Coffee Caste 

"In this rare image of a 17th-century coffee-house, wigged men sit on benches with newspapers and cups of coffee, while a maid serves behind the bar." the British Library.

On a sunny, refreshingly crisp Saturday morning when I had just successfully completed a simple bit of grown-up financial business, I decided to treat myself to a milky coffee and maybe a sweet pastry. I stopped at a pleasant Starbucks on the corner which had a great window seat for people watching. Thanks to Thorstein Veblen I began to wonder if I was implicated in a plague of societal inequity. Thanks Thorstein.

There’s a strange class politics to coffee that everyone recognizes but no one talks about. I guess that’s because no one has to. We all know and understand this market driven social experiment. I like to think I’m a wonderful magnanimous egalitarian who always only thinks the best of his fellow man. If you’re laughing right know, then you obviously know me well. Of course I’m not that person. I don’t feel too bad about it. Not even Ghandi was that kind of person.
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unbound 

I hate my backpack. I hate all backpacks. I even hate the name. Back. Pack. I hate this entire category of luggage. There was a moment when I thought what a great idea a “No-strap Backback” was, until I realized it was a terrible idea that was also an April Fools prank. Even the most ergonomically designed pack is putting stress on your shoulders and spine (even “strapless” ones). I hate the sweatiness of a pack covering a large portion of my back. What’s the point of wearing breathable fabric outerwear if most of it is covered with a heavy nylon unbreathable pack stuffed with junk?

Of course, it’s not really about the bag itself. Living in a city where you leave your house for hours at a time and don’t have a car to secure personal affects means you have to carry everything you might need with you. I’m fascinated by the “Persona” project where an artist asks to photograph a person and the belongings they deem essential enough to carry with them everyday (a surprising number of people carry two phones and knives - big knives?!) If I emptied out my backpack you’d find an asthma inhaler, a handful of ibuprofen, maybe a protein bar, a couple of notebooks, multiple pens, a phone cable and a backup battery to recharge my phone on the go. Probably the oddest things I carry are part of a repair kit for my bike, namely a wrench and a pump (a compact pump but a pump nonetheless).
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The Hibernator's Handbook 

This is exactly the kind of thing I want to avoid

2017 didn’t end well for me. In fact, I began the holiday season looking up from my belly and ended the year looking down at it. Less than a week before Christmas, I was riding hard, standing on the pedals, when one of my bike’s crank arms gave way beneath me. Luckily, my ribs broke my fall. I spent the entirety of Christmas trying not to move, but now more than anything I have to try to move which is a tricky business when I’ve decided under no circumstances should I go outside.

Having no bike to ride as transport and with the temperatures well in the crispy -20 to -30s I began to feel a hibernation coming on. If bears and other beasties can do it, why can’t I? I’m old enough to not be drawn out by any kind “cold shaming” that accuses you of not being Canadian if you can’t face the cold. I have nothing to prove. I recently rode a bike 30 minutes across town in -23°C just to go skating for another 30 minutes then ride another 30 minutes back again. Did I mention the temperature? Did I mention the blistering wind as violent as any shark attack? Did I mention the difficulty tying my skates after all my fingers had frozen then broken off? I ride throughout the winter devising stratagems and tactics such as doubling of socks and gloves while employing a variety of balaclavas, scarves and hats in such a combination that not even I know where my face begins or ends. No, I have nothing to prove and it now seems appropriate to withdraw from the world and enter a prolonged state of torpor.
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Another Breath Before Sleep 

“I’m a coach driver letting his team of horses run.”

