10.10.08
Posted in blogging, gear at 6:51 pm by Administrator
Is it any wonder my bottom is sore or outright numb with streets like this? Really, here in NYC there are still cobblestoned streets, but only in lower Manhattan on the West Side and Soho and also some parts of Brooklyn by the waterfront near the old Navy docks by Red Hook. I won’t even talk about the old trolley tracks that are still embedded in the stones in Brooklyn which are evil traps that catch road tires and make you fall in front of moving cars… Uhh…maybe that’s just me. But anyway, my point being that it’s hard sometimes to get to these areas without having to roll over these stones and I feel the right seat could do the bottom good. So here is another seat that I have found, have a look:
This baby I found on the Trek site. Have a look around, it’s pretty cool. I may not be a fan of the bikes, but the gear is alright. This seat specifically is a Bontrager Race Lite Saddle, unisex from what I can see.
I don’t know why, but I prefer gear for men more than I do for women. I find that the fit of men’s gear suits me (as I am a whopping five feet eleven) but even more than that, I find that these companies sort of “coddle” women. It’s like this sexist sort of culture that makes all these “pretty” bright colors for women’s clothing, despite the fact that riding causes you to get covered in dirt and grease, thus ruining the pretty, pretty colors. The bikes are fashioned for “easy riding” and I swear if you go through catalogues, hey make the bikes different for “women’s bodies”!! Really?!?! Last I checked, we were of the human variety. It’s like the boy’s club and we’re not allowed. They say that we are smaller–I’m taller than the average man. We need different seats–that may be true, but I prefer the men’s seat because I don’t need extra cushioning on my butt. When I’m tearing down a hill I want to same advantage as the men do and I don’t need to be dragging a granny seat underneath me. They say that the handlebars need to be some kind of weird positioning for our smaller hands and smaller frames. It’s like they are trying to convince us that we are smaller and more inferior. Is it any wonder that there is no women’s Tour de France? However, there is an equivalent of the Tour, which is called the Grande Boucle which you can learn more about in this Wikipedia article.
However, I’m getting off subject. This is a topic that I certainly will get back to.
So anyway, once again I will leave you with a moment of zen:
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Posted in blogging, info, safety at 12:13 am by Administrator
Well, well well, I know I have not been blogging as much as I should have lately, but mitigating circumstances have made it so that posting regularly has become somewhat harder. I’d rather not get into it, but let’s just say that not only have I changed jobs so that I am not in front of the computer as much anymore, but I have been chillin’ in spots that don’t even have an internet connection. Can you believe it? There are still spots here in the city that I can’t pick up a wireless signal!! Needless to say, Murphy’s diabolical cousin is fucking with me. But, however much he fucks with me, how good do I look in this picture?!?! (Yes, Cycle Chic is very modest too.)
And fucking with me his is!! I just got some new ink last week–a super awesome dragon reaching into flames on my right forearm. Well I got it on Monday night. Tuesday night, I’m riding out in Williamsburg down McGuiness and this huge flatbed truck rolls in front of me on the road and takes up most of the space of the lane so that I can’t pass it stopped at the light. I spot a driveway on the sidewalk (to the right of course) and I think that I’ll roll up on the sidewalk and pull up in front of the truck. So I roll pretty fast up to the driveway and–it is also wet outside after the rain mind you–and I couldn’t see in the nighttime darkness that the bottom of the driveway didn’t slope level with the street. In fact, there was a three inch lip!! So I roll up, catch my wheel on the lip and slide both tires along the lip and then fall over and skidded both my elbow and knee!! The elbow I JUST got the ink on the night before!! So I immediately stand up, look at my elbow (which was gross) and my knee (which was even more gross) and did what every little kid that falls does. I look up, drop my head back, open my mouth and start bawling. I cried all the way over the Pulaski Bridge and to the nearest gas station and had my friend pick me up.
Now the friend that picked me up happens to be the very same friend I mentioned in the last post who drank, rode, fell and hurt himself. Well here is a picture of his helmet after the fall:
Now if you follow this blog, you know that I have repeatedly said that wearing helmets is important. Now look at the crack in that helmet. If he wasn’t wearing one, that crack could have been in his head. What more can I say people? WEAR YOUR HELMETS, or else they’ll be cleaning brains up off the street more often here in the Big Apple. Now I can’t wait for the space age suits of the future that stick to the body like a second skin and protect against skin scrapes when you go sliding along pavement at about fifteen to twenty miles per hour…
Anyway, going back to tattoos, I still am considering getting this kind of tatt on one of my legs:
You see, lately, after having the stitches from the accident, scrapes from falls and cutting my lower legs on various parts of my own bike, I have come to realise that my once perfect legs are no more. Really, I had perfect legs before I got this deep into cycling and now I have ruined them with the scars. Well…that and getting older. My skin just doesn’t look the same anymore. Hell, I used to get cuts on my legs before but I was young–the skin would heal right in front of my eyes. Now I brush up against my cat and BAM!! Looks like I went head to head with shark skin. I was told however that this stuff Mederma is great for taking care of scars. I have to get my hands on some as soon as these last two heal up fully and run the whole gamut on my skin. But I digress.
Also, the Tour de Bronx is coming up not this Sunday but the following. I’m registered and will be riding!! I’m looking forward to it and of course I will have my camera at the ready and will be taking pictures to post here. Also I will be looking for all kinds of biking information for posting so I will do my best to have a great read after the ride….
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