This blog post from Mike Vallely re-kindled the flame. It is a good read. Though if you know nothing of skateboarding, it may not have relevance.

I’ve been disappointed too many times by too many people and am so bored with people using/choosing their “brand” over their friendships or using the classic: “it is not personal, it is just business” line to make it acceptable to behave like a shit-bag. I am over it. Way over it.

I’m far enough removed from most of these folks now that it might feel good to get it all out; like Vallely dishes on Powell in his post.

Mike Vallely was a hero of sorts when I was a kid growing up skateboarding, it is crazy to read his experiences from 20 something years ago in such a condensed and raw, personal way.

It bums me out to see people with genuinely positive intentions get manipulated and burned. That is something that hits home. Having gone into so many friendships, partnerships and business relationships with positive (and likely naive) goals and communication only to come out of them completely manipulated.

I’ve made it a point in my life to never, ever put business above my friendships. You have to make some tough calls as a small business owner but, I believe you can do good, honest business without fucking people over.

There is something in the way I am wired that does not want to acquiesce to the bullshit in the world. I don’t believe you have to play the game like all of the other motherfuckers play the game. So I’m going to give it to you straight and expect to get the same respect back. No lies, no manipulation.

It often baffles me that people can’t or don’t see through the fake, slimy veneer some people exist in. Yet the longer I live, the more I see the lying bastards growing bigger and bigger. It is a bro-fest out there and well… I am just not interested in being a bro. I want more out of life, more out of people. I don’t do the superficial, I want it raw and real.

(the attack Vos puts down at :40 epitomizes my feeling on attacking. Don’t attack when it is easy, attack when it hurts the most. SO AWESOME!)

Y’know, I probably would have won a few more bike races in my life if I was a bigger asshole on the bike. Yet as many fucking disappointments (and there have been so many) as I have suffered on the bike, deep in the core of my being, I would not be able to live with myself if I played the game dirty.

I truly believe in honesty, hard work, dedication, lots of passion and dreaming big. Bigger than I probably should.

It is how I approach cycling, my business, my lovers and my friends.

Wow. For the first blog post in months, I did not expect this… not writing to toot my own horn here, Vallely’s post elicited an emotional response and I reacted.

BOOM!

End rant.

Now watch this video of some BMX kid getting all Zef and taking it to the next level. His landings are so clean it makes me want to cry.

John’s email below describes what happened from an unbiased (not a friend of mine and not my words here) point of view:

“Here’s what I saw yesterday. You can quote me as a 20 year ‘cross racing
veteran.

John McCaffrey”

Again, not my words. I definitely do not think that anyone should have sat up and waited for me post-crash. It just would have been pretty easy not to create a dangerous situation in the first place. Bike races should not be decided by who can run into you the hardest. (though they often are)

I am into full-on aggressive racing but, particularly at these local races with lots of lapped riders, safe and conscious racing. There are hundreds of other racers on the course at the same time as the elite riders. And not all of them are going to feel safe or comfortable getting passed at speed. I pride myself on being as courteous as possible to the lapped traffic while passing and then getting back on with my own race without being a danger or menace to the other riders.

That said, I don’t see much of a difference between something being unintentional and riding with complete disregard for another rider’s safety.

I’ve never protested any race result before, even with punches thrown at me and riders trying to push me off my bike during a race. While I still disagree with it, I absolutely respect the decision (a warning for dangerous riding) that Chief Referee Terri Camp and the OBRA officials came to after hearing my protest.

I’m not angry anymore… I took it all out on the single speeders.

I just do.

And, hell yes they fit into your Lazer helmet! PRO style!

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Last week I wrapped up my final big block of training miles for cx season. And this week was a “rest” week. Putting that in quotes cause I did very little resting. c’est la vie, ma vida loca, etc, etc.

There was so much amazing that happened this week, and I am just now catching a breather and able to sit down and write a little bit out.

CHECK OUT MY NEW KIT!! Press release coming right up!! Just in time for CX Vegas!!