I leave the theatre accelerated. Past the stilettoed women, laughing and confident, past the coiffed young men, sneering and arrogant. I find my bike and begin to glide. I’m never sure where my late night adrenaline surge originates but it’s there. My afternoon rides home are sluggish and doleful by comparison. Whereas late at night I’m completely awake and my legs are so full of spite they feel like they might tear themselves free of my body and ride on without me. Perhaps it’s the darkness of the streets, spotlit by dim streetlights strobing beneath me which gives an illusion of speed but I feel like I am ripping over the tarmac without touching the surface at all. I slip through stymied traffic like a dry wind and all the while my legs carry me ever faster. I’m a coach driver letting his team of horses run. My back tightens while my knees pump the steel crank. Maybe it is the thick close cool night summer air that wills me to pedal so hard that I can feel the bike’s frame twist in my assured grip.

It’s these humid turbid nights when the ride starts chilly but soon enough I feel the sweat forming on my back like morning condensation on the hood of a car. At some point I break from the Entertainment District and past the valets and hotels and the city quietens and I take the side streets where the breeze through trees sounds like water lapping on a shoreline and my thin rubber tires rolling through shallow reflecting pools flit like swift flying insects buzzing by.

I’m surprised by the size and brightness of the full moon which I mistake as a streetlight above rooftops of low darkened apartments. The dank green acrid smells of laneways and all their putrid water anchors me back on earth. I dismount, unlock the gate and pour my bike through the back door with an easy fluency. I’m home, the surge ends and my energy drains away like I’m leaking blood from a huge wound. I wobble momentarily, my head swoons slightly and my hands shake from the sudden shock of stopping. The creeping sweat I was aware of before is now a deluge with my shirt and jeans sticking to my skin. I let it take its course and breathe deeply while allowing my arms to dangle lifelessly and my legs to slacken. Another breath and the tiredness of the hour sinks in. A glass of water before closing. A rinse and stretch before lying down. Another breath before sleep.

Wake from Your Sleep 

Saturday, in the parlance of our time, I got woke. That is, I became aware. I had a very full schedule so I needed to be prepared. My first priority was breakfast. This may not have done my cholesterol any favours but my customary two poached eggs with ham, cheese and toast was necessary fuel for the day ahead. I would be joining three different consecutive events. At 11 AM, I’d be doing Cycle Toronto’s “Coldest Day of the Year” Ride through the downtown to promote winter cycling, then at 12:30 PM there was the National Day of Action Protest (basically a protest against Donald Trump and Steve Bannon…) at the US Consulate, and lastly at 2 PM, an Introduction to Winter Bike Maintenance presented by Bike Sauce at a local library. The last one was primarily a show of support as I’m pretty accustomed to biking in the winter and know at least the basics of maintenance but both this library branch and the volunteers at the non-profit DIY bike shop, Bike Sauce have been good partners in our bike advocacy work.
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Dames on Frames 

#bikes #bikestagram #bicycles #bicykel #fixies #fixiestyle #fixedgear #fixied #fashion #track #city #cycle #cycling #bike #cool #singlespeed #live #time #trackbike#fixiebike #fixieporn #fixielife #fixiegirl

A photo posted by M (@krasahor) on Sep 16, 2016 at 10:39am PDT

There is something about bicycles that is immensely empowering, particularly for women. From the suffragette movement to the Ovarian-Pscyos Bicycle Brigade to the hashtag #IranianWomenLoveCycling, bikes remain an enduring symbol of female emancipation. I’m not even sure I understand it. Well, of course I don’t. I’m not a woman and I never will be (unless I’m involved in a horrible automated corn shucker accident). Thus I will never understand the sorority of the travelling pants, by which I mean cycling shorts. I won’t understand it in the same way women can’t understand male-bonding bromances. To be sure, some men can’t wrap their heads around non-sibling, non-romantic male friendship. I point to the many snickering critics who surely would deem Frodo and Sam’s relationship in the The Lord of the Rings, as one long in-the-closet gay love fest. Admittedly, the friendship is even closer in the text without the longing looks cast in the movies, but I’d wager it was based on something J.R.R. Tolkien experienced in the actual trenches with actual mates at the battle of the Somme. This is entirely beside the point. It’s not even beside it, it has totally nothing to do with it at all. The point is, ladies and gals love cycling and it allows them to seemingly bond closer when they bike together. I’m going out on a limb here, a very treacherous limb to say when I see women riding together, it seems more fun. They really look like they are having more glorious fun.

