Supply List for Winter

Cold-weather riding in Minnesota means dressing in the proper clothes.  It's not that the clothes make the cyclist, unless you are Homovelofashionus,
in which you ride only for the cool outfits and accouterment available.  It's that winter necessitates the clothes for the cyclist.

I may be riding until the snow sticks, at which time I will be hanging the commute up until spring.  Until then, proper clothing becomes an

Charity Time!

It's that time of year when we open our wallets or purses and give to those who are less fortunate than us.  Soon we won't have to worry about giving, as the government will properly allocate all of our money to the best recipients, but until then, we need to give.
My beautiful and brilliant wife and copy editor likes to give money for animals.  I find that difficult to understand as animals don't have wallets to put money in, nor can they go to the store and buy food for the lack of communicative skills and opposable thumbs.
 That being said, I'm sure she means well.  I like to help the poor kids.  My favorite is the charity Free Bikes For Kids.  Bikes are a great idea, and give poor kids

I Have Become One of Those People

It's been a good bike year.  I bought a commuter bike.  I rode the MS 150.  I got a locker at work with access to showers for those hot days.  I've ridden to work so often that I now prefer it over driving to work.  Like I said, it's been a good bike year.  One thing that has changed for me is that whenever I have some place to go, I try to determine if I can ride my bike there.

Oh Fat Guy - Where have you been?

You are probably wondering why I've not posted since June.  Or you're not because you didn't even realize I haven't posted in 4 months.  I could say I fell, hit my head and got amnesia, but that didn't happen. I could say that I became discouraged because I only have 10 followers, but that wouldn't be true. Well, I would like more followers but I haven't lost heart over it.  You are not going to believe me when I tell you this, but my terrific prose and Lilekian wit (Jame Lileks: writer and real smart dude) was not me.  You see, I'm a functioning idiot.  I can't string 2 sentences together without completely destroying all the grammer rules of the English language.  I rely on my beautiful and brilliant wife, who not only is perfect in her use of the English language, but is it's sole protector who delivers swift and horrifying justice to those who stray from it's well-defined and documented rules. (Such as: in the previous sentence, "well-defined" needed a hyphen.) See, without her all you would get from me is a bunch of jumbled thoughts that lead to no real ... uh, something ... SQUIRREL!  

My beautiful and brilliabnt wife would copy edit all my posts before publishing them.  I would sit there and listen to her type, delete and retype almost complete sentences, and I convinced myself that she would have an easier time editing Trigg Palin's blog, if'n he had a blog.  So I talked myself out of blogging.  I have several posts from the summer that I never asked her to edit, but was too scared to post without the once-over by Grammo, protector of the written word.  So I put my keyboard down and walked away.

I've decided to continue my blogging with Cynthia's help.  I'm no longer embarrassed by my ignorance.  She and I are like Martel 'Too Sweet' Gordone in Penitentiary II, back and badder than ever!  

Mechanicals, starvation and the promise of a hotdog

The MS150 was one week away and I hadn't logged over 40 miles on a single outing. So I decided to get in 60 to 70 miles. Got a partner to ride with me, Mike Kampwirth a young man on the Sigh Yoga MS150 team. Inspired by Sarah Neumeier's epic ride on Friday from South Minneapolis to Stillwater,

Serial Bike Killer

I've been riding well, my knee is improving as my quads are getting stronger. I've been following a conditioning routine and things are looking up. So much so, I decided to

What a difference a commitment makes

Two weeks ago I was concerned that, like last year, I was ending my quest before it got started. I was concerned I wasn't on the bike enough, that the frequency needed to be increasing, not going down. Two weeks ago I believed that the path to fit was an ever-increasing number of rides,