Ted King

Supdogs?

My zeal for coffee is considerably more than yours. Some readers might simply agree with that statement while others of you are bound to put up a stink. My recommendation is to just take it as fact and let’s move on, because that’s not the point I’m getting at here. I have long been considering what it would take to produce a boutique and remarkably delicious signature iamtedking branded coffee. Naturally, it would be a dark roast, created in small batches so as to produce the finest, unctuous coffees and espressos available to mankind… besides of course the coffee that people worldwide lust over that have been pooped out of the cute Asian Palm Civet.

The problem with that, however, is that it’s been done. It’s predictable. It’s hackneyed. It’s very 2008. (Not to say I won’t do it, because in truth I really want to.)

Teduardo Chavez's Fine Worldly Coffees & Beaneries

So what next?

I’m pretty pumped on the iamnottedking stickers and shirts being produced. I give them both a nine point five for execution and – more so the stickers – a check-plus for originality. So high five to myself and CutawayClothing.com for making that a reality.

But I’m not content with complacency, so again I ask, what next?

I’m seriously thinking about wine. Okay, truth be told I’m well far away from making the iamtedking-wine-pipe-dream a reality (…hey, any wine makers out there want to chime in here?! Seriously, email me at heisTedKing at gmail is you have any sorts of leads here). However the wine industry is something I’d love to eventually segue into, so at least I have the gears in motion, right? Right.

Now for the third time, although now I remove the rhetorical nature of the question and pose it quite seriously, what do YOU think I should make? I want it to be something I’m passionate about or something I love (peanut butter comes to mind, but these guys beat me to the punch to combine maple with PB).

Ideas? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

The benefits of being one of my best friends are virtually endless. Highlights include:

• General awesomeness by association.
• Frequent high fives allotted out by yours truly.
• Sampling some of the finest foods you’ve ever eaten, generally homemade but I enjoy fine dinner establishments as well.
• Aaaaaaannnd of course, the possibility to be mentioned in my blog, which brings me to today’s subject matter…

Look, I’m an pretty cool guy. I’m a bachelor, I’m a professional athlete living the dream, and if you read my ABOUT section, you’ll see that I enjoy putting out the vibe. I’m single so the prospect of children is still a fair ways off (…sorry Mom and Dad. Maybe this blog post will help me start working on that).

What I’m alluding to here is that babies don’t rank high on my order of operations.

That said, when you’re one of my best friends AND you have a baby who is extraordinarily cute, you’re on an elite list of people who receive the royal treatment (which is especially exciting, being that my last name is King). Namely, your baby receives something that no one else in THE ENTIRE WORLD HAS. Now that’s some pretty elite company – or lack thereof.

No lie, I had this bad-boy made up fully custom (umm, the shirt – not the baby)! Yup, one of a kind shirt for the baby in question.

This one says, “Hello world, I’m all kinds of cute!”

This one says, “What’s shakin’ Momma Mia? Check out my sweet new threads! Oh wait, you already have one. Cool cool. I love you mom!”

Aaaand this one says, “Mom, I’ve had enough of these stupid pictures. Oh, P.S. you may want to check my diaper.”

"Shoot Mom, I should have asked you to pull my finger."

And on that note, while not yet a national holiday, January 31st is my birthday. In lieu of going to the trouble of having you send me something to Europe, I sincerely encourage you to vastly increase your street cred while donating to the Krempels Center by purchasing either a t-shirt or stickers, both found here. As a reminder, 50% of shirt profits and 100% of the sticker profits go to Krempels.

Holler.

My father received an iamnotTedKing t-shirt for Christmas from me a few weeks back. Coincidentally, he is actually named Ted King, so he was slightly confused as to why his t-shirt advertises incorrectly. Such is life.

Ted (the senior) is the pillar of the King family. Dad is an orthopaedic surgeon, an athlete, and a brilliant and loving family man. He is the best father I could have ever asked for. On the morning of March 23, 2003 everything changed.

