If this winter has taught me one thing, it’s that the Gilmore Girls is just as relevant today as it was when it came out. But if this winter has taught me another thing, it’s that my thermal bibs are not thermal enough. At least not where my bathing suit covers. Every post-ride shower lately has ended with me cradling my manparts (not in a sexy way) under a stream of hot water, begging them “DON’T GO TOWARDS THE LIGHT CAROL ANN!” This isn’t a reference to Poltergeist. I’ve actually named my manparts Carol Ann.

So this is why I’m announcing my intention to create a committee to discuss the development of a business plan to produce a working prototype of a wiener cozy. Or koozie, if you’re a beer drinker. The idea is simple: it’s a thing you shove in your pants to keep your weiner warm. But unlike a cup of coffee, it won’t cause scalding. It’s more like the wool hat you currently use, but without the bunching or awkward bulge. The details aren’t yet… uh… fleshed out, but this is what I do know about my imaginary product.

• It will be called the “Members Only Jacket”
• It will come in three sizes. XXL. XXXL. XXXXL. Small didn’t test well.
• It will not be made of softshell fabric, because that doesn’t promote confidence.
• It will be “artisinal” and available in “boutiques” so that I may charge more.
• We will produce a 30 minute informercial that will show how complicated other warming solutions are, before someone with a fake Welsh accent will step in to show how fantastic the Members Only Jacket it. This informercial will be rated NC-17.

Here is a picture of some wieners wearing Members Only jackets.

As far as I can tell, sosovelo began with three friends who liked cycling, loved laffing, and sort of knew how to use the internet. All came from very different backgrounds and were drawn to different aspects of bicycling culture. Yet this motley crew managed to maintain high-endurance blogging for several years, and are still going strong today.

What made sosovelo such a success (it’s been referred to as “the google of blogs”) was the different perspectives its three founders brought online with them. These different personalities, or “flavors” of writing, can best be categorized by using an analogy of the standard holiday popcorn tin. (For those of you unaware of what I’m talking about, the holiday popcorn tin is a large aluminum cask, trisected, and filled with butter, caramel, and cheese flavored popcorn…one flavor to each section).

In terms of sosovelo writers, the popcorn breakdown goes as such:

Editor: Butter
Cait: Caramel
Dawn: Cheese.

But this isn’t the only way that popcorn categorization can be used. No, no, avid reader, you can categorize ANY group of three things this way! Another easy one is the popular brands of bicycle components:
Shimano, Campagnolo, and SRAM.

So far, everyone I have asked has come up with the same answer. So take a minute to make up YOUR mind.

Done? Well of course Shimano is butter, Campy is Caramel, and SRAM is cheese.

When Cait came to visit she woke up one morning popcorn tinning the Holy Trinity. This wasn’t as cut and dry for me, having been raised in a godless family, but she is fairly sure this is how it goes:

Father: Butter
Son: Caramel
Holy Ghost: Cheese

Basically what I am getting at is that sorting out any group of three things into popcorn flavors is something we can AND SHOULD all be doing all the time. Or at least that’s what I thought until a certain fated day in early December when I discovered the new Trader Joes QUADRISECTED popcorn tin. In adition to adding another section, TJs also switched up the flavors, adding the crowd pleasing Kettlecorn, but also including two more “mature” flavors: White Cheddar and Olive Oil. Butter was dropped, but caramel was kept on, leaving us with two savories and two sweets. A safe decision on their part…but did it hold up when used to categorize everyday things?
The answer isn’t as easy as you might think. First of all, after purchasing and consuming this tin with Cait, we can both confidently say this it is a bullshit popcorn tin. The Kettlecorn and Caramel were great, but the white cheddar is way too serious for our festive moods. The Olive Oil flavor tasted like a rotten pile of nothing. If nothing could still have a bad taste to it, this is what I would say the Olive Oil popcorn was like. Maybe like the taste of a bad smell? Something like that. I don’t think it even had salt on it. That section remained full as the others diminished, I assure you.

Yet despite its failure in the overall popcorn tin category, the new flavors still held up in some scenarios.

In bike parts companies, Kettlecorn is Chris King and Olive Oil is suicide brakes. In the Holy Trinity, Olive Oil is purgatory and Kettlecorn is free will. Do you see what I’m getting at?

In bike racing:
1st: Caramel, 2nd: Butter, 3rd: Cheese, Prime: Kettlecorn, DNF: Olive Oil.
This is only related to race placement, it does not reflect my actual popcorn preferences.

Do you understand what I’m saying? If you’re more of a visual learner, I’ll use diagrams:

In closing, even though Trader Joe fucked up his popcorn tin, don’t feel like you need to live within the rigidity of the three-flavor system. Make your own way through the world and pop your own corn. Put nutritional yeast or cayenne or Braggs or cinnamon and sugar on it. Just please always use salt and always compare the favors to other groups of things completely unrelated to popcorn.

