I'm not gone, just busy. News you've been breathlessly awaiting:

» We hosted a Halloween party. Ellen was a corked bat, I the Black Sox scandal. Howard Hughes, Bob's Big Boy and disgraced NASA astronaut Lisa Nowak all showed up. (The theme was "Scandal!" It turned out to be harder to dress for than we thought, since most scandals are perpetrated by white men in suits, and it takes a special person to make that fun.) We had way too much food and enjoyed a net gain of 12 beers.

» We bought a tandem. I still haven't taken a picture yet, but it's a 35-year-old Schwinn, canary yellow, made in Chicago. The brakes could use some modernizing but otherwise it runs great. We should all run so well at 35. There are two great things about a tandem: You cannot help but smile when you are riding it. Likewise it is impossible not to smile when you see two fools riding one down the street. It is a smile maker.

Between us we now own 10 bikes: Two mountain bikes, three racing bikes, a track bike, a cyclocross bike, a touring bike, a fixed-gear bike and the tandem.

» I've gotten better at cyclocross. I'm still terrible at the technical aspects, but I'm learning to ration my energies, and several of the courses have been well suited to my inabilities.

I've discovered one more reason why it appeals to me: It's slow. It's an odd confession for a bike racer, the fact that I don't actually enjoy going fast. But it's true: I've always preferred to go up mountains than down them, and motoring across the grass at 15 mph is a much happier time than riding elbow-to-elbow in a criterium at 30 mph. Plus, falling is less traumatic.


» I've taken on the redesign of my team's Web site. It's a difficult job: The site has to be complex enough to meet our needs but simple enough that even a cyclist can use it.

It's been about 12 years since I taught myself Perl and HTML -- back in the days when we bloggers had to write our own darn CMS's, back before we even had the word "blog", back when Pico was my text editor of choice and 28.8 baud felt fast -- and I haven't taught myself much since. I feel a little bit like unfrozen-caveman coder. So much has changed!

The challenges that pop up are great, but the greater a problem, the more satisfying the "Aha!" moment at its resolution. Several times I have leaped from my desk to celebrate a minor victory. I bounce into the living room and try to explain to Ellen why being able to rescue a deleted MySQL table is a big deal for me, if not a minor miracle.

As if this isn't enough to keep me busy, I'm also on a task force to improve safety at races. And I'm part of a four-man team to guide the development of new racers. And I'm trying to keep CBR fresh. And I'm trying to finish my test for my Level 2 coaching license. And I'm trying to get back into serious training-mode.

» I didn't write about it at the time because I didn't want to alarm my mother more than I already had, but I lost a second teammate this summer in a freak racing crash. One of the many cruelties of the loss was discovering what amazing young man he had been. We had hints while he was alive, but few of us were lucky enough to have seen him in full bloom.

Among other things, Pieter was an accomplished photographer, I came to learn, and this week his work went on display at a Michigan Avenue gallery. He was his own subject in many of his photos, so visiting the exhibit was like a reunion with an old friend. And as I rode by on my commute this morning and saw him through the window, I had the urge to wave hello.

After two years of spectating I finally did my first cyclocross races Sunday. My goals were modest: Don't hurt anyone, finish in the top half.

Everything I knew about cross I'd learned from watching a few online tutorials. While Ellen studied contracts and torts in the living room, I would be studying barriers and "suitcasing" in the dining room.

Amazingly, I had no problems with the obstacles. My mounts and dismounts were clean and quick, and I'm quite proud of my shouldering skills, thank you very much. I fell only once.

What killed me was the bike handling. There were several tight U-turns and chicanes that gave me fits every time, especially as the ground deteriorated and turned to dust.

In the 4's race I got a good position at the beginning of the race and hit the first barriers in the top 10. Each time through the chicanes, however, I would lose a position or two.

On the third lap I dropped my chain and had to get off to fix it. This turned out to be a windfall, because it set me back with the slower riders, and I spent the rest of the race passing people. Turns out that passing people is much more fun than getting passed. I should drop my chain in every race.

I went home not knowing how well I did and not even really caring. That's the great thing about cross: It's fun no matter what. Last place has as much fun as first. Most everyone in the 4's is there for a good workout or to dabble in a different discipline. There's none of the pressure or tension of road racing. It's just go go go, fun fun fun, wheeze wheeze wheeze. I think I'm hooked.

(Two days later I found out I got 13th out of 79.)

It takes a lot to bother me, but some of the reaction to last weekend's road rage incident has left me dispirited. Some have used the attack as an opportunity to launch angry, hateful rants against cyclists, in particular those who don't obey traffic laws with the to-the-letter vigor that drivers do. It's a blame-the-victim mentality that doesn't make a lot of sense. It's like taking a mugging and turning it into a discussion about jaywalking.

I turned off the comments on Chicago Bike Racing after one person wrote a particularly degrading comment, taking issue with the size of my testicles and insulting the two teammates who have died this year.

I responded as any rational person would: I invited him to lunch. On me. I figured if he felt that strongly, he'd welcome the opportunity to insult me and my dead friends in person. We could enjoy a burger and have a civilized conversation about what a humorless idiot I am. I promised him I would not cry.

So far he has not responded, He has declined, which I take to be a white flag vis-a-vis the question of who has the bigger cojones.

Jeff was on the phone to 911 and battling bad cell reception.

"What was the license plate?" he asked me.

"Foxtrot, echo, 'S' as in Sam, 4-3-3."

"Say it again?"

"Foxtrot, echo -- What's 'S'?"

"Sierra," Peter said.

"Oh, right. Foxtrot, echo, sierra, 4-3-3."

Five minutes earlier about 15 of us had been in a single-file paceline near Libertyville. We'd just turned onto St. Mary's Road and were ramping our pace up over 25 mph. Suddenly a white truck passed us, moved to the right and slowed. My initial thought was that he was turning. But when he came to a halt, I realized there was no road, and he was not turning.

This was an attack.

The first few riders were able to ditch into the gravel, but the rider in front of me endoed over his handlebars. On his way down, the truck's tailpipe sliced his shin, and I think it was his foot that swung up and broke the truck's taillight. About five others went down in the ensuing pileup, but fortunately the wounds were minor. (Bob would be taken to the emergency room for precautionary X-Rays, but they came back negative.)

I stayed upright myself and pursued the truck far enough to get its plate. I started yelling it so I wouldn't forget -- "FES! 433! FES! 433!" -- and immediately txt'ed it to myself. (Unfortunately, I couldn't make out the state. Our guesses included Utah, Arizona and Idaho. It turned out to be Florida.)

Everyone was OK, thank goodness. I have the rest of the tale up over at Chicago Bike Racing. Long story short: The guy turned himself in, as is apparently common with hit-and-run's, and the outstanding Lake County sheriff's deputies who responded to the scene didn't buy a word of his story (he claimed he was avoiding a squirrel). He would spend the next 48 hours in jail and now faces felony charges.

It helped immensely that two other drivers returned to the scene to give statements. They were able to confirm to the deputies that we had been riding single-file and as far to the right as possible.

It's an amazing feeling to see and hear the handcuffs put on someone who has just tried to do you harm. Most car-on-bike attacks don't end this way, so we are of course thrilled with the outcome thus far.

The positive reaction from the bike community has been wonderful. Yesterday set a record for visits to Chicago Bike Racing. People are promising to help see that the driver is not undercharged. It's nice to know that as a group, we refuse to be bullied.

The best outcome will be publicity. Cars and bikes need to be reminded to share the road. Reckless driving needs to be stigmatized, but cyclists also need to be aware of the impact we have on local residents. We demand patience, but we must return courtesy. Every time we ride more than two abreast or take up more than our share of the road, we aggravate drivers unnecessarily, and more cases of road rage will be inevitable. Next time it might not end with cuffs, and next time it might not end with everyone riding home safely.

After spending a week at home with my family, I have come to speculate that the joys of being a happy 3-year-old, and the joys of being around a happy 3-year-old, could very well be the reason God came up with people in the first place.

There are many adorable things my nephew does. He picks flowers for people. He makes cell-phone calls to his uncle at the dinner table. He goes pee-pee in the woods, and then beckons loved ones to come admire the wetness on the stump.

But the most adorable thing he does comes when he is doing something he really likes, such as playing in the park or eating a cookie. He'll ask, in his whispered, lispy voice, to tell him the story of whatever it is he's doing.

"Will you tell me about when we had ice cream, pwease?" he will say, said ice cream not even finished yet. And so you will tell him about how you drove downtown, played with the pigeons, walked to the ice cream parlor, asked about what flavors there were ... and so on.

He will sit rapt during the telling. And if it's an especially good time, he will ask you to tell it to him again. (Suzie tells me he did this even before he could speak. To hear a story, a story about the present, he would lean over and pat his fingers on her mouth.)

Stories about cookies and trips to the park don't have much in the way of plot development, but they make up for it with the characters, strokes of genius each.

On the last day of my trip, I spent three hours wandering through Caracas, killing time before it was time to go to the airport. Gazing across the city from a small hill, I saw in the distance what had until this point been a rare sight in this car-crazy country: A road bike. Then another. Then a pack of them.

It was a race! It looked to be a criterium of some sort. I scrambled down as fast as I could while carrying all my luggage. Meanwhile, my mind raced, trying to conjure a way to enter. In my bag was a Clif Shot leftover from Superweek. Would someone lend me their bike? Who would watch my bags? Would I be OK in a T-shirt and street shoes? How do you say "One for the Cat 3 race, please" in Spanish?

Alas, my heart sank as I got closer and saw the numbers painted on the riders' arms and thighs.

It was just a silly triathlon. Pbbbt.

Standing at the start line, I knew this was a test. The lesson from Snake Alley was that it was OK to pull out if I didn't feel right. And here I was, not feeling right. I'd practiced on the Downers Grove course that morning, but then the rain started with the first race, and things looked dicey.

