"The Italians are coming! Mama! The Italians are coming!"

All of American cyclocross is having its Dave Stohler moment this week. If you don't remember your Breaking Away (and honestly, shame on you if you don't have at least a few viewings of that movie under your belt), Dave was the goofy, Italophile, bike racer in the college town of Bloomington, Indiana who found a moment of acceptance when he learned that the Italian Cinzano team would be participating in a local race. Unfortunately for Dave, he learned how little regard the Italians had for Americans.

As the cyclocross world descends upon Louisville, Kentucky for the 2013 World Championships, we are in a similar twitter as our paragons of the sport, the Belgians, make the first ever trip over to our side of the world to race some 'cross. Unlike Dave, the U.S. has its own distinctive flavor of cyclocross.

In Europe, cyclocross is a spectator sport of the general masses like football, baseball, and basketball are here. Picture your typical, rabid American football fan and you have the general sense of the typical Belgian cyclocross fan. But here in the U.S., cyclocross is a fringe discipline of the fringe sport of cycling. Most of the fans of American cyclocross are cyclocross racers themselves. So our perspective is different.

Key difference #1 - The Holeshot

In the U.S., we constantly refer to the holeshot in 'cross. Simply put, the holeshot is the person who gets from the start line to the critical first turn first. The advantage of the holeshot is that you get out front early and minimize the amount of chaos that you encounter in the critical first lap of the race. Those unlucky souls who find themselves in the back of the field going into the first turn, rarely make it up to the front of the race (or Kop van de Wedstrijd if we want to brush up on our Flemish).

Key difference #2 - Heckling

Heckling is the mix of harassment and encouragement that can only truly come from someone who knows your pain and struggles. There is no equivalent to this torrent of good natured abuse anywhere else in the cyclocross world. Sure the Euro's are used to having beer thrown on them and they are able to exact retribution for this form of pure harassment on occasion, as evidenced by this at 1:01 in:

But how will they handle heckling? We shall see.

Key difference #3 - the dollar bill hand up

Yep. It's exactly what it sounds like. Sometimes you get a dollar bill hand up when you are sucking in the back, or flying off the front, or the ever insidious dollar bill hand up in a very difficult, technical part of the course where you need both hands on the bars and all of your attention focused on the task at hand. But taking the dollar bill hand up is a sign of pure style.

So welcome to American Cyclocross ladies and gentlemen! We're glad you're here, but don't think we worship the traditional way of doing things. We've had decades to bring our own style and flavor to this sport that you invented and we hope to spread that love around the world!

The shy assassin

photo by Hans095

We've had a lengthened long weekend due to the snow closure of school on Friday. This has been especially beneficial for me as it has given me a free day of recovery after my shoulder surgery on Wednesday. If anything has worked out for me in all of this it has been this bit of timing. And the fact that I have now met my out of pocket maximum for my health insurance which basically means that all injury repairs are free from now until October 15th! I kinda hope not to take advantage of that, though.

Sunday was the last World Cup event, the Gran Prix Adri van der Poel, in Hoogerheide. You can always tell when it is really cold at a European 'cross race when the riders are warming up with their custom team head buffs up over their chins and down over their foreheads so that just an oval of face peers out of the fabric and into the camera in the obligatory pre-race interviews. The course was covered in snow and a slushy mixture of mud and ice slurry that looked to be less than ideal in the traction department.

Kevin Pauwels, the shy assassin, went into this race with a strong chance to win the World Cup overall, but that was not meant to be. Pauwels is an enigmatic racer. His interviews feature him standing stock still, his mouth a tense line of barely discernible lips that moves little as he tersely and painfully answers the interviewers questions. His racing style is deceptively aggressive; always near the front and ready to take charge. His attacks are without any noticeable moment of fury. His accelerations perceptible only by the fact that other riders are clawing to hang on to his wheel. He does not look back. Ever. An untimely dropped chain took him out of the front of the race with two laps to go, just as he was making his move to take the lead. He is not an unsuccessful racer, but he is largely overlooked in the sea of Belgian cyclocross talent and he is definitely a man to watch in Louisville.

As for the women (or vrouwen if you want to brush up on your Flemish as we head to Louisville), the battle looks to be shaping up nicely with our own Katie Compton coming off of her best European season ever, winning the World Cup overall for the first time. Between Compton, Marianne Vos, Sanne Cant, and Sanne van Passen, it should be a duel. There are some other women in the mix that can definitely upset the apple cart. Women like Helen Wyman, Katerina Nash and our own Olympic bronze medalist, Georgia Gould.

Unfortunately, two French women with extensive racing experience in the US, Julie Krasniac and Caroline Mani, will not be racing as the French federation opted not to bring them despite their eligibility and their ability to pay their own expenses. This brings me to my soapbox, a soapbox built on the words of Helen Wyman. Now that the US is taking the spotlight in the world of cyclocross by hosting the 2013 World Championships, it is time for us to impact the sport on the start line and not just focus our efforts on the podium. Let us pressure the UCI to amend rule 9.2.045, which now reads:

Each federation shall be required to include the following riders in their Men Elite’s team, as long as they are in the top 50 of the UCI Cyclo-cross Classification as published after the national championships in Europe:
federation with a selection of six riders: its first three ranked riders;
federation with a selection of five riders: its first two ranked riders.

