There are a couple of really basic life lessons that you learn from Tuesday Night Worlds, and they apply today more than ever, and I'll try to spell them out here in a way that White Anxiety can understand.
1) If you show up to a fast road ride and you get shelled, that's your fault. Don't blame the guy at the front, drilling it, for the fact that you cannot keep up. He has trained his ass off. If you're unhappy with your fitness, or you're pissed off that Coal jobs haven't come back yet, then start training.
Don't blame the ride.
2) In a similar way, don't misunderstand something very obvious about that guy at the front...he is not Hispanic. Take Will Leet, for example. Or Jeff Bezos. Goldman Sachs. The Clinton Foundation. All of them are very, very white. Like, among the whitest people to ever be white in a white country and a white town full of white people. The only thing brighter than Will Leet's new chromed-out road bike is Jeff Bezos enormous, growing, very bald white head, both of which you can now see from outer space. So if you're trying to infer in some bizarre way that your lack of performance is about race, or that you've been maligned by someone who doesn't look like you, look again. The people with all the watts, just like the people with all the money, left to right...white people.
I went and voted this morning at 7 AM, shortly after the polls opened, at the same elementary school where my kids are in first grade. In the parking lot, the sheer volume of confederate flags, Trump T-shirts, and InfoWars inspired bumper stickers caught me by surprise. I just didn't think that, 2 years into this administration, that I'd be wading through a crowd of Still-Angry Rednecks, in the rain, to vote my conscience beside them.
Democracy is like a breakaway with too many guys in it. It works OK for a while, but eventually, people stop doing their part. One guy wants to sit on, which prompts another guy to do the same, and before you know it the 10 minute lead you had on the rest of the world has been reduced to nothing as you attack each other in the name of...well, you're not sure. But that guy wouldn't take a pull.
Adding people to the breakaway doesn't help it, and so it occurred to me that I honestly don't care if you vote today. At this point, if you need some kind of convincing about the need for your political voice, then this probably isn't the right move for you to mark anyway. It's just not clear to me that adding another 30 million vindictive, angry, partisan voters to what we already have here will actually improve anything.
But the minute you see Will Leet go up the road, you better jump on that train, and so will I, and maybe your friends can come too, if they want to work.
See also, Voting, and welcome back to the United States of America.
A grassroots racing team from Charlottesville, VA.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018
Friday, October 19, 2018
The PARANORMAL. Saturday, 10.20. 4 PM.
The PARANORMAL is tomorrow. 10.20. Race starts at 4 PM, but assholes without costumes will begin to be singled out by 3 PM for hazing and ridicule. So if you're coming without, get there early, and prepare to be berated.
Also, the kids race is 3 PM. ISH. Because wrangling 30+ costumed delinquents on bikes is not easy or timely, so get those rascals there by 2 so we can stuff them full of candy and get them soaking wet in the creek first.
For the next 1.5 hours or so, you can still sign up online here. After noon, no mas. But we'll still take your money and provide you with a number and free beer on Saturday at your leisure. So just know that we are here for you and we cherish your attendance, even if you are a disorganized piece of shit.
Someone asked me yesterday how long the course was.
And so I sent them this:
And then they asked me how long those laps will take them. And I guessed: 1 hour per.
And then they asked how many of those laps would be during the day and how many at night (requiring lights) and, in a flash, I was transported back almost two decades to 2003 in the way that memory tends to suddenly, without warning, place you elsewhere. And here's that memory:
In 2003, I caught a flight from Colorado to Virginia to come spend time with family and race The Paranormal. This might have been the 2nd annual Paranormal I'm honestly not sure of the year at this point, but I was in my early 20s. Back then, the race was held at Panorama farms, but the format was pretty much the same - costumes, 4 pm start, 1 hour laps, etc.
And so I lined up at 4 PM for my very first paranormal, but there was a delay of some kind. Maybe rain? Maybe just inefficiency. But, whatever the cause, it was an overcast, grey evening, and the race didn't actually start until almost 5 PM. I did 1 lap, came through the transition, got back into the woods for lap 2, and it was pitch dark.
So my plan of 3 day laps and 3 night laps suddenly became 1 day lap and 5 night laps. Which, back then, was a huge problem because a) lights really sucked back then and b) this was v-brake, hardtail, 26er era. 2.1 inch tires - I was running the legendary smoke and dart combo for those that know what that is - pumped up to 50 PSI so you didn't pinch flat on the wet roots. It was recipe for disaster. Around 9 PM, on my last lap, there were probably 10 racers on the course whose lights had burned out and were just fumbling around out there with pin lights trying to find their way out of the woods. That's just what night riding was back then. Anything over an hour was asking for trouble, and 5 hours of night racing was a bridge way, way too far. Somehow, my lights kept it together, but my legs did not, and I, too, barely made it out of those woods in one piece.
So, back to reality, 2018 and the race is tomorrow, and you want to know how many night laps it'll be?
I will just lie to you the same way I lied to my 23 year old self:
Three. 1 hour each. Easy as that.
Hope to see you there, kid.
Up, up, up.
Also, the kids race is 3 PM. ISH. Because wrangling 30+ costumed delinquents on bikes is not easy or timely, so get those rascals there by 2 so we can stuff them full of candy and get them soaking wet in the creek first.
For the next 1.5 hours or so, you can still sign up online here. After noon, no mas. But we'll still take your money and provide you with a number and free beer on Saturday at your leisure. So just know that we are here for you and we cherish your attendance, even if you are a disorganized piece of shit.
Someone asked me yesterday how long the course was.
And so I sent them this:
And then they asked me how long those laps will take them. And I guessed: 1 hour per.
And then they asked how many of those laps would be during the day and how many at night (requiring lights) and, in a flash, I was transported back almost two decades to 2003 in the way that memory tends to suddenly, without warning, place you elsewhere. And here's that memory:
In 2003, I caught a flight from Colorado to Virginia to come spend time with family and race The Paranormal. This might have been the 2nd annual Paranormal I'm honestly not sure of the year at this point, but I was in my early 20s. Back then, the race was held at Panorama farms, but the format was pretty much the same - costumes, 4 pm start, 1 hour laps, etc.
And so I lined up at 4 PM for my very first paranormal, but there was a delay of some kind. Maybe rain? Maybe just inefficiency. But, whatever the cause, it was an overcast, grey evening, and the race didn't actually start until almost 5 PM. I did 1 lap, came through the transition, got back into the woods for lap 2, and it was pitch dark.
