fellowshipofthechainring.org

We added a new addition to the bikes page. It’s TriGuy’s Bianchi. You just gotta love the cool wheels and quintessential Bianchi green. TriGuy reveals some fascinating anecdotes. Check it out.

I know this isn’t about cycling, but I am driven to comment on the autistic high school senior who scored 20 points in the final moments of the last home game of the season.

Here’s a kid who has probably struggled to “fit in” with his classmates. A boy with a passion for basketball, who didn’t think he could make it on the varsity basketball team, but did anything he could do to be surrounded by the sport. He signed up for team manager, and did all kinds of jobs for the team. And then, in the last home game of the season, his coach puts him in the game.

His teammates dished it out to him, and he launched his first shot. Air ball! They gave him the ball again. Another miss. And then it happened. He nailed a three-pointer. The next time they had the ball, they fired it to him. Wham! Nothing but net. By the time the game was over, Jason McElwain nailed six three-pointers and scored 20 points in all–in four minutes.

As McElwain put it, “I was really hotter than a pistol!”

This touched me on so many levels: McElwain, his coach, his teammates, and his fans. McElwain followed his passion, and if he couldn’t have it all (he couldn’t make it to varsity), he would do the next best thing: team manager.

There was his coach: Jim Johnson. Johnson was willing to give Jason play time in a game for a divisional title. I’m sure Johnson began wondering if it was a good idea to get McElwain on the court after he missed his second attempt, but the coach kept him in.

Then there were his teammates who kept dishing it out to him. No one would have slighted any player for not passing it to McElwain, but they trusted in him to make it if given a chance.

Let’s not forget the fans. Jason had an entire fan club of students cheering him on even before he went out on the floor. He had his own cheering section. The video highlights of the game showed just how exhuberant the crowd was. They went nuts every time McElwain hit a shot. By the end of the game, the place erupted. Even teammates from the opposing team rushed the floor at the end to congratulate him.

When I saw the news clip on the story, it sounded like a Disney movie. I would not have believed it had I not seen it. I was in tears, and it got me thinking about the big picture. Whether we know it or not, we all are gifted and talented in some way. We all have passions. Will we dare to follow what we love? Will we give others a chance? Will we give others a second chance? Will we give them a third?

I felt bad about missing the “Worst Day of the Year Ride,” (it was sponsored by the Community Cycling Center in Portland), so to make up for it, my bride and I chose to do a ride in the middle of this “Arctic” cold spell. I dub that ride: “The real worst day of the year ride.”

Actually, it wasn’t that bad. The sun was out, so who cares if it was 30 degrees with 20 or so mph winds? Half of the ride felt like a warm spring ride, and the other half just felt like we were going up a hill the entire way. The weird part was that it felt like riding uphill while also going downhill–that is, with the rush of wind and watery eyes and such.

We kept it a brief ride. We started with a little warmup around Rood Bridge Park (it’s a great launch site for rides around rural Washington County), then we rode to Oak Knoll Winery and back. I took the Lumbering Rhino, and my bride took her new Ibex Mountain bike. I highly approve of the bike. The Ibex is great for the value–except for the squished toe clips (we’ll be replacing those soon).

It was tempting to stare at the frozen streams by the side of the road, but with the strong and variable cross winds, it was too easy to end up in the ditches. The countryside in Washington County is stunning, with its lush farmfields and meandering hills. The arctic winds cleared the sky and created the perfect views of Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens (alas, there were no steam emissions).

So the next time it’s below freezing with gusting winds, don your tights and rain pants and jackets, and enjoy the ride–at least the part when you’re riding with the wind.

This weather forecast is so typical of Portland. Only in the city of Roses could we have a difference of 3 degrees over the span of three days.

Here’s one I took back in January:

It’s actually more typical because it has rain in the forecast. Do you remember that week? That was the week before I got my cycling rain pants (I got so soaked).

I’m thinking of making this my new hobby: collecting depressing weather forecast graphics.

Thanks to SamWise for sharing a little about the beginnings of the Fellowship. I’ll take the liberty to share my perspective of the beginning of the Fellowship.

The 2004 riding season had begun for me with a 50k. Further than I had ever gone before, but I made it! That was April and a few of the other guys I rode with were talking about doing a Century in a few weeks. 100 miles in one day. I had just finished 30+miles on that ride and felt great, but knew that trying to do a Century in three weeks would require a little different preparation…like writing my eulogy and picking out a burial plot. But a Century, wow, 100 miles! I was drawn by the intrigue of joining that elite fraternity. After some research I found out about the MS 150, dedicated to eliminating MS, a disease my mother-in -law has had for 20+ years. And it was in August. Four months to prepare. That was doable, so the quest began. Soon after, SamWise and I started training. The culmination of our training was a 70 mile ride to the Oregon coast two weeks before the big ride.

I learned a lot about camaraderie that day. It was the two of us and the open road. I had our route mapped out and we were on our way! We had a glorious start of the day speeding along faster than we had ever ridden before. Our lunch break was short because we were eager to get back to our trusty steeds. Leaving Grand Ronde meant going over the Coast range. Hills and lots of them! For some sick reason hills are my favorite part of the ride. Maybe because of the challenge, maybe because of the scenery that comes with hills, maybe because I flew over the handle bars once too many times on my mountain bike.