Could I pull out with everyone looking at me? What about Matt, behind whose hopes of winning the team was throwing itself?

I decided to stay in and see what would happen on the first lap. In my pre-race visualization, I attacked on the first lap and stayed off long enough to benefit Matt. I even pre-visualized his podium interview, in which he thanked me and my Web site. Heck, I even visualized winning myself and apologizing to Matt from the podium. (A guy's got to dream.) Surely I could give it one lap to see.

Well, by Turn 3 it was obvious that this was not going to happen. On the wet roads I had trouble getting any acceleration, and as we came down the descent into Turn 5, I knew I wanted no part of it. "Pulling out! Pulling out! Pulling out!" I headed straight into the wheel pit, my bike pitching from left to right as I applied the brakes. Somehow I stayed upright and didn't clip anyone behind me.

"Get back in," the official said. "You can still get on the back!"

No, I told him. I was done.

A lap later I was in dry clothes and taking pictures, in time, unfortunately, to watch Matt wipe out in Turn 1. He's one of the most experienced riders on our team, but he'd break his collarbone, our fourth this year. (Mine is the only one to have been self-inflicted out of personal negligence.)

And so it went. Nobody looked to be having any fun. The rain fell harder on Sunday, but with national championships on the line, the riders who stayed in raced as aggressively as ever. I count seven crashes that I saw myself, but I expect the actual number was five to 10 times that. As I've mentioned before, there are two, coincident sensations in watching a crash. On the one hand, it's unnerving to watch, the sound shakes your spine and your heart goes out to the riders. On the other, it's exhilarating and almost comic, and I am quick to the swing the camera to the unnatural sound of wreckage.

Next week: My team's criterium in Sherman Park. Maybe a crit on the North Shore the next day. I should be out riding right now, but it's still wet, and as they say, the hay is in barn. It's quite possible these are the last races of the year.

Until cyclocross.

People ask how the clavicle is. The clavicle is fine, I tell them, it's the rest of the body that has gone to shit.

I've been back on the bike for five weeks now, equal to the time I was off it, but I haven't been training well. I've been eating junk. I haven't gotten enough sleep.

Most of the sleep has been lost to the Web site, which has an endless to-do list. People have offered to help, but I want to keep it under tight control for now, and managing helpers would probably be more work than doing it all myself.

This weekend there were big, international-caliber races in Elk Grove. Because Ellen is still in Venezuela and thus not here to tell me go to bed, I stayed up until 2 a.m. each night editing photos and posts.

I could just dump my photos online, but I like to adjust each one individually and make sure they all have enough information to be useful. People don't realize how much labor goes into this. Taking pictures may not be easy, but at least it is not time-consuming. It usually takes only about 1/250th of a second. It's the post-capture production that kills a guy.

Fortunately I love what I'm doing, and the response from readers has made everything worth it.

Yesterday I took a half-day off work and went down to the practice crits in Matteson. I could tell the fitness was lacking and considered dropping out during the first two races. In the third race, however, I got in a three-man break that took off from the whistle.

There's nothing more beautiful than a successful breakaway. Andy from Clif Bar was in it, as was a kid from South Chicago Wheelmen whom Andy had told me was strong. Coincidentally, the last time I was at Matteson I was in a three-man break with Andy. He won that time, but afterward told me the secret to winning a three-up sprint. Here we were again -- and for the life of me I couldn't remember what he had said!

Sure enough I could only get second. Afterward he reminded me: Gap yourself and then start sprinting from off the back, thereby passing the others with too much speed to be caught. Of course!

I know barely enough Spanish to order a plate of carne asada, and unlike Europe, Venezuela is not a country that makes allowances for American ignorance. Fortunately Ellen is fluent and makes enormous allowances for my ignorance, so we got by just fine. I'm not much of a talker anyhow.

At the end of the week I would return to Chicago while Ellen stayed behind. My return would entail a 12-hour overnight bus trip from the remote city of Mérida to Caracas, from where I would take the Metro to a second bus, which would in turn deliver me to the airport.

Ellen was concerned about my ability to find my way, but I was not. I'd already made the necessary legs at least once. Besides, all week it was I who had kept us from ever getting lost. All I needed to do was be able to buy my ticket in Caracas. "Uno para aeropuerto, por favore." We spent a few minutes rehearsing.

"What could possibly go wrong?" I boasted. "Nothing!"

Ellen trembled.

A surly teenager in a sparkly pink halter took my bus ticket in Mérida and told Ellen that I would be sitting in seat 15A. (Because we'd bought the ticket at an agency, this somehow meant I did not get a ticket receipt.) I kissed Ellen good-bye and boarded.

And found a gangling 10-year-old girl in 15A, a window seat. I looked at her. I looked at the seat number. I looked at her. Seat number. Her. Seat number. She giggled and bounced in the seat with a copy of what appeared to be the Venezuelan equivalent of Tiger Beat.

I tried to communicate that I owned that seat, but I wasn't sure how to say "15."

"Cinco, cinco, cinco, ah," I said.

"¡Oh!" she said. "¡Cinco!" And she pointed up the bus toward Row 5.

"No. ¿Cinco dieci? ¿Dieci cinco?" I may have been sputtering Italian here.

Two female relatives in the seat ahead of her turned around to see about the commotion. The seemed to be asking to see my ticket. "Non habla espanol," I said, and helplessly pointed out the bus to indicate where my ticket was.

I gave up. The bus was still fairly empty, so I settled in across the aisle. One of the women asked where I was going. "¿Caracas? ¿Valencia? ¿Caracas?" "¡Caracas!" She smiled and turned around.

Eventually someone came and wanted my seat, so I left the bus to find the girl in the pink halter.

"Excuse me," I said, "could you please tell me what seat I'm supposed to be in?"

Except I said it in Spanish. Clear, unequivocal Spanish.

"¿Dónde yo?"

She shot an angry, puzzled look. So I spoke louder. Maybe she was hard of hearing.

"¡Dónde yo! ¡Dónde yo!"

She wrote "15A" on her clipboard.

I pointed into the bus. "¡La niña! ¡La niña! ¡La niña!"

This somehow made her even angrier, probably because it meant she'd have to leave her station, board the bus and come sort it out.

Sure enough, the girl had been in the wrong seat. She moved to the aisle seat, 15B, freeing up 15A for me.

I sensed the girl had wanted the window seat and offered to swap. I pointed at my seat: "¿Preferado?" She declined, and she declined again when I offered some of my Cocosette candy bar as a peace offering.

A few minutes later the bus driver turned the lights off and the salsa music on. At 8:30 p.m. it was too dark to read and too loud to sleep ... and I obviously had no conversation partners.

This is not yet, by the way, the part of the story that answers the question of what could possibly go wrong.

At 5 a.m. the bus pulled into a small terminal. The driver stood at the head of the aisle and said something quick. We'd stopped for snacks and restrooms on the way to Mérida, so I figured that was what this was, or maybe we were dropping off passengers in Valencia. I pulled my hat down and tried to go back to sleep over the music, which had been playing all night.

That's when one of the women shook my shoulder. "¿Caracas?" She stabbed a finger toward the front of the bus.

And this! This is what could have possibly gone wrong: A transfer! I had no idea. Ellen had no idea. But thank God I'd established a rapport with this family, because they had an idea, and if it weren't for them I'd still be trying to make my way to Caracas.

The rest of the journey passed without incident. I had three hours to wander the city. I bought some cachapas for Nikki and stumbled upon a triathlon, then successfully made it to the airport, where I heard the most English I'd heard all week: Three hours of American tourists whining about how slow and long the lines were. Ignorance had been such bliss. ¡Ay carumba!

Near Los Nevados, Venezuela.

I told Sandy and Sarah that if they wanted to see me in Sunday's criterium in Evanson, they'd better be there in the first 20 minutes of the 40-mile race. I didn't expect to last much longer than that. By then I'd have either run out of fitness or have crashed on the course's technical turns.

Happily I stayed upright despite a few close calls, and happily I lasted a full hour, much longer than expected. Looking at the photos that Ellen took, however, it was obvious I was in over my head. My mouth was agape the entire time, and I lurched precariously from the tip of my seat in a desperate effort to grind every extra watt out of my body. Even if I could have lasted, I would have been useless to help set up the sprint.

With 10 laps to go I was able to make my way to the front and pulled for a block to help chase a break. By the next lap, however, I was back in the rear and when I took a tricky corner extra conservatively, a gap opened. Teammate Chris was also on the back and gave me a push, but it wasn't enough. I was done. I took a few laps of shame, then pulled out in time to get the camera to shoot Ed's victorious sprint.

It was fantastic to be able to race so close to home. I cheated and used Ellen's car, but I easily could have ridden or even walked to the course. All day long, curious and enthusiastic spectators watched the races, something we amateurs are not accustomed to. Technical crits aren't my bag, but I can't wait to return next year.

The next day was more up my alley: a 70-mile road race through the rolling hills of Wisconsin. The sole objective was to support Ed and defend his lead in the overall. Unfortunately there were only two of us to do so, and we lost Matt around the 50th mile. I didn't race smart at all. I drilled it at all the wrong spots, and when it came time to chase a break, I didn't do it smoothly or cooperatively. Instead I twice found myself off the front by accident, where I would be useless. Meanwhile, other riders counted on the vast army of XXX riders -- both of us -- to be doing all the work.

There was a tricky, milelong stretch of chip seal where the road was covered with loose, sticky gravel. It began with an off-camber turn that hit us immediately with steep climb. Then came a long, straight descent that we took single-file at close to 40 mph. Gravel flew up in our wakes, requiring us to close our mouths lest we lose a tooth. I took several off the bridge of my nose. Someone remarked that the gravel bouncing off bikes sounded like storming a beach at D-Day: Ping! Ping! Ping!