So my plan of 3 day laps and 3 night laps suddenly became 1 day lap and 5 night laps. Which, back then, was a huge problem because a) lights really sucked back then and b) this was v-brake, hardtail, 26er era. 2.1 inch tires - I was running the legendary smoke and dart combo for those that know what that is - pumped up to 50 PSI so you didn't pinch flat on the wet roots. It was recipe for disaster. Around 9 PM, on my last lap, there were probably 10 racers on the course whose lights had burned out and were just fumbling around out there with pin lights trying to find their way out of the woods. That's just what night riding was back then. Anything over an hour was asking for trouble, and 5 hours of night racing was a bridge way, way too far. Somehow, my lights kept it together, but my legs did not, and I, too, barely made it out of those woods in one piece.
So, back to reality, 2018 and the race is tomorrow, and you want to know how many night laps it'll be?
I will just lie to you the same way I lied to my 23 year old self:
Three. 1 hour each. Easy as that.
Hope to see you there, kid.
Up, up, up.
Thursday, October 4, 2018
Paranormal Costume Idea # 345,190
Floyd Landis with the munchies. At a 7-11. With $750,000.
I've written about Floyd Landis a few times, as well as the complicated emotions that we have, as fans, for someone who not only put pro cycling on the map for us but also kind of ruined it.
And still, I can't help but like him. Throwing away $750,000 that he probably never should have had anyway...because, why not. It's a strange world we live in, getting stranger all the time.
Paranormal Costume Idea of the week - Floyd Landis at a 7-11 with the munchies and $750,000. GO.
You really can do anything you want, world. But make sure you get your costume ready.
Up, up, up.
I've written about Floyd Landis a few times, as well as the complicated emotions that we have, as fans, for someone who not only put pro cycling on the map for us but also kind of ruined it.
And still, I can't help but like him. Throwing away $750,000 that he probably never should have had anyway...because, why not. It's a strange world we live in, getting stranger all the time.
Paranormal Costume Idea of the week - Floyd Landis at a 7-11 with the munchies and $750,000. GO.
You really can do anything you want, world. But make sure you get your costume ready.
Up, up, up.
Tuesday, September 18, 2018
What-What. What. WHAAAAT?
What-what? What. WHAT?
Those of you who have been reading this blog for greater than 12 months know exactly what what-what, what, WHAT means.
Time to pop some tags. The paranormal is coming. October 20th, 4 PM. E-Rallys-Ville.
Getcha' popcorn ready.
The first thing you do is sign up. That, of course, is the easy part.
Then, I guess you have a quick look at the course layout, acknowledge that you lack the fitness to even watch Keck ride around this thing for more than like 15 seconds, and then, the real work begins.
And no, I'm not talking about training. I'm talking about putting together the most fantastic, semi-safe-to-ride-your-bike-in costume you can muster in...gasp...1 month.
This requires some thought:
Macklemore vs T-Rex on an MTB.
Slutty Catgirl vs Hello Kitty.
Evel Knievel vs Dr. Octopus.
What kind of costume are you? This is not a game. It requires careful consideration, and a clear assessment of your motivation...do you want to actually race your bike without the risk of getting your costume-appendages caught in someone else's drivetrain? No. No you do not. Because what fun would that be?
To further complicate the annual costume conundrum, this year we finally have a verifiable account of what, precisely, Donald Trump's penis looks like. So you've got that to sort out, emotionally and otherwise, and then you have to figure out if it's something you'd want to race your bike in for 6+ hours.
Have we hit rock bottom of whatever this is yet?
No. No we have not.
Look, it was already hard to imagine a Paranormal where half of you derelicts were not a) drunk and b) dressed as something phallic and/or offensive anyway. So I don't guess a costumed Mario-Toad/Stormy Daniels team riding a tandem and sneaking off into the woods together should come as a real surprise to anyone at this point. It's sad, sure, but if the past is any indication, things can always get worse.
 |
| worse. |
And we'd still ride it anyway, wouldn't we?
Prove it to me, Toad.
Sign up, up, up.
Friday, August 3, 2018
Bleak
God forbid we fix our own shit.
Let me explain myself.
But first: A Legend:
In 1864, with the Civil War raging around him, Link Evans was a slave at the Bleak House Plantation in Earlysville. He was a blacksmith, having learned the trade from his father, also a slave. Bleak House was originally owned by the Michie family, of Michie Tavern fame, the original Michie Tavern having been located right at the Buck Mountain end of Bleak House Road before it was moved over to the foot of Monticello, decades later. At that time, Bleak House Plantation was an active plantation, harvesting everything from corn to cows to tobacco (no cotton though) - even during the darkest period of the civil war. The whole operation was run on the labor of the 41 slaves that lived there.
Link Evans had something that few of the other slaves at Bleak House had though. Because in 1865, the Civil War ended and Link was a free man, and he learned that his skill as a Blacksmith - learned under the oppression of slavery - was the key to his financial future. Back then, before the bizarre reality that is Amazon-based consumer delivery, when something broke that you needed, and you couldn't just order a new one online, you fixed it. And so much of the stuff that you actually needed in life - plows, horseshoes, nails, etc - were metal, all made and fixed by your local Blacksmith. So suddenly, lucky enough to have a skillset that he could monetize, one day in 1865 Link was a free man, and he set up shop right there in Earlysville. Link Evans Rd, right next to Broadus Wood School, marks the site of his home and shop - where you took all of your stuff after the civil war and paid Link to fix it.
Flash forward 150 years. Amazon is the world's largest internet company by revenue and has a market cap of 874.19 billion dollars. If you happen to break anything - ANYTHING - you can buy a new one online with 2 snaps of your finger - and it will literally arrive at your door in 48 hours. Meanwhile, the great pacific garbage patch, where a small percentage of our broken shit goes to rest, now spans 617,763 square miles, 3 times the size of the country of France. Despite those numbers, Peak Consumerism is still, by most estimates, decades away into the future.
This is Freedom?
As a form of escape, I ride over to Bleak House Road pretty much every Thursday night, and I participate in a 3+ hour night ride with a group of hard, fast mountain bikers who, themselves, are seeking the same kind of catharsis. I say I participate in this ride, and I mean that. I used to lead it, but these days the level of speed and endurance is way, way up - and I'm basically just hanging on most of the time now. We end the ride, every Thursday night, riding back down Bleak House Road, past where Link Evans was emancipated, and I can't help but wonder what Link would say if he could see us.
So, this is Freedom?
My backpack, which I've used for all of my big Thursday night rides for the last decade, has some problems.
1) The bladder. It's completely ripped. This is a camelback, sans camel. So I'm always finishing this huge night ride on empty.
2) My saw (1). This is actually a two-part problem. This ride, the trails we tend to ride are a little, shall we say, interpretive. This is the fringe. A 6 inch wide half-track with some trees down here and there is about average, but other trails, you need a saw to open them up a little just to even get through. But my pack lacks a good spot to store my gigantic handsaw, so I've been just mashing it into the main pouch for about 5 years now, like a light saber, and hence, the torn bladder.