This rule shall not apply to riders who have failed to fulfill their obligations under the regulations. In the event of a dispute on this issue, it shall be the responsibility of the National Federation to decide whether the rider will be selected.

The rule should be changed by simply adding "and Women" so that it reads "Men and Women Elite's team". This wold ensure that every country brought every rider they were eligible to bring in both the Men's and Women's fields and would give equal opportunity to all Elite riders. Let's see if we can pressure the UCI to amend this rule and provide equal opportunity to Women Elite riders in cyclocross.

Brown M&M's

 Some rights reserved by Wade Brooks

I like to think of details as brown M&M's. If you aren't familiar with the story of brown M&M's, it goes back to the 1980's and the heyday of Van Halen. The story goes that Van Halen had it in their concert contracts that there could be no brown M&M's in their dressing rooms. It was always told as a way to illustrate the crazy excesses of rock stars, but that isn't the real story.

According to Diamond Dave himself, the brown M&M clause in the contract was real, but it wasn't some nitpicky excess of rock stardom. It was a way of ensuring that the contract had been read thoroughly and that all of the important details that it incorporated were truly met. This made it possible for Van Halen to go into small market venues with a full blown rock show and trust that the stage would hold the weight and the electrical system wouldn't short out or electrocute anybody. The brown M&M's were the canary in the coal mine so to speak. Walk into the dressing room and see brown M&M's, then you'd better start checking and worrying about everything because obviously, the venue hadn't read the contract thoroughly.

There are a lot of little details involved in bike mechanics. The knowledge of and attention to these little details are the difference between an okay mechanic and a trustworthy, high quality mechanic. When you start training a mechanic, you immediately begin teaching them a very precise way of doing things that includes these subtle details. Things like where the label of a tire goes when installing a tire (readable from the right side of the bike, label centered over the valve stem), the proper direction for wrapping handlebar tape (from where the bar plug goes, wrapping to the outside and finishing two inches from the stem), and eventually how a hub is properly oriented to the rim when building wheels. These and a host of other small details can have little effect on how the bike rides (except the handlebar tape wrapping - do it wrong and it'll unravel after a few rides!), but what they really are are the calling cards of an attentive, detail oriented mechanic. It is the shorthand by which mechanics can judge the quality of each other's work.

So all of this blog post preamble was actually written in my head as part of my inner monologue on Friday as I crawled around on all fours, small bike headlight in hand for illumination, looking for a set screw a 1/4 the size of a grain of rice that had fallen off the work bench as I was working on a wheel. As I crawled around finding ball bearings, presta valve nuts, and a lot of other stuff for 20 minutes, muttering curse words at myself and contemplating the utter futility of my quest, I just reminded myself what I always tell my students, "Being good is what you do when no one is looking."

I could have easily given up and carried on, the customer none the wiser to the missing miniscule set screw. But that isn't the detail oriented standard that we set for ourselves, so I pressed on. Miraculously, I found it just a few moments later, grasped it, cursed it for good measure and carried on with the job.

It's the big one, Weezy!

"Well, there's your problem..."

The ground is hard and gravity pulls you there with a relentless, gentle tug so seductive that sometimes you just give in and go with it. This crash was no seductive dance, though. This was sudden violence like a mosh pit gone awry. Speeding along. Flying through the air. Blackness. Impact. That sudden inhalation that lets you know you are alive. Sudden realization that you can't fully inhale or exhale. Pain receptors firing off all around the impact zone like the flashing lights on a control console that lets the Captain know that there are multiple serious things wrong with the ship.

But there were good moments, too. People rushing to help. The realization that you aren't dying. Being able to joke around with the EMT's that are working on you in a kind of "Aw-shucks, you don't really need to put me on a backboard, do you?" kind of way. And then everyone you know at the race coming to help you out, find your kid, get your stuff, drive your car back home, sit with you in the ER and ultimately, drag your broken body home.

The good news has come that the initial idea that I would be off of the bike for 4 months has fallen by the wayside in favor of a much shorter recovery period. The broken ribs are healing fast, the punctured lung is totally resolved and I only need to have surgery to remove the floating bit of collarbone that I broke off. Today I went for a road ride; three weeks to the day of the accident.

With surgery in a week and a half, I'm looking forward to putting this crash and the entire season of crashes behind me. I'm forgoing any and all racing or events that involve pinning a number to myself or affixing a number to my bike in any way for the entirety of 2013. I'm gonna get all of the bad mojo, juju, kharma, dharma and anything else that I must have accumulated and let it works it way out of me. Instead of racing, I plan to volunteer at the events that I have participated in as a racer and putting in time on our nascent trail building effort at the Zacks Fork trail that we have been raising funds for building.

I hope to see all of you out on the road, on the trail and maybe at a few special events that we'll be putting together at the shop this year. And always remember: Your face is not a good brake pad. I know. I've tried to brake with mine...

A little hot chocolate to end today's ride!

