TOT 11: Somedays You're The Bear Hitting The Windshield

It was a nice dawn patrol ride today. A good chunk of the usual crew was there, Trevor "The Regular Guy" M. was back in the saddle after a highly irregular experience that landed him in the hospital with more tubes in him than a 1955 Dumont TV. Sven was there after terrorizing young shredders half his age all last week, and even Snoop Dogg brought his muzzle to the hizzle.

Highlights of the ride, for me anyhow, included leading the group up the MC trail. It's a steady, mildly inclined stairstep with a series of kickers on it. Ironically, it's easier for me to go up it fairly hard than for me to cruise, so that's what I did. Turns out it was a decent pace. The downside to that is that when we headed up the next section of trail, 20 minutes of steep ups and downs, my legs were tired and about 2/3ds of the way through that I lost the string of the group and popped. I didn't shoot way out the back and in fact cruised in on the wheel of the next-to-tail end guy. I even got a couple compliments on driving the pace there, which is cool; the only way to get stronger is to bury yourself and that's what I did, so Mission Accomplished. But I was toasted so I told the group to go and I'd ease on in, which I mostly did until I got to the last mile back to the trailhead. That part is downhill, swoopy, and has a bunch of log drops on it. I absolutely hammer that and stick with guys who are way faster there... that part of the trail system just works for me.

Today it didn't though. I swerved left to take this little optional log hop. No big deal, it was only 6" in height. The only problem was I hit it going full tilt, as in eyes-watering, sliding in the turns full tilt. Upon further review, I determined that my front wheel made it over, but I was nowhere near quick enough with the rear hop. I stopped dead in my tracks when the rear wheel hit the log, and shot out over the handlebars, pausing only to let the bike Jeff Gillooly me right above both kneecaps, a square on nasty handlebar blow to my lower quads. I hopped up immediately then started gasping; had to lean my chest onto the bike seat to support myself. The pain was searing. Now I know *exactly* how Nancy Kerrigan felt.

Artist's Impression: The Rouleur, Post-Crash

I was due. It's been about a year since my last Ginormous Mountain Bike Crash, so there you go. After getting my breath back - about 15 seconds - I checked the wheels and the Velocity P-35 rims, those stout bastards, were still true. Me, not so much, I was still doubled over in pain. I got back on the bike though, and pedaled it in, slowly.

Once I got my kit off I checked out the knees. They both have pretty good hematomas, but the one on the right is basically softball sized. Nothing appears to be broken, the joints seem to be working... just it hurts like the bejeezus to bend my legs or touch them anywhere above the knees.

Meet D'Brickashaw
My New Hematoma Best Friend

The kneecap is under the smaller lump there, the one directly in front of the electrical socket.

I'm going to call the big useless lump D'Brickashaw.

Yeah. That hematoma oughtta have it's own zip code. Guess the Trail of Tears (TOT) theme lived up to its name today.

Oh well. Some days you eat the bear, other days, the bear kicks your ass, rips your head off, craps down your throat, and doesn't even say thanks.

Still beats a day of not riding though.

TOT 10: Cold as Ice to Me

I rode early solo at Rosaryville this morning. I thought it was about 8 degrees or so, but then my smartphone affiliated with the nearest weather observation post, the Tippett station, and informed me the temp at 8:25 was 5. So there's a pretty good chance it was 3 or 2 when I pushed off at ride start.

How cold is that? Cold enough that the inside and outside of my helmet was iced up.

Keeping a Cool Head...

The white stuff there, is ice. The riding itself was okay. The douchebag ruts are getting pounded down into dust, the dry, dessicated earth from the prolonged hard freeze is making them crispy and cyclists are breaking them down. We're supposed to have temps in the mid-40's over the next couple days though, and this thaw will bring water up to the surface, at which point douchebags will go for pleasant, late afternoon rides and dig new, deep, 4" ruts into the trails. For today it was alright however. Took 20-30 minutes for my legs to loosen up enough to stop pedaling squares, but loosen they did. If my feet had been warmer I'd have ridden maybe another half lap. They weren't, and I didn't.

Two noteworthy things happened. One is that my tires, inflated to 20 PSI at room temperature, were bottoming out and I was hitting the rim on every little root I crossed. I guess the cold air caused enough contraction that an event which normally occurs once or maybe twice per ride became commonplace. Second, my lobster gloves - which are too warm for ordinary cold weather riding - actually didn't do a great job of keeping my hands warm. Yeah, it was real cold to be riding a bike.

