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| Currently, I'm training to ride the 2013 "century" at the Tour de Cure - click this image to see my personal donation page. |
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| Me on my fixie "Kroptkin" |
I'm Kelly and, although I've traveled pretty much
everywhere throughout the United States and to lesser extent all over
the world, officially I'm a lifelong resident of Las Vegas. I did most
of my international travel during four years I spent in the Marines. I
also traveled around the country for a little over five years as an over
the road truck driver.
Like a lot of kids I grew up
riding bikes throughout my childhood, although it was basically just for
transportation and not any sort of competition or as a sport. Back in
those days in Vegas there wasn't a lot to do though, so my brothers, our
friends, and I pretty much rode everywhere around town.
We
were also kinda poor and so we didn't have the fancy multi-gear road
bikes in those days. Basically, it was always a BMX bike with the big
tires, single gear, and no brakes. One of the inevitable side effects of
that which I remember from my high school days was that my thigh
muscles were disproportionately large to the point that when I bought
jeans I always had to make a choice between having them fit my thighs,
but be really loose in the waist, or fit my waist, but be skin tight on
my thighs.
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| Me on my fancy road bike "Nicola Bartolomeo" |
But also like a lot of kids, once I was
able to get a car I stopped riding bikes. Over the next few decades, I
pretty much never even thought about cycling (something that seems to be
a pretty common theme among cyclists I meet during rides). However,
eventually a number of different things brought me back to cycling
during the time that I was working as a truck driver.
Shortly
after I began driving, I got rid of my car since I was on the road
three weeks out of the month or more and it just wasn't worth paying the
car payments for something I never really had a chance to drive anyway.
As a result, I soon realized all the money that I could save without
the car payment, insurance payment, registration fees, gas and
maintenance costs.
In 2008, as the economy went south
and fuel prices skyrocketed, I left trucking behind. Not being in a big
hurry to resume all those expenses involved with owning a car, I went
out and bought a cheap mountain bike.
Although it
weighed a ton and was so cheap that it began falling apart inside of
about six months, I soon began to reconnect with my childhood days spent
racing around the neighborhood on a bike. It wasn't much longer before I
upgraded to a Schwinn Prelude that I bought used and began riding
almost exclusively.
Soon I was riding the "Blue Bomber"
everywhere including 20 miles a day to work and back and had lost 40
pounds (most of which was due to the lack of exercise and decent food
that comes with being an OTR truck driver) within the space of about
nine months.
That bike served me very well up until
early in 2012 when I locked it to a pole outside a grocery store as I
had done hundreds of times before, went inside to pick up a few things,
and came back out to find the pole very empty. My old reliable workhorse
had been stolen by some heartless bastard!
My next
bike, "Nicola Bartolomeo," is a Specialized Allez, which is a little
fancier than the Blue Bomber. and a good deal lighter at 20 pounds. Now
that I had a proper (albeit "entry level") racing bike,I started getting
interested in doing some big miles. While I had routinely done 30 miles
or more in a day and more often than not loaded down with a back pack
full of stuff, those miles were usually split up between multiple short
trips of 10 miles or less stretched out throughout the day.
After
finding some cycling groups through Meetup.com, I set about making the
transition to long distance riding. I was pretty pleasantly surprised to
find that the transition was fairly actually easy. Between the somewhat
slower pace ( I tend to ride as fast as I can on short rides) and lack
of the weighted down backpack, it wasn't very long before I progressed
to the point where I could easily ride 50 miles or more at least a
couple times a week in addition to the typical daily mileage that I
still put in while commuting around town.
In September
of 2012, I accomplished a personal milestone by completing the 102 mile
"century" course at the RTC Viva Bike Vegas ride. This marked the first
time I had ridden more than 65 miles at any singular continuous ride.
Not only did I finish what essentially amounts to the cycling equivalent
of a marathon, but at the end I actually knew that I could have done a
lot better if I hadn't paced myself so conservatively out of a concern
that I would burn myself out early.
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| A Recent Training Ride for the Tour de Cure - If you look closely you can see me in a yellow jersey by the guy in dark blue. |
Unfortunately, there was one complication
that quickly arose. Basically, I started feeling paranoid about the
possibility that someone would steal my new bike and that I might not be
able to afford to replace it with a quality bike this time around. To a
certain extent I solved that problem by buying some "Street Cuffs" a
pretty much indestructible motorcycle lock, which looks like giant
handcuffs.
However, this created a new problem because,
while these locks are both intimidating and virtually impossible to cut
off, they weigh 3.5 lbs. each and because the bike has quick release on
both tires I bought two pairs. So, between them they weigh 7 lbs. and,
between their size and my reluctance to scratch up my pretty new bike,
it was complicated to carry them around. So I decided to shop around for
a cheaper used bike that was already scratched up and wouldn't be quite
as much of a tragedy if it went missing one day.
Ultimately,
I decided that I should get a "fixie" partly because I wanted to have a
change of pace and build up my legs a little on short rides and partly
because I knew that I could get a fairly decent used one without
spending a whole lot of money. "Kropotkin," a Tommaso Augusta Ninja
track bike, soon became my bike for running around town. Some people
refer to it as a "decoy bike" because it's less likely to be targeted by
thieves, although it's actually a pretty nice bike in it's own right.
(In case you didn't notice it's a ninja!) Also without all the extra
gears and associated equipment, Kropotkin actually weighs only 15 lbs.
(five lbs. lighter than my "racing" bike), although when you add in the
weight of the chains and that 20 lb. backpack, makes up for that and
then some most of the time.
Right now, between
commuting on the fixie and those longer rides on the racer, I generally
average between 150 and 200 miles a week. One of my goals is eventually
to do a triathlon, although I'm not a big fan of the running part of it,
which is a big part of why I haven't "dove into" that yet (I do swim
like a fish, though). I'm also really interested in doing some bike
tours at some point in the near future.
Currently, I
am in the process of training for the American Diabetes Association's
annual "Tour de Cure" ride to benefit diabetes research on April 27th.
this will consist of my second century ride and I'm looking forward to
this both as an opportunity to challenge myself and improve on my rookie
effort at Viva Bike Vegas, as well as an opportunity to raise funds for
a great cause. The latter reason is very personal for me because my
mother suffer from and ultimately died earlier than she should have as a
result of the complications from diabetes. I miss her very much and
would very much like to see a cure soon so that other people and their
families and friends don't have to suffer through its effects.
If
you would like to donate to my fundraising goal (I've committed to
raising $150), you can get to my profile page by clicking on either of
the banners located at the top or bottom of this page. You can also use
this direct link:
My Fundraising Donation Page.
In addition, if you are a cyclist yourself you can join the team I'm
riding with (BikingHenderson.com) or enter a TDC ride in your area if
you live outside Las Vegas. There are several distances for different
experience levels. So you don't have to do the century distance if you
aren't ready for it yet.
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| Currently, I'm training to ride the 2013 "century" at the Tour de Cure - click this image to see my personal donation page. |
that some douche stole, was named the "Blue Bomber." Mostly that's because it was blue and I didn't put a lot of thought into it. But I did bomb down the road on it on a daily basis.
that I got to replace the Blue Bomber is named "Nicola Bartolomeo." This is a name that I have used in the past and on rare occasions still do as a pen name. It consists of the first names of Sacco and Vanzetti, two immigrant laborers that were murdered by the government because they were Anarchists.
Ninja (that's right a ninja!), that I use for commuting. It's an all black, stripped down fixie that lives to do the hard work. So it's only appropriate that it should be named after Petr Kropotkin, who Emma Goldman referred to as the "Godfather of Anarchism."