3) My saw (2) - Also, my saw itself is broken. Again. This time, though, it's the handle and not the blade - so I think I could fix it if I had the ability to craft the proper size chassis for it and remount the blade.
4) My shoes - I make a brief effort to craft a spot on the outside of my pack with some straps to hold my back up saw (yes, I have two) but the straps I need to use are actually holding the sole of my shoe on. Complications, one leading right into the other, and I miss dinner, fix nothing, and just barely make it out the door in time to join the guys on the other side of Bleak House Road, just past Link Evans birthplace, where he was a slave but he could fix everything.
And right way I've got problems. Even going up the first hill, my head isn't right, and so I stop to eat something but the bars I stuck in there last week appear to have fallen out the bottom of the pack, so I settle for some expired peanut butter nabs. Not good. It's a cloudy night, so we turn the lights on early, and for three hours I'm yo-yo'ing off the back of the group, their lights a distant speck through the trees and fog.
All of this gear, by modern standards, should be thrown in the trash. Click to buy and I'll have a new one in 48 hours. Stop by the shop and get a new one to ride immediately. And don't get me wrong - there is a place for that. But something about those options makes me pause too. For starters, despite their flaws, I LOVE my pack. I love these shoes. Nothing fits quite like the things that have conformed to your body by sun and sweat, over time. And, nostalgically, the places I've been with this gear...I'm just not ready to give all of that up to memory yet.
Most importantly, I have this fear, that the hidden danger of this whole trash-the-old-buy-the-new consumerism basically amounts to this: we can no longer fix our shit.
And I'm not just talking about my pack or my saw or my shoes. My fear is that the psychological shortcoming we have created - where we can't fix our THINGS - carries over to much more important areas of our lives. Like our marriages, our relationships, our broken families.
The environment.
Democracy itself.
Indeed, when we lose the ability to repair...anything, it's going to be a huge problem when what we really need is gone and Jeff Bezos can't deliver us a new civilization.
Our night ride starts to wind down, thank God, because I'm a bonking, drippy mess. We turn back onto Bleak House Road, right past the plantation where Link Evans grew up, and I am dropped again right away, about 100 yards back from the group, and it's pretty bad. I'm head-down-hot-face, at the bottom of the proverbial hole. If I can just get to the cars, I'll (hopefully) drink about a quart of water and eat something before I dive directly into the beer cooler, face first. But as we round the bend just past the old plantation, the guys up ahead stop, turn around, come back towards me, and in their lights I see that there are two black bear cubs on the side of the road there. Then another, and another. And it happens pretty fast, and I'm so exhausted I don't really even react to it, but the cubs' HUGE PISSED OFF MOTHER BEAR comes loping out of the fringe of the woods, running straight towards us, and - about 10 feet from us - she ushers her 5 cubs up the side of a big white pine tree, though she, herself, stops short of actually climbing the tree. No indeed, she just latches onto the side of that tree so we are face-to-face, and she gives us the stink eye as her cubs scramble around in the tree above her. There's something hugely primal about this, but also, I find myself relating to this bear in a very human way - because she's clearly having one of those days you have as a parent when you've got insane quintuplets that won't stop tipping over trashcans and there are five of them and one of you and you've got places to be, and where the hell is your spouse, and I get her perspective, and I feel bad for her, but also I need to get the fuck out of there ASAP. And I would, except I'm cramping and I feel so absolutely terrible at this point that I'm kind of just hoping she'll kill me and eat me.
It's a big, brave bear these days that has the ability to birth 5 cubs into this world and get them all to survive.
Bonking, cramping, but still alive and uneaten, my fight-or-flight response kicks in slowly, like honey. The bear is stationary for the time being, just staring us down, and the sum weaponry of this potential conflict is our 2,000 lumens or so vs. about 30 inches of bear claws and teeth. We are fucked if she comes off the side of that tree, but no one wants this fight less than she does, though, this wise old bear. Like maybe her momma told her about how General Sherman said War is Hell as he wept and burned the South. I stare at her for a moment and she stares back, and I wonder out loud:
"Link?"
I manage to get a foot back on my pedal and point the bike back down Bleak House Road towards the cars. The bear allows us to leave. It's only a half mile back to the cars, all downhill, and as soon as we get there I'm headfirst directly into the beer cooler without a drop of water. Relieved, I am struck by how slow my escape actually was. In hindsight, I imagine the bear watching me painfully depart the scene of our encounter, surprised at how slow and soft I was, taunting me as I go, "Bitch, you better pedal that bike."
Really, Bear, I am better than this. I will fix my pack.
That was two weeks ago, and my pack is right where I left it. I don't know how.
But I promised you, Link, and I meant it. I will figure this out.
Let me explain myself.
But first: A Legend:
 |
| Map of Earlysville, 1864 |
 |
| Bleak House Plantation |
Link Evans had something that few of the other slaves at Bleak House had though. Because in 1865, the Civil War ended and Link was a free man, and he learned that his skill as a Blacksmith - learned under the oppression of slavery - was the key to his financial future. Back then, before the bizarre reality that is Amazon-based consumer delivery, when something broke that you needed, and you couldn't just order a new one online, you fixed it. And so much of the stuff that you actually needed in life - plows, horseshoes, nails, etc - were metal, all made and fixed by your local Blacksmith. So suddenly, lucky enough to have a skillset that he could monetize, one day in 1865 Link was a free man, and he set up shop right there in Earlysville. Link Evans Rd, right next to Broadus Wood School, marks the site of his home and shop - where you took all of your stuff after the civil war and paid Link to fix it.
 |
| Link's Home |
Flash forward 150 years. Amazon is the world's largest internet company by revenue and has a market cap of 874.19 billion dollars. If you happen to break anything - ANYTHING - you can buy a new one online with 2 snaps of your finger - and it will literally arrive at your door in 48 hours. Meanwhile, the great pacific garbage patch, where a small percentage of our broken shit goes to rest, now spans 617,763 square miles, 3 times the size of the country of France. Despite those numbers, Peak Consumerism is still, by most estimates, decades away into the future.
This is Freedom?
As a form of escape, I ride over to Bleak House Road pretty much every Thursday night, and I participate in a 3+ hour night ride with a group of hard, fast mountain bikers who, themselves, are seeking the same kind of catharsis. I say I participate in this ride, and I mean that. I used to lead it, but these days the level of speed and endurance is way, way up - and I'm basically just hanging on most of the time now. We end the ride, every Thursday night, riding back down Bleak House Road, past where Link Evans was emancipated, and I can't help but wonder what Link would say if he could see us.
So, this is Freedom?
My backpack, which I've used for all of my big Thursday night rides for the last decade, has some problems.
1) The bladder. It's completely ripped. This is a camelback, sans camel. So I'm always finishing this huge night ride on empty.