Each time I had trouble turning into the hill. I'd always find a bad line and end up climbing up last, then scrambling to regain contact on the descent. The 7th time up, after 60 miles of racing, the gap was too big and I couldn't reintegrate. I rode the last lap alone and at times with another dropped rider before rolling in for 23rd place. (About 45 had started.)

The breakaway was never caught, and Ed had to settle for 8th place. It's a shame I didn't quite have the tactical know-how or fitness to make this work. I love races of attrition like this, and in many respects it wasn't all that different from April's great Hillsboro Roubaix. Oh well. Maybe next year.

Were I in proper fitness, Tuesday's race through the rolling roads of the Whitnall Park botanical gardens is another one that should have been up my alley. (I got fifth here in April.) Happily, early on I could tell that I was feeling better than the previous day. I was lingering at the back, sure, but I was able to make up dozens of positions on each climb.

But 4 miles in, I felt a strange wobble in my rear wheel. I might have been bumped. I might have slipped on a groove in the road. It might have been pyschosomatic. Regardless, I didn't feel right, and I didn't feel confident taking turns at speed. I didn't want to risk falling on my glass shoulder, let alone take anyone else out with me.

"Brian," I yelled to a teammate. "Is my rear wheel shaky?"

"Yes!" he said emphatically.

So I pulled off and tightened my skewer. I chased for a bit, but even with motopacing from the support vehicle, there was no hope of catching. I rode on for the training. Friends and teammates encouraged me on, but others merely averted their eyes as I rolled past in shame. After five laps I called it a day.

Brian, an honest man and a chaplain by trade, later told me he had lied. My wheel didn't look shaky at all, but he knew an emphatic "Yes" was the answer I needed at that moment. Sometimes there is greater truth in the lie.

Nonetheless, I spent the rest of the day in a dark place mentally. Watching the pros, with their lean legs and their Zipp wheels and their dexterous turns, I didn't feel like a cyclist myself. I felt like a guy with an expensive bike and better things to be doing.

I wanted to imagine this being fun again. I wanted to imagine having confidence.

Wednesday was more fun. Wednesday I was more confident. Wednesday I had fewer things I'd rather be doing.

After reeling off two consecutive second-place finishes, Ed woke up in first place overall. Nico and I would be riding in his defense at the proving grounds, the course where I cracked a rib two years ago.

It's not something I've had much chance to do, but this kind of riding is an aspect of the 3's I was looking forward to. In some respects, playing a role and riding for someone else is more fun and more satisfying than riding for yourself. It's just as hard -- harder? -- but there's less pressure and tactically it can be more interesting, and I've enjoyed watching the more experienced Nico selflessly and expertly thread Ed through crowded packs.

In the second of six 10-mile laps, I was sitting near the front and feeling good. The pack had just reeled in a two-man break, but I rode tempo to make ground on a solo rider who remained away. The guy who'd won the previous day on a long flier was off the front and out of sight.

"Take it easy," Ed said.

"No, that time trial dude is off the front. We gotta bring him back before he gets too far."

"No he's not," he said. "Look, the pace car is here. The pace car stays with the leaders. That means there's nobody off."

"The pace car could be wrong," I said. I was certain I'd seen this guy's bright yellow jersey slip away. "Look, you stay here. I'm going to float back and try to find him."

As the pack strung out on a descent, I coasted back, back and further back. Sure enough, riding last was my yellow jersey, and as I floated back one more position, it became me who rode last.

I spent the next three laps weaseling my way back up to the front. It was hard on the congested roads, and I can't deny I crossed the centerline, mostly out of necessity, occasionally out of greed, all the while knowing full well the danger, knowing full well the hypocrite it made me.

Finally I was near the front again, keeping an eye out for any last-lap attacks. I motored up to a few, but the one time I made a sudden acceleration, I cracked hard after a mere 5 seconds of hard effort.

Eventually a rider in green got away by himself. A handful of people traded pulls at the front, including Ed. I went up to relieve him. "That was your last pull," I said as he coasted by me. I wanted him to save himself for the finish.

When it was my turn, I slowly accelerated. Next thing I knew, I looked back and nobody was with me. I didn't mean to attack, I swear, but there I was in no man's land. This would be my last chance to be useful, so I plowed ahead toward the green beacon on the horizon.

I got about halfway across the gap when a Brone's rider I knew to be strong bridged to me. "I'm happy with third," I quickly conceded in order to keep him motivated, but it was wishful thinking. We were soon joined by a third, and after a single rotation we were swallowed by the peloton.

The effort cooked me, but I'd like to think it contributed to catching the escapee a few miles down the road. I stayed with the group until the final mile, where two tricky turns led us back into a racetrack for the finish. As expected, several riders tangled up on the first of these turns, and the gap it created was just the excuse I needed to soft-pedal the rest of the way.

As I crossed the finish line, I heard the announcer say "Oak Park," and I knew that Ed had won.

I'm back, sort of.

Ordinarily today's road race at Alpine Valley would have been my favorite of Superweek. But after two uncharacteristically challenging group rides last week -- getting dropped when I ought not to have gotten dropped, wheezing when I ought not to have be been wheezing -- I knew that I'd lost quite a bit of fitness since the Snake Alley crash in May. I'd be lucky to be pack fodder.

Within the first 5 of 60 miles I was on the brink. My heart rate soared to 193 in the flats. One single hard effort sent me floating to the back, where I clung to keep contact. I had mechanical worries, too. I got a bad case of speed wobbles on the first descent, and the bumpy second descent loosened the screws of my bottle cage.

Just as I was contemplating how to safely secure my cage, I heard a loud "Pisssssh" and felt pressure give away behind me. "It's me," I said and raised my hand for a new rear wheel from the support truck. Unfortunately I hadn't put a wheel in and there were no compatible wheels available. I wouldn't have been able to get back in the race anyhow, but it would have been nice to get a training ride in.

A rider from Austin, Texas, stopped to give me a lift back to the start/finish. I had a nice chat with him, then balanced the karma by taking Ed's car and giving an Australian rider a lift up the feed zone.

Maybe there's a good race in my future, but I doubt I'm going to get the fitness back this year. I haven't had any quality intensity in six weeks, just spotty endurance rides. I don't feel that taut invincibility that comes with being in shape. Maybe I'll be fine by August, but those are all short crits, and even at my peak I'd have trouble.

The good news is that the shoulder is fine. It didn't even cross my mind during the race, and it is now rare when it twinges or throbs.

And that's all fine. What I have lost in fitness I have gained in perspective. I felt happy out there, and I felt safe and protected in the fold. Maybe next year.

Waiting for Floyd

When life hands you lemons in June, I always say, buy a bike for the November cyclocross season.

This comes to me from Brian, who sold it to me for a song. Now I have no excuse to not race this winter, and it takes some of the pressure off of recovering in time for the road season.

The clavicle is healing well. I have almost full range of motion, although it often feels as though someone were pinching me. I still wear the sling, mostly to remind me not to reach for that top shelf, and to remind others not to pat me on the shoulder.

The worst part is the commute.

I must face away from the lake as I ride the bus. I can't bear to see so many people riding bicycles. I especially can't bear to see so many people riding poorly. "Booo!" I want to yell. "You shouldn't be out there! Yes, you! Riding that stupid cruiser with your iPod and flip-flops! That should be me out there!"

And then there's the time suck that the CTA is.

There are two kinds of commuters in Chicago: Those who like to get around town quickly, cheaply and conveniently, and then there are those who choose not to ride a bicycle.

Unless Ellen gives me a ride, I must budget an hour for the commute that would take 30 minutes on a bike (26 minutes if there's a tailwind). Ordinarily I can leave work at 6:30 p.m., get a 90-minute workout in and be home by 8. Now I still get home around 8, but by the time I've changed, filled my water bottles and pissed away some time at the computer, I'm getting on the trainer at 9 and finishing, dejected and unmotivated, around 9:45.

I've heard of people whose joints become barometers, warning of weather patterns days away. My shoulder has become a tachometer of sorts. As soon as my heart rate rises above 150 on the trainer, it begins to throb. I don't know whether it's the blood pulsing around the wound or whether it's the nub of the clavicle floating around. I'll ask my doctor at my check-up tomorrow.

"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."

WOPR, "War Games"

Snake Alley. Probably my favorite race of the year.

It takes a big man to win Snake Alley.

It takes a stronger man to sit it out for the sake of torrential rain.

I'm neither of those men.

I had a bad feeling about the race, not to mention a nightmare or two during the week, but I hadn't driven four hours to stand under an umbrella.

The rain stopped right before my race, but the roads were still soaked, and it disrupted my pre-race routine.

I'd been sulking over the weather ever since I left the house before dawn. I wasn't visualizing the climb or going over the mechanics of descending. It didn't even dawn on me to under-inflate my tires because of the rain, and I passed on Pieter's suggestion to use vinegar to keep the oil off my tires. (I don't know if this would improve grip, but he's Belgian, so he should know.)

My head was so unscrewed that I couldn't even clip in properly at the start. What was more troublesome, however, was how unbothered I seemed to be by it. A cyclist depends on urgency and lust, and I had neither.

I found the Snake impossible to climb, mentally so more than physically. My legs were fine. It was my head that couldn't work fast enough, and it frustrated me to not be able to pour my everything into my pedals.

Normally I would get out of the saddle, yank on the handlebars and bound like a gazelle. The bricks yielded too little traction, however. Too much force in any direction sent a rider sliding. Even sitting I had fits, and yanking on the handlebars would pull my front off the ground. Damn my new light bike! A pox on my 680-gram wheels!

Obviously other people were figuring it out because they were passing me. I lost even more ground on the turns of the descent, worthless, tentative descender that I am. On the second lap I braked heading into one turn and sent a spray of water into the rider behind me, who scolded me accordingly.

On the third lap I was gapped so badly by the bottom that I had nobody to follow and had to make my own line on the last corner. The turn worried me so much that I spent one second too many worrying about it and one second too few actually executing it. This was a physics test and by hesitating, I was failing.

