News Flash! Loose Nuts delivers "State of the Stain" address!

I realized today that a huge span of time has passed since anything was published on this little wedge of electronic pepperoni pizza about the art and science of wheelbuilding, and more importantly, the goings-on around Loose Nuts HQ. Perhaps it is time, here in the freshly birthed new year of 2009, to inform our esteemed readership about the new and improved spoked, circular hotness that has been - and is soon to be - rolling out of our super-powered wheel factory in a bi-trimesterly address that we like to call the "State of the Stain" address.  

First of all, we at Loose Nuts have been greatly saddened and dismayed by the decision of MillerCoors, makers of many delicious adult beverages, to end production of Sparks and SparksPlus, the unofficial official beverages of the Loose Nuts racing team. This upsetting development came after the Attorneys General of at least 14 states came to the conclusion that Sparks and other caffeinated alcoholic beverages were aggressively marketed to underage drinkers and contributed to more instances of "alcohol related consequences." We at Loose Nuts are disappointed by this new instance of our government infringing upon our constitutionally given rights to exercise and augment our own god-given stupidity through consumption of whatever beverage we see fit, even one that comes packaged in recycled battery shells and turns your tongue a frightening shade of orange. In response to this draconian prohibition act, the Loose Nuts accounting department has dedicated a special fund to the purchase of all remaining cans of Sparks and SparksPlus (aka the Party Panther) still available to form an "Unregulated Strategic Sparks Reserve" or USSR. We are also accepting donations to the USSR from outside agents, and will gladly compensate any agent who provides viable, intact containers of Sparks or SparksPlus (aka the Party Panther) for their assistance in this very important act of civil disobedience.

Somehow, through all of the legal and psychological turmoil resulting from the demise of Sparks, we have managed to keep the nose to the truing stand and build some lovely wheels for the people in the "nice" column of Santa's informal but shockingly thorough census of humanity. Highlights include a super-light paired spoke road racing wheelset featuring used Bontrager hubs laced with 20 and 24 double-butted silver spokes to silver Velocity Fusion rims.  This set was also the first "Signature Series" wheel to hit the big roads, featuring four contrasting red alloy nipples around the valve stem. They turned out great, and lend some class and sparkle to the Tarmac they now grace. Of course, this doesn't mean that we're abandoning our old friend the track hub. We just completed a sweet rear wheel featuring red anodized hub and nipples tied together with black spokes and a non-machined black Deep-V. Few things look as awesome as an all black deep-dish rim rolling along with sparks flying off of flaming red molten alloy nipples. And, when your old rear wheel gets relegated to serving hard time on the polo bike, why not treat yourself to a little upgrade for the street machine? I can't think of a reason. 

But with all this anodization covering the world, we at Loose Nuts thought that the world needed a little more paint rolling around in circles, so we've enlisted the help of Atlanta artist and bicycle racer Nathan Tavel to produce a one-of-a-kind hand painted wheelset. We provided him with a pair of Velocity's lovely all-white Deep-Vs to have his way with, and after they have been sufficiently molested they will be returnd to Loose Nuts HQ for construction before showing at an upcoming show of Mr. Tavel's work in Atlanta. Early reports from the artist are highly favorable. He claims that whoever rides these wheels with have "baby unicorns sprouting up behind them." More information and photographs of all these projects are forthcoming, and the information ministers here at Loose Nuts HQ well be sure to tell you everything you need to know to get your hands on a once in a lifetime wheelset that will turn you into a Pied Piper of spontaneously germinated baby unicorns, or just a regular wheel to make your bike roll. 

That's all for now, stay tuned for developments.   

What's in a name?

Faithful reader, I am in a quandry.  I was informed by the Drunken Master and eternal pants-trader Ben "El Bastardo" Jones that the title of my little slice of electronic ephemera has already been taken.  Not by just anyone either, but by the two hosts of my all-time least favorite radio show, Car Talk on NPR.  Apparently the brothers Magliozzi are producing a new animated series on PBS, and seeking to indoctrinate a new generation of young auto mechanics to service the aging army of American automobiles that might otherwise be allowed to rot here on Earth or be crushed into cubes and shot into space like interstellar spitballs.  I would rather not be associated with any evil and subversive plots like this, and since they've got the money and the lawyers (funded in part by donations from listeners/viewers like you to NPR and PBS) and I'd rather not risk a lengthy and expensive legal battle in a futile effort to assert my control of the name in question, so I am left with two choices: I can either vacate the tiny slice of the giant christmas ham that is the interweb, leaving it just as I found it, unnamed and without any spirit to give it life, or I can change the name.  Well, anyone who knows me and many who don't will know that I don't just give in to leftist scare tactics so easily and will not be made to abandon my newly-claimed wireless homeland just to clear more space for a couple of eye-talians to drive their shaky old junker hatchbacks around and wonder what that funny rattling noise might be while swilling wine and wondering if the pasta is sufficiently al dente.  But, I need help.  While I may be able to use a whole lot of words to say very little, I'm not so good at coming up with snappy one liners or condensing meaning down to its very essence, boiling off the nonsense until nothing is left but some burnt-on residue at the bottom of the pot which is of course, the essence of all meaning.  For this task I need your help, faithful reader.  Help me reinvent myself and the Loose Nuts webspace with a fresh, inspiring, bold new title.  Please leave suggestions in the comment field at the bottom of this entry, and help save me from the shit storm of copyright litigation soon to rain down upon me from the two brothers who call themselves "Click" and "Clack" and their army of gasoline-addicted miscreant automotivists.   