Even with the ruts and the cold, it was still worth the trip.

Sunofagun...

TOT 9: Many Are Cold, But Few Are Frozen*

Gatoradesicle.

It was about 12 at ride start on Saturday at 7:00 AM. We did about 2:30 of ride time at Patapsco; not super fast but not super slow, just kinda slow with not much in the way of breaks. I rode with Brad, who is newer than me to the TMR crew. Nice guy, was rocking the single track. I was slipping pretty good - needed to go with lower tire pressure maybe - and wasn't hanging too well toward the end of the ride. My big tactical error was not bringing hot gatorade in an insulated bottle, and some food; after about 90 minutes of steady work I REALLY needed some calories but didn't have any, what with the juice being frozen and no munchies in my pockets. It was still a nice ride, Keith R. bumped into us and we hung together for a while, up Vineyard which I've never cleaned in the winter time, so that was nice. Toward the end of the ride I was definitely getting frostnip on my gut and chest; shoulda stopped to put my windbreaker back on.

Lessons learned / clothing: regular weight bib tights, Terramar lightweight base layer tights; wicking (Starter) baselayer, Terramar poly baselayer, Performance wool/nylon blend jersey, cheapo windbreaker for the first 20 minutes of the ride. Fleece ear covers, fleece ear cover on the neck as a neck warmer, ski gloves. Woolly lumberjack socks layered over standard weight socks on standard shoes. Lesson learned - put the windbreaker back on if the tummy skin gets tingly.

Plans: ride a loop or loop+ real early at Rosaryville tomorrow, probably fixed, maybe I'll see how the Super Secret Technical Inner Loop rides fixed. Write a blog entry bitching about the DoucheRuts and how my back hurts tomorrow night. Dawn Patrol at Patapsco Tues. Maybe there's a Happy Hour Ride Weds? Maybe not. Maybe Dawn Patrol again Thurs. Rest Friday.

That is all.


* Reference to Matthew verse 22:14.

Freakless Friday

Man, only one ride on the MTB so far this week... the weather has sucked and frankly the investment it takes to drive 30 minutes to get to the trail by 5:50, to maybe have to turn around by 6:01, is a bit too steep, plus there's been a couple early mornings at work. Looks like it may be getting to be trainer time, which isn't as bad as normal because I haven't been struggling to stay on the thing (and being mostly off it and doing jack shit) for 6 weeks at this point, like usual. Time to start gettin' after it with some volume, and to get after the diet. It's been a good winter, and being mostly static is an enormous win for me considering how I usually manage to screw up... now we move forward.

As some of you noted I managed to pick up an extra entry to the Baker's Dozen. I had a contingent agreement to ride on a team. But because of the scramble for entries, I realized pretty quick that I needed to get an entry, any entry, because my team manager hadn't gotten my registration done by 4-5 minutes after 8:00 PM. (Yes, my BikeReg Fu is strong). So I popped for the 13 solo. Turns out, I hit the pay button just when my buddy Mike did, so now I have too. What to do? Right now I'm making the obligatory offers to my closest friends who were shut out and are wallowing in angst over it. If one of them nuts up, it's gone. If none of them do, I'm E-baying it and putting the proceeds toward charity, or a booze-fueled spree in Tijuana, providing I can also get a week off, a cheap flight, permission from the wife, and a gamma globin booster shot.

So I had a discussion with a reprobate about whether Led Zeppelin is better than the bluesmen from whom they appropriated their music. You tell me what you think.

This?



Or that?



One?



Or t'other?



Or the other one?




I think you people know where I fall on this question.

Please discuss in comments: who is better, and why?

Like a Rock in a Pond

Sometimes, when you get to see a display of Full Frontal Roadie Bitchiness, like what's on display in the reactions to the announcement of a new local superteam, you want to recoil from it.

I've got some friends who ride for Harley & Haymarket, they're good guys. They're going to win even more races by combining forces this year and I'm happy for them. It will be nice to maybe see a revitalization of the local 1/2/3 fields, which are generally small. If the new team can do that and drag lots of upper Cat guys out to the races, it will be a good thing.

