Last night I got home from a quick ride and went around to the back of my house to put my bike in the shed. Its just a little garden shed and like everything else where I live its made of asbestos (cheers James Hardie). Its really just a outdoor laundry with a normal house type door and is maybe 2m x1.5 meters in size.
As I cant fit through the door beside my bike, I have to wheel it through in front of me and then slip through beside it. As I completed the first part of the process and now had a bike leaning on the doorframe halfway through, I looked down and my feet as I went to squeeze through, and thought “oh, there’s a snake about 6 inches from my foot”. Then I composed myself and thought “Jezuz, THERES A F_____G SNAKE 6 INCHES FROM MY F_______G FOOT”. At this point I did what most people would do and jumped sharpish in the opposite direction to the snake. This now positioned me inside the shed looking directly at a 6ft copperhead laying with its head now directly under my bikes chainwheel in the middle of the doorway.
I quickly had a look around and all I had at my disposal to deal with the situation was a long handled window cleaning sponge. Now this would not normally be my weapon of choice in dealing with a situation such as this, but I was in a low option type of predicament here. I was also in cycling shoes on a cement floor in full cycling clobber including helmet and fogged up rudy projects. The betting was running at about 3 to 1 in favor of the snake at this point
The snake initially did not seem that stressed about things. That is until I started to try and persuade him to leave the scene with my window cleaner. At this point he became a little surly. However rather than just pissing off and living to fight another day, Mr Snake, or Steve Earle as I have started to refer to him, decides that he is going to start coming into the shed. My bloody bike is in the way so I cant pin him with the window cleaner, so I try to just create a barrier to push him back out.
Steve is not having a bar of that. He comes in pretty fast, heading for me. Just as he is in far enough that I can now pin him with my weapon, he does a hard right and heads into the corner via a passage along the wall.
This allows me to vacate the shed, but now leaves me with another issue. I have a snake in my small shed, nestled in amongst a pile of old tubes and vittoria rubino pro’s.
My preferred implement for this type of work is an old fashioned rake. I called the boss and asked her to find me one of these pronto. Of course of the 5 rakes that should be around none of them can be found, but she returns with about 4 different styles of shovels – at least they are better than the window cleaner.
20min stuffing around leads to no improvement in the situation until the umpires call end of play for bad light. Steve is still in the shed and I am on a 24 hour watch out the back window on the shed door.
At this point its anyone’s game.
Now Daddy ran the whiskey in a big block Dodge
Bought it at an auction at the Mason's Lodge
Johnson County Sheriff painted on the side
Just shot a coat of primer then he looked inside
Well him and my uncle tore that engine down
I still remember that rumblin' sound
Then the sheriff came around in the middle of the night
Saw mamma crying, knew something wasn't right
Was headed down to Knoxville with the weekly load
You could smell the whiskey burning down Copperhead Rd
Steve Earle "Copperhead Road"
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
The Hobbit and Captain Big Calves
Have just gotten back from some holidays, and for me holidays means that I will have done at least a few rides down Melbourne’s famous (infamous?) Beach Road.
For an old school country lad such as myself this is always a bit of an experience. Back in the “good old days”, you had two pairs off wheels, one for training and one for racing – you didn’t get those puppies out unless your life depended on going fast. Beach Road however will see any number of fat gits ridding along on their 4000 dollar Campagnolo Bora’s.
There is also a new etiquette being formed that is based more on material status than any sense of actually “payin your dues”. You know about cycling if you have the right gear. Having the right gear allows you to assume a position at the top of the tree regardless of whether you can actually ride.
On one of my rides, I turned around after a hard effort and was coasting a little when passed by a group of 4 or 5 riders. We were riding into a headwind and so I naturally just sat in behind them as they passed. On the first little hill we hit most the rest of the group dropped off the front two and so I rode around the others and tacked onto the back of the leaders. They looked around and saw that it was a bloke they did not know that was with them and so on the next hill they obviously put the hammer down. I was feeling quite good at this point and so had no trouble just rolling along behind. As we crested the top of the hill and realizing that all they had really done is put about 400 meters between them and their other mates, they sat up. The sudden slowing meant that I was slightly caught off guard and so drifted up between their wheels for a millisecond while I slowed down.
One of the blokes on the front, who we will call the Hobbit, cause to be honest he looked like a Hobbit, went off his nut. “Don’t f_____g half wheel me mate, S___t this S___ts me. When we crash, you C__t etc etc etc. He then went on to talk loudly to his mate about the need for them to start lessons for new cyclists again. I just shut up – cause really, what can you do?
