Brevity, Compatibility and Gang Bangin', bike-squad-style

To find friends as nice as mine, most people have to go to prison. Not me. I ride bikes. (Lately, I'm not sure which is preferable.)
My kind friends have suggested that I've been a bit long-winded lately. "Maybe you should post more often so you don't go off on another one of those psychotic rants," one suggested the other day.
Point well taken. So I dedicate today to brevity. In the spirit of Ohio's wildly scrutinized primary election campaign, I'll just do talking-point bullets:

• It figures. I just spent about $100 on a few pairs of Campagnolo socks, only to get the jolting news that Shimano has acquired Pearl Izumi. Now my sickly expensive socks will wind up being incompatible with my stupidly costly Pearl Izumi Ultramicroatomicsensor shorts, and I'll get bad shifts.
• Mark my words on this: Shimano's Pearl Izumi will come out with some new standard every few years that renders all prior PI clothing obsolete and is not backward compatible. The Three-Arm Jacket, or some such. For $350.
• On the subject of clothing: My Snake Bite Racing colleagues and I just got our new kits. I'm going to call them "colors," because I feel like I'm now a member of a gang. I've always wanted to be in a gang, or a "posse" of "homies," but I couldn't get past the part about getting the shit beaten out of me for initiation. But if a bike team had an initiation, it would be like getting initiated by these guys:

Yo, word: When I got made in SBR, the whole team stood around me and scratched and kicked at me and tried to pull my hair (when it was 2 mm. long instead of completely shaved off); only one blow landed, and the guy hurt his hand and couldn't shift for a month. So he called me a fag. And then they sent a young associate member after me to take me down in a race (after I crossed the finish line). Truth.

Just kidding. Gotta add the "just kidding" or someone will curb me.

• There's a foot of new snow and the first highly anticipated race of the season is four days away. If you gotta race in mid-winter, though, the only place to do it is at the Mid-Ohio Raceway. My bet is that they have enough plows to make the track spotless. So it should be in perfect shape for me to get dropped on the fifth lap.
• My reader demographics recently got significantly better -- or perhaps worse, but at least richer and more snooty -- when a certain erudite Cuyahoga County Common Pleas judge pumped me and this sordid blog up in an email to about 50 of his high-falutin' friends. That day, the hits on my blog were off the charts. (Oops! Sorry, y'Honor -- after the whole Dudas thing, I'm probably giving you hives by putting references to you and the word "hit" in the same paragraph.) I'm imagining the folks in his email address book generally ride Sevens and Serottas. I should suck up. After all, with that kind of heft in my corner, maybe I really can shoot Lanigan and Malone after all. But just with the Crosman 760. And only with a couple pumps.

- JN