A linguistic analysis of a bike crash

- or A Grammar Nazi's View of Why I Crashed

Statesville CX Single Speed start. photo courtesy of Carl Pelzer

My recent Facebook status update tell's the story:

"Didn't manage to get a grip on the bike as I dismounted for the first set of barriers, managing to turn the holeshot into a head shot as I hit the second barrier with the side of my head. Fortunately, everyone avoided my barrier tango. I popped up pretty quickly in my best "I'm a tough as nails 'cross racer" only to have my legs buckle underneath me. Got up, got the chain back on the bike and fina

lly got my head screwed on straight about 5 minutes later. Managed to work my way up to tenth despite a second fall (tangle with a junior rider) and having another junior try to keep me from passing in the twisty turn sections. Word to that particular junior - experience and treachery will always win out over youthful exuberance. There will be elbows..."

The long and short of it is that I knocked myself silly. I suspect that my teammate Jack Brown's assessment that my shoulder looked dislocated might be accurate given the way it feels two days later. All I know is that once the stars and bluebirds stopped circling my head, I got the chain back on my bike and put the metaphorical bit between my teeth and started riding hard to make some chicken salad out of the chicken sh*t I'd served myself.

Seeing my Facebook status update, my friend Chris, the erstwhile English and Italian instructor, hit me on chat. This was our conversation:

Chris Harris

how're you feeling, dude?
This chat is no longer off the record

---

Shawn

sore

---

Chris Harris

you're supposed to go OVER the barrier, not into it. we gotta work on your prepositional fluency

---

Shawn

but you go INTO the barrier section, where you go OVER the barriers
so you're saying my prepositional fluency caused my crash

---

Chris Harris

it's a fact of analytic-language linguistics that the last step in fluency is prepositional mastery. fluency comes from the latin 'fluere,' to flow.
so yeah. the words don't flow right, neither do you.

---

Shawn

so linguistics is the ultimate tool for mastery of anything

---

Chris Harris

i see an academic article in this
well, yeah. it is
or not

---

Shawn

well I definitely lacked flow. Kind of a sickening feeling as you hurtle towards the barrier, pull up on the bike and realize it isn't coming with your hand

---

Chris Harris

i have evidence to back me up
you said: "but you go INTO the barrier section"
actually, you go IN TO the barrier section
INTO is an entirely different sense. they're not interchangeable
you go IN TO a building. going into it means, well, you walk or drive right into it
so your brain, in confusing INTO and IN TO, caused neuromuscular confusion

---

Shawn

so I said what I did, rather than what I meant to say (and do)

---

Chris Harris

= crash
yes. neuromuscular confusion is not what you want when any sort of hurtling is involved
separate the prepositions and you won't separate skin, teeth, shoulders from their rightful positions


First off, let me say that I am a big fan of the idea that we create our own reality through our subjective perception of it. I place a great deal of stock in the concept of Positive Visualization. It along with Active Rest, forms my complete training philosophy (aka The Smoke and Mirrors Plan). So I'm not going to dismiss the notion that my grammatical confusion caused cognitive dissonance that resulted in my crash.

It is sad to note that I seem to ride really, really well when starting DFL. A crash and mild concussion just add a little more giddyup to the mix. So now, along with the need to focus on my positive visualization of the perfect start (I'm not BSing about this. I picture everyone riding out of my way and me flowing to the front. Works every time. Weird.), but now I must maintain proper grammar in the running monologue in my head that goes on the entire race. It's all terribly exhausting...

slow motion train wreck...

 Some rights reserved by gage and desoto

I've stayed silent but riveted through the entire slow motion train wreck that the cycling world has been involved in since last Monday's USADA bombshell. Unless you've been living under a rock on another planet in a solar system other than ours, I'm sure you have not only heard about Lance Armstrong being stripped of all his results from 1998 on (including all his Tour de France results). This means that Greg Lemond is back to being the only American to ever win the Tour de France.

My thoughts are less about Armstrong now that the stories and evidence have been slowly coming out. I'm more bummed about the notion that the apogee of American participation in the European peloton, an invasion trajectory that began with a few riders in the '80's and gained momentum with the 7-Eleven team, Lemond, and Andy Hampsten, was all smoke and mirrors. The dominance of Motorola which begat US Postal which begat Discovery and spun off a host of American contenders on teams like Telekom, Phonak, CSC, Gerolsteiner and myriad other Pro Tour teams now falls under the asterisk of doping. Save your "everyone was doing it so it was a level playing field" argument, I'm not interested nor buying that circular logic. What started as upstart Americans beating the Europeans at their own game by doing things differently became the greatest organized systematic doping effort that sports has ever seen. In fact, what we watched seems less like a sporting event and more like professional wrestling - where favorites were chosen and results were all but predetermined in the pursuit of generating commercial revenue from an American public hungry for the ultimate resurrection story of the modern era.