A few days later I had a similar experience. This time I was passed by another similar group to the first and again the first hill saw some of the riders dropped and me moving up to fill the space. This time a guy with the weirdest looking calves I have ever see. They were like someone had drawn his legs out of equilateral triangles. What was really off putting however was that he had socks pulled halfway up them giving a look that was something like trying to stretch a sock over a bucket.
Anyway we rode along for a bit before Big Calves say’s “Hold your line mate! Your drifting right, just stay left.” He then proceeded to sprint around the rider in front and ride for about 500 meters in the extreme right of the lane to the extent that he was often actually in the right car lane.
Anyway I am pretty confident that if viewed by the commissaires, I would have come up clean on both counts, but that’s not the point. The reality is that on my old Cannondale, carrying a few kg’s and having decidedly hairy legs these days, I just didn’t fit in with their “look” and they did not want me to be riding with them. There are so many cyclists now on routes like Beach Rd, that you need to develop a hierarchy and the lack of any real climbs means that strength does not really play into it, so fashion and pretending you know what you are doing are what gets you up the ladder. Part of the deal is a preach as I say not as I do type of mentality. The guys at the top of the tree are allowed to break the “rules”, because their skill and experience allows them to manage the risk it seems, but watch the shit fly if someone they perceive as beneath them deviates by more than 5mm.
So it looks like on Beach Road at least I am a the bottom of the tree – which I am quite enjoying. My chances of ever owning a set of carbon wheels to race on let alone pose on are pretty slim so I may be down the bottom for a while.
So cheers to the Hobbit and Captain Big Calves. Keep fighting the big battles!!!
For an old school country lad such as myself this is always a bit of an experience. Back in the “good old days”, you had two pairs off wheels, one for training and one for racing – you didn’t get those puppies out unless your life depended on going fast. Beach Road however will see any number of fat gits ridding along on their 4000 dollar Campagnolo Bora’s.
There is also a new etiquette being formed that is based more on material status than any sense of actually “payin your dues”. You know about cycling if you have the right gear. Having the right gear allows you to assume a position at the top of the tree regardless of whether you can actually ride.
On one of my rides, I turned around after a hard effort and was coasting a little when passed by a group of 4 or 5 riders. We were riding into a headwind and so I naturally just sat in behind them as they passed. On the first little hill we hit most the rest of the group dropped off the front two and so I rode around the others and tacked onto the back of the leaders. They looked around and saw that it was a bloke they did not know that was with them and so on the next hill they obviously put the hammer down. I was feeling quite good at this point and so had no trouble just rolling along behind. As we crested the top of the hill and realizing that all they had really done is put about 400 meters between them and their other mates, they sat up. The sudden slowing meant that I was slightly caught off guard and so drifted up between their wheels for a millisecond while I slowed down.
One of the blokes on the front, who we will call the Hobbit, cause to be honest he looked like a Hobbit, went off his nut. “Don’t f_____g half wheel me mate, S___t this S___ts me. When we crash, you C__t etc etc etc. He then went on to talk loudly to his mate about the need for them to start lessons for new cyclists again. I just shut up – cause really, what can you do?
A few days later I had a similar experience. This time I was passed by another similar group to the first and again the first hill saw some of the riders dropped and me moving up to fill the space. This time a guy with the weirdest looking calves I have ever see. They were like someone had drawn his legs out of equilateral triangles. What was really off putting however was that he had socks pulled halfway up them giving a look that was something like trying to stretch a sock over a bucket.
Anyway we rode along for a bit before Big Calves say’s “Hold your line mate! Your drifting right, just stay left.” He then proceeded to sprint around the rider in front and ride for about 500 meters in the extreme right of the lane to the extent that he was often actually in the right car lane.
Anyway I am pretty confident that if viewed by the commissaires, I would have come up clean on both counts, but that’s not the point. The reality is that on my old Cannondale, carrying a few kg’s and having decidedly hairy legs these days, I just didn’t fit in with their “look” and they did not want me to be riding with them. There are so many cyclists now on routes like Beach Rd, that you need to develop a hierarchy and the lack of any real climbs means that strength does not really play into it, so fashion and pretending you know what you are doing are what gets you up the ladder. Part of the deal is a preach as I say not as I do type of mentality. The guys at the top of the tree are allowed to break the “rules”, because their skill and experience allows them to manage the risk it seems, but watch the shit fly if someone they perceive as beneath them deviates by more than 5mm.
So it looks like on Beach Road at least I am a the bottom of the tree – which I am quite enjoying. My chances of ever owning a set of carbon wheels to race on let alone pose on are pretty slim so I may be down the bottom for a while.
So cheers to the Hobbit and Captain Big Calves. Keep fighting the big battles!!!
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