Last Ride Texas – Cranky Is Back In Washington!

Hey y’all, This Yankee is back on home turf! No more riding on the flattest place on earth. Sorry Lance, but your state really sucks for riding. I’m sure Austin is a great place to ride, but Houston absolutely sucks. Let me tell you about a couple of incidents that occurred to me over the last 18 month’s in Houston. The first time I went out on the open road, I thought, “Man this is great – I can cruise at 22 miles an hour”. 15 miles into the ride and I feel an incredibly intense sting in the small of my back. Can you guess what it was that caused the stinging sensation?

Well, that stinging sensation was caused by a paint ball gun firing a green paint ball! Fucking assholes… That and the international symbol (The bird), went to the idiots in the oversized, compensating pickup truck. The guy behind the wheel obviously had a little dick to drive around in such a big ass truck. Anyway, getting hit with a paint ball really does hurt and I’m here to tell you that you certainly do NOT want it happening to you.

Another time, I decided to give the road another shot and had a drunk swerve into oncoming traffic just so he could throw his empty beer bottle at me. It hit my handlebars and shattered sending glass all over the front of my body. Good shot for a fucking drunkin’ idiot. After those two (Mind you) consecutive rides, I decided to pretty much give up road riding and stick to the Mountain bike. It didn’t last long though and within a couple of month’s, I was back on the road bike.

Of course, at this point I was only going to ride at certain times. 9:30am-11:30am was the best time to ride as everyone was at work. On the weekends, I would only ride in the wee hours of the morning. I did have a great TT set up right in my community. It was 10 miles long and perfect for checking my fitness improvements. That in fact was the last ride I did! Here is a quick video of my Garmin 405 which shows my output:

Thats it for tonight – Goodbye to Texas and hello to Washington – Tomorrow is a 56 mile ride from Coupeville, WA to Stanwood, WA! I’ll post the ride and if I take any pictures, I’ll post them as well.

Cranky Trails – Welcome To CrankyBike.Com

Welcome to Cranky Bike. I bet your thinking right now, this is going to be one of those blogs where some pogue’s lame ass blog bitching about cycling.

Wrong Bitch! This is nothing more than crankin’ in the world of cycling. I’m tired of all the crap I’ve been reading in the magazines and all the ho hum blogs floating around on the internet. I’m 43 years old and have been cycling for 25 years. The first bike I ever had was a Raleigh road bike. I stripped that sucker down, painted it and then put her back together and road the hell out of her before I ever had a license to drive.

I grew up in a town in central California called Tulare. Yeah – some of you pogue’s may remember me. I lived there until I was a junior in high school and moved to some crappy little hick ass town in Arkansas. That went over well! Anyway, we lived there for about 6 month’s before moving to Phoenix, Arizona. Now that was a cool place when your 17 years old, have a license and owned your own car!

Before I get off on a tangent…

I started riding when I was really young and took up a paper route to buy (at the time) a kick ass Diamondback BMX bike. That didn’t last very long as it was destroyed jumping off the roof of my grade school. I know – “What a Dumb Ass”!

I learned a lot back in the old days and laugh every time I think about em’. At the ripe old age of (almost) 22, I joined the military to see the world! Boy, did I see it – Another tangent!!!

Being young, dumb and full of (*&^, I spent most of my money on alcohol. Met my (going on 21 years) wife, and didn’t have many goals or aspirations. My wife Vicki changed all that and I began to settle down. Well, not really – It took her 10 years to tame the beast!

We didn’t have a whole lot of money – go figure – navy paychecks don’t go far! We couldn’t afford two cars and one had to go. I had a 69′ Chevy Nova – primed Grey and a real hupla! So, I decided to sell of the junker and buy a bicycle. That was the true start of my passion and love of cycling. Yeah fucker – I still shave my legs!

After selling the junker, I bought a Bianci Veloce (I still have it). I rode that bike every where and it has somewhere in the neighborhood of 45,000 miles registered. Anyway, I raced (Weekend Warrior) on that bike for many years. Talk about green thinking – I’ve only owned 4 bikes in the last 25 years – 2 mountain bikes and 2 road bikes. I never really kept up with the Jones seeings how I never really had the money to buy the bikes I did have at the time.

My two (as my wife says) current love affairs would be the Lemond road bike and the Gary Fisher Mountain bike. I will post pictures of all the bikes soon.

Cycling is a huge part of my families life as I have forced it on them for years. I remember following Greg Lemond for all his race wins, new who and followed Lance Armstrong before the public knew he existed. I remember I couldn’t wait until ABC Sports would air the tour when Greg put America on the European Circuit! My wife has had to endure many races as my cheerleader and driver – Getting drunk after the race was the norm! My pesky friend – I have many stories that take place on the bike. Cycling is my CULT!

So – What the hell is Cranky Bike all about? Its about the bike you friggin’ moron! Nothing short of my sailor mouth rambling on about cycling – the good, the bad, and even my gross ass remarks about some yahoo talking shit in some magazine. Oh yeah – nothing is sacred! I definitely want to here your comments as well. If you have something to say about the cycling world – I want to hear it! I don’t care if its good or bad.

Lastly, I wanted to hit on all this bullshit floating around about drugs and the usage of drugs in the cycling world.

Look – we all know that cycling is riddled with drug use. Get over it. If every one of them mother fuckers is on some form of drug, then the playing field is even! Wouldn’t you say? I say fuck it and just enjoy watching them skinny little fuckers ride the hell out of them $20,000 bikes!

I am just getting started! Some things that will be hot on the agenda:

• mountain bike accessories
• mountain bike gear
• mountain bike magazine
• mountain bike parts
• mountain bike racing
• mountain bike skills
• mountain bike video
• mountain bikes
• mountain biking
• mountain skill
• mtb skill
• rider skills
• riding skills
• road bike
• road bike skills
• sales bicycle
• specialized skills
• trek bikes
• triathlon bikes
• And pretty much anything else I feel like writing about – Its my blog!

I hope this blog will educate, entertain, and most of all make you laugh at some of my off-the-wall remarks. Yes- I do in fact cuss a lot and this blog will be riddled with sometimes vulgar language. Not always and hopefully not to distastful. But sometimes, the only way to make my point have any affect is to use the language of the sailor!

Later pogue’s!