It was the first Sunday of spring vacation and I was eagerly driving home across New England after a successful collegiate race weekend. When I received a call from Mom telling me Dad was in the hospital, my immediate reaction was nothing was out of the ordinary – as a surgeon, Dad was perpetually on-call and therefore in the hospital repairing peoples’ injuries at all hours of the day and night. Despite remaining intrepidly calm on the phone, Mom’s voice wavered just the slightest bit indicating that something was in fact wrong. The right hemisphere of his brain experienced a blood clot early that morning, thereby changing our lives forever. Dad had suffered a stroke.

The human brain is an extraordinarily complex and delicate organ. So much of its intricate functions and complex mechanisms are still a mystery yet to be understood by science. What is unequivocally known, however, is that the left side of Dad’s body is virtually paralyzed. Dad was very active; he formerly ran up to twenty miles per week, was an accomplished international sailor, and avid skier. As a highly respected and well-known surgeon in our community, his job was to enable people who were crippled by orthopaedic maladies. The irony is that, although a hand surgeon, Dad is now unable to feel and use his left hand. He is now a prisoner in his own body. Additionally, he has difficulty thinking through complex tasks.

Approaching seven years after the stroke, our family’s lives have turned out to be startlingly different that we had expected - most notably the lives of Dad and Mom. Mom is effectively Dad’s caregiver, his provider, and his companion. Their vows “In sickness and in health” could not be put through a better test than this.

This brief summary does not even begin to explain how our lives are forever changed and in truth, I don’t want to delve into it here or now. Writing about this even now is still very tough for me – it brings back the same wave of emotions I experienced driving home in the spring of 2003.

This is the official introduction of the iamnotTedKing frame sticker/name badges. What started as an original title for my blog has turned into something larger. The iamtedking name now featured on t-shirts and stickers will be sold for an incredibly worthwhile cause. The Krempels Center is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of people living with brain injury from trauma, tumor, or stroke.  In partnership with universities and community volunteers, the Krempels Center offers programs that engage members in meaningful and productive experiences and provides ongoing support and resources to those impacted by brain injury.  In addition, the organization’s community outreach initiative provides education to the public about brain injury and brain injury prevention.

100% of the sticker profit and 50% of the t-shirt profit will be given to the Krempels Center. Additionally, all t-shirts already purchased will be retroactively credited towards Krempels. So while you don’t need to buy another shirt, maybe you should anyway… or at least a set of stickers.

I’m multidimensional. Not only do I write for Missingsaddle, I dabble with Velonews AND Twitter. Oh yeah.

For my latest contribution to bike nerdery, check this out over at VN:

http://tinyurl.com/yec4gfx

(Copy and paste, since I don’t think it will automatically hyperlink.)

I’m writing this blog post from my phone and don’t know when (or if) the photo will post, but if it does, it’s a very action packed pic in the middle of a point in the 8-person ping-pong tournament we had here at camp. Important side note: all 8 people play at the same time. Yatzeee.

I just Googled Rules of Twitter and received nearly two hundred million results. That’s astounding enough to prove that Twitter is not merely a fad of 2009. Surely a great number of these sites provide recommendations how to avoid Twitter faux pas, offer definitions for Direct Messages, ReTweets, and others, explain the origin of the emblematic  “@”, and basically be a general User’s Guide to Twitter.

I do not, however, think you would find any rules of Twitter catering specifically to cyclists. Cycling and Twitter go hand in hand with as much as symbiosis as cycling pairs with coffee (…except for my comrade from the women’s Cervelo TestTeam who told me this very morning that she “doesn’t enjoy coffee in the morning.” I was flabbergasted. If not the morning, when do you drink it – nighttime?!).

Before I begin, I offer an emphatic, You’re welcome. Transgressions to these rules stand out like a hybrid Mapei-Astana cycling kit; the word clash doesn’t even begin to do justice to the cycling tweets injustices witnessed with regularity. There is a very good chance some of you will feel disparaged when you see what I have to say. Yet, following these simple steps are like a life preserver tossed to the floundering swimmer – fear not, friends, the King of Style is here offering hope and promise for a positive and productive Twittering future.

