Good morning!
I’ve got a new column on the Outside website:
Okay, fine, I’m not gonna sit here and tell you it’s full of mind-blowing revelations or anything, but the point is there are better things to do all winter than spin yourself silly on the hamster wheel by riding inside, and I stand by that sentiment.
And no, I don’t pick the images that go with the stories, and so I can’t explain what she’s doing to that bike:
Perhaps she figures if she squints hard enough she can save herself sixty bucks and skip the FAG-2:
And yes, the FAG-2 is a frame alignment gauge, not what you call your second bike if you have two Faggins (due Faggini?):
Speaking of my watered-down content in mainstream publications, every couple weeks I take my older son to a meeting for an organization he belongs to, and so my younger son and I kill time by hanging around in a large chain bookstore. In addition to books, they also carry other obsolete media such as records:
And even magazines:
As I understood it, Bicycling (who, if I remember correctly, are down to publishing four print magazines per year) was supposed to run my little Star Track profile in their winter issue, and so every time we’re there I check to see if it’s out yet–not for my own sake, mind you, but so I can show it to my younger son and continue to delude him that I actually do something until he’s old enough to figure out the truth for himself.
Up until now, every time I’ve checked it’s been the fall issue. But this time, they had…no issues of Bicycling at all. They did have Outside, with noted outdoorswoman Pink on the cover:
They had Mountain Bike ACTION, which I couldn’t bring myself to open, but which I’m sure was full of wet hot mountain bike ACTION:
They had Cyclist, which appears to be British, and with which I was not familiar:
They had Thrasher, which is of course a skateboarding magazine…
…but which seems like an absolutely fantastic name for a magazine about deep sea fishing, since it evokes reeling in a marlin:
[Look at that thrasher!]
And they even had Concealed Carry Handguns:
I don’t know anything about guns, so I wonder if there are Gun Freds who look at this the same way I do at Mountain Bike ACTION. Are there retrogrouches who only use vintage revolvers?
Are flintlock pistols the pennyfarthing of firearms?
Is there a gravel bike of guns?
I’m guessing there are plenty of equivalents in guns and shooting sports to bikes and cycling, since in my experience most lifestyle pursuits that people geek out over are fairly analogous, and in terms of the types of people involved you can usually extrapolate from one to the other, which is something I find both endearing and comforting. (Also, bikes and guns are quite similar in that in both cases people who don’t use them and aren’t interested in them nonetheless have very strong opinions about how people should be allowed to use them.) But of course I don’t know for sure. All I know is that they didn’t have the winter issue of Bicycling.
Oh well.
By the way, at any bookstore there’s always a kid’s book that involves bikes somehow, and it’s always on sale at a deep, deep discount:
Not to spoil the ending for you but…
…at the end the basically decide “Fuck it, I’m drawing a Hyundai:”
Though there is a bit of a subversive twist on the very last page when they realize they don’t know how to drive.
As for the riding conditions around these parts, the weather has gone from arctic to merely cold, and so instead of riding in the woods I rode on the road:
At one point, I found myself on a paved park path that was mostly ice:
Despite my slick tires, I was able to ride it without stopping–well, except when I stopped to take a picture of the bike–which I attribute to the inherent stability of the Homer’s county-spanning wheelbase. Presumably the frame was also in alignment, though without a FAG-2 I can’t be sure:
With that wheelbase she’d need a spyglass to see the front end of the Homer from there.