Winter Bike League: Bowman ride report

Humbled. Broken. Left for dead on the road somewhere between Athens and Bowman. Didn't even make it halfway. Almost there, so painfully close to the halfway point store stop that I almost thought I could make it, could almost taste the cold, sweet, crisp Coca-Cola that might give me the boost I needed to finish this 80-mile festival of torture, but it was not to be. The view from the back of this pack is not a pretty one. I spent the miles I was able to suffer through in constant flux, from coasting easy to giving everything to just barely hang on, big ring, little ring, never the right gear, and always a little nervous about the sketchy guy trying to ride up the middle of our double-wide pack, or the guy who crossed the yellow line to unzip his vest and almost got creamed by an oncoming pickup truck, or the nasty unforeseen potholes waiting to eat my wheels or - even worse - the pair in front of me. And then came one particular climb, which was not so terrifyingly steep or long as climbs come, but was sufficient to cause my already bewildered legs to begin convulsing like a pair of asthmatic lungs that just slammed down a Lucky Strike. By the time we reached the top, I found myself off the back and struggling to bridge the gap. A couple of riders passed by, too fast to jump a wheel, and then came the look back, over the shoulder, to realize that there was nobody left behind me. Where was the giant group that we left Downtown with? They were somewhere out there on the road, left behind or gone another way, probably enjoying their Saturday's ride on a nice smooth road at a reasonable pace, and here I am trying to bridge the 150 meter gap to a pack of lunatics hauling ass on plastic bikes. And what for? To prove to myself that I could do it. That I could hang with the big boys out on the open road. I can't hang. This sucks. No cue sheet, no map. The only way to survive is to catch the pack that leads the way. And then comes the final pass: the sag van. "You okay?" the driver asks. I shake my head and hang out my tongue. All I can muster at the moment. She passes me by to rejoin the pack. So close, still within sight. Just keep them in sight, don't miss a turn. The gap widens. Another rolling climb. The gap widens, but not much. "I'm climbing faster than the back of the pack," I tell myself. "You can still bridge up." My left leg keeps trying to cramp. Standing doesn't help, sit back down. I'm all out of gears. Stop sign coming up, where's the pack, where's that van? Which way did they go? Up or down? Left or right? Where am I anyway? Dropped. That's where. Nowhere. No-Man's-Land somewhere in between life and death, at the corner of some road I don't remember and one with no sign at all. I roll into a driveway, take a drink, try to decide what to do. I pull out the phone, make a call to the Mapping Department at Loose Nuts HQ, try to figure out the quickest and flattest route home. If I stretch out, take it slow, recover a little, maybe I can survive the trek back to town, back home to where my baby waits for me wearing naught but a loosely fastened bathrobe with a slice of pizza in one hand and a tallboy in the other. While Chris processes my coordinates, another dropee rolls down the hill. He's got a cue sheet. His name is Greg. He figured on getting dropped. He's got more sense than me. He tells me that the store stop in Bowman is only four miles up the road. Great! Maybe we can get back with the pack, get a nice draft and get sucked along all the way home. Let's get going then! The first uphill grade is mild. I favor my right leg, try to keep the pace high. I pass Greg on the flat to do my share of the pulling, turn a corner into another hill, steeper this time. Have my legs recovered? I try to stand on the pedals, and the inevitable but still unthinkable happens. Total lockup. Both legs eating themselves from the inside, being crushed inside the black hole that this ride has punched in my spirit. The pedals won't turn. The wheels have come off the bus. I've got nothing left, tell Greg to go on, and coast to a stop on the side of the road. At least there's a street sign. HWY 172 and Corinth Church Rd. This is the end of the road for me. They broke me. I thought I could hang, and the awakening is pretty damn rude. I report in to HQ and arrange for a pickup. This has never happened before. I've never not finished a ride. But it happened today. After being dropped off at Headquarters I still have to make the ride home. On the way, I run into another Loose Nuts compatriot who missed the start of today's ride because he was sick with a hangover. I fill him in on the details and we conclude that he didn't miss much. I tell him to call me if he feels like riding tomorrow, and roll my bones on home. I stop at the corner store and pick up a frozen pizza and some tall boys. What's the point of all this hauling ass anyway?

Have the Polo Players met their match?

