Bike Racing Team

Here’s the latest installment of Kiko’s Tale, because I haven’t posted anything in a while. He’s back, our hombre duro de las bicilcletas, aand he’s going to peek into another world today. More observations of work in NYC, and not the kind for people who go to college. There is some recreation here too, and the kind for the Manhattan-Types. There’s more the pipeline, though if I don’t start getting some feedback… (It’s hard to keep going without hits and feedback, of course it is possible that it sucks.)

And of course, if you want to start from the beginning, go here.

The team of a certain Manhattan Bike shop, with their matching Blue and Gold kits that had passed them with a series of smirks eight faces long on the way out of the city had to work harder than they ever had to catch them on the way back across the golf course at the border of Queens. They figured it was ‘cause they were tired, in need of nourishment in the form of the food-like-stuff the team provided in little bottles and foil packets. They had no idea that this was the raw debut of something new in cycling, this was Kiko, unleashed.

Team Manhattan, the Blue and Gold Line, did catch them after about a mile of perfect drafting and flawless transitions of the lead. It was actually, were you there to watch, a superior act of teamwork: they looked like an iridescent blue and gold zipper with each rider taking his turn until he was completely shot and then falling back and catching onto the end of the line in perfect time and harmony. They had never, even I the race out at the old air strip Floyd Bennett Field where the exposure to the wind made teamwork paramount in their victory, worked so well together. At that race it was enough to clearly, convincingly, win, out here in their weekly “leave Manhattan” practice it was barely enough to reel in a guy in commercial togs and one in jeans. Had Marcal, the captain, thought to ask them to join it would have been a coup, instead their smirks just rode back to where Kiko had left the bike with the basket locked up.

The End of Kiko’s Patron (Reflections Back to Queens)

We went and got the kids helmets for their bikes yesterday  Lennox rode her training wheel bike all the way to the bike shop in woodside and back.   Not bad for a pink-made-in-china-confection under a five year old: at least two miles. Another great meal at La Flor Cafe.

Here’s the latest installment of Kiko’s Tale, the last that Mike will be dominating for a while. Kiko will be back soon, but I’ve got to set up the bike racing, which I’m still waiting to hear feedback on. If you ride, formally, with clubs and packs check this for realism and send me a line.  Today in my writing I had Kiko meet a new friend who will flesh out delivery culture, you can expect to see Kevin the Chinese delivery guy in a few days or a week.   And of course, if you want to start from the beginning, go here.

It was one of those bikes that make you worry about the guy who brings you your pizza as he rides off on it.  Mike, taking his food back into his apartment thought about how the bike was bought: the owner goes to Target or Wall-Mart and buys the snazziest looking bike on display, without any help from either a sales person who knows about bikes or the kids –no, men– who will ride them.  “If it has springs the pizza will be cushioned,” he tells himself as he buys two or three bikes in boxes and brings them back to the shop for the busboy who’ll ride it to assemble (without instructions in Spanish, or Chinese, [Mandarin or Cantonese] or Bengali, or Korean). 

Sandwiching the crates in the back of his SUV (whose gas guzzling got him to buy the bikes in the first place) in direct disobedience of the warning instructions on the side would be the last time that this man had to lift them, Mike thought.  Did the owner notice the suspension of his truck cringe under just three of these heavy bikes?  Did he realize that Pedro and Pablo and Juan would ride the same distance as the Tour de France on these bikes before they disintegrated?  Did he realize that he was buying, essentially, disposable bikes?

Snapping out of his reverie he thought about more of the details of the rider.  The bike couldn’t have weighed less than 35 pounds, without the basket.  I mean, he had a chain around his waist that must have weighed 10 pounds.  Mike did a quick inventory of the delivery guy and figured with clothes, bike, basket, and whatever was in the bag in the basket, he couldn’t have been freighting any less than 50 pounds.  Fifty pounds of gear, and chains and sprockets for riding the bike through suburban bike lanes, on a frame that flexed like a Mariachi’s accordion, and he beat me up the hill. 