But yeah, some of the facts associated with this are going to be hard to swallow for a lot of people. As the haters note at GamJams, it's going to be absurd to see a third of the field at some races comprised of Harleymarket guys, and blocking tactics with 15 guys in a race are going to be very tough to deal with. It's going to be a particularly bitter pill given that a substantial minority of the local fast guys - perhaps most of the fastest guys - are going to be riding for one team. The goal is to win though, not to make friends, and the new team should do a lot of the former. It's a big F.U. to mediocrity, and I hope the rest of MABRA is ready to smell the glove, because they sure aren't going to be smelling the podium much this year. If you don't like that, well, you should probably find another sport where people cope with beatdowns a little better, like MMA for instance.

On the other hand, the bitchy reaction to the formation of this super team evident in the comments is fricking foul. Haters gonna hate I guess.

And on the gripping hand, some of the comments in defense of Harleymarket, are pretty foul too.

And on an appendage to be named later, I'm regretting having shown my ass by adding my own unique brand of snippiness to the comments. I didn't need to pour gas on that particular fire. That was particularly stupid on my part. Shoulda just kept my damn mouth shut.

But there it is.

I'm going to be racing in the dirt this spring & summer so it doesn't affect me too much. I'm mainly just amazed by the spectacle and by the vindictive reactions.

TOT 8: Icy

This is the obligatory just-passin-thru MTB tourist picture from Cascade at Patapsco on Monday AM. Gotta stop there and get a picture when there's ice. This was in the middle of a 2:15 ride up there with John and my old cross nemesis Alain, who is a really nice guy.

I'm on the boinger lately due to a wonky back. It's not terrible, just that riding at Rosaryville (which is getting comprehensively destroyed by assholes who ride it on warm days, leaving huge scars in the mud) really aggravates my disc condition. No, not the undersized rear 160 I have on the rear of my single, I'm talking about the herniated L5/S1 disc in my back. The constant bumping in and out of 1" to 4" ruts makes it super painful, and it takes 3-4 days for the aggravation to go away. You see, because I'm halfway responsible and don't want to repeat some of the backbreaking trail work days I've done, I only ride there when it's dry, or frozen. That means the ruts are like concrete when I ride there, and the rigid just beats my lower back up as if it had insulted its mother.

On the boinger... no troubles.

I am noticing a weird phenomenon though, and that's a convergence of my singlepseed and geared riding styles.

What has bled into my singlespeed riding is the hops. When I get to a low obstacle at speed, like a log, or a log drop, or a rock drop, I flex my legs, hop up, then land using my legs as shock absorbers when I hit. This really smooths out the ride on the rigid single. I noticed that I do this in a really pronounced way on the full suspension bike; this results in an utterly plush ride on that bike, even when bashing through really rough terrain.

What has bled into my geared bike riding is a habit of carrying as much speed as I can into the bottom of hills, and grinding up way harder than I used to do on a geared bike. The result is in rolling terrain... well, my rides seem a bit shorter than they would because I can really tear on the downhills and by carrying big speed into little kickers, I'm up and over pretty quickly. It's kind of like the fatboy road trick on rollers, to sprint down them... except more fun.

In any activity, it's possible to get to a point where it just makes sense, where you feel fluent in it and can do it with a lot of joy. Lately, I'm able to ride that way for several minutes at a time on the MTB. It's a good feeling and I always finish rides in an elated mood.

I think it's going to be a dawn patrol to start the day tomorrow at Patapsco. Looking forward to it. [Big Grin...]

TOT 7

Destroyed, in pieces, sitting in the back of the truck post-ride. Wondering when the next mountain bike ride will be, and looking forward to it.

Am I talking about me, or the bike? Good question.


Rosaryville, Jan 14.

Ps. Not blogging a lot lately. Riding MTB quite a bit though and that's where my free time is going. Just don't have the gas to blog after I get up at 5:00 to do a 90 minute or two hour dawn patrol before work.

This will, sadly, slow down when the weather warms up.

Fixed, Baby / TOT 3

There is a school of thought that says if you want to get good at something, get in over your head, try to do what the experts do, and try to blow through your limits. That way lies excellence, rapid growth, and performance beyond your wildest imagination.

In mountain biking, that way also lies regrettable line choices, pants-pissing dropoff-inspired scares, and a guy on the side of the trail who appears to have a broken collarbone.

It's just not responsible to try to do what really accomplished mountain bikers do.