Without further ado, I bring you the King of Style’s Cycling Rules of Twitter.*

1 — As KoS has stated in the past in reference to emails and texts, faces are always disallowed. In my twenty-six years on planet Earth, I have found myself in no more than three circumstances ever where I have felt the desire to use a text face. In each situation, I allowed myself roughly seven more seconds of thought, and thereby found a simple alternative. You should too.

2 — No abbreviations unless they’re original. ROTFL? Really… you’re going to tell me with a straight face that you are literally rolling around on the floor laughing? No you’re not, you liar. Alternatively consider an original abbreviation like BDC, short for bomb dot com. The irony here is excellent because an abbreviation like BDC is not yet mainstream, so when lobbed out there in casual discourse it confuses the recipient. Once mainstream, however, it should cease being used and you should look for an alternative once again. I definitely recommend GIAW (giving it a whirl).

3 — A follow up to the above rule, as stated in the past, WTF-(adjective) is one of the few continually acceptable abbreviations. Example, “That was a WTF-good buffet, yo! We slayed that.”

4 — Word-shortening for the sake of using <140 characters is acceptable. Example: “though” becomes “tho.” If the word is already short, however, then you should never shorten it unless you are restricted by the 140 character rule. “You” only rarely must become “u” and “see” rarely is “c”. If you’re short for space then just use multiple tweets (three or fewer are recommended) in rapid succession. Remember, you’re tweeting, not writing a doctoral thesis.

5 — Read your Tweets before you publish them. There is NO deleting them once they’re published. I will readily admit, I’ve screwed this one up more than once.

6 — Your name isn’t Hume or Plato or Descartes, is it? Then don’t get too philosophical.

7 — Any chance to practice humor is acceptable. (However, see subsequent rule.) Witty, dry humor is the most preferable, but toughest to administer, so be sure you have a strong handle of it before using it with reckless abandon.

8 — Political correctness trumps all. Insulting slurs should never be used. As I just said, once published, your tweet is out there forever. Presumably, you don’t want to come across as a bigot, so if you have a distaste for a certain creed, nationality, sexual orientation, or race keep it to yourself. I truly wish this need not be stated, but it does.

9 — Be courteous with your two-way conversations. There is a time and place for Direct Messages so tediously uninteresting conversations should be kept out of the public.

10 — (Yet somewhat conversely to the above rule…) speaking highly of yourself is absolutely fine. I’ve posed the question in the past, what is self-promotion if it’s not shameless?

11 — Silence is golden. Less is more. Cliché expressions are awesome… Look, long story short: don’t tweet just for the sake of tweeting. If you have something to say, say it. If you type something out, however, and as you’re reading it back to yourself before hitting the Tweet button – as I just taught you to do – you find it boring, abort the tweet. If you find it dull the rest of us will find it even worse.

Photo rules:

12 — Don’t take pictures of just your freshly shorn legs or robust tan lines. Although strange, people inherently have an affinity for garishly vile pictures, so if your skin is literally boiling from being sunburned, snap that picture with an appropriate warning tweet. If not, no one cares about a mere color contrast.

13 — If you’re a dude, don’t take shirtless pictures of yourself. Cyclists are vain. We’re not that vain though. If you’re a woman, umm…

14 — If you have an iamnotTedKing shirt, definitely tweet pictures of it by replying to www.twitter.com/iamnottedking. (Have I mentioned cyclists are vain?)

15 — Speaking of vain, perhaps you recently returned home from a hot ride and your legs look like a road map with veins roped abundantly throughout. See how your girlfriend doesn’t care whatsoever? Neither do the rest of us. Abort tweet.

* If I’ve insulted anyone with this post, you have a few options moving forward. You can be pissed off, angrily believe that KoS has a holier than thou mindset, and continue along on your misinformed Twittering ways – you certainly have every right to do that. Another option is to put your tail between your legs, acknowledge that the KoS is actually quite correct here, and use this as the educational seminar that it’s intended to be.

