My Only 'Cross: Voodoo Wazoo

In much of Europe, cyclo-cross season is in progress, or getting underway.  Until fairly recently, this form of bicycle racing was all but unknown in the US.  Part of the reason for that may have been that around the same time that Greg LeMond was winning the Tour de France, bicycle racing was enjoying its first spurt of popularity in the US since the days of the six-day races, but mountain biking was also becoming popular.  Americans who were just starting to pay attention to cycling subscribed to the “road racing/mountain biking” polarity.  Some seemed to think that mountain biking and cyclo cross were the same thing. 

Here is the difference between the two:  In mountain (or, more accurately, off-road) biking, you ride—and sometimes jump or hop—over whatever comes your way, but in cyclo-cross, you might actually hop off your bike and sling it over your shoulder to ford a stream, wade through mud, climb rocks (or a fence!) or goose-step your way through un-strategically placed 2x4s, rocks or debris.  Having done both, I think that mountain or off-road riding is about riding over whatever terrain you encounter, while cyclo-cross is more about getting you and your bike over any and all kinds of obstacles.  To use a ski analogy, cross-country and downhill mountain biking can be compared to their skiing counterparts, while cyclo-cross is like the biathlon with bikes and without the rifles.

In the past, racers often fitted old frames with cantilever bosses and wheels with wider tires and treads suited to mud and other conditions for cyclo-cross.  Bikes built specifically for that kind of racing are a fairly recent development.  I’ve owned one in my life: a Voodoo Wazoo.

As you can see, the frame was made of oversized TIG-welded Reynolds tubing and stays, which made it stiff for a bike with its geometry.  One result is that, even though it was somewhat heavier than my road bikes, it climbed well.  It also remained stable even with a rack and full panniers.  As you might expect, I rode the Wazoo on three loaded tours: from France into Spain through the Pyrenees, along the vineyards and chateaux of the Loire, and through the Alps from Lyon into Italy and Switzerland and back.

The only real complaint I had about the bike was that it had an odd chainstay configuration, which made it difficult to install a triple crankset and get a good chainline.  I had one smaller quibble:  When I bought the bike (complete), it came with V-brakes and Shimano “brifters”.  V-brakes aren’t made to work with road levers, at least not the ones available at that time. Voodoo included a “travel agent”, which was supposed to compensate for the fact that road levers have less range of motion (or “pull”) than V-brakes are designed for.  Alas, the setup never worked to my satisfaction; before I embarked upon my tours, I switched to cantilever brakes. 

I bought the bike, as it turned out, during a transition from one model year to the next (1997-98).  I expected to get the 1997 model, which had the same frame in a shade of green rather like chartreuse.  As you can see, I ended up with the 1998 model, which was only available in a screaming bright orange.  The color wasn’t my cup of tea;   however, the components were actually, I thought, slightly better than the ones on the 1997 model.  And I paid the same price for the new model that I would have paid for the older one.

The Wazoo is the sort of bike you’d want to have if you lived in the country and could have only one bike, but you wanted that bike to give you a lively ride while holding up to varied conditions. I might, one day, have Mercian build something like it for me—with lugs and in finish #57, of course.  

A Journey

Just recently, I came across this e-mail I sent a few friends.  I couldn't believe I still had it in an old e-mail account that I now use for school.

18 november 2006

 Hi Everybody:

 No urgent messages here. This'll be more like a blog, I guess, or a journal entry. Read on at your own peril! ;-)

 Today I went for a bike ride with Barbara and Sue, who have become sometime riding buddies during the past couple of years. It was chilly, overcast and fairly breezy, but actually not a bad day to ride.  We may not see any better for a while, so we went.

 We started on the Queens side of the 59th Street Bridge, with no particular destination in mind. I don't know which, if any, of us was leading the way, but we found ourselves headed toward water: Jamaica Bay and the ocean. It was as if currents of the sky, gray and rippled by white crests of clouds, pulled us there.

 Our bikes zigged and jagged along boards that clunked and chattered underneath us on the Rockaway Boardwalk. Sky and ocean grew grayer, bluer and steelier all at once as foamy white ripples thickened.

 We crossed the bridge into Atlantic Beach, Nassau County, where both the fresh-faced and the weathered people wore down parkas with swim trunks and flip-flops. Sand swirled on the road toward Point Lookout--on the other side of the bay from Jones Beach--where we had a picnic lunch.

 Since we all did errands this morning, we didn't meet for our ride until well after noon. Of course, we didn't take into account how the days are growing shorter, so by the time we got to Point Lookout, we saw rays of a sun that was about to set peeking through furtive openings in the clouds.

 And everything grew darker as we rode back along the southern Atlantic shores of Nassau County, the Rockaways section of Queens, Sheepshead Bay and ultimately to Coney Island. The point at which the sea and sky disappear into each other grew closer and the tides amplified their echoes as their foam crests grew whiter like advancing glaciers.

