the socialist pig

 Bike trip to The Socialist Pig with Rachel.

and then the winter arrived

Lake Ontario Park is a great place to watch the weather roll in.

As I rode laps around Sunday's cross course, the wind picked up, the waves grew big, the temperature dropped, and then winter arrived.

Yes, for the first time this year, the clouds brought snow. It wasn't much, but it was a solemn reminder of the cold months that lay ahead. 

kingston cross II

Dear Kingston Cross,
Next year it is all business. 

Sincerely,

.h.

kingston cross

The eighth race of the Eastern Ontario Cyclocross Series takes place in Kingston, Ontario at Lake Ontario Park. From what I hear, the crazy course that sweeps up and down a massive terraced hill on the north shore of Lake Ontario is the best race in the series.

Cross is hard, fast, and painful... and unlike anything I've ever experienced before.

My racing experience has mostly involved long days full of epic singletrack where the fist hour is about finding your rhythm and the next five hours are about riding with a handful of other folks in the woods. Cross, by comparison, feels like a rat race.

The field is visible, the crowd is cheering (and I did have a great cheer squad), and there is an expectation to preform. As I thought about the race on my ride home, I realized how much of a learning experience the morning had been: Endurance races and cross races have very little in common. Epic cross performance requires preparation. Proper training probably will not make the races any less painful. And trail running does not constitute cyclocross training.

My legs and (oddly enough) my back feel like lead, but the race was lots of fun. I will do it again - but probably not this season. Thanks to my wonderful cheer squad for making the trip down to the lake to root me on.

I will post pictures when I get them.

two hours and counting

In less than two hours, I will be in my first cyclocross race ever.
I'm under prepared and will most definitely be making a fool of myself... which is fine, as long as those cute trail-building mountain biking boys I met yesterday while running in the woods don't show up.
Time to get dressed and finish my morning cup of coffee. 
Here goes nothing.

merciless darwinism and the c-section baby

I used to be a merciless Darwinist.
It looked something like this:
Evolution is a reality and if you are not strong enough to survive you shouldn't.
The irony was that as an infant with a head far too big to fit through my mother's birth canal, this ideology would have no-doubt rendered me dead.

I'm still a Darwinist.

I idolize the orchid and believe in bio-mimicry something fierce, but thankfully my thoughts have evolved and I have managed to identify some of the many problems associated with the latter half of my former ruthless credo.

I have also come to hope that life can be more than mere survival.

And so began the exceptions....

I have some strong friends in weak places and some solid friends who have been dealt shitty hands. Our fiercely independent swaggers are nothing more than street theater. This is not to say we don't preform well. Many of us would have made good actors. But the truth is our fierce claims of freedom and independence are as misguided as my moments of militant Darwinism. We are all affected. Our  freedom is tied up in the well being and freedom of our global co-inhabitants.  I love my bikes, but somewhere some malnourished child working for 2 dollars a day probably cut the tubes that I'm riding on. Call it interdependece, interconnection, life, or whatever word suits your fancy. 

When I was fourteen my grandmother told me that she never would have moved to New Hampshire if she knew the license plates said, "Live Free or Die".


You're right Gran... it isn't that simple.
And I'm glad you're moving to New York.