Today on the airplane I was fortunate enough to sit next to an old guy who was very curious about the sport of cycling.  He seemed to know a thing or two about the European Tours and whatnot, but he really seemed to know a some stuff about this thing called a “pelotron”.

Of course, I knew he was referring to the peloton and I took a quick sec to correct him once or twice.  But he continued on with this pelotron business and dammit the name has stuck in my head. 

And, I can see why.  A pelotron is obviously so much faster, so much more aerodynamic, than a regular old peloton.  One might even say its chic. It’s very high-tech, like something you might propel through a partical accellerator or some sort of mass spectrometer gettup (for the life of me, I cannot remember what one of those thingies is for or even looks like, but I do know that we talked alot about it in Organic Chemistry which was a class that I seemed to glaze over in a cloudy mind state due to cycling.  To be honest, it was a class I seemed to glaze over several times in college). 

So you may race in a peloton, but I will be racing in a peletron from now on. 

While we were in Philly last week, we discovered something very cool.  I do not mean the “royal we” here, I mean Chrissy, Lara K, and me.  Just a block away from our very centrally located host house, we found this strange bicycle art project on South Street in Central City Philly. 

It started as one man’s project on an abandoned lot in 1967.  And it grew to take over almost an entire city block, now known as the Magic Garden (I don’t really like the name either).  Glass bottles, broken mirrors, your grandma’s dishes, and bike wheels all smashed together to make a space from another world. 

I read one little piece inside this crazy place where the artist explains why he likes to use bike wheels.  It went something like this: the bicycle wheel is amazing because you can see straight through it, yet provides so much structural integrity.  Obviously not referring to any disks. 

Sure, Philly and DC have their monuments n stuff, but this kind of stuff is way better.  Way more real than any marble-pillared big old building dedicated to dead presidents.  I feel lucky that we found this gem in the city. 

So Philly race came and went without air-conditioning, an Irish pub was packed and gross with racers, and now me and some Blue Diamontes are in Minnesota for the Nature Valley Grand Prix.  Tough race this one, looks like a 140 starters and chances of flash floods for the first crit on Wednesday. 

I don’t think I have ever mentioned this, but as of Wednesday, flash floods are actually my favorite riding conditions.