Hung it up for the year.

I have hung my bike up for the year. When I am not riding it I store it from a hook in the basement. This year it has company as it hangs there upside down. My bike has my wife's 2 bikes to keep it company. Both belonged to my father in law and my wife inherited them when he passed away. I have no idea what the 3 will talk about but I'm sure they'll find something to discuss. Hopefully good things to come for 2010.

The TREK is about 12 human years, the Gitane is about 25 to 30 human years and my Vision R40 is 8 human years old. The Gitane is between the TREK and Vision. I am sure as the oldest bike it will keep the other 2 in line. In the next month or so they will be joined by an even older bike. An old Schwinn American. It is about 40 to 50 years old. But the Schwinn will not be hanging around for that long as it will be donated to the public museum for the transportation exhibit. Sometime later in 2010 the bikes will be joined by an even older bike an old Hiawatha which belonged to my father in law and I inherited.

From Novemeber to March the Vision will not be hanging in the basement nor will the TREK or Gitane. I ride the Vision and my wife will ride either the TREK or Gitane March through November. The Schwinn will hang there until it goes to the museum and the Hiawatha will hang there until something is figured out as to what will happen to it. The Hiawatha needs a lot of restoration work before it is even stabel enough for anything again.

The bikes are also joined by a red American Flyer wagon to keep them company. At the very least there will 2 bikes and the wagon hanging in the basement keeping each other company. At the most there will be 5 bikes and the wagon.

Along with hanging it up for the year I have also put away all of the accessories I use when I ride. These include but are not limtied to: saddle bags, seat bag, floor pump, helmet, computer, gloves, etc. I have also washed and packed away all bike clothing.

The reason I have hung it up for the year is it is now getting too cold to ride, both before and after work. Thankfully it is only for 4 months. I will get the bike and everything out in March.

New Siouxland Cyclists club jersey

The bike club I belong to, the Siouxland Cyclists has a new club jersey. I ordered mine over 2 months ago and it finally arrived yesterday. If anyone would like to order one, let me know and I will put you in touch with the person in the club who does the ordering. My jersey cost me $65.00 Primalwear is the club ordered the jerseys from. The price depends on how many are orderd. Here are the photo's:

This is wrong.

This is wrong on so many levels it is not funny. It is bad enough the thief stole the bike. But to come back and leave a response is reprehensible. Talk about ballsy, the thief must have a set the size of bowling balls.

Check it out:

Spike - How it Began

[In the year 1989, one man fights an institution]


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Annie asked me how it all began.

I told her the story of Scott Currey and the last Kay-five, but it really started a long time before that. I learned how to ride a bike when I was four or five, and it probably started shortly thereafter. Nevertheless, when I think of more recent times, of the dark years immediately preceeding the Act, one incident comes to mind...

It was the summer of 1989. I was in my second year as an undergrad at Caltech, visiting my family in Chicago over the break and competing in some of the local races. I was still a Cat 2 then, unknown save for a small local reputation I was getting.

Dave Karpinski, my best friend and one of my teammates, showed me a newspaper clipping that had been circulating among most of the USCF clubs in the area. The author was a humorist, a local personality noted for his irreverent commentary and sardonic wit. Usually, his columns were funny. There was nothing funny about this one. He described an incident involving his wife and a local cyclist. The cyclist, it seems, had been hit by the wife's car. The circumstances which led to this were not fully explained, but the columnist inferred that it had been the cyclist's fault; perhaps he had run a stop sign. This was not infuriating in itself. The columnist, however, went on to explain how his wife had been upset by the incident. He claims that he would have enjoyed it. Mutilation and death, it would seem, were appropriate penalties for minor traffic violations.

That was infuriating.

The local racing organization was asking its members to write letters to the columnist's paper, deploring the irresponsible nature of the column and all that. I took a somewhat different view. Being one who holds freedom of speech in the highest regard, I didn't want to tell his paper they shouldn't have printed the article. The man was entitled to his views, however warped and sadistic they might have been. Nevertheless, I wondered if he was sincere in his word. I thought I might find out. I was always better with a bike than with a typewriter, anyway.

The rag he wrote for ran TV commercials that suggested he was a regular at "Billy Goat's Tavern," one of the Loop saloons. I checked it out and found out it was true enough, although the place wasn't as homey and cozy as the commercials would have you believe. I spent considerable time observing him, keeping track of his comings and goings and the amount of beer he drank. The information would prove useful.

I followed him home a few times, in my Dad's car, keeping a discreet distance. I didn't want him to see me on a bike just yet. I had to learn his habits, which turned out to be well established. This would also prove useful.

Ultimately, I was ready to set up for him. I didn't go armed in those days (although I often wanted to), but what I had in mind was somewhat less than lethal. Hanging from ceiling hooks in my parents' garage was an old Schwinn LeTour I used to ride to high school. It was battered and rusty, but still serviceable. It did, however, require a few modifications. I retrieved a set of Deore' cantilever brakes and a pair of beat-up Campy Record levers from my junk box. A little work with a brazing torch, and the brakes bolted on. I installed a couple of oversized Mathauser brake pads, the kind used for heavily loaded touring, and a pair of well-stretched 2mm cables. When I was done, my old beater bike had brakes that would stop a train.

I waited until Friday afternoon to make my move. I wore my most obnoxious outfit, a screaming, day-glow jersey I'd won in some crit or another, and a matching helmet cover, white gloves, and shorts with a bright yellow stripe. I wanted to make sure he could see me.

I lay in ambush for him in an alley a couple of miles from his house. I knew he'd be coming home from Billy Goat's down this narrow street, with several beers in him. As I saw him approach, I pulled out of the alley and strategically moved in front of his car. He laid on the horn, but I ignored it. There were cars parked in solid lines down both sides of the street, with nowhere for me to go, even if I'd wanted to. Of course, I didn't want to. I wanted him good and mad.

At the end of the block was a four-way stop sign. The columnist would make a right-hand turn here, usually the California variety. This is where I sprang my trap. I did something he didn't expect. I stopped. That is, I STOPPED, from 21 MPH to zero in just enough space to keep me from going over the handlebars.

He did what I expected. Timing it perfectly, I had released the brakes an instant before his bumper hit my back wheel. It was easier to control than I'd expected; I had to throw the bike into a skid myself, taking care to slide a ways on my elbow and thigh. A touch of road rash would make it more convincing.

By the time the columnist was out of his car, a couple of passersby had already come to my side. I wasn't hurt, but I made a good show of it, holding my elbow with the other hand, not getting up from the street. A crowd was gathering. I heard someone murmur something about getting an ambulance, another mentioning the police. The columnist was visibly shaken, but I was just getting started. As he approached, I turned to face him, pointed my finger and shouted to the gathering crowd:

"Him! He tried to kill me! He followed me for blocks! Get him away from me!"

A couple of big men emerged from the crowd, stood between me and the columnist, glowering menacingly.

"What did you do to the kid?" One said (I was 24 and an ex-Marine at the time, but I took no insult in being called a "kid" under the circumstances). "Sh__, you just run him down, man. Hey, mother______, you been drinkin'?" The crowd got uglier as sirens approached.

Ultimately I went easy on him. I dropped the assault charges a few days later. I waited a couple of months to tell him I wouldn't be seeking civil damages, although I did ask him to pay for the bike. He was in a good deal more trouble with the police and his editor, given the content of the article he'd written. And I didn't see him hanging around Billy Goat's Tavern much after that. Just as well; I kind of liked the place.

It was just a small skirmish, ultimately an empty victory before the gathering storm.

Copyright (c) 1989 by Robert Fishell All Rights Reserved

Source Link:
Spike - How it Began

Spike Bike Returns

* PRELUDE *
[American life in the Year 2000 is not what the futurists of the late Twentieth Century had predicted. With the Western economy nearly wrecked by the remorseless profiteers of the Corporatist era, conditions are sometimes harsh, problems and unrest abound, and a fledgeling Government struggles to steer America back to a course of prosperity and growth.

Times are hard, but improving. In many ways, it is a better world. Most Sundays, bicyclists ride freely up and down the streets and avenues of American cities, secure in the knowledge that they are no longer flirting with suicide.

Optimism abounds as the new Millenium approaches. People have grown kinder, more tolerant, even happy. Most people, that is. In the year 2000, one man cannot forgive the lowly cyclist for getting in his way. Another cannot forgive himself.

Fate is to bring them together.]


* PROLOGUE *
(The smell of the new upholstery exhilerated him. With a lot of people out of work, it meant something to drive a new car. It was not just a cheap little econo-crate, either; this was a top-of-the-line mini-van, with a V-6, air conditioning, stereo, power windows, the works.

He drove out of the congested city into the abandoned roads south of town. This would be a good place to open it up, see what it could do now that it was broken in. Just over the hill and .. NO! Just his luck, a goddamn bicycle. One of those arrogant wimps who were responsible for those spineless bleeding-hearts in Washington. Things had been good when the Corporatists were in charge; there was money, and you could buy a new car every couple of years. Now he had to work a second job just to make the payments on this fine machine.

He followed the bike at a distance until the shoulder of the road gave way to a bridge abutment. That would be the place. Okay, you little bastard, it's pay-back time. He pushed the accelerator to the floor...)


* PART ONE *
I lay on the shoulder of a dusty Texas road, my feet hopelessly tangled in the toe straps of my wrecked bike. My arms felt like lead. E. J. Ross towered over me, his great bulk quivering as he laughed.

"Gonna whup yo' ass, boy. Teach y'all to fool with me!" E. J. moved closer, reached for me. I managed, lamely, to get an arm raised, and I tried to throw a punch at his jaw. My fist drifted slowly through the air, barely dented the pudgy flesh of his jowls, and fell back. I could not raise it again. So weak...

E. J. gripped my shoulders in two ham-like fists and pulled my face close to his. His breath stank of whiskey. He was no longer laughing. He squeezed my skull against his forehead and I felt my head begin to split. I could not breathe. I could see nothing but his eyes.

"Gonna whup yo' ass, boy."



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I awoke with stifled scream lodged in my throat. My pillow was drenched. The chill air of the cabin impinged on my awareness as I lay among knotted bedclothes tossed askew in the night. Shivering, I turned the pillow over and pulled a heavy quilt up around my neck. My head hurt. After a while, sleep returned. E. J. Ross did not.

A beam of morning sunlight glinted from the half-empty Jack Daniels bottle next to the bed. The cabin was awash in daylight, terribly bright, driving needles into my eyes. I sat up groggily and reached for the jug, for the hair of the dog. Raising it to my lips, I was seized by a pang of revulsion as the peppery-sweet fragrance bit my nostrils. I hurled the bottle into the fireplace, where it shattered and fell among the other shards of glass there. I regretted the gesture immediately, for the whiskey stench now flooded the room. After a few agonized moments, I rose to my feet.

A light June snow had fallen in the night. With the bright sunshine, it would be gone by mid-morning, and by noon, I would be able to split wood outdoors without a shirt on. Such weather was not uncommon in the Canadian Rockies, but even after nineteen months, I had not grown indifferent to the unpredictability of this place. It helped to mark the passage of time -- time which was too slowly healing the wounds of a life ended under the streets of Detroit back in '98.

The day's first coherent thoughts returned to that night, as they often did. Another morning, another day's life drawn on a bankrupt account.

I didn't deserve to live. Sitting there alone in the mine, I tried to recall how many men I'd killed since I awoke only that morning. I'd lost count. Multiply that uncertainty by five years and it added up to a load of guilt which could be expunged by death alone. It was the right time, the right place to die.

But I did not want to die.

I'd had the better part of an hour to work with the mine computer. It took little time for me to activate one of the conveyers which carried salt to the surface, half a mile above. After completing the last entry in Spike Bike's diaries, I prepared my escape. To lighten the bike as much as possible, I removed all the heavy armament, keeping only the grenades and my 9mm Walther automatic. I then donned a dust mask and hefted the bike and myself into one of the hoppers. At precisely 9:30 PM, as I had instructed the computer, the conveyer lurched to life and I began the painfully slow ascent.

When I emerged , I had but ten minutes to get away. I used the remaining grenades to blast the conveyor tunnel I'd used to escape, hoping to contain a bit more of the radiation from the impending nuclear blast. Then I jumped on the bike, pointed it at the main gate, and sprinted away. Fortunately, I ran into no resistance. Senator Crisp must have been successful at evacuating the area.

I got, perhaps, two miles from the mine entrance when a brilliant flash lit up the sky. A moment later, the pavement buckled violently and I was thrown into the air. I landed hard on the broken asphalt. I looked back towards the mine, half-expecting to see a mushroom cloud, but I saw only the glow of scattered fires. The flash I'd seen had been merely the result of a transformer explosion. It was over. Ames Morgan's plot had been foiled; what was to have been a major nuclear disaster had become a second-rate earthquake.

The bike had landed hard enough to collapse the back wheel. It was totaled, and I was not far from being totaled myself. I hadn't broken any major bones, but my left wrist was sprained, and the bullet wound I'd received in my shoulder earlier had long since opened up, oozing blood down the front of my flak jacket.

I armed the plastique charge in the bike's down tube, tossed the bike into the culvert, and simply walked away. When the radio-linked heart monitor I wore was out of range of the bike's receiver, the charge went off, rendering the evidence of my survival to slivers. Spike Bike was dead.

In the pandemonium following the blast, it was easy to slip across the border into Ontario. I had discarded my remaining weapons, keeping only my Canadian papers and some cash. Some time early Tuesday morning, Michael Resnick, of Caroline, Alberta, Canada, checked into a Windsor hospital and slept for two days. The doctors did not challenge my story about getting my injuries in a gas line explosion, although I don't think they believed it, either. In any case, I was discharged after a few days, to make my way to the only home I had left, taking the only identity I had left.

Michael Resnick was born April 17, 1965, in Vancouver, B.C. He died of severe birth defects on April 18. He had been my cousin. His birth certificate was among the effects my mother inherited when Michael's parents died in a plane crash in '67. I used it to obtain other Canadian documents, including a passport and driver's license.

I established the Resnick identity during the years I fought the Act. Canadian citizenship made it easier for me to move around north of the border and helped to cover Spiro Bikopoulis's movements. To the Canadian government, Michael Resnick was a geologist, a mining consultant who spent most of his time in the States. But that was just for the benefit of the authorities, and the bankers and lawyers in Calgary. The people of the little town of Caroline, Alberta, where I kept my post office box, didn't care what I did for a living. I was just a hermit who came down from the mountains only to get whiskey and supplies.

I'd have to go this day, as that jug I'd smashed had been my last.

I didn't get drunk every night. Why, just two weeks before, I'd gone to bed after only a couple of good ones. Well, maybe three. It's not that I needed the booze. It just helped to dim the stares of a hundred dead men. I could handle the rest of it, memories of the flames, the twisted metal, even the blood. It was just those damned _eyes_.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[In case you were wondering:
In the final installment of "Armageddon in Detroit," Spike removed the Bomb from his rear rack after he reached the mine's control center. Why would he do that if he didn't intend to ride the bike any more?

How many of you caught on?

Fish]

My cabin cannot be reached by auto, even by 4WD, which is why I like it there; it cuts down on the riffraff. There are two ways to get there: on foot or by ATB. I prefer not to walk.

The bright June sunshine had already melted the night's snow from the trail, leaving only mud, but I was used to that. I rode the mountain bike effortlessly down the five miles of familiar trail (riding back up with full panniers would be more taxing) to the Timberline Trading Post.

At 6500 feet, it was well below the timberline, but it was the last outpost of so-called civilization for the tourists who passed by on their way to the campgrounds up the mountain. They were willing, if not happy, to buy their groceries, eggs, and notions at the Timberline's outrageous prices if it would save them the 20-mile haul into Caroline. As for me, I got a substantial discount, inasmuch as I half-owned the place. My partner, Jack, kept most of the obscene profits in return for not involving me in the day-to-day operations of the establishment. I got my eats and supplies wholesale, and I got to use the Timberline's ancient Jeep CJ when I had to go into town for stuff Jack didn't sell, viz. American bourbon.

I pulled into town around 2:00. I stopped by the post office to get the month's mail. It was the usual stuff: bank statements, junk (even assumed names can't escape mailing lists), and a couple of letters from my mother, forwarded by my lawyer in Calgary. My family knew I was alive, but not where I was. My lawyer knew where I was, but not who I was, and I paid him enough not to ask.

My next stop was Snuffy's Tavern, one of Caroline's less-classy saloons. Snuffy kept in stock for me an extra case of Jack Daniel's, which was my usual monthly supply. Stepping into the dark, smoky bar, I noticed something shockingly new: a 120-cm, wide-screen, high- definition, surround-sound, plasma-display television set. I had long ago forsaken such banalities, but I was snared by a close-up shot of a pitcher winding up. A "C" emblazoned on his jersey told all: the Cubs were playing, at Montreal. What's more, they were actually leading by four to one in the bottom of the eighth.

I guess it's something about growing up in Chicago. The bums hadn't won so much as a division championship since 1984, but Cub fans die hard. I sat down, ordered a beer, and watched the rest of the game, which, of course, the Cubs lost on a grand slam homer in the bottom of the ninth.

During the post-game wrap-up, I observed that the program originated from Chicago's WGN-TV, and was being picked up here in Alberta on a satellite dish. Snuffy had really gone overboard with this rig. I was just about to pick up my whiskey and head back up the mountain when the program broke to the local news. An attractive female announcer deadpanned:

"Two more bikers killed in Oak Lawn. Details next on News Nine." Typewriter music faded into an inane beer commercial. I sat down again. Snuffy reached up to change the channel, but I gripped his arm. He gave me a startled look and backed away from the set when he caught the expression on my face. After an eternity of drivel, the announcer returned.

"Two Oak Lawn teens are the latest victims of a hit-and-run driver. The bodies of sixteen-year-old... "

The screen flashed high-school photos of the two victims, a boy and a girl. I was struck by the girl's pretty, white teeth and engaging eyes [at this point, the reader will notice, the narrative descends to contrived, manipulative hate-mongering, a cheap ploy to gain the sympathies of the reader and make his blood boil at the same time. -- Fish]. The announcer continued,

" ...the youths were the fifth and sixth victims of what police believe to be the work of one man, seen fleeing the scene of this morning's tragedy in a late-model Ford mini-van.

"Despite severe federal penalties, it appears, at least in Chicago, that the streets are still not safe for bicycles."

The newscast switched to local politics. The announcer's voice faded into the rest of the background noise: the clinking of glasses, the murmur of the other patrons, the rickety ventilation fan. I sat in numbed silence, no longer watching the screen. Something familiar and yet new stirred inside me, a feeling I'd not had in years.

After a while, I got up to leave. Snuffy called after me:

"Hey, Mike, what about your booze?"

"Pass it around when business picks up. Tell 'em it's on me."

It was near nightfall when I got back to my cabin. I sat staring at the fire, sober for the first time in nineteen months. Their eyes were gone, along with their accusations, their hatred, their fear. The sons of bitches had deserved it. The old rage blazed inside me, searing away the guilt, cauterizing the wounds. The only pair of eyes I saw in the flames were the powder-blue discs of a dead girl, imploring me to avenge her.

That night, I slept better than I had in years. The next morning, I was on my way to Calgary Airport.

The plane made its approach to O'Hare over Lake Michigan, giving me a spectacular view of the Loop. I had not seen this city I once called home in well over a year. My thoughts were not, however, of homecoming. Somewhere down there was a killer, the kind of man I'd nearly destroyed myself trying to fight.

The plane landed and I disembarked, going through customs without incident. I'd brought only an ordinary suitcase and a few hundred dollars in traveler's checks. I had hoped that what I would need here would be waiting for me in a rented storage shed out on 75th street.

With the aid of my shipping records, the old Secret Service had raided several of my caches when they closed in on me, but they couldn't have known about this place. The key-card still opened the gate, and the seal on unit 13-J had not been tampered with. I'd leased this place back in the fall of 1998, paying two years' rent in advance. A musty smell greeted me as I opened the overhead door to reveal the shed's contents: A dining room set, a china cabinet, and a large crate marked

HAMMOND ORGAN HANDLE WITH CARE

I moved to the rear of the crate and felt under a slat for the small studs which, activated in the proper sequence, would disarm the charges that lined the box. A reassuring chirp from within assured me that I would not be blown to bits, along with everything else inside of fifty yards, when I pried open the crate.

All was intact, and appeared to be in good condition: A custom- built, titanium-frame mountain bike, a MAC-10 submachine gun, a .44 magnum, a small-caliber automatic, a case of ammo, another of grenades. A small box in the corner of the crate held ten thousand dollars in American greenbacks. I buttoned down the crate, loaded it and the rest of the junk into my rented panel truck, and drove away.

I needed a place to stay. A hotel would not do; there was too little privacy. I finally found a tiny furnished apartment to sublet in Berwyn. A house would have been better, but this would do. Besides, the landlord had been happy to accept my hard cash for the three months which remained on the lease, and didn't ask many questions.

There was little danger of being recognized. There had been no close-up photos of Spike Bike, and the few photographs of Spiro Bikopoulis that had been in the news did not resemble my present appearance. I'd grown a short, full beard, which, like my hair, was flecked with gray. The most familiar news photo of me was of a clean- shaven, 22-year-old Marine sergeant without much hair at all. The principal threat would come from a chance meeting with someone I had known well, but the chances were pretty slim. My family no longer lived in the city, and I'd had few close friends during my double life in the Act years.

My principal problem was locating my quarry. I'd never had much difficulty finding trouble in the old days, and the few specific individuals I'd gone after, like the infamous E. J. Ross, had been easy to find. But all I could do now was set myself up as bait and hope the killer would take the hook.

The police would be looking for him, too, but law enforcement in Post-Corporatist America was, like everything else, in a state of disarray. The economy was slowly recovering, but the country was in a near-depression. Unemployment was at its worst levels in sixty years, civil disorder was widespread, and crime was rampant. The fanatically loyal private security forces of The Twenty had been completely disbanded, and their former employees were barred from public service. State and municipal police departments were staffed with eager but inexperienced young officers and a few old hands who'd been willing to come back to the job. They were a dedicated lot, but they were pretty green.

The Federal Government wouldn't be much help, either, with the FBI and Secret Service having undergone the same kind of overhaul. All things considered, it was a wonder things worked as well as they did. President Crisp and his pals had their hands full. Faced with the most staggering agenda since the Second World War, I suppose the Government had more important things to do than to devote scarce resources to protecting a few crazy cyclists.

Nevertheless, it made my blood boil. The police were advising cyclists to stay off the streets. While that would make my job easier, it wasn't what I'd been all about for five years of my life. Had I done any good at all?

I should have stayed in Alberta.

How was I going to find the son of a bitch?

It had been a hot, sultry summer in Chicago. At 9:00 in the morning, the temperature had already risen into the mid-eighties, and the afternoon promised to be positively infernal. I wondered if it was keeping my adversary indoors. For three weeks I had been riding nearly a hundred miles a day, randomly criss-crossing through the southwest suburbs where all of the attacks had occurred.

All had been quiet so far. Motorists passed by without so much as a tight squeeze or even an angry horn. Riding on city streets was less unnerving than it had been even in the pre-Act days, back in the Eighties. Perhaps the new laws were doing some good, or perhaps the excesses of the Act had shocked these people into better behavior. It was almost disappointing. With the temperature in the nineties nearly every day, the weight of the heavy weapons I carried made itself ever- apparent. I was particularly aware of it now.

I first saw the lone rider as I headed into what used to be the Palos Hills Forest Preserve. It was now a maze of abandoned construction sites strewn with rotting building materials and rusting machinery. The roads, however, were pretty good, so it wasn't surprising to see somebody training out here, or it wouldn't have been, had not the scare kept so many bikies off the streets. I decided to pursue. I hadn't ridden with anyone in years, and I found myself longing for company.

To my chagrin, whoever this was didn't seem to want any, or was at least playing hard to get. After chasing the rider for nearly two miles, I had closed barely half the distance between us, and I was panting and drenched with sweat. O.K., maybe I was on an overweight mountain bike. Maybe I was thirty-five years old, and maybe I had been drunk every night of my life for over a year and a half. But dammit, I had still trained every day. I'd once beaten Alexi Grewal. I'd never had so much trouble trying to catch up with a woman!

She knew I was there. Several times, she glanced back, flashed a smile, and dug in. It was only after she had to slow down over some broken pavement that I finally closed the gap. When I pulled beside her, I had to catch my breath for a few beats before I could speak. She saved me the trouble.

"Hi! I'm Annie." She turned her head, and I could see that she was nearly as wilted as I was from the race. She was also very pretty. She had nice teeth, and the niceness sort of continued in all directions from there.

"You can call me Mike." She could have called me anything, I wouldn't have minded. "You know, you're pretty fast."

"You're not so bad yourself, considering. What have you got in those things, anyway? You touring, cross-country?" She indicated my full panniers. I liked her, but I didn't want to burden her with the details of their contents just now. I don't think it would have made a good impression.

"Just day touring, but I like to be prepared. You know, tools and things."

"Tools? Looks more like you've got a whole bike shop in there", she laughed. "You do any racing? Off-road?"

"On-road, back, oh, ten or twelve years or so ago. Before the Act."

"Gee, you don't look that old."

It was bad enough that she was gorgeous. Did she have to be ingratiating, too? "Chalk it up to clean living. You race?"

"I just started this year. Got a crit Sunday. Registration's still open. You wanna come?"

"I'd love to," -- and I would -- "but I've got some things I have to do." Which I did, and it was something I was beginning to really regret. Riding here beside my new-found companion, I felt more alive than I had in years. I'd forgotten what living had been like. I'd been close to no one, lonely.

Damn, she was pretty. She was young, twenty, twenty-two, maybe. Long, light brown hair streamed behind her from underneath her helmet. She wore black lycra shorts and a light jersey, much as I did, but on her it looked a lot more interesting. She was tall. I think "leggy" might be the word, but there was no awkwardness, at least, certainly not in the way she rode her bike. I thought she might be holding back for me and my fat tires and my grey whiskers, and I began to wonder if she hadn't purposefully allowed me to catch her. I got the feeling she could break away at any time, and there wouldn't be much I could do about it. I was glad she didn't.

I found myself thinking what a beautiful day it was. For the first time in many, many years, I remembered why I had started cycling in the first place. There was her, the warm sunshine, the rush of wind, the singing of the wheels underneath. I momentarily forgot what I had come here to do. Just for a minute. It was a minute too long. Too late, I heard the roar of the engine, the howl of the tires. I jerked my head around and he was on us, close enough for me to see the bugs on his radiator. A blue Ford mini-van. I had nothing in my hand but a water bottle.


[Yes, she's beautiful.

No, I'm not going to put any cheap, gratuitous sex in this story.

-- Fish]

The deadly blue van was nearly on us. There was no time to get to the MAC-10, not even to the little Walther that I always had close at hand. There was no time even to warn Annie of the danger. There was time for only one act.

Back when I was racing, I'd go up against guys who were a little short on manners, particularly in the closing laps of a criterium. One learns to expect some aggressive maneuvers in such situations, but occasionally somebody would cross the line between competitiveness and sheer malevolence. Once in a while, somebody would bump you a bit too hard, with the obvious intent of making you crash and perhaps take out some of the pack with you. I developed techniques for dealing with these guys, an unusual blend of cycling skills and Aikido. If a move was executed properly, you got the guy out of the race without taking anybody else down. It was such a technique I applied to Annie, regretting that I had no time to explain.