We started up the hills and I took the lead, encouraging Samwise to draft and save energy. Hill after hill brought us closer to the summit until it finally hit me. That part of a long ride where you get down. I had been warned about this, usually at 60-80% of the way thought a long ride you get sluggish, I was; you’ll get down in the dumps, I was. Crazy thoughts went through my head as delirium set in at about mile 55. I’m sure I’m going to fall over from exhaustion, so I’d better fall over to the right or I’ll be just another trophy next to the “Wall Drug” bumper sticker on that Winnebago. Other similar cheery thoughts swam through my foggy head. Then SamWise did the most selfless thing a friend could do. He was tired too, he needed a little boost of energy, but seeing his friend in dire straights, he pulled up beside me, opened a Power gel packet and instead of taking one for himself, he handed it to me first. I looked over and saw a ray of pure light from the sun make a glow behind him, I heard a single angelic note in my head “Aaaa” (I’m not making this up!) I smiled at my friend in the middle of his noble act and knew at that moment, we’re going to finish the ride! We had more hills to go, but I knew we would finish it together. Rolling into Lincoln City that day was an accomplishment that WE did. To me that was the defining moment of the Fellowship.

Please take a look at our bikes page. Each bike is something special. Each bike has stories to tell. What if those bikes could talk? Sorry, they can’t; they might be bikes, but they’re not that special.

Anyway, I decided to dedicate a page to our trusty steeds. Please take a look at our bikes’ page. We’re just getting started. Please, if you’re registered, and you’d like a dedication to your bike, please email me a picture of your bike with a brief description or story to go with it.

I love the idea of IMAX movies, but so often they seem to waste the technology. Not this time. Starting March 3rd at OMSI’s OMNIMAX Theater, will be, Wired to Win, a movie that focuses on the Tour de France.

Oh sure, it will probably be filled with all that science stuff, and probably songs by some aging artist like Sting or Don Henley, but it will also capture the mountain stages, the grueling individual time trials, the treacherous cobblestone corners.

Can you imagine the 60 mph descents down the French Alps? Watching Basso, Ulrich, George (he did sign my MS150 poster after all), and of course, Lance pumping up those Pyrenees as they squash some splinter breakaway upstarts? And can you imagine it all 3 stories high and surrounding you? I’m there.

I just created a FOTC Foto page where we can post pictures of us on our rides, workouts, and other events. If you have any pictures that you would like to post, contact TriGuy, Samwise, or El Cap.

I almost fell of the LR (Lumbering Rhino) today when I looked up in the sky and saw this bright orb looking thing. It looked familiar. The sky was funny looking too, it was the most bizarre shade of blue. It was an uncanny phenomenon. It reminded me of living in Arizona.

The other strange thing was the road. Call me crazy, but I could have sworn that it was completely dry. It’s so strange; I just don’t know what’s become of Portland.

One more pound, and I’ll be at my lowest weight since sometime in the early 90’s. I took a hit during the holidays, but I accounted for this in my overall scheme. Just a half a year ago, I was at my highest weight ever. Since then I lost 19 pounds.

How have I managed to lose so much weight since last August? It wasn’t Atkins, the Zone, or the South Beach diet. It was a Frontline Special called, Diet Wars, Triguy, and my own ingenuity. I knew I needed to lose weight, especially after I saw the pictures of me from the MS150 from ‘04.

The Frontline Special didn’t help to encourage me — at first — but something from that show stuck with me. It was actually after the second time watching it that a particular concept took hold of me. It was that just a few extra calories a day add up. Steve Talbot, the host, mentioned that even a one pound a year weight gain becomes dramatic over 20 years. If a few extra calories a day can mean 20 pounds from age 20 – 40, then fewer calories a day can mean weight loss.

The trick is consistency. Steve said most people who go on a diet may succeed for a time, but eventually fail. So the question became, how do I not become a sad statistic? How do I escape the numbers game?

While I pondered that question, Triguy added the motivation I needed. In the middle of the MS150, I mentioned something about the weight of the bike and hauling it up the hill to Vernonia, and Triguy pipes in with, “it’s easier to lose a pound off your body than a pound off your bike.”

No one ever put it that way. I thought, yeah, why drop a few thousand bucks just to lighten up and reduce drag on the bike. Why not shed 10 pounds instead? That’s more weight savings than anyone could afford. I then pictured myself climbing some 8% grade with 10 fewer pounds to carry up the hill. That’s all I needed; I knew what I had to do, but how would I do it?

The plan had to be fool proof, and I needed to make the change permanent. Just a few extra calories a day. That’s all I had to cut. And then it hit me: coffee creamer. Almost every day of the last 5 years or so, I had 1 or 2 cups of coffee with some kind of flavored creamer. If I could make the switch to black coffee–permanently–I could drop anywhere from 40-100 calories a day (see the calorie count of coffee creamer from the Mayo Clinic). Averaged out, over an entire year, that would be over 25,000 calories.

I knew what I had to do. People thought I was mad, mad, I tell you. But I proved them all wrong. I drank black coffee every morning since then, and within a week and a half, I acquired a taste for black coffee. Within a few weeks, my weight began a gradual descent, and my belts started going into overtime trying to hold up my pants.

The crazy diet works. It can work for you to, provided you consume something on daily or near daily basis that you can go without. Of course, it makes the best sense if you are getting on your bike and riding it around to help burn calories.

The only thing that makes me a bit nervous is wondering if my body will figure out it’s being “cheated” out of 40-100 calories a day and somehow come up with a workaround. I’ll have to keep you updated.