Ramping Up For Wednesday

With the summer gradually winding down, I'm making like an industrious little squirrel and gathering my nuts:

(KuKu Penthouse: gathers your nuts.)

I don't mean I'm taking care of my responsibilities or anything like that.  P'shaw!  As if!  No, what I mean is I'm putting my cyclocross-style bicycle into something resembling rideable condition and scoping out my fall riding routes, which is how I spent yesterday afternoon:

See, with every passing day autumn draws nearer, and with every passing autumn I'm that much closer to the grave.  Therefore, I've got to make every ride count!  Grim death is my wheelsucker.  In fact, I'm pretty sure he rides along with me in my saddle bag--which, as you can see, is a big one:

Fortunately, from where I live it's a short ride to this, which is where I headed yesterday:

As you follow this bucolic trail northward, it evolves subtly but never changes direction or unduly challenges the rider--sort of like listening to The Byrds:

Then I cut over onto this paved trail:

Where I rode past some ponds and shit:

And finally came to a network of fairly non-technical mountain bike trails:

Complete with adorable wooden bridges:

I then knocked around on the trails for awhile, but not for too long, because I have a terrible sense of off-road direction and couldn't risk getting lost.  Granted, you can't get all-day lost in a park like this, but you can get 20-minutes-lost, which ordinarily is no big deal, but on a weekday is more than enough to make me late for picking up my kid at the iPhone factory, where he glues touch screens onto phones with toxic solvents.

So I left the park and turned back towards home right on schedule, and I even had enough time to take this Anti-Velominati bicycle portrait in front of a deli:

I think I managed to cover everything:

In fact, I may very well establish a strict non-drivetrain-side-only photography rule on this blog.

Of course, I would have had a much easier time with that deli shot if only I'd had one of these:



That's right, someone has finally brought clipless pedal technology to leaning your bike against the wall:

Hey, look, I don't give a shit what kind of plastic crap you screw into your own walls at home, but for chrissake leave the goddamn trees out of it, okay?

I mean really, is this so hard?

I think next time I ride those trails I'll put plastic anchors on all the trees just in case I need to stop and take a leak.

But the best thing about this invention is that two Freds can finally dock their bikes together:

Isn't that cute?

Now they can go chase the weasel that's been nibbling at their bar tape.

Lastly, here's a triathlete doing what they do best, by which I mean riding right into another rider for absolutely no discernible reason:

Maybe he was trying to do engage his Fred bike-docking system.