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 SQUUUUUUUARK! Not too loud, mind you. The monks are meditating. Well, all except for this one, caught test riding Rob Fawcett's Pocket Rocket in Tibet. It was captioned 'Meditation on a Pocket Rocket' ... now isn't that an oxymoron? "He was actually looking for something to help his practice in detachment from earthly possessions, and my Pocket Rocket really kicked it up a notch," said Rob, a tour Guide and marketing manager of www.BikeChina.com. OK, he didn't say that, but I bet he thought it. Now all we gotta do is get the Dalai Lama into the fold and the monks will follow. Fat tires may well be the order of the day, give those craggy peaks upon which many a monastery doth perch ... |
 SCREEEEECH! POOR ED! One of cycling journalism's great luminaries, Ed Pavelka of RoadBikeRider.com, suffered a bad fall on the recent PACTOUR RAAM-qualifying Elite Tour- we're talking 160+ miles per day ... and no rest days. From the RBR bulletin: If you missed the news last week, Ed suffered several serious complications following a total hip replacement in late December. Thirteen days after that surgery, a blood clot caused a pulmonary embolism and pulmonary infarction, killing part of his right lung. He was in the hospital nine days and has been receiving home care since Jan. 12. The hip was broken in June by a fall in Arizona during a 167-miles-per-day transcontinental ride. The bone failed to heal correctly and that, plus the onset of avascular necrosis, made hip replacement necessary ... Thankfully, our man Ed has surfaced and wrote: Dear Roadies, I feel like I've had one foot in the crematorium. When my temperature hit 103 degrees during the fifth day in the hospital, and the doctors still didn't have a handle on all that was wrong, my wife Joleen said I told her, "Remember, I'll be coming back as a rock star. There'll be so many girls, but I'll wait for you to find me." Ah, the fevered delusions of a 61-year-old. (But I still like the idea of playing lead guitar the next time around.) Joleen was at my bedside many hours and now tells me several other things I can't remember saying or doing. As a career nurse, she's seen her share of fatal cases. She was much more worried about me than she let on. But like an angel Jo was always there, cheerful and supportive as could be. I got home last Friday evening, as sick of being in the hospital as I was with my illness. Saturday I logged on for the first time in 10 days and found a daunting 1,491 e-mail messages. Amazingly, more than 800 were from well wishers responding to last Thursday's medical bulletin in this newsletter. Many of the messages were so touching ... Although Ed - who authored the famous BF quote 'rides as good as your best bike' has a Pocket Rocket Pro, he wasn't on it at the time. Now, here's a bird-brained thought ... could he have jumped free given BF's human-friendly low stepover? "I don't think it would have made any difference what kind of bike I was on, unless it was a trike that couldn't tip over. When my front wheel and Fred's [Fred was not riding his Bike Friday either - Ed (me, not Ed P)] rear wheel clashed, I hit the road instantly. And I stuck like a dart - didn't even damage my shorts despite fracturing the bone under them. All the force went straight into the hip instead of being dissipated by sliding. Terrible luck and truly a life-altering incident. I'm praying now that all the complications are behind me." Screeeeeeeeowwwwwwch! BF pedalin' pilot Jeff Linder managed to finish (on a Friday, read that amazing story) but admitted in not so colorful words that he had "three pairs of shorts on and every cream he could find towards the end." Please send a note to Ed, edpavelka at roadbikerider dot com, by carrier pigeon or whatever is most convenient to you, and even better, subscribe to RoadBikeRider.com's free newsletter - one of the BF factory favorites. You can eyeball the current bulletin at www.roadbikerider.com/currentissue.htm Some of you have already written to him. He writes: "Thanks for all the support from the BF family. It makes a big difference to have so much support coming my way. Here's hoping we'll all be riding together sometime." May the fold be with you, Ed ... Got news and self-centered opinions to share? Sock' em to Fred's seed tray, fred@bikefriday.com or blog@bikefriday.com - whichever you can remember better |