I tried to lean to save the turn, but given the speed and slickness I lacked the nerve to lean far enough. My caution would be my downfall, literally.

As soon as I knew I wouldn't make it, I had two choices: Try to continue the turn and skid out at 35 mph? Or do I jam on the brakes and continue going straight?

I continued straight, straight into a hay bale. The bale saved my bike but I tumbled over, landing squarely on my left shoulder.

As I limped to the first-aid station, a second rider plowed into the exact same bale. But he was lucky: He shredded his skinsuit, but other than road rash he was fine. I would be another story.

An hour later I walked out of the hospital with my left arm immobilized. In my good hand I held a prescription for Vicodin and a diagnosis of a broken clavicle and separated joint.

(The immobilization device included a large foam strap around my waist. Two of me could fit in it, and the nurse struggled to fit it to my 150-pound frame. "It's not designed for cyclists," she said, part apology, part compliment. "It's for us corn-fed people of Iowa.")

I'll see an orthopedist this week, but the ER doctor said to expect to be out 5-8 weeks, plus 5-8 weeks more if surgery is required.

People will say, "It's a shame for things like this to happen to the nice guys." And they're right! It is a shame, and on behalf of nice guys everywhere, I'll note that it's really starting to piss me off.

And so now I spend Sunday morning listening to the Adagio in G minor, reading the Giro d'Italia ticker and generally feeling sorry for myself. I'm going through photos of people cycling and thinking, "That looks like it might be fun." I see a picture of someone raising both arms in the air and think, "That looks like it might be fun."

I'm trying to think of a worse time for this to have happened. In September, this would be a get-out-of-painting-free card and a welcome excuse to be lazy. But now, after hundreds of hours of winter training and spring preparation, I'm close to being on form. The season is coming into bloom. The weather is almost pleasant. I feel like a groom left standing at the altar.

Somewhat on a lark last week, I ordered the correspondence course to become a licensed cycling coach. I have no desire to coach, but I thought it might help me as a rider, and since I'm always doling out advice to newer riders, it might make sense to know what the hell I was talking about.

Suddenly I'll have plenty of time to study, as well as work on this other new project of mine, and do all the fun summer things that normal people do. And just think of all the entry-fee money I'll save. Yay.

Someone had some time on her hands.

By the next day she'd raided her own library to fill out the entire bookcase from red to purple.

On our fourth and final approach to the milelong, 700-foot climb of the Denzer road race, riders started saying their farewells and exchanging their final pleasantries, like prisoners on the morning of their trip to the firing squad, or soldiers heading once more into the breach. Many had had to catch back on after being dropped on the prior lap -- I was one of them -- and knew they would not be so fortunate this time.

All eyes were on Seth, Get a Grip's ace climber. It was no secret he'd be attacking on this climb. He advertised as much leading up. Sure enough, he set off early in the climb and the field shattered in his wake.

Ed and I urged each other on. I told him I didn't think I could hold on and thus it was up to him. He told me he didn't think he could hold on and thus it was up to me.

I was standing on the pedals and close to cracking when Ed started fading in earnest. Seth was floating away, but I knew I'd be OK if I just stuck with the lead bunch. I started to pre-emptively organize. "Let's take it easy and stay together," I said. "At the top we can paceline up to Seth and drop all the mopes behind us."

Indeed, a group of six formed at the top and we caught Seth, who'd sat up to wait for us. Ed was not among us. A half-mile down the road, the course took a soft, gravelly right at the bottom of a hill and hit a steep climb. It was here that Seth attacked again. And it was here that my gears misfired, costing me just enough momentum to lose the move.

I ended up alone between Seth's group of three and a group of three chasers. "Seth!" I screamed in desperation, but that just caused his group to accelerate. (I'd given the guy a ride two weeks earlier, and this was the thanks I get?) I made progress but I knew if I pushed any harder I'd risk cracking and lose everything, so I fell back to the chasers.

And that's how we finished. I thought I was doing a good job sucking wheel and being patient for the sprint for fourth place. When I jumped I unleashed a fury I've rarely unleashed in a race before. I felt great. Finally! Finally I was going to beat people in a sprint!

Alas, I unleashed it 2 seconds too early. The fury ran out 10 meters before the line. A rider came around my right. "Damn! Fifth place!" A second rider came around my left. "Damn! Sixth place!"

"Nice leadout," one of them said to me afterward, about as back-handed a compliment as one can give to someone you just beat in a sprint. I know I can work on my jump and be less stupid, but one needn't rub it in.

Ed said later that this was the first time he'd been dropped since our first ride at camp last year, when Randy, George and I rode away from him. He also said that that experience motivated his training for the next 12 months. I can only speculate how getting dropped in a race will motivate him.

"Everybody hates for a crash to happen," everybody says after a crash has happened, but it's not completely true.

Within a race, for example, there's no sweeter sound than that of mangled components -- if the sound comes from behind you. The surviving riders feel a small euphoria, for each crash means fewer people trying to take your prize.

Opportunistic riders accelerate at the sound of metal scraping against pavement. Part if it is the survival instinct, to get as far from danger as possible. But it's also a natural point of attack, to drive the stake deeper into the unfortunate.

The unscathed rider doesn't look back but secretly imagines the entire balance of the field writhing in a heap. He counts n riders ahead of him and fancies that the race has been reduced to n+1. Alas, even the worst-sounding crashes typically take out only one or two riders.

And photographers love crashes. We train our long lenses on each sprint, secretly hoping this will be the one that provides the perfect shot. The image of the unfortunate rider floating helplessly away from his bike is a decisive moment that carries as much portent and energy as Henri Cartier-Bresson's classic shot of the man leaping across the puddle. The proper crash photo, in which a hovering rider has not yet hit the ground but is about to, is a piece of kitsch that every cycling photographer dreams of adding to his collection.

In this case the unfortunate rider is Ansgar, one of the area's best sprinters but one who sometimes underestimates his own strength.

Ansgar was one of the first friends I made in racing. I confess that I enjoy crash porn such as this, but I do so only by knowing he walked away unscathed.

According to the time stamps on my photos, it took only 20 seconds from the time he started going down to when he was upright on the curb and beginning to laugh it off. In those 20 seconds his skipped across the ground like a plane ditching into a field. He must have gone 15 meters. If he'd gone 5 meters more, he might have salvaged a top-10 finish, but he ground to a halt just short of the line.

Something I enjoy about this series is the reaction of the spectators. Some recoil in horror. Others stand agape in disbelief. Some don't react at all. A father shields his children.

Speaking of wrecks, my body is a bit of one at the moment. At my team's practice time trial this morning, I had one of my worst times ever, 10 percent slower than this time last year. My head wasn't in it, and neither were my legs. I'm not sure what's going on. Perhaps staying up until 2 a.m. editing race photos wasn't a good idea?

Mind your safety pins, please.

Sunday's pro/1/2 race was my third of this years Monsters of the Midway, a popular criterium at the University of Chicago. My goal was simply to hang on as long as I could.

By the third lap I was lagging and having to get out of the saddle to close gaps I'd let form. Suddenly a loud clicking sound started coming from one of my wheels. It sounded like a baseball card slapping against the spokes. I figured one of my zip ties had come loose.

While I fussed with the noise, a gap grew to 10 meters, then 20 meters, and soon it was out of reach. Even if I could catch back on, the racket my bike made would make me an unwelcome guest.

I swung into the wheel pit. I checked my tires. If the problem was a flat, maybe I could steal someone's wheel (I hadn't put in any of my own) and jump back in. But both tires had full pressure, so no free lap for me. I walked over to the officials and drew a finger across my throat. I was done.

My first voluntary DNF.

When I got to my team's tent I examined my wheels more closely and found the source of the problem: a safety pin in the rear. Five minutes later the tire was completely flat.

I didn't have much to show for the other two races of the day, but they were still fun and productive for my team.

As we staged for the 30+ race, I saw a familiar face in a Delta Faucet kit. "Hey, wow, it's the Druber!" As in Mark Swartzendruber, national caliber time trialist and entertaining True Sport columnist. I'd been a fan of his ever since I got into this sport. His rants against "feckless weenies" were influential in my early development as a racer.

"Who's that?" someone asked.

"That's who's going to win this race," I said. "Hold his wheel and you might have a shot at second."

Sure enough, the 30+ race quickly established itself as a game of Follow the Druber. He led the field around the Midway like the Pied Piper leading so many rats.

With about 5 laps to go, Druber was off the front with three other riders. They seemed just the right distance away: far enough to be viable, but close enough to be reached. I got away from the peloton in the headwind and a lap later had successfully bridged. Phew! I had it made! My most triumphant, gutsiest move of the season!

But Druber was already pulling back the throttle. He was taking an unusually long pull but wasn't going terribly fast (I had caught on, after all), and the other riders in the break, myself included, weren't doing enough to encourage a faster pace. Sure enough, the pack caught us a lap later, with 2 to go.

As soon as we were caught, Druber instantly unleashed his real attack and solo'd the rest of the way. I and many others tried to catch his wheel as he departed but it was like catching a rocket with a butterfly net. I then tried a flyer with 1 to go but it went nowhere, and I rolled in at the back of the pack, not even bothering to get out of the saddle in the sprint.

There's not much to say about the 3's race. My job was to cover breaks, but none threatened to stay away. In the final laps I'd hoped to help string it out to give our sprinters room to work, but I didn't have enough leg left to even get to the front, much less get there and drill it, so I was pretty much useless. The team, however, got second, fourth and seventh, the best collective result of the season.

Next week: Another crack at Baraboo.

After not racing for a month, I persuaded Ellen to lend me her car so I could go to Milwaukee and do the Whitnall Park criterium, mostly just to stay sharp ahead of next week's target race in Baraboo.