Fortunately there was water and soft mud in the ditch that ran along the side of the road. Annie's wheels hit the high curb and she went sprawling, sliding down the muddy bank on her side. I cut just in front of her and bunny-hopped the curb an instant before the van's tires slammed into it. A hubcap came loose and rolled past me as I fought to keep the bike upright on the slippery surface, groping for my automatic. The van swerved and fishtailed for a block or so, then accelerated away before I could get off a shot. Remembering I wasn't alone, I quickly tucked the little Walther back in its holster.

I turned my attention to Annie. She was fishing herself out of the muddy ditch, uttering some decidedly unbecoming monosyllables. She turned to me. As she stood, I could see that she was strikingly tall, nearly a match for my own 6'2" frame. She removed her helmet and shook her head to get some of the big pieces of mud out of her long hair. I waited for her to speak, more afraid of what she might say than I had been of the marauding van.

"Are you OK, Mike? What happened? That van..."

She had seen it! Thank all the gods and all the lucky, twinkly stars on a Rocky Mountain night, she had seen it! She would understand why she'd just been run into a filthy ditch by a guy she'd known for all of five minutes.

"Oh, my god!" she exclaimed, "that was him, wasn't it? The guy on the news, the one who's been... Oh, Mike, if you hadn't been here..." She crossed the distance between us, put her long, willowy arms around my neck, and kissed me. She was covered with mud, and she was smearing it all over me. It could have been tar and feathers, and it would have been all right with me.

After a delicious, brief eternity, she broke away. We took a few minutes to clean some of the mud off her bike, then rode together as far as the nearest convenience store. Neither of us said much. She kept giving me puzzled glances. I could not take my eyes from her.

"We have to call the police," she remarked, "they'll want to talk to us."

She was right. Well, half right, anyway. My Resnick identity might hold up, but then again, it might not. In any case, I didn't have time to get involved in a police investigation, particularly one conducted by young, enthusiastic, and somewhat inept detectives.

"No, _you_ have to call the police. They might want to talk to me about some things I don't have time to explain right now."

"Are you in some kind of trouble, Mike?"

"Let's just say I have my reasons for not wanting to get involved."

"But you are involved, aren't you? There's something odd about you. I know you from somewhere. You had something in your hand when I got out of the ditch. You didn't want me to see it. That was a gun, wasn't it?"

"It was just..." Dammit, I didn't like lying to her. "Annie, please, let's not go into that. It's better that you don't ask. Listen, you call the police, you tell them what happened. Tell them to get that hubcap back there, it came off his van."

"What do I tell them about you?"

"Tell them what you have to. Tell them I was afraid."

"No. Not you. I don't think you scare easily. But..."

"Annie, I have to go."

"Will I see you again?"

"Count on it."

I turned the bike around and sprinted away. I looked back only once, to see her standing there, looking after me. I decided to go home. The killer, having been foiled, would likely not do any more hunting today.

My heart was doing flip-flops. I'd come here on a mission and I had failed. But I'd been in the right place at the right time. If I had not been there, Annie might have been dead. Yet if Annie had not been there, the killer would be dead, and it would be over. But then, I'd not have met her, would I? Life was beginning to get very complicated.

I returned to my small Berwyn apartment feeling exhausted and torn. Too much had happened today. My head swam, and I longed for a drink, just one little belt to put things back in order. I knew, of course, that diving back into a bottle could only make matters worse. I settled for a hot shower instead. Letting the water run for a long time, I felt the tension slowly leave my muscles to mingle with the soap and mud that ran down the drain. Remembering how I'd gotten so muddy, I was reluctant to wash it off.

I considered my feelings. The rage which had driven me for so many years was still there. The image of the blue mini-van escaping unscathed incensed me. If only I'd had my senses about me. I played it over in my mind, how I would feint to the outside, then cut back beside the van, shoot out the tires, and finish it off with a grenade. Two granades. Hell, I wanted to shred it and its driver into pieces too small to identify. I wanted to do it twice. This much was familiar, and almost comforting.

But there was a lot more. Annie. I'd spent, maybe, twenty minutes with her. I didn't know anything about her, her background, her circumstances, not even her full name, yet I could not get her out of my mind. It made no sense. In my situation, I shouldn't even consider such matters; it couldn't work out with any woman, yet that knowledge made no difference in how I felt. I had to see her again.

That was still not the end of it. I'd been caught off guard today; I nearly died because of it. This gave me a profound sense of failure, but even this was not new. I'd blown it before. What was new was that I was afraid. I was not afraid of death, but of life. For a brief, fleeting moment today, I had forgotten everything, forgotten who I was and all that had happened in my life, and I had _lived_. And enjoyed being alive. There was no room for that feeling in the context of my existence. Nevertheless, I wanted more. I wanted to _live_, whereas before I had wanted only not to die. It scared the hell out of me.

I shut off the shower when the hot water ran out and collapsed, soaking wet, on the sofa bed. I awoke many hours later, shivering and ravenous. I crossed to the tiny kitchen and extracted a leftover chicken leg from a paper bucket in the refrigerator. Wolfing the drumstick, I padded back to the bathroom to throw on a robe.

Returning to the main room with a Coke and the rest of the chicken bucket, I flicked on the tube to catch the rest of the Cubs game. They blew it in the top of the eighth, losing eight to four, which would back them into a tie for fourth place, four games below .500, and eleven and a half games behind the first-place Mets. But it was only July. Things could get better.

I was finishing off a serving of congealed mashed potatoes when the nine o'clock newscast came on. I dropped the mess in my lap when the screen cut to a shot of Annie.

"This Orland Park biker narrowly escaped death today as the van killer strikes again. Details next on News Nine."

After an interminable spate of commercials, the newscast got under way. There was an interview with Annie, who recounted the events that had transpired earlier, save that she made no mention of another cyclist. All too soon, the camera cut away to the young police lieutenant in charge of the case. He bungled his way through the interview, commenting that they'd recovered a "valuable piece of evidence" from the scene. I presumed he meant that flattened hubcap, which wouldn't tell them diddly-squat. They already had the make and model of the van. They were no closer to bagging this bastard than they'd been when I was stinking drunk in my mountain cabin.

I found out a little bit about Annie, though. Her full name was Ann Chernak. She was twenty-two years old, unmarried(!), a nursing student at Loyola. She also looked just fantastic with the mud and sweat washed off her and her hair combed and set and large hoop earrings and just the right amount of makeup around her eyes.

I sat with a lapfull of mashed potatoes through a re-run of "The Twilight Zone" and half the late movie before I cleaned up the mess and went to bed. I had checked the phone book for "Chernaks" and found there were eight entries, but no "Anns" or 'A's, listed for Orland Park. I thought of contacting Loyola, as if they'd tell me anything, but then I remembered she was going to race on Sunday, two days from now. There couldn't be too many bike races in the area. I hadn't seen one in ages. Come to think of it...

All day Saturday I criss-crossed the southwest suburbs, ranging from Darien and Willow Springs all the way to Frankfort and New Lenox. There was no sign of a blue Ford mini-van, nor any sign of Annie. Well, if she knew anything about racing, she would be training lightly today. I did spend a little extra time patrolling the side streets of Orland Park, but I reminded myself that I'd come here for a reason, and it wasn't to meet women.

Where could he be? _Who_ could he be? I wondered what sort of mind the killer posessed. He wasn't like any of the brutes I'd faced during the Act years. They had come from various social and economic backgrounds, but they were united by a common trait: they'd had no real scruples; the Act had merely removed the thin deterrent of punishment. They were predictable, and that had made them relatively easy to deal with.

This guy was something different. Cyclists were now protected by laws stiffer than those of the pre-Act years. Shocked by the brutality of the nineties, Americans had affected a kinder attitude towards bikies. The killer was not, therefore, merely a product of his times. He was an abberation, a psychopath, unpredictable.

All I knew was that he struck his victims several weeks apart. His attack on Annie and me yesterday was the first he'd attempted since the incident that had first brought him to my attention, nearly a month ago. Would it be weeks before he struck again? Or would he hit somebody today? Yesterday had been the first time he'd missed. Maybe he had an itch to scratch, and I'd put it out of reach. Maybe I'd gotten him mad.

In any case, I didn't think he would emerge today. I would watch the news later to find out, but I had some things to do yet. I'd looked up a couple of bike shops in the Yellow Pages, and I was pleased to see that the old Oak Park Cyclery was still in -- or back in -- business. It was on my way home, so I stopped in just before closing time.

It wasn't as I remembered it. The bicycle industry had been utterly destroyed during the Act years, so the inventory was skimpy and unimpressive. Most of the new bikes were from places like Korea and Malaysia, although a few European and Japanese companies had begun dipping a toe into the American market once again. I didn't see anything I liked, though, so I poked my head into the repair area and asked the greasy-nailed guy back there if he had anything nice that wasn't on the sales floor. He did.

It sat in the corner of the shop, a used Pinarello built up with Campy Super Record. It was scratched up and at least 20 years old, but it had the right sized frame. The guy said I could have it cheap, only $1800, since it had sew-up tires, and nobody used them any more. I pondered whether $1800 was cheap, but there was quite a bit of inflation these days, and it was the only decent machine he had.

He let me take it out around the block for a test ride. The handlebar stem was too short for me, but I could live with it, and it cornered well. I told him I'd take it and a pair of cleats, which he threw in free of charge. I think he knew he was gouging me, and the shoes made him feel a little less guilty -- particularly when I paid him with nice, crisp, fifty-dollar bills. I removed my shades for the first time when I paid for the bike. The young mechanic-salesman (-owner?) looked at me for a moment and remarked, "You've been in here before, right?"

"Not in years", I told him.

"You look familiar. Can't place you, though."

I thought of something Annie had said yesterday. "Lot of that going around," I returned, "but I'm sure I don't know you."

"It'll come to me."

He turned his attention to scribbling out a receipt, after happily counting through the wad of greenbacks I'd passed him. This was the first time I took a good look at the large poster which hung over the cash register. I recognized the photo. It was taken at the 1991 Nationals. A sweat-drenched, road-rashed bike racer held a trophy triumphantly above his head. A caption was emblazoned on a wide black stripe across the bottom of the poster. It read:

Spiro Anton Bikopoulis 1965 - 1998

He noticed my looking at it.

"Oh, yeah, you want a Spike Bike poster? You get one with the bike."

"Uh, no, no thanks."

"Yeah. I suppose everybody's got one of those by now."

Hell, it wasn't a very good picture. And I'd only won the damn race on a disqualification.

I didn't know. Mom's letters had said nothing about it, and the papers and newscasts I'd seen lately had mentioned little about me. I thought they'd still be looking for me in every state in the Union. Instead, I find out I've been pardoned, and that there's some statue of me turning green and collecting bird droppings in the middle of the Detroit river.

Of course, they thought I was dead. Had they known I survived, would they have been so magnanimous? Or if they'd known how I skimmed profits from Bikopoulis Imports to finance my operations, or how I'd cheated on my taxes because of it? Would the Canadian Government be pleased to know I was impersonating somebody who died when I was two months old, and that I'd broken just as many Canadian tax laws, and that I still went around packing a 9mm automatic everywhere I went?

It occurred to me that there might be certain advantages to staying dead. It also occurred to me that I should finish my business here and get my ass back to Alberta before somebody took a really good look at me. The trouble was that my business wasn't entirely under my control, and there was more of it than there'd been when I got here.

The bike shop guy had told me there was only one nearby race that he knew about. It was a 4-corners criterium being held in an industrial park outside Willow Springs. It had to be the one. I rode the Pinarello down from Berwyn and arrived at the registration desk about 8:00 AM. I didn't know how I was going to bluff my way in, but it turned out I didn't have to.

USCF was defunct. The Bicycle Act had put an end to all organized bike racing in America by 1993, and the organization disbanded. It had been in disarray even before then. The leadership had deteriorated to an entrenched cabal of squabbling, imperious men who sat around thinking up silly-ass rules that were as inequitable as they were incomprehensible. It was the reason I left the circuit in '92.

This competition, however, was a far cry from the old days. Like all races now, it was an open affair, sponsored by local clubs and businesses. There was no license required, just ten bucks and a release form. There were only two divisions each for men and women, "Beginner" and "Experienced," which means you'd finished a couple of "Beginner" races without crashing or going off the back. Even at that, nobody checked; you just signed one sheet or the other and got your number. The only thing they really worried about were unroadworthy bikes -- and from what I'd seen of the bikes that were currently available, the concern was justified. I had to get my bike checked out by one of the officials, who turned out to be the greasy-nailed guy who'd sold me the bike yesterday.

"Oh, hi, Mister, ah, Renwick?"

"Resnick."

"Well, I guess this bike'll check out."

"I would hope so."

"You know, I'm still thinking. It'll come to me, I never forget a face."

"I suppose."

"Well, good luck."

"Thanks. Say, when do the women race? You know a tall gal, light brown hair, kind of thin, name's..."

"Annie. Ain't she an eyeful? Yeah, the women's 'E' race starts at 9:30, she should be there. She's pre-registered, so she probably isn't here yet. She'll win. Hell, she could win the men's division. You know Annie?"

"Met her the other day. Say, she going with anybody?"

"No, no boyfriend. But a lotta men tried, and a lotta men died. Man, you _really_ need some luck."

"Thanks. I'll keep it in mind."

I pinned my number to the back of my jersey and loped over to watch the men's 'B' race, the event just before Annie's. It was a comical affair. There were numerous crashes, though none were serious. The race officials did a good job of clearing the course of stragglers who'd gone off the back and obviously had no chance of catching the pack. These kids had heart, though. It brought back fond memories of how things had once been, before everything went to hell. I had to smile. Damn it, I was beginning to enjoy myself again. Damn it to hell, I was beginning to like this place. Damn...

"Mike!" That voice! "Mike, you came! You're _entered?_"

She approached, as gracefully as anybody can walk with cleats on, and placed a hand on my arm. Her smile was dazzling. I noticed for the first time that one of her eyebrows was just a little crooked. It made her face all the more endearing. She looked delicious. She had looked delicious with mud all over her.

"Mike," she lowered her voice, "Mike I didn't tell them about you the other day. I said he ran me off the road, that I steered myself into the ditch. I guess I owe you a lot, and I know you've got something to hide. That's why I didn't tell them about you. But you've got to tell me about it. Can we talk after the race?"

"You can count on it. I..."

An announcement pierced the air. God, they were still using those same damned bullhorns; some things hadn't changed.

"That's me. I have to get to the starting line. Wish me luck!"

"Good..." She draped her arms around my neck and kissed me. "...luck."

The women's 'E' race was a 40-km criterium which, I learned, was the standard distance for most events these days. Power would be more of an advantage than savvy would be in such a competition. That was well-suited to the times, as few aspiring racers had any real experience. It made me wonder how I'd do in my own race. I had done little road biking in the last eight years, and the maneuvers I'd mastered on my ATBs were probably not useful here. Breaking away from a pack isn't the same as dodging a marauding pickup truck while you're cocking the receiver of a MAC-10 with your teeth. I was still pretty strong, but some of these kids looked strong, too. I would have my hands full.

Annie was quite at home here. She stayed near the front of the pack for much of the race, then made her move when a group of three of the stronger women broke away. She cut to the outside and effortlessly ran them down from a hundred yards back. By the last couple of laps, it was evident she would win with ease. Just before the lap gun, she broke away, easily outdistancing the pair of riders closest to her. The gap steadily widened as she sprinted up the long back stretch of the 3.2-km course.

It was the trick of a practiced eye that caught it. I saw a light blue blur on the edge of my perception, and automatically homed in on it. It was _him_! He roared down a road parallel to the course, watching out his side window for an opening. He would get his chance at the cross street near the end of the back stretch, a mile or so distant. The only rider who'd be there to meet him was Annie.

I jumped on the Pinarello, cursing as I lost precious milliseconds starting a cleat in the unfamiliar pedals. I knocked down two spectators as I jumped onto the course, and two of the women who were trying in vain to catch Annie collided as I darted into their path. I was going to make them scratch this race, but that wasn't important now. In the clear, I stood up and sprinted for all I was worth.

Only slowly did the gap between me and Annie narrow. The menacing blue van was at the end of the parallel street, making a screeching left turn onto the common cross street that would connect him with the course. I tried to call out to Annie, but she couldn't hear me over the commotion on the sidelines. I could not reach her in time. I would have only one chance.

I'd brought the little Walther along almost as a good luck charm. I hadn't intended to race with it, and I was feeling it now as the holster dug into my side under my jersey. I drew it, flicked off the safety, and pulled back the receiver in the hollow between my chin and neck. I tried to steady it before me as my eyes swam and my lungs burned.

Annie rounded the corner and accelerated into the bottom stretch just as the van smashed through the barricades. The hay bales and sawhorses slowed him down just a little, enough time for Annie to to get out of the line of fire. I tried to center the sights on the driver's window. I squeezed off one shot, two, three, nothing. Four, five, the van swerved slightly, kept to its course, picked up speed. Annie, Annie, SPRINT, dammit! I fired off the sixth shot and the side window shattered. One more shot, then I kept pulling the trigger, but there were no more cartridges.

I knew I hit him. I could have sworn that his head jerked to the side as I squeezed off the last round. The driver was no longer visible, but the van continued to gain on Annie. I tried to scream, but I had no breath. NO! My god, if only I could reach her! If only I could take her place! I could not watch, yet I could not look away. Annie... The van closed to within a few feet of her rear wheel, but then lurched abruptly, left the roadway, turned over on its side, and crashed into a wall. A moment later, it exploded into a ball of orange flame and black smoke. Only then did Annie turn around to see what was happening.

You won, Annie.

After an eternity, I took a breath. I pulled off the course and got away as fast as I could. There would be police here very soon, with questions to which I had no answer.



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_Epilogue_
I waited behind the rusting carcass of an earth-mover as I watched the distant rider approach. I stepped into view when she was close enough to recognize me.

"I hoped you'd be here." She said.

"Glad you could make it."

She crossed to me, raised a hand to touch my face. It was a moment before she spoke.

"When I was a little girl, I had a bike. It was just an old clunker, but I loved it. I rode it everywhere. Then, when I was fifteen, my father took it away. I didn't understand. I cried for days. I didn't cry like that again until I heard you were dead."

Tears welled in her eyes. She fell into my arms, kissed me, and held her embrace for a long time. Neither of us said anything in the minutes or hours that passed. Finally she drew back.

"How long have you known?"

"Since you left the other day. I wasn't sure at first, but when I saw you again at the race, I knew. I think some of the others do, too."

"The police?"

"They know somebody rode onto the track and shot him. Nobody would tell them anything else. Only Dutch -- he's the guy who owns the bike shop -- and I know your name, or the one you're using. Dutch destroyed your race registration. We didn't tell them. They didn't need to know. Oh, Spike, you got him. That's all that's important."

"Another dead man. Another pair of eyes. They all watch me from somewhere, you know."

"You did what you had to do. You did it for all of us. What of the living Spike? What about us? What about _my_ eyes?"

"They're lovely."

I pulled her to me and kissed her again. After a while, I let her go.

"You know I have to leave, Annie."

"Where will you go?"

"I can't say."

"Take me with you?"

"I'm getting old, Annie. I couldn't keep up with you."

I turned away and walked toward the mountain bike. It was no longer loaded down with packs and oddly bulging panniers. There was no C-4 packed into the frame any more. For the first time in an eternity, I didn't need any of that stuff. The bike felt light. Riding away, I realized that I felt light too, younger by the minute, and _alive_. What in the hell was I doing?

She hadn't got more than half a mile down the road. I chased her down in less then a minute. I tried to hide my shortness of breath.

"You ever been to Alberta, Annie?"

* THE END *


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Postscript

Some time ago I read an essay by someone very good, Harlan Ellison, I think. He explains that his stories often tell themselves; he writes them down almost as though they have been dictated by an unseen other. Occasionally, a story willcome out far differently from what he had planned. In my own experience, "Spike Bike Returns" was such a story.

I had always planned for the original Spike Bike series to end in a final confrontation of Good and Evil, with Spike bringing order to his world only though the act of supreme sacrifice. As the series developed, however, Spike became more than a comic-book character to me. I grew fond of him, and in the end, I couldn't bear to kill him off. I gave him a way out, which an astute reader will have surmised from the little clues I left in the closing paragraphs of Spike's narrative in "Armageddon in Detroit."

"Spike Bike Returns" begins where that story left off, but beyond getting Spike out of the mine and safely into exile in Canada, I had no idea where to take the story from there. With the fall of Corporatism and the demise of the Bicycle Act of 1992, the central premise of the original series was gone. I had deliberately left some loose ends at the end, but I had only a vague idea how to develop them into a story. The serial killer idea seemed like a good way to get Spike out of retirement, but beyond that, I had no idea where the story would lead me.

Yet lead me it did. Every spring, my thoughts turn to two things, cycling and people like Annie. Once I had the idea for her character, I realized that the loose ends would have to wait. The story diverged from the old blood and fire and became a tale of a man's rebirth, his reconciliation with life and humanity. To be sure, Spike deals death in the end, but it is for the sake of life and love, not destruction and hatred.

Much of this story was written in one sitting. It took me as much by surprise as it did any of you, I assure you. If it was less bloodthirsty than what you'd come to expect from Spike Bike, perhaps it's because I wrote it early in the year, before I've had an unhealthy dose of hostility at the unclean hands of the local motorhead population. Nevertheless, I was quite pleased with the story. I've been making up stories for as long as I can remember and writing them down since I was nine years old. Of all the stuff I've written in recent years, "Spike Bike Returns" has been the most gratifying personally. If it wasn't what you expected, I hope you liked it anyway.

Will Spike Bike be back? This time, I honestly don't know myself. There are those loose ends I mentioned, but at the moment, Spike is happy and healed. I'd like to give him and Annie a little privacy for a while. Of course, it's early in the year yet. I had an unpleasant encounter with a gravel truck last Saturday; there will undoubtably be similar incidents in the months to come. It's possible I will need Spike again before the summer is out.

Source Link:
Spike Bike Returns

Spike Bike: The Last Race

Grey November light poured through the window of the stark hospital room in which I lay recovering from exhaustion and a bullet wound in my shoulder. My body, if not my spirit, felt much better today. The doctors told me I could go home soon.

Home. I didn't know where that was any more. As Michael Resnick, I kept a two-room cabin in the Canadian Rockies, but it was no more home than this grey hospital ward. It would be a place to hide, perhaps to heal, but it would not be home.

It was over. I would kill no more. This purpose gone, I had nothing left but memories that even now had begun to haunt me. How did it start? What was the turning point? Why had I stayed? Why did I kill, and who'd been the first? I remember...



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_one_
I was no longer racing in the spring of 1993. I got my USCF license revoked after the 1992 Olympic trials following an altercation with one of the officials. Disgusted as I was with the organization, I didn't appeal the suspension.

As things turned out, the incident was moot. The Corporatists had taken control of the Congress and passed the Bicyle Act of 1992. The Act prohibited all states and municipalities from spending any resources on bicycle facilities, so it was no longer possible to hold USCF races on public roads. There were still a few track events, but those fell apart when most of the big names fled to Europe, Canada, and Australia to continue their racing careers. The little fish in the lower Cats were left in the lurch. In the spring of 1993, USCF formally disbanded.

The full impact of the Act had yet to be felt, though. Few cyclists took the "at own risk" clause seriously, since most of us felt that we'd been taking that risk for years, anyway. Motorist animosity toward cyclists had grown slowly but steadily throughout the eighties, but most of the skirmishes were name-calling contests that hadn't resulted in any real violence.

As such, it wasn't surprising that the Chicago area clubs decided to hold the Kay-Five unofficially. Most of the course was on little- used farm roads in Kane and Kendall counties, where there wouldn't be much of a threat from autos anyway. Or so we thought.

The Kane-Kendall Korn Kountry Klassic, which everybody called the Kay-Five, was a 120-km road race held every year on the Sunday before Memorial Day. It was the first race I'd won as a Cat 2, and I won it twice after that before I achieved National status. I still held the course record. Now that my licensing problems were no longer a concern, I allowed myself to be coaxed out of retirement by my old friend Dave Karpinski. It seemed there was a score to settle.

In 1992 the Kay-Five was won, amid considerable controversy, by Scott Currey of the Winnetka Wheels. Currey purportedly won by jamming a water bottle into my ex-teammate Jerry Smies's spokes as Smies overtook him on the last stretch. The only witnesses near enough to actually see it were Currey's teammates, who kept their mouths shut. Jerry went down at over 30 MPH and got himself busted up pretty good.

Everybody knew Currey's reputation, so most of the guys believed Jerry's story. The only ones who didn't believe it were the USCF idiots who officiated the race. Currey got the win and the prizes that went with it. Since that time, everybody was gunning for Currey, particularly the Oak Park guys who were Jerry's teammates, as I was once. No one had nailed him yet. The Winnetka Wheels were a very fast, very skillful team, in spite of being some of the worst sportsmen even USCF had to offer.

_two_

My reunion with the old Oak Park team was an emotional affair, which called for a few extra rounds of Wisconsin's finest (or cheapest, as the case may be) swill. The important business thus out of the way, we settled into a strategy session for Sunday's race. Jerry Smies, the team's fastest rider since my departure, started in.

"O.K., now that Spiro's back, we can put those Winnetka wimps back in the gutter where they belong. Of course, Spiro'll win this year. We can..."

"Hold it Jerry," I interjected, "I don't think that's the best approach. Why don't we plan for Karp to take it this year. I think you and I are going to have some other business to conduct."

"Such as?"

"I think we ought to take care of Mister Currey. Catch my drift?"

A vicious smile twisted Jerry's lip, bringing color to the patch of road rash he still had on his left cheek from his last confrontation with Scott Currey. The smile was infectious, and soon we were all grinning and chuckling our way through the strategy session. Of course, it was thristy work.

_three_

The authorities would not cooperate for Kay-Five, but the weather did. It was a cool day, partly sunny, and the winds were light. It had been raining off and on for several days, filling the drainage ditches and making lots of nice, black, Illinois mud wherever the soil had been turned. This was perfect for what we had planned for Scott Currey. So far, everything had gone as planned. 100 klicks into the race, the field was pretty well spread out. At the front were myself, Jerry Smies, Dave Karpinski, and Scott Currey, who was by now nervously glancing around in search of his teammates. The rest of the Winnetka Wheels were well back in the pack, hopelessly tangled up by the other members of the Oak Park team and a couple of dozen other guys who'd had it in for Currey.

We had Currey boxed. Jerry Smies took the point, while Karp stuck on Currey's wheel. I held the flank, cutting off Currey from moving to the outside. To the inside was a drainage ditch and a soft gravel shoulder. A couple of miles up ahead, there was a sharp turn in the road. The area had recently flooded, and the ground all the way to the road's edge had turned completely to mud. Added to the mixture was a generous amount of natural fertilizer contributed by the local bovine population. It was there we planned to give Currey his due: Jerry was to move momentarily to the side, giving Currey room to move on the inside. But I would sprint to the point to cut him off, whereafter Jerry would bump him into the muddy embankment at the curve's sharpest point.

