Divisive

These are divisive times, my friends.  The POTUS speech yesterday might be the thing that - in my lifetime - has most evenly divided rooms full of smart people into two very separate groups, who see this particular issue the opposite way, with a clear line drawn down the middle - and they are now undergoing the process of learning to really hate each other.  This is not good.

I've written on this blog multiple times about the nature of divisiveness and our American tendency to divide and subdivide and sub-sub-divide in an effort to define ourselves as individuals.  Even as we're increasingly dependent on each other as a collective group (the connection economy as defined by the power of this here internet-thingy) we seem to be putting up bigger and firmer walls against those who don't see the world like us.  For example, Cyclocross.  Also for example, Triathletes, but they don't count.  See what I mean?

I'm in the early stages of trying to plan a trip to ride in SSUSA this year.  It's in August, in PA, a singlespeed-only "race" you might call it if you observed it from really, extremely far away.  Up close, it's not what you'd think of as a "race" or "exclusive" in any way, but then again gears are not permitted.  What else would you call it then?

The temptation is there, as it has always been, to cut yourself, de-friend those who think about things the other way.  And now, conveniently, doing so is a click away.  I'd like to see the Facebook numbers on this phenomenon and compare them to the average 7th grade cafeteria.  My suspicion is that the number of friends lost on Facebook this week, per capita, is about 10 times worse than the questionable emotional patterns of a bunch of 7th graders.   Facebook has that data, of course, but it's embarrassing, and they ain't sayin.

I say, don't do this.  Keep the dialogue and the trails open with as many other user groups as you can.  It's when they can carve us out into small enough groups that they'll finally close in for the kill.

And also, think of all you might miss.  For example, the things we can all agree upon: #hippopotopotus.


And, of course, VOTE.  Which is the only voice you have that actually counts, and always has been.

One thing I've learned from racing: always, always keep the process moving forward and your eyes looking up, up, up.

Plus Sized

The whole 29+ thing is officially off the ground, and very quickly, almost without warning (except for those of you that have been reading my shit and hearing me predict that this is the next big thing for years now) it's the big thing, way up in the sky.  Good for us.

The front window of BRC right now has no fewer than 4 of these things.  Trek Stache.  Surly Krampus.  Others.  Not fat bikes, mind you, no indeed.  These are 29+ bikes, the primary physical difference being 3 inch tires, not 4 or 5 inch tires, and a geometry more aligned for the jibber kids to get rowdy with vs. the old, crusty fatbike crowd that seems content to ride on icebergs or whatever.

I'm all for this.  There are a lot of reasons that this is happening, most of them have a lot to do with the simple reality that 29plussers (I just made that up.  Copyright pending) can outperform your average 2.3 inch tire in very much the same way that your 29er tire can outperform a 26er, or a 2.3 inch 26er tire was better than a 2.0 inch tire, and so on and so forth.  It's a simple process of growth, in a lot of ways, and with the advent boost bottom bracket and hub systems, the overall acceptance of 1X drivetrains, the mold-ability of carbon, etc, have all swung into motion at the same time and in the same way that puberty changes a young man quickly, drastically, and for the bigger.  And yeah, things are just bigger now.  Good for us.

You can read more about all of the reasons this is happening from official media outlets:
http://www.bikemag.com/gear/mean-27-plus-29-plus-bikes/
http://www.bikerumor.com/2015/03/08/nahbs-2015-quiring-boosts-29-mountain-bikes-beyond-148-w-clever-parts-use/
http://www.bikerumor.com/2015/03/19/nahbs-2015-cycle-monkeys-29-black-sheep-gates-belt-drive-kish-cysco-cycles/

Here's my prediction, even if you didn't ask for it: In 5 years, everyone but XC racers will be riding at least 3 inch tires.
It will actually be a really divisive thing, sort of the same way that roadies and mountain bikers differ today. Racers will still have their own technology built for speed, but 85% of the rest of the mtb market will be just 29plus riders - and with very little overlap.  Today, you can sort of go out and race your average trailbike and not be terribly disadvantaged.  But 29plussers, though enormously fun on trail, won't be fast in the way a race bike needs to be, and the idea of racing one will be pretty much laughable.  So people won't do it, and people with one bike will have a 29plus, and they'll face a pretty enormous barrier to entry when it comes to racing which doesn't really exist today, and they won't overcome it, and they won't care, and good for them.

Roll over your average rootball wedge in a section of single track on a 26er with a 1.9.  Then try it on a 2.3.  Then try it on a 29er.  Then try it on a 29plus.  The evolution is actually pretty obvious.

There's also something to be said for those of us who will make this jump in order to go rigid, leaving suspension behind for good, and probably gears as well.  Nothing before now has really been so conducive to rigid single speeding as a 3.0 which has just enough cush and loads of traction not the steep stuff.  That Trek Stache can be set up single.  So can the original 29plus, the Krampus.  So I think you'll see more of that - people taking advantage of the opportunity to abandon those shifty and movey bits that never seem to work right since the ramifications of that are now not so bonejarring and difficult.  And again, good for them.