Whitnall Park is a milelong crit course with three small climbs in quick succession. The first comes after after a sharp right turn, the second puts you into a stiff headwind, and the third deposits you at the start/finish line. King of the Mountain points are available on laps 4, 7 and 10.

With the wind as stiff as it was, I didn't expect anything would stay away. Since I was without teammates, I knew my only chance was to sit in and be patient. I knew it would be a waste to burn any matches early. I knew I should stay as anonymous as possible.

Knowing all this, then, it surprised me to be trying to cover anything that moved in the first few laps. What can I say? Sometimes in a race my body has a mind of its own. Why do I chase everything? For the same reason the scorpion strikes the frog: It is our nature, doom us though it may.

About three laps in a Homegrown Racing rider was alone off the front. I hopped onto the wheel of a second Homegrown as he moved to bridge up. Just as we got clear I noticed the first guy was already fading. Great. Another wasted move. Ten minutes in I already felt my race was done. I started to anticipate the ribbing I'd face from racing friends afterward. "What were you thinking? Who let a bonehead like you into Cat 3?"

When we caught Homegrown No. 1, he revived. But even though the three of us worked well together, I didn't expect us to get anywhere, for surely the pack wouldn't let two teammates get off together. Since we were approaching the first King of the Mountain lap, however, I figured I'd help keep the break going for that and score some points, then try to get lucky later on, after we'd been absorbed back into the pack's unsympathetic maw.

I won the KoM, and in the next lap we lost one of the Homegrown riders. He was replaced by four more riders in the pack, including two Get a Grip riders. One of them would be dropped, so we ended up with a group of five: me, Homegrown, Steven from Get a Grip, a Baraboo Shark and an unattached.

It took a while but we got a good paceline going. Our gap rose and fell: 30 seconds one lap, 20 the next, then back up to 30. Each time we headed up the first hill we peeked back to see how close the field was. If they were closer than the previous lap, we went faster. If they were farther away, we let up a bit.

Steven urged us to be neutral for the second KoM lap. Many a break has died when the riders get greedy for primes. But I wanted the points, so Steven arranged for me to take it uncontested. This kept our momentum going and effectively clinched KoM for me.

There's a point in every breakaway where the objective stops being to stay away and starts being to win. There's a point where even I have to stop being nice and go for the throat. In most of my successful breaks -- all four of them -- I am late to realize that this point has arrived. While I'm trying to keep the tempo up and cajoling others into working together, everyone else is smartly skipping pulls and plotting their endgame.

Coming up the hills on the penultimate lap, it finally registered with me that we were away for good and that I should start scheming. I decided to experiment by soft-pedaling and letting a gap open in front of me, thereby letting Steven and the unattached rider float away. Homegrown and the Shark had been conserving their pulls, so I wanted to make them work.

They showed no interest in chasing, so the gap grew. As the bell rang ahead of us, however, the leaders were stalling on the final hill, so I jumped. I got clear and caught them by surprise. With a lap to go, I was on my own. This was a brilliant, brilliant move.

Or it would have been, had it worked. Instead, Steven caught me on the descent. We worked a little bit together, but not well enough to hold off the others.

As we started up the three climbs, the cat-and-mouse game started in earnest. Steven was first, I was second, the three others sat on my wheel. We slowed to a crawl as we hit the wind. In front, Steven kept looking back as though he'd dropped something. Suddenly he jumped. I hesitated and missed my chance to grab his wheel.

At this point I had a choice. Do I chase, or do I sit? I could chase after him, but in this wind, all that would accomplish would be to pull the other opponents to the finish. So I thought: "Well, Steven is a nice guy. He worked hard in the break. I'll let him go. Either he'll stay away, or the others will chase and I can grab their wheels and let them tow me to victory."

Fortunately for Steven but unfortunately for me, the other opponents didn't respond until it was too late. I jumped with them, but I couldn't pass. Steven crossed the line with arms raised. My throw was too late, so I settled for fifth, last in our group.

I could have won, I know it, but I'm not sure exactly how. I'm still trying to unlock that puzzle. (As I've mentioned before, it's puzzles like this one that make cycling so fascinating.) In any case, knowing that it is possible to win is one of the most important steps in a racer's development, and I'm glad I got there so early in the season.

Fifth place earned me $10, and King of the Mountain earned me a $10 gift certificate and a box of Clif bars. After the entry fee and the flowers I'd buy Ellen for giving me the car, I just about broke even for the day.

One of our destinations in Milwaukee was the Lakefront Brewery. Five dollars gets you a tour and tokens redeemable for 32 ounces of beer. Bartenders casual about taking tokens gets you 32 ounces more.

The tour is about 10 minutes long. About one minute is devoted to learning about hops, wort and the biological miracle that is beermaking. The other nine minutes consist of the tour guide cracking wise about bungholes, making fun of the frat boys just there for the cheap beer (especially those who had already been on the Miller tour that morning), and dancing to the theme song from "Laverne & Shirley."

Her shtick was pretty funny, and the guy standing next to me was in stitches. He had a very distinctive laugh, a resonant, appreciative laugh. His laugh, in fact, sounded a lot like that of Dan, a guy I knew in college. He even bore a passing resemblance. But it couldn't be Dan. Dan was in Ohio.

As we moved on to the next round of taps, I said to Sandy, "Does that guy resemble Dan, or what?"

"Hey, that is Dan!"

And so it was. Of all the breweries, in all the towns, in all the world, he walks into ours!

At the Milwaukee Art Museum

Upon returning to the city from Saturday's race, sweat salt still caked on our brows, Mike and I headed to Logan Square's Mutiny, a dive bar renowned for having a urinal the size of a phone booth, for the debut of IRO Sprints, an event put on by the local messenger/hipster/fixed-gear scene.

We were both out of our element -- our element being considerably quieter, squarer and less smoky -- but it felt like an important cultural exchange, like America shipping teenagers to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Our team is trying to help messengers get involved in sanctioned racing, and the messengers no doubt feel out of their element whenever they're surrounded by gratuitous Lycra and carbon fiber. Participating in one of their events was the least we could do in return.

The format was simple: Two track bikes are positioned on rollers, their forks mounted to a stationary stand, their rear wheels wired into a laptop. The rollers offer zero resistance, so the contest is to see who can most quickly spin 36 times, the equivalent of a 250-meter sprint at the velodrome. The spins get ridiculously fast and violent. Progress is projected onto a wall. Winners advance to the next round; losers go drink some PBR. Meanwhile, a rowdy, inebriated crowd is screaming at the riders to go faster.

The set-up was very impressive, as was the stone-soup way in which it came to be. As I understand it, one person wrote the computer code from scratch, someone else designed a GUI, someone else got the frames donated from manufacturer IRO, and various others cobbled together the necessary parts and know-how and put it all together, all in less time than it takes an Amish village to raise a barn.

The bar was crowded and hot, the punk music was deafening, and two days later my jeans still reek from the cigarette smoke, but it was the most fun I've ever had on one wheel.

I didn't even do that well. What do you expect from a climber? I squeaked by the first round, then got crushed in the second. (Between heats I sneaked to Ellen's car to wolf down a Clif Bar, which I think violated IRO Sprints etiquette on multiple levels.) Mike got into the quarterfinals, but after he got beat at 2 a.m., we were both too exhausted to see things to their end.

The Hillsboro Roubaix is one of most anticipated road races in the Midwest. It fills up fast and draws riders from Missouri to Wisconsin.

Its inspiration is Paris-Roubaix, perhaps the most legendary one-day race in the world, otherwise known as "Hell of the North" or "Queen of the Classics."

Like Paris-Roubaix, Hillsboro's principle feature is a long stretch of brick, unmaintained brick littered with ruts and potholes and gravel.

Riding over the brick is bad enough, but you also enter it coming out of a long descent and, on this particular day, aided by a 20 mph tailwind. One second you're screaming down a hill at 40 mph and then you hit the "pavé" and suddenly your bike is bucking you like a mechanical bull at a Texas honky-tonk.

Between the bricks, the hills and the ridiculous crosswinds, I knew this race, a combined 3/4 field, would be a brutal affair. It would also be my first serious race as a Cat 3 and at 66 miles my longest.

I couldn't help but think of a training ride I went on with a local Cat 3 team last fall. They dropped me in the first 10 miles. That was a casual training ride. How on earth could I fare any better in competition?

Hovering over all this uncertainty was the threat of thunderstorms, the chance of which hit as high as 60 percent. The only thing I knew for sure was that his would be a race of attrition that would spit people out the back from start to finish. I just wanted to be spit out last. My strategy would be to sit in, hang on and hope for the best.

I spent most of the first lap near the back. The roads were narrow and the field was large. It was impossible to move up through the congestion. At the back we felt the brunt of the frequent braking and surging, and we had to fight the hardest to not get gapped in the crosswinds.

I touched base with Seth from Get a Grip. We shared the same frustration over the braking. "Are all Cat 3 races like this," I asked, "or is this just because there are so many Cat 4's in the field?" He could only shrug. Fortunately Seth is a smart, agile rider. As we approached the two hills that led into town at the end of the first lap, I followed his wheel as he navigated his way up to the front. I suddenly had breathing room.

Approaching the same two hills at the end of the second lap, I predicted to Ed that Seth, an excellent climber, would attack. Sure enough, he did. I scrambled up the second hill to catch him, as did Ed and a few others. We rattled our way across the bricks with no regard for bike, limb or dental fillings and soon enough were with Seth and tried to get a paceline together. As soon as it had begun, however, Seth saw that the field was right on our heels and smartly called off the effort. The good news was that the pack exiting town was a little bit smaller than the pack that had entered it.

It was on this trip through town that I learned that there was someone well off the front. I had no idea.

Starting the third lap I rode some tempo and attacked once. At one point we had a very viable group of a dozen, including myself and two teammates, but none of the others wanted to work, and the field caught us. By this time, however, the field was down to about 30. Mark, Ed and I were the only ones from our team.