For a while, I have thought that the last thing I would want my son to aspire to be was a professional cyclist. It isn't hubris to think he could follow that path given the genes he has most likely received from his mother, a former professional mountain bike racer who retired as drugs were really taking hold in the cycling world. I see him ride with abandon, race the kid's races with a seriousness that leaves plenty of room for fun and I hope that he always holds on to that spirit of joy that cycling helps us all find. In the end, there isn't a Santa Claus or an Easter Bunny or mythical heroes on bikes, there are just people with all the faults and foibles that come with being human. I still thrill at the effort and the triumph of sheer will over the sinew and flesh that holds us back; the grimaces and masks of pain that we all show the world when we push ourselves beyond our limits. For a chosen few, this mean achieving greatness, be it in mud, over cobblestones, flying tucked in wind cheating positions, or careening elbow to elbow at 60km/h towards an arbitrary line painted on pavement. But for the rest of us, we still can feel the elation of knowing that we did our best with what we have, and to me, that is drug enough.

An ode to slogging uphill

It's Bridge to Bridge time again. Like a passionate love affair with a person that is slightly crazy, The Bridge can enthrall you and punish you to such a degree that it never quite leaves you in peace. I've done the ride four times; never two years in a row. My hats off to those who ride it year after year - you are stronger men and women than I.

To all of you that are riding the 2012 edition of The Bridge to Bridge Incredible Challenge: may you pedal without resistance, may you climb like you have wings, and may you reach the top of Grandfather Mtn. filled with a sense of ecstasy, elation, and accomplishment. Be safe, be fast, be efficient, and be one with the bike. Tomorrow is the day you accomplish a great and wonderful thing - you get the joy of breaking through your limits and doing more than you think you are capable of doing!

This Old Mouth - one week later

It's been a week since I decided to give up mountain biking for full contact root-kissing in the middle of the Dark Mtn. mountain bike race. The scrapes and cuts on my face have healed, my lip looks nice and normal, and my two erstwhile teeth seem to have settled down and accepted their fate that they will never successfully escape my mouth. I'm staring down the barrel of two root canals to help insure their permanence. Stay tuned for all the gory highlights! All in all, given how I looked last week, I think this week is a remarkable 180 degree difference.

BEFORE

AFTER

I suffered a minor setback at the hands of my friend and business partner, Jeff, on Saturday. I was working on an old bike for a customer who has earned the nickname "Raleigh Guy". It isn't all that original, but it serves as a warning call when someone sees him appear on the sidewalk in front of the shop. Much like meerkats and prairie dogs, bike shop employees utilize a primitive system of warning calls to aid bike mechanics in their daily survival. This doesn't get deployed willy-nilly, but is reserved for those circumstances when a "heads up" to the mechanics is warranted.

I was working on the old center pull brakes on the bike, something which we just don't have the necessary sets of brake arm clamps and older style 3rd hand tools to work on since they haven't been common since the '70's. I'm familiar with the tools that were made to work on them having worked in shops that were old enough to still have them, so I had fashioned some workarounds that were adequate. But due to the decrepitude of the bike, things just weren't going smoothly and an extra pair of hands was warranted. I asked Jeff to pull one of the brake cables tight while I held the calipers firmly against the rim. Jeff pulled mightily as I held on and with a lightning quick jolt - his clenched hand slipped and shot with astonishing accuracy into my upper lip and teeth.

Jeff let out an expletive or two as I doubled over, first with the shock of having been hit in the exact spot where my lip was stitched and my two teeth had been reimplanted, followed by the pain of being hit in that sensitive and healing area. Jeff fully expected to see me spit those teeth out (again), such was the force of the blow, but my beauty will not be held back! All is well despite Jeff's best effort to the contrary and I remain firmly on the road to recovery.

Today on This Old Mouth

This liquid diet thing is not too bad, but trying to eat solid food is kind of a drag. It is a weird act to work the food into my mouth, past the enormous upper lip, and into the back of my mouth for the molars to take care of business. I finally got to eat some solid food last night. I made ground turkey Shepherd's Pie and I was gonna eat some of it come hell or high water.

Yesterday, my mission was to try to get in to see the oral surgeon, Dr. Stigall, to see about getting an implant inserted in the socket of my missing tooth before it collapsed. A few phone calls involving the obtaining of an appointment in Boone at 1:30, arrangement with my Dad to skip one of his community college classes to drive me up to Boone and back (thanks Dad!) and then a phone call telling me how much I was expected to pay (up front) in order to have the procedure done IF they decided to do it today.

I got to the office on time, waited a not unreasonable time period, got a panoramic x-ray ("bite-right-here-with-your-front teeth-oooooohhhhh-as-best-you-can) and then sat in a chair and waited. Dr. Stigall came in, took a giant needle and began injecting my gums and the roof of my mouth with anesthetic. I've had about 20 injections of anesthesia in my gums and roof of my mouth in the last two days and I think 7 or 8 of those was yesterday's visit.

After waiting a bit for my mouth to get numb, giving me a couple of more injections for good measure, Dr. Stigall came in and got to drilling. He drilled a hole about 2 inches to 2 feet deep into the tooth socket and up into my jaw. He then took what looked like the cotter pin of an old style ashtabula crankset and inserted it into the hole. Apparently, this little piece functions like the expander wedge you put in a carbon steerer tube as he turned something on it and it began to expand and wedge into the hole he had drilled. He then took some little thing and screwed it into the wedge. I assume this is where the new tooth will eventually go.

I'm wondering if they can make me a variety of teeth that I can take off and put on as the mood strikes me, or if I should just go gold tooth and be done with it...

