A Beginners Guide to Cycle Touring

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 thestrainer on your head. Find a busy road. Stand by the side of the road and dodeep 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 localgas-station (where the mechanics wash their hands). Let the bottle sit in thesun 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 yourspagetti-strainer on your head and drink the swill-water from the bottle whiledoing deep knee-bends along the side of the road.

Step 5: Get some of those Dutch wooden-shoes. Coat the bottoms with 90-Wgear-oil. Go to the local supermarket (preferably one with tile floors). Putthe 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 thesalt-soaked spagetti-strainer on your head, while you drink the warmswill-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 achamois-cloth. Make sure you get a healthy amount of residual soap androad-grit embedded in the chamois. Put the chamois on your body like aloin-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".