The future of the Athens Hardcourt Bike Polo League may be in serious jeopardy.  After a run-in with the security guard at the Butler Building, league officials decided to move the games scheduled for the evening of Thursday last to the parking lot of the Jittery Joe's coffee sweatshop, a vastly inferior venue.  The Polo League has used the Butler Building parking lot as a training ground for the past few months with no trouble, other than some confrontations with a band of unruly Greeks behind the Southern Wall of the court in conflict. Until the events of December 11, this had been a near-perfect venue for the League's weekly matches. The ground is relatively smooth and level, the streetlights are always on, and one would imagine that the roving bands of possum-slaughtering, khaki-clad, date-raping fraternitarians would be more of a concern or nuisance than an innocuous bunch of beer swilling pipe smackers. Passers-by, police, and (up to this point) security guards have been nonplussed by and unconcerned about the oddballs on bikes riding in circles swinging golf clubs and PCP pipes at a ball that may or may not actually be visible to the naked eye. But somehow, on a rainy and uninviting Thursday night, a hillbilly in a minivan with some stickers on it managed to run off the band of mallet-whackers who had just begun the first match of the evening's program. How did he do this? With fear tactics, poor English, and a mandate of power over a small chunk of cracking asphalt that comes with a meager paycheck twice monthly. A debate ensued, but the League's position was severely weakened by the arbitrary and foolish decree against consuming delicious hoppy beverages in public places, which it was clearly in violation of. Rather than risk an expensive and time-consuming court battle, the League's legal team advised bowing out, conceding a momentary defeat, and moving the matches to the next-best location. 

All we need is a fairly flat space where we can swing our mallets and drink our beers without interference from any kind of arbitrarily appointed authority figure, where the cars of the world will leave us unmolested for a few short hours, someplace in the secretive corners of Athens where The Great Eye is not casting its deathly stare upon us, but where the streetlights still shine brightly as the Christmas star beckoning the Magi, a glowing beacon for the faithful few who showed up on a rainy night in December to pay homage to the Duke of the Mallet in hopes that he might spare their souls and allow them passage to Pensacola, where all good Americans go when they die. This cannot be too much to ask, and such a place must exist somewhere.

Ahh. It's been too long since we've met, faithful reader. I hope you have missed me. My creative juices have been flowing so freely and mightily that I couldn't even step under the waterfall of brilliance for long enough to capture a bucketful without being crushed. But this morning is different. Like a good solid turd after suffering a week of diarrhea, my creative floodwaters have been receded to pre-Katrina levels and are now able to be harnessed, dammed and leveed into a new installment of "As The Wrench Turns", brought to you by hydro-electric power. A project to harness the awesome power of my flatulence to generate wind power is also in the works, and I will be sure to update you if there are any developments in the quest for this exciting new technology.  

All formality aside, the real reason that you have the high honor of reading a new post from yours truly is that I found myself quite happily hung over this fine fall morning, and nothing goes better with a nice home-brewed hangover than a hot cup of coffee and some headache-induced ranting to an internet full of people where nobody is listening.  

Goodness, so much has happened here at Loose Nuts HQ. We have elected a new president, built some cool wheels, watched the leaves turn colors across the great state of Georgia, seen a new wave of electric-assisted "hybrid" bikes hit the streets, won a cyclocross race, felt the first chills of the coming winter nipping at our noses, bought the cat a new collar that she promptly ditched in a bush somewhere...

HOLD UP!  Wait a minute!  Did you just say something about winning a race?  Winning?  Really?  That's terrible news.  

Yes, I know.  But I cannot tell a lie, and I must confess that there was winning last Sunday in Rome. I myself, the Grinch, took home the golden medallion, stood on the top floor of the three-tiered tower of might, and quite literally and awkwardly sat on the wheels of the competition this last weekend. There is no photographic evidence of this wheel-sitting, but anyone who saw the race unfold at its crucial stage can attest to the forcefulness of my wheel-sitting. However, in the interest of transparency and full disclosure, I will present the unavoidable, highly public, unspinnable, truth-telling photograph taken by some paparazzo with a long lens and a short fuse. I leapt from the podium as soon as I heard the shutter snap and tried to snatch the film from the camera, but by the time I discovered that there was no film at all (damn this digital age!) he had gone off the deep end and was assaulting me with a tripod. I managed to escape he three-legged attack by running into the ladies' restroom, a no-mans-land that I knew he would never dare enter, but the photo remains.  Ladies and gentlemen, exhibit A:

This photo was taken immediately after some wise guy said, "Everybody in favor of Ryan shaving his legs raise your hands!" Unfortunately, it looks like I'll be investing in a big bag of disposable razors. it's just my way of helping this troubled economy out of the toilet. I know what you're thinking though, I can see it in your beady little eyes. I know what I said a few posts back and the words echo in my dreadfully empty brain case. "Winning is for dopers and sandbaggers"

"WINNING IS FOR DOPERS AND SANDBAGGERS"

Which one am I?......  

I'm lost in a moral conundrum and I don't know quite what to do with myself. I'm becoming exactly what I said I'd never be: a leg shaving, trainer riding, diet watching, teetotaling, bibshort wearing, goo eating, cycle sharting, chamois buttering, carbon fibering, gram counting, gear clustering, race winning DOPER. Or sandbagger. Or maybe both. I can only pray that this doesn't continue.