I'm getting ready to ride with the cousin I mentioned
http://www.acsevents.org/faf/home/default.asp?ievent=79547
for a couple days so I thought I'd look around about any extras I'd
need and came across this.
Tears running down my face from laughing.
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Craig's Beginners Guide to Preparing For a Cycling Trip:
Step 1: Get a spagetti-strainer and several small sponges. Soak the
sponges in salt-water and paste them to the inside of the
spagetti-strainer. Place the
strainer on your head. Find a busy road. Stand by the side of the road
and do
deep knee-bends for 8 hours. This will acclimatize you to a day's
ride.
Step 2: Take some 200-grit sandpaper and rub your rear-end and the
insides of your legs for about 20 minutes. Rinse with salt-water.
Repeat. Then, sit on a softball for 8 hours. Do this daily for at
least 8 days.
Step 3: Each day, take two twenty-dollar bills and tear them into
small pieces. Place the pieces on a dinner-plate, douse them with
lighter fluid and burn them. Inhale the smoke (simulating car-fumes).
Rub the ashes on your face. Then go to the local motel and ask them
for a room.
Step 4: Take a 1-quart plastic bottle. Fill it from the utility sink
of a local
gas-station (where the mechanics wash their hands). Let the bottle sit
in the
sun for 2 or 3 hours until it's good and tepid. Seal the bottle up
(kinda,
sorta) and drag it through a ditch or swamp. Walk to a busy road.
Place your
spagetti-strainer on your head and drink the swill-water from the
bottle while
doing deep knee-bends along the side of the road.
Step 5: Get some of those Dutch wooden-shoes. Coat the bottoms with
90-W
gear-oil. Go to the local supermarket (preferably one with tile
floors). Put
the oil-coated, wooden shoes on your feet and go shopping.
Step 6: Think of a song from the 1980's that you really hated. Buy the
CD and play 20 seconds of that song over and over and over for about 6
hours. Do more deep knee-bends
Step 7: Hill training: Do your deep knee-bends for about 4 hours with
the
salt-soaked spagetti-strainer on your head, while you drink the warm
swill-water and listen to the 80's song over and over (I would
recommend "I'm a cowboy/On a STEEL horse I ride!" by Bon Jovi). At the
end of 4 hours, climb onto the hood of a friend's car and have him
drive like a lunatic down the twistiest road in the area while you
hang on for dear life.
Step 8: Humiliation training: Wash your car and wipe it down with a
chamois-cloth. Make sure you get a healthy amount of residual soap and
road-grit embedded in the chamois. Put the chamois on your body like a
loin-cloth, then wrap your thighs and middle-section with cellophane.
Make sure it's really snug. Paint yourself from the waist down with
black latex paint. Cut an onion in half and rub it into your
arm-pits. Put on a brightly colored shirt and your Dutch oil-coated
wooden shoes and go shopping at a crowded local mall.
Step 9: Foul weather training: Take everything that's important to
you, pack it in a Nylon corodura bag and place it in the shower. Get
in the shower with it. Run the water from hot to cold. Get out and
without drying off, go to the local convienience store. Leave the wet,
important stuff on the sidewalk. Go inside and buy $10 worth of
Gatorade and Fig Newtons.
Step 10: As Archimedes hypothesized: "Use a simple lever to move the
Earth from one place to another". After doing that, go around your
house and lift heavy things that you never imagined a person could
lift. Surprise yourself. Do 1,000 sit-ups. Then 10,000. Eat lunch.
Repeat. Argue with every girlfriend/boyfriend you've ever known and be
RIGHT. Solve all the problems of politics, faith and economics. At the
end of the day, get into a huge tub filled with hot soapy water and
relax, because tomorrow is another BIG DAY ON THE BIKE!
Step 11: Headwinds training: Buy a huge map of the entire country.
Spread it in front of you. Have a friend hold a hair-dryer in your
face. Stick your feet in
taffy and try to pull your knees to your chest while your friend tries
to
shove you into a ditch or into traffic with his free hand. Every 20
minutes
or so, look at the huge map and marvel at the fact that you have gone
nowhere after so much hard work and suffering. Fold the map in front
of a window-fan set to "High".