Fit

You can pay a lot of money to get someone to scientifically fit your bike to your body. I have not done this. But, I hear you ask, you have clearly established yourself as a science nerd of the first water, so why have you not done this? I’m glad you asked. Well, I’m glad I asked for you. The answer is, because I don’t want to. Now that we have that settled…

Some years ago when I moved from the trusty Trek 1000 to a new bike, I suffered what could be called some “discomfort.” I realize that this is a vague word which can be used to describe many things, and I have chosen it for that very reason. When I went from toe clips to clipless pedals, I experienced some “discomfort” that I wouldn’t try to describe in a family blog. When I switched bikes, the “discomfort” was a pain in my…um…legs.

So what do you do in such a situation? You ask somebody who knows. I asked several people, and, when I indicated the area of my legs that was trouble me, Jörg asked, “In the adductors?”

Well, now is the time to admit that I am a biologist with a woeful lack of knowledge of the musculature of the human frame. I am not necessarily proud of this lack, but the fact is that I am a molecular biologist by training (which isn’t anywhere near as glamorous as it sounds), and structures much bigger than a cell don’t really interest me that much, so my response was pretty much just to point.

Then Jörg, who was apparently making a habit that day out of asking questions that I had no idea how to answer, asked, “What’s your setback?”

Huh? (Actually, I don’t think my response was actually as coherent as that.)

Jörg kindly explained what “setback” was (and in case your ignorance is as vast as my own, it’s the horizontal distance between the bottom bracket and the front tip of the saddle) and how to measure it. This involved getting a plumb bob (the fact that I actually knew what that was did make me feel a bit better about myself) and a tape measure and getting to work.

Fortunately, the trust Trek was set up correctly for me (not that I had anything to do with that, you understand) so I could simply measure the setback of that saddle and then use that same measurement on the new bike. Simple. Well, it should be simple. For me, nothing like ever is simple, but I got it done in the end.

I mention all of this now because recently I’ve been back on the Trek while my other bike waited for tires. I got the new tires on and discovered that the saddle was waaaaaaaaaaay out of place. I put it back more or less where I thought it should be and went for a ride.

Apparently, more or less where I thought it should be wasn’t quite right, so I finally broke down today and remeasured the setback on the two bikes. It was wrong. (Yes, I know that a smart man would have written the numbers down the first time he measured the setback, but there you are. I didn’t do it. Draw your own conclusions.) I moved the saddle some more, and, pretty soon, I’ll go on a ride to see how it feels.

Wish me luck.

I’ll need it in the end.

See you on the road.

Oops

Okay, so, to put it technically, I faw down go boom.

Actually, that isn’t the beginning, that’s the end. As Dr. Who once said, “First things first, but not necessarily in that order.”

First of all, someone moved my saddle. This is extremely annoying. I spent I don’t know how long tweaking the saddle position to get it right. As we all know, when someone moves your saddle it’s a real pain in the posterior. Literally and figuratively. I still don’t have it quite right, but that will come eventually.

Now let me go back in time.

I was once knocked down by a beagle while it was on the way somewhere else. A group of us were riding, and Jörg was riding beside me. (Clearly an unwise thing to do.) A beagle decided to go after Jörg and, to do so, had to pass in front of me. My wheel took it right in the short ribs. The dogs was fine. I was a victim of physics.

My bike stopped, I did not. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. As I started to roll irretrievably over the handlebars, I jostled Jörg and actually had the presence of mind (or the absurdity) to apologize. Then I continued my flip, hit the road and did a series of truly acrobatic somersaults down it. The road curved, but I continued on straight and remember thinking “Ah, grass,” as the world continued to rotate around me and then I eventually came to a halt on my back and the world mercifully ceased to spin.

I climbed to my feet to find that my bike was okay and I had acquired some road rash and lost some blood. I took that opportunity to express my dismay to the dog’s owner in tones rather fueled by anger and pain.

After we remounted and road on, Jörg asked, “Haven’t you ever fallen off before?”

“Yes,” I said, still fuming.

“Then, what’s the problem?”