Your face is not a good brake pad

I intended to have fun today. The plan was to race the singlespeed class at the Dark Mountain XC race, see what kind of [lack of] fitness I had, not take things too seriously and just have some fun. Despite a good start, I pretty quickly got the message from the engine room that the red line had been surpassed and that an emergency shut down was imminent if I didn't throttle back a bit. Cool, I can do that. I mean this is for fun and all.

I have ridden Dark Mountain a lot. I've ridden it in the rain, in the dark, when I felt good, when I felt bad, when I wondered why the hell I was riding a mountain bike, and just about every other permutation of external and internal conditions possible. I've crashed there. Nothing major - just the usual scrapes and bruises. That sudden lightning bolt of pain mixed with shock and surprise that leads to a moment of lingering on the deck, contemplating all of the choices that you have made in your life that has led to you hitting that tree (or root, or rock...), but nothing like my little adventure today.

Post ER, pre emergency dentist/orthodontist visit

Dark Mountain is rooty, to say the least, and as I went through a nice section of roots on a descent at a nice pace, I suddenly found myself pile driving my face into a root with a briskness that shocked and surprised me.

The rider behind me said, "Are you ok?"

I pushed myself up on my hands, the leaves and dirt covered with a dark red splatter worthy of a Dexter opening scene and a large, curving tooth lying whole on the ground in front of me.

"No. I'm not ok."

He asked me if I wanted him to stay with me, or go get help and I asked him to go get help. I never got his name, don't remember what team uniform he was in, but let this be my thanks to him. Thank you for taking off to get help.

Then a Cycles de Oro rider named David asked if I wanted him to stay with me as he stopped a few minutes later. I told him no, but he insisted. I asked him to help me find my teeth. I'd found the one immediately when I crashed, but since that time I had determined that I had lost 3 and only found 1. In between racers coming down the trail, David looked for my other two missing teeth.

We're gonna find these teeth," he said.

He found one and pointed to it so I could pick it up and drop it into my water bottle with its brother. We found my two front teeth, but couldn't find the other one. I figured two out of three isn't bad, so we just sat there waiting for help to arrive.

Soon after, another rider, Tyler, stopped and David asked if I minded him jumping back in the race while Tyler waited with me. "Sure," I said, "Thanks for waiting with me." Shortly after that, Kelly a rider for Cycle Therapy, stopped to see if he could help. "I'm a doctor," he said and then hastily added, "Well, a pathologist to be exact."

I ran through what had happened with these guys and then posed the idea that we start hiking out to meet up with whatever help was coming to speed up the process of getting me to the ER. All I could think about was the clock ticking on reinserting my teeth and the chance of success dwindled with time.

We met up with the cat on the 4 wheeler, who took me to the EMT's at the race start. They got pissed because I had been walking, but I reiterated that I had not lost consciousness and did not have a concussion. I've had plenty of both. I can diagnosis and ignore those symptoms with the best of them and I assure you this was not the case. This time.

I asked to go to Caldwell Memorial, banking on the odds being pretty good that someone I know would be working in the ER. Sure enough, Dr. Diana McClinton came to my stretcher, gave me a bit of a stern look and I knew I was gonna be just fine. The first order of business was to get my teeth back in. By this time, my mom (a dental hygienist) was there and was pretty up front about wanting to help get those teeth put back in right. She cleaned 'em up and popped them back in. They made a popping sensation, a lot like fitting two lego pieces together. The she started cleaning up my lip which had been split open from just below my nose all the way down. She trimmed off the ragged edges, removed a couple of pieces of the root and then started stitching me up. She cleaned up the rest of me and sent me on my way. Thanks, Di!

The dentist my mom works for, Dr. Hollar, along with the local orthodontist, Dr. Shell, met us at Dr. Hollar's office and proceeded to splint my teeth to help keep the ones that had been reinserted in the right place and to give them the best chance of healing properly. Thank you Dr. Hollar and Dr. Shell for taking the time to take care of me on a Sunday.

I'm sure I will be sore as hell tomorrow, but today I want to thank everyone who helped me out. This was one of my worst wrecks (not the worst, but definitely in the top 5) and I don't know how I would have fared without so many people taking the time to help me out on the trail, in the ER, and in their office. I'm glad my mom was around today to help save my teeth. I'm thankful to have a wife and child who can take me looking like a horror show in stride and make the best of a bad situation. Thanks to to the Greens for helping me make some sense of communicating with Golden when I wasn't sure where she was.

Always remember, kids: your face is not a good brake pad.

"That was awesome!"

We headed up to ride Rocky Knob in Boone yesterday to do some mountain biking and escape the heat and humidity a bit. Jeff, Cecilio, Peter, and Jeremiah joined Golden, Owen, and I. I took off with the guys to show them the trail since it was their first time there, while G and O rode to the Beginner Skills Area about midway through the lower loop.

After riding all of the open sections of trail, we joined up with G and O. G took off with everyone to do another loop of the trails, while I took Owen up to the Intermediate Skills Area at the midway point of the Middle Earth Trail. A combination of walking and riding got us up the climb and to the skills area.