2) My saw (1). This is actually a two-part problem. This ride, the trails we tend to ride are a little, shall we say, interpretive. This is the fringe. A 6 inch wide half-track with some trees down here and there is about average, but other trails, you need a saw to open them up a little just to even get through. But my pack lacks a good spot to store my gigantic handsaw, so I've been just mashing it into the main pouch for about 5 years now, like a light saber, and hence, the torn bladder.
3) My saw (2) - Also, my saw itself is broken. Again. This time, though, it's the handle and not the blade - so I think I could fix it if I had the ability to craft the proper size chassis for it and remount the blade.
4) My shoes - I make a brief effort to craft a spot on the outside of my pack with some straps to hold my back up saw (yes, I have two) but the straps I need to use are actually holding the sole of my shoe on. Complications, one leading right into the other, and I miss dinner, fix nothing, and just barely make it out the door in time to join the guys on the other side of Bleak House Road, just past Link Evans birthplace, where he was a slave but he could fix everything.
And right way I've got problems. Even going up the first hill, my head isn't right, and so I stop to eat something but the bars I stuck in there last week appear to have fallen out the bottom of the pack, so I settle for some expired peanut butter nabs. Not good. It's a cloudy night, so we turn the lights on early, and for three hours I'm yo-yo'ing off the back of the group, their lights a distant speck through the trees and fog.
All of this gear, by modern standards, should be thrown in the trash. Click to buy and I'll have a new one in 48 hours. Stop by the shop and get a new one to ride immediately. And don't get me wrong - there is a place for that. But something about those options makes me pause too. For starters, despite their flaws, I LOVE my pack. I love these shoes. Nothing fits quite like the things that have conformed to your body by sun and sweat, over time. And, nostalgically, the places I've been with this gear...I'm just not ready to give all of that up to memory yet.
Most importantly, I have this fear, that the hidden danger of this whole trash-the-old-buy-the-new consumerism basically amounts to this: we can no longer fix our shit.
And I'm not just talking about my pack or my saw or my shoes. My fear is that the psychological shortcoming we have created - where we can't fix our THINGS - carries over to much more important areas of our lives. Like our marriages, our relationships, our broken families.
The environment.
Democracy itself.
Indeed, when we lose the ability to repair...anything, it's going to be a huge problem when what we really need is gone and Jeff Bezos can't deliver us a new civilization.
Our night ride starts to wind down, thank God, because I'm a bonking, drippy mess. We turn back onto Bleak House Road, right past the plantation where Link Evans grew up, and I am dropped again right away, about 100 yards back from the group, and it's pretty bad. I'm head-down-hot-face, at the bottom of the proverbial hole. If I can just get to the cars, I'll (hopefully) drink about a quart of water and eat something before I dive directly into the beer cooler, face first. But as we round the bend just past the old plantation, the guys up ahead stop, turn around, come back towards me, and in their lights I see that there are two black bear cubs on the side of the road there. Then another, and another. And it happens pretty fast, and I'm so exhausted I don't really even react to it, but the cubs' HUGE PISSED OFF MOTHER BEAR comes loping out of the fringe of the woods, running straight towards us, and - about 10 feet from us - she ushers her 5 cubs up the side of a big white pine tree, though she, herself, stops short of actually climbing the tree. No indeed, she just latches onto the side of that tree so we are face-to-face, and she gives us the stink eye as her cubs scramble around in the tree above her. There's something hugely primal about this, but also, I find myself relating to this bear in a very human way - because she's clearly having one of those days you have as a parent when you've got insane quintuplets that won't stop tipping over trashcans and there are five of them and one of you and you've got places to be, and where the hell is your spouse, and I get her perspective, and I feel bad for her, but also I need to get the fuck out of there ASAP. And I would, except I'm cramping and I feel so absolutely terrible at this point that I'm kind of just hoping she'll kill me and eat me.
It's a big, brave bear these days that has the ability to birth 5 cubs into this world and get them all to survive.
Bonking, cramping, but still alive and uneaten, my fight-or-flight response kicks in slowly, like honey. The bear is stationary for the time being, just staring us down, and the sum weaponry of this potential conflict is our 2,000 lumens or so vs. about 30 inches of bear claws and teeth. We are fucked if she comes off the side of that tree, but no one wants this fight less than she does, though, this wise old bear. Like maybe her momma told her about how General Sherman said War is Hell as he wept and burned the South. I stare at her for a moment and she stares back, and I wonder out loud:
"Link?"
I manage to get a foot back on my pedal and point the bike back down Bleak House Road towards the cars. The bear allows us to leave. It's only a half mile back to the cars, all downhill, and as soon as we get there I'm headfirst directly into the beer cooler without a drop of water. Relieved, I am struck by how slow my escape actually was. In hindsight, I imagine the bear watching me painfully depart the scene of our encounter, surprised at how slow and soft I was, taunting me as I go, "Bitch, you better pedal that bike."
Really, Bear, I am better than this. I will fix my pack.
That was two weeks ago, and my pack is right where I left it. I don't know how.
But I promised you, Link, and I meant it. I will figure this out.
Thursday, July 5, 2018
The Drowning of Jeff Buckley
A lot of people assume incorrectly that Jeff Buckley drowned in the Mississippi River. That's actually not true. It was the Wolf River, just upstream from the Mississippi in Memphis, where Buckley and his roadie stopped alongside the interstate at a rest area, stepped over the guardrail, and walked down to the banks of the Wolf for a swim. It was hot, and there wasn't much to do - the rest of the band was behind, still in Boston, on their way to Memphis soon enough, but they weren't there yet. Buckley, fully clothed and with his boots on, had gone swimming in this same spot a few times before. It was hot, 90+ for the third day in a row, May 29th, 1997. Jeff Buckley was singing the chorus to Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" and he was stone sober.
In he went.
As human beings, we are mostly bound by the limitations of gravity, but not entirely. There are a few circumstances when we are not. Swimming is one of those. The buoyancy that the human body can achieve in water, floating, is a huge part of what makes the experience profound.
Road riding is a lot like swimming in this same way. In both cases, the sensation that you experience relates directly to buoyancy, and you can't find it doing anything else. Floating, as a rule, is not something a human being is capable of but in water. The same, too, for propelling yourself along at 50 miles/hour with only your legs and a couple of wheels. Going downhill at top speed on a bike, like floating on your back on a summer day, is sensational.
Walking on the ice of a frozen lake.
Skydiving.
Outer space.
We are able to remove our souls, momentarily, from the confines of our own bodies. But gravity is still there, lurking.
When I lived out West, my roommate, Chris, bought a Ninja JXR-1000. As far as road specific motorcycles go, it was the fast one. This was 2005 or so. Chris was ex-military, and he kept most of his experiences from his time in the Middle-East classified, locked up in secure room in the back of his brain. Most Friday nights, Chris and his buddies went out riding. Crotch rockets, I recognized, were a pure form of escape.
