Looking Outside that Pre-Defined Box

Photo credit: Team Radioshack

I'm getting tired of writing about biking. Maybe I've just hit that point of saturation with the biking written word. It's not like I'm not thinking about biking. I'm thinking about it all the time. I found the biking enthusiasts heaven in my cottage neighbour's back yard a couple of weekends ago.

Bicycle Purgatory? A "collector's" stash

I made 8 trips to this pile. And NO, there was no Italian. There was this really comfortable big-ass saddle though that made me think of this scene (unfortunately dubbed over but if you listen closely you'll catch it) from The Road to Wellville.

I am as obsessed with the Tour de France as I ever was. I'm reading a lot of other people's writing about the race. I'm learning how it works. Why guys like Fabian Cancellara are hanging out at the back, or at the front and dropping off before the finish or attacking and then fading away as he did in stage one where, I'm sure, he could have won. Easily. If that had been his job. I didn't know superstar cyclists sometimes played bodyguard for other racers. But it shows me why I made bad pool picks this year. I have at least 5 guys who have done nothing for my points situation because it isn't their job to win or even place top 20. They are there to serve and protect.

Photo credit: Team Radioshack

I'm obsessed with the images. Radioshack's artsy fartsy take on product placement, while obvious, is somehow also beautiful in the mechanics of it all. There is nothing more beautiful in its geometry than the bicycle.

Photo Credit: Team Radioshack

I'm obsessed with muscles and scars and bandages and 5 o'clock shadow and white sunglasses and how rain soaked kits "enhance" to the point of distraction. The male body can be beautiful too.

Klodi was definitely working for me before he abandoned (Photo Credit: Team Radioshack)

But then again, Cav has provided his own moments of excitement. (Photo credit: Tour de France)

I'm just not obsessing over my own cycling. Maybe because since I've been back from California nothing has even come close to the magic of that.

Floating down the river channel in Penticton, BC... 

Penticton was gorgeous. I made a couple videos. They say it all.

I'd thought if I survived Penticton, I'd give the Falcon Lake 8 hour a try, solo. Survived that too. Barely. I succumbed to heat stroke and dehydration over time, but the agony didn't really hit until the next day. But I'm a much better and more confident mountain biker now than I was when I went into that race. And that really was the objective wasn't it? And I can't say enough about the FGBC and RRR boys and girls and their race planning commitment. They truly go above and beyond.

But I am thinking about words even if not necessarily biking words. I'm thinking about this blog. I've actually been in a rather serious love-hate relationship with this blog for the last 7 months. I haven't much liked most of what I've written here for quite some time.

Except maybe the California stuff. There were moments of genuineness in there.

And all my blog stats tell me is that there are an awful lot of people looking at volleyball ass on google images because that has been the primary blog traffic I've had in the last few months. That blog entry alone has had over 1000 hits since I posted it in January. False hits, of course, because I'm certain only about 2% of them were from people who actually read my intelligent feminist ramblings. My fault for using the words butt cleavage and beer in the same blog title. Damn my facetiousness. But I'll be honest. That stat kinda pisses me off.

I just want to write other things, now. I'll think about biking. I just don't want it to be the central focus of what I write about. I never did.

So I have plan.

I have this book I wrote. I wrote it nearly 6 years ago now. It is a good book and it's too good to sit dangling from a USB drive on my key chain -- where it presently resides. How do I know it is good? Well people with a little cred have told me so. I think the worst thing anyone has said about that book was that it was very good but it wouldn't have been something she picked up to buy. And I was OK with that because I didn't write it for 37 year olds, I wrote it for 15 year olds. I wrote the book that I would have wanted to read at 15.

Well, I would have wanted to read it at 12. But that's a whole other story.

It should have got published but shit happens and agents and publishers can only imagine promoting something that has a clear and obvious audience, not one that straddles that zone between young adult and adult. Nobody wants to take a risk on anything that falls outside some pre-defined box.

And I don't get that, because that it seems everything about me falls outside some pre-defined box.

I guess that one publisher that still has it and was so excited about it 4 years ago and has never rejected it got distracted by, oh I don't know... maybe it fell from the slush pile on somebody's desk and is languishing in dust bunnies behind a filing cabinet. I got tired of emailing to ask if they had any news.

And the world has evolved in 6 years and there is this little thing called e-publishing. You load it up and sell it dirt cheap -- a couple bucks a download -- and work the laws of supply and demand and hopefully I can sell enough copies to make back what I am about to spend to have a very talented graphic artist I know and love do her thing and design me a cover image.

But first, before all that, I gotta read it again. And that could be the hardest part of all as, same with everything in life, I am my own worst critic.

And I wrote that book in another lifetime.  And I should really be writing another one and not blogging about my bike races.

Oh, and go online and buy my book when I download it. Or if it isn't your thing, find a kid 15-25 (give or take) who might want to read it. It's good. If you don't think its worth the couple bucks I charge you, I'll hand over my royalties for your copy.

The Human Canvas... Phase I

Those of you with me on Facebook have seen this. Many of you have now seen this in person. But as you may recall, on the list of things to do the year I turned 40 was a little body ink. So the art was created by Andy at Metamorphosis on McDermot (although, I think that link must be outdated) and the outlining is done.

Andy was a good sport and has the steadiest hand ever. I was twitching so bad by the end I feared I would have made him go out of the lines, if I didn't kick him in the head first. Wow.. this was far more painful than the one on my back.

But it is in that phase now where I have to constantly resist the urge to scratch the shit out of my leg.

At the end of July I go back for the colour. I will leave you in suspense until then. I'm kinda liking it though.