement! Good grief, why do I bring these things up??

A year or so ago I was thinking about getting a new pair of bike shoes and this led me to visit a legendary bike shop whose proprietor had (and presumably still has) a gift for making you feel guilty about not throwing your wallet in the door ahead of you. I've encountered many amiable bike store operators and some who were frustrated and a few who were simply predators. I've always tried to be sympathetic to their common complaint that we bikies drive their families to starvation by succumbing to the lure of discount catalog purchasing. But this was the only shop I'd ever been in that had a psychological cover charge.

Something I can help you with, Mr. Legend greeted me. I expressed an interest in looking at bike shoes; I think I used the words: I just want to look at some bike shoes. For folks whose ancestors abandoned the oulde sod to escape staple crop failure and worse, just looking begins as an unavoidable humiliation and ends as a habit in the blood. To this day, I regret not attempting to appear a bit more upscale and enthusiastic. Had I said: Good bike merchant, there is a blot o' mire upon my three-weekold Nikes and I find the cleats to be sorely scraped; methinks before the day is out I must cosset my aching dogs in a pair--or perhaps two--of your finest boots; I care not for the price and afterward shall we repair to the alehouse and drink our healths 'til wheels stop valvesideup, I would probably not have gotten this reply: We have lots of shoes in back--for CUSTOMERS; it's a lot of trouble showing them to people with no intention of buying TODAY! He really had my attention then; I could see I was either going to throw some shekels on the blanket or back out the door bowing, scraping and begging a thousand pardons for the despicable shadow I cast.

I did what any self-respecting and impressionable idiot would; I defended my worth as a customer. I can understand where you're coming from, I said. I've been looking for some time--certainly with a view to buying. In fact, I've been to several other stores but they didn't have much stock. I really hope you'll have what I want! Mr. Legend's eyes brightened as he watched my instant metamorphosis from nuisance to paying customer. Oh, I'm sure I do, he said. He knew he'd pushed the right button; my unprofitable desire to look at shoes was now accompanied by a nearly insatiable passion to buy shoes, any shoes, illfitting shoes, last year's shoes, the shoes the dog chewed--and right now, TODAY!

I give the man credit; he showed me a lot of bike shoes. I admired, caressed and salivated upon nearly all of them and then we got to the part where I fulfilled my earnest promise that I was worth the trouble. I laced, strapped and buckled my way through about ten pair and then again through the survivors of the first elimination round. I paid every last lira of m.s.r.p. and then some for the pair of size 46 Vittorias I settled on. I staggered out of the shop feeling like I'd been in a bare-knuckle brawl, bloodied but clutching something which a few moments earlier had belonged to the other guy.

At home, I opened the box and found not a happily mated pair of shoes but an alarming odd couple. They were Sidis, size 46, different models and both lefts. I concluded that passionate buying can make you lose sight of some reasonably important desiderata. I returned to the shop and explained that there had been a mixup. After a few moments of trading exculpatory vapidities (he:I can't imagine how that could have happened! me: Well, I should have checked to make sure what I had!) and a vain search for my Vittorias, I traded the shoes sinister for a pair of a slightly more expensive model. Believe me when I tell you I was relieved to get out with my shirt and a shoe for each of my distinctly individual feet.

June 1999

Completing a Century

Things so very complex, mun! What you see comin' next? Mun, you not be payin' by check at the fin du siecle.

--Arghie Fuller, Quarries and Tombs

Hey, Animal, howzit goin'? I knocked around front. When you didn't come to the door, I figured you were back here on the deck hunched over the trainer. Almost too warm for that now; evenings getting longer; you should be out on the road. Not enough time for more than 30 minutes at most, huh? Yeh, I know what you mean; I couldn't get caught up at work either. You getting in shape for that early season century? Yeh, I know what the bike magazines say about century rides. To barely survive you have to prepare. To survive with dignity you have to prepare and prepare. To breeze thru you got to prepare, prepare, prepare! Pay me now or pay me later, hey?

How's that again? Yeh, I think I saw that article-- the one you're talking about--how this millennial bug is gonna stop the world but we bikies won't even want to get off; really gonna have an edge on the genpop when they can't get the juice for the family buggy. Yeh, you're undoubtedly right; the unaccustomed stationary gig would be worse than just a little sweating on the trainer. But in the meantime, we'll just pedal on, business as usual; is that how you see it? Yeh maybe, I'm not so