Then one night Chris came home, ghostly pale but unharmed, and he went to bed without a word. The next day he sold his motorcycle. Like combat, he never really talked about what happened to him that Friday night. The speed at which life comes at you when you're going 150 mph is faster than he expected, I guess. But he did say something profound, "Human beings, man. We aren't meant for that."
He is right, of course. From an evolutionary perspective, escaping gravity is just not what we're built for. The locals in Memphis, they do not swim in the Mississippi. They've learned to fear it, over time, generation upon generation of stories of people who have drowned. The river there is full of snags, strainers, hazards below the surface, and the wake of passing boats creates unpredictable currents that are stronger than you think.
So, too, does our generation of cyclist pass along cautionary tales. Don't ride Earlysville road after 4 PM. Don't ride Old Ballard if it rains. Don't ride 20 South...ever. Hell, don't even DRIVE 20 South. We are adapting, as mammals tend to do, to the timing and structure of the dangerous environment around us.
You might not have noticed, but mountain bikes are now trending this way. Not unlike Chris's motorcycle, the speed at which the modern mountain bike is capable of going downhill has begun to exceed our ability to pilot it. Not that they don't ride amazingly well - these bikes are miracles. Modern geometry, long travel 29ers are easy to turn, a pure joy to ride, and they will run over almost anything.
Until they don't.
It's when these marvels of engineering suddenly stop that you've got a problem, because thanks to carbon fiber, DW-link suspension, and your 9-tooth cog, you're now going way, way faster than you think.
Jeff Buckley's body was found on June 4th, floating downstream in the Mississippi. A toxicology report showed no drugs or alcohol in his system. He was sober, thoughtful, happy, and just about to enter the best years of his life.
The rest of us, we are left with gravity.
We abide by its expectations, for the most part. But our need for escape is strong, too, maybe stronger than ever - and not riding at this point just doesn't feel like an option.
Taillights, people - every damn time.
Bleed your brakes.
Consider one of those MIPS helmets.
The pursuit of zero gravity always, always ends abruptly.
Up, up, up.
In he went.
As human beings, we are mostly bound by the limitations of gravity, but not entirely. There are a few circumstances when we are not. Swimming is one of those. The buoyancy that the human body can achieve in water, floating, is a huge part of what makes the experience profound.
Road riding is a lot like swimming in this same way. In both cases, the sensation that you experience relates directly to buoyancy, and you can't find it doing anything else. Floating, as a rule, is not something a human being is capable of but in water. The same, too, for propelling yourself along at 50 miles/hour with only your legs and a couple of wheels. Going downhill at top speed on a bike, like floating on your back on a summer day, is sensational.
Walking on the ice of a frozen lake.
Skydiving.
Outer space.
We are able to remove our souls, momentarily, from the confines of our own bodies. But gravity is still there, lurking.
When I lived out West, my roommate, Chris, bought a Ninja JXR-1000. As far as road specific motorcycles go, it was the fast one. This was 2005 or so. Chris was ex-military, and he kept most of his experiences from his time in the Middle-East classified, locked up in secure room in the back of his brain. Most Friday nights, Chris and his buddies went out riding. Crotch rockets, I recognized, were a pure form of escape.
Then one night Chris came home, ghostly pale but unharmed, and he went to bed without a word. The next day he sold his motorcycle. Like combat, he never really talked about what happened to him that Friday night. The speed at which life comes at you when you're going 150 mph is faster than he expected, I guess. But he did say something profound, "Human beings, man. We aren't meant for that."
He is right, of course. From an evolutionary perspective, escaping gravity is just not what we're built for. The locals in Memphis, they do not swim in the Mississippi. They've learned to fear it, over time, generation upon generation of stories of people who have drowned. The river there is full of snags, strainers, hazards below the surface, and the wake of passing boats creates unpredictable currents that are stronger than you think.
So, too, does our generation of cyclist pass along cautionary tales. Don't ride Earlysville road after 4 PM. Don't ride Old Ballard if it rains. Don't ride 20 South...ever. Hell, don't even DRIVE 20 South. We are adapting, as mammals tend to do, to the timing and structure of the dangerous environment around us.
You might not have noticed, but mountain bikes are now trending this way. Not unlike Chris's motorcycle, the speed at which the modern mountain bike is capable of going downhill has begun to exceed our ability to pilot it. Not that they don't ride amazingly well - these bikes are miracles. Modern geometry, long travel 29ers are easy to turn, a pure joy to ride, and they will run over almost anything.
Until they don't.
It's when these marvels of engineering suddenly stop that you've got a problem, because thanks to carbon fiber, DW-link suspension, and your 9-tooth cog, you're now going way, way faster than you think.
Jeff Buckley's body was found on June 4th, floating downstream in the Mississippi. A toxicology report showed no drugs or alcohol in his system. He was sober, thoughtful, happy, and just about to enter the best years of his life.
The rest of us, we are left with gravity.
We abide by its expectations, for the most part. But our need for escape is strong, too, maybe stronger than ever - and not riding at this point just doesn't feel like an option.
Taillights, people - every damn time.
Bleed your brakes.
Consider one of those MIPS helmets.
The pursuit of zero gravity always, always ends abruptly.
Up, up, up.
Friday, June 29, 2018
Secret Trails
25 years of Dave Matthews.
Like him or not, the power of music to transport your soul down the pathway of memory is strong. Chances are that if you're in your 30's or 40's, DMB was playing somewhere along the way, at least in the background, in a time and place that ended up being pretty important to you.
Watching this, I am reminded of one of the last times I rode bikes with Iron Mike Walling.
Mike was right behind me, and we both hopped over an old log in the trail - a log that had been a tree that had fallen on that same trail about 8 years before we were riding it that day. We'd ridden that trail probably 500 times since the tree had fallen, loops upon loops over time, watching that tree slowly break down and decay. The last time we rode it, the log was basically just a pile of red dirt, almost completely decayed, and Mike said something like, "Tell me that riding over that log doesn't make you feel old."
It did not, at the time, make me feel old.
But an old log doesn't grow a grey beard, and it can't sing like Dave Matthews.
Quite separately, though relevant, I did something on a mountain bike ride about 14 years ago that I've always regretted, and I'll tell you about it now.
I was riding with Shaine, Kirk, some of our crew out in the mountains above Boulder, CO. This was probably like 2004 or so. Mountain biking in Boulder county has long been a subject of contentiousness - so much of it isn't actually allowed. But in 2004 we had this huge ride that we used to do - we called it "Busta' Ned" - and we had it dialed. Basically, you caught the N Bus at 9 AM from Boulder up to Nederland, got off at the High School at about 9:40 AM, and you rode singletrack back into Boulder. The ride, like most summer rides in Colorado, took all day. It was probably a 40 mile descent, losing 5,000 feet of elevation along the way, and I guess it was about 80% singletrack. I haven't done the ride in 10 years, I guess. Some of it, I'm told, is long gone. At the time, much of it wasn't 100% legal. Semi-legal, hidden trails in Boulder County - this stuff was like gold back then. And like any claim that you stumbled upon in the mountains, the conventional wisdom was that you kept it a secret.
