I don’t condone the methods of the Critical Mass Cycling Movement but everyone should see this.

The video shows the NYPD officer standing in the street as bikes ride past. He begins to slowly walk towards the street as the cyclist, Richard Vazques, approaches. Vazques veers left to avoid him, but the officer speeds up his pace and then violently knocks Vazques to the ground in front of a crowd. Vazques was arrested, held for 26 hours, and then charged with felony assault of a police officer and resisting arrest. One other cyclist was ticketed Friday night for riding outside the bike lane, which is not actually illegal and often necessary, considering how popular bike lanes are for double parking.

Nice job, Mayor Bloomberg. If so inclined, please leave a message for him at (212) 639-9675. I did.

The NYPD placed the unidentified officer on desk duty pending the outcome of a department investigation. With a little luck, he will lose his job, his car, his house and find it very difficult to find employment in the future.

And just so it is known, if I’m ever knocked off the bike like this by a cop or anyone else, I will be charged with much more than assault. I will do everything in my power to end the assailant’s life, right on the spot. Yup, I would kill a cop. In a heartbeat without any remorse.

The last time I climbed North Cheyenne Canyon, I weighed at 228.5 pounds.  Today, I weighed 188.5 pounds and climbed it with Josh, one of the most gifted climbers I’ve ever ridden with.  We had planned to ride from Broadmoor down to Florence but the wind was steady at 15 mph from the south (read: HEADWIND) and gusting in the mid 40’s.  It was kinda chilly too (around 50) so we decided to ride close to Cheyenne Mountain for protection and do the hills.

When I first climbed this bad boy, I clocked a tad over 37 minutes (yikes!).  Today’s time:  23 minutes, 48 seconds (clocked from the gate).  Not great, but getting closer to my ultimate goal of sub 20.  I’ve previously written about the climb up N. Cheyenne Canyon HERE and HERE.

Here’s the ride profile (guess which spike is N. Cheyenne…):

Ride GPS data

Taken 6/26/07, I was about 260 pounds

Taken today, 193.0 pounds.

I can barely recognize the top picture but it has given me motivation to get on the bike right now, at 8:55 pm.  Even at 193 though, I’m still about 20 pounds overweight for my height of 6′ 1″.  Sorry about the scruff, I would have shaved but I was testing out my new camera and was shocked to see myself.

I momentarily took my eyes of the wattage and looked at my speed- I was doing about 10.5 mph. I thought that I was probably on the false flat this hill, err, mountain has. Maybe I should back off but I was holding 325 watts steadily. A few seconds later, I realized I had crested the hill and was done with the climb. As I felt the goose bumps go up and down my arms, I heard Josh scream “WTF Buckingham? What the hell are you doing up here! I gassed that hill!.” He actually startled me and then it sunk in that I had climbed this thing incredibly fast, probably five or six minutes faster than I thought I was capable of (north side of Woodmen Rd. for those in Colorado Springs).

Josh, who was ranked UCI Elite as recently as 2005 but has since retired to work for Federal law enforcement, asked how much weight I had lost ’cause “there’s no way I did that with training!” I said none, I was just one a new program of EPO, testosterone and exogenous blood transfers with as straight a face as I could muster. We laughed for a second and took off down the other side of that hill where I hit 52 mph.

During that climb, I knew that I couldn’t hang with Josh so I just fixated my eyes on the PowerTap and tried my best to keep 330 watts. I tried not to look at my surroundings and kept my breathing as rhythmic as possible. I was so fixated on my meter that I was sure that I had been passed by a few of the guys, the resident mountain goats who still race. But unbelievably, I was second at the top. It will be a very long time before I can challenge Josh, he’s 52 pounds lighter than me and his bike weighs at least 5 pounds less than mine. He is a phenomenal climber but he lacks power though on the flats and for the most part, I just need to stay within 3-4 minutes of him on a climb to catch him on the descent.

I had lost 32 pounds since I last rode with these guys back in February and while I had expected to ride a little better, I was blown away by the difference the weight made on the climbs. I’ve got to be careful to keep my power but I’m now counting the days until I can get down to 160.

I feel like a cyclist again.

Sure, the view from my deck every night is awesome but it sure sucks to have to climb back up every night.  At the end there, you see the murderous profile of Thames Rd, one of the three options I have to get home from the Broadmoor Valley.  While not the longest, Thames is the steepest but I’d grown very tired of climbing Farthing Drive.  Thames is about 1.08 miles long and averages 11% with two pitches that exceed 15%.  According to my PowerTap, I was averaging about 355 watts but was still only going about 6 mph up the thing. 

Those other three humps beginning at mile 5 were the repeats of the road that leads up to the Broadmoor Golf Course.  It’s one of the most bizarre hills I’ve ever ridden.  Though it’s about a mile long at 8%, it looks as if it’s barely a rise due to the big mountain ahead (Cheyenne Mountain) and three other ridges that can be seen from that road.  On the first club ride I did out here, I completely misjudged it and lost over 100 yards before the summit of the climb.  When I got up, everybody was laughing at me and said that hill gets newbies to Springs all the time.  I wasn’t laughing…