Racing, Cyclocross
Lisa Jacobs
Let's get this party started!

Eight races down, one to go... 

Let's get this party started!
Cyclocross, Lisa's Mum
Lisa Jacobs
Lisa's Mum answers your CX questions: The Mud ...

Lisa's Mum answers your questions on the big issues. Today: Mud. 

Lisa's Mum answers your CX questions: The Mud Spectrum

Riding Unhappy in Toronto

A few days ago, a reader sent me this via Twitter. It's the story of an abandoned bike that had been chained up on a street in Toronto, left to rust, then lovingly restored by a local artist into a feature artwork... only to have the local council slap a fine on him for 'storing a bike on public property'. You can read the full article here. I've reproduced the text below, but you can find comments (and maybe whether the story has a happy ending) on the site. Which makes me think... has anyone seen any street art like this in Melbourne - or anywhere else for that matter? Should we make one?

Toronto artist turns abandoned bike into sculpture, City threatens fine for "storing bike on public property"

A Toronto artist repainted an abandoned bike that had been locked in front of a storefront gallery for years, sanding it and spraypainting it eyepopping pink and adding a flower-basket. This eyesore-to-sculpture transition was well-loved in the neighbourhood, but the City of Toronto decided that the act of decorating the bike has converted it from abandoned trash to "a bike stored on public property" and is now threatening fines if someone doesn't angle-grind the lock off and haul the bike away.

On the only day that it wasn't raining last week, I set myself to work on the Raleigh. I sanded it (a laborious task since the entire frame of the bike was covered in rust) and then I primed it. As the bike went from rusted brown to white people began to ask me about it. What was I doing? Was it a memorial? The long forgotten bike was creating some buzz. Once the primer was dry, I spray painted the bike neon orange. A colour Vanessa and I picked out together at Montana Colours, aka The Bomb Shelter.The bike was glowing and so was I. It looked better than I had imagined. It looked fucking incredible (excuse me, but the F- word is absolutely necessary here). When Vanessa came to see the finished result, the two of us danced around the gallery squealing for joy. We agreed that this would be the first of an ongoing project called the "really-fucking-cool-urban-street-project" or just "the neon bike project."...

Yesterday, I arrived to the gallery with flowers, ready to plant them in the basket, only to find a notice from the city stapled to our neon bike. It turns out it is illegal to store bicycles on public property, and that we have seven days to remove it before we are fined and it is taken away to be destroyed. The funny thing is that this bike has been sitting in the same place for years, unnoticed by the city. However, once it is brightened and made beautiful, it's got to go. I am determined to save the neon bike that makes so many people happy.

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What Would Cipo Do? Bike v Girlfriend

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Ride Happy received the following What Would Cipo Do? dilemma via Twitter:
 
@LJridehappy can you ask Cipo what percentage ratio I should give My GF on the weekend? Am currently giving bike 80% GF 20% seems fair to me
 
Cipo would never give 20% of his weekend time to a girlfriend. Mostly because it would be hard to decide which girlfriend he would give it to. Also, it would be mathematically impossible to allocate 20% to every girlfriend, even for Cipo.
However, being a fair man, Cipo would probably allow 10% for his wife and 10% to girlfriend #1. His wife would be motorpacing him so that gives him 90% of bike time, plus more if he rides to girlfriend #1's place.
Cipo even makes looking like a tea lady cool

If you have a problem and need guidance from the king of smooth, drop us a line, tweet, or comment below. Remember, it's not worth doing unless Cipo would do it.

Lisa's Mum replies: Sickness and the Office Douchebag

Lisa's Mum was thrilled with the helpful suggestions that came in from readers in response to the letter she received last week. As you may remember, the irrepressable Jerry Castle sent Mum a letter asking how he should deal with an Office Douchebag who insists on coughing and sneezing all over the office, threatening his preparation for the 2012 Commuter Olympics. The comments that came through following the post contained wisdom that would have made Confucious proud. Suggestions for avoiding sickness in the office included eating tuna, drinking craft beer, and turning Japanese. Lisa's Mum enjoyed all these suggestions, although despite being a lady of small stature she was unable to effect a complete Japanese transformation.

Lisa's Mum's complete response to Jerry is below. Remember, if you have a question for Lisa's Mum, send it to her in the comments section below, or send an email to her at jacobs.lisa@gmail.com.

Dear Jerry

 The Office Douchebag is a strange beast. Oftentimes I've noticed that ODs are possessed with such a generous and sharing spirit that they will share their germs freely, along with their e-galleries of wedding pictures and their opinions on office politics. You cannot fault their giving nature. ODs are typically endowed with a rather inflated sense of their own importance in the office environment. You can see this best when someone drops a big fat hint that the OD should go home and stop sneezing all over everyone: 'Oh [OD's name], you don't sound healthy. Maybe you should go home and rest.' To which the OD will respond with some kind of false matyrdom, 'Oh no, I can't. I've got too much work to do. I'll be ok.'

The reality, as you and I both know, is that should the OD go home, the world will indeed keep turning, and probably no one will even notice. But if they were to go home, they would probably sneeze all over their kids and their partner, and then they would REALLY get it.

In an ideal world, all work environments would operate in the same way as a European Protour team. At the first sign of a sneeze, the offending athlete is whisked into quarantine, where they remain for the duration of the sneeze and the following 14 days. I have even heard that Lance Armstrong, in his heyday, would order the quarantine of any domestique who demonstrated a sharp intake of breath (often the first warning of an impending sneeze). As a result, most of Lance's domestiques were quarantined within the first 5 minutes of their time trial warmup, which is why only Lance performed well in the Tour de France prologues.

