Motors 2

Soooo, check out my new cyclocross bike:

Just picked 'er up at the shop last week, eh.  It's a little loose in the back, but like, whatevs.  Who wants to race me so I can prove my superiority and further stoke my lifelong dependency on the opinions of others to overcome my own deep-rooted lack of self worth?

Because, fuck you guys, I'm Fast.

Motors, eh?  Fascinating shit.  I was actually a little surprised by how many people were surprised by this.  Industry insiders have been writing about this stuff in the quasi-mainstream internet news for a long time, thus informing industry sort-of-halfway-connected-but-not-really dudes who in turn wrote on their blogs, prompting those of us way out in the fringes of internet newsland to write as much on our own.  So I thought that pretty much everyone was ready for this.  But no, it's with utter shock and disappointment that we have faced up to the hard truth that some chick in Belgium and/or her entourage put a motor in her bike to try to help her win Worlds.

Thus proving once and for all that a good muddy 'cross race can and will fuck up anything on your bike, even your sneaky, well-hidden, $2,000 engine that you claim to know nothing about.

"It's my friend's bike," as an excuse, sounds an awful lot like what we meth-heads here in the south like to shout, "That shit ain't mine!" when the feds finally come pouring in the back door, and oh no, you're the last person we'd expect to be cooking up the nasty brew in the back of your white trash trailer park, you cheating, incorrigible fuck.

I have so many questions though.  One detail in these news stories, which of course are still evolving, is about Femke's "Entourage" having deceived the Belgian federation, and I think that's the one that I find most engaging.  I see the words "Cyclocross Entourage" and I just can't read enough.  How has this happened, that we have arrived at a point in the developed western world where an upper-midpack U-23 Cross racer has an entourage?  Presumably, an evolution has transpired that I was black-out drunk for and can't remember, but why?

Also, the fine ($200,000) is something that I can't mentally grasp yet.  Like, for example, how in the fuck is a U-23 upper-midpack cross racer ever going to pay that fine when she's got a whole entourage of hangers-on suckling at the superstar teat of fame and fortune to worry about paying for already?  They're bleeding her dry, I assume, so how the fuck is that fine ever going to work?  Will she have to do hard time if she can't pay it?

But look at the big picture: the entourage, all of this cheating, the epidemic levels of beer throwing and spitting on the sport's greatest stars and you know what I think we've finally arrived at?  A sport people actually give a shit about and want to win.  So congrats, 'cross.  You have officially arrived.  Good luck dealing with the ramifications of finally almost making it.

It happens to the best of us.
Keep your head on a swivel, and up, up, up.