It wasn't to happen. As we pulled into the curve, an enormous, high-rider pickup truck pulled into our lane, crossing the double yellow line. I went off to the left of the truck. Karp and Jerry went into the mud. Currey went into the grille of the truck. His bike went under the oversized tires, but Currey was carried for several hundred feet on the bumper before the driver slammed on his brakes to shake him off.

I'm pretty sure Scott Currey was already dead. He wore a helmet, but it wasn't much help in a head-on collision with that behemoth. Nevertheless, I didn't get sick until I saw the truck drive over his body before continuing on its way. As I had dodged the truck a second earlier, I'd seen the face of the man behind the wheel. He had been smiling.

Damn it, Currey. You weren't supposed to get it that way.


* TO BE CONTINUED *

[Synopsis: Recovering from exhaustion and a bullet wound, Spike's memories take him back to 1993, the year it all began. Nobody took the Bicycle Act seriously, particularly not the Chicago area racing clubs. Despite the collapse of USCF and the end of public support for bike racing, the Kane-Kendall Korn Kountry Klassic -- the "Kay-Five" -- will run on schedule. The defending champion of this 120-km road race is the hated Scott Currey, who won the 1992 running by causing one of Spike's former teammates to crash. Reunited with his old team, Spike plots to give Currey his due by bumping him into the mud near the end of the race.

A vicious redneck in a red high-rider pickup truck puts a tragic end to Spike's plans. Deliberately crossing the center line, the truck plows into the pack. Spike and his teammates escape, but Currey is caught head-on, killing him instantly. Spike laments that Currey was supposed to get his -- but not that way.

In the year 1993, the legend begins... ]

_four_

We all stood in shocked incredulity as the deputy continued,

"...well, it's one thing for you to say the guy was left of the yellow line. Maybe he was, but it doesn't make any difference. _I_ didn't see it, so I can't issue him a citation. In any case, it's all I could do anyway. Your friend there..." he gestured toward the coroner's wagon "...was on his own. I'm sorry, boys, that's how the law reads. As far as I'm concerned, there was no accident. Legally, you guys weren't even here. I can't go after him. Now I'm telling you, for your own good, get those bikes off the road."

We'd all seen the son of a bitch. Down the road, the scumbag had sort of plowed through the pack, sending riders off both sides of the road, but no one else was seriously hurt. Just Currey.

Most of us had disliked Currey. He was a dirty competitor, and off the road, his personality had been somewhere between arrogant and psychotic. A lot of the guys who raced against him would not have shed a tear to learn that he'd been struck dead by lightning. Yet he had been one of us. He showed up for the Kay-Five to defend his title, even though it was an outlaw race. It was thus by acclamation we declared him the winner. The kitty was six hundred twenty dollars. It bought quite a few flowers.

I didn't sleep much the night of Currey's death. I could not forget the look in his eyes when he knew he was going to get it. Neither could I forget the fat, ruddy jowls of his murderer wrinkled into a remorseless grin as he went by. The words of the insensitive sheriff's deputy repeated themselves over and over in my mind. "...can't go after him...get those bikes off the road...can't go after him...off the road..."

Every notion of justice I'd ever held was shattered. What was happening to this country? Why had I spent four years in the Marine Corps, what had I been defending? And what of the goddamn cops? What did they have to protect any more? "...can't go after him ... your friend was on his own."

We were all on our own, now. It had been that way for years, but most of us had learned to cope with angry gestures and trash thrown out of windows. Now we had to cope with murder. That price was too high even for a bastard like Currey. It was much too high for me. What I had to do became suddenly and painfully clear. Finally, I drifted off to sleep.

_five_

He'd been easy enough to find. Red high-riders are pretty conspicuous, and I'd guessed rightly that he lived in one of the small towns that sprinkled the area where we held the Kay-Five. For days I watched him, doing nothing, getting to know his routine. He was an early riser. Each day, he got up before dawn and left for work at first light. He was a foreman at a construction site in Batavia. He bullied his workers, drank his lunch, and chain-smoked all day long. Around six o'clock, he would leave the constuction site, stop at a little roadhouse outside of Batavia, and drink boilermakers for a couple of hours before departing for home.

I didn't let him see me at first, while I learned his habits, but when the time was right, I started to spook him a little. I dressed all in black, like the mountain bike, save for mirrored sunglasses. I smeared black smudges under my eyes, like a football player, partially to cut down on the glare, and partially to obscure my face. I stood across the road from his driveway, leaning on the bike, sitting on the top tube, as he departed for work. The sun was peeping over the horizon, and I caught its glint with my shades, flashing it into his eyes. My hand cradled the butt of a 9mm Walther automatic behind my back, but I did not use it. He just gave me a funny look, turned the corner and drove off to work.

He kept a pair of wretched, abused dogs penned in the back yard. When he returned home that evening, they were gone. The next night, he did not park in his garage. Somehow, it had burned to the ground. When he rose to go to work the next morning, he would find the words

Scott Currey 1966 -- 1993

rendered in black spray paint on the side of his truck. For the next several evenings, he would return home to find nothing untoward, save for an occasional random phone call in the middle of the night.

Two weeks after I first appeared at the foot of his driveway, I showed myself again. This time, I waited, leaning against his truck, as he left the construction site. When he caught sight of me, he began to run, heaving his belly from side to side. I jumped on the bike and vanished into the maze of half-built houses before he could reach me. But I had left a calling card scratched into the paint on the driver's door:

JOHNSON'S MOUND DAWN

_six_

Northern Illinois is mostly flat, save for a few anomalies left behind by the glaciers. One such was Johnson's Mound, a heavily wooded hill out in the middle of the Kane County cornfields. It was a forest preserve before Corporatist real estate developers razed it in 1996. There was a road that cut through the woods. It wound through the trees, then cut sharply into a hairpin turn to the left, thence to a steep grade to the top of the mound. It was a popular attraction for local cyclists, who used to race one another to the top. The grade was steepest just before the crest; this caught many an unwary cyclist in the wrong gear. It was here that I set up for him.

In the blue, predawn glow I waited beside the road, watching the wide-set, elevated headlights approach. When he was near enough to take chase, I sprinted for the woods. As I expected, he crashed through the chain that was drawn across the bumpy drive, two hundred yards or so behind me.

I reached the sharp turn and jammed my way up the hill. Unable to negotiate the turn, he went off into the woods, had to back up and maneuver around to right himself. He was making this easy. I waited atop the hill for him to reach the notch just before the steep grade to the summit. At precisely the right moment, I kicked over an ashcan, and fifty-five gallons of used motor oil flooded the pavement. When his wheels hit the slick, I heard the motor abruptly change pitch and saw the huge truck lurch to the side, slamming into a tree. He tried for half a minute to get it started up the slope again before he finally shut off the engine. He reached to the rack behind the seat, got out of the cab, and leveled a double-barreled shotgun at me.

"You wanna tell me what you want, boy?" he grunted.

"Your worthless redneck ass."

I stood at the summit, perhaps fifty feet above him, not moving or flinching as he gesticulated menacingly with the 12-gauge.

"You the sum'bitch that took my dogs? You burn down my garage? You mess up my truck?"

"Your dogs ran off as soon as the gate was open. I don't think they liked you very much. You had a lot of old rags and paint in that garage. Wiring wasn't much good, either. As far as that piece of sh*t truck goes, it was messed up right off the assembly line."

"Who the hell is Scott Currey?"

"Just about the meanest son of a bitch ever to straddle a bike. Besides me, that is. Too bad you didn't get to know him before you killed him. You might have liked him."

He took a few steps up the slope, leveled the shotgun, and pulled back on the hammers. I maintained my stance.

"What's a matter with you, boy? Don't you know you're gonna die?"

"Well, we all gotta go sooner or later."

I watched, grinning, as he pulled one trigger, then the other, to no effect. A look of consternation crossed his face. He broke down the shotgun, extracted the dud shells, and moved back toward the cab.

"They're all like that." I told him. "Regulation weight, except for the powder. They don't work too well without it."

He reloaded the gun and repeated his futile gesture, casting the shotgun aside as it once again failed. He retrieved a tire iron from his truck and came for me.

He slipped on the oily surface twice as he scrabbled up the hill. I waited motionless as he regained his balance and eventually closed to within swinging distance. I kept my hands behind my back casually, almost lazily ducking away (so it appeared) as he repeatedly swung the iron. He lunged with its point and I stepped aside, tripped him, and kicked him in the butt as he went down. Stepping back, I waited as he rose to his feet and advanced again. He was beet-red, dripping sweat, wheezing like a broken bagpipes.

"You know, you ought to give up smoking." I offered. "Bad for your health. I'll bet your blood pressure is out of sight."

"You son of a bitch!" he panted as he swung at me again. This time I did not step aside, but stepped into his lunge, blocking aside the tire iron and bringing my fist hard into his solar plexus. Stepping back as he doubled over in pain, I snapped my foot viciously up into his face. He fell onto his side, blood streaming from his nose, gasping for air in little, desperate gulps. I retrieved the tire iron from his limp fingers and cast it aside, down the hill and into the woods.

"That's for Scott Currey." I said softly.

I left him there, struggling weakly to his knees, and rode down the other, dry side of the hill. At the bottom, I waited for perhaps twenty minutes before I heard the engine start. A moment later, the huge pickup emerged from the woods, lurched abruptly, and drove onto the grass, picking up speed, headed straight for me. I let it close to within fifty yards before I brought the Walther around and leveled it at the driver's side of the windshield. When I could see his eyes, I fired seven times, exhausting the magazine. The truck rolled past and fell over on its side in the ditch.

"And that's for me." I said, to no one who could hear.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Well, Mike, your temperature is down today. I think we might be able to send you home in a day or two."

The doctor examined the stitches in my shoulder, pursed his lips in satisfaction, and replaced the dressing. He withdrew the I.V. umbilical that had chained me to the bed for the last few days.

"We'd like you to move around some today, but take it easy. You know, most men wouldn't have stood up so well to the punishment you took. You have a remarkable constitution. Enviable, in fact."

"Don't envy me."

His expression turned somber. "You want to tell me how this really happened, Mike?"

"I don't think you'd believe me. In any case, it's over with."

"Is it?"

I didn't know.

THE END

Author's Note

Johnson's Mound is a real place, much as described in the story. A glacial legacy, it rises above the cornfields, dwarfing the gently rolling hills which surround it. Although the climb to the top is relatively short, the steep grade is a challenge for local cyclists, particularly for those who use tight gearing that is more appropriate for the surrounding flatlands. Because it is conveniently situated in the middle of some of the better cycling country around Chicago, it is a popular place to set up rest stops for the many invitational tours and group rides held in the area throughout the season.

Copyright (c) 1989 by Robert Fishell All Rights Reserved

Source Link: Spike Bike: The Last Race

Spike: Explaination

[In the year 1989, one man rails in futility against the tyranny of the automobile...]
Springtime in northern Illinois comes late, too late for me to wait for balmy breezes and sunny skies to begin hard training. I can't stand my wind trainer, and the trails are often too icy for off-road mountain biking, so I've been hitting the roads. Sometimes I can get a partner or two, but mostly, I'm out there by myself, friendless and defenseless. Just me and THEM.

In the winter of 1980, I quit smoking. A month or so later, I decided to do something about the ravages thirteen years of tobacco addiction had inflicted on my body. I considered jogging, nearly threw up on myself just thinking about it, and bought a bike instead. It was a 32-lb department-store superclunker, but it had ten gears and drop handlebars. It was to change my life forever.

I'd not had the bike for long before the pattern was set. One: I was hooked. Despite its massive, water-pipe frame, flimsy steel rims, 80-PSI gumwalls, pot-metal brakes, and all the other frailties junk is heir to, this amazing machine gave me a sense of freedom, an exhilaration I thought I'd lost along with childhood. I knew right away this was for me, and that I'd be doing it until the day I die. Two: I discovered that day could come prematurely. I'd already encountered some of THEM. I was thus forced to make a decision: I could cower in some health club, buy a set of running shoes, and let THEM dictate how I enjoy my free time, or I could defy the bastards and maybe get slaughtered in the process. As you all know, I took the latter option, and I've been living with it ever since.

Every year that decision gets harder and harder to live with. Every year I ride more and more miles, 4500 in '87, 6000 in '88. I've set a goal of 7500 for 1989, provided I survive. Every spring I think about the close calls of years past, about the impermanence of human flesh, and about the weak law of large numbers and all those goddamn CARS. Maybe only one driver in 100 gives me any real trouble, but there are so, so many of them. So many of THEM.

It gives me the heebie-jeebies when I think about it, so I don't think about it. I've made my decision, and I will not go back on it, the increasing risks notwithstanding. I'm not going to have my life run by a bunch of hotheads, rednecks, hell-raisers, and half-dazed morons who don't even watch the road half the time, let alone look out for bikes. I hate them. I hate them all. Mile after mile I ride on, seething with hatred and contempt, ever-vigilant and wary of every mechanical monster that comes within my sphere of awareness. Watch and hate. Listen and hate. I have to hate THEM, or they'll scare me out of my shorts. Hate is a strong emotion. Stronger, even, than fear.

Last spring I dropped into a local sporting-goods store to pick up a supply of those terrycloth sweatbands that vanish without a trace in the laundry. A display case in the store caught my eye: GUNS. There were hunting rifles, target pistols, even an imposing Redhawk .44 magnum. One piece in particular prompted a closer look: a double-action .38 Smith & Wesson revolver with a snub-nosed barrel. It was perfect. Small and easily tucked away in a jersey pocket, it could be drawn and fired in a split second without having to fuss with a safety catch or a receiving bolt. You could keep one hand on the handlebars to steady your aim. Perfect. And it could be had for a few hundred bucks, well within the means of any credit-card-carrying yuppie such as myself.

I don't know how long I stood there looking at it. The reality of that cold steel mingled with eight years' accumulation of a hatred that borders on paranoia, and something dark and ugly stirred within me. On the other side of the glass was a fistful of revenge, and all it would take was a little bit of paperwork and some of my disposable income, and it could be all mine. That thought scared the crap out of me. I quickly fled the gun department, bought a handful of the sweatbands I'd come in for, and left the store feeling very shaken. Days later, I was still disturbed about it. For just a moment, perhaps for just a split- second, I'd actually felt the impulse to do it, to call the salesman over, plop down my Visa card, and do something that would almost certainly ruin my life -- and could very well end it. I know now, as I realized then, that as long as I own a bicycle, I must not own a gun. Having made _that_ decision, I felt a whole lot better.

The incident brought into focus a peculiar problem, though. I need my hatred to give me the courage to ride, but I have too much of it left over, pent up. I needed an outlet. I'd already settled the matter of my carrying a gun, but it seemed such a shame to let the idea go completely to waste. I conjured an image of a man who'd made that decision the other way, and the result was a story called "My Wild Ride," which I posted to rec.bikes some time in May of last year. The character in that story was to disappear in the bursting bubble of a daydream, but he would return a few weeks later as Spike Bike. I already had the idea of a vigilante cyclist who would wreak vengeance on the dregs of motorized society. All I needed was the proper setting to put him in. In what sort of society might such a man emerge? I didn't have to think about that for too long.

I chose our own society of course, making just a few minor changes here and there. I had a little fun with it, getting ideas from current events: ruthless corporate takeovers, trade protectionism, political corruption, and rampant urban sprawl. But the central premise of the Spike series was the Bicycle Act of 1992, which formally strips cyclists of all the rights which have been informally stripped away already, i.e., now, in 1989. That's right, 1989. Now. Today. We have no rights.

Don't take my word for it. If you want to discuss your rights, ask that son of a bitch who just honked you, cut you off, and flipped you the bird. Ask Officer Rupp. Ask your State representative, who will dismiss you as a crank and subsequently ignore you. The only reason we get to ride at all is that there aren't quite enough of THEM to get bikes outlawed. The fact is, most people just don't give a damn one way or the other. Certainly not about us. But to the extent that's changing, it's changing for the worse. Bike bans are more and more prevalent, e.g., Sheridan Road here in Chicago. By 1992, there could very well be a law to get us off all the roads.

There may be some hope nevertheless. The Spike Bike series ends with his society moving in a positive direction. The bicycle becomes a symbol of opposition to the forces of Evil. Inspired by Spike Bike, people take to the roads in ever-increasing numbers, in spite of the risks. It's the same in our own society. If you want to be able to ride tomorrow, ride today, and take a friend with you. Better yet, take two friends, not people who ride all the time, but people who've, maybe, just quit smoking and are looking for a way to get in shape. You see, the more of US there are, the easier it will be to deal with THEM.

Spike began to understand this, too, near the end. He realized that one man could do little to change things, despite all his resources and skill. Benevolent creator that I am, however, in the series' climax I gave him an opportunity to be a real hero (and gave myself a neat way of wrapping things up). The world Spike saves is better than the one he shoots full of bullet holes; it is better, even, than the reality of 1989. Perhaps I'm an optimist, or perhaps I just don't like to tell depressing stories. You get enough of those from the Ten O'clock News.

The Spike Bike series was cathartic for me. I had something to get off my chest, and to all of you who enjoyed the stories and encouraged me to write more, I offer my heartfelt thanks. I'm no Hemingway. I'm just a hack engineer who harbors a frustrated writer within, and it's nice to have a way to let off a little steam, to indulge in a little fantasy, and know there's somebody out there who gets a kick out of it. It was fun. Thanks for coming along.

I'll be away from my office for a couple of weeks, so I'll be off the net for a while. I'll leave all of you with a couple of things to think about, though.

Spike did something after he arrived at the salt mine's control center. What did he do, and why would he do it?

Spike logged out half an hour before the Bomb went off. Copyright (c) 1989 by Robert Fishell

Source link:
Spike Explaination

Spike #5

[In the year 1998, one man fights the tyranny of the automobile...]
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A cold November rain beat against the window. The hour grew late. Yawning, I had set down my book and started off to bed when a knock came on the door. I warily crossed the room to peer through the door peep. It didn't look good. There were two grim-faced men in cheap suits outside. I caught a glimpse of more men in the grey uniforms of CFGM Security just on the fringes of the fish-eye view. This wasn't a social call. My 9mm Walther was in my right hand. My left rested lightly on a control panel next to the sill. I spoke into the intercom:

"What can I do for you fellows?"

"Spiro Bikopoulis?"

"Yes?"

"United States Secret Service. We'd like to talk to you."

"I'm all ears."

"Open the door, please"

"I can hear you just fine. Modern electronics, you know ---"

I saw the taller of the two men motion to the goons. Two of them came into view, ready to kick in the door. I threw a switch on the house's security controls. Instantly, a barrier slammed across the threshold of the front door, and the house shuddered as similar barriers simultaneously covered the remaining doors and windows. It was a metal-polymer laminate I'd developed during my years as a metallurgical engineer. Inch for inch, it was nearly twice as tough as armor plate, yet it weighed only a quarter as much. It, and the reinforced construction of my little ranch house would give me but a few minutes. If they'd come for the reason I suspected, they'd have brought some heavy firepower. I heard bullets thudding against the other side of the barrier. They would try a battering ram next, then explosives.

I ran down to the basement. The sequence I'd set in motion upstairs had already opened the sealed door to the secret room I'd built five years ago. I threw aside my bathrobe and pulled on a rugged jumpsuit and mountain bike shoes that awaited there. A gunbelt and flack vest followed. I hopped on the black-anodized mountain bike and opened the heavy door to the tunnel that led down to the river bank, 300 yards away. The chill and dank air seized me as I entered. I paused inside and tapped out a code on the keypad just outside the door. It quietly closed behind me, and I knew I'd never see my little house again. The bike's powerful headlamp stabbed far into the darkness of the tunnel, and I sprinted hard into its depths.

Halfway down the tunnel, I heard the muffled explosion behind. I had set the charges to gut the house without causing too much damage to the immediate area, or any innocent bystanders nearby. If, by chance, any of the goons had bashed or blasted their way inside, though, they were toast by now; those charges had been high-temp incendiaries. In any case, they would not follow through the tunnel.

Opening the hatch at the tunnel's mouth, I was nearly overwhelmed by a rush of knee-deep water. The heavy rains had swelled the river beyond its banks. I tried to get the camouflaged hatch closed again, but it was hopeless, jammed with mud. The tunnel would be easily visible. Hoping to at least cover my tracks, I rode through the shallow water for perhaps 200 yards before climbing up from the bank.

I rode along the river for another half mile before I saw the chopper. A powerful spotlight swept across the landscape, paused, and darted up and down the river bank in the direction I'd come from. They'd spotted the tunnel, no doubt, and were trying to decide which way I'd gone. The chopper turned to and headed my way. I offered a silent curse and took off at a right angle to the river, into the back of the railroad yard. I needed to get to cover fast. There! A freight train was pulling out of the yard, and I sprinted to match speed, pull alongside, and catch the open door of a boxcar. I struggled to get myself and the bike inside before the chopper spotted me.

I didn't make it. The light played over the door and instantly returned. The powerful beam followed the boxcar, and I heard the chopper descending. I extracted a drab green cylinder from the mountain bike's heavily laden panniers, extended the fore and aft tubes, and took aim at the spotlight. A squeeze of the trigger and the LAWS rocket found its mark. The chopper exploded and a huge fireball fell from the sky.

The train did not stop, but continued to roll out of the yard, picking up speed. It was evidently a robot locomotive, and it would not stop until it was programmed to do so. I didn't know where it was going, but any place was better than here right now. I closed the car's door and pondered my situation. In my bike's panniers and packs were my usual armament of a MAC-10, 12 grenades, a .44 magnum, and extra ammunition. But this particular bike had been especially prepared for this occasion. I also carried two, make that one, LAWS rockets, two satchel charges, and a sawed-off, 16 gauge pump shotgun. The rest of its cargo was less destructive, but perhaps more essential: Dry clothing, dehydrated food, $20,000 in small bills, some forged documents, and a pint of Jack Daniels. I cracked the seal on the last item and took one swig against the chill, replaced the cork, and set the bottle aside. This bike and the gear it carried were now all I owned, and I had to make the best of it.

I had known they might close in on me some day, but I had to learn how. That and many other questions burned in my brain. But first, I needed to sleep. I would need a clear head in the morning, wherever I might be then. Where?

I awoke from a light sleep as the lurching of the cars made me aware the train was slowing down. Through the space under the door, I could see it was still dark outside. I opened the door a crack. The weather had cleared considerably, and it was quite cold. I examined the skyline silhouetted against the stars: Detroit. That was just about perfect; just get accross the border to Windsor and I could make my way to my Alberta cabin to decide on a course of action.

How had they found me? More importantly, why now? Corporatism was finished. It had been a failure on all counts, social, political, and economic. The early boom years, when the executive-politicians had had the support of the people, had been financed by speculation, riding on false hopes. Lately it had been falling apart. Economic growth had ground to a halt, some consumer goods were growing scarce, and services were deplorable. Dissension was widespread among workers at all but senior management levels, despite harsh policies by employers -- The Twenty -- to ensure loyalty. The "workfare" labor force, which amounted to a pool of cheap conscript labor, could not absorb any more fired workers, and the threat of losing your job if your district voted the wrong way became meaningless as the quality of life deteriorated.

Though the Presidential election was still two years away, the midterm Congressional elections and several key gubernatorial races spelled disaster for The Twenty. Voter turnout had been unprecedented. Despite lavishly orchestrated media coverage and huge PAC funds, nearly every Corporatist candidate had been resoundingly defeated. The Enterprise Party, the political party of the Anticorporatists, would be firmly in control of the Congress and most of the states beginning in January. My contacts in the Party had told me that impeachment procedings against the Iacocca Administration would probably be the first act of the new Congress.

I had rejoiced in the news. The long nightmare was nearly over. I could soon go back to being Spiro Bikopoulis. Now, that dream was shattered. My cover was blown. I'm Spike Bike, now. I can no longer be any one else.

The train had slowed to perhaps 15 MPH. I slid the door open, dropped the bike out, and jumped. I was just outside the railway yard, near a crossing. I decided to take a chance on the road, at least for a little while, in order to cover ground quickly while I still had the darkness. It was early Monday morning. I would have to get near downtown, dump the bike and the heavy weapons, taking only the cash and my forged papers -- on foot -- to the bridge which led to freedom.

I covered about 5 miles before the morning glow made it too dangerous for me to stay on the main roads. Now I wound my way through alleys, through the poor neighborhoods near the downtown area. I would ride for another half mile or so and then change into street clothes and hoof it for the bridge.

My hopes were dashed. A block ahead, a dull grey Plymouth skidded to a stop, blocking the alley. Almost immediately, another duplicated the maneuver at the corner behind me. I immediately cut accross a back yard, through the narrow space between two dilapidated garages, and emerged with the MAC-10 drawn and ready for action.

This came immediately. As I rode out into the street, two of the CFGM Security cars converged on my position. I sprayed the windshield of one, and it changed course abruptly, crashing into a tree. The other was closing fast behind me. I rode up onto a yard, between houses, and into the alley paralleling the one in which I'd been spotted. To the west were two grey Plymouths, and I cut hard to the east. I grabbed a grenade and waited for the cars to close, but they kept their distance.

Up the alley ahead, I could see the walls of skyscrapers. I was only a few blocks from downtown. As I crossed a street, I saw three more of the CFGM cars closing in, but the way ahead was still clear. Finally, I ran out of alleys beneath the heights of the tallest building in Detroit -- the CFGM building. To the left and right of me were roadblocks. I had only one place to go, the parking garage under the skyscraper. I darted inside, my machine gun ready for an ambush, but I found no one waiting. I looked around for a place to make my next move. I felt a sting in my leg. Looking down, I saw a small dart protruding from my thigh. I reached down to pluck it out, but my hand wouldn't obey. The world tilted crazily and went black.

At first there was only a blur of agonizing light and a noise like a buzz-saw ripping through my skull. After a few moments, the blur became a face, and I realized it was speaking.

" ---ming around, Mr. Bikopoulis. Can I offer you a drink?"

A pail of icy water was thrown into my face, and I sputtered for air, choking and nearly throwing up. It began to clear my head though. As my vision returned, I observed that I was in an opulent office. Before me was a heavy mahogany desk. On it were my MAC-10 and a drab- looking suitcase. Behind, a panoramic window displayed the city lights of Detroit-Windsor, seen from the exhilarating heights of what I realized was the top floor of the 103-story CFGM building. The last fringes of twilight glowed in the west. It had been early morning the last I'd been conscious.

I was bound to a chair with duck tape, uncomfortably tight across my wrists and ankles. I had been stripped to the waist. A glance assured me that my heart monitor was still there. Looking around the room, I saw my specially-equipped mountain bike leaned against a wall, its armament intact. My gun belt and flak vest lay beside it.

"Yes, the bike's here," my host offered, "We know about that little electronic gizmo of yours, but we didn't have time to figure out how to disarm it. We thought it wise not to fool with anything, in fact. It was easier just to keep it in range of the transmitter for now. You're quite ingenious, Mr. Bikopoulis. Or is it Spike Bike?"

"That'll be _Mister_ Bikopoulis to you, Butt-brain." A mistake. That brought knuckles across my face.

"You should show proper respect for authority, _Mister_ Bikopoulis. Don't you know who I am?"