Nobody ever accused me of being responsible.

So with light heart I bought EBae's 19 tooth Velo Solo bolt-on fixie cog, removed the disc from my crummy old WTB wheel - crummy because it weighs about 7 pounds and is basically egg-shaped - and I converted the wheel to fixed gear. The Tommy Cog and Velo Solo fit onto a 6 bolt disc brake mount. According to this degenerate, if you want to spend a few fun hours with your drill press, several carbide bits and some machine oil, you can even drill out a regular singlespeed cog to fit the disc brake mount - though I question why anybody would burn $25 in drill bits, $3 in machine oil and $5 in wear and tear on the drill press to avoid spending $30.

Anyhow, installation was a snap, and the wheel fit on fine, the chainline was straight without goofing around with spacing the cog, converting the Redline Monocog Flight into a rigid fixie.

A cognizant (so to speak) person might ask, "what about the rear brake? You won't have a rear brake? Holy cripes you won't have a rear brake!!!" That last sentence isn't a question but that's what a smart person might say. I'm not that smart so I didn't worry about it. Fools do burpees where angels fear to tread & etc.

So pretty blithely, I headed out and rode fixed at Rosaryville on Friday morning.

In retrospect, I don't see what's so hard about it.

Other than most everything.

Actually it wasn't bad, not *hard* per se, but comprehensively disorienting, like watching a David Lynch film while you're drunk and sleepy and distracted by what your dog is doing, and you're clocking the film at a half-unaware level. Normal sensory feedback - the kind you expect from a mountain bike - isn't there, but you're riding, and going along just fine, you're 'getting it' alright, but it feels completely different from what you're used to.

It is also much more physical. It takes a lot less physical finesse, and a hell of a lot more brute physicality than a freewheeled bike. You don't bump the bike up and over and around obstacles; you kind of ass the bike over them - as in, "that rusted bolt didn't break? Then put some more assss in it, boy!"

It was a very refreshing change, but I was feeling it for sure Saturday morning, and that's with circulating around the perimeter trail about 20% slower than usual, which moves me from Slow to Impressively Slow.

If I go hard at Rosey it takes around 50 minutes; if I cruise at The Pace - you know, brisk, pushing it reasonably hard on the hills, working to get some flow - it takes about an hour. It took 1:15 Friday. Part of that was due to gear limiting - a fixie really slows me down on downhills, where I rip pretty hard and make up gaps; but part of it was do to me being cautious in a few places because I just didn't know what to expect from the bike, even on Rosaryville's minimally technical features. I suspect I could get the time down to 1:05 if I hustled a bit, not killing myself but pushing a little harder and riding more bravely on the downhills.

Slowing on downhills was a bitter pill, one of many in my life like loving beer, an ability to eat like a horse and put on weight (muscle or fat) in a heartbeat, and an urge to write blog entries when I could be doing something more productive. The one place where I'm half quick, on downhills, wasn't there due to the possiblity of pedal strike and the fact that I can spin real fast, but couldn't simultaneously handle the instability of a 140 RPM spin plus turning and bumping over roots & stuff. Where you use proper pedal attitude when you cross logs or rocks, it's not possible on a fixie, and a couple times I did something I never imagined possible, which was grounding a pedal on the *upstroke* after my bottom bracket was already past the obstacle. That was unsettling.

One problem I noticed right away is that the fixie forces hyper-awareness of little trail obstacles; it's hard to keep eyes up the trail 25 feet when things that are 5 feet away have a good potential for pedal strike.

The fixie also revealed little flaws in my skillset. For instance, I discovered that I need to keep pedaling when I bunny hop a log or root instead of putting the front over, coasting the rear wheel into the log then pedaling/hopping, as I do on a freewheeled bike.

As one the road, you spend a lot of time in the seat with your ass glued to it, pedaling. You can do a standing effort, but it's either all standing, or all sitting. This means that there's no way to slide or body english the rear end a bit and slop back into your cornering line when a rut kicks the rear wheel out - you just keep pedaling and bounce forward and ride it out.

The low gearing of the SS MTB means that you really don't need a brake in moderate terrain; you just give a little backward pressure and sow right down. Nothing to it. Skid turns are fun, and sometimes the only way to turn sharply, but they are utterly unpredictable compared to using a hand brake to do the same thing, the "delicate touch" of my quads doesn't match up to the delicate touch of index finger-braking. You also have to ride over the middle of roots and rocks instead of going around them, otherwise it's pedal strike city.

