Before I end up using these on a project bike…

I have a pair of 22mm FMB cotton Criterium tyres for sale.

First $200 USD gets them shipped in the continental US!

Removeable valve cores, latex inner tubes, cotton sidewall, very thin rubber tread as shown on his site.

248 grams each!

I cut the SHIT out of my legs shaving in a hurry yester-morning. I was running late; I had a date with Matt and Saska to watch DiLuca embarrass every other bike racer in Italy.

And I badly needed to con Matt in to making me an espresso on his sweet little Breville.

I’ve had far too busy weeks recently. Barely riding my bike, racing here and there, working, hiring and recovering from being sick. Story of my life, no?

I received a sweet package in the mail the day before and figured it would be a good time to try out this exciting gift.

Winston’s Knickers.

The tubular tyre has been a fascination for me since I learned about them. I still get excited When I make orders from Francois at FMB, I’ll send a little care package along, some coffee beans, some local flavor.

Imagine my surprise when a package arrived from new friends bearing something similar: home made Embrocation from Mary in Louisville! (or rather Mary’s BF)

I took the time to take the embrocation into the garage and lovingly rest it upon my moto. I inspected the aroma and texture.

Then applied.

I was off to the local training crit. It was windy; very windy for Portland and looking like a spring rain would hit us.

The embrocation was perfect for the brisk windy conditions we raced in, it kept me taken care of during the race and did not sting the shit out of my raw, bloodied legs.

I can’t say I did the embrocation any justice with my mediocre riding in the crit…

Thanks Mary!

Hooking each other up with gear and creating and putting good energy back out there is what it is all about.

Oh, this.

Besides having an interest in cyclocross, Vernor spends almost as much time traveling as I do! We have been out of touch and on the go this year. I ran in to him for all of 5 minutes at Sea Otter before having to run off and put more bikes together!

Long way from freezing our asses off in Tielt-Winge 3 years ago!

there was a road race yesterday that I started in Silverton, Oregon.

Some local PRO talent was in town and put the screws to the rest of us hacks. The racing was hot and besides giving the race to the first breakaway that went, I felt pretty crummy the whole time. I started trying to heckle people into chasing. Which kinda worked!

There was a little crash near the last lap and I put a hole in my tyre while riding around the carnage. I rode a little bit further on the flat tyre, as the follow/wheel car was busy dealing with the poor kid who broke his collarbone.

It was hot, the field was rolling away.

“I guess I am done.”

Quite the anticlimactic end to a brutal little race.

If I could do it again, I would have chased Mark Blackwelder down and jumped in the creek with him.

This is kinda my daily routine, wake up, sprint around the car a few times. Worth watching the whole video for the last 5 seconds.

bike racers. sponsorship. teams.

I threw my hands in the air: “man, I am maxed out. I sold everything I had left to sell to barely afford to go to Europe last season. And now I’m in debt. Instead of starting the cyclocross race season with money on my credit card, I’ll be starting my race season trying to pay down my credit card!”

The dilemma. I’ve gone over this year after year. My heart is in the small, the hand built, the local.

priceless:

The latest Embrocation cycling journal will be in stock in a couple days.

Hott white-sex PRO bars and stems in my hands too. yikes.

I wrote this post a year ago and got a lot of shit about it.

And today, I read about a near-fatal accident on the very bridge I was complaining about at the bottom of my post.

That 2 minutes of my commute is the worst. (on nice days and in the summer particularly) I’ve even taken to changing my commute on sunny days to the Burnside bridge just to avoid the douche bags that can’t seem to slow down a little and buzz slower riders and pedestrians on the Hawthorne. Witnessing this kind of behavior daily is appalling and now some one ends up in the hospital because of it.

I wrote “slow down” and some readers took that as me being a pretentious jerk.

I spend a lot of time outside of the insular cycling world. Interacting with people who are just normal folks and are completely freaked out by how “crazy” cyclists are on the road. These are not people who hate bicycles. They are not even people who resent bicycles, they just get freaked out when they have no idea what someone on a bicycle is going to do around them when they are driving, walking, jogging or otherwise.

My heart goes out to the victim in this case. I fly off the handle once in a while and the self-righteous attitude of some people on their bikes is one of the things that triggers it. Bikes are liberating, yes. But with liberation should not come entitlement.

I’m the slowest commuter out there and I’m sick of other riders giving cyclists a bad reputation with amateur moves like this.

End rant. again.