Okay okay okay okay okay - before I am immolated upon a pyre of my own words here, this has nothing to do with whether women are able to perform sport at a high level. Obviously they can. Obviously I’ve seen plenty of women, young, old, big or small, surpass my inept hijinks to know any woman or girl can outperform this particular man. It’s just, women don’t exhibit the kind of bravado or braggadocio that men do. That’s not to say it doesn’t exist. Maybe I just don’t know the female version of braggadocio even though tennis, MMA fighting, ice hockey, rugby and soccer all have female versions of aggressive, take-no-prisoners style competition. Conversely, many male athletes also perform at a high level and exhibit the sort of fraternal respect you’d like to see in sport. For some reason rowing and curling crews come to mind.
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On/In the Water 

The Donald D. Summerville Pool, image via BlogTO

A little known fact to those who don’t know Toronto is that the small collection of islands that shelter the harbour on Lake Ontario are inhabited and collectively, the islands are one of the best places to be on a hot summer day. As more and more Torontonians live in condos and apartments, more and more of them need a backyard. One thing Toronto has failed to do is maintain adequate green space for its citizens (which is why the idea of the so-called Rail Deck Park is so intriguing). A popular option for a lot of people living in the city who don’t have cottage-country-getaways is heading to the islands. A lot of people trying to get to the same place by limited means results in line-ups, and long line-ups for the city operated ferries are common. The water taxis on the waterfront are running constantly on the weekends and during the week, summer camps fill the islands with an almost midway like bustle.


View of Lake Ontario and the Toronto Islands from Corus Quay

In sixteen years I think I have been to the Toronto Islands three times. When I started biking for exercise, my main route to get out of the core was along the Lakeshore. When I lived in Parkdale, I knew multiple landmarks for doing 5, 7, 8, 10 km runs along the water. Running from Liberty Village I would experience the double sunset - run eastward and you’ll see the setting sun reflected off the downtown towers; run westward and you’ll see the actual setting sun falling behind Etobicoke and shimmering on the water. Unfortunately, my desk on the 26th floor looks north towards other taller towers, but reflected in the glazing of a new tower across from my office, I see the waterfront, Billy Bishop Airport, the Toronto Islands and the Lake beyond. I’ve come to realize how much of my happiness was dependent on the view of Lake Ontario. I also realized how close I live to the water but never experience it.
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The Last 100 Days 

Generations of kids grew up seeing this ad on the back of every comic book. Image via Comics Alliance

Sunday was day 100. Since August 1, I wanted to see how many workouts I could do in a one hundred day period. I’ve already explained why I started this before, but basically since the days of Charles Atlas ads on the back page of comics, advertisers have promised to make you a new man, in only 15 minutes a day, in just 90 days! That’s not that different from what Bowflex says now, or what researchers claim about interval training (I mean it is eerily similar).

Did I become a new man? Was my life transformed forever? Do I sleep better? Did I get all the gals? Well, not really but I did see some changes.
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Bushed 

For the last 23 days in a row, I’ve done a minimum of 30 minutes of exercise everyday. Be it running, swimming or biking I’ve forced myself to get off the couch or out of my chair and do something. I’ve surprised myself. I’ve even lost that five pounds I was trying to lose. Until yesterday, probably the hardest thing I’ve done was go for a morning swim. I’m not a morning person and I would wager that I’m still, physiologically speaking, asleep even two hours after I’m out of bed. I mean, I’m awake, I’m walking around, I’m drinking coffee or eating breakfast, but my brain is stuck in “fugue”, my heart rate and blood pressure are abysmally low, my body temperature is all wrong for a living human and I’m as prone to knocking a cup of coffee over as I am to picking it up. My eyes are open and my mind knows where I am, but my body is still asleep. It’s like the opposite of sleep-walking, more like walk-sleeping. It's not too different from lucid dreaming or a scene in Being John Malkovich. Even when I ride to work I’m sure I’ve dozed off while rolling along. That’s what made those morning swims so tough.