Sadly, thanks to democracy we can no longer lock up people who sneeze over other people. All we can do is eat lots of tuna, drink craft beer and perhaps turn Japanese. When an OD gets you sick before an important race, you should, in the spirit of generosity with which you were infected, freely share your thoughts on the subject to the offending OD. And go and get some Sudafeds and thank your lucky stars that ASADA does not test athletes at the Commuter Olympics.

Love and kisses

Lisa's Mum

Brrr! Winter is here

I went up to the mountains this weekend... Not for the faint hearted, as you can see from the frost my bike collected.
Actually my hip wasn't too happy so I didn't get much bike time but did manage to fit in a couple of xc skis and a run. Unlike 2009, which I spent being very inactive with an ITB injury, my hip injury is restricting my cycling but lets me do other things. So now is the time for cross training. Frustrating but not as much as if I weren't able to do anything.

Hope you all enjoyed your long weekend! Ride happy

What Would Cipo Do: Disowning your son over poor bike taste

Lisa's Mum was very excited to receive the following sollicit for counsel from reader Andy: Last night my lad was watching New Inventors and got all excited when they rolled out the Cruzbike "Vendetta" (partly because it was yellow). http://www.cruzbike.com/  Then he asked, very politely, if I would mind stopping the stream of sarcastic remarks that this story provoked. Woe betide! Must I disown him? Send him to a Home for Wayward Boys? What shall I do?

Lisa's Mum has chanelled the best of Mario Cipollini and considered Andy's dilemma in terms of What Would Cipo Do?  To do this, I first had to coax her out of the broom closet into which she had retreated following the discovery that the Cruzbike Vendetta was in fact a RECUMBENT bicycle.

Recumbent bicycles rank alongside bright orange flags and rear-view mirrors as things that most clearly should not be combined with cycling.* Having said that, if you are riding a recumbent, you will require both, along with a flagrant disregard for societal norms and a legally binding last will and testament. (Apart from looking ridiculous, recumbents are not very visible in traffic.)

*Lisa's Mum may consider adding this discussion as Part II in her Rules of Cycling.

Cipo was many things to many people, but above all he was a famous sprinter with a glorious mane of Italian hair.  Cipo would never have ridden a recumbent, for two reasons:

  1. it would have been hard tacking on to the end of his lead-out train while lying down; and
  2. the aerodynamics of the recumbent position would have prevented him from feeling the wind through his beautiful locks.

It is also considerably harder to make a convincing victory salute whilst looking like you are about to enter a luge chute.

But back to Andy's wayward son. Or maybe it's his friend's son.

It is important to explain to your son that liking recumbents is a lifestyle choice that, whilst valid, has yet to be openly embraced in mainstream Australia. He may have to indulge in his recumbency in special underground clubs or quiet university bars until he is ready to be openly recumbent in front of friends and family. All you can do is love him for the person he is and not for the cyclist that everyone else will laugh at. Even Cipo would respect that.

Lots of love,

Lisa's Mum

Letter to Lisa's Mum: Sickness and the Office Douchebag

Last night Lisa's Mum received a letter from the indomitable Jerry Castle. You may remember Jerry from such Ride Happy posts as What is a cyclist and the $15,000 starter kit (including Lisa's Mum's reply) and A solution to magpie season: the RMD project. I think Jerry's problem will be shared by many. Lisa's Mum is taking it to the people for inspiration and advice for Jerry - please leave  your comments and feedback at the bottom of the page and I'll pass them on to her. Dear Lisa’s Mum, Can you offer any advice on how to avoid sickness during winter? Well… that’s not really what I want to get to the bottom of. Not quite. Let me explain. At the moment I have a colleague who insists on coughing and sneezing all over everyone in the office. His philosophy when infected with a cold is to “share the love”. I didn’t mind so much when I was a typical office drone. In fact I was often excited by the prospect of minor illness as there was a chance of a day off. The chances of infection in the modern office are high as well – the lack of fresh air, fluoro lighting and 1 sqm of personal space would make most battery chickens feel at home. In an effort to fill my wage-slave life with something a little more interesting, and to provide an avenue to “release some steam”, I took up bike riding (in a mildly competitive way). Now that I train and race regularly nothing shits me more than a douche bag proudly infecting the whole office with his latest illness. It is the height of murderous selfishness. I can see a network diagram of illness starting with this guy, and then spreading to 5 others, then 25 others, then 125 others… Some of these, the old and frail, will be steamrolled as the illness builds in intensity with each transmission. Some of these folks will be Olympians training for their once-in-every-four-years-big-day-out. This office douche bag is undoubtedly responsible for not only thousands of nursing home deaths but the loss of 20 or 30 Olympic gold medals for Australia (this is hard to stomach, particularly when our track team is performing so well). So Lisa’s Mum, I’m hoping the wisdom of 30 years of Earl Grey drinking can help me with two questions? (1) How do I avoid sickness in the presence of an office sneeze machine? (2) What is a suitable punishment for those who infect me with illness prior to a race? Is this, for example, a bunny-boilable offence? A related question is… 3. How do I quickly get back into form after a minor illness? (perhaps that’s one for Lisa though?) Cheers, Jerry

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