And, there you have it. What was the problem? My bike was fine, I would heal, what was I getting so worked up about?

I tell you this story to explain why, after hitting the deck today, I just don’t feel like it’s that big a deal. Yes, I have some road rash, and, yes, I left some blood on the road, but I’m okay. My body hurts, but it will heal, and no serious damage was done, except perhaps to my self-esteem, but I would hardly be writing this blog is my self-esteem didn’t have a certain flexibility about it.

I had a hard ride, my bike didn’t quite fit, I fell down, it was really windy…and I will hope back in the saddle the first chance I get, so what is there to complain about?

I can still ride. Life is good.

See you on the road.

The way I fall off, maybe I mean that literally.

Group Ride!

Has it been awhile since I’ve been on a group ride with my fellow Seyboros?

This is a rhetorical question, which in this case means "a question I already know the answer to."

Well, I guess it has been awhile, because when I let it be known that I was going to go on the Memorial Day ride, I was counseled by Jörg to wear a name tag and was greeted with shouts of “Hey! New guy!” after I arrived.

I pulled my bike out of the back of the 2000 pound beast, only to notice that my computer sensor had fallen to the ground and my chain had come off. How appropriate.

It was nice to be greeted by people, even if they couldn’t believe their eyes.

Once we got moving, we had a great time, if a bit peculiar in spots. For example, I’m used to hearing shouts of “Dog left!” or “Car up!” but “Cow right?”

That’s a new one on me, and I thought it was a joke, but, no. There was a small cow trotting along beside the road. It was following the fenceline and sticking its nose into every crack in the fence, apparently trying to get back in where it hadn’t gotten out from and unable to figure out how to do so. (When we rode back by at the end of the ride, it had apparently found the way.)

I could hear snatches of conversation all around me. Triatheletes were trading battle stories. Roadies were talking of dogs of the past. Work stories, cycling stories, family stories, laughter, they were floating all around me, and I thought back to my first ride with the club. Somehow, I hadn’t known that cycling would be so social. I had this idea in my mind of everyone riding along, together, but each in his or her own world, and the nonstop conversation surprised me.

How do you tell if a hill is hard or if the pace is difficult? The conversation stops. But let the road level out or the pace slacken a bit and it’s back again.

We have a good time together out on the road. I eventually found myself riding next to Lisa. While we were on terrain unknown to me, we were practically in Lisa’s backyard, and she had more than a passing familiarity with every dog on the route.

“Okay,” she’d say, “There are four dogs who live just on the other side of that bend, and they will run at you.” She was right, too. Dogs must like Lisa a lot. They chase after her everywhere she goes.

There was one dog that got encouragement. It was a very small puppy, but it exploded into barks as we went by, and people began calling out, “Come on, dog!” This may, in future days when this dog is no longer so small, prove to have been a tactical error.

We passed a field full of cows, stately matrons all, who watched us go by, heads swiveling slowly to keep us on view. (I later passed these same cows in the 2000 pound beast, and they ignored me completely. Apparently they are only interested in cyclists.)

I was treated to the sight of a rider I didn’t know playing with her helmet as she rode. This seemed odd to me, and then a wasp flew out from underneath it! Apparently it had flown in through one of the air vents and she had been trying to get it out again. I'm sure both the wasp and the rider were happy that it succeeded.

We rode twenty miles out to the Bentonville Battlefield, which turned out to be closed on Memorial Day, go figure, hung out there for a bit and then pedaled twenty miles back home. The talk ranged from theology to cloning to turkey nutrition to dogs I have known to what it’s like to work in a prison to cows to home life to…well…pretty much everything really.

I can’t guarantee that everyone had a great time, but I think they did. Even the rider with the (fortunately painless) wasp in the helmet, allergy rash, bug bites and, to top it all off, a bloody knee from a classic clip related slow motion fall in a parking lot. Hey, most of us have done it, and you guys who haven’t, there’s still time. Just wait.

It was great to do a group ride again. I was urged to do another one before next memorial day, and I think that’s good advice.

At the end of the ride, Jörg asked, “How are the legs?” The legs are fine. I’m ready to go again.

See you on the road.