Whenever I see a failure of the aforementioned rules, I generously offer my services in the form of a Direct Message to you. I never publicly call anyone out by name, and for that you should be rapturous (yup, I used my thesaurus to find that word). Remember the You’re welcome that I started this blog post with? Charitably accept it.

Well, sort of.

Put on your smoking jacket, my friends, pull out your pipe, sit in your favorite leather reading chair, slide your feet into your comfy slippers, and get ready for a good few minutes of reading. This one is a doozy!

As recently discussed, there are certain scenarios in which all rules of style are thrown out the window for the sake of survival. In other words, there’s no sense in trying to look ridiculously good by maintaining the King of Style’s rules if you’re being killed by frostbite anyway. Although the King of Style often reinvents the wheels with his (my) revolutionary rules pertaining to style, I think the rule of survival-over-style is fairly obvious.

But as you perhaps have noticed, the title of this particular blog entry doesn’t mention KoS. We’re merely back to Toughening Up Sissy Boy… or TUSB to those in the know. Hypothetically speaking, if there were a conversation on this topic, it would go down in the following manner:

Blog: “Hey Teddy, Toughen Up Sissy Boy!”
Teddy: “Hey Blog, screw you. I just had one of the top three worst experiences on a bike in my life. In fact, top three worst experiences ever!”

And that brings me to the subtitle of this blog entry: I.J.H.O.o.t.T.T.W.E.o.a.B.i.M.L. Allow me to extrapolate.

I have five hours of training assigned to me today. There is a bit of climbing to be done, a touch of big gear/force work, but basically it’s an endurance ride. Today marks the third day I’ve been in Spain; day one was drizzly but suitable for three hours, yesterday was overcast but dry all day so I enjoyed four hours of riding, and today was… just… plain… horrible. But I didn’t realize it until I was already out on the roads. Moreover, I didn’t realize it until I was nearly halfway into my ride. And by then it was merely Darwinism – only the strong survive.

I knew rain (and even rumor of snow according to my Irish neighbor, Dan) was in the forecast for today, so I was pretty excited to wake up to dry ground. About a half hour before I headed out the door whilst still noshing the last of my plain oatmeal (Mmmm) it had started drizzling, and then by the time I truly rolled out it was definitely a noteworthy rain falling down.

I was wearing virtually all of my cold-weather gear. I figured this would be more than enough to keep my body temp up since it’s basically the exact same thing I wear when riding in the WTF-harsh conditions of New Hampshire in the winter.

It’s raining. Check.
I’m wearing all the clothes I should need. Check.
I’m mentally ready for a cold and wet ride. Check.

The kicker? It’s 37 degrees Farenheit (3 Celsius) here in Spain! (…you know I’m being completely serious because I opted for bold, underline, and italics.)

I had a nice loop planned out that included some climbing up an easy grade. It’s 20km of really tame climbing, so speeds are fairly high plus you don’t get any windchill since you’re protected by sinuous curves throughout the ascent. Pedal, pedal, pedal, I’m now 1:15 into my ride, I’m at about 1500 feet above sea-level, and I notice it’s snowing on me. Crud. More importantly however, I’m at snowline, so the ground is covered, the trees are snow-encrusted, and the roads are getting slick. Therefore, rather than continuing and risking sliding out, I flip it about 8km shy of the summit (where I was planning on rolling down the other side to complete the loop).

The advantage of this road being ridden in the wet is that – like a fine woman or bottle of wine, it’s very curvaceous. Therefore you can’t get going too fast on the descent either and therefore you don’t get too cold from windchills. Right? WRONG. By this time, it’s merely fifteen minutes later and my fingers are starting to get chilly and a bit painfully tingly. I do that thing where you treat your arms like really out of tune and hyper-fast pendulums and whip them around aggressively to get more blood into my hands. You know the motion, right? Right. By the time I’m at the foot of the climb, I’m forced to do this every five minutes in order to avoid heinously frigid digits.