So we were riding back down from Nederland one afternoon, huge beautiful blue Colorado sky against green Colorado pines. Magic dirt, just the kind of ride you'd want to do if you were a visitor - and we came upon two people who were just that: Visitors. Newbs to town. A husband and wife, I don't recall their names, but they were from the midwest somewhere and they'd heard about this Nederland-to-Boulder singletrack, and they were about 1/2 way down the route trying to figure it out, and they were stuck. The next trail was anything but obvious. We came up to them, and everything was polite and fine, but when they asked us about how to get down, we lied. We straight up lied to this wonderful couple, a part of our tribe, these two great people just like us, that maybe we would have been friends with if we'd just showed them the next trail...we told them that we didn't know the way down. They rode down Magnolia rd back towards Boulder, a steep gravel slog that kind of sucks, and we took the secret hidden stash of singletrack down behind their backs, to the south, back onto the West side of Flagstaff mountain and on into Boulder.
I felt absolutely empty.
Afterwards, Shaine and I debated what we had done for days. Years even. I think we still talk about it some. In Shaine's view, the trails that we were riding were not legal, and more importantly, they weren't ours. We had no right to share them with complete strangers.
That may be true, but I 100% and wholeheartedly disagreed, and I still do. They weren't ours, I insisted. We had no right to hide them either.
On a flight back from Sacramento recently, the guy next to me tapped my leg and pointed out the window. There, much to my surprise, was a HUGE double rainbow - one of the biggest, prettiest rainbows that I have ever seen. In your life, if you maintain a list of the top 10 rainbows that you've ever seen, which you should...this one would have been a top 5, for sure.
Anyway, here's the point - if he hadn't pointed it out, I would have missed it.
Sharing the beauty of nature with other people, even complete strangers, is a fundamental part of what it means to be a human being. Humans have the unique capacity to observe and share natural beauty in ways that animals do not. At the very least, it's the cornerstone of most environmental conservation in the modern world - the deeply rooted reflex of, "Wow. Hey. Holy shit. You have to see this..."
I do everything I can to not cut the logs now, to allow and enjoy Dave Matthews as he grows old, and if I find a secret trail I share it. While we're all still here.
This world, it is not mine.
Up, up, up.
Like him or not, the power of music to transport your soul down the pathway of memory is strong. Chances are that if you're in your 30's or 40's, DMB was playing somewhere along the way, at least in the background, in a time and place that ended up being pretty important to you.
Watching this, I am reminded of one of the last times I rode bikes with Iron Mike Walling.
Mike was right behind me, and we both hopped over an old log in the trail - a log that had been a tree that had fallen on that same trail about 8 years before we were riding it that day. We'd ridden that trail probably 500 times since the tree had fallen, loops upon loops over time, watching that tree slowly break down and decay. The last time we rode it, the log was basically just a pile of red dirt, almost completely decayed, and Mike said something like, "Tell me that riding over that log doesn't make you feel old."
It did not, at the time, make me feel old.
But an old log doesn't grow a grey beard, and it can't sing like Dave Matthews.
I was riding with Shaine, Kirk, some of our crew out in the mountains above Boulder, CO. This was probably like 2004 or so. Mountain biking in Boulder county has long been a subject of contentiousness - so much of it isn't actually allowed. But in 2004 we had this huge ride that we used to do - we called it "Busta' Ned" - and we had it dialed. Basically, you caught the N Bus at 9 AM from Boulder up to Nederland, got off at the High School at about 9:40 AM, and you rode singletrack back into Boulder. The ride, like most summer rides in Colorado, took all day. It was probably a 40 mile descent, losing 5,000 feet of elevation along the way, and I guess it was about 80% singletrack. I haven't done the ride in 10 years, I guess. Some of it, I'm told, is long gone. At the time, much of it wasn't 100% legal. Semi-legal, hidden trails in Boulder County - this stuff was like gold back then. And like any claim that you stumbled upon in the mountains, the conventional wisdom was that you kept it a secret.
So we were riding back down from Nederland one afternoon, huge beautiful blue Colorado sky against green Colorado pines. Magic dirt, just the kind of ride you'd want to do if you were a visitor - and we came upon two people who were just that: Visitors. Newbs to town. A husband and wife, I don't recall their names, but they were from the midwest somewhere and they'd heard about this Nederland-to-Boulder singletrack, and they were about 1/2 way down the route trying to figure it out, and they were stuck. The next trail was anything but obvious. We came up to them, and everything was polite and fine, but when they asked us about how to get down, we lied. We straight up lied to this wonderful couple, a part of our tribe, these two great people just like us, that maybe we would have been friends with if we'd just showed them the next trail...we told them that we didn't know the way down. They rode down Magnolia rd back towards Boulder, a steep gravel slog that kind of sucks, and we took the secret hidden stash of singletrack down behind their backs, to the south, back onto the West side of Flagstaff mountain and on into Boulder.
I felt absolutely empty.
Afterwards, Shaine and I debated what we had done for days. Years even. I think we still talk about it some. In Shaine's view, the trails that we were riding were not legal, and more importantly, they weren't ours. We had no right to share them with complete strangers.
That may be true, but I 100% and wholeheartedly disagreed, and I still do. They weren't ours, I insisted. We had no right to hide them either.
On a flight back from Sacramento recently, the guy next to me tapped my leg and pointed out the window. There, much to my surprise, was a HUGE double rainbow - one of the biggest, prettiest rainbows that I have ever seen. In your life, if you maintain a list of the top 10 rainbows that you've ever seen, which you should...this one would have been a top 5, for sure. Anyway, here's the point - if he hadn't pointed it out, I would have missed it.
Sharing the beauty of nature with other people, even complete strangers, is a fundamental part of what it means to be a human being. Humans have the unique capacity to observe and share natural beauty in ways that animals do not. At the very least, it's the cornerstone of most environmental conservation in the modern world - the deeply rooted reflex of, "Wow. Hey. Holy shit. You have to see this..."
I do everything I can to not cut the logs now, to allow and enjoy Dave Matthews as he grows old, and if I find a secret trail I share it. While we're all still here.
This world, it is not mine.
Up, up, up.
Tuesday, June 5, 2018
Thursday, April 26, 2018
Bike Ridin' Weather
Now THAT is some fine bike-ridin' weather.
Spring has finally sprung, and the 22936ish has not one but two races to offer you this weekend, plus a couple of demo trucks chock full of more bearings and adjustment knobs than you can possibly turn on your own.
