Canis Terribilis

Just last week a new friend of mine, a hardened bicycle tourist, offered me a can of Halt to carry along on my trip. It's just pepper spray, but it's got a picture of a dog on it instead of the usual man with a sock over his head. It claims to be the #1 dog deterrent used by the postal service.

Now I don't have a problem spraying animals with pepper spray. I even sprayed my sister when she was 12. ("Hey, Kim, you hold this napkin up on that side of the room, and I'll spray this stuff at it like a target. It'll be fun.") However, if I'm on a bike and I'm fast, is there really any reason to spray a mean dog in the face with this stuff? Can't I just outrun him? Can't I Dog Whisper him into passivity?

I don't have an answer to those questions. I do have a story:

About a year ago I was riding home along the main north-south trail in town. It was dark, and there were no people around. I was passing through an area that was somewhat wooded. I had just turned a corner on the trail when a giant four-footed black creature moved out of the trees and onto the trail beside me. It was so big that my mind immediately said "bear." More specifically "grizzly bear." I was looking up at it. And it appeared literally beside me. My light didn't do any good, it was shining forward. And anyway, I wasn't thinking about figuring out what exactly it was at that point. I knew it was interested in my thighs. So I sprinted. I remember taking 3 pedal strokes, and then I was going 30mph. I just barely swerved in time to avoid a fence at the next turn in the trail. Finally I looked back and saw that it was a little smaller than I had first thought. Okay, a lot smaller. It was clearly a dog. But it was chasing me at full gallop. I pedaled anaerobically for another quarter mile and lost him.

This little fellow may have just wanted a late night companion to play fetch with, or he may after all have been interested in my thighs. But whatever the situation, the point of the story is that I could have hit the fence. Or I could have been exhausted at the end of an 80mi day. Or it could have been a grizzly bear. Seriously, it could have. So carrying this little can of pepper spray might make the difference. Or maybe the point of the story is that my mind doesn't actually work when it's scared. In which case, I might end up Halt-ing grandma if I carry that stuff around. Grandma, someone has to make a sacrifice.

Leaving Town

I spent the better part of today biking from one school district headquarters to another. I had left my car at the shop for some final repairs, and I was trying to drop off a little form which had to be filled out by the payroll departments of all the school districts and charter schools I subbed at over the last year. I met a lot of secretaries with names like Mary Lou, efficient names, names that scowl. I walked a lot of halls, and was told many times that I was in the wrong building. And the whole while I was worrying about the 10 other things I still have to get done before I pull up anchor from my home of almost 3 years.

This is what preparing to leave feels like. I wish it felt like death or birth or something big. But largely it feels like sorting mail, making phone calls, getting a hundred forms notarized in a hundred different offices, organizing and reorganizing. I wish I had more time for more important things than administrivia.

I've certainly had some poignant goodbyes already, and there are more to come. CO Springs has become a really great chapter in my life, dense with good and interesting characters. I got to say goodbye over coffee to Moses, my earliest room mate, last week. I had a send-off with my REI coworkers at a local bar called Kinfolks, where Andrew (my shop boss) and his blues prodigy child slipped in a verse of Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited for me. I learned how to make tabouli and stuffed grape leaves from Melanie and then grilled out with her and my 3 other best CO friends on Sunday. Last night I rode home from work with Greg, my touring friend and supplier of many bike parts and other things, and said goodbye to him and his wife and daughter and dog. I'm having a fairwell dinner tonight with a group of guys I've met with on wednesday nights ever since I moved here. And the Allises, good family friends, are cooking me a meal tomorrow night.

So here's to CO Springs. Or rather the people I know and love here.

The bicycle, John Henry

I finally finished building my touring bicycle, the end of last week. I've christened him John Henry. Here he is above; oh, and there I am. I was originally going to post a sexy close-up. But I felt a sudden too-close kinship with the guys who drive their pimped-out sports cars up and down the avenue, using their rear-view mirrors mostly to check their hair. Who wants to see a close-up of a bike? Well I do, actually. Especially if it's my hair. Bike, I mean. But in this case what you're getting, reader, is better: the bike AND its rider.


In the bike shop there is a term: frankenbike. A frankenbike's parts have been dug up from various graveyards. Frankenbikes are impossible to tune, because nothing in the drivetrain is really compatible. You often find hose-clamps on a frankenbike. John Henry is the quintessential specimen of a frankenbike.

The front end of the drivetrain is comprised of a crankset and derailleur from a 1989 Dura-Ace road racing group, which my friend, Greg, gave to me. "1989" and "road racing" translate to painfully high gearing. To compensate, I have a 9spd cassette in the rear that ranges from 11 to 34 teeth, providing me the lowest gearing I can buy. The low gear feels good, but it'll still be a haul up some of those steep passes. The rear derailleur is an XT mountain bike derailleur given to me by Dan. I needed the mountain derailleur's long pulley cage to be able to wrap up all the extra chain for such a huge range of gears. The crankset rotates on a super-long spindle Shimano bottom bracket that our shop was trying to get rid of for $5. I had to piece together two 9spd SRAM chains to get enough links to handle all the gear combinations and to reach across the extra-long touring chainstays. The shifters are also from Greg's Dura-Ace group. They're down-tube shifters, something that went out of style when animal print sweatshirts came in. And the rear shifter is for an 8spd cassette. To make that compatible with my 9spd cassette, I've switched it to friction shifting. That means it doesn't click into position. It just glides through all of the gears. Picture a trumpet player trying to play a trombone. Or a guitarist trying to play an upright bass. Or Niels Bohr trying to imagine continuous atomic energy states. What I'm saying is it's very difficult to operate a friction shifter.

The front rack was part of a $50 deal for a set of panniers that a co-worker of mine designed and built in the 80s. It attaches to my front fork with two u-bolts that stick way too far out. I'm afraid after all of this, I'm going to have to employ hose-clamps to keep it on.