Two and a half hours into the race, I kept up the pressure into the headwind, figuring that there were some dangerous riders that could catch back on if the pack relaxed. But 20 seconds into any hard effort my left hamstring and quads would cramp up. I would make do with those 20-second bursts: I'd go to the front, drive the tempo, cramp up and retreat back into the sanctuary of the draft ... and then I would do it all over again.

During one such effort someone asked, "Are you attacking, or are you just going faster?" I think he was making fun, and indeed it's one of my weaknesses: It is sometimes hard to tell whether I'm attacking or "just going faster."

Riders started to slip off the front. I was in no condition to chase or bridge. When Seth and a Mesa rider got a good gap together, I asked Ed whether he wanted to be up there with them. I figured I could jump and get him halfway there. But he declined. Sure enough, they would stay off, thanks to some solid blocking from their teammates, and I think both Ed and I would regret his decision.

Normally I would think about trying to wait to lead Ed out at the end, but with my cramping I didn't think I would be useful in a sprint. So I reported my condition to Ed and went back to driving the tempo as well as I could, hoping to pop more and more riders off the back.

Finally we neared town. Quietly Ed sneaked off the front and started to drift away as we hit the hills. Mark and I went up front to soft pedal, the only job a guy with cramped quads can perform, thus vexing the chase. Few had the energy to come around, and I moved into the path of any that did. Ed's lead grew. "Go, Ed!" I screamed into the wind. "Go!"

Finally people surged past us as we hit the bricks. I mentally urged Ed on. Mark and I were sacrificing our results and we were happy to do so, but it would only be worth it if Ed could hold people off.

Which he did, of course, finishing a few seconds ahead of everyone else to get sixth place. I held my own in the sprint and despite getting boxed and not knowing where the finish line was got 11th.

Given the situation it was textbook teamwork. What impresses me most is how it came to be almost telepathically. We never talked about what we would do in such a scenario. Nonetheless, Ed knew exactly when to go, and Mark and I knew exactly what to do in response. It's only a shame that five people had already gotten away.

So, a successful start to the season. This was one of the hardest races I've ever done, but the Hillsboro Roubaix earns its designation as "spring classic" and joins Snake Alley and the Circuit of Sauk in my list of favorites. I need to figure out why I cramped up, but I think I can stop worrying about getting dropped.

Belmont Harbor.

When the audience enters the theater for a performance of "Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind," cast members ask them their name to put on a nametag. The cast member is listening to very loud music on headphones, however, so the name written on the nametag is a random word that has no bearing on whatever the person actually said.

Last night my nametag read, "Hello, my name is Road Rash."

I considered that an anti-omen and wore it to today's races, the last of the Parkside series.

The first race after a crash is always terrifying. It becomes impossible to conceive of any outcome other than a crash. Your mind files through all the possible bad ends: Skidding out on gravel. Hooking handlebars. Crossing wheels. It becomes an act of faith that, yes, you actually enjoy doing this.

Fortunately, the anxieties recede once you are rolling.

The masters race seemed a little faster than last week's, and after many aborted attempts, a small break got off. Randy, tired from a long break in the 40+ race, successfully slingshot Mark up to a chase group. I hopped on to a strong wheel and got a free ride up to Mark. If we could catch the leaders, this would stick.

At Randy's tactics seminar this week, he emphasized one point more than any other: When you are in the break, Don't. Get. Dropped. This was on my mind as we traded pulls, but when I took a long pull out of Turn 2, thinking a long pull with the wind would absolve me from working into it, my mind was writing a check my legs couldn't cash.

Both Mark and I were soon dropped. We fought hard in no-man's land, but soon the pack swallowed us up, and our team now had nobody in what would indeed be the winning break.

The 3's race, my first since upgrading, was fairly uneventful. I tried to stay patient and sit in the pack. I think I tried only three doomed attacks, which may be a record low. Each of them withered upon hitting the wind like a vampire stepping into the sun.

It was hard to sit in. I felt a lack of control and power. I had to keep reminding myself that given the wind and the composition of the field, any attempts to go off the front would perish as surely as mine did.

On the last lap I was able to position myself ahead of two teammates, another goal for the race, but I jumped way too late, and they didn't have the gas to come around anyhow. We rolled in 12th, 13th and 14th.

Despite two mediocre placings, I was happy with my sprints, and especially happy to have kept the rubber side down, the shiny side up. I timed them poorly, but I was on top of my gears and navigated well. Not a single person passed me. I just didn't pass enough of them.

Afterward the Get a Grip rider who held me off in the 3's said he read my blog, the second person to say so on the day. "I like it," he said. "I reminds me of when I was just starting out."

Just starting out? This is my third year with this nonsense. But it's true: I still don't know what the hell I'm doing. I wonder whether it's my writing or my riding that betrays that fact.

Parkside is a good fitness check. I obviously have a lot of work to do to get on form.

Parkside's also a nice indicator of progress. Teammates who got spat out the back last year were involved in the sprint this time around. Teammates who finished in the pack last year were now involved in the podium. Everyone had a lot to be proud of, and everyone who was just starting has a lot to look forward to.

I wasn't always a weight weenie, but here you go. Supposedly the bottle cage on the right, one of many great deals Marcus at Yojimbo's helps us with, saves me a few grams, but the difference is too slight to register on the kitchen scale. And yet having them makes me happy.

My bike is already back following Sunday's crash. Johnny Sprockets was able to turn me around in a single work day, this despite a workshop and basement stacked with bikes brought in for spring tune-ups and cobweb removals.

I don't know whether it's because I'm a racer or because I sometimes bring them beer or because they know I'll blab about them on my blog, but they're always conscientious about getting me back on the road as soon as possible.

There was good news: No major cosmetic damage, and only the right shifter needed to be replaced. Just my luck, Shimano had mis-sent a bunch of right Dura-Ace shifters, so they let me have one on the cheap, and they advised me to continue crashing on the drive side.

Like all race reports, this one would be much better if I could remember everything.

The Parkside criteriums are insignificant races -- they're short, and there's no money on the line -- but they're eagerly awaited because after five months without racing, everyone is keen to shake the off-season out of their legs. And since the riders are so rusty, it's an excellent chance to get the annual crash out of the way.

For me, it would be my first chance to, as one of my favorite cycling expressions goes, "turn the pedals in anger" on my new racing bike.

My first race was the masters open. It was a big field, although absent was Robbie Ventura, the former pro who the week before had been there with his Vision Quest minions. It was only 40 degrees and windy. Reportedly he's a fair-weather Parksider.

The race was fast but smooth. I stayed active near the front and got in one break that I thought was viable, but by the time the bell was rung, it was clear that things would be settled in a bunch sprint.

With a half lap to go, Ed was a few spots ahead of me. I didn't have any other teammates nearby, but I was in good position, about eighth wheel. Four were off the front and were about to be reeled in. We strung ourselves out in chase.

Two bikes ahead of me, a Team Mack rider started to fade. A gap opened ahead of him. I accelerated up the right to leapfrog him into the next draft. He, meanwhile, looked over his left shoulder for help and drifted to his right, right into my path. I had nowhere to go. I tried to bail onto the curb but failed, wiping out at 30 mph and tumbling onto the grass.

My shifters splayed at unnatural angles, but I was fine. People asked if I was OK. I frantically waved them on to the finish line.

Mike Stanley stopped to help and offered his bike to use in the Cat 3 race. I joked that I supposed this would be my free lap. We walked back to my team's staging area.

It's there that I said, "Guys, I'm starting to forget things."

At least, this is what I'm told I said. From the point Mike and I started to walk back, I remember nothing up until when I found myself strapped onto a board in an ambulance.

I hadn't passed out but I was very sleepy. By now I couldn't remember anything about how I got there. I could remember the crash -- Team Mack, argh! -- but not how I got to the race, or what I did that morning, or what I did the previous day. I could remember what day it was, but only because like all race days, March 18 was indelibly circled in my mental calendar.

I could remember I did not like my job but I could not remember how to do it, so I figured the upside of this would be getting a sick day or two.

Things started to come back by the time I arrived at the hospital. I waited in an examination room, anxious for Ellen to show up so she could help fill in the memory holes. Also, so I could put on pants. I was getting cold.

When she arrived I told her about the last time this happened. "When I was 13 I crashed while dirt biking and had a concussion," I said. "This feels a lot like that."

"Honey, you already told me that. Twice."

Surely if I'd told her that I would have remembered it. "Don't be ridiculous!" I roared. "Now you're just making fun of me." I thought it pretty funny of her. Nurses peeked in to see why I was laughing so hard.

They took a few X-rays and a CT scan. Then we waited in the exam room for an hour, eating figs and watching college basketball.

Finally the doctor popped in and confirmed I was fine. Probably a minor concussion, but nothing to worry about. Contrary to my expectation, Ellen wouldn't have to wake me up every two hours to make sure I was still alive. This relieved her greatly.

There was nothing the emergency room could do about my shifters or ripped shorts, so we headed back to the city, first stopping for frozen custard, the highlight of any trip to Wisconsin.

I recently read "The Echo Maker," an excellent novel about Capgras Syndrome, a disorder marked by the inability to recognize loved ones. In the book, the victim emerges from a brain trauma and can't recognize his sister or his dog. He insists they have been replaced by an impostors. Despair ensues.

Even though I couldn't find my keys this morning, I'm so far recognizing everyone, loved and unloved. This episode, however, was a fascinating peek into the mysteries and fragility of the brain. I certainly didn't feel crazy, but to Ellen my insistence that I'd never told her about my spill on the dirt bike was as sane as the guy with the sandwich board who strolls Michigan Avenue insisting that our government has been replaced by Russian spies.

A day later I hurt only in the shoulder where I received a tetanus shot. Weather permitting I'll be back out there next Sunday. I'll be the one giving Team Mack a wide berth.

