Clean.
During those brief, magical times during a ride when my legs are ticking over smoothly, I think to myself, "clean."
It's like having your poorly-maintained 1972 Dodge Dart tuned up perfectly by an expert mechanic to pass an emissions test, instead of randomly tweaking the carburetor's mixture screw until the raw fuel smell goes away. It may not last long, but for a little while it's running about as efficiently as it can.
Lance and Co used to call them "no chain days", but that was probably just the EPO talking. I just think of them as times when all of the pork fat and poor life choices are momentarily flushed out of my blood system and I get a glimpse of what my clean-living friends are going on about when they're blabbering on about vegan this or paleo that. Sooner or later that blog o' mistakes clogging up the plumbing is probably going to break free and stop my heart, but hopefully I'll be riding my bike and will go to my eternal punishment riding an endorphin rush.
For me, "clean" works as well as any other description for the sensation.
The other day I was looking at the pile of bikes in my garage, and "clean" wasn't exactly the word that sprang to mind. Usually I'll have one filthy bike at the end of fall, abused while I wrung as much riding as I possibly could from the season before the snow fell. The chain will be black with grunge so thick and dark the lights will dim as you wheel it into the room. The frame's tubing will be splattered will all sorts of mud and substances that you dare not name or attempt to identify. The wheels will sport a polka-dot pattern of dirt and chain oil from hastily-applied chain lube. The bar tape will be more salt than cork. When spring approaches, it will be torn down and rebuilt in preparation for more abuse. My faithful Russian titanium road bike usually gets this sort of treatment, because it's the best-suited for the abuse, saving my dainty carbon fiber bikes for the five or six sunny days we get a summer.
This year, thanks to my hitting the deck last summer and subsequently not being able to ride and wrench as much as I normally do, I have a whole lot of dirty and otherwise crunchy bikes to deal with. The problem is, I have no space to work on them. The garage, never a wide-open workspace, is piled higher than ever with all sorts of projects and stuff. Building materials from the RV renovation and boxes of old children's books compete with the family's impressive collection of bikes. The lighting in the room, which normally can be barely characterized as sub-standard, is further hampered by my various bikes and wheelsets hanging from the ceiling. The only well-lit and relatively clean space in the garage is the trainer dungeon, but even that is as packed as possible while still permitting room for the trainer.
Yeah, I really need to add that Moots to the pile of poorly-maintained bikes.
"Clean" doesn't really describe my world at the moment, but I'm hoping I can find a brief moment of it soon.
It's like having your poorly-maintained 1972 Dodge Dart tuned up perfectly by an expert mechanic to pass an emissions test, instead of randomly tweaking the carburetor's mixture screw until the raw fuel smell goes away. It may not last long, but for a little while it's running about as efficiently as it can.
Lance and Co used to call them "no chain days", but that was probably just the EPO talking. I just think of them as times when all of the pork fat and poor life choices are momentarily flushed out of my blood system and I get a glimpse of what my clean-living friends are going on about when they're blabbering on about vegan this or paleo that. Sooner or later that blog o' mistakes clogging up the plumbing is probably going to break free and stop my heart, but hopefully I'll be riding my bike and will go to my eternal punishment riding an endorphin rush.
For me, "clean" works as well as any other description for the sensation.
The other day I was looking at the pile of bikes in my garage, and "clean" wasn't exactly the word that sprang to mind. Usually I'll have one filthy bike at the end of fall, abused while I wrung as much riding as I possibly could from the season before the snow fell. The chain will be black with grunge so thick and dark the lights will dim as you wheel it into the room. The frame's tubing will be splattered will all sorts of mud and substances that you dare not name or attempt to identify. The wheels will sport a polka-dot pattern of dirt and chain oil from hastily-applied chain lube. The bar tape will be more salt than cork. When spring approaches, it will be torn down and rebuilt in preparation for more abuse. My faithful Russian titanium road bike usually gets this sort of treatment, because it's the best-suited for the abuse, saving my dainty carbon fiber bikes for the five or six sunny days we get a summer.
This year, thanks to my hitting the deck last summer and subsequently not being able to ride and wrench as much as I normally do, I have a whole lot of dirty and otherwise crunchy bikes to deal with. The problem is, I have no space to work on them. The garage, never a wide-open workspace, is piled higher than ever with all sorts of projects and stuff. Building materials from the RV renovation and boxes of old children's books compete with the family's impressive collection of bikes. The lighting in the room, which normally can be barely characterized as sub-standard, is further hampered by my various bikes and wheelsets hanging from the ceiling. The only well-lit and relatively clean space in the garage is the trainer dungeon, but even that is as packed as possible while still permitting room for the trainer.
Yeah, I really need to add that Moots to the pile of poorly-maintained bikes.
"Clean" doesn't really describe my world at the moment, but I'm hoping I can find a brief moment of it soon.
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