The Intermediate Skills Area at Rocky Knob is all about riding balance beams or "skinnies". The area is a short loop that flows downhill and turns to a slight uphill to bring you back to the start. The slight downhill section is where the skinnies are located to give you easy momentum into them. The first skinny ramps up from ground level to about a foot off the ground. The second skinny is about 40 feet long, is about a foot off the ground the whole way, has a distinctive turn or kink to it, and ends with three six inch drops from one skinny to another lower one until you hit the ground. All of the skinnies are about 8-10 inches wide and are made from small diameter trees with squared off topsides with traction grooves chainsawed into them.

After a couple of tries, Owen rode the first skinny completely, flowed into a large hip bridge (a kind of curving packing pallet looking bridge around a tree), smoothly rode the little pump jumps and attempted to ride onto the last skinny which is embedded in the ground. With his confidence built up, he started eyeballing the 40 ft. long skinny. He got off his bike and walked the length of the long skinny, explaining how he needed to ride each part and allowed me to give him a couple of pieces of advice (not that that is worth much - I had never ridden anything like these skills stunts until the last time we were at Rocky Knob!). He asked me to ride the skinny to let him see what it looked like to ride it. Thankfully, I rode the thing without coming off anywhere and it seemed much easier than the last time I rode it.

After a couple of failed attempts with a few ride offs of the skinny onto the ground a foot below and one big step off when he jumped free of the bike as it fell sideways, he figured out his speed and approach. Owen hit the skinny with a little more speed than his previous attempts and zipped right across it, made the kink turn smoothly, and then took the three drop offs no problem. A huge "That was AWESOME!" was expelled as he went around the bend and out of sight. (ed. note - yes, my kid talks with a lot of '80's surfer/skater slang with his favorite adjectives being "awesome" and "rad") My phone had died, so I didn't get the chance to take pictures of this, which is kind of a good thing because I got to be 100% present for it without a screen interrupting the reality of the event.

I see cycling as a metaphor for a lot of things in life and it is becoming a prominent part of my parenting style, too. What I saw yesterday was a kid confronting a challenge; a pretty daunting challenge. I saw him plan out how to tackle the problem. I saw him try several times, falling and crashing each time. And then I got to see the pure, smiling joy that came with his successfully riding the beam. As a teacher and as an employer, the thing that I find most lacking in students and people is resiliency. Resilience allows you to try and fail and try again. It is a fundamental key to success in life, I feel and I hope that days like yesterday with Owen show that we are being successful with teaching him this fundamental skill.

Shocking news from the FUCI

(Antwerp, Belgium) - In a shocking press conference this morning, Johan Verbagel, the head of the International Fantasy Cycling Union, announced that the results of the 2012 Luna Cycles Fantasy Tour de France presented by Uncle Chuck's New School Pregreaser were nullified and that the entire race was being wiped from the records.

Citing issues in the race, Mr. Verbagel declared, "It was so boring. Did you watch the whole thing? No? Neither did we." The specter of doping within the pro peloton raised its head once again when a reporter asked if what we saw this year was truly a "clean" Tour.

"Look," Mr. Verbagel responded sharply, "allegations of doping by riders is outside the purview of the FUCI, but I strongly believe that a massive and coordinated doping campaign was mounted to drug every viewer of this year's Tour in order to keep them watching this boring, travesty of a stage race. We assure you that we will get to the bottom of this. Thank you."

Done

Wiggins. Froome. Nibali. The only thing I'm happy about is Tommy Voeckler in the maillot a pois and Peter Sagan in the maillot vert on the final podium. Guts and grimaces, panache and balls will get you far in life.

Nothing left but a hopefully interesting dash to the line on the Champs-Elysees. I can't believe I'm going to have to console myself with the Vuelta until cyclocross season starts...

Home

I'm finally home. No more jet setting, hobnobbing with bike racers, partying with young, really attractive European girls in awe of hanging out with an esteemed man of letters and learned cycling journalist such as myself. No, I'm back for some quiet time with my family. Time to recharge and replenish my mental faculties before heading out on the next great Fantasy Cycling journalism endeavor.

As much as I miss the jet-setty, hobnob-by, party times filled with decadent food, sumptuous accommodations, and generously free flowing libations, I missed being a husband and father. The young, beautiful, flirtatious European women will always be there, but my family is here.

Surprisingly, Mark Cavendish won today's stage with a zig zaggy sprint that appeared as if the portion of video in which he was in was being played at twice the speed of the bits that every other rider occupied. Quite amazing, but then the reports that his girlfriend, Peta Todd (go ahead, Google some images of her. I dare you. NSFW. You've been warned) was trying to get an autograph from Peter Sagan must have spurred him a bit. And that lead out from Wiggins, you'd be better off drafting a pole as skinny as that guy is.

Barring any great surprises, our Luna Cycles Big Deal Fantasy Tour de France presented by Uncle Chuck's New School Pregreaser, is pretty well wrapped up. Now for the mad scramble to find some cheap token to present our grand winner with in some hastily organized ceremony that is long on pomp but short on circumstance.

