Eroica CA DVD Extras!

On Monday I shared my Eroica California story for Outside magazine, which is already being hailed as the greatest story about the 2019 Eroica California for Outside magazine that I've ever written:

Nevertheless, as comprehensive as that story is, it doesn't tell the whole story.  Specifically, it omits many of my crappy photos, as well as the sorts of tedious details nobody really needs or wants to know.  Therefore, I am going to provide you with an abundance of both herewith.

For example, you know I ordered a Brand-X Road Bike from Chain Reaction Cycles for the Nova Eroica and had it shipped to my hotel.  But do you know how it looked when I took it out of the box?  Well, now you do:

You also know that I purchased a Univega Viva Sport for $125 on Craigslist.  Well, here's the actual ad:

Here's the bike mere moments after it had become mine:

And here it is in my sweet-ass rental minivan:

Oh yeah, here's my sweet-ass rental minivan:

As for the Brand X, even though I now ride titanium, the ne plus ultra of frame materials ("ne plus ultra" is how the sorts of assholes who ride titanium say "bestest"), I do have a soft spot for aluminum bikes as well as for inexpensive bikes of all materials.  So I was just as excited to try it out as I would be if it were a $10,000 Fred Sled:

The matte finish and minimal branding also worked for me:

As did the accidental nod to the Bronx, the New York City borough which I call home:

For the data nerds, the shifters were Shimano Tourney, which I believe are probably the last ones to include the little Campy-esque nubbin on the inside of the lever for the upshifts.  Unlike Campy, you can't really access the nubbins from the drops, but outside of a race situation that's not really something you miss too much.  Also, as I mentioned in the Outside story, the bike comes with a seven-speed freewheel, and I do mean freewheel--it's not a cassette hub.  However, that too worked perfectly well, and it also seemed like a fitting nod to Eroica.

Anyway, as I said, I was excited to try my new cheap bike, though to be honest the setting may have informed my excitement somewhat.  It's still pretty cold and crappy in New York City in April, and so watching people heading out for a quick surf before work on a sunny Friday morning seemed impossibly exotic:

And yes, before you tell me about your friend who surfs out in Rockaway before work, I know it's something people do everywhere, but let's not pretend that the pre-work routine for 90% of New Yorkers isn't getting a buttered roll and a coffee at the deli on a dark and rainy morning before throwing elbows on the subway for an hour.

Dialing in the bike was easy, and as I mentioned in the article I didn't even bother to adjust the tire pressure, which was fine out of the box.  After that I picked up some nutrition and various sundries at a local bike shop and headed up the coast in my minivan.  Then, the next morning, I lined up at the start of the Nova Eroica:

If you squint the Brand-X looks like any other gravel bike, but it's oh so much less:

As was the case last year, the ride itself was stunning, and while it featured some long, difficult climbs, there was plenty of time for recovery in between:

Plus, the view at from the tops of the climbs was well worth the effort:

One thing I didn't mention in the article though was that, owing to what was apparently an organizational hiccup or whatever the technical term for fuck-up is, many of the rest stops were insufficiently socked, which is another way of saying they didn't have enough food.  This wasn't really a problem for me, as I had stuffed my pockets with so much food that morning that my jersey was distended and about to burst, and I never got close to bonking.  (The girth of my midriff wasn't helping.)  However, a lot of riders were understandably quite frustrated, since a major part of the Eroica experience is eating fancy quasi-Italian foodstuffs, and whether it's Tuscany or the Central Coast you should be plied with wine and olive oil at every turn. 

Still, there was a stop at a brewery:

And I felt really bad for all the normals who had to endure the constant stream of Freds clomping in for their free sample:

But yeah, that aside, the ride was sublime, and here are the wheels I followed for a good portion of the ride:

"Who's the doofus with the pie plate and 500 packets of energy gels in his jersey?," they're all wondering.

With Nova Eroica down I had only the Classic Eroica to go, and when I spotted this vintage Mario Bros. game in a local restaurant I wondered if there was an Eroica for gamers:

Then I realized I don't really care.

Until now I had barely touched the Univega, so the morning of the Classic Eroica I finally turned my attention to it.  Here's the house we were staying in, so I enjoyed the novelty of working on a bike in a garage as opposed to the basement of an apartment building which is where I usually do it:

The view wasn't too bad, either:

My usual view is of the laundry room.

Here's the Univega exactly as I received it:

It was, by all appearances, a pretty nice frame:

Though the cockpit looked like the "It's" man from Monty Python:

According to this seat tube sticker, it had begun life at Bike Tech in Orange County:

So presumably it hadn't traveled far in the past few decades.

The Craigslist ad had said 1985, but I think maybe the SunTour components are newer than that:

I'm sure someone out there can date all this stuff exactly, though as Classic Cycles points out on their website in the description of my Litespeed, when it comes to bikes it's sort of pointless to get hung up on exact dates.

Either way, while the chain was rusty, the chainrings were quite clean, leading me to believe this bicycle had not been ridden much relative to its age:

I wasn't about to bother re-taping the bars or anything like that, but I did add some toe clips (I brought those home with me for another project), and I also threw on a Brooks Cambium I had brought with me for insurance:

In all, I easily had the mustiest bike there, but I was there, and that's all that mattered:

Recovery rides don't get much better than leisurely spins along the Pacific:

Here's the view from the turnaround point:

And here's what happened to my decaying brake hood when I briefly lay the bike down on the ground:

I guess it must be gravel-specific.

On the way back I stopped to commune with the seals:

After two days spent riding around with packs of people in cycling clothes, it's hard to to draw comparisons:

And finally it was back to Cambria, where somebody apparently misunderstood what the whole Eroica thing was about:

Of course, what you really want to know is this:

Who called dibs on the bikes?!?

Well, I had one dibs-caller on the Brand-X.  He was down from Berkeley for the ride, and if he happens to be reading perhaps he'll hop into the comments and let us know how it's going.  Perhaps he'll also share how (or even if) he managed to get both his own bike and the Brand-X (not to mention all his camping equipment) back in a Miata.  It really is a solid bike, and it seems particularly well-suited to long-haul commuting.  Throw some fenders and a rack on there and you'd be all set.

As for the Univega, incredibly nobody called dibs on it.  Can you believe it?  If it had fit me better I might have even considered keeping it.  However, instead I decided to donate it.  Since I would be flying out of Los Angeles somebody recommended giving it to the Bicycle Kitchen, but then it turned out there was also a Bicycle Kitchen right there in Cambria, so in the end it all worked out.

 After Eroica, I drove down to Los Angeles and spent the night there before flying home on Monday.  Here was the reading material in my trendy boutique hotel room:

Clearly there was no escaping the Eroica theme.