There are pros and cons to riding indoors vs. riding outside. On the one hand, when you’re riding outside you get to experience terrain change and adjust accordingly — you can work hard to climb hills, coast on descents to give your legs a break, etc. You also don’t have to worry about creating a lake of sweat underneath you when you’re moving along an actual bike route, and your place won’t smell like wet feet and buttcrack when you’re done with your ride. Riding indoors, however, gives you some nice luxuries — you don’t necessarily have to get up super early to begin your workout, you’re always near a bathroom, and you don’t have to worry about running out of fuel or getting in a crash. These are all nice perks, but my absolute favorite reason for cycling at home is the obvious one, and that is I can watch whatever crap I want for the duration of my workout. Jason and I watch a lot of movies when we ride. We watch TV too, but usually save the DVR’d shows for shorter recovery rides and opt for full-length movies or TV on DVD for longer workouts. Our preferences typically include the following: something with subtitles so we don’t have to blast the volume too loud no heavy dramas or depressing crap that can suck the cadence right out of you; this means we usually end up watching a lot of mindless action movies or lighthearted comedies something that’s long enough to last the entire ride (either we’ll watch a bunch of TV episodes in a row or we’ll try to find a movie with a running time that matches closely with our workout) I thought I’d try to chronicle some of the movies we watch while cycling in a segment I’ve coined Cyclepiece Theater. My first two entries come from the Paul Verhoeven collection, my favorite guilty pleasure director. Two weekends in a row we watched some awesome vintage Verhoeveny goodness. RoboCop Genre: Action Year Released: 1987 Running Time: 102 minutes Awesome?: Yes! Memorable Quote: “Dead or alive, you’re coming with me.” Lesson Learned: Crime doesn’t pay! Also, in Verhoeven-envisioned futures, men and women share locker rooms because they are sooooo progressive (see also the Starship Troopers communal shower scene). When I first met my friend Matt and told him I was from Detroit (I’m not, but saying “I’m from Detroit” to people who aren’t from Michigan is better than saying “I’m from 40 miles outside of Detroit”), he perked up and said, “Oh, really? I don’t know anything about Detroit — do you guys just have a bunch of RoboCops wandering around the city policing it?” Dude, I wish! That’d be supremely awesome. Alas, I have to make do with watching it while doing a dumb cycling workout. Boo. The movie holds up well, although you might be weirded out seeing the dad from That 70’s Show acting like a total dickwad to the entire population of Detroit. It’s a good one to cycle to — you’ll get caught up watching Peter Weller transform into RoboCop while his partner who had been paired up with him for literally less than a day feels an inexplicable bond with him (it’s like those d-bags you barely spoke to in high school who are now all of a sudden coming out of the woodwork to friend you on Facebook because OMG REMEMBER WHEN YOU BOTH WENT TO THE SAME HIGH SCHOOL?! BESTIES 4 LIFE!!). He mops up the street while Clarence Boddicker mops his toxic waste-soaked henchman off his windshield (that scene is so nasty-cool). The actual citizens of...

Warning: This post has more obscenities than usual, as well as several lovely photos of some pretty gnarly road rash. Reader discretion is advised!

Yesterday Jason and I begrudgingly drove up to Lake Stevens to ride the 70.3 bike course a few times with our teammates. We have no intention of doing the Lake Stevens 70.3 since it’s too close to Ironman Canada and because I hate the race with the fire of 1,000 suns, but it was our group workout for the week and we needed to get in the mileage. Well, to summarize how the day went, we had the usual redneck obscenities screamed at us and had to cut the ride short one loop after Jason got in a bad bike accident. Needless to say, our feelings about Lake Stevens have continued to dampen.

A couple weekends ago, Jason, his dad and I drove to Wenatchee to do a long ride through the hot and formidable canyons. We only managed to do about 50-60 before succumbing to the suckiness that is triple-digit heat waves. You suck, Wenatchee. Shove your applets and cotlets up your searingly hot ass.

Much like Elaine’s boyfriend Puddy from Seinfeld, I picture this guy running around going, “We’re the devils! Eeeeehhhhh!”

A week after the huge steaming dump known as Ironman Boise, Jas and I embarked to Mt. St. Helens for a “redemption ride,” as we affectionately referred to it. We signed up for the Tour de Blast, an 82 mile ride that consisted of climbing 42 miles up Mt. St. Helens and then turning around to fly back down it. We were all gung ho about making this ride our beeyotch after Boise’s wind gusts slapped us around. Unfortunately, for the second weekend in a row, things didn’t go according to plan.