I'm outta here

While I waited in line to get a ticket out of here, I watched today's stage. Standing in line, eating poor quality airport food and the third degree from a security guard who found it suspicious that I was not taking home any french wine, but was taking home 50 bottles of various types of Absinthe was way more interesting than watching the Sky pair of Mantis and Twiglet make everyone else look foolish on the final climb. Froome, gesticulating wildly in an attempt to get Wiggins to follow him up to the will of Valverde for the stage win, played the role of castrati in this little opera perfectly. I'm done. A handful of melatonin and copious amounts of airline liquor should just about wipe this trip off the map of my mind for a while. I haven't been this disappointed in a Tour de France since Miguel Indurain's five robotic wins.

Sure, I'll still listen to the Tour coverage when I get home, but I won't be gripped by it. No, I've got a new bathroom remodel to paint and I see no need to sit on the edge of my seat waiting for a flash of excitement that just won't materialize. The only thing at this point that can break me out of this malaise will be Froome breaking free of the shackles of lieutenancy and actually attacking Wiggins for the yellow jersey. Short of that, or a wheelie sprint victory by Peter Sagan on the Champs-Elysees and I'm checking out. (ed. note: in all likelihood, Sagan will wheelie across the line for a sprint victory on the Champs-Elysees, so not even that will be revelatory.)

Even the Luna Cycles Big Deal Fantasy Tour de France presented by Uncle Chuck's New School Pregreaser is pretty well wrapped up at this point. There has been some slight shuffling between second and third with Team Don't Call It A Comeback moving past Team Dottatope for second place, but I predicted this yesterday. There is a minor skirmish between 4th, 5th and 6th place, but once you're out of the top 3 who will ever remember? Don't be that guy in the nursing home talking about how in 2012 you got 4th place in the Luna Cycles Big Deal Fantasy Tour de France presented by Uncle Chuck's New School Pregreaser. All anyone will care about is who the winner was and that honor will have gone to Quint Ervin and his Team SRAM Red 2012 p/b Bojangles.

I've got to go. They are calling my flight and the security guard is saying something in French about wanting to search my teeth for cavities.

Frank, Frank, Frank - Interview with a Schleck

I got a chance to sit down with Frank Schleck for an intimate, one on one interview; an exclusive for the Luna Cycles Big Deal Fantasy Tour de France presented by Uncle Chuck's New School Pregreaser - guaranteed not to cause a positive doping test provided you don't ingest or get it on bare skin.

Me: Frank, first let me say thank you for allowing me to speak with you.

Frank: You're welcome.


Me: Let me get right to the point. How the f*%k you test positive and get forced to withdraw from the Tour de France on a rest day?

Frank: I don't know, man. They say they got a positive A sample for diuretics.

Me: But seriously, Frank, why you gonna dope on a rest day when you already sucking hind teat and nothing gonna change that? What you trying to do - get a stage win?

Frank: I didn't do it, but they say they got evidence. I don't know man, I musta been poisoned or something.

Me: Well, listen man. I know you don't drink. I know this, but I'm gonna get you druuunk today. You ain't in no race. You ain't got sh*t to do...

Frank: Get outta here with that. I ain't trying to do nothing like that. I gotta start my defense preparation...

Well, that's it. I'm booking a flight and ditching this race. There is no mystery left. Wiggins, Froome, Nibali - there's your podium in Paris. Maybe somebody will do something surprising, but that slim chance isn't worth following this circus in person. The most interesting thing right now is Peter Sagan and I can watch his autographing sessions on pay-per-view in the States.

As for our Fantasy Tour, Quint Ervin looks to have this one sewn up pretty tight. I'm gonna say that Margi and Team Don't Call It A Comeback are going to overtake Jeff Welch and Team Dottatope for 2nd in Paris. As for everyone else, better start rebuilding for next year.

Welcome to Hell... I mean Pau

I don't know what the hell they farm in this part of France, but whatever devil weed they happen to pass off as a crop here is beyond horrible. I think my sinuses are packed tight with the satan spores or Lucifer's Pollen or whatever the hell is making me feel like my head is going to explode like that guy in Scanners. I'm phoning it in today, I'm not gonna lie. All I can manage is laying in bed, self-medicating with generous amounts of wine, Chartreuse and Absinthe.

Fortunately, the peloton took a pre rest day rest day once the right mix of combatants made its way into the break. The most exciting thing to happen today was Peter Sagan obliging some woman's request to autograph her breasts. Most interesting televised moment was when a British Eurosport commentator said that a particular rider would ride strong on the climbs to a certain point and then blow up "going backwards like a backwards going thing". Nice. If you haven't heard by now, some of the best Fantasy tweets of the Fantasy Tour are coming from Fantasy rider @TweeterSagan. He gets to be all Fantasy cycling hero with just 140 characters whenever he feels like it. Not like me. I have to do the hard shoe leather journalism that has marked my Fantasy career.