 There was a time in my life--actually, most of my life--when a scene like this was my only solace. The day returned to the sea; the night spread across it, punctuated by the pulse of waves that reflected flashes from the moon and stars. I often went to the sea, alone, in the darkness. Sometimes I hoped not to come back; other times I had some vague, if entirely implausible, hope that fluidity and darkness would wash away what I was trying to leave and change.

 Somehow, though, it didn't seem so odd to be at the darkening sea with a couple of friends. In a sense, I was never actually alone, even in the days when I was traveling solo. When I first started my gender transition, I used to believe that for all those years, the boy and young man I had been was carrying the person I'm becoming within him, all the while hoping nobody would notice. I suppose that is what would sometimes cause me to sometimes grieve about Nick when I first began to live as Justine. I used to think that he'd been carrying me all this time, and somehow it wasn't fair that I was able to experience the joy that he never could.

 But now I realize that in some way, I, Justine, had been guiding and protecting him. And I was again today. Today I would show that scared, confused, angry teenaged boy and young man named Nick--whom I learned to love only by becoming Justine--that what we were seeing today was not all there is to life, that we were continuing on a journey and that it would be all right and neither of us would have to be alone.

 Of course I didn't tell any of this to Sue or Barbara, for I am just realizing it now. But I did tell them what a joy it is to ride with them, and apologized for not being in the kind of shape I was once in and for being something of a chatterbox.  Don't worry, they said. It's all fine.

 Yes, Justine, it's all fine. And it's going to be all right. For you, too, Nick.

 OK. I apologize if this is a bit of a ramble. I know you're all busy, and I appreciate you, whether or not you've read this far.

 Good night.
 

 Love and best,

Justine

A Century After The Storm

I'd forgotten about Daylight Savings Time. So that, of course, meant I'd slept an hour later than I thought.

Then I realized I'd have another hour of daylight at the end of yesterday.  Plus, something about yesterday's noon light seemed very appealing.  What I didn't realize, then, was that it reflected some light I would see later in the day.

I also thought that going for a daylong ride (or, at least one of more than a couple of hours) would help to shake me out of the emotional funk and physical lethargy that enveloped me.  I was, as they say, sick and tired of being sick and tired.  

So--you guessed it--I got on my bike.  I think Max and Marley knew I was going to be gone for a while because I left extra servings of food and water for them.  

Anyway, I took out Tosca, figuring that if I rode for only two hours or so, I'd at least get a good workout.  That's one reason I recommend having a fixed-gear bike:  If you're pressed for time, you can still get in a pretty vigorous ride.

I started in the direction of Rockaway Beach.  I hadn't been there since the first Sunday of January.  It was a little more than two months since Superstorm Sandy; the streets still looked like sections of the Ho Chi Minh trail after the bombings and people still seemed shell-shocked.  I'd heard that there was still much devastation, but I was determined to ride out that way.

Well, as the day was breezy and chilly, but still quite pleasant, after crossing the bridge into the Rockaways, I wanted to keep on riding.  And so I did--alongside the sections of the boardwalk the storm tore away, past stores that still haven't opened and houses still vacant.  But some people, at least, seemed to be taking Sunday afternoon walks and otherwise taking back what they'd owned in their lives.  That may have been the reason why I just wanted to keep on riding.  

And I kept on riding, until I got to Point Lookout.

That meant I'd already done the second-longest ride I've done so far this year, and the third-longest since Sandy.  I felt invigorated, to say the least:  I pedaled into a breeze-bordering-on-a-wind most of the way out.

You'll notice that Tosca is standing aslant.  She's not "posing"; it was the only way I could stand her up.  As I expected, the tides had tossed rocks and slates into positions in which no one had seen them before.  And there was a lot of erosion:

That mushroom-shaped thing is an Army Corps of Engineers marker.  In the two decades or so in which I've been riding to Point Lookout, it was always level with the ground and usually dusted with sand.

The bay loooked as it usually does, if a bit more forlorn:

I know they're buoys, but a part of me wondered whether they weren't markers for something lost during the storm.

I also couldn't help but to wonder whether those trees were denuded by the season or the storm.  After all, it happened in late October, right about the time leaves attain, or start to pass, the peak of their autumnal color in these parts.

Even in the middle of such musings, I didn't feel sad.  After all, everything and everybody I'd seen during my ride was a survivor.  Plus, the light wind into which I'd pedaled would blow at my back as I started my return ride.  I felt stronger,and the ride seemed quicker.

And, by the time I got to Far Rockaway, the sea and sky refracted a layer of visual frost through the late-afternoon sun.

It was, I realized, a later-day image of what I'd seen when I left my apartment just after noon.

By the time I got home, I'd pedaled my first metric century (about 105 km, or 65 miles) this year, and my first since Superstorm Sandy.