Thank you for your time.
Love,
Dawn Riddle

Forties and fifties of people came out on Saturday to watch the celebrities of a small subgroup (cyclocross) of a much larger not-so-popular sport (cycling) that doesn’t get a fraction of the media attention of Juniors Figure Skating duke it out for overall supremacy at PIR. Maybe it’s because cyclists never have musical accompaniment by Mannheim Steamroller. Or maybe it’s because the sport is always outside in the cold and never with established seating or mobile hot dog vendors that come directly to you. Whatever the reason, no one cares about cycling or its celebrities except cyclists.

Until one of those celebrities fucks an Olsen twin.

And this is why cycling is awesome. Cycling celebrities are just like normal people! Unlike normal celebrities, cyclocross stars  have to slum it with the proles. Unless they start fucking Olsen twins. And they aren’t going to make millions of dollars like Earl Anthony, The Greatest Bowler of All Time™ (who also fucked an Olsen Twin.) Cyclocross celebrities don’t throw TVs from hotel windows during drunken binges with prostitutes. Cyclocross celebrities don’t give a shit about the Bush tax cuts, because they are smart enough to understand how tax brackets and progressive tax systems work. They don’t send pictures of their genitals to sports reporters unless asked to do so, and they never… NEVER… murder their spouses in fits of rage.

This isn’t ‘Nam, Donnie. This is cycling. There are rules.

As normal cycling folk, we’ll never get to watch an hour long live broadcast called “The Decision” about Jeremy Powers trying to decide what kind of burrito he wants for lunch. But we might get to ride around on the same course as world champions, and sometimes we might even get pushed around by those people when we get in their way. And if we’re really lucky, someone will get a picture of us right before we get lapped so it looks like we were beating that world champion for a minute or two.

Here are a bunch of photos of normal folks racing with celebrities from the Men’s and Women’s Elite races.

The best part about having an expensive hobby like cycling is that you never have to worry about what normal grownups call “investing” because you sink all of your money into plastic parts for your bicycle. Your portfolio is your quiver of bikes, and your broker is eBay. If you want to, you can diversify by buying both Campy and Shimano components, but the only payout you’ll ever see is a crumpled piece of paper taped to a box truck and a photo or two of you standing on milk crates of various heights taken in the dusk, after even the families of people that care have left the race. But when the economy goes to shit, it has almost zero impact on your life. Because who the fuck cares about mark to market accounting?!

But the worst part about maintaining an expensive hobby like cycling is that you never want to get rid of anything you purchase. There is never a good time to sell. It either has sentemental value, like the busted Rocky Mountain seatpost that took my virginity during a romantic 48 hour adventure race at Whistler. Or it has future value, like my 2004 limited edition Tickle Me Elmo Primal Wear Jersey, still with original tags and in Near Mint condition. None of these things are ever actually going to get used again. They’re just going to sit in my box labeled “parts” that may as well be labeled “Short Circuit 2 props” because the only person that’s ever going to make any of that shit work  is Steve Guttenburg and his sidekick, the racist Indian stereotype.

It isn’t just bike stuff either. That box sits next to another box of worthless electronic crap. Like my trusty Apple Newton, the first PDA with handwriting recognition. The original owner had erased then entire system dictionary and replaced it with only profanity, so anything you wrote would be recognized as some variation of “piss shit shit motherfucker fuck shit whore.” It was like buying an iPad that ran only the Tourette’s translation app. It took me weeks to figure out the problem, but I was too stubborn not to use it so I had a series of grocery lists that read like Bukowski’s poetry.

These are my toxic assets.

It’s worthless now, that Newton, because the average American consumer in 1991 recognized that replacing a pen and paper with a $1000 digital device  is a fucking ridiculous idea, unless that digital device can also magically pull pornography and videos of kittens from space.

Why am I bringing these up now? Well, because I haven’t bought any bike parts in ages so I have nothing to talk about. This is what people do when they run out of shit to talk about. They talk about the past, and how they were once in a band and climbed K2 without any oxygen and slept with 4 women at once and how they used to be a pretty good racer. And they they pull out their boxes of faded pictures and broken bike parts and electronics and they stare at them wistfully.

Well, I’ve never accomplished shit. But I had an Apple Newton once, GODDAMMIT, and that makes me someone.

Mostly I’m bringing this up because I just read this great price from the NYT Sunday Magazine about storage units. And by “just read” I mean last year. But I just thought about it today, because my brain processes things 1 year late. And then I listened to the Planet Money story about Toxic Assets, which was really fantastic. So you should read or listen to both.

