Cheesehead Roubaix XI

The ride already had split into several groups before the first gravel sector: Lovers Lane.

In some ways, Cheesehead Roubaix XI was a bad end to a bad April. We have had incredibly poor weather this month and today was no exception. The air temperature at 9 a.m. was about 45° but strong winds from the east put the wind chill in the low 30s. Things were even colder at the mid-ride rest stop in Belgium: just 40° before factoring in the wind and the now steady rain. Conditions were miserable all day long. But the forecast proved correct. About 50 riders left Fireman’s Park in Newburg and none of them can say that the rotten weather was a surprise. The event had attracted a lot of attention online, but much of that interest faded as the “chance” of rain became a certainty. On a historically average final day of April, 61° is the afternoon high. We eventually hit 50° this afternoon but the wind continued to make things feel much colder. And if I had tried to postpone Cheesehead Roubaix for one week? Well, we might not be back in the 60s by then either. The first week of May promises more of the same.

But by no means was this year’s Cheesehead Roubaix a doom-and-gloom affair. The turnout was understandably small but—somewhat less understandably—enthusiastic. Some of the enthusiasm came simply from being able to participate in the event again after two years lost to the COVID-19 pandemic. People like this event. They like the route, they like the support (thanks to Cedar Creek Outdoors for offering mechanical help and for hosting the rest stop), and, let’s be honest, they like getting a ride of this caliber for free. I encourage, but I don’t require, donations to Newburg’s volunteer fire department. Today we raised about $500 at the park and a few people have indicated they will be making donations later by mail, so it won’t be a bad payday for NFD when all is said and done.

So, yes, today’s weather sucked. But the people were great! And the people who do Cheesehead Roubaix are always going to be great. And the weather isn’t always going to suck. Even I know that. We’ll do Cheesehead Roubaix again next year and we’ll take whatever comes. And if karma is real, then we’ll prosper … because it owes us one.

A Design So Good, It’s Scary

Svengoolie

One of my guilty pleasures is watching old horror / monster / sci-fi movies. And I mean really old: anything newer than the 1970s need not apply. Watching these films is a very conscious exercise in nostalgia. For a couple of hours I return to childhood, a time of carefree sleepovers when my friends and I stayed up long after our parents had gone to bed. When I was a kid I didn’t know just how bad most of these movies are, and now that I’m an adult I choose not to care. The feelings they reproduce are so seductive that I happily suppress any real criticism.

Movies of this sort used to come to me from UHF broadcast channels. Despite modern technology that makes them available at any time and in many formats, I still get my fix over the air. The Movies! network (Channel 63.3 in Milwaukee) has a classic horror / monster / sci-fi lineup on Fridays, and on Saturday nights I try never to miss Svengoolie on the MeTV network (Channel 58.2 in Milwaukee).

Last Saturday, Svengoolie showed “Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man” from 1943. It’s very weird to think that this movie was only about 30 years old when I saw it for the first time. It seemed ancient. For contrast, “Ghostbusters” was released 38 years ago but it feels like yesterday. Anyway, last Saturday I noticed something in “Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man” that didn’t make any impression on me when I was a kid:

The policeman on the right is using a floor pump to inflate the rear tire of his bicycle. It’s a curious detail, one with no bearing on the plot of the movie. The policeman on the left is reading a newspaper, so perhaps this little scene was intended to show an unremarkable moment before the police station and the community it served were disturbed by the supernatural.

What made the scene remarkable to me was the unchanged nature of pumping up a bike tire. Here’s a pump from the 1940s alongside a new model:

Tiny CO₂ inflators have mostly replaced frame pumps when we’re on the go, but no one has “built a better mousetrap” to challenge the floor pump in the garage. Modern pumps are lighter than the brass-and-wood pumps of yesteryear and they have convenient built-in pressure gauges. The heart of the design, though, is the same.

No one seems to know exactly when the tire pump was invented or by whom. The best guess is that its invention must have coincided with the invention of the pneumatic tire in the late 1880s. The tire pump appeared just a few years after Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone. Now, imagine Bell magically reappearing in 2022 and trying to understand a modern telephone: tiny, wireless, feature-rich … capable of so much more than he could have envisioned. Things would be otherwise with the inventor of the tire pump. More than 100 years on, the inventor would immediately and fully understand a new model. Amazing.

Labor Of Love

Looking north from the south end of Lovers Lane near Boltonville.

Today, the first 70° day since October 19, I painted the roads for next Saturday’s Cheesehead Roubaix. Stopping at almost every intersection for 63 miles makes for a long day out. With lunch in Port Washington and an unexpected visit to a hardware store to replace a couple of spray paint cans that failed, I needed almost 6 hours to get the job done. I think we got as high as 78° by late afternoon, so this was the right day for painting. We’re expecting rain early tomorrow, then a big temperature drop back into the 40s by late Sunday night. Then we’re looking at freezing overnight temperatures on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and highs in the 40s for the remainder of the 10-day forecast. This year’s Cheesehead Roubaix, like most editions of Cheesehead Roubaix, looks chilly. But the show will go on, fair weather or foul.

Back At It

After a full week of temperatures that were 10-20 degrees below normal, today we actually surpassed the average high for this time of year. But the wind! We had sustained wind speeds above 25 mph, with gusts over 30. Today provided a perfect scenario for a mountain bike ride. Surely it would be a more pleasant experience than being buffeted on the open road.

And then I went to Glacial Blue Hills, where I have never ridden well, and I made a mess of it. I have no complaints about the performance of my new Giant Anthem mountain bike. I know we’re going to be friends. The problem was my almost total lack of confidence in my mountain biking skills, which have been untested for a long time. Today’s ride was my first time on singletrack since September 23, 2017!

I didn’t intend to stay away for so long; it just sort of happened. I’m back now. I suck, but I’m back. Glacial Blue Hills was probably the wrong choice for my comeback ride. It has the benefit of being the closest trail system to my house and of being dry enough to ride this early in the spring. I will, however, be much happier when I return to less technical New Fane.

So, not much fun during my 60 minutes at Glacial Blue Hills today. I really needed the road ride that followed later in the afternoon. Wind speeds had died down a lot by then, and I spent a comfortable 70 minutes on familiar roads to feel a little more like myself again. I’m still a long way from fit, though. This was just my 8th day of outdoor riding this year, and I have racked up only 200 miles. By this date in 2021 I had done 19 rides for a total of 439 miles. Skills and fitness will return, but not soon.

Just Another Insult

“Sunrise” in West Bend on April 18, 2022: 31° and snowing. My cycling season remains on hold. Pretty demoralized right now.

… Another Person’s Treasure

Do you need any of these cycling accessories for which I have no use? I offer them for free.

• Headlight
• Tail light
• Digital tire pressure gauge
• Aluminum water bottle cages
• Reflector set: white front, red rear, white wheel reflectors
• Tire pumps: Topeak frame pumps (two different sizes -- great for high-pressure road tires), Blackburn and Bell mini-pumps (better for lower-pressure mountain bike tires -- can be mounted to the frame or stuffed into a backpack / hydration pack)

Everything works, but you will want to replace the batteries if you choose any of the items that require them. Take as many items as you desire. I hate to see useful things go unused. Local pickup only.