Some more links to photos from the first GPMC race of the year:

Whoa. Looks like Flickr just automatically puts them up on the site. Weird. I had just listed text-links for you to click on… well, that is rad.

Anyways, a million things to do: write up a press release, change the sponsors on my website, do some crunches.

CX Vegas is next Wednesday and it is going to hurt, like really really really hurt. I’ve got no speed in these legs yet.

Make sure to plan on coming out to dinner after the race with me! 11pm next Wednesday in Vegas! More details TBA!

My pal Adam (pro cyclist, coach) re-tweeted this video (from Boston his home), some one else had originally posted to Twitter with the comment: “critical mass: like a guy beating his wife to get her respect. they’re not cyclists; they’re morons.”

While offensive, I completely agree with the sentiment. Taking over a busy intersection and riding in a way that no cyclist would ever do regularly without being caught up in the mob mentality + breaking very basic rules of the road? What the fuck is the point of creating a traffic jam with bicycles?! To demonstrate that bicycles, just like cars, can create a traffic jam? That bicycles can frustrate and piss people off just like cars can?

There is a point to Critical Mass. I’m not claiming to be in a position to define it. When I regularly participated in Critical Mass in the late 90′s in San Francisco, it was an urgent, organic, action. 15 years ago, there was shitty bicycle infrastructure, minimal bike lanes and cyclists did not have a voice. We broke laws, ran lights, blocked intersections. Got our bikes run over, got in fights with drivers, got beat up by the police. I was part of a crew of riders that led Critical Mass up and onto the Bay Bridge (which ended up with a bunch of people getting arrested and pummeled by the cops). I participated in Critical Mass for years in the Bay Area, NYC, Los Angeles and finally in Portland, Oregon.

Critical Mass means a lot of things to a lot of different people. I don’t agree with all of them.

Now, someone on Twitter wants to press the issue, there are some exchanges between them, Adam and I. With Adam and I saying basically the same thing.

That we do not condone shitty, dangerous, illegal and inconsiderate behavior on the roads from cyclists and drivers alike. Both are bad, dangerous and not productive. Critical Mass, club rides, unsanctioned races, group rides, whatever. If you are breaking laws and riding dangerously, that sucks. It gives all cyclists a bad reputation and does nothing to help improve the perception of bicycles. Riding in circles blocking an intersection during Critical Mass is moronic, while fun and empowering (I’ve done it myself), not a single driver stuck in traffic behind that is thinking positive thoughts about bicyclists. It is just not productive. Sure, keep telling yourself it fosters cycling community, and ignore how many enemies your are making with the people you really need to foster community with: non-cyclists.

The final straw for me was the response: “bike/ped commuters die more than 10/day in US. Reaction manifests in crit mass & other ways. Have empathy.”

Have fucking empathy?

I’ve had people who were friends, lovers, co-workers, team-mates and countless acquaintances killed while cycling. By cars. Killed by cars hitting them. They are dead. I’ll never hear their voices, never hold their hands, never see them smile again.

When I was a bike messenger, I saw, with my own fucking eyes, a bike commuter crushed by a semi in downtown San Francisco making a wide right hand turn. I heard her scream before she died. (the driver was devastated, he was just doing his job, driving slow and safe, used his signals and was obeying the law %100, the cyclist was not paying attention and tried to pass on the right, I saw it with my own eyes)

I watched as a car hit and plowed over a commuter right in front of my bike shop here in Portland. Crushed.

Nothing I could do to save any of my friends, any of those people I’ve seen die.

What did I do after they died? Did I go to Critical Mass? No. I went to their memorials, I went to their fucking funerals. I consoled their partners and friends.

And you want to spout statistics at me? You want to assume that I do not have empathy? That I have no experience with Critical Mass, with protests, with activism and with being a bicycle commuter? That I am just some privileged PRO bike racer, without a clue and with no real connection to the average cyclist? That I am not run off the road, screamed at, threatened and have shit thrown at me everyday, sometimes several times a day when I am out on my bike?