Yet yesterday, I think I over extended myself. I’ve felt a little guilty about not doing enough training rides and I’ve lost some of that desire I used to have to go on longer rides. Who has the time for a three or four hour ride? As I’ve added some bike intervals into my exercise I’ve also started getting out a little earlier on Sunday mornings which allows for longer, more exploratory rides.

That’s what I did on Sunday. A long ride to try and find a bicycle friendly entrance to Bronte Creek Provincial Park. I failed. Here’s the thing – I’ve done longer rides on hotter days but something about Sunday’s 120 km ride to nowhere completely sapped me. It drained my batteries. It sucked the life from me. As soon as I got home, I napped for over an hour. Then I showered and rode to Bay and Bloor to grab a steak & frites and went to a movie. During the previews I nodded off. During the film, which I enjoyed, I almost nodded off. When I got home, I started looking at e-mail, and nodded off. I decided to give in and go to bed. During my pre-sleep “floor routine” (some planks and stretches), I nodded off! I fell asleep at the foot of my bed while getting ready for bed!

Then I slept a thousand sleeps. All day at work I’ve been fighting off sleep. My legs still feel like noodles the next day. Yet I do not want my 23 day streak to end so I will drag myself home and do some kind of “recovery day” exercise. Then, I will most likely nod off.

Update: In fact I went on to run over 5 km, not in great time, but I did it and it hurt like hell. Then I did laundry and got up the following morning for a swim, making it 25 days.

You Win Some, You Lose Some, You Replace Some 

No Whiners Club, image via Brain Pickings

It’s been a hot and muggy, sweat soaked week in Hogtown (T.O., Tdot, “in the six”) and for all of my general good fortune, recently my luck ran out. Read more »

Easy Like a Sunday Morning 

5:00 AM: an alarm trickles down my ear canal. Drunkenly, I swipe it away. Ten minutes later the backup alarm hums. At this point I fight off the bedsheets and dismiss that one too. I’m standing on the other side of the bedroom with no idea how I got there. I grab the cycling shorts I’ve laid out about four hours previously, and apply generous amounts of chamois cream to the padding of the shorts like mayonnaise to a large county fair winning sandwich. Slipping the shorts on feels like wearing a soiled diaper. It’s 5:15 am on a Sunday morning and this is how I feel. Then a shirt, then “knee” warmers (which are sort of 3/4 length leg warmers), then socks which I’ve chosen for their warmth. I decide against wearing too much more because despite the 4ºC temperature outside, I will be riding about 90 km in the charity Ride for Heart and Stroke and I’d rather err on the light side. This will prove my undoing. I should’ve layered up. Always layer up.

Somehow I’m drinking coffee. A bowl of cereal I’ve warmed in the microwave is all I have time to eat. After a quick tire check, I pocket a bike pump and decide to switch to a waterproof jacket – it is a steady rain after all. By 6:10 am I’m on the bike rolling down Richmond street. The start point of the ride is close to my office which is usually a 25-30 minute ride but at 6AM on a Sunday, with nothing but green lights ahead me, I’m there in 15 minutes.

“There was no cake at all.”

My last bike ride of note was 75km on a perfect California day which did in fact include some pretty demanding hills. By comparison this 75 km should have been a cake walk. A promenade with a pastry. A stroll with a strudel. A jaunt with a jingle-berry pie. But this ride was happening about an hour earlier than my earliest eye blink, and only about 16 hours after an 8-hour cross-Atlantic flight. It was not a cake walk. There was no cake at all.
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Another Year's Orbit 

I don't care for the “selfie” genre but this accomplishment seemed to call for it.