Bonus full moon on Saturday eve, under perfect clear skies. Chance of shredding? Nigh 100%.
Because if you can't have fun on a demo bike, you might as well be already dead.
Pivot, conveniently, is happy to let you know upfront, via the magical interwebs, exactly what kind of heat they are packing in that rad demo van. His 69er disdain notwithstanding, my Chris Cocalis bro-crush remains in full effect.
Trek, on the other hand, does not appear to do have a list of what's in their truck, presumably because it's so big they don't actually know what's in there. Their demo trailer is about 385 feet long, so I think it's more a question of what's NOT in there than what actually is.
I've ridden a bunch of Treks and Pivots. When asked by close friends to confide which I actually prefer, I tell them the truth - "Yes."
Though I can tell you that if I lived at the bottom of Torry ridge - like RIGHT at the very bottom - I'd have two of these:
TWO, not one, because it's easy to assume one of them would be the broken down subject of a crash replacement at all times.
And I'd be in the hospital.
So lucky for me, and lucky for Trek, I don't live there.
But for one weekend only, I plan on riding like I do.
Sign up, show up, giddyup up up.
Spring has finally sprung, and the 22936ish has not one but two races to offer you this weekend, plus a couple of demo trucks chock full of more bearings and adjustment knobs than you can possibly turn on your own.
Bonus full moon on Saturday eve, under perfect clear skies. Chance of shredding? Nigh 100%.
Because if you can't have fun on a demo bike, you might as well be already dead.
Pivot, conveniently, is happy to let you know upfront, via the magical interwebs, exactly what kind of heat they are packing in that rad demo van. His 69er disdain notwithstanding, my Chris Cocalis bro-crush remains in full effect.
Trek, on the other hand, does not appear to do have a list of what's in their truck, presumably because it's so big they don't actually know what's in there. Their demo trailer is about 385 feet long, so I think it's more a question of what's NOT in there than what actually is.
I've ridden a bunch of Treks and Pivots. When asked by close friends to confide which I actually prefer, I tell them the truth - "Yes."
Though I can tell you that if I lived at the bottom of Torry ridge - like RIGHT at the very bottom - I'd have two of these:
TWO, not one, because it's easy to assume one of them would be the broken down subject of a crash replacement at all times.
And I'd be in the hospital.
So lucky for me, and lucky for Trek, I don't live there.
But for one weekend only, I plan on riding like I do.
Sign up, show up, giddyup up up.
Thursday, April 19, 2018
Beaver Spring Fever - Sunday, April 29th
THE BEAVER HAS GROWN.
9 and 1/4 miles per lap, dedicated to chewing on your legs. Sunday, April 29th.
Before we get to the nitty gritty, I will here deposit all of the bizarro Beaver attack news that you people have sent me over the last year. I don't know what it says about me, or you, or the world at large that this blog is now the de facto authority on Beaver aggression. But here you are:
http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/canadian-trapper-survives-brutal-sexual-assault-by-200-pound-beaver/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2307572/Beaver-attack-Fisherman-killed-BEAVER-tried-photo-lake-Belarus.html
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/04/11/newser-beaver-kills-man/2074145/
https://www.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2016/07/11/possibly-rabid-beaver-attacks-paddle-boarder-beaver-lake/86942648/
I think the course is a lot longer than it was last year. Much of the new stuff is also way, way better, having been successfully beaten into submission by the army of junior racers we have around these parts.
You can sign up here.
Orrrr...you can wait, watch the weather, and then sign up on race day, thus ruining Marky Mark's entire weekend.
Of note, there will be not one, but TWO demo trucks on site that day, dishing out the toys in exchange for a temporary glance at your personal credit card. The Pivot Demo truck, in fact, I can see parked from where I am typing this right at this very moment. But those new Trek's with the Re-Active bizarro valve, the ones from outer space, won't show up until the weekend.
Someone dropped me a note, mentioned how old I have gotten, then asked a great question:
"Can I just race a demo bike?"
Good thinking. No sense riding the Beaver and taking a beating on your own bike when you can just ride a demo bike and blame it for your lack of talent and winter lethargy. The answer: I don't know. Maybe the powers that be at Trek and Pivot will chime in here with their thoughts on allowing you to semi-puke on their demonstration carbon bits.
It would be useful, after all, to get a sense of how well the vomit flows down the top tube at high speed. Hashtag, aerovomit. You read it hear first.
Those CAMBC burgers: Easily digestible. For a good cause. But do they adhere to carbon if pre-chewed?
One way to find out.
Sign up, Show up, get up up up.
Thursday, March 22, 2018
JGST Video
Short, awesome video put together by Ryan Little with the JGST highlights.
I'm not sure if I'm more inspired by the people who come together to make an event like this happen, or just simply by Ryan's abilities as a filmmaker. The whole "we knew that kid when..." concept seems insufficient.
Regardless, it feels pretty great to live and operate in a community like this.
Will keep you, the public, apprised of the semi-ginormous check that we all played a part in creating, to be sent out to Colorado soon.
Until next time, rubber down, heads up up up.
I'm not sure if I'm more inspired by the people who come together to make an event like this happen, or just simply by Ryan's abilities as a filmmaker. The whole "we knew that kid when..." concept seems insufficient.
Regardless, it feels pretty great to live and operate in a community like this.
Will keep you, the public, apprised of the semi-ginormous check that we all played a part in creating, to be sent out to Colorado soon.
Until next time, rubber down, heads up up up.
Thursday, March 15, 2018
James Gist - MTB Race Pioneer
This past fall at the final race of the VAHS series at Woodberry Forest up in Madison, something like 300 kids showed up to race mountain bikes. It was a jaw-dropping volume of shredding, bigger than almost every other MTB race in Virginia in 2017, all except for the SM100.
Even 10 years ago, the idea that 300 high schoolers (and middle schoolers, actually) would show up to a mountain bike race would have been pretty far-fetched...unless you were James Gist.
A little of the history of youth mountain bike racing here in Virginia can be found below, and the big man on the Northern Fringe, Nolan himself, sent me an explanation of how James' work back in 2007 has evolved into the thriving race scene we have today.
From Nolan:
James was pretty instrumental in helping Tony and I get the blue ridge triple threat off the ground. As far as I know (and I am sure someone will correct me) it was the first high school race series in virginia. Started in 2008 ran for two or three years. In my humble opinion it paved the way for the current junior MTB scene. If memory serves me correctly James was the CAMBC president at the time, and he and Fenton showed Tony and me how to do stuff. The series was BRS, O-Hill and Walnut.
 |
2007, Blue Ridge School  |
Social Progress. The aging of the human body. The passage of time. Every lesson in history like this tends to give me pause.