But also, and here's my only actual unique point that you couldn't read elsewhere sooner and better:
It's also about your penis.

Don't act like it's not.
This is a simple, male-dominated sport and the rationale of size matters is not unique or missing for us any more than it doesn't apply to monster trucks, or burritos, or the NFL.
And again, good for us.

Keep growing.
Up, up, up.

Sham/Shame

In the roadside ditches between my house and Nortonsville, between the road itself and the rolling green pastures and oak flats, there are three used masks.  They're not together.  The first one - a nice white N-95 - is right around the corner here, less than 500 yards from where I sit and write this.  The other two, a black one and a blue one, are about a mile past that, just on the edge of Buck Mountain, in some tall grass on the right.  It's possible they were purposefully discarded there together, homemade cloth masks that someone obviously labored to create, now spent.  It's also possible that they simply blew out of the window of a passing car, just an accident.  It turns out that masks, divisive little items which they have become, can also be litter, intended or not, and maybe that means something.  

On the same stretch of road, there are about twenty empty, blue bud light cans.  At least twenty.  That number goes up and down a little based upon the schedule of roadside clean up crews, how fast the grass grows, and presumably how often these assholes drive the road and throw their cans out. On long rides out through the county on hot days, litter is something I have struggled to understand.  Who on earth is doing this?  Is it on purpose?  Is it a single individual, a lone-wolf, bud light bandit in reverse?   It might, in fact, be a single bad actor, though if COVID has taught us anything, it's that bad behavior begets more bad behavior.  These things come in packs.  

*

  

My wife literally runs.  She logs her miles in a spiral notebook that she keeps by our bed, spends hours out on the narrow country roads that spread north into the surrounding counties, out into Greene and Madison, like roots. Hours per day, miles per week, she prefers to deal with our bizarre new reality on a one-dimensional plane, one foot in front of the other.  She was born here.  

 

“It’s like they’ve become emboldened now,” my wife summarized her experience on the road recently.  It's summer, Sunday, too hot for a long run unless she started early.  So she’d left home in the dark, trudged without coffee through humid air thick with fog and manure.  Along the way, she’d been horned twice, both times by big trucks, rednecks, whooping at her and catcalling.  She couldn’t read their license plates as they careened away, North, out into the county, but in the back window of both, the same kinds of stickers.  

*

I had a theory going for a while that the sub-culture of people who throw beer cans at cyclists, and the sub-culture of people that harass female runners, and the sub-culture of people who refuse to wear masks in public - if you mapped them all onto a Venn diagram -  would be a single, overlapping circle.  But that hypothesis got crushed on a ride recently, at the bottom of Bleak House road above the river, when I came upon a French-Canadian guy with an old steel Nishiki propped against the guard rail.  He was having a smoke and halfway through his first of two 20-ounce tallboys.  He had the two cans tucked neatly into the bikes' bottle cages, a perfect fit, and he wore a bright yellow safety vest. I spoke some French and he spoke some English, but eventually we settled on English because his English was way, way better than my French.  This man was quite a paradox.  He claimed, between enormous gulps of malt liquor, to be a former ironman triathlete, which I found believable as he recounted in detail the massive costs involved with race travel.  He'd just been coal-rolled, up near the intersection of Woodlands and Reas Ford, by some huge truck with a modified exhaust, and it had burned his eyes.  So he was pounding a couple of beers here, at the bottom of the hill near the river, to take the edge off before he rode home.  

"Motherfuckers," he swore, with a thick, French-Canadian accent.  We leaned against the guardrail in silence for a while.  He smoked, and I watched the flow of traffic.  

He asked me about the Virus, "What do you make of all of this?"  

I confessed that I honestly didn't know.  

He said he thought it was a Shame.  Or he said he thought it was a Sham.  I couldn't tell which he said.

That's vital information, of course, his whole point of view in the conversation hinges upon the existence of a single letter - that "e".  I wanted to ask him, but in a strange way I felt it didn't matter.  I didn't want to know anymore.  We're all just playing parts now, some bizarre, nationwide attempt at improvisational theater where we've all been assigned roles but no one knows their lines.  What would my character say about this?  We check twitter the way that an actor checks the script.  Line, please.  

But what do we really know?  

*

 

“It’s my faith in people, now,” my wife mutters.  But she cracks her knuckles anyway and jumps the three steps down off the deck on her way out for a run again.  She will never stop, I know.  It’s barely dawn but already hot, and she’s glistening under a thin layer of sweat, resplendent in her defiance.  Take your best shot, motherfuckers.    

It's a sham, or a shame.  Maybe it's both.  Maybe it's something else.  

Up, up, up.  

