White tooth supremacy.

Other possible titles were:

• My bedroom smells Gucci
• The time Laura picked up a 1,500-page book without realizing it
• Spring?
• Billy and the Clonesaurus

Meet Ol’ Chomper:

Ol’ Chomper is my newest flipper, which means I went from being three teeth down to just one. Two of my crowns were installed last Thursday. The third is three months away, as the dentist wants to re-do the middle implant. This means you guys are going to have to deal with more posts about the status of my mouth for the next bit. Ol’ Chomper is a shade whiter than the rest of my teeth, hence the post title.

Even with Smarch behind us, Victoria has only been teased with spring weather. April 4th marks the first day I go outside wearing shorts. Every year, the weather flip-flops for another month, sometimes even up until what the locals refer to as “Junuary.”

It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that convertible pants originated* in Victoria.

If it’s warm enough for regular shorts, it’s warm enough for bib shorts; therefore, cycling season has arrived. I made some minor tweaks to my road bike last week in hopes of getting out for a proper ride. While I was in the bike shop making these tweaks, Daniel mentioned he and Alexa planned to go to the Westshore Velodrome open house on Saturday.

This wouldn’t count as an opportunity to ride on my freshly tuned bike, but some crummy rental bike that doesn’t even have brakes.

Alexa was the most stoked about this plan:

Jordi was apprehensive. After all, how much fun could riding in circles be? We rode in circles around a banked oval track. I was the only one of us who mounted my Garmin to the rental bike. Jordi was incredulous when he noticed me packing up the Garmin before we left his place for the velodrome.

“You’re bringing that?!”

Yes. YES. I have power meter pedals; in my case, my riding data isn’t limited to squiggly red lines on a map. I wanted to find out how fast I could go and how many laps I could do. How many watts could I hit on a track bike? These power meter pedals are by far the nerdiest shit I own (no, I don’t own convertible pants).

You can find all this nerdy data on my Strava upload.

I couldn’t go as fast on a track bike as on my road bike. Whether this is a testament to the excellence of my road bike or a decline in my fitness is still to be determined.

The sunny breaks were too brief for my body to absorb the sun’s warm rays. Alexa was kind enough to loan me her windbreaker, which I am wearing in the above photo. Then, Alexa borrowed Daniel’s pullover and refused my offer to return her windbreaker.

It wasn’t my first time on a fixed gear bike, but I hadn’t ever gone outside a parking lot. The small single cog makes it so that a lot of torque is required to get going. The lack of brakes, I imagine, makes riding on a track safer, as braking while in the middle of the banked turns wouldn’t be ideal.

Since it was an open house, we didn’t have to pay for anything. In fact, they were giving out homemade cookies! The dentist claimed I could wear Ol’ Chomper while eating, so I tested that on the free cookies.

Yes and no. Yes, I can bite into food, and the flipper stays in place. No, it is not ideal, as masticated food gets trapped between the palate and the flipper’s bite plate. Fortunately, Alexa missed out on seeing me rinse the cookie mush off Ol’ Chomper while we were in the public washroom.

The cherry blossoms have been in bloom for about three weeks. Coincidentally, the vial of perfume sample I stepped on (while wearing slippers) was Gucci’s Bloom. I keep all my perfume samples (I’m on Sephora’s VIB list) in a 4″ ceramic on a ledge by my bed under where my clothes hang. It got knocked over without my noticing, and I stepped on one of the glass vials, again, without noticing. I didn’t feel the glass crunching under my slippers, but the reality of what had happened reached my nostrils shortly thereafter.

I’m glad it wasn’t one of the perfumes I loved and equally as glad it wasn’t anything as offensive as Elizabeth Taylor’s White Diamonds or Pink Sugar by Aquolina. At least it’s a spring scent?

That being said, it was still too much perfume. I tried absorbing the overpowering stench with sodium bicarbonate. When I came in to the bike shop, fearing I’d become nose-blind, I asked Burger if he could smell me from 6 feet away.

“Well, yes, but you smell good.”

Not the answer I was looking for, but, yeah, I assume he’d have told me I smelled like his grandma if I’d stepped on White Diamonds.

Ever since I discovered luxury candles, I’ve delved deeper into the world of fragrance. But being a perfume person when you work in a bike shop isn’t ideal. Not only are most workplaces expected to be scent-free (which bike shops are NOT, thanks to all the lubricant and cleaning sprays), but it just doesn’t work with the vibe of a bike shop. My job as a bike mechanic has forced me to adopt a mostly black wardrobe.

But, sometimes, I’ll spritz my bed with perfume before bedtime to associate the smell with whatever I’m reading. Or to set the mood. I’m currently reading Les Misérables, a book that averages 1,500 pages in print. I didn’t realize the book was this substantial until my Kindle went from displaying my progression from 0% to 1% after an HOUR of reading. The good news is that the story may be captivating enough for me to finish, and I may have enough Gucci Bloom in the carpet to last me.

*The invention of convertible pants is credited to American Brian K. Wells, who patented the design in 1987. Source: Patent #US4766613A