I also noticed that the rear wheel bottoms out more (that coulda been the 700x45 tire...or it coulda been the harder sitting) while cruising. The little dipsy-doodle extra credits - the little gravity cavities - were easy on the fixed gear, and maybe the shock at the bottom of each was lessened compared to a geared bike because my legs were under tension at the bottom rather than paused, as they'd be on a freewheeled bike. Logs were definitely harder and I wasn't about to try to touch the big (>12") logs. Climbing starts out easier because the fixed drivetrain is locked down, but it seems to become harder because there's no recovery period between... well, between any one thing and any other thing. So the legs get toasty much quicker. I stretched the chain a ton - and this on a chain I've used for probably 20 singlespeed rides so far. The chainring bolts all loosened up too. I threw the chain once bouncing down a rooty hill where I was practicing my skidding.

But wait, there's more. The hands get tired faster because you're always pedaling and reluctant to take the hands off the grips (need some trackie skillz here). Lifting the butt a half inch off the seat is a constant occurrence because repeat hits get really uncomfortable pretty quick if you leave the butt locked down, so you might intuitively start doing this pedaling-with-your-butt-1/2" off the seat thing. Oh yeah, this gives your quads had frickin' knots and even today - Sunday evening - I still have a knot in each butt cheek, though my upper back stopped hurting (just a little) within 24 hours. My ankles were also a little beat up, it felt like I was using stabilizing muscles a bit more than on other bikes.

Pedaling up the little hill to the parking lot, my legs were *done*.

The bottom line about riding a fixed MTB is that *everything* - every single thing - about the bike is different on the fixie, in the way that *everything* is different between a fully sprung geared bike and a rigid single. But it's more different than that; although the geared boinger and rigid single free wheeled bikes are distant from each other - say by 30% - the fixie feels different from both of those bikes by maybe 50%.

That is really cool. It makes a familiar old trail seem fresh.

Chapeaux to Seibold and Sven and Baler and BB and RickyD - and all the other guys who are fast on fixed MTB. I'll be riding fixed more, but only at mellow places like Rosey, or if we do a wicked slow Rockburn-focused ride. It would *kill* me, possibly literally, to add the increased technical challenges and to lose my momentum on trails like Ridge or the rocky section of Cascade.

If you're curious about it... try it. It's different in a good way, and not as perilous as I'd expected.

The Un-Reeses: Things That Don't Go Great Together

Ebae sold me his fixed gear cog so I think tomorrow AM - unless there's some snow on the ground warranting a PDP ride at Patapsco - I'm off to Rosaryville to explore a whole new fixed gear way of breaking my ass. Looking forward to it. Because I'm a dumbass, when you get right down to it.

Now I'm going NSFW with the music choices today. Last chance to turn away kids. And if you're under 18 get out of here, aight? Otherwise I'm telling your parents.

So... Changing subject... it's not often I show ads, but this one is pretty awesome. A couple things about it: 1) Russian tycoon uncouth. I'd swear this is the guy that Putin/Medvedev had sentenced to 50 million years this week; 2) dogs playing poker; 3) Opulence? I has eet. 4) Miniature giraffes! Miniature f***ing giraffes!!!!



Classy. Like Frank Sinatra.



Frank was a great singer but in truth probably wasn't classy, except in the sense that the Hells Angels use the term "class." Or as has been said, "the kind of person who uses the term 'classy,' as a rule, is not." Dude was a heavy drinker, womanizer, sort of uncouth, and hung out with guys who, at best, were basically animals. But he had a glam image so that's why we love him, right? Cake is classy though. For sure. Wife of Rouleur had never really heard of Cake until recently when I had a bunch queued up on Pandora. "Oh, they're interesting," she says. That's a good way to put it. I like interesting music.

Some music is interesting to the point where it doesn't really make sense. For instance, the Butthole Surfers were sort of a metal / thrash band when I was coming up. You might catch them at a show with some post-punk band or another. I can't recall exactly but think they may have played with Black Flag at one point.

Then I hear this song:



Great song, but in the context of the Butthole Surfers doing it, well, interesting.

Of course that's nothing compared to this.



Holy cripes, is nothing sacred to these xtranorml people?