The Perpetual Tie

A decade and a half ago, I lived in Paris for six months while on a study abroad program.  I was finishing out my last semester of college in Europe vs. within the relatively safe confines of the sheltered bluestone campus in Harrisonburg.  It was a tremendous experience.  Not all positive, but all very real - certainly an education.


Early on in my stay there, after the luster of just being in Paris wore off a little, I recognized that it was still a big city, complete with all of the big city highs and lows you might find in New York or London or Hong Kong.  Non-directional septic smells.  Street sweeping dog shit.  Mean people.  But also, the best of the best: and at times that was Sports.  Indeed, one of the most profound experiences I had in Paris was taking the RER north to St. Denis, buying a ticket off a scalper, and watching a football friendly between Team France and Team Cameroon in a much-hyped match between what was, at the time, the Olympic Champs (Cameroon) and the World Cup Champs (France) at the Stade De France.

Outside of being just an absolutely huge stadium, the second most defining characteristic of The Stade De France is that there are basically only two levels - The Top and The Bottom.

The Top, where I sat, and much to my surprise, was almost 100% black people, mostly North and West African immigrants.  I wasn't bothered by this in any way - quite the opposite.  These were the warmest, most welcoming, and certainly the most excited people I had ever encountered at a sporting event, immediately prompting me to root for Cameroon instead of France.  We sat together, cheered and yelled and hissed at the refs, and all the while looked out across The Lower Deck, below us and a great deal closer than we were with a better view of the action - pretty much exclusively white Parisians.

The obvious and unapologetic segregation was shocking at first, but everyone there seemed to take it in stride.  The reality is that this was and still is a pretty accurate cross-section of France and Paris today.  The old guard - white people near the center of the city with the view and influence of it all - and the immigrants craning their necks from afar just to see.

I'll cut to the punchline on this one: France and Cameroon tied that night.  I didn't see anyone fight after the game, but I heard on the news the next day that there had been some serious brawls later that night - as so often happens in a tie, sometimes the fans will try to sort out the winner on their own.  Of course that doesn't ever work, but it was obvious to me then - December of 2000 - that the table was set for a real, hard, bitter struggle for what you might call "limited seating" between the haves and the have nots.

Such were the grounds, at least in the sense of an actual location, for the suicide bombings in Paris last week.  Of course, Cameroon is not ISIS, and that's not at all what I mean to imply.  I'm talking about the enormous gap itself - that space in the middle.  It's the perpetual tie in a game we insist on continuing to play over and over - the fact that I'll never convince you and you'll never convince me, and hate, death, and whatever hell may come, no one ever actually wins.

It's not just in France, of course; it's everywhere.   The divisive, unholy line.

I've been in exactly two sprint finishes in bike races - both times racing for the Win, and both times I've been beaten at the line.  Once, in 2011, I almost won the XXC at the Middle Mountain Mamma, probably the closest I've come to winning a decently big race.  I actually had a pretty big gap coming into the last downhill, and I played it safe in some pretty poor conditions while the guy behind me risked it, and he came from a long way back and outsprinted me at the line.  At the Urban Assault in Richmond in about 2009 or so, I led it out into the final straight, but Mike Hosang passed me, only I passed him back, but then he re-re-passed me to take the W.  In both cases, I was pretty psyched just to have been close, and I was beaten by really fast guys.  And, more than anything, we didn't tie.  Nothing in a bike race ends up being a tie.  There's a clear winner, and a podium, and a top 10, and everyone else too, and we can all move on and go home and feel OK about that.

But life is not bike racing.  Most things aren't.

Today - The Third Thursday of November - is Beaujolais for the French.  It's the day when the newly bottled wine of the year is uncorked, decanted, and served across France even though it's still pretty fruity and not entirely ready for consumption.  It's a national holiday and basically an invitation to call in sick to work tomorrow.  But after various credible threats around Paris and the rest of Europe this week, it will be no surprise if another terrorist attack hits France right on the nose again tonight.  I could be wrong about that, and that's one of the unfortunate effects of terrorism - that attack or not, we're all at least a little terrorized.

I've done a ton of bike riding in France over the years.  Ventoux.  Alps D'huez.  Normandy.  Arles.  Right through the streets of Paris and out past the Hippodrome and farther West out to Versailles and back.  But right now, it's hard to imagine.

The lines we draw are all so clear, now - that's the power of the internet.  They're Social.  Economic.  Cultural.  Religious.  Ethnic.  Political.  There are language barriers.   Financial gaps.  Dead bodies to reinforce the threat from the other side, whatever that side might be.  The distance from here to there is so enormous, people so far out of context with our own reality that perhaps we'd be better off just not interacting at all.  But we can see them all so clearly, and so far, that isn't helping.

I saw the gap - right across the waistline of the Stade De France, just like that night when France and Cameroon tied, and fought, and nothing was ever really settled.