Downtime, Uptime

Or just the right time. Several years without a post or pic is a horrible way to treat a blog, even if it is read by only me. The time has come, maybe the right time or maybe just some time - in any event, I'd like this to matter again a bit.

Thoughts of time lend themselves to thoughts of things done and left undone, or hopes of things yet to be done; a resurrection or just a restart. The convergence of being off the bike for the summer with ankle surgery, not travelling to the beloved Montana this summer, and seriously revising my racing plans now that the dread fifty has been passed seems as fine a reason as any to make this...place, or log, or document , or what have you, become renewed as well. So then, beginning from rusty writing vantages and rolling into revised lifeblood of family, cycling, and racing, here we go. There is no plan, no form, no central ideal, but there is a suspicion that things will get better as it goes . . .

Jens Voigt, Soccer, and Snow

Another April snowstorm to break the heart. Granted, it has been many years since we have been hit too hard in April, and granted as well, we are in a wickedly bad drought. . .but still, the call of racing and group rides, family rides and camping rides, and most of all the velodrome is so strong now this storm is cruel indeed. The planned team training camp in Red Wing looks a little more challenging than many of us had planned for, particularly the transportation and ride down aspects. All this, and a boy and a girl so set on sun they were very gloomy indeed the last two days.

Cabin fever had dulled the delights of our usual indoor saviors, books and games, because there were bodies wanting movement and minds wanting green. Together, though, we resurrected a dream that predated both children and falls in line with those simmering, summery thoughts: behold, out new Subbuteo soccer stadium, resplendent in green and aqua hopes.

Though not the football palaces that we've seen online, and certainly not holding a candle to the brilliant matches on YouTube between very skilled flickers, our modest little pitch brought squeals of delight, excited competition, and even some warmth to the air as we learned (Oliver, Eleanor, and Heather for the first time, me for a half-remembered second time) the delicate flicks and dramatic errors of the beautiful game, writ small. Perhaps more than the playing and the well bent shot, the building and finally beholding a place for the teams and goals and pitch to be used mattered most. For too long, before Eleanor arrived, they all had waited, QPR and Holland, France and Sheffield Wednesday, if the gradually more dusty back shelf for when we had more room and time. When will we have such room and time. if not now?

Our collection is modest, but our cheer great - and even if consigned forever to the bench as a molded substitute awaiting an 85th minute appearance that never comes, it is awfully good to see each figure out on the green.

One last detail remained, though - one cannot build such a pitch and not have a proper name for it and be true to the game's traditions! Especially now, in the tradition bound height of cycling's Spring Classics season, we wanted to echo something "right." We tried out a few, almost went with Memorial Field, but only through a happy accident and the quirky, rotten weather did we find our way. Coming in from school and clearing the snow from his hat, Oliver looked up to the sky and yelled "Shut up, Snow!" And there it was: our new creation could only be named after that stalwart rider and inspiration for finishing many a hill on our family rides, Jens Voigt.

So today, when school is done and I have packed my bags and checked my bike for the training  weekend that should be, we will gather around and play in laughter at the perfect venue that is, for us:
Jens Voigt Stadium. Now, if you would, shut up, snow!

Reframed, Revised, Revisited...and Pink

Somehow, this forgotten blog has not been quite forgotten, usually coming to mind in the night's darkness or in the wind of a long hill climb, when moments that ought really to be remembered or seemingly wise thoughts cry out to be added. This, for once, is a moment when the crying out met with a little time and a lot more inclination. Unfortunately, the snazzy post made in November 2012 about the future and the new Pinarello fell victim to some overzealous pruning of "old stuff," so here we are on the cusp of new stuff but without some roots.

Today was going to be all about the amazing cold ride of today, a celebration of things coming together, centers holding, and a huge appreciation of PodiumWear. It will be still, but first a detour to the missing post that mattered: reframed cycling.

It was 1991, a shiny new Pinarello Montello frame in pure awesome spumoni paint sat in the bike shop where I worked. A dream machine, waiting to be built up with the nest parts I could afford, some wheels from my trusty Bianchi, and as much excitement poured into it as only a young and cycling crazed rider could contain. It was going to be just short of perfect.

It didn't happen. A series of school snafus and work changes left me without the funds to finish buying that beautiful frame, much less finish it, even less to feel it smoothly under me on the road. Bitter, a bit, and unhappy, a lot.

Now, a couple decades later, that vision was reborn in modified guise. The same trusty Bianchi was my sole road race bike in 2012 when the dreaded middle age crisis descended and a few funky health concerns brought me back to riding full force. I adore that old celeste beauty, and Chuck at Behind Bars had decked it out in Campy Chorus in 2009 for me. It was a long, cool draught of happiness to swing a leg over anytime, but as the 2012 Powderhorn 24 proved to me in no small way, it was not quite going to cut it anymore as a long distance or crit ride. Besides...did I want to wreck such a part of me?

So the Pinarello dreams returned, though not dogmatic ones. Carbon called, but a family budget and dividing bike funds between track and road meant something less than the latest models would have to fit...and it did. A 2007 Pinarello F4-13, in black and pink a perfect 57cm, found at Competitive Cyclist for a killer price. Though going local is always better (more later on that), the CC people have truly great service, really great deals on frames not available anymore here, and were a dream to work with. Chuck built it up, dressed nearly like the Bianchi but in black components, and the first ride took my breath away. Hills felt manageable, the frame responsive, the ride nearly unlike any bike I have ever pedaled. The pink - maybe it would not have been the first choice, but it is a beautiful color, it speaks of Italy, and matches the older Birchwood kits awfully well. No pics of it yet, so the stock ad version above will have to do. It is the dream of youth, refined, revised, and reframed.