I knew who he was. Ames Morgan, Secretary of Transportation and Executive Vee Pee of CFGM, Iacocca's right-hand man. It was rumored that Morgan was the real boss of the Corporatist government. What was an important cabinet member doing smacking me across the face?

"The face and charming manner are familiar. You grunt for the Prez."

"The President of the United States is rather upset with you, Spike."

"The American People are rather upset with him, so I guess he's entitled. But why does he care about me? Senator Crisp..."

"Joseph Crisp is merely the political leader of this disloyal rabble. You're their folk hero. You inspire them. You're too much of a nuisance to have around."

"Somehow I think it's Mr. Iacocca who won't be around, at least not much after the 3rd of January. Is it true that they're just going to impeach him, or are they going to throw his ass in jail, too?"

"That's rather outlandish, coming from a terrorist."

"Terrorist? I'm just a concerned citizen, doing my best to keep our highways free of trash."

"Terrorist. Particularly after the little stunt you pulled in New Mexico Thursday."

"I was in New York Thursday, filling out reams of your goddam forms just to receive a shipment of Metaxa from Greece."

"Quite the contrary, Spike. You shot up a top-secret government installation. We've got it all on video tape. Killed thirteen people, including a janitor and a couple of secretaries, before you got away with this."

He placed a hand on the suitcase sitting on the desk. He removed a panel to reveal an array of switches and displays. Reaching into his pocket, he extracted a key and inserted it into a slot in the control panel. The displays jumped to life.

"The CIA whipped this up. Quite clever, really, only thirty-six pounds, and most of that's the shielding."

"What is it, a crystal set? Captain Video decoder, maybe?"

"I thought you were a weapons expert, Spike. It's a thermonuclear device. Oh, it's just a little one -- thirty kilotons, maybe -- but enough for you to do a great deal of damage to this fair city and its distinguished guests."

I suddenly saw what he was getting at. It was monstrous.

The Enterprise Party had fittingly chosen Detroit's Cobo Hall as the site for its first Transition Planning Conference. Every important member of the Anticorporatist movement would be in attendance. The conference was to open this evening. So that was why they'd timed my capture for this date! They intended to destroy the cities of Detroit and Windsor, and make it look like an act of terrorism, with me the perpetrator. A quarter mile in the air, this office would be ground zero. We were half a mile from the convention center. None of the delegates would survive, and hundreds of thousands of innocent people would perish with them.

"You're insane!" I hissed. I tugged and jerked at my restraints. Morgan leaned back in his chair, placed his feet on the desk next to the Bomb. His laughter filled every inch of the spacious office.

Morgan's laughter died down and my struggles ceased -- partly because I'd managed to partially free my right leg, and partly because I needed a cool head to size up the situation. I was alive only because of Morgan's maniacal ego. He'd conquered Spike Bike, and couldn't resist confronting me, just to gloat. I studied the device on the desk before me. One of the displays on the suitcase Bomb was changing. It read:

3:58:21... 3:58:20... 3:58:19...

I had to keep Morgan talking, to find out what he had planned, and to divert his attention from my quiet struggles with the leg restraints. He evidently hadn't realized the strength in a cyclist's legs. As I exerted steady, concerted pressure, the strands of tape tore slightly on the squared corners of the chair legs. Eventually, they would break and my legs, if not my arms, would be free.

"You'll never get away with it. Even Iacocca wouldn't approve of nuking an American city."

"Actually, he doesn't know anything about it. He's mainly a figurehead, anyway. Past the age of retirement, you know. In any case, four hours from now -- make that three hours and fifty-six minutes -- your friends down there will be radioactive vapor, and the people will have to look to the only government they have -- us -- to see them through the ensuing international crisis. And you, my friend, will go down in history as the most infamous terrorist of all time."

"The bomb goes off in four hours?"

"10:00 PM sharp. Senator Crisp should just be finishing his speech to the convention around then. I'll be long gone by then, driving west toward Chicago. Couldn't take a chance on the airlines. You, on the other hand, will be right here, snoozing away on another dose of aneprazine -- that's the stuff we shot you with downstairs. You'll have the whole building to yourself. We gave the cleaning staff the night off -- not much point in mopping the restrooms in the middle of ground zero, is there?

"Well, Spike, it's been nice meeting you in person, but I have pressing matters to attend to. It seems there's no way to disarm this thing once the countdown has started -- which it has -- and Detroit is fast becoming a crummy place to be."

He extracted a hypo from a briefcase on the desk. My legs were not quite free. I had to stall him a few moments more, fan his ego.

"One more thing. How did you find me?"

"The computers did it. Took us a long time. Seems you always traveled under assumed names, paying with cash for your airline tickets. But you used your family's business shipments to transport your weapons and bicycles by rail and truck to the areas you hit. It was just a routine audit of our shipping records, anything to get a lead. When we found out that Spiro Bikopoulis, former bicycle racer, was shipping merchandise to areas that were shortly thereafter visited by Spike Bike, we had a pretty good idea who you were.

"That business you pulled back in Illinois confirmed it. Incidentally, that was a half-million dollar chopper you blew up. Fortunately for us, the pilot radioed your situation just before you smoked him, so we had the train diverted here. Quite a stroke of luck for us; we got some nice pictures. The security cameras caught your entrance downstairs and got a nice close-up of your face before we tranked you. It was not strictly necessary, but it will add credibility to the story of the world's first nuclear terrorist. In a few days, the tape will be on every TV screen in America, along with the stuff we got in New Mexico."

"You got a ringer for me."

"Remarkable likeness, at least from a distance. Good with weapons, too, an ex-Marine, like yourself. Down on his luck, poor chap. He was more than happy to work with us after we got him off death row in California. He took to a mountain bike like a natural. Did a great job for us in New Mexico. We need more men like him. Pity you don't work for us, Spike. Well, Spike, I could go on for hours, but I really should be going. Have a nice nap."

He prepared the hypo and crossed from behind the desk. My legs were free. I would have just one chance. As he drew close to administer the shot, I rocked back on the chair and kicked up violently with both legs, catching Morgan in the rib cage. The thrust hurled him through the air several feet, until his back crashed through the expansive, mural window. They say that from 103 floors up, you're dead before you hit the ground. I always thought it was a myth, but I didn't hear him screaming the whole way down, just 50 floors or so. Maybe there's something to it after all.

My hands were still bound. I lay on the heavily carpeted floor, alone with the Bomb.

3:42:01... 3:42:00... 3:41:59...


The silent, florescent display counted down the seconds until an inevitable 30-kiloton nuclear blast. Morgan had said the Bomb could not be disarmed, and he'd had no reason to lie.

I got myself turned around and managed to get on my feet. My hands were still bound to the arms of the chair. I gingerly hobbled over to the shattered window, through which poured the chilly November air. The jagged glass cut through one of my bonds, giving me a gash across the wrist in the process, and soon I was free of the chair. Glancing down to the street, I saw tiny flashing red lights converging on the area where I knew Morgan's remains must be splattered. Not good; I'd hoped to get out of here unnoticed. The surrounding streets would be crawling with CFGM Security by the time I reached the ground floor.

I turned my attention to the Bomb. Within just over three and a half hours, it would have to be taken to a place where it could be detonated with relatively little harm. There wasn't time. Morgan and his henchmen had kept the theft of the Bomb a secret from the public, and I could not deal with CFGM Security, which policed the city. It could not be exploded on the surface anywhere in the populous East. A fast military plane might get it to the Nevada desert in time, but how could I convince the Air Force or the Navy of the urgency of the situation? And how could I trust them? I had no idea how extensive the conspiracy was. Searching my memory, I thought of one place it could be taken that might suffice: the extensive salt mines under the city. I knew I would have to take it there myself.

I retrieved my MAC-10 from Morgan's desk and checked out the bike. It was undamaged, and Morgan had been afraid to tamper with its extensive array of armament. That was good; I had a feeling I'd be needing it. I patched up the cut on my wrist and replaced my flak vest. Then I set about lashing the 36-lb Bomb to the rear rack. It was more weight than I was used to carrying, but I was able to maneuver the bike around the room. I boarded the private elevator which connected Morgan's office to the parking garage under the skyscraper. A brief, sinking feeling assured me I was on my way. On the way down, I broke all the lights in the car's interior. I readied the machine gun, prepared a grenade, and straddled the bike as the elevator slowed to a stop. As the door opened, I saw two grey Plymouth sedans waiting outside.

I burst through the doors firing in a wide arc. The guards crouched behind the cars instinctively ducked, and did not return fire for a critical second while I sprinted past the roadblock, tossing the grenade as I passed. One of the guards got off a shot before the blast, and I felt something hot laid across my shoulder. The wound was superficial, but bloody. I waited for more fire, but none came. The next wave would be at the garage's entrance. There was no time for stealth. Repeating my bold move at the elevator, I sprinted up to the street. The Bomb's weight slowed my progress up the ramp, but I still burst out of the door with enough speed to maneuver. Fanning the machine gun at the row of grey Plymouths just outside, I cut towards the alley I had come out of this morning, right between two of the Security cars. This time, none of their shots connected. A second grenade went off behind me and the guns fell silent. A block away, I knew I had made the first hurdle, but I could not get far this way. A mountain bike has tremendous advantages in rough country, but it's not much help on city streets. I thought for a moment about where I should go, and had the answer.

I wound my way through the alleys toward the sea of light four blocks from the CFGM building. There was one place in this city where I might find friends, but there would not be any time to explain. Firing into the air, I burst forward into the light. A stretch Lincoln limousine was just pulling up in front of the glittering entrance to Cobo Hall. It would do nicely. Riding up onto the sidewalk, I grabbed the first person in reach, a terrified woman. I hated to do it, but I needed to hold off the guards while I got the limousine door open. I rolled the bike inside and dove in after it, releasing my hysterical hostage. There was a distinguished-looking man inside, rubbing his knee. The bike had jostled him some.

"Senator Crisp, I presume."

"So. I finally get to meet Spike Bike."

I instructed the Senator's driver to get away -- fast. The Bomb silently counted away the seconds.

3:08:18... 3:08:17... 3:08:16...

"... and you're sure the Bomb can't be disarmed?"

"We can't afford to try. We've got less than three hours, and I have a feeling the people who built this thing won't help us much. No, Senator, the mine is our only chance. You have to help me get it there."

The Senator finished bandaging my wounded shoulder. He'd been reluctant to volunteer any help at first, but I had convinced him of the urgency of the situation. I turned my attention to the limousine driver. Could he be trusted?

"Your driver, Senator. Secret Service?"

"Yes, but..."

I held the muzzle of my MAC-10 against the driver's neck. I told him to pull the car over and struck him sharply on a well-chosen point at the base of his skull. He slumped over unconscious. I pulled his limp form into the back seat.

"You'll have to drive Senator. I'm going to be busy back here. Is this heap bullet-proof?"

"No, it's just an ordinary limo," the Senator replied as he took the wheel and sped off. I tied the driver's hands and then busied myself with smashing out the back window. Flashing red lights pursued from behind.

"Step on it, Senator!" I implored. Several CFGM Security cars were gaining on us. I waited until they were just in range and opened up on them with the MAC-10. The lead car went out of control, creating a spectacular smash-up. Only one car came through the chaos to continue pursuit. Bullets struck the limo and I felt it swerve. I turned my head to see that Senator Crisp had been struck in the arm. It was only a scratch, but it proved that our pursuers were not overly concerned with the Senator's well-being. I took careful aim at the driver's side of the Security car and hosed the windshield. It veered crazily off the road and crashed into a utility pole.

"Are you all right, Senator?"

"It hurts like a bitch, but yes."

"We've got to get help. The CFGM Security force is loyal to the Corporatists. They'll kill us both. Is there any one you can trust?"

"Maybe. There's a mobile phone in the back seat. Give it to me." Crisp thumbed a number, spoke a few words to the person who'd answered, and turned to me.

"The Coast Guard is sending up a chopper. The Base Commander and I go back a number of years."

I hoped the relationship was a congenial one. Up ahead, a few miles yet from the entrance to the mine, was a massive roadblock. More grey Plymouths approached from the rear. We could not stop, and we could not turn back. I reached into my ATB's bag of tricks and readied my remaining LAWS rocket.

"Put it to the floor, Senator!" I opened the door and leaned out, took careful aim at the center of the roadblock, and squeezed the trigger. The explosion blasted a hole through the roadblock, setting the vehicles ablaze and taking out most of the guards who'd awaited with pistols drawn. The limo crashed through the inferno and continued down the road towards the mine. I had to hand it to the Senator; he was a hell of a driver!

A flood tide of red lights was still in pursuit. My MAC-10 was empty, and the extra mags were in the bottom of one of the panniers. I didn't have time to hunt for them. I extracted the 16-gauge sawed-off from the bike's arsenal and took aim at the center of the parade. It would not be enough. So close, dammit, so close. Another mile to the mine entrance, but we wouldn't make it. I pumped the scattergun again and again, but they kept coming. As they were almost on us, a bolt from the heavens struck in front of the lead car. The Coast Guard chopper! The Security cars scattered to the roadside and gave up pursuit as the chopper engaged them with rockets and machine guns. The way to the mine entrance was clear.

More resistance no doubt awaited at the mine. That chopper was busy; I had to deal with it myself. A quarter of a mile from the mine entrance, I bade the Senator to stop the car.

"Thanks for the lift, Senator. Sorry about your wheels."

"I think the taxpayers can afford it. What now?"

"I take the mine. You've got to get as many people as you can out of this area. The mine should contain the blast, but there will be a hell of a shock."

"Good luck, Spike."

"You're the one who'll need that, Senator. You've got to put this Country back together. All I've got to do is dispose of some of the last Administration's garbage, here." I patted the deadly suitcase. Its flickering blue display continued the silent, businesslike counting.

1:58:33... 1:58:32... 1:58:31

The Senator sped away and I mounted the bike. I could not try the main gate, it was too heavily guarded. I would have to get onto the grounds some other way and find my way to the entrance to the mine shaft. Though time was of the essence, I would have but one chance to do this right, so I took my time in careful preparations. I blacked out my face and donned black gloves. I taped together the remaining MAC-10 magazines and tucked them into pockets in the fresh black jumpsuit I'd obtained from the panniers. Six grenades hung from my belt.

I scouted the perimeter of the grounds until I found a stream bed which ran under the chain-link fence. It was a tight squeeze, but I got through, dragging the bike after me. The area into which I emerged was isolated and poorly lighted. The mine shaft was located on the other side of the complex. To get to it, I would have to cross an open field and wind my way through huge piles of salt, thence across a brightly lit yard. It was not going to be easy. A force of about 25 CFGM security men guarded the mine complex, and they had by now been alerted that I was in the area. I rode through tall weeds parallel to the fence for a ways, staying out of the open until I could cross the field to the salt mounds at the narrowest point.

I spotted a jeep patrolling the perimeter service road, sweeping a spotlight over the fence. I laid the bike down in the weeds and kept low. The light did not come near, but the jeep stopped when the guards passed the breach in the fence. One of them got out to look more closely, shining a flashlight along the stream bed. He abruptly drew his pistol when he spotted the crushed weeds that betrayed my arrival.

I could wait no longer. I tossed a grenade at the jeep and opened fire on the flashlight. Both the grenade and the burst found their targets, but I no longer had stealth to my advantage. I sprinted hard for the salt mounds, darting between two of them as I caught sight of headlights flickering and heard gunfire from several points.

The salt mounds covered an area of three or four acres in an irregular pattern. It would be easy to get lost winding my way through the maze -- on the ground. I shifted into a granny gear and started my way up the steep slope of a large mound. I took a spiral course around the mound, staying just out of sight of the grey Plymouths that prowled through the grounds.

At the mound's crest, I had a much better view. I could see the entrance to the mine and was able to pick out a course through the salt mounds. Below, three cars systematically searched the mound area, supported by half a dozen men with flashlights. I would need a diversion.

I readied a grenade and observed the progress of one of the security cars. As it drew behind one of the mounds adjacent to mine, I lobbed the grenade over the top with a throw a major league outfielder would have been proud of. I don't know if it hit its mark, but after it went off, the searchers converged towards the area of the blast.

I rolled down the mound at a reckless speed, fighting to keep the overweight bike under control. As I neared the bottom, I caught sight of a lone searcher. He swung his flashlight in my direction; too late, I was on him. There was no time for either of us to shoot. I ran the bike squarely towards him, with all the momentum of my quick descent behind me. At the last moment, I pulled back on the handlebars and the front wheel left the ground to catch him perfectly in the chest. The bike skidded crazily as he went over, but I kept it up. No gunfire followed as I made the first turn through the course I'd scouted.

The last hurdle was yet ahead. Emerging from the salt maze, I sprinted for the entrance to the mine. To the left and right, two grey Plymouths sped towards me. I took aim at the windshield of the nearest, fired, and watched the car spin out of control. The other car spat fire from the passenger's window. I felt something thud solidly against my flack vest and nearly lost control of the bike. Bringing it around, I fired again, off balance, but I hit one of the Plymouth's front tires. As the driver fought the wheel to regain control of the car, I opened up on the passenger's window and the return fire fell silent.

I reached the entrance to the mine shaft as the security force began to regroup near the salt field. I rode straight into to the elevator, slammed the doors, and threw a switch which I hoped was for "down." Reassuringly, the car began to sink.

Several minutes passed before the elevator lurched to a halt. I wondered what awaited me outside. I threw the doors open, submachine gun ready, but saw only a few startled, unarmed men. I bolted through the door, into their midst.

"Everybody into the elevator! You have to get out of here!" To convince them, I fired a burst into the air. Salt rained down from the high ceiling. The frightened workers packed the elevator.

"Is this everybody?" I snapped.

"We're all there is. Most of the mine's automated, now. We're just a maintenance crew, going off shift"

"Then get the hell out of here! And don't bother punching out. You won't be working here tomorrow."

The doors closed and the elevator began to rise. The adjacent shaft would bring the other elevator down, teeming with armed men. I would not be able to deal with them directly. I set one of my satchel charges at the bottom of the shaft and rigged it to explode when the car contacted it. In the mean time, I had more urgent business to attend to.

I saddled up and headed down a tunnel. There was a fairly steep grade; good, I was getting deeper and deeper into the earth. After perhaps half a mile, I reached a large chamber at the tunnel's end. I did not know if this was the deepest part of the mine, but it would do. I detached the suitcase-Bomb from the bike, set it down, and examined my surroundings. This was evidently a center of operations. There were tracks and conveyers leading through various tunnels, and there were crude offices set up.

That's where I found this terminal. The mine, like everything else these days, is run by computers. This one has an operating system I'm familiar with, and it was fairly easy to get an outside link to access the main computer at Bikopoulis Imports. I brought up my diary file and began typing.

This, you understand, will be my last entry. I heard the satchel charge go off a few minutes ago. It had to be done in order to seal the mine shaft and contain the blast. It also leaves me with a problem. That was the only elevator. When the Bomb detonates in thirty-nine, make that thirty-eight minutes, Spike Bike will be no more.

Men like me are, I suppose, an inevitable consequence of harsh times. But when the times change, we are out of place in the World. I am a killer. The men I've killed were trying to kill me, but they're still just as dead. The Bicycle Act freed them to act on their basest instincts, but it allowed me to do the same. I hunted them, baited them, and killed them without compunction. Some kind soul may argue that my motives were noble, that the ends I achieved were for the greater good, that what I did was for the benefit of everybody who claims the right to ride a bicycle. I told myself all of this often enough. But the quest for justice isn't enough to make a man kill. I am driven by a rage that is neither good nor evil, but animal. Again and again I have felt it boil over, surge through my nerves, and burst forth in a stream of fire and lead. It sickens me now. I am sick of rage, sick of killing. It is well that it should end here.

Do not lament. I have longed for this day. Although it is an end for me, it is the beginning of everything I've fought for. But the fight isn't mine any longer. It must be won with law and order, not guns and bombs. Make it happen for me. I never made it to the Olympics. Let Spike Bike go out a winner.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I've still got a pint of Jack Daniels stashed away on the bike somewhere. I've got about half an hour to kill, and I could sure use a belt. It's been a long day.



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[Epilogue:

It was Spiro Bikopoulis's wish that his diaries be made public in the event that something happened to him. Had I not known Spike, albeit briefly, and seen the climax of this adventure unfold, I might not have believed the fantastic accounts recorded on the diskettes that were sent to me by the Bikopoulis Family. I am honored that he chose me to be among the first to read it.

The nuclear blast was well contained by the deep mine. There was considerable structural damage from the shock, but little radiation escaped, and Detroit-Windsor has remained safe for habitation. Casualties were minimal, and an international crisis was averted, thanks to Spike's sacrifice.

We do not know, as yet, how widespread the Morgan conspiracy was. We are searching for Morgan's accomplice, the man who, posing as Spike Bike, stole the Bomb that was almost the end of us all. He should be able to tell us much, if we ever find him.

President Iaccoca resigned in lieu of impeachment. We decided not to pursue criminal proceedings against him, in deference to his age and satisfactory evidence that he knew nothing of the Morgan affair. Vice President Turner has resigned as well, although there are charges pending against him. The Cabinet has, of course, been dissolved.

House Speaker Trump has resigned in scandal, leaving the job of U.S. President to me, as President Pro Tempore of the Senate. It is with great reluctance I have accepted the Office. Spike was right; I'm going to need some luck.

The new Congress has a staggering agenda. The Corporatists did an incredible amount of damage, and it will take more than a decade to overcome it all. Yet Spike was wrong about a few things. The first Act of the new Congress was a unanimous resolution to repeal the Bicycle Act of 1992. The legislation left in its place provides for a nationwide effort to improve the roads to better accommodate bikes, and outlines severe penalties for motorists who engage in "willful acts of hostility" against cyclists.

Attached to the bill was a resolution, passed by acclimation, granting a general pardon to Spiro Bikopoulis, a.k.a. Spike Bike, for "all crimes and misdemeanors, known or otherwise," committed during the years the '92 Act was in force. It also ordered that a medal be struck in his honor. However, the Cities of Detroit and Windsor have upstaged us. On an artificial island in the center of the Detroit river stands a statue of a man astride a mountain bike. Twenty feet tall, it is appropriately larger than life, as was the man it honors.

Respectfully Submitted,

Joseph Crisp President of the United States July, 1999]


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Copyright (c) 1989 by Robert Fishell

Source link: Spike #5

I Crashed the RAGBRAI Reunion Ride.

I am going to take a short break form the Spike Bike stories. I promise they wuill resume tomorrow.

This past Saturday, 09/19/2009 I decided to crash the RAGBRAI Reunion Ride. This is not to be confused with I crashed while on the ride. The ride went from Ankeny to Woodward on the Newly named High Trestle Trail, some still call it the Ankeny to Woodward Trail.

The way I crashed the ride was by being what I'd consider a party crasher. In other words someone who shows up uninvited or with out any real reason for being there and they come and attend anyway. I really didn't have a reason to be involved in RA?GBRAI because I did not do any part of RAGBRAI this year and do not have plans on riding it any time in the near future. I am no longer involved in RIDE RIGHT in any way shape or form. But when RAGBRAI puts on a free ride you bet I'm going to jump at the chance to crash it.

Prior to the ride was the RAGBRAI RIDE RIGHT meeting with food and drink for participants at the Ankeny Shell. I had no interest and did not attend that, I just wanted to take advantage of a free RAGBRAI sanctioned/sponsored event. I showed up a little before 1:00 pm got my bike ready and joined the group of riders on the trail for the ride.

The trail only goes as far as Madrid right now, it is not complete. Because of a time constraint I turned around at Sheldahl and headed back. My wife and I had dinner with my dad and stepmom that evening and I had to be back before 5:00 pm. But it was a lot of fun crashing a free RAGBRAI event, I hope to be able to do it again sometime.

Spike #4

[In the year 1998, one man fights the tyrrany of the automobile]
I heard it before I saw it. An ancient Cadillac convertible was closing very quickly from the rear. There was nothing ancient about its electronics; at least 1000 watts of amplifier power screamed raunchy C&W from god knows how many speakers. It sounded even worse for the doppler shift; he was doing at least 100. That was stupid. He would try to clip me in the side, because people in snazzy cars always try to clip me in the side, and at that speed, he wouldn't be able to maneuver. I feinted to the left when he closed to within a few hundred feet, then cut right abruptly when he'd committed himself. He missed me by a good four feet. As he roared past, I opened up on the tires with my MAC-10, shredding them. The Caddy swerved crazily, rolled over twice, and slid off the road upside down. Crazy as it seemed, that godawful music was still blaring out from the wreckage. I fired another burst into the gas tank, and the racket stopped as the wreck went up in a huge ball of orange flame. The driver's Stetson hat lay in the road perhaps 50 feet away, virtually undamaged -- unlike the driver, who had no further use of it. I emptied the rest of the mag into it, chasing it down the asphalt, cutting it to scraps. Sure as shootin', I was in Texas.

I'm Spike Bike. I hate cars. I don't care much for C&W, either.

I'd been to Texas before. The rednecks in these parts are as stubborn as they are mean, and that's meaner than most. This time, though, I had come for one man, and it wasn't that bozo in the Caddy. I'd never met Earl Josiah "E. J." Ross, but I'd heard plenty about him. He was a millionaire oilman who spent much of his time hunting since Standard Oil bought him out. It was said he hunted rattlesnakes, coyotes, and wild horses. These days, he also hunted bicyclists. My Anticorporatist contacts in Lubbock said he'd run down at least 20 of them, and those were only the confirmed kills, the ones there were accident reports on. I'd come to see that there would be no more.

I arrived at the Yellow Rose Cantina at about 11:30 in the morning. I counted three cars and two pickups in the dusty gravel parking lot, plus a couple of cars out back. It was more than I'd expected, but not too much of a problem. I leaned the bike up against a crumbling adobe wall and went inside, bracing myself against the assault of darkness, smoke, and Tex-Mex blaring from the jukebox. I paused near the door, letting my eyes adjust to the dim light, and checked the place out. Three men sat at the bar, and two more played pool in the adjoining room. A tired-looking waitress set out ketchup bottles on the empty tables. There was a big, middle-aged redneck behind the bar. I guessed that there was some one in the kitchen, but I couldn't see much through the tiny round windows set in the door. That would complicate things.

As my vision cleared, I noted that all eyes present were on me. I wore black lycra shorts with a red stripe, and a red three-pocket. I surmised that this was not suitable attire for this place, but then, I wouldn't be staying long. I crossed to the bar.

"A glass of beer" I ordered.

"Ain't got no beer, boy." This brought chuckles from the men seated at the bar.

"How about a sandwich, then?"

"Ain't got no food." More chuckles.

"What time does E. J. Ross show up?"

"You a friend of E. J.'s?" The chuckles gave way to raucous laughter.

"Didn't know the son of a bitch had any."

I casually strolled over to the jukebox, studied it for a moment, and viciously yanked the plug out of the wall (Who the hell was in the kitchen?). The twangy music abruptly stopped.

"Awright, get the fu** out of here, sissy-pants!" The bartender had lost his grin.

"I said, what the fu** time does E. J. Ross show up?"

"'bout half past noon, but y'all ain't gonna be here that long."

He was out from behind the bar, lumbering towards me with an unopened bottle of Lone Star beer in his hand. When he closed to within a couple of feet, he brought it up in a wide arc.