I consider a few alternative routes home while on the aforementioned descent, so as to add a bit of extra mileage and to avoid the glut of traffic I experienced while rolling out of town. But I soon realized that I was really freezing cold and no matter what route I picked, this five hour ride was going to be anything but five hours.

I opted for a route that took me a bit shy of three hours total, but around hour two, I reached the cruel irony where I could no longer feel my fingers at all, yet they’re horrifically painful. Think: fingers-down-the-garbage-disposal painful. Plus I have lost all finger dexterity, so braking is extremely difficult and shifting is impossible. Nice, last hour on a virtual fixie!

Long story short, with tears streaming down my face in pain, I made it home. By now, the temperature shown on banks and other buildings around town reads 2 Celsius. It’s still pouring down rain and my mood is even lower than the temperature. Once in the shower the real tears start streaming and – I kid you not – I am crying. Alone, in the shower, cold as a human ice cube, I am crying. You want real? That’s real.

Freezing cold and snow works fine. Warm and wet works fine. Cool and wet, although less desirable, still works fine. Cold and dry works fine. Warm and dry works extra fine. See, there are two variables – temperature and precipitation – to consider. There are two that don’t work so finely unless you’re racing and your body temp is somehow warmed up by the adrenaline: cold and rain.

Lesson learned: invest in a trainer or else just do three hours of jumping jacks and sit-ups on days like today.

Dear Family, America, Home, High school friends, College friends, Neighbors, and other awesome people,

Thank you! Thanks for a fun off-season back in my homeland of America. It’s been an excellent trip, a restful time, a time full of bodacious adventures, and an all-in-all fun time. So let’s recap with a photo montage, shall we?

Golf outing (yes, that’s a safari inspired shirt).

Not one, but two Red Sox games (including the final game of the season, where they lost dramatically to the Angels).

Bonfire on the beach. Ethan is housing a piece of wood to fuel the fire.

Then off to Toronto to hang with the fine folks at Cervelo! L to R: me, Dominique, and Heinrich are doing a little publicity at a local bike shop.

From Toronto to Vegas for my first ever Interbike. I think I was there for about 46 hours total and slept about 8 hours in that period of time.

The inaugural Boston Mayor’s Cup Criterium was a huge success! (Except when I finished 4th and not 1st.)

I participated in the Dempsey Challenge in early October. Front and center are Rich and George Hincapie and Patrick Dempsey. The event was a blast for everyone involved, from the VIPs to riders, runners, walkers, the organization, and Patrick himself.

La Festa… wow, wicked yum.

Off to Vermont to see my friends the Dan4ths and partake in Middlebury’s homecoming. “Coach” is up in the tree installing a pretty fantastic rope swing. Do NOT try this at home, kids.

I did a speaking event at Landry’s. Thanks to everyone who came out and a special thanks to Mark for hosting the event and Richard to emceeing like a champ.

In late October Robbie and I took in a Patriots game. Or more like, we took in a blizzard which happened to coincide with a Pats game. This picture doesn’t do it justice – we got about a foot of snow… in October!

My adventures continued out in Boulder where I spent most of November. Frank and I are discussing how to summit this ferocious peak. (I think we settled on snowshoes and continued hiking.)

Thanksgiving at Kathy and Jim’s was a blast as always. Lots of family in attendance always makes the holidays special. So does a smoked turkey in the BBQ. Deeeee-licious.

Wine Club 2.0 was nothing short of excellent. Here’s a homemade flatbread.

Next stop, Santa Barbara. Nearly perfect weather for 3 straight weeks made for a good reintroduction to a normal training regiment.

…of course, it would all even out when I got back to New Hampshire to see the fam. Sun and warmth in CA is quite the stark contrast to snow and snow and snow and cold of NH.

Mom’s birthday and Christmas were two massive highlights of being home! This may turn off some of you animal lovers out there, but as I’ve mentioned in the past, we four Kings are a family of gourmands, so Dad gave us all a morsel of fois gras as a special Christmas gift. We enjoyed it immensely.

