Trust but verify: You bike shop might not be the expert you think it is

Black Betty begging for better brakes,
barely before
I almost bailed off a bad-ass bluff

Doing 35 miles per hour while heading down a 10 percent grade into a double-S curve is not a good place for your brakes to fail.

Trust me. I checked.

But after slamming into a retaining wall during the aforementioned brake failure, I'm now an expert on mountain bike brakes. Or at least a whole lot more informed.

"I can fix this once," my surgeon said. "Not twice."

Looking back at that statement drives home my point: Trusting my bike shop was a nice thing, but following my instincts and verifying that trust was more important. After all, my rear brakes failed continuously for more than a year after I purchased my first real mountain bike.

In fact, I brought my bike into the shop to look at my rear brakes about 10 times in that first year.

Then, nine months after my crash and two weeks before my wife and I were heading out on a month-long trip that was heavy on cycling, I brought my bike in.

Again.

Same place I bought it, same place where no one could quite figure out how to fix it – beyond a test ride in the parking lot.

I'm ashamed of the whole sordid affair. I feel dirty. I've been riding bikes my entire life, and I didn't think I was a dreaded "newbie" when it came to mountain bike riding.

But I guess I was, a little bit. And to this day, I'm still shocked I never went to the Google Machine to research my brakes.

Verify, every step of the way

This is a good lesson for all levels of mountain bikers, even experts. Because after time, we tend to trust people. And that's a good thing.

But we need to remember to verify that trust. Especially when we're really busy and all we want to do is hit the trails and reach high rates of velocity while encountering dips, drops, boulders, rivers, rattlesnakes, and sometimes even Satan himself.

Trust is a great thing for people to earn, but if it's unfounded or begins to erode, things can go awry quickly.

Because they were cool, I disregarded my gut feeling that the employees at my shop either didn't know what they were doing, didn't care, or were nickel-and-diming me. That's why you should verify everything your bike shop says and does.

Or you'll end up in surgery, like me.

I'd ridden what I previously thought were mountain bikes for 20 years all around Chicagoland. And I'd ridden what I knew were real mountain bikes in places as near as Colorado and as far as Switzerland. But that was nothing.

I hadn't lived the life of a true believer, like I do here in Asheville, NC, where I'm wasting time unless I'm out on the trails.

So I quickly came to trust my bike shop. Everyone there seemed totally cool, why worry? This led me to foolishly disregard my subconscious when I would ask the important question that Jason, my bike sensei, kept telling me to ask: "Did you bleed my brakes?"

It was always a difficult conversation when I asked that question, because no one ever gave me a straight answer. They had 10 tries and each time, they mumbled their responses.

Know your limits ...at least mechanically

Not to mention, the arithmetic doesn't add up: Hydraulic + system = me out of my element.

Not that I don't try to understand. But I'm a writer, I work with words and stories. If you put a tool in my hand that isn't a keyboard, it just might end up sticking out of my eye socket.

So I need a bike shop. Desperately. Because, while I'm a decent mountain bike rider, I'm a passionate guy. When I find something I love doing, I throw myself into it. All the way.

What else is there?

Then push through those limits

So I'm on a quest to become an expert mountain biker. I live in the right place. My heart is in it for all the right reasons. And I'm almost on the right bike.

I'm fed up with people taking advantage of the trust I place in them. I think I found a new bike shop, but we'll see how it goes. So far, so good.

This is what happens when you treat people like you would want them to treat you. They might just write a long-ass blog post about you.

Not yet, but soon.

Until then, see you on the trails, my friends.

Dear Santa...

A thing of monumental beauty

My instincts tell me this is the right bike for me.

Ha! Still got it baby!

Well, not really. Don't got it yet, but it's coming in 2016. I can feel it.

Living in Asheville: The views

Downtown from... somewhere near the Armory

One of the best things about living in Asheville is the views.

Another visit with the world's greatest parents

I don't think the heavy stuff will come down for a while

My parents, Pop & Kat, are back in town!

We drove through Mills River, Pisgah, and then headed up the Parkway to Graveyard Fields.

Oh captain, my captain

"Science is the captain, and practice the soldiers."

Leonardo da Vinci

Over the past year and a half, it's become obvious that I shouldn't go for mountain bike rides that last even one minute longer than three hours.

Why? I fall apart.

When I'm tired, I get lazy. And when I get lazy, I just...might...crash.

It's a pretty simple concept.

So I'm not sure why every goddamn ride ends up clocking in at something like three hours and 42 minutes. It's like keeping my hand over an open flame for 42 minutes.

Sure, it's fun, the kids love it, and it smells delicious, but it's not really a good idea.

Let's talk tires
Anyway, what I really want to talk to you about today is tires.

Wait! Where are you going? Guys???

Hang on! I'm going to do some relationshippy stuff!

Damn, I lost half of you. Which means there are about four of us left. But that's fine, because you're the kind of people who care about bike stuff. Or you're dressed up like a clown and hanging out in a cemetery at night, reading this on a cellulartronic device.

We'll get to that tire talk in a moment. First I want to talk about my life-long love for riding bikes.

Second-grade BFFs
Chris Juracka. As soon as I saw him, I knew he was the dude I wanted to be. Man, he was cool. Chicks dug him even in second grade!

Chris and I were semi-tight, but we kind of drifted away. For example, he only showed up at maybe 20 percent of the parties I threw my senior year of high school. Which means he came over 100 times to drink beer and listen to Scott Naples repeatedly play Eddie Murphy's Party All the Time.

"My girl wants to party all the time, party all the time, paaaaaaarty all the time!"

Over and over and over.

Not that there were ever any parties at my house. Not that it was technically "my" house anyway.

Getting back to bicycles, Chris Juracka and I both realized that we loved riding bikes. And doing so together was kind of fun. Especially when riding down a hill that was conveniently located right on our school's property.

What school? The Campanelli Cougars, that's who!

So we formed a bike club. And then young John Miller joined. As we grew older and got into BMX, our crew was a solid five or six strong, depending on the day.

We all rocked nice bikes. Chris had a Mongoose and I rode a Roger DeCoster. I can't remember what kind of bike John rode, but I think it was blue.

Those bikes were nice, but you know what they didn't have? Knobby-ass 29-inch tires, that's what.

Not only are they tough, but they grip the trail like no one's business. And when I'm flying downhill on a road, they hum like a UFO.

So yeah, I love my bike. I love my tires. Together, we are the captains of our destiny.

But I can't find Chris Juracka anywhere.

Official beesness

How's it goin' in there?

If you have an underground Yellow Jacket beehive in your backyard, there are basically three things you can do:

1. Hire a professional
2. Perpetuate the wholesale destruction of our sacred planet by utilizing poisonous chemicals that I'm sure the EPA has robustly tested to make sure they're safe while angry bees latch onto your skin and sink their stingers deep inside your soul
3. Put a bowl over it and call it a day

Which method do you think works best?

Don't get me wrong. I love pollinating bees as much as anyone else.

But these weren't peacenik hippy bees that sat around thinking about how they can best help nature. It was a pack of vicious thugs who were granted the gift of flight and decided to use it for nefarious purposes.

Therefore, glass dome. Game over. 

Hard Times Connector

Two-and-a-half hours into my ride yesterday, it was time to pack it in and point my bike homeward.

So I decided to cut through the Arboretum and take Hard Times Connector to the road that leads toward said home. Where beer was waiting.