Author Archives: Steve Tilford

Rarely Surprised Physically

This entry was posted in Comments about Cycling, Totally Irrelevant on by .

I’ve been riding really subpar recently. Yesterday was no exception. I met Bill out at the Governor’s mansion and planned to ride a couple laps before it got dark. It had rained a ton here on Saturday night, so the ground was slick with the wet leaves. I had no spunk. I wasn’t dying, but really couldn’t get out of my own way.

Then, I pinched through my front tire and didn’t have enough latex in the tire to seal the cut. So, I needed to put a tube in. Unluckily for me, the “bolt” or valve stem nut, didn’t seem to want to come off. I’ve had this issue before. I have a really small pair of aluminum, foldable pliers that I used to carry in my seat jar, but I don’t seem to have them now. Anyway, it was in the mid 30’s and our hands just kept getting more useless by the minute. We tried to grab the nut with a rubber tube, then tried a chain tool I had on a multi-tool. Nothing. We tried to put Gorilla tape on the cut, but it wouldn’t stick. Finally, I took the multi-tool and we stuck the torque bit down the valve stem from the inside and used another part of it, I’m not sure what it is for, to grab onto the nut and unscrew it. It was very lucky it worked.

We didn’t really ride much at all, only 15 miles, but I was really out of sync anyway. I could hardly follow Bill down any of the descents.

So, when I got home, since I didn’t get much exercise, I thought I’d try to do some situps, pushups and stretching in the living room. I figured it would be a bust, but at least should make an effort. Normally, when I’m riding really poorly, everything else physically follows. I started doing situps and it was a breeze. 50 not a problem, so I did another 50, no problem. I was thinking something was weird. So, I started doing pushups. I usually do 50 in a row. I got to maybe 10 and was pretty much done. I rested for 30 seconds or so and did another ten. My shoulders were so weak and sore I quit.

This is the first time I can remember in my life where my situps and pushups deviated from the same course physically. I have no explanation. If I’m not sore from situps later today, then I’m really lost for a reason. Normally when I’m riding this badly, my stomach would be sore from situps, no matter how used to doing them I am. Rarely, something like this changes. I’m not sure what to make of it as of yet.

I did a bunch of manual labor things yesterday. I recharged the ac on the diesel van. I had the ac lines welded where I had jerry-rigged some patches with JB Weld, aluminum shims and hose clamps. This worked for over a year, but since the engine was lowered to replace the fuel injectors, they were easy to get at. I only had a pound of 134a, so I still need to add nearly 3 more. Not a big deal.

I was playing on the kitchen table with my new Di2 shifters for my cross bike. I still haven’t put them on yet. It is kind of fun wiring them up and watching them move on their own. The front derailleur adjusts automatically for the trim of the rear derailleur, so when you’re shifting the rear, the front aligns it self.

Then later, I went over to my friend’s, Adam Gatewood’s house, to help him remove a cast iron tub. The problem was that is was built into the space it was in. I was going to take it to use, but the bottom was pretty beat up and I have no intention of getting it fixed. So, out came the sledge hammer. Cast iron is very brittle and cracks easily. Below is a short video of the carnage.

I’m driving over to Lawrence this morning to get a blood test. I ordered a ton of tests actually. I do it through a website call Econolabs.com. A complete blood test is $26. You can add what you want after that. I got a thyroid test, cholesterol, iron, and a few others. If you have a Lab Corp. near, you just walk in with the order you print out and get the results back the next day. Very easy.

Trudi and Bill are going too and Bill and I are going to ride back on gravel. It’s only 30 miles, but it’s not supposed to be very warm yet. I’m heading to Texas tomorrow. The weather there is in the 70’s.


Adam smashing his tub to remove. The thing weighed about 350 pounds, so we broke it up a little more.

Adam’s grandfather’s sledge hammer. It was a beast.

The pile of fuel injectors from my diesel van. They are way more complicated than I’d imagined. No wonder they cost $250 a piece. There is a $1000 core on these here.

Di2 functioning on the kitchen table.

It took nearly all our hands to remove this nut, which was seized on with dried latext. Luckily I didn’t flat a couple weeks ago in Berryman.

Nothing Like a Little Fight before a long Road Race

This entry was posted in Race stories on by .

I ate some Fig Newtons last weekend and was thinking about how that Fig Newtons used to be about the only processed food that I would carry during a race for the first few years. Other than them, I’d usually have a banana, maybe some grapes and that was about it.

One year, before the Kansas State Championship Road Race, maybe the first year I was a senior, my brother Kris and I drove over to the grocery store to buy stuff to have in the race the next day. We were looking mainly for ripe bananas, nectarines/peaches, watermelon (to juice and put in our bottles) and of course Fig Newtons. It was after 10pm, then night before the race.

We were pushing a shopping cart around the store when a group of drunk guys started following us around and hassling us. They were whistling and calling us names, implying we were gay. I kind of understand where they were coming from, because we probably both had on short Adidas running shorts, Kris was wearing wooden clogs, me Adidas sandals, and of course, shaved legs. None of that was normal for the times.

Anyway, they finally came over and started getting a little physical. The ring leader said something about fighting and Kris casually said that we’d meet them outside after we finished shopping. The guy was stoked. We finished up and paid and I was pretty stressed about the whole thing. Kris was acting like nothing had happened. We were both carrying paper bags of groceries and we went out.

There were 4 of these guys, all bigger than both Kris and I. Kris kind of turned to me and asked if I’d hold his grocery bag. Right when I got a hold of the bag, Kris swung his arm, roundhouse style and slapped the leader across the side of the face with his open palm. The sound was unbelievable. The guy hit the ground instantly. Kris was immediately on top of the guy, sitting on his chest, knees on his shoulders, slapping him back and forth across the face. It looked like something out of a weird movie. I looked up at the other 3 guys, thinking that I might have to drop the bags and join in, but they were as taken back as me. Nobody else was going to get involved.

Kris stopped slapping the guy every few seconds and asked him if he was done, but the guy was either too drunk or too stupid to call uncle. Every time that Kris tried to let the guy up, he would take a swing at Kris, so Kris would slap him a few more times. Eventually, it came to a stand off. Kris told me to go get the car, and when I drove up, he jumped up and got in. The drunk guy got off the ground and tried to jump on the hood and break the radio antenna, but he missed. We went home.

I asked Kris how he came up with the slapping thing. He said he didn’t want to hurt his hands before the race the next day and figured that taking the guy by surprise was his only chance. It worked out to a T.

We went home and pureed our watermelon in a blender and poured it into bottles and put them in the refrigerator. The next day, we drove over to Manhattan, stuck some Fig Newtons in our jersey pockets and finished 1st and 2nd in the State Road Race. I guess a little pre-race fisticuffs didn’t slow Kris down too much. I was glad I was just a spectator.

We didn’t have this individually wrapped Fig Newtons. We had to put ours in a plastic bag ourselves.

Remember these? Kris was wearing something similar to these the night of the altercation.