Massive Attackers

A little Massive Attack on a Tuesday morning to set your day off in the right direction.  Mellow.  Steady.  But ready to launch up the road in an all-out, king-hell bid for glory at any moment.

Oh, and the forecast.  Already, fencesitters are throwing in the towel left and right.  Even the select few hardmen seem to have a tenuous grasp on how the fuck to dress for a road ride in single digits. So look - like most problems in life that you can't control, my advice is to just block the weather out, ignore it, and maybe it will resolve itself.  Indeed, the forecast has already changed from a low of 22 to a low of 25.  Things are getting better all the time.

So, podium preview, let's do this.  Last week, I sent out a call-to-arms, asking all the podium contenders I could think of to send in a photo of their Pantani bike.  And I got back some doozies.  Let's go straight to the top, I reckon:

Mr. Mark Smith checked in with this:

So, it's going to be like that, I guess.
He only might be joking.  And he'll likely drop you anyway, so it doesn't matter much.  But yeah, it would appear that Mark is playing his cards close to the chest.  Do with that what you will.

More legit, this one came in from B-slow himself:

That's a straight up road bike, sports fans.  Or at least it appears to be so.  Still, he'll never be able to pedal that around the pop in the snow, right?  Right?

Fellow podium threat, Mr John Patrylak, checked in with this: "I'll be laufing up all the climbs."

And, like most of you right now, I didn't get his little pun, nor did I comprehend what the gigantic, multi-pronged appendage was dangling off the front of his otherwise sweet bike.  So I did a little google-clicking and, boom, Lauf Forks.
Now that is pretty baddass, if you ask me.  I'm all about rigidity, low maintenance, and shredding anyway, and when you put in as many hard trail miles as John does, that thing makes a lot of sense.
Then again, it's $1,000 for 2.35 inches of travel, and so for the mathematically challenged of you, I went ahead and did the math on your behalf, and that adds up to $425.53 per inch.
Yowza.
Side note, though: Back in September, after I completely folded alongside the rest of my 4-man team, I saw John literally foaming at the mouth at about 8 AM at the 18 hours on the farm, grinning from ear to ear, about 200 miles into that thing, with the throttle still wide open, and having the time of his life.  So I don't think it matters what fork he's running, most of us won't be seeing it much after the gun blasts anyway.

On the subject of gearing, socks, and what not, Wilson sent this handsome devil in:

Pink socks as bar mitts - oh, you enterprising bunch of 1-gearers.  Not much to say about the bike that Wilson hasn't already confirmed, but the pink socks prove once and for all that you CAN polish a turd.  Wilson might not be THE favorite, but he is MY favorite.  And that's worth something (nothing.)

Others checked in too, though not many other pictures.  Plenty of folks on the fence about what bike to ride, what tires to run, how to dress, and so forth.  Also, a lot of verbal sandbagging, false claims of poor fitness, rumors of going to an actual road race in North Carolina, and general diarrhea of the mouth.  Blah blah blah.

Of note, and conspicuously missing from all of this, Mr. Qwadsworth didn't even respond.  Filthy levels of preparation happening there, I imagine.  Though maybe he'll check in later this week, or at least hold still for long enough that someone can take a picture of him and send it to me.

That's all I've got for you at this point, except for this picture of Todd humping the rooster at the base of Brokenback.

Never gets old.

Up, up, up.