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So I’m standing at the cash register the other day waiting to pay for my new bike when this short guy (wider than taller) gets
off the same bike I’m about to buy (in a smaller size) and says I’ll take it.
He had just spent a grand total of about 22 seconds test riding the bike. I had
just spent three months of pain-staking work visiting every bike shop in
Boulder and Denver plus countless hours on Google researching the perfect tri
bike.
Let me take you back a few months to the beginning of this search for the Holy
Grail of Triathlon: The perfect bike and the perfect bike fit. There is a kind
of art to the perfect bike fit that is part science, part mysticism and part
blind luck. I just hope that the details my quest will make your quest that
much easier.
I suppose my quest began at Boulder Peak Triathlon when on a particularly fast
stretch of road the left aero bar made a dash for freedom and flew off my old
Trek 2100 bike (which I had somewhat clumsily converted to tri bike duty) like
it was shot out of a cannon. Or perhaps it began a few week earlier when on a
group ride my front derailleur would not shift out of low gear leaving me
sucking wind trying to spin, like the road runner runs, just to keep up.
But I suppose it really began when I almost ran over that bear.
A few months ago I saw my friend Luis and he says to me, “I'm going for a ride
tomorrow morning in the mountains. Do you want to go?” I said sure if my run
gets cancelled...which it did...so at 5:00 a.m. I meet him and we're on our
way. Did I mention that this was 5:00 bloody A.M. You all know that means
getting up at like 4:30 a.m.
Luis says, "we'll have the roads to ourselves." and I'm think sure, us and all
the drunks heading home after an all-nighter boozing it up with their buddies.
Thank God for Bubba and Jeb. (Keep Reading)
So anyway, once I'm awake and moving, I'm thinking this is not so bad. Luis is
pointing out various local birds flying overhead and I notice that for the
first time in my life there are no other bikes coming back into town, even the
prairie dogs are asleep.
We make a left and now we're in the canyon and it is cold and still darkish. I
get to mile 9 up the canyon and my left leg has checked out. I look down and my
left cleat has turned sideways. I'm now official hosed as I don't have an
wrench to fix it. Not a good way to bike unless you are in a 3 Stooges movie.
Luis is long gone. So I turn around and head back down and decide to go home
the short way. The going is a bit doggy since I really can't clip in on the
left side. So I'm always looking down trying to keep my foot on the backside of
the clip.
About halfway up the last steep incline before the decent home the sun hits. I'm
feeling pretty good because I know that it’s downhill in a few minutes. That's
when I look up and see the biggest freakin' Bear I have ever seen looking right
at me. You take them out of the zoo, remove the bars and the pit, and boy are
they big. Image a furry VW Beetle. At least that's what it looked like to me. I
freeze and almost poop my pants. My heart jumps into my throat and my left foot
flies of the cleat. I stop and look at him. He's just kinda looking at me like
a big hungry dog. His head cocks to one side and I image him licking his lips.
Now what? I've heard bears can accelerate to something like forty miles an hour
in 5 feet or less. Plus I'm down hill from him That makes it even easier if he
chooses to go for an early morning triathlete breakfast.Plus there's o denying
it...there's plenty of meat on my Clysdale bones.
Have you seen those scary/crappy/rusty deliverance pick-up trucks that seem to
ply the back roads of America. You know the kinda of pick-up that's
40-years-old with booze buddies Bubba and Jeb in the front seat smoking just a
little less than the truck. We'll thank God for Bubba and Jeb and their road
burner.
Just as the Bear was deciding which part of me would make the best breakfast
burrito, one of these pick-ups comes chugging up the road. As the hill is very
steep, the road burner was howling and popping and smoking and chugging and
scrapping, which spooked the bear, which ran across the road and up a hill,
which saved my butt, which went totally unnoticed by Bubba and Jeb, even
thought I was waving furiously at them, to get them to slow down, so I could
use their truck as a bear shield.
Needless to say I flew up the rest of the hill in record speed. Had Lance been
in front of me he would have been bear chow.
It was definitely then that I decided that I needed a new bike.
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