Back to the original point: I still think Critical Mass riding in circles blocking an intersection is moronic. That is less actual activism and more like a parade/party. Try to explain the positive connection between that kind of riding, and people that are killed by cars; to the drivers sitting in that traffic jam just trying to get home or to work. That kind of activism is short-sighted, divisive and quickly creates enemies, not allies.

I still loathe inconsiderate, illegal and dangerous behavior by drivers and cyclists alike.

Critical Mass does not in itself create safer roads or foster improved riding conditions and safety. Get involved in your city’s Bicycle Association, government, infrastructure or urban planning. Do something tangible to improve road safety versus putting so much value on what has fundamentally become a parade.

Not that there is anything wrong with parades!

For Adam:

Jesus. Can Parlee do no wrong? Dropping amazing bomb after amazing bomb!

This is completely unreal. Yet, it is very, very real.

I’ve been riding Shimano Di2 for 3 years. It is flawless and proven. Wins races, gets power washed daily, crashed, beaten up and ridden into the ground. Still works perfectly. I don’t have 10 bikes and an endless supply of replacement parts like a PRO team. I’ve got a couple of groups and I’ve been racing on one of the Di2 groups from the start. Through snow, ice, Belgian sand, Japanese mud, Las Vegas’ summer heat. No bullshit, it works.

How do you better such a solid platform? Oh right, improve the User Interface. Or just blow the UI apart and re-think it.

…and with this development, Skynet is just that much closer to dominating us. Well shit, at least our new electronic overlords will have precise bicycle shifting.

Hats off to Parlee and Prolly.

(haters will hate. I bet there are still some of you out there moaning about the development of the clipless pedal)

I strongly encourage the use of leg warmers vs. knee warmers. I’ll even accept leg warmers OVER the shorts vs. knee warmers or bib knickers any day.

You all know the rule. Keep the legs completely covered until it is over 20c/68f. Unless you are racing, then of course you slather your legs with Mad Alchemy Molly Cameron edition embrocation. Look at the pain on my face… oh the suffering!

More absurd than the video below is the pre-road season cock sizing. Well check out my watts! Just kidding, I don’t have many of those right now. Yet, I keep breaking powermeters… which means something, right? Really awesome was finally hearing about my local cycling hero tearing the legs off of a bunch of super models out on a bike ride and not telling anyone about it!

My goal for this road season is to out smart everyone else… As I am certainly not going to be out-watting anyone out there.

This happens often when there is a lot on my mind. And there is a lot on my mind. I just can’t sleep. I stay up late thinking, trying to distract my mind with Sci-Fi novels. I toss and turn all night and wake up at odd hours. I would not call myself distracted and, if anything, I am focused, feeling balanced and on top of the typical-for-Molly life and workload.

There is a world of wants and needs in front of me. And, history shows, I am one to seize the moment and make it happen. But this week and, this morning is one of those… “yo!” (to myself) “whats the point of it all?” Sometimes I feel like I am banging my head against a wall trying to make amazing things materialize and become reality.

I spoke with my pal (and coach) Adam Myerson last night for the first time in months and it was like a 30 minute re-cap of my summer and autumn up to this point. After we got off the phone, I was like, whoa. It is a miracle I’ve made it this far, this year has been completely nuts! This was followed by hours of looking at flights to try and race UCI cyclocross in North Carolina this weekend. ha! I’m a glutton for suffering.

And now here I am. 10 minutes before a meeting and wondering what the hell kinda trouble I am going to get myself into in the next few days, weeks and months. There is a lot of beauty in this world. Beautiful things to create and beautiful things to experience.

I can’t stop myself from doing everything full-on.

I’m back and, I have no idea where to begin. Life has been such a whirlwind and, I am thinking about a lot of stuff. There always is a lot on my mind, work, cycling, work, racing, work. Work.

I lead a charmed life. Truly.

I really need to catch up and take a breath from Japan, Los Angeles and the whirlwind that has been my cx season so far. But here I am, late on a Friday night at Portland Bicycle Studio catching up on work and emails and procrastinating heading home.

The fog is heavy and thick in Portland right now. Which is unusual for my little town.

It is romantic. Chilly, cold. You can tell the holiday season is approaching.