Today I completed a couple of trips. One around the sun and another around San Francisco Bay. I’m westward in California for work this week. Going west seems like putting off the inevitable by delaying my celestial loop by three hours. As a little gift to myself I rented a bike and rode north of the city through Mill Valley (dying to use a MILF Valley pun somewhere) up to Mount Tamalpais (Mt. Tam to locals where it is a mountain biker Mecca), then down through Muir Woods and back through Sausalito to San Francisco. It wasn’t a long ride at around 65 KM but full of steep climbs and wild chicanes. Every time I glanced at my heart rate it was well into the 150s or 160s and I limped back through Canary Wharf with a cramped thigh and pretty well spent. My legs were fried on the climbs with even my triceps strained from pulling hard on the handlebars. Even my hands were sore from squeezing the brake levers to keep my speed to something controllable as I zig-zagged descents like an alpine skier. I never would’ve made the original 90 KM I had planned on doing. Despite my completely inadequate fitness I pushed on and it was one of the most satisfying and beautiful rides I’ve ever been on.

In some odd way, it made me think of my father. Not just how different we were but also how similar. I would have been 12 or 13 when my dad was the age I am now so I remember him vividly from that time. I’m certainly thinner and fitter than he was but I’m more vain too. What I wouldn’t do for a fuller head of hair like he had. If he ever had a thought about clothes, they were definitely wrong. But today I think I behaved as he would have. Stubbornly persistent and maybe even showing a bit of toughness. The only thing that got me through that ride today was determination. How many other riders passed me? Easily, I might add. Or how many asked where I had gone and said, “That’s a nice ride – with some decent climbs.” Decent? Ugh. I will add that for the most part I did not use my GPS-enabled smartphone for navigation but simply followed Dirk Gently's Zen Navigation and followed cyclists who looked like they knew where they were going. You won't end up where you were intending on going but you'll often wind up somewhere you needed to be. This led to my meeting two older guys at a 7-11 quaffing energy drinks and bananas. It turns out they lived in Berkley but were from Boston originally where they "didn't miss having 8-f**king-feet of snow." At least the mechanic at the bike shop where I rented my bike seemed mildly impressed, saying simply, “Dood… that’s a good ride, my man.” I suppose my comportment did not indicate someone set to tackle a “decent climb”.


It's remarkable what phones can do these days - though capturing this vista of the Yerba Buena Gardens and Center at night isn't one of them. The coloured lights were like a gaudy stage set beneath a turbulent early evening sky.

A benefit of a 1400-Cal workout is you can fully justify a 1400-Cal meal afterward. I had intended to go to a Mexican restaurant near Yerba Buena Gardens but it had a huge queue and I was red-lining pretty fast. Instead I went to some posh burger place which in true California fashion required a pager to let you know when your order was ready. Admittedly it was better than I had expected and they had these great in-house pickles but alas no cake. There should always be cake. So it was I was left to buy a brownie from a nearby Starbucks and retire to my room to contemplate another year’s orbit – I was so close to typing “obit” there but I’ll happily leave that for another time in the faraway future I hope.

Bike Gripe (shouldn’t, wouldn't, didn’t) 

Welcome to the high intensity sport known as Urban Cycle Commuting. Image via Flickr

Despite not having ridden my bike for pure pleasure much this summer, that doesn’t mean I haven’t been a man about town everyday on one of my bikes. The last few weekends I’ve gone for little 70+ KM sojourns, more or less trying to find a new training route without much success. Worse yet, all of this biking purely for transportation has meant I’ve tired of riding and I long for a day when some automatic device would carry me from place to place. Not like a car or a motorcycle but more like a smoothly walking leviathan who would pick me up and swaddle me until I am delivered safely where ever I need to go.