I bumped into this guy on my ride this morning near Diversey Harbor, whose sheet of ice was still thawing and breaking up. His name is Ioseph. "I am from Russia," he said, "but I am a Jew." He also said he swims there every Saturday, but it's hard for him to find friends to join him.

It was a pleasant encounter, and it almost made up for the rear axle that broke on me. And the banana that exploded in my bag. And the treacherous black ice and ominous radio warnings of "freezing fog," which sounded like a spell out of "Harry Potter."

A year later: a new color in the hallway, better hair and a smile.

"We've already established what you are, ma'am. Now we're just haggling over the price."

George Bernard Shaw

If I've been quiet lately it's because I've spent the new year shopping for a new racing bike, and it's hard to type when you are wringing your hands.

Ellen chides me not just for wringing my hands over such things -- instead of wringing, I in fact wave my hands at my sides; we call them, lovingly, the "jazz hands of anxiety" -- but also for spending so much money on a new bike when I'm too cheap to hire a plumber to fix my toilet, which has had flushing problems for more than a year and whose solution has eluded me.

But that's easy to reconcile. I hope to spend 10 to 15 hours a week on any bike I get. I won't spend nearly that long on the toilet, knock on wood.

A person must keep his prorities in order.

Choosing the right bike is important, and not just in terms of finding the right mix of speed, comfort and value. It has to say something about you, and it must speak clearly and accurately.

When we all dress alike and conceal ourselves behind sunglasses, our bikes are our nametags. For the several years you ride a certain bike, it will define you, making you either a Trek man or an Orbea man or a Fuji man or an [obscure Italian manufacturer] man, a man made of either carbon or aluminum, steel or titanium. It shouldn't matter, but it does.

Then there's the route you take to buy it. To some, there is cachet in finding a good frame and building it up yourself, like Roy Hobbs and his mystical baseball bat. To others, the fun is the hunt, scouring the secondary markets of Craigslist, eBay and that friend of a friend who works for the cycling magazine.

I'm neither of these. I'm not a tinkerer, and I find value in supporting the local bike shops. So I limited my search to two or three shops that have done good things for me in the past. I wanted something already built up that I could test ride, and from a source I could hold accountable should anything go wrong.

Buying my first racing bike two years ago was easy. Back then I didn't know anybody or anything. I simply walked to the corner shop, stated my price range and rode three frames that fell within my boundary. The result was a Jamis Quest with Ultegra components. It was steel and I would eventually come to loathe its weight, but it has crashed well and proven to be an outstanding starter bike.

Now, however, I still don't know anything, but my boundary is a little higher, and I'm friends with dozens of bike snobs, each of whom has his own biases and each of whom is happy to tell me exactly what to do.

I received much counseling from one particular teammate, who loved carbon, and my Cat 1 co-worker, who thought I'd be a fool to ride anything but aluminum. "Don't ride anything," he would say, "that, when you crash, will make you cry."

Just when I was convinced I needed to go carbon I'd go to work and be swung in the other direction. Then I'd talk to my teammate again and be convinced that aluminum would on the first long ride rattle my arms right out of their joints.

It was an unnerving yo-yo, and I quickly tired of any sentence that began, "What you need to do is ..."

One bike I tried was a Cannondale Six13. Its frame was both aluminum and carbon, which would make everyone happy, maybe even me. It felt great and had great components. But even with a generous discount from the shop, it was a little bit out of my price range.

Then I found the same bike on eBay, new, for $1,000 less. I forwarded the link to Ed, just to see what he thought. I wanted to support a local shop, but $1,000 was a lot of money. It could hire a lot of plumbers. I like to support local bookstores, too, but like George Bernard Shaw's female conversation partner, I can't say no to Amazon, if the price is right.

That night I got a voice message from Ed. It was broken up but it sounded like he was giggling. It also sounded like he was telling me he'd just bid on the Six13 for me and hoped I didn't mind.

It was an audacious thing for him to do. A normal person would have been outraged, but somehow I felt relief. For the moment I no longer had to make any decision about which bike to get or from where. With 24 hours to go in the bidding, my fate was now in destiny's hands, exactly where I like it.

With an hour to go we were outbid, and I declined to make further offers of my own. I was willing to use eBay to save $1,000 over a local shop, but not $500. (What do you take me for, Mr. Shaw?)

I continued to wring my hands all week. Then on Friday I called my guy at Johnny Sprockets, the corner shop, to ask about the Specialized Tarmac I'd ridden and liked. I nervously told him that I'd found it at a rival shop for $300 less. Could he match the price?

He called me back the next morning. Since the other shop's bike was a different size, he couldn't match the price, but he could sex it up for me. And so he did: Dura Ace where there was Ultegra, Ultegra where there was 105, 200 grams where there were 220. These were exactly the sort of upgrades I was going to ask for anyhow and for which I was prepared to pay more.

Her name is Leslie.

She's two years old and is not going to turn any heads, but I'm not going to cry when I crash at Parkside and she splits in two. I couldn't be happier.

I will grant each of my advisers exactly one chance to criticize my purchase. If they bring it up further, I will politely tell them to kiss my hairy ass.

Speaking of which, I'm now going to try again to fix that toilet.

9 dinner guests, 7 menu items, 2 fondue pots, 1 smoke-filled kitchen. Happy 2007.

For several years I have been saving my pennies, emptying my pockets each night before bed. In doing so I have filled a pickle jar, a peanut jar and about 10 percent of a Carlos Rossi wine jug.

For several months Ellen has been asking me to get rid of those silly penny jars. She wanted me to redeem them at the Coinstar and then do something fun with the proceeds.

I was reluctant. I harbored this fantasy that one day my nephew would visit. What if it rained and we couldn't go to the zoo or the park or the bar? We could stay home, count pennies and learn about the rewards of thrift! Because surely nephews love counting pennies, almost as much as uncles love nephews who do chores.

Finally I relented, but stealthily and without Ellen's knowledge.

As I walked to the grocery store, my messenger bag groaned from the weight of the jars. The Coinstar there was defective and counted only one of every five pennies, of which I had thousands. Every few minutes I had to take handfuls of rejects and reload them into the intake hopper. The transaction took about 45 minutes. Meanwhile, the machine shook like an epileptic R2 unit, hemorrhaging pennies into the aisle.

The clatter reverberated through the Jewel. I scrambled to nab coins that had rolled away. I heard clerks and shoppers raising their voices to be heard above the disturbance, and I felt their accusing stares: "Who's that asshole with the pennies?"

This asshole with the pennies ended up $50 to the good. I took it in the form of Amazon credit, which enabled me to afford Ellen's Christmas present: an iPod. I miss my penny jars, and if my nephew ever visits on a rainy day we will have to play poker or fold laundry instead of any penny-related merriment, but it was worth it to see her face light up Monday as she tore through the newspaper in which I had wrapped my gift.

Then it was my turn to open her gift, and my greatest fears were realized: She had sold her entire CD collection -- in order to buy me a coin-sorting machine!

Ho ho! That last part is not true, but a day later my witty reimagining of the "Gift of the Magi" still makes me laugh. (O. Henry? Oh, brother!)

In truth, Ellen and her family spent the weekend burying an undeserving me with chocolates, casseroles and various wrapped delights. The highlight was a scarf made with yarn Ellen and I had selected this August at a rural Arizona truck stop/trading post/yarn emporium, a magic scarf that somehow keeps me warm even when it does not slither around my neck.

Homemade gifts are always the best, of course. I had hoped to make her an MP3 player out of twigs, plastic bottles and other found objects, but I could not find enough lithium ions for the battery and had to abandon the project just as I'd finished soldering the circuit board.

Mom, from behind a model plant in the children's room at the Garfield Park Conservatory.

Women's cyclocross, Jackson Park.

I went riding Thursday, enjoying what was surely the best weather we'll have until May. I haven't ridden more than an hour in six weeks, so it was going to be a short, easy ride with Mark. Then Ansgar joined us, and nothing is easy when Ansgar is pulling. Then Soren showed up in Highland Park, and it's never short when Soren is leading the way. It turned into a challenging 4-hour ride -- and one of the year's best.

Afterward I celebrated Turkey Day by eating at the Turkish restaurant around the corner.

I'm not yet excited about the long, boring rides of base training. I've been following Seth, a collegiate Cat 3 studying and training in Germany. Last week he rode 31 hours. Between the weather, work and my inability to stand more than two hours on the trainer, I'll be lucky to get in a few 15-hour weeks this winter. 31?

Cyclocross in Jackson Park. Just like last year, I wished I were out there. Even the people who got lapped seemed to be having fun. Heck, even the guy puking against a tree after his race seemed to have had a good time.

My excuse for spectating was that I don't have a proper cross bike, but the course was flat enough that if it were a little drier and I hadn't forgotten my cycling shoes at work, I would have pulled a Super Rookie and ridden it on my Steamroller, fixed gear be darned.

In other cycling news, the off season is officially over. Ellen took me to the Y this morning and introduced me to the weight-lifting regimen I should be doing for the next 12 weeks. Afterward I didn't puke against a tree, but I was a little wobbly riding my bike to work.

The people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalogue ...

You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you've got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug.

Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you.

Chuck Palahniuk, "Fight Club"

We've been decorating.

My apartment's previous owner was an artist. Judging from the work she did in what would become my home, it made sense for her to hold a day job.

The worst atrocity was the living and dining area: orange, yellow and red walls ... in sponge paint. "Tuscan hell," Ellen calls it.

Instead of painting one room one hue and the second room the other, the artist organized the color scheme diagonally, thinking the resulting optical illusion would make the rooms look bigger. (She thought wrong.) She also had either the negligence or the hubris to paint over the light switches, vent registers and, intentionally or not, half the woodwork. Despite all efforts to eradicate them, specks of red and yellow will forever remind me of her talents.