"I thought you didn't have any beer" I commented, as I threw a block to his wrist and brought my knee up into his groin. As he flinched from the pain, I snap-kicked him in the face and he fell back. He and the beer bottle he'd wielded hit the floor about the same time, and ended up in approximately the same condition. The sleepy-eyed waitress screamed, dropped her tray and retreated into a corner. The three men from the bar advanced on me, one of them hurling a bar stool in my direction. I ducked aside and blocked it away with my wrist. Coming up from the floor, I fan-kicked the nearest of the three in the jaw, spun around and threw a fist into the adams-apple of the next man. Both collapsed. The third held back, circling, looking for an opening (who was in the goddam kitchen?). The pool players had entered the room by this time, brandishing their cue sticks menacingly. I thrust a side kick at the third man from the bar and caught him off balance. He hit his head on the corner of a table as he fell. A pool cue came around at my head, and I ducked, grabbed the man's arm, and felt his elbow crack as I twisted. The pool stick flew out of his hand to crash into the row of bottles behind the bar. The other pool player realized his situation and wisely dropped his stick, retreating with his hands out to the sides.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a flood of light from the kitchen door, saw a blur, and heard the sound of a shell being chambered into a pump gun. I instinctively reached for the 9mm Walther I had concealed under my jersey. In one motion, I chambered a round, took aim, and fired. The mercury-filled slug tore through the cook's skull and he fell back. The scattergun discharged as it hit the floor, and a lighting fixture shattered overhead. I quickly swung around to cover the people who were still standing, and backed towards the door.

"Tell E.J. Ross I'm looking for him. I'll be up the road a ways."

Two plumes of smoke intertwined in the air above the Yellow Rose Cantina. Before leaving the parking lot, I'd fetched my .44 magnum from the mountain bike's panniers and fired a round through the radiator of each of the cars and trucks parked around the dump. Two of them caught fire as the heavy slugs ripped through the engine compartments. I'd taken care to cut the phone lines, but I didn't want any of the survivors going for help. The ones I'd left breathing would recover. The one I'd left with his brains splattered all over the kitchen door wouldn't be needing help. Now, I watched the Cantina through powerful binoculars from a mesa half a mile up the road.

My friends in Lubbock told me that every day, E. J. Ross stopped at this dive for a bowl of Texas chili and a few beers on his way back from his Lubbock office. The bartender had told me he'd arrive at half past noon. Sure enough, at 12:30 sharp, a cloud of dust near the horizon portended his arrival. I took some time to study his vehicle as it pulled into the Yellow Rose's parking lot.

I'd heard about the E. J. Special, but I had to see it to believe it. It had stared as an enormous Chevy pickup, but thousands of E. J.'s dollars had transformed it into a rolling monument to bad taste. It was mostly a glossy black, with elaborate desert scenes airbrushed onto the side panels. The windows were tinted very dark. The grille was from a Rolls-Royce, or a good imitation. Headers protruded from beneath the running boards, to come together and elbow into stacks that rose three feet above either side of the cab. The license plate read


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|KICK ASS|
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All the brightwork was plated in 14K gold. The antlers of an authentic Texas Longhorn steer embellished the hood. Under that hood, I knew, was a finely-tuned, 454 cubic inch V8 that didn't bother with emission controls.

E. J. himself was as audacious as his truck. He was big, at least 6'4", and 350 pounds if he was an ounce. He wore a white suit and matching Stetson, with mirrored sunglasses, a string tie, a hand-tooled Navaho belt with an enormous gold monogrammed buckle. His correspondingly enormous belly hung over it. On his feet were ornate Texas boots with gold caps on the toes. Gaudy, expensive rings embellished each of his pudgy fingers. A huge stogie jutted out from his mouth.

I regarded him through the binoculars, wishing for a moment that I was peering through the telescopic sights of a .30-06 Winchester; one squeeze of the trigger and I'd make happy ladies of each of his ex- wives. No, that would be too easy, too quick. I wanted him to know it was coming, and who it was who brought it.

A small crowd had formed in the lot beside E. J.'s truck: the bartender, the frumpy waitress, and a couple of the men I'd dealt with earlier. I could not hear their conversation, but I surmised they weren't talking about the weather. One of the men gestured up the road, in my general direction, and I thought it was time I announced my presence. I fired the magnum at the side of the building, not expecting to hit anything in particular at this distance, but I was pleased when a window shattered. The report echoed several times from the sides of the nearby hills. All but E. J. hit the ground or scattered. He merely looked up, trying to pinpoint my location. I hoped my red jersey made it easy for him.

E. J. got into his truck and started up the road. I stuck the magnum back in a pannier and hurried down the slope to meet him. I waited behind a rock for the E. J. Special to round the bend, and took off up the road, certain I'd been spotted. Timing would have to be perfect. That monster could go from 0 to 60 in less than 9 seconds, despite its size, and it had already killed at least 20. Surprisingly, he gained on me very slowly. So that's how he did it; let them sweat a little before the kill. I let him close to within 50 feet before I made my first evasive move, cutting accross the center line and darting through some rocks. I abruptly spun the back wheel around in a controlled skid as E. J. brought the truck to a halt, and I took off in the opposite direction. The truck did not turn around, but screeched after me in reverse, much faster this time. As it closed to within a few yards, I sliced off to the left and rode up the steep slope of the embankment. At the summit, I paused to make certain E. J. knew what direction I took.

The road wound through a canyon cut into the low mesas that dotted the countryside. I had scouted it carefully earlier, but it was going to be tight. I sprinted over the uneven, rocky surfaces towards the bend in the road where I'd hoped to intercept him. I arrived barely in time. planting myself in the middle of the road, I just had time to draw the MAC-10 and cock the receiving bolt. The E. J. Special roared around the curve, 200 feet up the road. I took aim for the driver's side of the cab and looked for his face, found it, met his eyes. The huge pickup bore down on me like a hellhound, but I waited for his expression to change, his jaw to slacken, his eyes to widen in fear with the shock of realization: that's right, you son of a bitch, this is a machine gun, and you're going to die! He got an arm half-raised before his face and cut the wheel sharply to the left as I opened fire. I held the trigger and fanned the barrel in a narrow arc, exhausting the full magazine. The windshield disintegrated and both the side mirrors shattered before the truck ran aground against the embankment and turned over on its side.

Five miles down the road, I could clearly see the column of smoke rising from the remains of the E. J. Special. A well-placed satchel charge had taken care of it, the road, and part of the adjoining hillside. E. J. Ross was no more; 20 lost souls were avenged, and Texas was just a little safer for bikes now. Perhaps E. J. had been the worst of the men I'd faced, perhaps not. At least I'd known his name, unlike most of them. And I'd had time to hate him. The satisfaction was fleeting. E. J. and his ilk had always been there, murderous intentions just below the surface, hatred and intolerance held barely in check. The real evil was the system that allowed the E. J.s to emerge, and I and all my guns, grenades, and bombs had no more effect on that than spitting on a forest fire.

All that would change some day. I had to believe it would. I'd killed two men today, and I'd seen their eyes. You don't forget the eyes. You feel them watching you when you wake up shivering, pillow soaking wet, with the sound of your own hearbeat shattering the night. How long?

Copyright (c) 1989 by Robert Fishell

Source link: Spike #4

Spike #3

[In the year 1998, one man fights the tyrrany of the automobile...] "DROP YOUR WEAPON AND PUT YOUR HANDS UP! STAY WHERE YOU ARE!" An amplified voice roared from somewhere beyond the blazing wreckage of the delivery truck that had chased me in here. Instinctively, I fired a burst from my MAC-10 in the direction of the squawking and sprinted off. I heard bullets grazing off the pavement behind and winced at a loud ping from the rear wheel. The bike swayed crazily as I leaned it around the corner of a building, and I went down at the top of a ramp that led down into a loading dock. I scrambled for the only cover available, a narrow, filthy space between the building and a large dumpster. I heard several cars screech to a halt as I dove into the gap. The voice repeated, "THROW OUT YOUR WEAPON! WE HAVE YOU SURROUNDED!"
I answered with a burst of submachine gun fire. My situation was grim, but it could have been worse. I had a defensible position, two and a half mags of ammo, and four grenades. They wouldn't get me without paying dearly.

They weren't real cops, of course. There weren't any real cops left, just security guards employed by The Twenty. Cities contracted with them to have their goons patrol the adjoining roadways, which supposedly saved tax dollars. It was a laughable system. It was all these idiots could to to keep from shooting each other, and cooperation was virtually nonexistent. It was one of the reasons I've been able to operate for so long. But now, they had me in a spot. Perhaps it would all end here. How did it begin?

...

I was born Spiro Bikopoulis on February 14, 1965 in Oak Park, Illinois, the eldest of six children. My father was a prosperous importer of foods and specialty items from his native Greece. I played football and soccer in high school, then did a stint with the Marines, where I taught hand-to-hand combat and automatic weapons at the U. S. Naval Academy. After the Service, I picked up degrees in Physics and Metallurgical Engineering at Caltech, where I started building bike frames as a project, and later for the racing team I captained.

As a bike racer, I moved up rapidly, particularly after word got around that bumping me on purpose was a mistake. I even got to the Olympic trials in '92, but I was disqualified when a California race official detected traces of Tylenol in a surreptitiously obtained sample of my urine.

"I had a headache," I told him. "besides, I took it after the race!"

"Don't serve me a plateful of irrelevant arguments, you fool!" the official countered, "it's right here on page 387 in volume 3 of the USCF rule book (revised 1992). You're out! Finished! Disqualified!"

I left the race official with volume 3 of his rule book stuck in a most uncomfortable place, and quit sanctioned bike racing forever.

That was when everything started to go to hell, anyway. The Economic Holocaust had begun, first with import restrictions, then the repeal of anti-trust and conflict of interest laws. A group of giant corporations known as The Twenty soon emerged, crushing all competition and gaining a strangle-hold on the Government.

In 1992, the Congress passed all kinds of ridiculous laws designed to curb the demand for Japanese goods. One such was the Bicycle Act, which cut off federal highway money to any state that didn't strip bicycles of any claim of right of way on the public roads. Shortly after it was passed, reports of bicycle fatalities all around the Country rose sharply. The same hotheads, rednecks and hell-raisers who used to just harass cyclists had upped the stakes to what amounted to legalized murder. The nation's roads became a living Hell. As The Twenty expected, bicycle sales, and hence imports, dropped off to nothing. The nation's highways were ruled by motor-driven hooligans who killed for sport. It had to stop. I, Spiro Bikopoulis, alias Spike Bike, would make the roads a living Hell for _them_.

My old Marine uniform and some forged orders got me into the Joliet Arsenal, where I learned the place's weaknesses and established my secret entrance. I soon had an extensive collection of military ordnance -- and I knew how to use it. I began my campaign around rowdy roadhouses and construction sites in my native Illinois, leaving a wake of blood, fire, and destruction, as driver after driver, trying to turn me into road kill, discovered too late that I wasn't defenseless. Soon the attacks diminished, not only on me, but on the die-hard, crazy cyclists who still braved the roads all over the Chicago area. Word was out. Bikes weren't sitting ducks any more.

That was 5 years ago. Since then, I've been all over the country, hitting areas at random, leaving my grisly signature on roads in every state, and everywhere I've been, brave souls have ventured out on bikes again, to find that drivers give them a wide berth, knowing that any one of them could be me. Bicycles have become a symbol of the growing Anticorporate Movement. It is the beginning of the end for The Twenty.

...

Unfortunately, it might also be the end for me. Crouching behind the dumpster, my reverie is shattered by a volley of gunshots clanging deafeningly against the heavy steel. Four of the goons are charging my position, concentrating their fire to keep me pinned down. I pull the pin of one of my grenades and lob it into their midst. I hear the blast, and the gunshots stop for but a second. The hail of bullets resumes and shadowy figures stir through the smoke. How many of them are there? And where am I? A sign on the loading dock door confirms my worst fears. I'm in a facility belonging to the Chrysler-Ford General Motors Corporation, President Iacocca's own company. The delivery van I took out hadn't chased me in here by happenstance. I'd been set up, and I'd fallen for it! I fire wildly into the smoke, enraged as much at myself as any of the uniformed hooligans out there. How many are there? How many?



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* TO BE CONTINUED *
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[Synopsis: Pinned down behind a dumpster by armed security guards, Spike recalls his past: his privileged childhood as Spiro Bikopoulis, son of a wealthy Greek importer, his tour with the Marines, his college days at Caltech, his bike racing career, and the Economic Holocaust -- the emergence of a consortium of giant corporations, known as The Twenty, who control the Government and nearly every aspect of American life. He recalls the passage of the Bicycle Act, which, in essence, gave America's "rednecks, hotheads, and hell-raisers" a license to kill, and how he became an armed, two-wheeled guerrilla, who would purge the roads of mechanized murderers and strike terror into the corridors of power in Detroit.

In the year 1998, one man fights the tyrrany of the automobile. Now, he fights for his life...] ---

Bullets rained against the heavy steel of the dumpster and chipped away the concrete of the wall next to it. I was inbetween, in a two- by-six foot pocket of cover which would be my coffin when my ammo ran out. I lobbed one of my three remaining grenades over the top of the dumpster at where I thought the fire was coming from. I must have gotten lucky, for the onslaught broke up. I took advantage of the lull to slip a peek around the corner. Through the smoke, I counted seven bodies, two of which were moving some, and spotted two more men diving for cover behind parked cars. Perhaps six more of the grey-uniformed goons received them there, crouching with pistols drawn.

My situation seemed hopeless. I'd taken out almost half of them with just two grenades and a few rounds of ammo, but they wouldn't be foolish enough to try a frontal assault again. They were too far away for me to get a grenade behind their cover without exposing myself, and I could not slip away unseen. They would wear me down, or keep me besieged, awaiting reinforcements armed with something heavier than the .38 revolvers that were standard CFGM Security issue.

CFGM -- The Chrysler-Ford General Motors Corporation, largest and most powerful of The Twenty, and the most ruthless. They controlled all transportation in America, including cars, trucks, rails, ships, barges, and airlines. Their CEO was also President of The United States, and lately, I'd been on his agenda. I'd been hitting bigger and bigger stuff, like that fleet of construction trucks back home, and I was a huge embarassment to CFGM and the Government. Last week, a group of demonstrating Anticorporatists rode bikes around the White House, and no one had touched them. Iacocca must have given the word to get me at all costs.

That must have been how this bunch had trapped me. I suspected that CFGM Security forces all over the Country had been instructed to lure or chase bicyclists onto CFGM property, where they could be apprehended and held for questioning. This bunch just got lucky -- or so they must have thought. Luck had run out for a truck driver and seven security guards when they'd tangled with me. It was the remaining eight, watching my dumpster through the sights of their pistols, that I had to deal with now. A thought occurred to me: they wanted me alive, if they could get me that way, although I'm sure they'd been told to get me any way they could. Perhaps I could parlay that into an advantage.

I tore a sleeve away from my white jersey, and waved it gingerly past the edge of the dumpster. I heard a voice ordering the goons to hold their fire. An instant later, the same voice came over the squawk-horn.

"THROW OUT YOUR WEAPONS AND COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP," he intolled. Didn't he have anything else to say? He was beginning to annoy me.

"Stick it, Butt-brain!" I shouted back, "Just come and get your wounded. I'll hold my fire!" A few moments passed in silence. "Come and get them, they're bleeding to death!" I insisted, and added, "Just leave that bike where it is!"

My bicycle, its back wheel collapsed after a stray round had fractured the hub, lay near the top of the ramp, among the fallen men. There were eight more grenades, a .44 magnum, and several magazines of ammo in the panniers, one of which had ripped open to partially display its contents. If I could get to it, I could hold out much longer, maybe even blast my way out. But if they got to it first, they could take me out with my own grenades.

After a moment, two men emerged, empty-handed, from behind the row of ugly grey Plymouths the guards drove. They made motions toward the wounded man nearest them, but then quickly darted for my ruined bike. One man scooped it up while the other produced a gun from behind his back and opened fire on my position. As they retreated, the others fired to keep me pinned down. The wounded men lay unattended on the asphalt. The two who'd ventured out ducked back behind the cover with their prize.

Long ago, I'd vowed I wouldn't be taken alive, and that I'd get whoever and whatever got me. To that end, every bike I built had a little extra weight: two pounds of plastique in the down tube, with an electronic detonator linked by radio to a monitor strapped to my chest. If my heart stopped, the bike became a bomb. I had flipped the arming switch during my encounter with the delivery truck. All that remained was to make the bike think I was dead. I drew as far back into my hole as I could, put my head down, reached under my jersey, and ripped the monitor away from my chest. Within seconds, a powerful blast shook the ground, and debris rained down all around me. There was no gunfire as I emerged from the filthy hole that had nearly been my tomb.

I surveyed the havoc I'd wreaked. The row of cars my adversaries had used for cover lay twisted and blazing in a disorderly array around the smoking crater the bike-bomb had made. One of the wounded men who'd been abandoned by his comrades was still alive. He groped weakly towards his fallen pistol, but I sprayed it with a burst from my MAC-10, driving it away like a leaf before a garden hose. The man looked at me with terror in his eyes. I looked at him with pity in mine. He was a conscript, no doubt, some poor, dumb slob who couldn't get an honest job. I holstered my weapon, removed his belt to make a tourniquet for his leg, made him comfortable, and picked up a small object from the ground to stick in his shirt pocket. It was the hand-tooled silver head badge of a bicycle, twisted and charred, but still intact. It was inlaid with the caricature of a bulldog with a steering wheel clenched in his teeth. The name on his collar was "Spike."

"Give this to your boss," I told him softly.

Sirens approached from the south. I found an undamaged security car and made my getaway. 30 miles away, I rendered it to scrap metal and walked the rest of the way to the airport. I would go back to Illinois, rest up for a few days while my road rash healed, and outfit another bike. I had much to do.

Copyright (c) 1989 by Robert Fishell

Source link; Spike #3

Spike #2

[In the year 1998, one man fights the tyrrany of the automobile...]


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The image of a white panel truck grew ominously in my helmet mirror. The vehicle's speed and the faces of the two men inside left little doubt as to their intentions. As they got closer, I saw what they had in mind. The passenger had a four-foot section of heavy water pipe stuck out the window, intending to play a little polo with Yours Truly's skull. This would call for perfect timing, but then, it always does. I faded towards the right shoulder, and the van did the same. But then, at the last possible moment, instead of going off the road, I darted in front of the van and went off on the left shoulder, into the grass, throwing the bike into a controlled skid. The driver reacted the way I'd hoped. He cut the wheel sharply to the left, still intent on having his pal brain me, and lost it when he hit the brakes to avoid a utility pole. The van skidded wildly, rolled onto its side, and slid to a halt 100 feet down the road. I picked up the bike and rode over to the wreck, tossed a grenade through a shattered back window, and sped away. The explosion was spectacular, as the grenade touched off something, a propane tank, maybe, inside the truck.
It gave me no satisfaction. This was the third one today, and I'd only been out a couple of hours. My mood blackened, just as the smoke from the plumbing truck blackened the sky. When would it end? "Spike, m'boy (I said to myself), you need a vacation." I headed home, packed up a few things, and caught the next flight to Calgary.

I needed to pick up a couple of Dura-Ace gruppos, anyway. Canada had no Bicycle Act and no Japanese trade restrictions, unlike what was left of the States, and I was really looking forward to getting to my cabin and putting in a few days of mountain biking without having to bring along an arsenal. After a couple of hours of tearing up and down the trails, I found myself on the road, heading down the mountain and into town. I could do with some breakfast. I heard a roar behind me, the unmistakeable sound of knobby tires. I looked back to see a jacked- up Jeep Cherokee following me down the twisting, gravel road. Nothing to worry about, I thought, this is Alberta, after all. I hadn't lost my instincts though, and I kept an eye on it. As soon as it was close enough for me to see the Illinois plates, I sprang into action, heading for some rocks near the edge of the road. He barely missed me, and put some big gouges in the side of the Jeep as he sideswiped the boulder I cut behind.

It was two men, American men. Just my luck. Goddam tourists, and drunken ones at that. They didn't stop to inspect the damage, just threw a bag of empty beer cans and cigarette butts in my direction, and sped off down the road. I didn't have so much as a firecracker with me, and I stood there, impotent, shaking with rage and frustration.

A clear head soon returned, though. There were no motels in the little town at the foot of the mountain, just a grocery store and a couple of restaurants. They could only be staying at one or two places, campgrounds up the mountain. They would be back, probably soon. I made a few preparations down the road and doubled back to the spot where I first encountered them. No more than 45 minutes passed before I once again spotted the roaring blue Cherokee coming up the road, laden, no doubt, with beer and junk food for another day's revelry. I hefted the bag of garbage they'd tossed out before and waited behind a rock. As they roared past, I hurled the bag at the driver, shouting "hey a****le, you dropped something!" It hit him in the head.

As I expected, he slammed on the brakes and skidded to a halt, manhandling the Jeep to get it turned around on the narrow mountain road. By the time he got it straightened out, I was a good 200 yards ahead of him, which was all I needed. I kept him in sight, making sure he wouldn't lose me, as I headed down the old fire road from which I'd removed the barricades. The surface was bumpy, barely navigable for both me and the Jeep, but it would get a lot worse -- for them. I spotted them closing in behind me, nearly bouncing out of their seats. That's it, butt-brain, watch me and not the road. Just a little farther. Atop a sharp rise, a chasm 10 feet wide and perhaps 40 feet deep cut accross the old road. The bridge had long since collapsed, but I'd laid a foot-wide plank accross the abyss. I shot accross with the Jeep nearly on my back wheel. As the heavy vehicle lurched over the edge, the plank snapped like a toothpick and it and the Jeep tumbled to the floor of the ravine.

After a while, I peered over the edge. The only sound from below was the babble of the little stream at the chasm's floor, which now ran streaked with red from under the wreckage, carrying away beer cans and little scraps of trash. What a shame, to pollute such a pristine wilderness. Before I headed back to Chicago, I would call the RCMP -- anonymously -- and tell them about the mess. In the mean time, I had a couple of days to take it easy, breathe the clean mountain air, and get in some more trail riding. After today, though, I'd tuck my 9mm Browning into one of the panniers, just in case I ran into some unfriendly critters, like bears. Or more tourists from the States.

Source link; Spike #2

Spike 1

[The year is 1998. The Federal Government is the puppet of a consortium of the 20 large corporations which run the country. State and local governments have been completely taken over by real estate developers, whose goal it is to turn America into one giant suburb consisting of subdivisions, apartment complexes, shopping malls, and office parks.
Bicycles have been all but outlawed. The Bicycle Act of 1992 made it illegal to appropriate tax dollars for bike lanes, paths, etc., and included a provision that "those persons riding bicycles on public roads do so entirely at their own risk." The law was originally intended to stem the flood of imports of Japanese bikes before foreign trade was cut off entirely in '94.

However, the ramifications of this law were much more serious. If a cyclist were to be injured or killed by a motorist, the motorist could not be prosecuted or even sued. It is open season on cyclists. One man fights back....]



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A cloud of brown dust stretched as far as the eye could see along old route 126. From my vantage point behind an old barn, I watched the grim parade. For the third time in less than a minute, a huge gravel truck rumbled past, spewing acrid, black smoke and kicking up more of the brown mud-dust and spreading it all over everything.
Including me. I'm Spike Bike. I hate cars.

Taking out a tractor-trailer rig isn't easy. You might be able to get a grenade into the cab, but if it bounces back at you, you're finished. You can sometimes shoot out all the tires on one side of the tractor and the truck will jackknife, but it takes at least half a mag, and half the time you won't get all the tires. I had to face the fact that a MAC-10 submachinegun and a few grenades just weren't going to do the job against these monstrosities.

My weekly raid on the old Joliet Arsenal yielded what I needed: a bazooka and a couple of crates of armor-piercing rockets. As usual, the morons the Army has watching the place didn't see anything. All the approaches to the arsenal are pretty well guarded, but nobody expects a guy on a mountain bike sneaking up from the river bank. I slung the bazooka over my shoulder, stuffed all the rockets I could carry into a set of panniers and a backback, and slipped away unnoticed.

Back in the garage, I set about converting the bazooka and some old Reynolds tubing into a bikezooka. When I was finished, it looked pretty much like any other fat-tube bike, except your every-day Kleins and Cannondales aren't capable of firing antitank rockets out both the front and back ends. The bike handled a little funny, but I wasn't going to do any criteriums on this baby.

I had to ride along 126 for a couple of miles before I got an opportunity to test it. There wasn't a gravel truck in sight, but I spotted an enormous flatbed carrying a bulldozer. Both the truck and its cargo were filthy, covered with mud and chipped paint, just the thing to make my blood boil. He tried to run me into the ditch, but I'd expected that, and I dodged him easily as he rumbled past. He gave a blast on his air horn that meant "I'll get you next time!"

There wouldn't be any next time. I waited until he was about 200 feet ahead and let the first rocket fly. It scored a direct hit on the rear axles and blew the wheels clean off. The truck collapsed on the roadbed and the 'dozer broke loose from its restraints to lurch forward and crush the cab. My second shot ignited the truck's fuel tank and set both the machines ablaze. I had a weapon!

My first opportunity to take out one of my primary targets came a few minutes later, when I spotted a gravel truck a quarter mile behind me. It was big and ugly and loaded with dirt -- a fat hog to be butchered. I loaded a rocket into the nose and flipped the firing mechanism over so I could launch the round out of the back of the bike. I waited until he got closer, almost too close. I heard him downshift to get more power as he headed straight for me. I let him have it. The missile struck the radiator just above the bumper. The entire cab exploded and blew off the undercarriage. With the steering box destroyed, the truck promptly and violently jackknifed, turning over in the ditch and spilling its entire cargo of dirt, rocks, and debris off to the side of the road. It lay a smoking ruin as I pedaled on.

I'd only brought along four rockets for this test run. I'd hoped to get a chance to hit another truck, but it was after 5, and most of the truckers had gone home. The remaining rocket didn't go to waste, though. On the way home, I spotted a big, gaudy, new Pontiac pulling out of one of the myriad construction sites along 126. A foreman, maybe; he smoked a cigar and wore a yellow hard-hat. He roared up at me from behind, hoping to clip me in the side, but he didn't realize who he was dealing with. I feinted towards the ouside lane, then quickly cut back to the shoulder, and he missed me entirely. I could see him flipping me the bird out the back window as I fired the final rocket. There wasn't time for his expression to change, but I'll bet he saw the backblast just before the warhead blew his car into small metal scraps. I had to carry the bike over them for sake of the tires.

It had been a long day. I headed home and went to bed early. The construction crews start at dawn.

Source link: Spike 1

Precursor

With all the acrimony that's been passed around about bikes vs. cars, I thought it would be a good time to talk about a really interesting ride....
It was a Friday. Fridays are usually good days because you have a lot of teenagers drinking and driving, plus a lot of people who are in a bad mood and in a hurry to get home from work. The factories usually pay on Friday, so you get a fair number of beer-commercial types cruising around in their 4X4s looking for some butt to kick while they're knocking back a few brews. A cyclist's paradise.