On his rides from Queens to meet the Manhattan boys in Central Park he worked on his technique, warming up and practicing his aero positioning. He knew it was less efficient going up the hill, but holding it as he climbed helped him to focus on his breathing, heart-rate and cadence.  Mike knew he was in perfect position hunched over the bars, elbows back cutting through the morning breeze without wavering in spite of his 90rpm.  He went through a mental checklist, and everything he had done to soundly thrash the pack in Central Park, he had done climbing the bridge out of Queens.  And yet the delivery guy had served him, passed him like a statue on a pedestal.  Fuck!  He thought of this guy riding past him all the way home.  It was about 7 now, what was the guy doing?  Bringing Spanish omelets to early rising (and lazy) apartment dwellers in Manhattan?  FUCK, beaten up a hill by a guy in street clothes, my a guy who rides in bike that doubles the weight of my throwaway tandem that I got when I was dating Clare: FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!

KIko’s Patron (Reindeer Games II)

Yesterday I bought the kids used bikes off of Craigslist (and of course it rained on them last night).  Now I have to get helmets and training wheels.  My bike is in the shop too.  I also had the pleasure of the second installment of Dr. Dustin Shin’s (DDS) second installment of my latest root canal.  Jheesh, not only did it hurt, a lot, but after the second shot of Novocaine I was numb from my  forehead to my throat.  You could have pierced my ear without my noticing.

Here’s the latest installment. I tried to use some dialog with an accent, not my strong suit, let me know how it sounded.  If you ride, formally, with clubs and packs check this for realism and send me a line.  And of course, if you want to start from the beginning, go here.

When they were all chatting for a few minutes, planning their next rides and strategies for upcoming races around the fountain at 90^th Street Frantz gave mike some credit “you vere vailing up de hill after the Lasker Pool the last three laps. Man, how you keep us going up hill iss great.”  Wiping the half expelled snot off of his nose on the back of his team-logo glove he continued “how do you pull so hard up a hill after leading us for two miles?”

“I guess I just got a spotted jersey in my heart,” Mike, embarrassed but proud, clipped out in his Queens accent.  “of course you know that I climb the bridge to get here every morning, and I climb it again to get back afterwards.”  Thinking, “that’s gotta be 130 feet of climbing  each way, with no traffic and it’s pretty steep, I dunno, I guess a 4% grade going back to Queens.”  Mike stared off across the lake thinking about the Spanish guy on the delivery bike who passed him with a basket like he was standing still. He thought that he must have been taking it easy, and his damaged pride probably fueled him up the hills in the park today. 

Frantz noticed his wistfulness in Mike’s stare amid the chatting, bragging and prancing of the pack there before 6 in the morning.  They had had a good ride, beaten their usual times by a lot, and the pack was feeling good, tearing apart the ride lap-by-lap, climb-by-climb and according to each transition from leader to leader.  Mike usually enjoyed this red meat and busted chops with the guys, but could only think about the knobby tires on the bouncing bike that had beaten him earlier.  It seemed impossible that someone without toe-clips, in jeans, a cheap leather jacket and on a bike built by Chinese slave labor could have passed him where he was usually strongest.

“Vhat gives Mikee?” asked Frantz.  “Vhy are you zo qviet, ve vouldn’t have broke our record iff you did not conquer zhe mountains vith uss hanging onto your vheel zhose lasst two laps.  Zhesus, ve dropped Teddy coming up to the finissh line on the lasst lap: if there vere a fork in the road he’d be drinking by himself now” the blonde German said looking slyly at Theodore as he clipped off the light stuck to the back of his jersey.  The light had, stuck between Juan Valdez and his Burro had made the bean-picker look like Diogenes looking for an honest man.

Kiko’s Patron II (Reindeer Games)

 On Sunday (two days ago) we went to Coney Island.  We had a blast, though I was grumpy at first because it took us a long time to get there from Scott’s house.  We ate, then we tried to leave but had to buy shoes since Lennox’s Crocs were too small.  So we ended up buying each of the kids a pair of new beach shoes.

 

Here’s the latest installment, though I’m getting long winded, and distracted by bike racing, my real fear is that this shows my bias towards Anglos. If you ride, formally, with clubs and packs check this for realism and send me a line.  And of course, if you want to start from the beginning, go here.

