Smooth Sailing = Calm Seas = Doldrums = Stagnation

My new best friend Ed, the bike whisperer, informed me that the frame of my cherished but untested - and likely to remain that way - Koga Miyata touring two-wheeler is cracked, and susceptible to spectacular failure in the near, far, or possibly never, future. The fault line lies in the headtube below the handlebars, and it takes little effort, given the horse-with-no-name desert crossing looming before us, to imagine a karmically-seismic collapse involving explosions, shrapnel, and full Bugs Bunny/Road Runner sound effects. Harder to imagine is Coyote Ugly Barc rising charred from the mushroom cloud, then miraculously restored to cartoon health in the next scene.

Sooooo, with a week to go, we - and of course I use the royal bike-prep "we" - are frantically refitting the under-cherished, over-tested, and geriatrically-geared chariot of my youth. I'm not worried. The Folly Cycle shall see me through the toughest terrain - physical, emotional, and Texan - with an economy of motion and the cool certitude of Sophia Loren striding over a sea of Kate Moss limbs, snapping bones with every step. No problem.