I just want to get somewhere safely. Is that so much to ask? Apparently, it is. Even streets with bike lanes are crazy. My current problem is I have to go East-West across downtown, right through the core of the city. From about Sherbourne to Spadina, it seems insanely dangerous and akin to an American Ninja obstacle course. I’ve tried every route from Dundas to Queens Quay but the combination of road conditions, speed of traffic, drivers making illegal u-turns, drivers never signalling while they turn, drivers running red lights, drivers running stop signs (actually just add “pedestrians and cyclists” to that list too), and a general overwhelming number of a-holes have created the most intimidating cycling conditions I’ve experienced in 15 years of riding in Toronto.
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My Morning Jacket

My new Showers Pass Transit Jacket

This morning it was raining a bit so even though my "ride" to work is two minutes or less, I threw on my light-weight rain jacket (it's still very hot in Toronto). I didn't bother throwing the rain cover on my knapsack.

Two minutes later, my laptop bag was soaked, my arms were drenched and my shoes soaked through. Two minutes. For two minutes it was like riding through a car wash. When I sat at my desk, I double checked three of my four weather apps, all which were reporting light rain. The amount of rain was small, the intensity would've power washed graffiti from brick walls.

“…an increasing trend in extreme events”

Light rain is not actually a concern. My beloved Castelli Leggero jacket is perfect on hot days with light rain, but that was not what I just rode in. My typical approach to wet weather has been to wear light weight, quick dry clothing; you're going to get wet but at least you can dry out quickly. But as I've grown tired of wearing trail clothing and eventually just started wearing street clothes (because let's face it, trail gear might look normal in Seattle or Ottawa but not anywhere else). That meant riding a bike with fenders and chain guard to minimize street spray and just some typical rain jacket. As I started extending my riding season, fenders and rain jacket just didn't cut it. This spring, as wet and cold as it was, I thought I had cracked this problem. Comfortable merino wool base layers,  light weight rain gear, plus a bike with fenders. But today, that "light weight rain gear" let me down. Don't get me wrong, the Leggero jacket is still the tiny perfect jacket to throw in a bag or take on a ride for just-in-case scenarios, just not for it-is-raining-like-an-Indian-monsoon type scenario.

Which is in fact, the real problem. You can read all about it in this report:
Historical Trends In Short Duration Rainfall In The Greater Toronto Area
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Just Did It 

Haruki Murakami, author and spiritual leader of runners around the world. Image via New York Times

“As we're finding out, there are a lot worse things in life that we "just have to do"…”

As Nike implores us to "just do it", I just did it. Don't know why I did it? Not sure how I did it? I did it with a nagging headache. I did it without much preparation or training. I did to forget I was wasting my vacation. I did it to not think about other things. I did it to ignore my parents' health. I did it to ignore strife in the world. I did it to avoid my grossly messy apartment. I did it to avoid taxes. I did it to avoid other people. I did it to avoid the fact there were no other people to avoid anyway. I did it to make up for wasted time, as if it wasn't just wasting time in a different way.
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Araf 

Somewhere between Hundred House and Pains Castle where sheep mingle along the road.

There is a London Transport poster that simply says "Look after your jam tart and jump on your Dick Van Dyke". Assuming it's a play on words using Cockney rhyming slang you can guess the meaning. Today I did my jam tart a right world of good after riding my Dick Van Dyke a mere 65 km.

I say 65 km but that does not do the route justice. I discovered a route that was described quite literally as a bit "lumpy" was probably the most difficult single day of riding I've ever experienced. The "lumps" would put both rides to Cape Spear and Lake Placid to shame. Tim at The Old Vicarage said there's no shame in walking. In my head I thought, "of course there is; it would be shameful". I now think differently. Let me say I have never got off a bike on a hill and walked it, until today when I probably did it 4 or 5 times. On two of those occasions I could barely push the bike up. I have no idea of the grade but at times it looked greater than 45 degrees. It would be akin to putting planks on some stairs and pushing your bike up that — for a kilometre or two.
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A Weekend in the Hot Sassy City

A pint at Bellwoods Brewery, the name of which, I do not recall.