Few house guests have entered and not commented. Kind people say, "Your paint is ... interesting." Honest people say, "What ugly walls you have. And what idiot painted on the diagonal?"

But I have high tolerance for such atrocities. Yes, each time I looked at these walls was a small pain, but that small daily pain multiplied over the four years I've lived there did not approach the big pain and time suck I expected a painting project to be. I'd rather ride my bicycle.

Ellen adjusted the calculus. When I wasn't looking she spackled and applied primer, and soon enough I was playing with online color pickers. Good-bye, Tuscan hell. Hello, "Rejuvenate" green and "Blue Fox" blue.

Several weeks later, I must concede that the new rooms look great. We haven't even finished touching up or moving furniture and they look great, and I'm grateful that Ellen had the courage and patience to put up with my fussiness and hand-wringing.

But Pandora's box has been opened. Now that the living area looks livable, the yellow hallway stands out like a yellow, gangrenous thumb. Once we tackle the hallway, I expect the bathroom will need work. And then the bedrooms. And then the kitchen. By then it may be time to rejuvenate "Rejuvenate."

It didn't end with the painting. This week we went to Ikea. I had the brilliant idea of going on a Sunday afternoon while most of Chicago would be watching the Bears game. Surely we could be in and out within three hours.

What I'd forgotten is that while one can go in Ikea in three hours or go out of Ikea in three hours, nobody in the history of low-cost home furnishings has ever done both, not even on a game day. We returned home at 6:30.

Much time was spent considering drapes to go with the new color scheme. It came down to a question of boring. Ellen is anti-boring. I, however, am emphatically not.

What she sees as boring I see as "neutral." I see nothing wrong with being neutral. Neutral is flexible. It doesn't offend. It doesn't have to be replaced every few years.

Switzerland is neutral. Who doesn't love the Swiss, from their watches to their misses? I spent 24 hours in Zurich once. It was indeed boring, but nice. I'd spend the rest of my days there if I could.

And just as a neutral country never risks being on the wrong side of history, so do neutral aesthetics avoid falling on the wrong side of fashion. A person who never goes out on a limb with the cut of his pants never has to look at 10-year-old photos and say, "What on earth was I thinking?" (Then again, a person who does not blog never risks having to say that either.)

There were tense moments among the drapes when Ellen was holding fast to flamboyant patterns while I clung to understated solids. "Why do you hate everything I suggest?" one of us said, taking the words out of the other's mouth. In the end we compromised: solid orange layered atop white-on-white floral prints. She got her flamboyance, I got my solids.

And they will be the last drapes I will ever need in my life.

Ellen has often said that there's nothing wrong with me that $200 in clothes and a proper haircut couldn't fix, a diagnosis that reveals either her charity or her lack of imagination.

A few visits to Banana Republic have addressed the first problem, but the hair ... the hair ...

In the 25 years since I last hopped onto the kitchen stool for a haircut from Mom, I've patronized white man's barbershops exclusively, independent joints with baseball on the radio, ashtrays by the coffee pot and porn under the Newsweeks. I've been seeing the same guy for six years. He isn't interesting or funny or even very good, but he is as close as he is cheap, and the end result is always adequate for me. I don't have to look at it, after all.

But Ellen does, and in six months she has earned the right to veto certain grooming and lifestyle decisions. (See also "beard, off-season" and "whities, tighty.") Thus when I returned from the barber a few months ago with a speck of blood behind my ear -- it was just a nick; didn't even notice it myself -- she promptly vetoed any further visits to my guy, barbers' proud heritage of bloodletting notwithstanding.

Last week, then, I made my first appointment to a salon. Ellen's hairdresser recommended a spot near the Belmont El, a trendy place where one can also get tattoos, dyes and whatever it is that the goth kids inflict upon themselves. It sounded intimidating. (It's true: I'm 31 and am still frightened of the cool kids. Zombies? Mummies? Amway reps? Pish. It's student-body presidents and punk rockers that keep me up at night.)

I was nervous from the first step up the narrow stairway to the second floor. Given a choice, I'd climb the gallows with greater mirth. Entering the salon, it was clear that, as is often the case, I was the square in the room. I fidgeted in the waiting area, as if I were waiting for a dentist or a first date. As I was escorted to my stylist's station, I bumped into someone I knew -- someone who has always had very good hair, it should be noted -- but I was too jittery to make conversation. "Hey! Good to see you! Gotta go!"

My new stylist had a shaved head himself and looked like the type who ate live bats for lunch, but he was jolly enough. He asked what I wanted.

"Short and low maintenance. And my girlfriend says what I need is 'texture.' I assume she's talking about my hair."

"Don't worry," he said, patting my shoulders. "I'll take care of you."

"What kind of product do you usually use?" he asked a few minutes later.

"'Product?' None." I didn't volunteer that I usually shampoo with Suave, don't own a hairdryer and use conditioner only when I am the guest of someone who owns some.

"Don't worry," he repeated. "I'll take care of you."

And so he did. After a while he commented on how quiet I was. "My girlfriend says that, too." But I wasn't sure what commonalities we had to discuss. I could only presume he didn't care to hear about my cycling, and I wasn't all that curious in what he used to wax his eyebrows.

The rest was fine. He even washed my hair, something I like but that my guy doesn't do. All in all the experience wasn't that different from any other haircut. The main difference was that it cost twice as much as my guy. He certainly didn't take twice as long, nor did he cut it twice as short. Is it better? Sure. Probably. Maybe. (I'm not a very good judge of new haircuts.) But is it twice as good?

At least he didn't make me bleed. Now, however, there are ominous rumblings about something called "product." Sounds high maintenance to me.

A Durango, Colo., coffee roaster recently inquired about one of my Downers Grove photos. He's marketing a line of coffee for Tom Danielson, Discovery's climbing prodigy and the top American finisher at the 2006 Vuelta, and wanted a generic cycling photo for a piece of marketing. As a fan of both locally roasted coffee and locally grown climbing specialists, I was happy to oblige, especially since he was polite enough to ask. All I requested in return was some coffee and, if Tom happened to be around the shop, a signed sock or something.

A few days later, 6 pounds of coffee and an autographed T-shirt arrived. Not a bad haul for 1/500 seconds of work.

I ran a marathon this weekend. Which is to say, I ran in a marathon.

Levi was running the Indianapolis Marathon, and since Ellen was due to visit family nearby, we drove down early Saturday to watch.

It's been almost a year and a half since my last serious run -- a happy, regret-free year and a half, I should note -- but I've always wanted to be someone's rabbit, and I was pleased when Levi accepted my offer to jump in around the 21st mile. I told him I couldn't promise to last very long, but I'd help him keep his 8-minute pace as long as I could.

I would be sore the next two days, but it turned out that the running muscles haven't atrophied as much as I had expected. I stayed with him the balance of the course, peeling off with 385 yards to go and cutting across a park in order to cheer him at the finish line as he set a personal record.

The highlight of the morning came at the beginning of the run. We'd just rendezvoused but I desperately had to pee. (The coffee required to leave Chicago at 6 a.m. is great.) So I told him to keep going, popped into a Porta-Potty and then sprinted to catch up.

This sprint created the illusion of a marathoner having an improbable gale-force second wind. "Good job!" spectators yelled as I bounded past bonked runners. "You're looking great!"

And of course I looked great: I'd only been running for 30 seconds.

Chicago's marathon was this weekend too. Walking down Michigan Avenue this morning, I saw tell-tale green ribbons around necks. Full-page newspaper ads congratulated runners. At the office, someone wanted to surprise a colleague with a standing ovation. I rolled my eyes.

In the past 15 or so years, the marathon-industrial complex has elevated the race from fringe stunt to Oprah-approved rite of passage, if not outright act of heroism. Enough is enough. It's time to stop lionizing marathon runners -- and not just because cyclists train so much harder.

Marathoners deserve congratulations and support -- just as all loved ones deserve congratulations and support for following their bliss, whether their bliss is running 26.2 miles or darning socks or performing the banjo -- but they are not heroes, and I'm tired of Nike ads that allege that they are.

Runners neither cure cancer nor survive it. I should know: I ran seven marathons. The world isn't any better for any of them. The world may even be worse for my narcissism. Those seven marathons required thousands of hours of training that could have been spent doing something useful, like learning a trade or teaching people to read or baking cookies.

Is running hard? Sure. So is parenting. So is teaching. So is driving a CTA bus. As the Dread Pirate Roberts said to Buttercup, "Life is pain, Highness."

Levi knows I'm not talking about him. He's the type who races in order to train, not the other way around. He would be mortally embarrassed by a standing ovation, the first person ever to be clapped to death, and I don't expect he wore his medal to work today. In fact, he rightly allowed that if the weather had been any worse Saturday, he would have bagged the race and felt not one pang of regret.

And just as cycling requires a greater devotion to training, so is it an even bigger waste of time and an even bigger act of narcissism. The difference is that we don't expect to hear the "Beaches" soundtrack when we cross the finish line. We don't expect mortals to pour oil on our feet the day after a race. And we only give medals to winners.

The co-worker? She didn't get her applause. She called in sick with sore legs.

The cycling season wrapped up this weekend.

(It occurs to me that I've been saying that for months: first after the last of the road races in July, then after the criteriums of August. But this time I mean it. We are out of races.)

As I rode home on the lakefront last night, a tailwind freshened my legs and made me mournful for the sudden competitive void. "If only," I thought to myself, "there were someone up the road to chase." As I glided up and around the 18th Street bridge, I thought, "If only this were Snake Alley."

The past two weekends comprised the Fall Fling: one time trial, two crits, a road race. I was most excited about the road race, which happened to fall on my birthday. It was a 40-mile race over rolling terrain that I knew would include exposure to heavy winds.

One particular team has been a bane to me all summer. Their etiquette is questionable but their sprinting is not. My hope in the road race, then, was to make sure it was a race of attrition and did not come down to a field scrum.