I stuck a full mag in my MAC-10 and put another one under the saddle. The gun fits into the water bottle cage pretty well, and it's fairy light. I stuffed a couple of grenades in my jersey pockets and slipped my Rambo-knife into its sheath on the front fork. Just for good measure, I grabbed a thermite grenade and dropped it into the remaining jersey pocket. This is a little more weight than I usually carry, but it was Friday night after all.

I caught the first one just a mile from home. It was a type-A, businessman-yuppie-semipsychotic in a BMW, who didn't like the fact that I was occupying two feet of the lane in front of him. He let me know with his horn and his middle finger. It's pretty hard to hit a moving car from a moving bike, even with a machine gun. I must have fired four bursts before I put one in the gas tank and the "Bimmer" erupted into flame. Fortunately, this bozo managed to get the car off on the shoulder before it blew up, so I didn't have to find a detour around the fire.

The next one didn't come along for another five or six miles. This was a couple of punks in an old Camaro. They pulled alongside me and the passenger barked out of the window like a dog. Then the driver floored it and screeched off in a cloud of burnt-oil smoke. I got lucky for once. The punks got caught at a stoplight, so I didn't need the gun. I pulled into the center of the road so I would pass the driver. As I rolled past, he started talking some punk talk. I don't know what he said, because he stopped in mid-sentence when he saw the grenade go through his open window into the back seat. I caught a glimpse of both of them frantically scrambling after it just as it went off. It looked like some of the glass and shrapnel did some damage to the car ahead of them, but it couldn't be helped. Every war claims some innocent victims.

I'd had enough of the city traffic, so I headed out into farm country. As I went past a barnyard, two enormous dobermans took off on an intercept course. I dropped them both with one burst, and put a couple of rounds through the farmhouse windows to remind the farmer about the leash laws in effect everywhere in the county.

A short time later, I heard the roar of knobby tires behind me. I looked back to see a huge Ford pickup truck, one of those jacked-up monstrosities with the undercarriage about three feet off the road. As it pulled closer, I heard loud country music blaring over the din of the tires. There were two men in the cab. They both wore Stetsons, and they were both drinking beer from cans. An archetypical redneckmobile.

I felt like just blasting them right then and there, but I waited to see what they had planned. Sometimes these guys just pass you without giving you a hard time. Not this pair, though. The guy in the passenger seat had a styrofoam cooler full of icy water, which he was preparing to dump out the window on yours truly. That was all I needed. As soon as the truck pulled even with me and the guy started to toss the water, I put a burst through the window. This brought trouble, though, because the cab was so high that I didn't get the driver. The truck continued down the road, and I tried to finish them off through the blood-spattered back window, but wouldn't you know it, the mag was empty.

I couldn't reload while I was rolling, and the driver of the pickup had by now stopped the truck and was turning around to come after me. I had, maybe, two seconds to make up my mind what to do. I reached into a jersey pocket and pulled out the other grenade. Then I did a time-trial turn, pulled the pin, and looked over my shoulder at the truck which was now speeding towards me. This would have to be timed just right. I let go of the handle and dropped the grenade, then sprinted for everything I was worth. I heard the blast and felt something graze my right arm. Turning around, I saw the truck in flames and out of control. It did a spectacular flip as it went into the ditch, then overturned. There was a second explosion as the gas tank went up.

I decided to cut my ride short, since my arm was bleeding. The wound was superficial, but it was nasty enough to cause a lot of discomfort. I thought back to the ammo I'd wasted on that turkey in the BMW, and regretted it. One of these days, I'd have to get some tracer bullets for the MAC to help me aim. Oh, well. I reloaded the gun since I was bound to come accross a few drunks & punks on the way home.

A few miles passed and I heard a siren behind me. I decided to play it cool, hoping they weren't after me. I was disappointed. The sheriff's car slowed behind me and I heard an amplified voice telling me to get off the bike and lie face down on the ground. Damn. I hated the thought of wasting a cop, but if they'd go out and do their jobs, I wouldn't have to ride around doing my part to rid the area of its rat population. But I had an idea. I still had a thermite grenade. I yanked it out of my pocket and tossed it on the hood of the patrol car. I'd hoped for the element of surprise and got it; the two deputies inside the car were too startled to shoot at me. The grenade went off and started burning its way through the engine compartment. The deputies managed to stop the car, and by the time they got out, I was a good quarter mile down the road. I heard shots behind me, but they'd never hit me at this range with .38 Smith & Wessons.

My escape was short-lived, though. I saw two more sheriff's cars up ahead with riflemen crouched behind them. I heard more sirens from behind. This was it. I pulled out the MAC and fired wildly at the roadblock, crouching to make a smaller target. If I had to go, I was going to take some of them with me. It had been a good life. I'd had some good times. I just regretted that they were getting the wrong guy. I felt something hot tug at my shoulder. I reached up, expecting to pull my hand away bloody, and found my office-mate's hand instead. "Bob..Bob!.. Wake up! You fell asleep at your desk! C'mon, it's Friday afternoon. Time to go home!"

I went home, firmly resolved never to eat that cafeteria chili again.

Source Link; Precursor

Spike Bike Stories

I am going to be posting a series of Spike Bike stories. There are 10 total that I will post over the next 2 weeks. I am not the author of the stories. A man named Bob Fishell is. These stories while fictional are at the very least metaphorical in nature and in some ways express how a lot cyclists actually feel about motorists, and perhaps shows what we wish we could do to some of them, especially the worst ones we encounter when riding bike on the roadways. Bob writes a very entertaining way of dealing with these motorists and their vehicles. Perhaps by writting these stories was his way of expressing how he felt/feels about the idiot motorists on the roadways. Using an array of weapons, from a MAC 10 to gernades and at times heavier more effective weapons in his arsenal this one man fights the insitution and fights against the tyrrany of the automobile. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did. My next post will be the first story. They will be posted in the order they are on the web site and have the source link posted as well.

Urban Cycling Vocabulary

This is transcribed from a print copy. Since it is old, so it misses problems like cell phone drivers, yet it is humorous and helpful in identifying common problems on the road. It was written by Nate Briggs (Salt Lake City).

Ballerina Barge - Massive SUV with an 85-pound former dancer at the wheel. She is the fifth wife of a prominent orthodontist, who purchaced this fuel-intensive landmark for his young spouse because she feels insecure in traffic. They make great "Companions" (see below).
BubbaBouncer - Four huge tires, to which have been attached to a cab of some type to protect the occupants from bad weather. Comes in small, medium and large sizes. Drivers of larger sizes usually have an extensive list of social grievances this is the most likely MV (motor vehicle) in the urban landscape to have a loaded gun on board. Handle with care.
Busboy Special - Pre-1980 ten speed with the under-curved handlebars tilted up, so the rider can sit bolt upright. Best ridden wearing a baseball cap; after dark (without lights); on the left hand side of the the street; with the pedals turning about 10 rpm.
Clot - Urban traffic lights (the great equalizers) divide MV's in to groups called Clots. They travel so closely spaced that it's often difficult to distinguish them in a rear view mirror. Therefore, when you see one MV, assume, two or three and so on.
Companion - An MV whose position serves to protect the cyclist from the misjudgements of motorists. The most common example: a MV which traverses an intersection at the same time, in the same direction as the cyclists. Oncoming traffic, ambitious to turn left, will see the oncoming MV and wait for it to clear the intersection. Thus the cyclist is protected.
DMZ - The area of a street barricaded for repair work, before repairs have begun. The cyclist can slip between the barricades and- in this traffic free zone- suspend Rampant Paranoia (see below) for a moment.
Donna - Term originally used on the radio show CARTALK to refer to female motorists. Now applicable to both sexes. Drives a Camaro or Firebird. Has a cigarette dangling from one side of the mouth or is popping gum. Or both. Usually in a terrible hurry to get home to catch the contestant introductions on WHEEL OF FORTUNE. Capable of any unbelievable thing in traffic.
Eternal Triangle - A positioning device formed at the corners of an intersection. Passing cars push gravel and glass and hardware in to the shape of a triangle , w/ one crescent shaped side on the right. The curved edge shows the common path of vehicles turning right. The straight side on the left shows the common path of motorists just going straight through the intersection. Since the desire of a motorist to turn right cannot be impeded in any way, the correct position for a cyclist is just to the left of this formation.
Fairy Dust - The granulated windshield glass found at poorly designed intersections or on infrequently cleaned streets.
Flyboy - Consists of an an all-terrain bike that hasn't seen soap in years; a mailbag draped over one shoulder; an upraised middle finger; and a solid determination not to slow down or stop for any reason.
Foreplay - The efforts of a cyclist to locate and trigger buried sensors under the pavement that will cause the traffic light at an intersection to turn green. Like the real thing, occasionally there is no result from this activity, despite most sincere efforts.
Hat Man - A motorist, 80 years old or above. He had his last full driving test in 1968, and he's gained a lot in experience and unpredictability since then. Often remarks how hurried people are now, an capable of any unbelievable thing in traffic.
High - A lateral position on a street more toward the center line. As in: If you look like you are leading a funeral procession of slow moving cars, you are probably positioned too "high."
Kid Ender - A trailer which holds 1+ children. Being children, they are not as terrified as they should be.
Low - A lateral position on the road more close to the shoulder. As in: if you find yourself dodging sewer grates lying next to the curb, you are probably positioned too low.
MV - Motor vehicle. The acronym PIU (Personal Isolation Unit) is more accurate and descriptive. But too cumbersome.
Parenthesis - An evasive move in the shape of a closing parenthesis mark. Made as the cyclist is traversing an intersection where there are oncoming MV's waiting to turn left. The cyclist, by making a gentle arc to the right, is trying to diminish any impact which would result from the the MV turning left too early.
Percolator - A parked car with the engine running on a warm day, when no vapor can be seen. For further explanation, see "Smoker."
Slot, The - The best single lateral position for a cyclist on a city street. Not too "high" or too "low"
Varies according to the street, time of day, and rider's level of assertiveness
Smoker - A parked car with the engine running (producing vapor clouds) on a cold day. For the cyclist, the Atkinson's Law of Contrariety applies. If you anticipate the car will move out, it probably won't. If you predict that it won't, it probably will.
Spandex Warrior - Very similar to the FlyBoy, except equipped with an expensive road bike, and very colorful attire. Slightly less irritating, since he does seem to regard traffic signals and signs as possible suggestions for behavior.
Veil - Windows tinted very dark, because the occupants are too beautiful to be looked upon by the naked eye. Tough to make eye contact. Tough to gauge intentions. Tough to describe occupants to the police should they wack you.

"HEY ASSHOLE, RIDE A BIKE"

"You hit me with your Prius"

"Me - Bicyclist, heading to jury duty on 10th Street, Friday at 8:50am.
You - Prius driver, crossing over two lanes, hitting me with your car and speeding away.

I was hoping we could catch up for a cup of coffee, so I could get your views on the environment, and strangle you."

Source link; You hit me with your Prius

ONABIKE; The Perfect One Day Ride

This past weekend I had the pleasure of successfully accomplishing one more ONABIKE. ONABIKE is on the 4th Saturday in August and is what I call the perfect one day ride. It has everything in a bike ride an on road cyclist could want. No more then 12 miles between towns, flat, hills, the ride is a loop, on county and state highways with light to moderate traffic, beautiful scenery and offers 2 routes. ONABIKE is refered to as the Tour of the Loess Hills. It starts/ends in Onawa. It only goes through one town, Turin, then back to Onawa on the short route. The long route towns include Turin, Soldier, Moorhead, Pisgah, Little Sioux and Blencoe. This year was the 17th ride, or ONABIKE XVII.

Link;
ONABIKE

Here is the long route;

Anti Monkey Butt

Every cyclist knows what it is like to have a sore butt. Whether you ride a recumbent as I do or a bike with a wedgie saddle your butt will get sore and irritated, albeit on a different part of the butt. Wedgie saddle riders are more prone to soreness on the inner part of the legs and thighs and recumbent riders on the outer part. Recumbent riders commonly refer to this as recumbent butt. And take my word for it when it happens it is just as sore and irritating as what wedgie saddle riders experience.

Over the years a variety of products have been developed to help deal with butt soreness caused when riding any type of bike. most wedgie saddle riders use some sort of cream or ointment both while riding and right after they are done riding. These creams and ointments are typically used inside the bike shorts and on the inside of the legs and thighs. Recumbent riders have discovered to help with recumbent butt they can use these same creams and ointments on the outside of the butt. However it can be messy. Unlike using the cream or ointment on the inside of the legs/thighs where it is not as messy and less can be used on the outside more is typically used and is messier. I know from experience it is more difficult to clean the cream or ointment out of my bike clothing when I use it.

I have recently discovered a new product to prevent recumbent butt. It is called Anti Monkey Butt Powder. This stuff works great. I have been using it for about a week, every time I ride and I have yet to have problems from recumbent butt. Hopefully it will continue to work to prevent this problem that sometimes happens when I ride. I recommend this stuff to any recumbent rider out there. Use as directed.

Link;
Anti Monkey Butt

Barbwire Bicycle

My wife and I recently went to the Iowa State Fair. One of the things we like to do there is visit the Multi-Cultural Building. This is where the artists present their creations for competition and where they can be viewd by the public, during the fair and see how well each artist did. This includes anything from sculpture, photography, painting, etc. There are also art vendors selling their wares as well. One of these vendors is Art From The Farm. They are from the Toledo, Iowa area. The art they create is out of barbwire. I have seen their art work in years past, but never a bicycle. I had always asked about one and was told they do not have them available. Last year RAGBRAI went through the Toledo, Iowa area. Because of that the artist decided to make barbwire bicycles. They sold out of them. Since then they decided to keep making the barbwire bicycles. I saw one and purchased it at the fair to add to my collection of bicycle art.

This bicycle would be very difficult to ride. Never mind the fact that it is too small, or that nothing turns, pivots or rotates. The most difficult part would be sitting on the barbwire saddle. Ironically barbwire is something cyclsits try to avoid while riding on Iowa's roadways. I have come across some myself while riding on the county and state hwys and have thankfully avoided rolling over it.

Web link and photo;
Art from the Farm

Bicycle Times Magazine

Recently I found a new bicycle magazine called Bicycle Times. It is for the everyday cyclist that most of us likely are. Unlike another bicycle magazine I used to read, (bicycling Magazine, otherwise known as buy-cycling), the articles do not talk above or at people. They are concise to the point, easy to understand and have a point. Nothing in the magazine says you must do this or you should have that to be a successful cyclist. The magazine also does not put anyone or anything down nor does it make people feel inaduquate as cyclists if they do not have the latest and greatest thing in cycling, like buy-cycling magazine does. I found the issue I recently read at my local Barnes and Noble. I will purchase and read a few more before subscribing to it. I stopped subscribing to the crappy buy-cycling magazine about 7 years ago and stopped reading it 5 years ago. Thank you to the editors and creators of Bicycle Times for coming out with a magazine for the everyday cyclist.

Web Link;
Bicycle Times

Replaced handle bar grips.

For the last 3 years or so I have used Serfas brand grips on my bike. Prior to that it was what ever grips came with the bike originally. The style of Serfas grips I have been using until recently is this one.; CNGB Connectors® Standard and Twist Shift They worked well but have worn out and needed to be replaced. I wanted something better. I have since installed this style.; CNG-2 Connectors® SL MTB So far they are working great. Granted I have no pressure on my hands as I ride a recumbent, but my hands still need to be comfortable on the bike. the grips help absorb vibration transmitted up from the front wheel and fork, through the steering tube and into the handle bars.

Seat frame broke, AGAIN!!!

On my commute this morning my seat frame broke again. This time because of s tress crack on the opposite side of a joint that had a stress crack repaired before. I co-worker was able to repair it for me with a stainless steel sleeve. I am done messing around with this thing. It is time to have one built out of cro-moly 4130 material. I know it will cost close to $700 for a Dakota Muscle Cars to build me one. A brand new recumbent would cost $1,800. I am sure some think I am nuts for wanting to keep mine and keep throwing money into it. Maybe I am nuts for doing so. But think about something you're passionate about and how much you'd be willing to spend to keep doing it. For right now until I can afford to have a new seat frame built I will ride with the repaired one that I have.

Update; Gonna go for it! Went for it; Didn't hit the speed I wanted to.

Well I went for the speed record as I said I would in Des Moines this past weekend. Unfortunatly I did nto hit the speed of over 48 mph as I wanted to. I parked at Howe Elementary School on the south siode of Des Moines. Got the bike ready. Rode out onto Indianola Rd. Rode the 2 blocks to where the hill started gradually picking up speed, started down the hill increasing speed and shifting up my gears and was only able to hit over 41 mph.

I am not going to make excuses as to why I was not able to hit the 48+ mph I wanted to hit, only educated guesses. First one of the differances between when I hit 48 mph the last time and now is I did not have fenders on the bike then as I do now, thus possibly causing some wind resistance. Another reason could be right now my bike is very dirty and needs to be cleaned and relubed, before the bike was cleaned and lubed. It also could have been because I had just ridden 24 miles prior to the speed attempt and I was a bit tired and a little sore in the legs. I do know what it was not. I know it was not because of fear. There was no fear of crashing or getting caught by the authorities for speeding. While I have no illusions of what could happen if I crashed at that speed on a bike, I am not afraid of hitting speeds like that. As far as a speeding ticket is concerned, I would consider it a badge of honor and liely frame it and hang it on my wall.

I am going to attempt this again on that hill in Des Moines, so this is not over. Next time the bike will be cleaned and lubed and will not have the fenders on it. I will not have ridden any sort of distance except maybe a few miles of warm up first.

Fender broke.

I use Planet Bike fenders on my bike. I love them, they work great and recommend them for anyone who has a bike. I use a 20" on the front and a 26" on the rear. The rear fender broke, but not through any fault of Planet Bike or manufacturers defect. The fender has 3 points at which it is fastened to the bike. An "L" bracket and a total of 4 stays. The stays are in pairs located at 2 points along the fender to hold and support it in place. It was where the pair of stays furthest to the rear that broke where the stays connect to the fender. The reason they broke is because of how I transport my bike on the carrier I use. I use an Sportworks tray style carrier. It has arms that come up and hold the wheels in place from the top of the wheel. At the rear wheel this has caused stres, torsion and torque on the fender where these 2 stays connect. I repaired it by taking a piece of corroplast and riveting it to the inside of the fender and attaching the stays to the corroplast. Hopefully this will work until I can purchase a new fender. This would have been prevented if I had unthreaded the stays from the connection points before securing the wheel with the locking arm that holds it on the carrier tray. Hind sight is 20/20 I guess.

Gonna go for it!

The fastest I have ever gone on a bike was 55 mph. It was during my first RAGBRAI in 1998 on my TREK 470 road bike, this happened at the Pilot Mound Hill. The fastest I have ever gone on my recumbent is 48 mph during a commute to work. It was no Singing Hills Blvd heading south. I have been trying ever since I hit 48 mph on the recumbent to hit 50 mph or faster. I have not found a hill smooth enough or straight enough for this to happen, until now.

In Des Moines there is a road called Indianola Rd. Part of it is a long straight stretch of a hill. I am going to Des Moines this weekend. Tomorrow 06/20/2009 I am going to go for a ride on the Summerset Trail, then I am going to go to the top of this hill on Indianola Rd to attempt to speed down it hitting at least 50 mph. I don't need to hit anything faster then 55 mph and have no intention or goal of breaking that speed record, just the speed record of 48 mph on the recumbent.

By the way Indianola Rd. is a city street with a speed limit of 30 to 35 mph. People often drive down it at 40 mph+. So yes I am admitting to breaking the speed limit on my bike, therefore breaking the law. If anyone wishes to report me to the authorities, get over yourselves and remove the plank from your own eye, before you remove it from mine, also stop throwing stones or you will break that glass house you live in.

Cycling Term Translations‏

Cyclists are the biggest sandbaggers and secret trainers around. They'll say anything to soften you up for the kill. Don't let this happen to you. Study this handy rider's phrasebook to find out what they really mean when they say:

"I'm out of shape"
Translation: I ride 400 miles a week and haven't missed a day since the Ford administration. I replace my 11-tooth cog more often than you wash your shorts. My body fat percentage is lower than your mortgage rate.

"I'm not into competition. I'm just riding to stay in shape"
Translation: I will attack until you collapse in the gutter, babbling and whimpering. I will win the line sprint if I have to force you into oncoming traffic. I will crest this hill first if I have to grab your seat post, and spray energy drink in your eyes.

"I'm on my beater bike"
Translation: I had this baby custom-made in Tuscany using Carbon Fiber blessed by the Pope. I took it to a wind tunnel and it disappeared. It weighs less than a fart and costs more than a divorce.

"It's not that hilly"
Translation: This climb lasts longer than a presidential campaign. Be careful on the steep sections or you'll fall over -- backward. You only have a 39x23 low gear? Here's the name of my knee surgeon.

"You're doing great, honey"
Translation: Yo, lard ass, I'd like to get home before midnight. This is what you get for spending the winter decorating and eating chocolate. I shoulda married that cute Cat 1 racer when I had the chance.

"This is a no-drop ride"
Translation: I'll need an article of your clothing for the search-and-rescue dogs.

"It's not that far"
Translation: Bring your passport.

Update; Pedal Broke

I went ahead and purchased and installed the Look Keo's Classic and am using the gray cleats. The cleats I am using have 4.5 degrees of float. There are 2 other colors, red, that have 9 degrees of float and black with no float.

Here are the pedals I purchased;
Look Classic Pedals

16 reasons why a bike is better than a horse:

1. A bike does not leave melon sized steamers on the trail.
2. I don’t have to feed or shoe my bike.
3. Bikes don’t have attitudes.
4. If I get thrown off my bike, its usually my own fault.
5. A bike does not stink.
6. It is easier to adjust a saddle on a bike.
7. When I get off and walk my bike, it wont trample me, refuse to follow me, or bite me.
8. When I come across another bike on the trail there is no fear of it freaking out and sending its rider flying into the trees.
9. A bike is cheaper to own.
10. I don’t need livestock rights to keep a bike in my yard.
11. A bike won’t get worms.
12. A bike won’t find a hole in the fence and run amok all over the neighborhood.
13. A bike is never in heat.
14. Unlike a horse, a bike will not go berserk when you come across a wild animal.
15. A bike does not leave post-holes in muddy trails.
16. And lastly, a bike does not leave melon sized steamers on the trail.

Why Bicycles are Better then Horses

This would never happen on a bicycle.....

A 30-year-old blonde decides to try horseback riding for the first time.

With no lessons nor prior experience, she mounts the horse unassisted, and the horse immediately springs into motion. It gallops along at a steady and rhythmic pace, but the blonde begins to slide from the saddle. In terror, she grabs for the horse's mane, but cannot seem to get a firm grip. She tries to throw her arms around the horse's neck, but she slides down the horse's side anyway. The horse gallops along, seemingly oblivious to its slipping rider.

Finally, giving up her frail grip, the blonde attempts to leap away from the horse and throw herself to safety. Unfortunately, her foot has become entangled in the stirrup; she is now at the mercy of the horse's pounding hooves as her head is struck against the ground over and over. As her head is battered against the ground, she is mere moments away from unconsciousness and possible death when to her great fortune.....

the Wal-Mart greeter sees her dilemma and unplugs the ride.

Why Bicycles are Better then Women (for the guys.....)

1. Bicycles don't get pregnant.
2. You can ride your bicycle any time of the month.
3. Bicycles don't have parents.
4. Bicycles don't whine unless something is really wrong.
5. You can share your bicycles with your friends.
6. Bicycles don't care how many other bicycles you've ridden.
7. When riding, you and your bicycle can arrive at the same time.
8. Bicycles don't care how many other bicycles you have now.
9. Bicycles don't care if you look at other bicycles.
10. Bicycles don't care if you buy bicycle magazines.
11. You'll never hear, "Suprise, you're goning to own a new bicycle"
unless you go out and buy one yourself.
12. If your bicycle goes flat, you can fix it.
13. If your bicycle is too loose, you can tighten it.
14. If your bicycle gets misaligned, you don't have to discuss
politics with it.
15. You can have a black bicycle and bring it home to your parents.
16. You don't have to be jealous of the guy who works on your bicycle.
17. If you say bad things to your bicycle, you don't have to apologize
before you ride it again.
18. You can ride your bicycle as long as you want and it wont get
sore.
19. You can stop riding your bicycle as soon as you want and it wont
get frustrated.
20. Your parents wont remain in touch with your old bicycle after you
dump it.
21. Bicycles don't get headaches.
22. Bicycles don't insult you if you're a bad rider.
23. Your bicyle never wants a night out with other bicycles.
24. Bicycles don't care if you're late.
25. You don't have to take a shower before you ride your bicycle.
26. If your bicycle doesn't look good, you can paint it or get better
parts.
27. You can ride your bicycle the first time you meet it without
having to take it to dinner, see a movie, or meet its mother.
28. The only protection you need to wear when riding your bicycle is a
decent helment.
29. When in mixed company, you can talk about what a great ride you
had the last time you were on your bicycle.

Why Bicycles are Better then Men (for the ladies...)

Bicycles don't belch, snore or fart.

A bicycle never get "too tired".

You can take a bicycle to the mall, and no matter how much
time you spend there, when you return, it never asks "What
took you so #%$^* long?"

Bicycles don't leave dirty socks and/or underwear all over
the floor.

Bicycles don't work late.

Your Bicycle stays as clean as you want it to.

Bicycles don't have parents or kids.

Bicycles don't get sick.

A bicycle never try to be in control.

Bicycles let you know when something is wrong.

A bicycle does not worry obsessively about the size of its
crank.

Bicycles don't get overweight, except as per your
convenience.

A bicycle will never ask "Are you gaining weight?"

A bicycle will never dump you for a younger, sexier rider.

If your Bicycle goes flat, you can fix it.

If your Bicycle is too loose, you can tighten it.

You can check out the guy who works on your Bicycle.

If you say bad things to your Bicycle, you don't have to
apologize before you ride it again.

Your Bicycle always has time for you.

Bicycles don't complain and don't ride away from you when
the road gets rough.

Bicycles don't watch TV.

Bicycles don't shave.

Bicycles don't leave a mess in the kitchen or bathroom.

Bicycles are better protection in a bad neighborhood.
If you don't like the size of your bicycle you can get a
new one.

You can try out as many bikes as you like before you get
your own.

You don't have to feed your bicycle.
Bicycles never argue, you are always right.

Bicycles never wake you up in the middle of the night, for
any reason.

Bicycles never try to show you off to their friends.

Bicycles don't come home drunk after a night out with its
buddies.

Bicycles don't sneak around with other bicycles.

Bicycles don't care what you look like or what your age is.

Bicycles don't care and don't comment about what you spend
your money on.

Bicycles don't care if you have to work late.

When you go riding, your bicycle doesn't care if other
bicycles are bigger or out of town.

You don't have to explain to a bike if you don't feel like
a ride.

Bicycles never put you down.

Bicycles don't complain if you wear "sensible" clothes.

Bicycles don't have egos.

Bicycles don't refuse to ask for directions when they're
lost.

Bicycles don't need remote control units.

When you're lost you don't have to argue with it about
stopping for directions.

When it's going too fast into a curve you can slow it down.

When you need someone to ride with it's happy to go.

You buy the tools it needs; it doesn't buy tools that never
get used.

You don't have to continually assure it that its crank
length is just right.