The Birchwood team party was this past weekend, and as one of two shiny new people, I went intending to be a quiet and observant fellow, soak up the vibe and get to know a few more riders. A truly great bunch, and incredibly warm and welcoming, the Birchwood team is all that and more. Though I feel pretty quickly at home in bike shops and with riders usually, the stoked faces and genuinely happy greetings were different than teams I recall from my past - none of those were bad, but this was great. Though in my head I am still seventeen and fast, the middle-aged greying and stocky guy people see appreciated being part of that group even more. It looks to be a great riding year, my goals are modest and the company is fine.

Pure Awesome from Podium Wear

Where the bike and the new team come together with today's amazing winter ride is this: when I joined Birchwood in the fall, no team kits jerseys in my wider-bodied size were available. So I picked one of 2011's pink-and-black jerseys for my daughter to wear - but not-so-secretly liked the bold contrast and design a lot. When we all ordered this year's kits in blue, the team also set up a special order with Podium Wear for some non-stock items: skinsuits for track and 'cross, vests, and a winter jacket. I ordered up a blue skinsuit and vest, but the incredibly accommodating Podium Wear folks worked with me to get a Birchwood pink skinsuit and winter jacket made. Amazingly fast work, perfect color printing, and just plain great discussions already made things fantastic, but today I rode in that jacket for the first time. It was unbelievable.

Like most riders, many combos of old and new winter gear litter our house at times, wool jerseys and base layers and jackets and vests, all mixed and matched to repel cold and usually not quite a perfectly comfortable fit. With just a base layer, standard jersey, and the new jacket, I have never been as warm and comfortable on a winter ride, here or in Montana, ever. It was simply a delight. Made well, made right, made here - and, made the ride. Thanks Podium Wear!

The Ride

Today, the first Sunday after 17 May, was the first ride. Actually, it was a Sunday with many rides going on, past even heading out alone for a spin: the Lake Pepin Three Speed Tour, a friend's Michele Bachman Dump Ride, a memorial ride a thousand miles away I could nearly have done with a red-eye drive and a more than understanding wife. Several old team mates and fellow mechanics were up for a metric century that we had kicked around in January, when the Spring seemed too long away and our schedules very open.

But, no. Today was the first ride, and needed to be more, and less. Colin and I had always been bound and separated by bicycles, linked and parallel. Despite both of us working as cycling mechanics, riding for USCF sanctioned teams, prizing Italian frames and components above all others, and having cut our cycling teeth in the valleys and on the mountain roads of Montana, we never rode together that I remember after we were in middle school and junior high. I got serious, very serious, about racing in my sophomore spring, shedding 50 pounds from my defensive lineman's frame and learning to pace and to hammer. Colin, much more a natural athlete than I, was still more interested in transforming the many butter-fly barred and banana-seated bikes around into jumping and stunt machines. He looked askance at my first toe-clips and straps, and probably thought I was nuts riding to Battle Ridge and back twice in a day. But I wonder...so many views and dreams we shared but never spoke about, so many things I started and left behind that he picked up and took further, I wonder if that strange passion for unattainably wonderful Italian frames and jerseys and peletons (never in 1982 Bozeman) that obsessed me and drove me to my bike for hours upon hours didn't lodge with him, then, to burst into full blossom and recurrent blooms later.

There is another thing about bicycles and brothers: in our darkest days, I know cycling saved our lives, figuratively and literally, for a time. Mine first in high school, when it gave structure and appreciation and in many ways a spiritual voice to life in a bleak time. Again, after leaving my beloved undergraduate college without a degree but with a brutal brain injury, I turned to riding and wrenching to sustain myself and regain balance and worth. Working at Freewheel Bicycle, riding not too well for Flanders Brothers, while Colin worked at the Chalet, for the first time we both learned how immersed we were in cycling, and felt the bikes coursing within us. I was never great, rarely good, often battered, but always lifted by it...as was he. For Colin, cycling waited and welcomed him when the snows of his first love, skiing, receded. It sustained him and saved him when the hard seas of life broke on him. It immersed him in the bright, the possible, the lovely, and gave him hope far longer than anything else. It almost, I believe, almost saved him from hi daemons in the end, even after the broken collarbone that took him low for a year.

Bicycles bound us, still bind us. Through him, I ordered my first Bianchi frame, a frame I raced for 10 years and which I still ride often...nearly every week, at least. But today, the first year without Colin, needed to be marked with a ride of a different sort. While the Delphine team took to the roads and hills where Colin and I learned to love cycling, I rode alone, wherever, en route to nowhere...I simply rode, following the whim and the wind, and remembered riding as kids, riding the neighborhood and across town, to Joe's Parkway for gum and soda and baseball games, and out Third and back Eleventh from the foothills with our family on golden-soft, perfect evenings. Today the roads were a thousand miles away from those roads, and decades away in time, but I rode in memory and with memories and without remembering where I rode. A ride that was simply that: riding.

Next year, end each after, there will be other rides, other memories to come alongs. But this year was simple, and sad, and fine. I left my Bianchi at home, left the daily driver LHT at home, left the dad-bike Ute and the old, proud Raleigh from high school that is now a fixed gear fun bike at home. I rode the only bike that fit the day, for the only time I will ride it every year: Colin's Marco Pantani commemorative Bianchi. One bike, two men, gone the same way. Two held close and held up by so many, two who should still be here. I rode neither as effortlessly as Marco, nor as smoothly as I imagine Colin riding, but I rode...a simple thing, a needed thing, a beautiful thing.

Whatever the route, the first Sunday after the day Colin left will always be at least me and his Pantani Bianchi on a ride, some ride, the ride.

I miss you, my brother. Ride with me?