Many more adventures occurred, but some didn’t make the cut, others didn’t happen to have a camera handy by, and others simply need not mentioning.

Thanks again to all… And now I’m off to Europe!

Love,

Teddy

What’s up slackers?

I went for a bike ride today. What makes this ride slightly more noteworthy than average was that the average temperature during this ride was somewhere hovering in the mid teens. Yeah yeah, not terribly interesting until you factor in the windchill and then recognize that the temperature I felt was somewhere in the -5 range. Yup, Fahrenheit. Nippy.

This brings me to a very important point that was brought up periodically during the King of Style reign of terror – namely, what happens to style when it’s WICKED FRICKEN’ FREEZING OUTSIDE, guy! Specifically, how does one maintain his or her semblance of looking ridiculously good while also trying to maintain all of one’s extremities and not sacrifice them to the single digits (hahaha. “Single digits.” Get it… like getting frostbite and having to remove your fingers/digits so as to not die? Oh man, I crack myself up sometimes.)

That was a very long introduction to this particular blog post’s subtitle, which reads: TUSB meets King of Style.

My loyal readers will fondly remember the TUSB series from a few years back. Part I featured the highly enviable ice faring and was documented back in my Rochester, NY days. Part II occurred back in New Hampshire exactly one year ago today. TUSB, to the fair weather crowd, means Toughen Up Sissy Boy. Mind you, TUSB was created before the TTFU phrase became popular, so they pretty much stole my thunder before the TUSB thunder even had a chance to growl.

I digress.

–Back to the question at hand: How does one remain stylish while avoiding hypothermia and subsequent death?

–Brief Answer: You don’t.

–Longer Answer: It’s all a balance of style versus function and when the temperatures start to dip to New England-like lows, function always plays it’s trump card.

Let’s revisit my ride today, shall we? It was freakin’ freeeeezing. I woke up to a cloudless blue sky, and the thermometer read four degrees. Do you have aaaany idea what four degrees feels like? Seriously now, do you? (You’re welcome to say yes, but if you don’t know, then don’t even try.) For a bit of relativity, your kitchen freezer is probably four or five times warmer than that. FOUR DEGREES… yeah, chew on that for a bit.

Thankfully yesterday’s hurricane-like winds had subsided, so we merely had 10-15mph gusts to deal with. With relatively dry roads today, I was more than happy knowing that I would eventually tackle the open roads rather than another basement trainer session. Late morning rolled around, and with the sun seemingly almost ready to set (that’s a joke) it was time to kit up. As any tried and true New Englander will attest, I wasn’t joking at all when I said it would take about 45 minutes to bundle up. Moreover, all said and done, I end up wearing seemingly 10lbs more clothes than I will on a normal summer ride. More clothing weight = more of a workout = much MUCH more badass. Obviously.

Fortunately, Castelli kits us out to the nines (whatever the heck that means), so it actually probably only took me about 39 minutes to deck myself out. And when I’m done, I look like something of a gray/black/white ninja… with blue lensed glasses.

...ignore the Crocs

For style aesthetics, note the full face mask in combination with a lowly worn hat and glasses. Skin exposure: probably less than 1/2 square inch. Style points: high. Function points: extraordinarily high. Winner: Function.

So three hours of riding later, as any New Englander will again attest, my bike was salted more than a sweaty fat dude on Alpe d’Huez in July.

Note the seasonal wreath. Festive.

You know the worst part about riding in the cold, nasty winter is? It’s arriving home and having to clean off your bike when you’re already pretty darn chilly. Thankfully, sound thought won out the battle of what-to-do when I reminding myself how poorly the bike cleaning had gone the previous day. Instead of cleaning my bici, I hopped into a steamy hot shower.

But before I did that, I stripped down and snapped a photo of what it takes to survive this wintry mess. In truth, it’s surprisingly little again thanks to the folks at Castelli. For me, my core gets up to an adequately survivable temperature relatively quickly – it’s my face, fingers, and toes that are the true worry. Plus the heinously cold pains to those extremities are the ones that will bring you in from an otherwise pleasant ride. Big BIG mittens tackled the fingers. Wool socks, those chemically/ski-style toe warmers, and big ol’ neoprene booties handled the toes. And the aforementioned facemask and hat fielded any potential problems with the moneymaker (…my face).