Lately, I have been what you might call slothful. Not just lazy but practically inert. I'm not entirely to blame nor blameless either. The tumultuous weather and the resulting headaches or migraines have meant my preferred position recently has been horizontal and drugged — though I prefer the Elizabethan sounding "druggéd". Sounds romantic. As though I were an English poet recumbent on a chaise lounge incapacitated by opiates, dreaming of stately pleasure domes. But I wasn't really. In reality I lay in a sticky, bright but airless Parkdale apartment (albeit with views of sailboats on the lake). 

One problem is I gain weight like a plant absorbs carbon dioxide — very efficiently. Also, I appear to have developed a tendency for being a hermit. To counteract both weight gain and hermitage but mostly to avoid the heat of my apartment and the noise of the nearby Molson Indy car race I took a longish bike ride then attempted rehydration at Bellwoods Brewery.
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Ride On 

Just over a week ago I rode in the Ride to Conquer Cancer which benefits the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. Luckily, over 220 kilometres I didn't have a single "mechanical" and only a couple of times did I have to tell my legs to "shut up". Hopefully, this video above will give some insight on what the ride was like.

The work of the people at Princess Margaret and advancements they've made in the treatment of cancer have been remarkable but there is still a lot to be done. That's why this ride is important. That's why the money everybody gave is important.

Years ago a friend asked me if I cared about money, and I said, "Yes, yes I do."

He asked, "Why? Money can't buy you happiness? It can't buy you love?"

I knew my answer then, and I know it now. Money buys freedom. But it buys more than that. Money buys the resources we need to find new treatments and fund research. I think it was Pierre Burton who wrote about the coercion of poverty, and if funding or lack thereof is one of the things coercing how we cure a disease, that seems to be the easiest of many complex problems to solve.

The total amount raised in this year's ride was over $19 million. It's said to be the largest fundraising event in Canada. While I was enjoying myself out on the open road, I also enjoyed meeting so many other riders, some far more experienced than me, and some just starting out. It was a privilege and humbling and I'm glad I was able to do it with the help of everyone who contributed.

Thanks again, again and again.

Ready to (rain) Wear 

After 25 years of cycling wet – this is what dry cycling looks like… mostly

Let the French have their Prêt-à-Porter and their Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Let the Yanks Sing in the Rain. I for one would rather ride dry. In almost 25 years of city cycling, I've never really been happy with riding in the rain. Arriving somewhere wet sucks. I tried fenders. Still got wet. I tried head to toe Gore-Tex. Still got wet. I tried fully water proof gear. Got so sweaty I was in fact wet from the inside out.

Then I sort of gave in. You ride. You will get caught in the rain, thus you will get wet. You aren't made of sugar. Man up. Dry out. At best, wear comfortable clothing that dries more quickly.Read more »

This Thing Just Got Real…

image via Brooks England Blog

Then again, I guess it was a "Thing" all along. I've only recently started riding the distances wherein chamois cream may be considered. I have a friend who has ridden thousands of kilometres without the stuff and believes saddle sores are caused by funky riding shorts. I think the first season I rode thousands of kilometres with underwear beneath my riding shorts, which seasoned riders would think of as heresy – I think they're not wearing the right underwear. This season, I'm switching the riding shorts for riding undergarments – just like the Mormons – and I'll be wearing more regular looking shorts on top. I don't mean for training rides but on touring rides. I've been wearing the new underwear on the trainer and I have to admit, they are not as comfortable as regular riding shorts but I guess I'll eventually get used to them. I can't say riding sores have ever really been a problem but maybe I'm just not riding enough. If riding more is the only way to find out then I'm game to get my rash on! The Ride to Conquer Cancer is only 2 months away so at some point my 20 mins on the trainer will have to migrate to 5 hours on the road.