Oh well. As long as I'm sitting here drinking a Dale's and listening to defiled music, might as well go with some Richard Cheese. Whoever put this video mashup together is pretty awesome - it mashes up RC doing Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" with some random Bollywood flick.



Wow, that's horrific. In a terribly wonderful kind of way... And if that doesn't creep you out, then creepy-syrupy-crooner guy Josh Groban called one of his best selling hit albums... you guessed it! Closer! Ick!

Just Ick.

Some mashups we remember because they are sorta epic and unexpected and they work because the stuff that is mashed up is complimentary. There's no irony, no cognitive dissonance.



That was the first of the great rock/rap mashups. It worked because of the musical commonalities, but also because a principle that Sepp articulated holds true: good musicians play good music. This video was also socially significant; it broke down a major wall between "black music" and "white music." It wasn't musicians from one genre co-opting the other's work; it was a collaboration. You watch this, and you realize that it makes the Beastie Boys, Kid Rock, Eminem, In Living Colour, and a bunch of other genre-bender, post-racial acts possible. Great stuff.

Then you have Hayseed Dixie... This mashup works not because the two mashed up forms mesh, but precisely because of the sheer distance of the mashup from the original work.



Damned if I don't just love that. But it's mind bending in how it plays off our expectations.

While we're at it, we've got Rouleur Reader Fave Ace of Spades.



Great song. Set to a scene from Bullit. Funkin' A, you can't top that, right?

Think again.



So that probably just totally unraveled Motorhead's version on you. Wow.

How do I top that and end this post? With Hayseed Dixie destroying Greenday of course.



Don't say you weren't warned.

Relieved...

I made some homemade Kimchi Jigae for dinner tonight. A pork chop, cup of tofu cubes, tablespoon of chili paste, tablespoon of soy sauce, some rice wine vinegar, a sliced onion, a few sliced shitake, a cup of kimchi, boil it up and drop in a Korean ramen at the end of cooking process... damn that was good. I only could eat about half of it, I totally got The Bloat. Still, it was super tasty, and there is nothing better on a terribly cold night than some jigae so hot and spicy that it makes you sweat like jogging on the 4th of July.

Missed riding PVSP this morning, but I'll be back on it tomorrow. Wife of Rouleur is sick, kid woke up a few times - I didn't sleep much last night. We'll remedy that starting in about 45 minutes.

The Trail of Tears

Some of my friends did Bike 180 last year. They rode 180+ days, and took pictures of it. This made for some neat year-end photo collages.

Me? I'm going to do something like that but it will be focused on my unique outlook on riding. It will be called the Trail of Tears because (1) I bitch and whine a lot; (2) I'm kinda becoming mountain bike focused; and (3) I broke some more shit on the first ride of the year.

Yep, the coming of the New Year was celebrated this morning by the spectacular fireworks-like shredding of a freewheel. Fortunately, it was only 3 miles or so, mostly uphill, to get out of Patapsco Valley State Park and over to Landing Road, which was just a mile of mostly walking back to my truck. What praytell, you ask, does a blown up freewheel look like? Why, like this of course:

The Rouleur Redesign:
The Five Piece BMX Freewheel

Mike W very kindly looped back for me and patiently led me out, taking Jelly's shortcut, which he has apparently used in the past after destroying a freewheel in similar fashion. It's good to know you're following in others' pioneering footsteps.

I'd been laughing about the freewheel for a few weeks. Seibold warned me it was a cheapass BMX freewheel, and the thing frequently froze coming out of creeks, making me feel at home with my fixed gear-riding buddies but causing some surprises as I tried to coast into Patapsco's rock fields with my feet positioned just-so. Yeah, there's nothing more surprising than an inadvertent fixed gear MTB, one that decides to become a fixie conversion mid-ride...

The other failure was the eggbeaters. Up to the point where the freewheel failed, the eggbeaters were doing what they could to destroy my confidence, shooting my feet off every couple minutes whenever I tried to really wrench on the pedals to jump or bunny hop. I'd hoped to ride them until Chris comes through with the used Times, but it's not going to happen. There were also some colossal pedal/rock strikes. Yeah, I was unglued this morning. It was shameful.

Anyhow I wrenched that off tonight, put on a White Industries freewheel, and installed my old bulletproof Shimano 520 SPDs. The Dedline is ready to rock the valley tomorrow AM.

Me? Not so much.