Oh GAD

I rarely dream about bikes. If dreaming is the subconscious mind trying to make sense of your experiences, perhaps this is understandable. Bikes are one thing, perhaps the only thing, I don't have to "rationalise" and "understand" they just "are".

If bikes do make it into my dreams they are in the context of the classic anxiety dream. Being late for the start, going one way when everyone else is going the other, not being able to find my chip, losing a shoe. Or turning up in calf-high black socks, next to which turning up naked is eminently preferable. Besides, let's face it, most Sunday's we're functionally naked in public anyway, with only a single layer of high-cut lycra we fervently hope isn't too see-through between our collective modesties and the little old lady who got caught on the course while driving to church.

Last night I dreamt I was in the UK renting a bicycle. A fixed-gear bicycle. Every time I said "fixed" the rental guy said "single speed". Even when I was talking to my travelling companion, if I said "fixed" he'd "correct" me.


WTF indeed. Firstly I was in the UK, the one place I don't need subtitles under me when I speak. Or so I thought. Have I lost the ability to seak British English. Was I now speaking some mid-Atlantic collabo, mixing bits and pieces from the various (English-speaking no-less) countries I've lived into a creole that only I understand?

Secondly, I was being corrected on a point I knew something about, and indeed being corrected "incorrectly". Sure, all fixies are single-speeds but not all single-speeds are fixies. Yet the rental guy was adamently, and consistently, mis-correcting me. Grrrr.

So the dream ended, presumably when I turned over in my sleep to say to my dream-land companion (sotto voce)...

"This guy knows nothing about fixies"
"Single-speeds, sir"

...and I woke up. Not screaming or covered in the night-sweats, more a vague sense of academic disquiet; why this dream this night? I'm not worried about anything in particular, or at least I didn't think I was. Sure I worry about the usual things; did I turn the oven off, making the rent, did I use monobasic or dibasic potassium phosphate in the PBS, but who doesn't? Besides, Boston isn't for another 146 days and the dream wasn't in the traditional anxiety-dream mould anyway. If anything, things are pretty copacetic, on and off the bike. Right? Must be the cyclocross. After all, voluntarily spending 50 minutes red-lined in the granny in the mud with ominous grinding noises emanating from your hubs, bottom bracket, headset, knees, lungs and chest is enough to make one question one's most deeply held beliefs. Ya, must be the 'cross....

Blogosphere Apocalyse

It may be a sign of the blogosphere apocalypse but it looks like I'm starting a blog. Somewhere I can be more myself than, say Facebook (which I have an ongoing love-hate relationship with) and decidedly more myself than my departmental homepage (which from the looks of, even I hate myself). Somewhere I can be thoroughly self-indulgent.

Firsts first, I am a guy staring at 40 and wondering what happened to 30 and generally having a hard time with it. My actual profession will likely become apparent with time but to ballpark it, it starts with 'g' and ends in 'eek'. I seem to have a love-hate, or at least ambigous, relationship with many things other than Facebook and I'm sure with time many of these things will also become apparent.

If asked to self-identify a sport it would be cycling. I'm a kind of old-school, retro roadie cyclist and to establish my credentials I have two wool jerseys and two fixies but I haven't gone the full Sheldon Brown with the facial hair (not "yet" but "ever"). I do shave my legs though. As an old-school, retro roadie kinda guy I seem to have acquired a rather snobbish reputation for socks, the rule of thumb being cycling socks (and by extension running socks and athletics socks in general) be ankle-length and white. Those knee-high black ones Lance Armstrong wears should be reserved for births, deaths, weddings and court appearances only (oops, there I go, ranting in my first entry, is that a blogging faux pas or what?). So between the whys and wherefores and woes-are-me I hope to start a critical dissection of cycling socks; I mean it's what the world has been waiting for, non?

Start as we mean to go on: shorty short white ankle socks.
Nary a sport these wouldn't be suitable for!