At thirty Mike had become a sort of domestique for the guys on his club because he has the strength to pull but not the stamina or speed to win sprints afterwards.  He was sad about his diminished skills, tough he trained harder than anyone else on the team.  The other guys just fell out of bed from around the park and rode a few laps to keep their pack together.  Mike was the only one who didn’t live near the Central Park, or even in Manhattan.  Three times a week he’d ride in from Rego Park before dawn as the Russians all over his neighborhood who spoke Farsi stocked their stainless steel stands for the day’s coffee, donut, egg sandwich and gyro dispersal.  They’d look at him in his lycra Café de Columbia kit in yellow, red and blue with the matching helmet cover like he’d landed from another planet.  One guy, Grisha, whose stand was in his driveway right next to the service entrance of Mike’s building had noticed that he had different bikes.  “Today you will lead the pack,” he knowingly chided every other day or so; usually when Mike took out his carbon fiber bike with the pursuit geometry that made him really look space aged.

The ride, along Queens Boulevard before dawn, was fast and dangerous.  The service road was a staging area for jaywalkers, while the six middle lanes were a highway with stop-lights that worked like the banderillas that picadors use to rile bulls before the fight: the drivers were resentful, tired and angry because there was a city going on outside of their cars.  Mike always imagined that the cars were bought with some perfect ideal of an empty California road before them, while they were driven in the rat-maze of Queens as an evil psychological experiment.  This made the ride to Manhattan a 100% focus affair, where his senses had to work overtime in the dark on the Boulevard of Death.  This hyperawareness flowed out to his body and he always rode hardest here: fast, silent, aggressive. 

So when he joined the pack of Manhattanites, in the rolling hills of park before the dawn jogger infestation, there was no stress. Though he could always beat them up a hill, and could lead most of the time, he didn’t have the interpersonal competitiveness of the Manhattan professionals with whom he rode.  His life lacked the structure that the college educated reindeer games foisted upon the officegnomes who used this as a high-cost stress reliever that could be boasted about around the water cooler: “…eighteen miles around the park before dawn.”  It impressed the coworkers, but Mike did five miles before and five miles afterwards in a state of prey-like awareness of the outer-borough traffic.

Kiko’s Patron

Here’s the latest installment, though I’m getting long winded, and distracted by bike racing, my real fear is that this shows my bias towards Anglos. If you ride, formally, with clubs and packs check this for realism and send me a line.  And of course, if you want to start from the beginning, go here.

The man on the bridge with the tight clothes who rode earnestly up the bridge before dawn, wasn’t in a hurry to tell his Manhattan club about the guy on the bouncy bike who passed him in the darkness over the East River. He rode his older bike, a classic Reynolds Raleigh with a Campagnolo grupo, a bike that a serious cyclist of the 1970s might have ridden. At 30 Mike was becoming as much a hobbyist as a bike racer, his wins becoming more and more infrequent. But, generally speaking, he was in excellent shape and was rarely passed by other bicycles.

He met the rest of this morning’s pack on the hill above the bronze cougar on Central Park Drive East where the races start and end. George, the alpha rider in their club had set this as the place to meet because Mike would always beat him up every hill and if they started atop a hill there’d be one less place for him not to shine. As they waited for the rest of the guys they made small talk about their commutes to Central Park as they unwrapped Mylar covered treats to fuel their laps this morning. Careful to fold the wrappers up and put them in their rear pockets in keeping with their idea of themselves as environmental warriors, they complained about the taste of the various nostrums of Goo, chewy power bars and crumbly Cliff Bars (because salt was, of course, the magic ingredient).

The buildings on the east side of the park had started to grow halos in the minutes before dawn as they set off in the pack. It was agreed that they would stay together for the first three laps, working on drafting and their cohesion as a “pack.” George, to try to wash the tar of primadona off his kit, led for the entire first lap, though they all knew that Mike could have taken them up the hills much more quickly. As he followed with his wheel six inches off of George’s, not passing to keep the peace in the pack, he kept thinking about the kid with the basket. George’s alpha status was contingent on beating, soundly and humiliatingly, at least once a ride each of the other men on his team. He had been riding harder on the bridge than he was here, even accounting for the fact that he was drafting off of George’s tight ass. His specialty was hills and to have been passed near the summit of the Queensboro Bridge by a guy on a dual suspension delivery bike with a basket was surprising and a little humiliating.