Manna from Heaven

Just 40 miles into the day, heavy rain forced me to stop turning over the pedals—welcome to Hanksville, Utah. I stayed dry in my tent and read some Doug Adams to pass the time but by nightfall, an electric light show joined the rainfall and robbed me of any sound sleep. Is this the lightning […]

Continue reading →

Wolfcreek Pass

I was a broken man by the time I crested Wolfcreek Pass Colorado, 10,857ft. Nine days and just about 1000 miles into my journey east. Both Achilles’s tendons were swollen as wide as my ankles while the attendant pain narrowed to a point and stabbed each pedal stroke with a seared flesh kind of misery. It […]

Continue reading →

Eighteen Days in October

Bleary-eyed and sore, day three saw me to Cedar City, Utah, 415 miles from where I began. The day before I sped down NV-375, the so-called Extraterrestrial Highway, with more vigor than I had originally planned. Little gray men with their invasive probes must have weighed on my psyche because I pushed the pedals with […]

Continue reading →

Squeaky Chains and Haggard Bikes

And then there is the transportation gang, often heard before they’re seen with squeaky chains propelling haggard old bikes, for whom there is no choice…or perhaps the choice is to ride or hoof it, as the bicycle is their sole means of speedy A to B. Maybe they ride to work, maybe they’re unemployed. Maybe they’re homeless, lost their […]

Continue reading →

Yes, I Wear Spandex

To another group within the group “cycling”, the club riders and racers, the bike is a recreational activity; like hunting, fishing, or…er…umm…Irish road bowling. The problem here is, seeing the bike as a pastime and the paved road a playing field has with it inherent contradictions to the motor-dominated status quo, no? As a recreational […]

Continue reading →

Rick Derringer Said So

There are times however, when I’m on my bike, that I don’t feel welcomed by others on the road. Sometimes, it goes well beyond a feeling of being unwelcome, it feels like loathing or hatred even. It feels…well…horrible. Once, a while ago, someone threw a cup of tobacco spit at me from a car window. . . at that moment, I had some hatred myself. I […]

Continue reading →

History

Heeding my…err…bike’s advice I started to snoop around, do a little research, and found the following… Early automobile history is fraught with controversy, patent disputes, and in-fighting…so wading into that soal too deep could be all-consuming, deadly and thick black bottom mud holding you fast, and still yield no actual truths. I mean, knowing how subjective any history […]

Continue reading →

The Basics

There is a war out there on the streets, a little war for sure (if there is such a thing), but a war none-the-less with it’s fair share of casualties. 2009 showed something like 630 deaths and close to 60,000 related injuries. Statistics aren’t really kept up to date on the subject on a federal […]

Continue reading →