Now if someone would just be kind enough to please clean my bike…

Let’s skip the preface about HOW I got in the following situation, and just accept it as is. Moreover, accept that the following is not illegal. I would have received a ticket for a traffic violation if what I did was against the law – especially as I’m basically a foreigner from waaay far away New Hampshaa’. Furthermore accept that what follows was not dangerous; racing a bike as much as I do is far more dangerous than this little escapade. These previous three sentences are my way of saying, don’t write a comment about how much of a bad decision this was. When you’re in a bind, you need to somehow figure your way out. Right? Right. Read on…

On a recent afternoon I found myself needing both a means of transportation and my bicycle in downtown Santa Barbara at the same time in order to visit the best bike shop in Santa Barbara. Unfortunately for me:

A) I’m living about 3 miles from downtown SB and
B) My “means of transportation” is a borrowed Vespa belonging to my good friends Aaron and Kim.

Which begs the question, how do you get a bicycle into downtown with just a Vespa? Answer: very carefully.

I therefore hoped on the hog, practiced manouvering these four wheels (bike + Vespa, if that math was too hard for you) between my garage and the end of the driveway, and from there it was out onto the open roads. Specifically, I was pulling the bike with my hand on the stem. This way I’m able to steer it dexterously down the road so as to keep myself and everyone else around me out of harms way. Safe? In the words of Sarah Palin, You betcha!

Next, I put a lot of thought into my route of choice and unfortunately, the shortest route is also the busiest. There are, however, very few traffic lights and stop signs on this main route, so I went for it. Additionally, there’s a generous and well distinguished bike lane so I figured that just by riding along at sub-20 mph, I’d be safe if I ran into the po-po.

And seriously, not even one minute into the ride, I was passed by a police car. Eye contact? Check. No lights, no siren? Phew, home clear!

About five minutes later, I’m now getting mildly close to the shop (which, if you run some mathematic differentials, you’ll realize that I was probably exceeding my aforementioned 20mph. You would be right, but only by a few mphs). Another cop. Lights? Yes. Siren? Thankfully that was unnecessary. So I immediately ditched my bike, gave the Vespa 90 degrees of wrist tilt for full-gas, and outran the cop by hiding a dark and deep alleyway! Muhahahaa.

Actually no, that last part is a lie. But I did in fact get pulled over, which was both hilarious and embarrassing. The policewoman kindly asked me what I was doing while obviously biting her tongue to not laugh at me. I explained my situation, how I don’t have any friends in town who have cars (at this instance at this very moment, this is both sad and true), how my bike is currently inoperable and therefore needs to go to the bike shop (I prefaced this blog by telling you to accept these details as fact – don’t bother asking why), and that my only vehicle happens to be a fantastic yellow Vespa (yes, fantastic).

As an added bonus, I explained to the woman that I had moments ago passed another police car and he seemed fine with me merely congesting the bike lane and not the roads. This excuse didn’t fly, however, since she quickly retorted that he was in fact the cop who called in my semi-illegal biking-while-err…-biking technique.

Isn't So Cal gorgeous?

Meanwhile the second po-po rolled up as backup in case I was getting surly. When I saw the two police officers conversing – and laughing at me – I realized I was probably going to elude the long arm of the law.

Blah blah blah, I explained the same situation to the second cop, who also had to bite his tongue to not crack a smile, then we chucked the bike into the back of the cruiser, with wheels in the trunk, and I got a police escort to the bike shop.

Ticket? No. Warning to never ever ever do what I was doing, ever again? Yes. Lesson learned.

Super broseph extraordinaire (aka my older brother) Robbie got me into cycling, so I recommend you take note of what he has to say.

Here he is felling a tree with his bare hands, circa 2007.

He’s good at bike racing and especially good at clip-art.

See what I mean HERE.