Ok my excuse was ostensibly to get some skeelz back before the mtbr ride I was leading to Saguaro Lake. but this is becoming suspiciously more serious for myself personally and amongst the mtbr crowd potentially pandemic. We did another “MTBR’s on Skinny Tires” ride today to Bartlett Lake, people are discussing rides for cooler weather, regular occurrences, invitations for training partners. WTF?

In reviewing my riding log, I’ve done 16 road rides this year but 7 in just the past month. 1.5 a month to 7 a month. WTF?

Something is afoot! My theories are wide-ranging.

First, the Tour De France is always good for a few extra road rides. Sure, TV coverage sucks, and I’m sick of people saying “just get OLN”. fuck you and your OLN, its the biggest event in the sport and the best CBS could do was 1 hr a week when Lance was riding and its the middle of baseball season? ESPN’s coverage has gotten better this year. The Bobby Julich Blog and Jim Caple’s articles are good, and and they now have a regular Tour columnist in Bonnie DeSimone. Austin Murphy on cnnsi is good, but he is very irregular (This by the way is one of my favorite bike articles ever). So there is stoke to be had, without resorting to going euro for Velonews.

Second theory: Its hot! Goddamn its hot and not only is it hot but it stops being cool very very quickly. Its so much easier to just get on the damn bike in a hurry and ride during the quick cool window of morning, with no gear or straps or dangling armor. and once you get going you at least think its cool until you stop and boil over. I find the heat is such a burden to overcome its just joyous not to have to always be cleaning and fixing and fixing and cleaning stuff.

Theory 3: The roadie is much easier on most injuries. People go up and ride the lifts at Sunrise, break stuff, and decide road biking isn’t so bad after all.

My Personal Doomsday Theory #4: The Heckler Effect. I’m really sick of mountain bikes since the Heckler shopping experience was so exhausting, and likely there are hoops to be gone through yet. And now that I’ve ordered the Heckler, and got my ass handed to me last week riding Alta, I really want to wait wait wait to ride much of anything technical, and I really don’t want to break anything new on the Blur.  And in some small way, this whole Heckler-obsession project seems like cheating on the Blur, and riding the Blur while thinking of another bike I would rather be with seems hurtful to the Blur. The Blur has carried me to the corners of the world and back, if I’m not willing to give it complete devotion when I’m with it, what kind of selfish partner would that make me?