You determine the length and frequency of the rides, and
you're always on top.

It never finishes before you do.

It doesn't complain about you going out to dinner with your
women friends rather than staying at home with it.

You never get helpful suggestions from its mother.

It will ride with you even on Super Bowl Sunday.

It never complains if you put on a few pounds.

When its dysfunctional you know how to get it fixed (and
know that it can be fixed).

If you decide to get a new bicycle you don't have to give
up more than half of everything you have.

It will never earn more that you do for the same job just
because it's a bicycle.

It never spends a "night out with the bikes" and come home
with a strange rash on its saddle.

It will never turn into a beer bellied blob of metal on the
couch in front of the TV.

Pedal broke.

On my commute home on friday 06/05 my right pedal broke. I was using Look pedals. What broke was the spring loaded plastic piece that moves when I clip in and out. I have a pair of SPD/platform pedals I can use if I can find an adapter to convert my 3-hole pattern cycling shoes over to an SPD style. Part of the problem may also be the stack height. Might be too much to allow me to comfortable and safely walk as well as change the geometry on the bike. I might end up just buying the set of Look Keo's for $100 from my bike shop.

Visiting old friends and making new ones.

This post is not going to be about what you think. When I say visit with old friends and make new ones I do not mean people. I am talking about trails. Call them bike trails, Multi-Use Paths, bike paths, etc. I'll just refer to them as trails. More specifically the trails in central Iowa. Sure I have a lot of real human friends and some may think referring to something like a trail is weird, strange, odd and lame, but that's ok. I grew up in central Iowa and I have ridden a lot of the trails in central Iowa. I used to walk some of them to go to my favorite fishing hole along the Des Moines and Raccoon Rivers. I went to and graduated from a high school that is really close to one and I used one to commute to and from college on one of these trails. I even made out with some of my past girlfriends, long before I met my wife, on one of these trails. I have a strong tie and kinship with them and as such I consider them friends.

The trails to date I have used in my youth as a pedestrian, cyclist, fisherman, student or horny teenager are;
1. Neal Smith Trail
2. John Pat Dorrian Trail
3. Bill Riley Trail
4. Great Western Trail
5. Raccoon River Valley Trail

In the past 3 years I have made friends with other trails that did not exist when I was a younger lad or I simply never met them. I have only ever visited these trails as a cyclist. These trails include;
1. Gay Lea Wilson Trail
2. 4 Mile Creek Greenway Trail

As of April of 2009 I have made friends with some new trails that were recently built or I never had the opportunity to meet until this year. I have only visited these trails as a cyclist. They are;
1. MLK Trail
2. Meredith Trail
3. Kruidenier Trail
4. CHICHAQUA VALLEY TRAIL

In June I hope to make a new friend of the Summerset Trail.

Information about the trails can be found here. Click on the link and scroll down the list to learn more about these trails.
IOWA TRAILS

Kudo's and Thanks to Hostel Shoppe.

As I have been posting about the issue with my seat frame and the help I have been receiving from Hostel Shoppe on a solution. One of their sales people, Jessie has been very helpful in working with me on a solution.

To summarize;
1. Seat frame broke.
2. Called Hostel Shoppe, a recumbent bike shop in Stevens Point, Wisconsin and started looking at local metal shops to see if it could be repaired or have a new one built.
3. Found a few shops to repair seat frame and one that could build me a new one.
4. Jessie at Hostel Shoppe called me back and we discussed a possible solution from parts they offer. Also go quote from a shop called Dakota Muscle on building a new seat frame.
5. Decided to purchase parts from Jessie at Hostel Shoppe and attempted to retro fit new Volae parts to my old Vision bike.
6. Right off the bat some of the parts would not work, the seat stays. I returned those parts and received a refund.
7. Managed to fit the new seat frame to my bike and adjusted and dialed in other parts of the bike to accomidate the new seat, etc. with the help of my local bike shop.
8. Took bike for a test ride and very quickly figured out because of the newer seat frame design the geometry was not going to work with my older Vision. My hips and lower back hurt when I tried to ride with the new set up.
9. Had my original seat frame repaired and went back to using it.
10. Returned remainder of parts, including new seat frame to Hostel Shoppe and received refund.
11. Of the parts I purchased form Hostel Shoppe I only kept and used the new seat frame cover, seat bag, and side plate for one of the seat QR skewers. I needed a new seat cover, bag and side plate.

I do not blame Jessie or the Hostel Shoppe for the Volae parts not working on my Vision. She presented a solution and I decided to try it. In fact both her and Hostel Shoppe has been incredibly helpful with me through all of this. They are of course empathetic that the solution they presented did not work. At the same time both they and myself are glad there is a shop in my area that can build me a new seat frame using the geometry from my original one when I am ready for it. For right now my original repaired seat frame will work fine.

Thank you Hostel Shoppe for your help and patience. I will continue to do business with you when I am in need of your services and help. You have earned a loyal customer.

I highly recommend Hostel Shoppe to any and all recumbent owners/riders. Here is a link to their web site;
Hostel Shoppe

Civic Duty

I am a volunteer with the Sioux City Police Dept. My role as such is to help patrol the local recreation trails within Sioux City. I do not have any law enforcement powers. My role is help and assist anyone who needs it along the trails and to kindly ask that people not block the trail and move off of the trail when they stop. If I see any major problems or violations of the law I call either 911 or the non-emergency dispatch number. I have no set schedule when I patrol the trails, it is on a voluntary basis. I consider myself on voluntary patrol duty when ever I am riding on the trails.

For me this is when I commute to/from work and when ever I use the trail for recreational riding as well.

Last night on the way home from work I had to call the non-emergency number because of a violation of Sioux City's open burning law. I was riding along the trail and just got past the Perry Creek channel where it empties in to the Missouri River along the riverfront. People like to fish in the channel along the banks. Last night some of these people had fires going. This presents a problem. There is a lot of dry brush along the banks of the channel and river not to mention other structures in the area that can easily catch fire and burn.

I do not mind if people fish, I think it is a great activity. I do not even mind if people fish with out a fishing license. What does bother me though is people setting open fires, potentially putting the entire riverfront at risk, especially on a windy day.

I do not like calling the authorities on people, I'd rather people obey the law and get along. But I am proud to serve my community in this capacity.

Update: Flying ribbons from bike

As I stated in an earlier post I fly ribbons from my bike. One of these is a blue ribbon, dedicated to my father in law who has brain cancer. It turns out the cancer is terminal, it is unknown how much time he has left. He is fighting it with chemo and radiation. But today has the attitude it is going to do no good and sounds like he saying good bye.

In addition to the ribbons I also have attached to my seat bag a yellow LIVESTRONG band and an orange band that says; IADIP DR. BOB. The yellow LIVESTRONG band needs no explanation. The orange IADIP band is in dedication of Dr. Bob Breedlove. Dr. Bob was an orthopedic surgeon in Des Moines. He competed and won the Race Across America, or RAAM several times. He was killed during his last race a few years ago on RAAM. IADIP stands for It's another Day in Paradise, a favorite quote of Dr. Bob's.

I am dedicating every mile I ride this year to my father in law. Dealing with his cancer has been hard on all of us, my wife especially. She is an only child, thus being closer to her parents then a child with siblings.

Update Part 10: Seat Frame Broke

I sent back the remainder of the parts I had to return to Hostel Shoppe yesterday. In time I will have Dakota Muscle Cars build me a new seat frame out of chro-moly material. After Hostel Shoppe receives the parts I returned I will post a huge kudos to them on the blog.

Alchemy Goods

I recently was turned on to a web site for the company Alchemy Goods. They manufacture products out of recycled bicycle inner tubes among other things. After reading about them I bought a new belt; Alchemy Belt I didn't buy one just because. I actually needed a new belt and was looking at buying one anyway, old one wore out. With shipping it was about $45, about the same cost I'd spend in my area for a good one. I received it today and wore it for the first time. It works as well as can be expected, in other words it works and functions like a belt, keeps my pants up, that's all I need it to do.

I do wonder though what kind of a cyclist used the inner tubes my belt is made out of. Is he or she a pro, or someone famous?

It is nice that a company is giving new life to an old product that us useless as it's original purpose.

I also need a new wallet and business card holder, I'm thinking about the Alchemy Goods brand for those as well.

Here is the web site; Alchemy Goods

Electronic gadgets

As of this year I have really simplified the type and amount of electronic gadgets I ride with. Until last year here is what I had for electronic gadgets;
1. ATC brand digital camera mounted to handle bars that would shoot both still photo's and video, only used it for still photo's.
2. ATC brand camera that would shoot video only mounted to front "T" bar on front deraileur mast.
3. IPOD Shuffle.
4. 2 Samsung MP3 players.
5. Sony speakers with battery power supply for greater volume.
6. Cell phone.

Now all I carry is my cell phone, which doubles as an MP3 player and the Sony speakers. In fact I sold both cameras and all 3 of the other MP3 players. When I ride and am playing music I have the phone set to Airplane/Music Mode, which saves on the battery power when I am playing music. I use a 4GB mini SD card for the music files.

Will I ever go back to using a digital camera? Maybe, I won't rule it out. ATC now has a digital video sports video camera that has a viewer so you can see what you're shooting video of. My other 2 did not have this feature. If I need to take still photo's of anything I carry my regular Olympus 5 megapixel digital camera. The Olympus is what I use when I take photo's of the buildings I post about in my History and Culture by Bicycle Blog.

The only other electronic gadget I use on my bike is my bike computer. I have never ridden with out one.

Update part 9; Seat Frame Broke.

I went for a ride with the new set up and seat to take the bike through it's paces. It did not go well at all. In fact it hurt my hips and lower back to ride the bike set up like this. My legs were fine, the rest was not. After a very short ride, about 1.5 miles round trip because it hurt so much, I set the bike up the way it was before using the old repaired seat frame. Thankfully I can return the new seat frame and hardware used to attach it to my Vision. The only thing I am using that I bought brand new is the seat cover and seat bag, both of which I needed anyway. I think the reason the new set up does not work is the geometry of my Vision frame. I hope the repaired frame holds up until I can have a new one made out of chro-moly.

Update Part 8; Seat Frame Broke

My bike is now back to being able to be ridden. I washed the bike and took it to the shop where I had the boom tube moved out, had additional chain links added and had a new longer front derailer cable and housing put on in place of the shorter one. I also had to have a chain tubing and spring clips added that I ordered from Hostel Shoppe so the chain would not rub and hit against the new seat bracket hardware.

I take the bike out for a ride tomorrow. If all goes well with everything dialed in correctly then I will be ready for MAR on Saturday.

Update Part 7; Seat Frame Broke

I got the new parts installed yesterday. Today I took my bike to the shop to see if and how much the geometry changed and if it did what would need to be done to dial the bike in so it is comfortable to ride and performs the way I want it to.

The geometry changed to where I will be in a more upright position and had to adjsut the distance between me and the steering riser. I also need to push out the front boom tube, there is too much bend in my knees. Pushing out the front boom tube requires a new front derailer cable and housing and a few links added to the chain. I have an appointment to take my bike back to the shop to have the chain links added and the front derailer cable and housing changed to a longer one. Before all of this happens next week though I need to wash the bike this weekend.

22nd Annual Mayor's Annual Ride for Trails

I just signed up for the 22nd Annual Mayor's Annual Ride for Trails. I have been doing this ride almost every year since 1995. I have seen it change in more ways then one. There have route changes and changes in the sponsors. The amount of people who do the ride has also increased over the years too.

One of the current sponsors/partners I am not too impressed with and there will be some people associated with this particular sponsor/partner I am not impressed with and want nothing to do with that will likely be a part of MAR, but that's ok I will still enjoy doing the ride. This ride is not about one particular sponsor/partner or anyone associated with this sponsor/partner. It is about raising money to improve trails for the City of Des Moines. I grew up in Des Moines so I want to see it succeed as much as possible. Of course this is only my opinion of this particular sponsor/partner of MAR and the City of Des Moines. Though aggressive, demeaning and disparaging toward the sponsor/partner and positive to the City of Des Moines, it is how I feel. Also notice I did not name the sponsor/partner of MAR. If anyone approaches me about this that has something to do with this particular sponsor/partner I will simply tell them I do not want to speak to them and ask they stay away from me and will do what I have to to stay away from them.

This year the MAR is 04/18. As in the last few years it starts and ends at City Hall, just on the east side of the river.

Here is the link to register and the brochure;
Mayor's Annual Ride for Trails Registration
MAR brochure

Update; Other bicycle plans for 2009

I finally have final confirmation on being able to do organized rides on Saturday's. I could not say anything until now, but the reason I will be able to do rides on Saturday's is I am switching companies. I was waiting for and have finally received confirmation of being hired at a new company. The company I currently work for, until I do my exit interview, I am Tuesday through Sat. and they do not pay well at all and the benefits are not good. My new company is one I applied at before I started working for my current company. The new company called me in for an interview, I was offered the job, accepted on the contingency that I passed the back ground check, I did and I start on April 20, 2009. As I am in training at my current company and because they do not want to invest any more money into my training I have pretty much said good bye to them, but am waiting to hear back from them on the exit interview part of it. I am tired of working Saturdays and am tried of working hours other then 8 to 5. Now I will have Saturday's off and will have more realistic hours.

Update Part 6; Seat Frame Broke

I picked up my original seat frame from the welding shop in Elk Point, South Dakota today. It is repaired. I will use this one as a back up frame if something happens to my new one. The guy who repaired it told me this one was either not heat treated or not heat treated very well, the aluminum is pretty soft. My new seat frame nad parts on their way from St. Paul, Minn. They left Wisconsin yesterday, arrived in St. Paul this morning and are not on their way to Sioux City. I should get the package tomorrow.

Here are photo's of my repaired seat frame;

Update Part 5; Seat Frame Broke.

The parts shipped today. I also took the original seat frame up to a welding shop in Elk Point, South Dakota. I am going to have it repaired and use it as a back up if something happens to the new frame. I should get the parts for the new frame either Wednesday or Thursday at the latest. Once I receive them my bike will then be morphed from just a Vision R40 to a Vision/Volae R40.

Cycling, CPAP and Sleep

In order for me to be able to comfortably ride bike, stay focused and be safe while doing so I need a minimum of 7 hours sleep. But sleep has not always come easy for me. For at least 3 or 4 years prior to 2004 I was almost always tired, regardless of how much sleep I had the night before. I would go to bed, sleep for at times 10 or even 12 hours and still be exhausted the next day. I hardly rode bike or did anything much at all. I finally said enough and went to my doctor. After determining what it was not he referred me for a sleep study. It turned out I have sleep apnea.

It was decided by the neurologist who studied the results of my sleep study that to help me sleep I would use a Constant Positive Air Pressure machine, or CPAP. I use the nasal mask that fits comfortably on my head and over my nose. Because of the constant pressure into my nose it is impossible for me to breathe in and out through my mouth when I sleep. The CPAP forces me to breathe in and out through my nose, as it is designed to do. If I try to fight it and attempt to breathe through my mouth I lose and start breathing through my nose again. Another positive thing about the use of a CPAP is it is impossible for me to snore, in fact from what my wife tells me I have not snored once since I have been using it. To snore a person has to breathe through their mouth, someone can not snore if they only breathe through their nose when they sleep which is what a CPAP makes happen.

A CPAP does not do the the breathing for me or force my breathing to take place, nor does it pump oxygen into my lungs, only air. I still breathe on my own, all the CPAP does is pump air in through my nose only which forces me to naturally breathe through my nose and into my lungs and exhale like I normally do when I sleep. There is a vent on the mask to allow the exhale to vent out instead of getting trapped in the mask. The mask I use is a silicon one that is comfortably attached to my face with an elastic velcro head gear strap. There are other styles of masks and other options, the silicon mask works best for me.

In the 5 years I have been using a CPAP I am on my second machine. My first was set at only one pressure setting and did not ramp up, I also did not have the humidifier. My second starts a lower pressure setting then ramps up to what I need when I sleep, up to a max. setting of 18. I also use a humidifier in the winter time.

Because of my CPAP I am no longer tired when I have at least 7 hours of sleep a night. The only reason I am tired is if I get less then 7 hours, but it is no longer because of my sleep apnea.

Some people have a hard time with using any type of mask or nasal pillow device on their face. Some people get used to it and it no longer bothers them over time, others never get past that so a CPAP ends up not being for them and they pursue other options. Certain types of surgery can help correct the problem and I have also heard about some sort of device someone can get from their dentist that they hold in their mouth which pushes the jaw forward. I do not know how effective these devices are. What I do know is my CPAP is the only 100% sure way to prevent my sleep apnea.

Speaking of these devices that push the jaw forward at night, I had some dentist, not from my area try to shove the idea of one of these things down my throat. This person tried to tell me it would work better then my CPAP and wanted to sell me one. This dentist apparently helps design or manufacture these things. This person was very aggressive about it, almost to the point of being beligerant. Not something I take kindly to. I more or less told this person what to do with their advice and device and I AM NOT going to consider it. Even if I did a few things would have to happen first. I would ONLY do so under my doctors advice and the advice of a neurologist, not some dentist. I would also have the device ordered from someone in my local area. I trust people in my local area more then someone trying to pedal a device like this that is not from my local area. I also would NEVER just go to my dentist and talk with them about it, I would go to my doctor first.

I get very defensive when someone tries to tell me of a better way to sleep at night when I KNOW FOR A FACT what works for me. I have been using my CPAP for over 5 years. I know for a FACT it works 100% to help me sleep. I AM NOT willing to even consider trying anything else. The way I see it, if it isn't broke don't fix it. I have learned the hard way when I have tried to do so in the past.

When I first got my CPAP I thought the days of camping and over night bike ride trips were over where I had to camp. After doing some research I found a way to use my CPAP while camping when there is no available AC electricity. That is a deep cycle marine battery. I use a marine battery because it holds a charge longer and lasts longer at powering my CPAP then a conventional car battery. My batter is in a plastic battery box for easy carrying, storage and to keep it dry from rain. Connected to the terminals are alligator clamps that are attached to a female DC plug. The wire or cable is run through a plastic pvc pipe with silicon sealed ends to keep it dry from rain. The female end of the DC plug is run in through the power port opening of my tent to the male DC end. The male DC end is attached to a power inverter. The inverter, inverst DC to AC. My CPAP is plugged into the inverter with the standard AC plug. When I first put this kit together I tested it. I put the battery outside my bed room window, ran the DC cord through, connected it to the male end and the inverter and plugged my CPAP into it. It lasted for 4 consequtive nights at 8 hours each night before the battery died and needed recharging. I also used this set up to keep my cell phone charged during this 4 day time period.

This allowed/allows me to go on camping trips and bicycle rides where camping is the only option for over night accomidations. Knowing I only get 4 nights of use out of the battery I have had to figure out ways to keep it charged. I take my charger and extension cord and have always been able to find a place to plug it in to keep the battery charged.

For those that are thinking of using a deep cycle marine battery to power a CPAP or any other electronic device on organized bike trips where you have to camp keep something in mind. The organizers, or your own team/club may limit how many baggage items you can take. My club allows up to 2. My battery counts as one, but because I am able to strap my tent, sleeping pad and a few other things to the top of my large rubber maid container that holds everything else I only have 2 containers.

My battery weighs about 60 or 70 pounds. Because of this I am the only one who lifts it on and off the truck that my group rents when we do over night bike ride events.

Because of my DC power kit I can continue to do 2 things I love most, camp and do over night organized bike trips.

Update Part 4; Seat Frame Broke.

I placed the order today with Hostel Shoppe for the replacement parts. It came to over $650.00. Considering the bike only cost me $1,100 brand new 7 years ago, some may think I'm nusts spending that much on this bike. As I said words can not describe why I want to keep this recumbent rolling. Only those that own one understand. It is not something that can be explained to a lay person, or someone who does not understand anything about recumbents. Today a new bike like mine, which would be a Volae, would cost $1,800.

Here are photo's of the way my bike looks with naked, (with out her seat);

Update; Other bicycle plans for 2009

I got some more confirmation today, about an hour and a half ago that I will be able to do the rides listed; MAR, Tri-State Trails Tour and ONABIKE this year. I will have a firm confirmation on Monday 04/6.

I missed MAR last year and the Tri-State Trails Tour the last 2 years because of work. Some how I have not missed ONABIKE though.

Other bicycle plans for 2009.

Along with my bicycle vacation plans there are other rides I hope to do in 2009. Starting with a ride in Des Moines called Mayor's Annual Ride for Trails, or MAR for Trails. It is put on by the City of Des Moines to benefit the trail system. This will be the 22nd year and I have done several of them since 1995. Mar is later this month.

Another ride I am hoping to do is the 6th Annual Tri-State Trails Tour. It is a ride held in May in the Sioux City area, put on by the Siouxland Trails Foundation. I helped create the organization that puts the ride on and was the ride director for the first 2 years. The ride includes all 3 states ind if someone does the entire route they can potentially ride up to over 50 miles.

In August is ONABIKE. Held the 4th Saturday in August, in Onawa, Iowa, it is western Iowa's premier bike ride. One of the most scenic rides I have ever been on. The ride goes through the beautiful Loess Hills and is put on by the ONAWA Chamber of Commerce.

All of these rides are on Saturday. I did not include rides in the month of June and July because of the Michigan/Illinois trip. The riding I will be doing there will be in June and will be enough to not have to worry about doing an organized ride in July. I may do my annual solo century to Hawarden and back in July.

If some positive changes happen the way I am hoping they do I will be able to do these rides on Saturday. I'll know more by tomorrow, so an update will be following this.

Update; Stressful RAGBRAI, May Never do RAGBRAI again, 2009 Bicycle Vacation Plans

I recently found out there are some people who think because of the stress I experience on RAGBRAI that I will likely never do RAGBRAI again. As a matter of correction I need to clearly point out, NOT TRUE. The stress I experienced on RAGBRAI while a factor in my decision is not the sole or even a big reason as too whether or not to ever do the ride again. Though I stated the stress had something to do with it, it is likely it maybe did not. The main reason, and possibly the only reason is there are several other rides I want to do in other states.

Another item that needs to be corrected is some also think I am doing a week of riding in Michigan. No, not a week. I am riding a total of 4 times in Michigan and 1 time in Illinois on this trip. Most of the riding will not be a full days worth, in fact only one day will be a full days worth, the first day of the Big Mac ride.

2009 Bicycle Vacation Plans

My wife and I finally have our vacation plans set and locked down for 2009. We are going to Michigan. Specifically an area called the Straits. This is where Lake Huron and Lake Michigan come together near Mackinaw City.

This is in part a bicycle vacation because it is centered-ish around a bicycle ride I am going to attend. It is a 2 day event called the "BIG MAC" SHORELINE
SPRING TOUR. Day one there is a choice of 4 routes, ranging from 25 to 100 miles. Day 2 is a one way ride across the Big Mac. For those that do not know that is the Mackinaw Bridge. One of the only 2 days of the year bicycles are allowed on the bridge, I am not going to pass this oppurtunity up. To be allowed to do the ride across the bridge participants have to have ridden the day before. A shuttle brings us back across into Mackinaw City once we get into St. Ignace.

Here is a link to info. about the ride and a route map;
”BIG MAC” SHORELINE SPRING & FALL SCENIC TOURS

This will not be the only riding I will do in this area. We are also going to visit the Shipwreck Museum in Whitefish Point. I am going to ride from Paradise, MI. to the museum. On another day we are going to the Soo Locks and Sault Saint Marie, Canada. I am going to ride across the bridge on the International Hwy and do some riding in Sault Saint Marie, Canada as well.

After we leave this are of Michigan we are driving to Illinois. I am going to complete another section of the Grand Illinois Trail while we are there.

Here is a tenative itinerary of our trip. Any part of this is subject to change;

Thursday June 11: Travel day from Sioux City to Mackinaw City.

Friday June 12: Packet pick up, Old Mackinac Point Lighthouse, Icebreaker Mackinaw, historic walking tour.

Saturday June 13: Bike ride.

Sunday June 14: Bike ride in morning, Fort Michilimackinac in afternoon.

Monday June 15: Mackinac Island.

Tuesday June 16: St Ignace, bike ride from Paradise to Whitefish Point, Shipwreck Museum.

Monday June 17: Sault Ste Marie, Soo Locks. Ride bike across International Hwy Bridge into Sault Saint Marie. Ride around Sault Saint Marie.

Thursday June 18: Travel day from Mackinaw City to Illinois.

Friday June 19: Visit with grandma.

Saturday June 20: Bike ride to Ottawa on Grand Illinois Trail.

Sunday June 21: Travel day home to Sioux City.

This is why I am not doing RAGBRAI this year. I would much rather go to Michigan to enjoy and experience riding there then stay in my own state and ride yet another RAGBRAI. Will the riding in Michigan and Illinois be better then RAGBRAI? Right now I do not know, but I certainly hope so.

Restricting comments.

I apologize to those that may wish to leave comments on this blog. I am left with no choice but to restrict comments at least for the time being. I just received a comment, that I rejected, because it was full of vulgarities and threats. I take matters like this very seriously. The IP address has been tracked and I know what it is. The IP and the comment have been reported to the authorities.

The comment had something to do with and was in referance to my postings about RAGBRAI.

Again I apologize to those that would like to leave comments that are respectful that this restriction will affect.

Maybe at some point I will lift the restrictions.

Update; Stressful RAGBRAI

I am adding something more to the original post about stress on RAGBRAI. Some who read it may think I blame RAGBRAI for the stress. In fact I know of people who have read the blog post who think exactly that. They are dead wrong. No, not at all. With the exception of the fireworks show in Le Mars in 2005 the things that happened could have happened anywhere when I was riding. I do not blame RAGBRAI. How ever these things have NEVER happened anywhere else other then while I was on RAGBRAI.

I do not feel home sick when riding, even on other multi-day rides. I have done a few other 2+ day rides. I never had a tire blow which required replacing it and interrupting my ride. I never had a bug hit me in the eye to the point where I had to stop to deal with it. I never have been sick while riding. When I have had to have my wife come pick me up while riding, for what ever reason, she has always had no problem finding me. I have also learned how to make sure my cell phone does not die while riding. I have made it a point to remember her cell phone number. I used to just rely on it being in my cell phone directory.

For some reason, through no one's fault something stressful always affects me when I have ridden RAGBRAI. Whether it be one day or all seven. But no one is to blame. I just find it odd these things only happen on RAGBRAI and never any other time when I ride bike.

May never do RAGBRAI again.

I have decided it will be a very long time before I ever do RAGBRAI again. One reason is to avoid the potential stress talked about in the previous post about RAGBRAI. Granted the same type of stress may happen in other organized multi-day cross state rides, then again maybe not. That leads to another reason why I will not do RAGBRAI anytime soon. There are plenty of other multi-day cross state rides I want to experience other then RAGBRAI. While RAGBRAI may be the "grandaddy" of these other rides, it is no longer the only multi-day cross state ride to participate in. At one time, yes it was. That has changed.

Are these other rides better then RAGBRAI? I don't know yet, have yet to find that out and can not wait to do so. I do know one thing because of the huge problems and issues of RAGBRAI not controlling the amount of people who ride it the organizers of other cross state organized rides strictly limit how many are allowed on their rides and they enforce it. Some of them have no lottery, it is first come, first serve. After so many people are signed up that is it, the rest are turned away. Thus better controlling what happens on these other rides. This is part of why I want to experience other cross state organized rides, other then RAGBRAI.