Tomorrow is a rest day in the Luna Cycles Big Deal Fantasy Tour de France presented by Uncle Chuck's New School Pregreaser  and I'm as ready for it as the riders. Quint Ervin and Team SRAM Red 2012 p/b Bojangle's have exerted a stranglehold on the maillot jaune, but the Pyrenees are a whole other kettle of fish and he's still got some surviving to do.  Our podium will be a lot more solidified in the next few stages, so we should see the real performances by those men hoping not to be also rans soon or not at all.

whoops

So there I am, rocking in the free world. Flying down the road on the back of an AG2R motorcycle (I don't even know what the hell AG2R is and seriously: brown shorts?) in today's stage. I have the perfect view of everything. Seriously. I could see how frightened Gilbert, Casar and Co. were of Sagan. I could see Sagan texting while he chased them up the mountain. I had race radio crackling in the headphones. It was a Tour de France overload. Then there was something about a flat. And then another flat. And then another flat. Then something about tacks in the road.

Tacks. Crap. Johnny V. (you know, Johnathon Vaughters, we're pretty tight now) from Garmin had asked me to put up some flyers for him of this side project garage punk/ euro trash band thing he's got going on and since I was gonna be cruising on the moto today, I though "sure". The tack thing kinda made me wonder and I checked my messenger bag and sure enough, I was missing all of my tacks for putting up the flyers. I gotta give a big "My Bad!" to everyone affected today, especially Cadel Evans. Seriously though, Cadel, three flats? Surely, you're looking at the road when you're riding, right? Some of that was on you man...

As far as the Luna Cycles Big Deal Fantasy Tour de France presented by Uncle Chuck's New School Pregreaser goes, Quint Ervin has put a stranglehold on the maillot jaune tighter than that necessary to choke all those chickens his team dines on every night. With over 400 points separating Team SRAM Red 2012 p/b Bojangle's from second place Team Dottatope, I can't see where the weak point is. Short of Bradley Wiggins spontaneously combusting in the next couple of stages, Ervin may prove to be the Miguel Indurain of the Fantasy Cycling world.

As for this reporter's favorite, Mas Fuerte, these plucky underdogs need a few more strong performances from their French riders to cause the upset they are hoping for. Good on ya, Sandy Casar, for putting on such a strong performance today! Now get, Samuel Dumoulin and David MyCooties up there and Mas Fuerte might just have a shot at this thing.

Now you've done it

Greipel vs. Sagan is becoming an interesting rivalry at this year's Tour. The Gorilla one upped the Tourminator in a close squeaker after a bunch of French guys threw themselves on the pyre of martyrdom that always accompanies a Bastille Day stage. Sagan sits pretty comfortably in the maillot vert following yesterday's bit of argey-bargey with Matt Goss. Greipel had to have an intervention from his directeur sportif following a threatening text message he sent to a Vaconsoleil sprinter who had the temerity to enter the Lotto sprint train without paying for a ticket. The message, "Don't ever get in my train again, you amateur" was emphasized with an attempt by Greipel to ride the Vaconsoleil rider off the road in an intermediate spring. If you are willing to go toe to toe with Greipel, you had better be a card carrying badass.

Some shifts in the top 5 of the Luna Cycles Big Deal Fantasy Tour de France presented by Uncle Chuck's Pregreaser. With Courtney Morse and Team Supersonic Pelotonic falling to 6th place, yours truly with Team Mas Fuerte leapfrogs Jim "Legs" Lehman into 5th place. Drunken Grant Dunstan now sits vulnerably in 4th, a tiny lead on the bare chested warriors of Mas Fuerte all the fragile protection he can muster. His one edge is the inclusion of Bradley Wiggins on his team, but another good day by Greipel and Mas Fuerte may find itself knocking on the door of the podium.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Whaa?

Look. We all phoned it in today. Except for David Millar and some of the other guys in the break that took like 4 hours out of the peloton, but all the rest of us - total rest day. Let's face it. Last day in the Alps, but really more of a transition day leading into the Pyrenees. There were something like 60 miles of downhill on this stage and the peloton still toodled along without a care in the world.

I bagged the whole thing, found a nice French restaurant (they are everywhere here) and blew my per diem on a huge meal, gallons of wine, and a variety sampler of every kind of Chartreuse that this lovely region and its Carthusian monks have been producing 250 years. I woke up later to find out that I had missed Matthew Goss cutting across Peter Sagan in a two-up sprint from the field in a mano a machina battle.

Clearly, Goss fears Sagan and has to resort to deliberately blocking him to beat him in the sprint. But what would happen if Sagan did not have the presence of mind to ease up? I envision the Tourminator cleaving Goss into two neat halves in his burst to the line. What would that victory salute look like, I wonder...

Little change to our Luna Cycles Big Deal Fantasy Tour de France presented by Uncle Chuck's New School Pregreaser. No, I think we've got to see if anybody grows a pair in the Pyrenees and gets all "Death or Glory" on Wiggins and Team Sky or if they've resigned themselves to riding like little suckers hoping for third. Truly awful that Wiggins' TdF hero is Miguel Indurain, the man who served up 5 excruciatingly dull Tour victories and made the bulk of the '90s a write off for enjoying the Grand Tours. We need some Badger Hinault style riding where the attacks come frequently and relentlessly, like a prize fighter trying to punch his way out of the corner. If Evans, Nibali, and Vandenbrouke (not to mention Van Garderen and Menchov) will just lay out there over a couple of stages instead of just waiting for one moment of one penultimate stage, we may just have a race on our hands. Otherwise, it's just a parade lap from here on out.