Wednesday, October 1, 2008

My Cursed-Ass Bike



Well the day of my new Squarebuilt had arrived. I managed to miss the boat for the NACCC in Chicago so instead I bought a rare (for me) case of high-quality beer and headed over to the Myrtle Avenue basement that my boy Lance uses to build strongbuilt Squarebuilt bikes (which are triangles). He's had this tubeset that I gave him sometime around April and after months of serious doubt that the project would ever be finished, I received the message that the beast was back from the powder coater and was waiting nervously in the stand to get reamed, screwed and ridden. I'd been noticing a some prematurely-old-man tendencies in myself, toward early bedtimes and decreasingly rude behavior, and this sounded hot enough to short out the pacemaker.

I got over there and ran down the stairs like a kid on Christmas morning and Sweet Jesus, this thing was nice. Classic half-sloping fork crown, smooth fillets, funny wishbone seatstay assembly and some monster Columbus Life chainstays, all the color of a melting mint ice cream shake. Plus, Lance had taken it upon himself to order up some custom decals for the top tube, and each side in "aggro" white script said "Angry Drew", which was a hell of a classy touch. We dove in. I'd scrounged the best parts from my bin and ripped some of the best stuff off my other bikes. This was gonna be the showpiece, the race-winner, the daily beater and a buzz-piece for Lance's upstart framebuilding business.

We built the thing, and pronounced it good.




I've never met someone with a custom frame who hated it. Since our perceptions of good fit and style tend to be so subjective, I wonder whether it's just a case of "since it's made for me, and I paid for it, and I'd look like a doofus complaining, it must be right." I've never heard "those bastards at Serotta cut this top tube an inch too short and I feel like a goddamn circus bear on this overrated piece of shit." (I also don't know anyone who owns a Serotta.) But people will swear to some very strange things, in defiance of all logic. Is your carbon stem really any stiffer than the $10 Taiwan-forged lump you replaced with it? Are a few extra grams on your rims going to cost you the race, or is it the fact that you've spent all winter in a depressed, alcoholic funk, smoking cigarettes and eating Hostess? I know when I lose, it's always something closer to the latter. Equipment has to be pretty run down for it to take any blame at this (extremely low) level of competition. "Run what you brung" and have faith in your preparation. People love looking at pretty things, they love owning and fawning over and taking pictures of pretty things. I'm not exempt from this temptation, but I think it's a filthy habit. I try to keep it in check, and I keep a vice grip on my cash. I wind up with nice stuff because I'm patient, I trade, I buy used, and I have good friends.

But back to the lecture at hand. (Perfection is perfected, so I'ma let em understand.)

So I approached this beast with some trepidation. What if I hated the frame? What if it handled like shit, or didn't fit right? Not a lot to do then; it was made, gratis, by a friend who's looking for some feedback, some exposure and some kids winning races on his bikes. It wasn't like I could just not ride it. But as it happened, I never got to find out what I'd do. The fates smiled upon us and our enterprise, Lance did his job like a true professional, and the bike was sweet. He made exactly the bike I wanted, despite his protests that he'd do so many things differently if he'd had his way. It fit perfectly, it rode straight and smooth and handled exactly how I'd wanted it to. Of course, figuring that out took some time. Invariably, even with a stellar fit, there's the hard reality that once the bike's been built, it is what it is and the rider's got to get used to it. The angles won't change, the tubes will stay the same length, unless you crash it into a wall. It's not a Tempur-Pedic. Nothing's ever going to replace the comfort that comes with familiarity, so the first ride will always feel a bit like going to a party where you don't know anyone. I don't trust the "I jumped on and it was magic" claims, but I'll trust "I rode it for a year and I don't hate it yet." It's really weird, like someone writing you a song or a poem or making you a really complicated origami flower or planning an extravagant surprise party, where so much thought, work and skill goes into creating a thing that's just for you. I've never commissioned a work of art before and it's been hard to beat up this bike the way I've done with my others. I'm rude with my equipment; I have a rule that you don't really own a bike until you've fallen off it. Or done a hard race, or a tour, or earned a paycheck in the snow. If you want to keep it pristine, hang it on the wall but it will never really be yours. This bike looked too NICE to be mine, like the red Prada raincoat I got from Crazy Nick. (I owned that one pretty quickly, getting body-checked by a testy pedestrian into the grill of an SUV, ripping the sleeve on the stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid brush-guard. For trekking through the jungle. Or whatever Manhattan soccer moms do with their stupid stupid stupid trucks.)

As it happened, the relationship got off to a tempestuous beginning when, two days later, this happened:



Head-on collision with a speeding van the night before the Labor Day track races. It sucked, it was a night in the hospital and a dislocated, tore-up and stitched-up arm, among other injuries which began to surface once the drugs wore off, and I didn't get to take the new bike out again for another couple of weeks. One of the first things I did when I could walk was take the bent fork back over to Lance, who straightened it out posthaste. It's best not to watch when someone's fixing your steel frame. If it's someone else's, it's fascinating. If it's yours, it'll make you queasy. Lance was furious. I'd fucked up his baby in less than a weekend. The bike took a hell of a beating but weatherd the assault a bit better than I did. Not quite the same bike it was, but hell, I don't have quite the arm I did before the accident either and I'm not headed for the scrap heap anytime soon. As a post-wreck text message from Lance so eloquently put it, "Damn right it's gonna ride straight, and you're gonna ride it again. I put my blood into it and you poured yours all over it and now your souls are intertwined for all time." A little heavier than I would have put it, but it suits me fine.

So this weekend we'll hit the dirt with some fat tires for my first cyclocross race ever. I have a funny premonition that something is going to break...

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