An Amusement & Diversion for The Genteel Cyclist. Daily.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Steel yourself for winter


My pal HJ is visiting from Montana -- just when the ice is setting up in Hyalite Canyon, but he can't climb yet anyway due to recently having a benign tumor taken out of his big toe -- so we jumped on a couple of my bikes and barhopped around town. The rub, though, was that HJ could not afford to dump on any incidental ice, he was already out $5K on the toe surgery, and toe re-surgery was not in his plans, so that meant me decommissioning the cross bike officially for the season, installing regular-person pedals, and putting the studs back on, and I took it for a run down the alley. Over the summer, I always forget how studs feel and sound like velcro, and in the spring, when I take them off, I feel the way I did when I got my braces off at age 15 -- my lips no longer distended by brackets and hooks and wires and whatnot, but smooth and natural the way God intended. This thought provoked HJ to tell me he had a girlfriend once with a half-dozen piercings on her woman-parts, which wasn't as sexy as it sounds. "Walking around in her underwear," he said, "she looked like a bag of nails from the hardware store."

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Fly tire. Where can I get one?!

Anonymous said...

I rode a bike with studs like that once. I LOVED it! That was in Eastern Washington where they get ice in the winter. This year in Seattle we had the biggest snow in years, and my regular MTB tires were just fine... but I kept thinking of those studs. Snow riding is super fun! If I could afford a big fat HID headlight would have hit some trails in the snow for sure.

Here's a photo: http://900mpg.org/

Anonymous said...

Oops, that link didn't work.. here's the pic:

Winter bike commuting!