Storage Units

Toxic Assets

Here here is a video of kitten attacking its own reflection:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiwoNSy271U

Kruger’s Crossing this year was all kinds of miserable weather, and I didn’t have the energy to ride a lap or two while hoping for something to go wrong with my bike allowing me to quit guilt free. So I just didn’t race. I may have gone on The Worst Road Ride Ever™ instead, and that road ride may have ended with me barefoot and shivering in the isles of Safeway while trying to barter an uneaten Luna Bar and some almonds for a fresh pair of socks. I may have discovered that there is no established exchange rate for these items. So I may have also offered sexual favors to a septuagenarian in exchange for her overcoat, and she may or may not have rejected me.

It was a rough afternoon.

But not as rough as a certain unnamed Sheperd who has been BANNED from racing for a year for unsportsmanlike conduct. Check out this video of the Portland Velo dog in question taking someone out at the knees:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Put her right into the wall. Cold blooded.

Here are the bulk photos from the race. Nothing good. But lots of it.

Photos from the early races. Nothing after the B/SS race.

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I’ve never seen “Fiddler on the Roof,” but I heard the opening song Tradition one time when I was 14 because I wanted to make out with a girl named Gretchen who was really into musical theater.  I don’t know any of the words, but the tune gets stuck in my head every time someone buys something stupid for their cross bike because “cross culture” tells them to. Often, I am that stupid person.

Technologically, I can understand the backlash against disc brakes, because they’re obvious and garish and they make you look like that guy that got up-sold on all of the commuter components when he bought his bike. Also, they look heavy. And looking light while racing is the Liz Lemon perfect jeans booty shake of the cycling world.

I can also understand the anti-DI2 sentiment, because that stuff is like the Segway of bike components. I’m sure it’s amazing to ride, but if you put that shit on your bike you’d better be prepared to either win or kick someone in the face.

To rebel against mini v brakes, however, is to rebel against mechanical advantage. And that’s a pretty difficult argument to make. They aren’t even expensive, so you don’t have to break out into If I Were A Rich Man.* Yes. I get it. Tradition. But there are lots of traditions in the world that I choose to ignore. Like regular bathing. Or Seppuku.

Traditional canti brakes are the Sarah Palin of the cyclocross world, revelling boastfully in their lack of progress. You know who else hated mechanical advantage? Nicholas II. Though in his defense, I think that Rasputin was behind most of his component purchases, because he was the one with the account at QBP. Little known fact: he also hated musical theater.

So how is this for a review. I don’t own these newfangled TRP CX9 Mini V-brakes. But I’m going to give them 5 stars. Or ten. No… ELEVEN STARS. Because just talking about these brakes slowed my bike down better than the cantis I have on there now.

Even the cavemen used levers, for fuck sake. Grock think canti inefficient tool for stopping. Grock rub rock on carbon rim instead. Grock think tradition stupid like Sarah Palin. Grock think mini v brake Miracle of Miracles**.

* That’s another fiddler joke for the people that haven’t tried to make out with musical theater girls.
** Another Fiddler song, if Wikipedia is to be believed.

Here’s a funny video. Please accept this as my apology for the time you wasted reading my review.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wusGIl3v044

Barton Park has always been one of my favorite race venues. Probably because it’s usually near the end of the season, and the end of the season means I don’t have to spend Sunday nights hosing off my muddy shit any more. I haven’t done many Crusade races this year, but it appears that while I was away every racer was assigned a team of reporters to follow them around. What was up with all of the press? Everywhere I turned there was a reporter. And a cameraman. And a gaffer. And a boom. And a dolly. And a key grip. And a best boy. And a body double. And a second unit body double.

I could do this all day… I love movie credits.

I once worked with a guy who spent years working on the TV show Renegade with Lorenzo Lamas, and he would regale us with his stories of hanging out with Mr. Llamas. He was super proud of it, like it was amazing that Lorenzo Lamas would slum it with the common man and go get nachos after work. I recognize that Mr. Lamas is probably the coolest guy ever to solve crimes from a Harley while wearing a black leather vest with no shirt… but it’s Renegade, man. Lorenzo Lamas was probably just stoked to have someone split the bill on some nachos. But he was recently in Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus with Debbie (Deborah) Gibson, so maybe he is actually awesome. Just now, when I looked up Lorenzo Lamas’ name, I learned that it doesn’t have two l’s like it should. Llamas. Here’s the trailer to Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa7ck5mcd1o

My god. I’m so tired.

As a side note, A Series of Unfortunate Events™ led to the loss of my beloved slow motion camera. It’s red and tiny and it was thrown gently course-side during the B/SS race somewhere between the start and the run up. I know that someone saw me put it there. So if you’re that someone, this could be just like Sleepless in Seattle. Except I’m Tom Hanks. And Meg Ryan is a camera. And you’re like an asteroid that is going to destroy the planet.

Fine. I admit is. I’ve never seen Sleepless in Seattle. Here are some pictures from the race.

Also, I lost my camera. It’s red and tiny and it was thrown gently course-side during the B/SS race somewhere between the start and the run up. Let me know if you found it.

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