The organizers and ever participants tend to get a little arrogant in thinking their ride is THE ONLY ride and THE BEST ride to participate in. In some ways I think they get complacent because of this. Sure RAGBRAI will likely never suffer from lack of participation but it is not the only ride to do. I wonder how many of the participants have even considered doing other rides. Some of them are probably too narrow minded to even want to.

That leads to another reason why I will not do RAGBRAI for a while. Because of some circumstances in the recent past I do not want to associate myself with some of the people who participate in RAGBRAI. Thankfully no one in my area or from my bike club. I'll leave it at that.

I have come across at least 7 or 8 states that have some form of a cross state multi day ride. Some are an entire week, others are shorter. I look forward to participating in these rides. It may take me the rest of my life before I am finished with them. Until then I will not do RAGBRAI again.

Stressful RAGBRAI

RAGBRAI, for those that do not know is what is often referred to as the "granddaddy" of multi-day organized bike rides. It is a 7 day cross state ride. Participants can ride the whole week or as many of the 7 days as they want. 2009 will be it's 37th year. For more info. google RAGBRAI as this post is not going to talk about the history or how to ride RAGBRAI. It is going to focus on how RAGBRAI can cause stress and/or be stressful to people who ride it. I do not mean the physical stress, because it is a physically stressing ride. People need to be in shape and train to accomplish it. I am referring to the other stresses that can, do and have occurred during the ride. I am going to share my experiences of the RAGBRAI's I have done and how I dealt with it.

First a short bio. on the RAGBRAI's I have done;
1998; First time I ever did RAGBRAI, rode the the whole week.
2005; Rode first day only.
2006; Rode first 3 days only.
2007; Rode the whole week.
2008; Was supposed to ride 2 days, only rode one, the last time I did any part of RAGBRAI.

Here are the stresses I encounterd and endured on the RAGBRAI's I participated in;

1998; This was a big year for my wife and I. In this order we bought a new Jeep Cherokee, celbrated our 7th wedding anniversary, I did RAGBRAI for the first time, we bought a house and got a dog. The house and dog came toward the end of the year.

I had joined the Siouxland Cyclists bike club the previous year and learned they did RAGBRAI every year, though not every member in the club went. I also learned that the club is a "grand-parented" guarantee club and the members of the club that wish to do RAGBRAI do not have to worry about the lottery. So I decided to go at the encouragement of some of the club members who are veterans of RAGBRAI. When I told them I was going they started sharing their "secrets" on how to make it a successful event for me. I really appreciated that because it did help. Of course they could not prepare me for every bad encounter that could happen on RAGBRAI nor did I expect them to. I either did not think to ask or it was something that had never happened to them before.

My wife and I had never been apart like this. Sure we had spent time apart when either of us had to travel for business, but not for something like a vacation. We had always taken our vacations together. The first few days of RAGBRAI I have to admit I was a little emotional at spending this time away from my wife. I actually felt homesick and that caused some anxiety and stress for me. I tried to hide it as best I could, even from my wife when I called to talk to her about every other night in what ever over night town we were in. I did not want to be alone, yet amongst all of the people, including those in my own club I felt alone, because my wife was not there sharing the experience with me. She is not a cyclist, but she could have come as a non-rider. As the week went on I got through it and started feeling better and then something happened that almost spelled the premature end for my first RAGBRAI.

At the time I had a TREK 470 road bike. Near the end of the week, I think it was on the day we left Cedar Falls, I was beginning to feel better, no longer homesick and looking forward to completing by first RAGBRAI. I get up that morning, pack my gear and when I go to air up my tires I notice a bad bulge in the side wall of my rear tire. I hurriedly found one of the bike shops that follow the route for those that need mechanical help with their bikes, like tires, tubes, etc. He replaced it for me but it took most of the rest of my money and I still had 2 days to go. I called my wife and started asking what I should to. I was feeling stressed, not thinking straight all of the feelings of anxiety were rushing back I had felt earlier that week and was looking to my wife for advice. Thankfully in that situation she stayed calm, which calmed me down. At the time I did not have an ATM card, never had a need for one. She advised if I could borrow money from someone and pay them back when she arrived to pick me up on Sabula, where the ride ended that year. All of the members of my club who did RAGBRAI that year were gone, only the guy who drives one of the rental trucks was still there. I asked him if I could borrow enough to get me through the end of the week. Thankfully he loaned money to me. I had enough to get me through and then some. I made it in to Monticello and saw my favorite country music group at the fairgrounds. the Oak Ridge Boys. In fact one of the towns people gave me a free ticket to get in to see them. I finished the rest of the week, met my wife in Sabula, paid back the guy who loaned me money and that was it.

2005;
After what happened in 1998 and other things going on I either did not want to or was unable to do RAGBRAI for 6 years. I decided to do the first day only in 2005. We were in Le Mars, Iowa. Nothing stressed me out the day I rode in 2005, but the night before was no pic-nick. Some clown who organized the activities in Le Mars decided it would be a good idea to have a fireworks show at the fairgrounds where everyone was staying. Problem was a lot of us were trying to go to bed so we could be up and ready to ride the next morning. My group was so close to the damn fireworks the ground was shaking from it. Needless to say we were not happy about this. I was not the only one stressed by it, but the next days ride could have been better if I had gotten more sleep. I have to have at least 7 hrs of sleep if I am going to ride bike. My wife picked me up in Sheldon. Thankfully I only did the one day. That night there was a bad storm in Sheldon which ended a lot of people's RAGBRAI that year, and unfortunately ended one persons life when a tree fell on his tent as he slept.

2006;
Nothing really stressing about the 3 days I did. RAGBRAI started in Sgt. Bluff, one of Sioux City's very close neighbors. I slept in my own bed that night and took off from a church in Morningside, joining the route as the ride left Sgt. Bluff. The only concern I had was with my CPAP machine. I need to use a CPAP to sleep at night. I do have a way to power it on RAGBRAI. Because I slept at home that night I had to figure out a way to haul the CPAP to Ida Grove. I was able to strap it to the rack on my bike and carry the 70+ miles. Thankfully no damage was done to the machine and it worked fine the rest of time I did RAGBRAI that year. The last day I did RAGBRAI that year the ride was in Waukee, really close to Des Moines. My wife drove to her parents home from Sioux City to Des Moines so she could pick me up. The stressing part about this was my cell phone had died, I could not remember my wife's cell phone number and was not that familiar with the area around Waukee High School where my group was. What should have taken an hour to get my wife there to pick me up took over 2 hours. We were both pretty stressed about it, but in the end laughed about it and felt better.

2007;
This year was the last time I did the whole week of RAGBRAI. The stress I experienced was only on the first day. About a quarter of the way to Spencer I had a bug hit me in the face. There is nothing unusual about this. I am usually able to brush an insect away or make sure it does not get into my eyes or most will fly away. Except for this bug, it somehow got into one of my eyes. Keep in mind I am still riding at this point thinking it will fly away or I can just brush it off. That was not the case. I could feel its wings beating against my eye and the inside of my eye lids. Not a really comfortable feeling, in fact rather irritating. When this started I pretty much immediately stopped, got off the bike, took my helmet and glasses off, grabbed my handkerchief, wet it with water, grabbed what I could of the insect with my free hand and washed my eye out. Until I started getting the bug out of my eye, I had to endure the feeling of it being caught and moving around on the surface of my eye ball. Thankfully it was not a stinging or biting insect. I managed to get my eye cleaned out and continued on, irritated eye and all.

The stress of the encounter with the insect and some of the music I was playing on my bike started making me feel emotional about being away from my wife once again. With the exception of the music, the feelings and anxiety were just like it was in 1998, only 9 years later. But at some point I started feeling better. Then about 10 miles from Spencer my front tire blew. I thought no big deal, I'll change the tube and finish the that days ride. At that point I saw it was a sidewall blow out of the tire. I tried to boot it to no avail. So I waited for the sag. A SAG vehicle came along, but not the RAGBRAI SAG, I didn't care, they offered a ride and I accepted.

Once I got to Spencer I found a phone to call my wife, she did not answer and I left a message that I knew would cause her concern. I then found a bike shop to replace my tire, found my group, set up my tent and then went and had dinner. The meal I had was made by the Shriners and it was delicious. It was also great to sit and talk with my Masonic brethren. My cell phone had died, but that was being recharged. I found a phone to call my wife. She was worried about me after the message I left. I have to be honest, after the stressful day I had I was ready to throw in the towel and come home. She encouraged me to stick it out. I went back to where the club was camped and sat around enjoying beer and conversation with my friends. One of the guys who drives one of the trucks was reading the Good Book, (the Holy Bible). After I saw that I then remembered the story of Jesus Christ's time in the desert for 40 day and nights and the stress he must have undergone to come out of it a better person. So I decided to endure and stick it out for the rest of the week. There was no more really bad stress the rest of the week. I took the bus back home and had a great time.

2008;
I was only going to ride the middle 2 days in 2008. I ended up only riding one. My in-laws took me to Jefferson, Iowa, the place of my birth so I could ride the next day to Ames and then the next to Tama/Toledo where they would pick me up and take me home. Had a good drive with them to Jefferson. Unloaded my gear and went and had dinner. Sometime after dinner I started feeling sick to my stomach. I took something for it to no avail. Later that night I was up and down to the kybo's getting sick to my stomach, out of both ends. Needless to say I did not get much sleep but decided to ride. I ate, but not much because I was afraid I would get sick again. So right away I was felling pretty stressed about not having nearly enough sleep and being sick.

I leave Jefferson and was not riding very fast at all. I was thinking early on I would have to SAG into Ames at some point, but not after I took care of something important. My mom passed away the previous November. The RAGBRAI route in 2008 went very near to where her side of the family is buried, the Paton, Iowa cemetery. I had purchased some Memorial Day decorations for the graves prior to RAGBRAI that year. When the route got close to Paton, I went off route, rode to the cemetery and put the decorations on the graves. My great-grandparents, grand parents, mother and uncle. Everyone except my uncle had a cross with their favorite color flowers. On my uncle's grave I put a RAGBRAI ball cap. He loved wearing hats when he was alive. After I did this I returned back to the route and continued the slow pace into AMES. Surprisingly I made it before 6 pm. Had dinner, found my group, etc. I was felling better, but not 100%. I called my wife and talked with her parents, they were staying in Sioux City with my wife. I told them to come pick me up in the morning I was not going to ride to Tama/Toledo. They came and got me and brought me back home. I do not know if it was something I ate or something that was going around Sioux City before I left and the travel and minor stress that goes with it caused it to get worse.

None of the stressful experiences or encounters were planned or intentional. I am not the kind of person who wants to be stressed. Some of the experiences were preventable, some were not. All of them were learning experience.

RAGBRAI is not totally stress free, though the organizers and probably most of the participants would tell people differant. Some would even sugar coat it and say there is nothing that can go wrong on RAGBRAI. Nothing could be further from the truth. Is there a dark side to RAGBRAI? Absolutely! Is this dark side something that should keep people from participating? Well that should be left up to the individual when they decide whether or not to do the ride. This dark side and the stress that can occur should not be hidden, nor should RAGBRAI be sugar coated in saying nothing can go wrong on the ride. Am I disparaging RAGBRAI? Well that is something people can interpret for themselves how they take what I have written here.

Update Part 3; Seat Frame Broke

I got the quote from Dakota Muscle Cars and it will come to over $550. Add a new seat cover to that and it is over $650. I was just about ready to go with this option when I decided to try Hostel Shoppe to see what they could do for me.The sales person there offered a better solution.

That solution is to turn my bike into part Volae and part Vision. Ok, she did not put it quite like that but it is what it will amount to. What I will end up doing is replacing the entire seat assembly, including the seat stays into Volae parts. It will be more then $100 less then having Dakota Muscle build me a new frame so I am going with this option.

Here is the seat assembly as it looks with 100% Vision parts;















Here are the parts I am going to order to adapt a Volae set to my Vision bike;
Volae/M5 Seat Wedge
Volae - Delrin Frame Plugs
Volae - Mesh Seat Fabric Only
Volae - Mesh Seat Frame Only
Volae - Quick Adjust Kit
Volae - Rack Adapter kit
Volae - Seat Quick Release Skewer, part #'s 73349, 73350
Volae - Seat Skewer Side Plates, part #79085
Volae - Seat Slider
Volae - Seat Stays
Hostel Shoppe - Stainless Steel Nuts, part #82681
Hostel Shoppe - Stainless Steel Screws, 75353

The sales person at Hostel Shoppe thinks the reason my seat frame may have failed is it may not have been heat treated, given it is an older model. The older model seat frames were, at one time not heat treated. Vision later corrected that. Volae seat frames have always been heat treated. Which means the aluminum will hold up a lot better and longer.

Update Part 2; Seat Frame Broke

I went to Novelty Machine and Supply and talked with the shop mgr. showing him the seat frame. He can repair it but he'd rather see me spend the amount I would pay him to repair it in having a new one fabricated out of chromoly. The reason is it will fail again over time. He is unable to fabricate a new seat frame for me because he does not have a tubing bender. He sent me to McArthur Sheet Metal in South Sioux City, Neb.

I talked with the mgr. at McArthur, like the guy at Novelty he can not fabricate a new seat frame because he too does not have a tubing bender. He sent me to Dakota Muscle in North Sioux City, SD.

The guy at Dakota Muscle can fabricate me a new seat frame out of chromoly but it is going to be expensive. About 1/3rd of the cost of a new recumbent. Well I am still keeping my options open but it looks like I will have Dakota Muscle build my new seat frame.

Some people would hear that and call me crazy or think it is nuts to spend that kind of money when it may be better to get a new bike. I don't agree. For one I refuse to have a seat frame made out of aluminum anymore after 5 of the 8 welds have failed or are starting to fail. Chromoly is a much better material as it flexes and takes a lot more to become fatigued to the point of failure. 4130 chromoly is used to build funny car frames, one of Dakota Muscle's specialties. A funny car frame has a lot of stress put on it and unless they crash they hold up almost indefinitely.

I am working with Hostel Shoppe to see if they can find a seat frame made out of chromoly for a cheaper price then what Dakota Muscle will charge, but I have doubts they can have one built or find one that will work with my bike.

Another thing about not wanting to get a new bike, other then not wanting an aluminum seat frame, is most of the people who would advise replacing the bike either do not ride bike or if they do, they do not ride a recumbent. So they don't get it, especially those that don't ride bike at all. There are no words to describe why I want to keep my bike and keep it rolling as best I can, regardless of cost. Some may think it materialistic, it isn't. I can't put it into words as to why I want to keep and ride my Vision R40 and no other recumbent when there is nothing else wrong with the bike.

Update; Seat Frame Broke.

After extensive research I have not found a replacement seat frame for my Vision. I have found a place to repair it and possible build me a new one. That is Novelty Machine and Supply. They are a local Sioux City company that has been around since 1876. They specialize in repair of old and obsolete items like my seat frame. They typically work on machines and parts for companies in Sioux City but will also do the type of simple repair I need.

I have also found 2 other welds that are starting to fail that I will have Novelty repair for me.

I mentioned having Novelty build me a new frame. I do not know the angles, but I measured the tubing and it is 1"OD, 7/8"ID with a wall thickness of 1/16". The total appx. length is about 11'. It also has flat bar stock used for the "forks" that connect to the quick release skewers where it attaches to the seat stays and main frame tube. The measurements for those are about 3/16" thick, 1 1/16" wide and a total of about 15" long. The "fork" pieces also have an open ended slot cut into them that the QR skewers go through to fasten it to the bike. The slots for the seat stays are 1?4" wide x 3 3/8" long. For the front "fork", where it attaches to the main frame tube the slots are 1/4" wide x 5/8" long.

The material I will want used for the new seat frame will be chromoly. I will try to find a local supplier. I will consulte with Novelty to see if they can order the chromoly tubing. If not I will try the 3 local supplers first, if I have no luck I will start checking online for suppliers.

Seat Frame Broke

Today when I was commuting from work to my wifes office 2 of the welds on my seat frame failed and broke about a block away from her office.

My Vision recumbent uses an aluminum tube seat frame welded together. The front of the seat frame, where it connects to the main frame tube of the bike is a "fork" shape and is held in place by a quick release skewer. It is where the "fork" assembly piece is welded to the bottom tubing of the seat frame where the welds failed. I am pretty sure it is due to fatigue. The bike is over 7 years old and has a lot of miles on it.

There was also another spot it failed a couple of years ago that I had welded back together.

I am checking to see if I can find another seat frame. Vision went out of business a few years ago and most of the inventory was auctioned off. I found one bike shop in New York and am contacting them to see if they have a seat frame that will work on my Vision. Vision changed the design of their bike frames and thus the seat frame design before they went out of business. I need one for a bike built in 2001.

There is also a shop in Wisconsin that might have replacement frames too. They have a house brand of recumbent called Volae. The seat frames on some of their bikes are almost identical to the Vision seat frames. I need to contact them and find out if they have one that will work with a 2001 Vision.

In case I can not find a replacement frame I am looking to see if I can have it welded back together. There is a place in Elk Point, SD I know that will and can do it. When the weld broke a few years ago on another part of the seat frame I happened to be in Elk Point at the time. I stopped by the guys shop and he welded it back together for about $10.00. Did a great job too, has held up better the original weld.

The place my wife works also may be able to weld the broken welds as well. She is going to ask tomorrow. There also may be one other palce in Sioux City that can weld it. I heard from a couple of other recumbent riders that a place called Novelty Machine may be able to weld it, so I'll give them a call.

Here is the photo of the repaired weld that broke a few years ago;


Photo's of where the welds failed this time;

Flying ribbons from bike.

I fly an assortment of differant color ribbon from my bike when I ride. They are tied to the handle of my Vision Day Bag, and are visible from the back. The colors of ribbon I fly are; red, black, blue and purple.

The red and black are for those that have been hit by a motorist while riding and have either been injured or killed. Black is in memory of everyone showing my solidarity in mourning lost cyclists. Red for those whom I personally know that have been injured or killed by motorists. There have been too many.

The purple ribbon was my mom's favorite color. I fly it from the bike in honor and memory of her. She passed away on Nov. 28, 2007, just 4 days after my 36th birthday.

I fly a blue ribbon because it is my father in law's favorite color. I fly it in support of him and what he is dealing with at the moment. The blue ribbon is also the most recent one I added to the bike. Right now he is fighting Non-Hodgins Lymphoma. The prognosis is good, so far. But this type of cancer is one that never goes away. There is no such a thing as cured of it, even after the 5 year time span of being in remission. It will either be in remission, or not for the rest of his life. The average remaining life span for someone with this type of cancer is 8 to 9 years. He may live another 2 or 3 or another 20, no one knows. But he is only 69, neither of his parents lived to see the age of 71.

Assembly Views of my Vision R40

One person was kind of critical of my video; How We Roll. He just bought a Vision R40 with Under Seat Steering or USS. His problem/criticism of the video is he was trying to use the video as a guide to help put his bike together to make sure he does/did it right and he more or less if only for a brief moment gave me the 3rd degree over it. The problem with that is the video is in no way meant as a guide or set of instructions on how to properly assemble a Vision R40, so he obviously missed the entire point of the video. Another problem is mine is an Over Seat Steering or OSS and his is USS. I also do not know when his was manufactured. Mine was built in 2001. Advanced Transportation, the company who used to build Vision's dramatically changed the design of the frame, I do not remember when they did that, but shortly after they then went out of business. So his frame could be different then mine as well as some of the assembly.

How ever in light of that I have decided to help as best I can to guide him in assembling his Vision and anyone else who has issues with theirs. Those that use these photo's as a guide needs to keep some things in mind;
1. My bike was built in 2001.

2. Vision, at some point changed the frame design, especially in the rear of the bike.

3. I assume nor accept ANY liability if someone makes a mistake in using these photo's to help guide them with their bike. They screw up they can not come after me for damages.

4. My Vision is Over Seat Steering, OSS, NOT Under Seat Steering, USS.

5. My Vision is a Short Wheel Base, or SWB.

6. My Vision has a 20" front wheel and a 26" rear wheel. Previous Vision models had 16" front wheels with a 26" rear and some had 26" wheels for both the front and back.

7. Since I have owned it I have had to have the seat frame welded back together in a spot it had failed and broke.

8. I have had fenders put on it and will not remove them to show any more of an assembly view then I already have.

9. I have had a rear rack put on it and like the fenders will not remove it to show any more of an assembly view then I already have.

10. The rear derailleur has a spacer to push it out to keep in line with the chain so it will shift properly. This was not done at the factory, but Vision may have corrected this in their later models.

11. One of the chain pulley brackets is bent in a little to help keep the chain from bouncing off and over. Vision may have corrected this in their newer models.

12. The seat cover and cushion are NOT the original. It is the second one and the current cover has had to have some repairs done to it.

13. The black "T" shaped piece in the front is not original, but it is meant for a Vision with the front derailleur mast.

14. The view of the frame near the bottom of the steering tube is different then some of the older and/or newer models. As Vision changed the design of the frame this was one of the areas that was dramatically changed.

15. Some of the cable routing up at the handle bars and down the steering tube has been changed/re-routed to make for better and more efficient braking and shifting.

16. There is a mirror at each end of the handle bars that were added after market. To install them I had to cut the ends of the grips off.

17. The grips are not the original. The first set wore out and had to be replaced.

18. After an accident the handle bar had to be replaced and is not the original and may be slightly different then the original, may be slightly different then other Vision models.

19. After an accident the rear rim had to be replaced and is not the original, may be slightly different then other Vision models.

20. After an accident the front chain rings, all 3, had to be replaced and are not the original, may be slightly different then other Vision models.

22. My Vison has had one overhaul done to it and some other things may be different then the original factory build.

23. My Vision is perfectly dialed in for me. For example the brake/shifting levers are rotated higher then most and the left and right are different then one another. This is different then the original factory build.

24. Anyone is welcome to use these photo's as a guide only. They are not meant in anyway to instruct anyone in how to build or assemble a bike such as this. Again I assume NO liability or responsibility if someone uses these photo's and makes a mistake causing damage to their bike.

Here are the photo's;

How We Roll

I was once asked by someone "How do you roll, when you ride bike?" Well here is the answer. This is the new look for my bike for 2009. It is how we roll. Enjoy;

recumbent Series Post C: Recumbent bicycles take the strain out of seeing the best Siouxland has to offer

Originally posted in a another blog in Nov. of 2008. Moved here Feb. 2009.

This story was done about 7 years ago. I had only had my recumbent for about 2 years then. And have never regretted riding it one day since.

There is a mistake in the article though. I said I can hit 22 mph consistently with a tail wind. Not 27 mph. The paper mis-quoted me & mis-printed it as 27 mph.

Recumbent bicycles take the strain out of seeing the best Siouxland has to offer

Recumbent Series Post B: Sit back and enjoy the ride on a recumbent.

Read this article. It pretty much sums it up for me.

Sit back and enjoy the ride on a recumbent

Recumbent Series Post A: More comfortable DOES NOT mean easier to ride!

Originally posted on different blog in Nov of 2008. Moved to this blog on today's date.

I often hear people razz me or give me crap about riding a recumbent. I ride a 7 yr. old Vision R40 with a short wheel base & above seat steering. She is red in color & has over 10,000 miles on her. She is a real joy & comfort to ride.

Keep something in mind as you read the rest of this. This is based upon my experience with my recumbent. There are several models out there. I test rode a lot of them before buying mine. There are others that are easier to ride & others that are more difficult to ride compared to mine.

My recumbent is not easy to ride. It has become easier to ride her, yes. It took me 2 years & quite a few crashes, some resulting in major road rash & a lot of pain, of riding her to fully understand how to control her & how she behaves in certain situations. This taught me what to do & most importantly what not to do in certain situations.

Yes while I ride her I have no pressure, strain, discomfort or pain on my neck, shoulders, back, arms, hands, fingers or palms. I do not have a wedgie shaped saddle trying to insert itself into my ass. I never get saddle sores & do not need padded bike shorts. I sit upon what by all accounts looks like a lawn chair in a reclined position. My seat has a nice foam cushion on which to sit. The back is a strong mesh material that makes up part of the seat cover. The seat frame is made of aluminum.

Again all of this makes riding more comfortable, but not any easier then riding a diamond frame road bike or what I like to call wedgie bikes. If anything my recumbent is harder to control. First of all my front boom is further out then the front tire. When I turn the very end of the boom tube completes the turn before the front tire does. This is something I always have to be aware of when banking into a turn. Also as I mentioned I bank into my turns, not turn into them like on a wedgie bike. Turning also requires more room & I can not make sudden hairpin turns. My bike needs a wider turning radius.

Another thing is she will fish tail if I grab the brakes too hard. This is because of her lenght. From the furthest point in the front to the furthest point in the rear she is about 70" & her wheel base is about 39". While her center of gravity is lower then wedgie bikes stopping her can be interesting to say the least. I have had severe crashes because I applied the brakes too hard, fish tailed, was not able to recover & went down hard. One crash I slid along the ground on my left side with the bike on top of me for about 10' before stopping. I had major road rash from my lower back to my ankle on the left side. This was the first full summer I had the bike & was still learning how to control her.

There are also a lot of myths about recumbents. Too many to mention here. But one of the most common are they are not as safe as a road bike because drivers can not see you as well. That is such B.S. it is almost funny. I have never had a problem with a driver of a car seeing me while riding. Every recumbent rider I have ever met, talked with, ridden with, etc. has never had a problem with a driver seeing them.

Another myth is they are faster then wedgie bikes. That depends more on the rider then anything. Yes recumbents have a better aerodynamic advantage then a wedgie rider does. But if the rider is not a good strong one then a wedgie rider will beat a recumbent rider ever time. How ever I have discovered in the 7 yrs. I have ridden mine, wedgie riders pass me going up hill, but on the way back down the other side I pass them like they are standing still & they do eventually pass me on the flat if there is one. But not after riding like crazy to catch me. I also have an easier time in head winds, being 2' lower has some pretty good advantages with that too. In a strong tail wind I pass most wedgie riders on the flats as well.

My bike has had to adapt very little to my riding style. I have her dialed in perfectly to meet my needs. It has been me that has to adapt how she handles when I ride her. After the first 2 years, what I call the learning period, we get along great. She is probably the only female I will ever totally understand in my life.

After 7 yrs. I know every inch of her. How she handles when I do certain things while riding her. I know exactly what she will & will not do just by the feel of what is happening beneath her tires as we roll along the pavement. I know how she will respond when I move the handle bars a certain way. Not to mention how quickly she responds to what I want & need her to do. She is probably the easiest female I'll ever get along with too.

I know all of this sounds like I have no control over her at all & have difficulty riding her. After about a week when I bought her I was able to ride her in a straight enough line & maintain control to trust my abilities to ride her on the roadways. Before that I was riding around on a school track or a school parking lot to learn. Now when I am riding her we are inseperable. I do something & I know exactly how she will respond & what she will do. There are no suprises anymore with her. Just the way I like it.

I used to own & ride a road bike. I know what it is like to ride one. Not everyone who rides a wedgie road bike knows what it is like to ride a recumbent. Yet they have no problem giving those of us who do crap about it. They make judgment