This one gives me hope too. For every school shooting out there, which there seems to be an awful lot of right now, there's a guy like Nolan, or James, or Fenton working to bring bikes into kids' lives in a way that might help them learn to peacefully navigate this bizarre, dangerous new world.
Which is the only world we have to offer them.
Shred on, kids.
Rubber down. Heads up, up, up.
Monday, March 12, 2018
The JGST IS Saturday. Sign up, up, up!
Update from our man of the week, James Gist, out in Colorado. It's worth a watch and, more than likely, a healthy dose of perspective.
Two things that I'll point out here from his video:
1) There's an amazing amount of technology and assistance out there for someone battling ALS. I am deeply and profoundly grateful for that, as well as James' courage to share his story as he navigates it all.
2) It all costs money.
And that's where we come in. If you know James, you probably have already chipped in via the PayPal fund that was set up to do just that. If not, it's time to step up.
Even if you don't know James, you can still donate that way.
Or. Orrrrr...if you don't know James, but you just plain like racin' bikes, which there is no shame in, you can sign up for the JGST, which is a 1 hour short track happening on Saturday. It's going to be amazing, under 62 degree bluebird skies, with CAMBC grilled burgers and Green Beer to cap it all off. And your racing cash will go straight to Gist Family that way too.
Sign up for the JGST here.
I'm going to do my best not to sob and grovel at you this week, but there are no guarantees in life, which is kind of the original point of all of this anyway.
To try to keep it upbeat, I'll now give you the following:
1) Here's the lap. This thing will be taped, raked, and ready for you to stomp all over your big ring around by Thursday. You can tell I'm old because I use phrases like "Big Ring." But you know what I mean. I think the lap has the right balance of singletrack and flow but still enough room for Richard Serton to pass you and blow your doors off when he needs to. Which will be often. So I hope you'll like it.
2) I promise you, if we can get him out here this week in some sunshine, I'll put together some helmet cam video of the fastest, raddest leprechaun you have ever seen hucking his green vessel around this course like Nino McSchurter. So you'll have a sense of how rad it is, even before you show up on Saturday. I'll post the video up here soon.
That right there, along with the effort to support James as a whole - is the very power of the internet.
Use it the right way.
Step it up, up, up.
Two things that I'll point out here from his video:
1) There's an amazing amount of technology and assistance out there for someone battling ALS. I am deeply and profoundly grateful for that, as well as James' courage to share his story as he navigates it all.
2) It all costs money.
And that's where we come in. If you know James, you probably have already chipped in via the PayPal fund that was set up to do just that. If not, it's time to step up.
Even if you don't know James, you can still donate that way.
Or. Orrrrr...if you don't know James, but you just plain like racin' bikes, which there is no shame in, you can sign up for the JGST, which is a 1 hour short track happening on Saturday. It's going to be amazing, under 62 degree bluebird skies, with CAMBC grilled burgers and Green Beer to cap it all off. And your racing cash will go straight to Gist Family that way too.
Sign up for the JGST here.
I'm going to do my best not to sob and grovel at you this week, but there are no guarantees in life, which is kind of the original point of all of this anyway.
To try to keep it upbeat, I'll now give you the following:
1) Here's the lap. This thing will be taped, raked, and ready for you to stomp all over your big ring around by Thursday. You can tell I'm old because I use phrases like "Big Ring." But you know what I mean. I think the lap has the right balance of singletrack and flow but still enough room for Richard Serton to pass you and blow your doors off when he needs to. Which will be often. So I hope you'll like it.
2) I promise you, if we can get him out here this week in some sunshine, I'll put together some helmet cam video of the fastest, raddest leprechaun you have ever seen hucking his green vessel around this course like Nino McSchurter. So you'll have a sense of how rad it is, even before you show up on Saturday. I'll post the video up here soon.
That right there, along with the effort to support James as a whole - is the very power of the internet.
Use it the right way.
Step it up, up, up.
Monday, March 5, 2018
Let's Rally, O'Malley.
Sign up!
The JGST is in less than 2 weeks - that's Saturday March 17th.
At one point, I lobbied the powers that be to name this event the STJG (Short Track James Gist) because I thought it would make it sound Euro.
The Grand Prix Miguel Indurain
The Criterion Du Dauphine
Etc. Where the race category precedes the namesake.
But then I was reminded that this race also coincides with St Patricks Day, and for $20 you can both race and fill your belly with green beer, and that any notion of European Class should be quashed right from the very start.
And We Like It That Way.
So then, let's rally, O'Malley.
After all, it's a fundraiser. And our cause, The Gist Family, once famously won the costume contest at the Paranormal when they came dressed as Obama vs. Hillary Clinton. Johanna also famously killed it a different year with a deadpan impersonation of Richard Pence, hair and all. Point being that real class also sometimes dresses it up a little, and that is what we intend to do in this case.
The JGST is in less than 2 weeks - that's Saturday March 17th.
At one point, I lobbied the powers that be to name this event the STJG (Short Track James Gist) because I thought it would make it sound Euro.
The Grand Prix Miguel Indurain
The Criterion Du Dauphine
Etc. Where the race category precedes the namesake.
But then I was reminded that this race also coincides with St Patricks Day, and for $20 you can both race and fill your belly with green beer, and that any notion of European Class should be quashed right from the very start.
And We Like It That Way.
So then, let's rally, O'Malley.
After all, it's a fundraiser. And our cause, The Gist Family, once famously won the costume contest at the Paranormal when they came dressed as Obama vs. Hillary Clinton. Johanna also famously killed it a different year with a deadpan impersonation of Richard Pence, hair and all. Point being that real class also sometimes dresses it up a little, and that is what we intend to do in this case.
Course preview? Coming soon. Will it be helmet-cam footage of McCardell, dressed as a leprechaun, throwing huge tail whips through fresh cut loam?
Sign up - as I may have said before, and then tune back in to find out.
And up and up and up.
Thursday, March 1, 2018
#GravelBikesSaveLives
Gravel
Bikes
Save
Lives
You heard it here first.
How, exactly, they save lives varies immensely. But they do.
The marginally kept semi-secret Trek Checkpoints are now in stock, both up here in the Northside where gravel actually exists and Downtown where...Shaine works.
You can check out the full review over on CyclingTips. First person to ride that 34 X 34 gearing up Brokenback without putting a foot down wins a prize, that prize being temporary penile numbness.
Just in case the horses in the stable were getting lonely; N plus 1. That's French for "Federal tax return."
Giddyup, up, up.
Bikes
Save
Lives
You heard it here first.
How, exactly, they save lives varies immensely. But they do.
The marginally kept semi-secret Trek Checkpoints are now in stock, both up here in the Northside where gravel actually exists and Downtown where...Shaine works.
You can check out the full review over on CyclingTips. First person to ride that 34 X 34 gearing up Brokenback without putting a foot down wins a prize, that prize being temporary penile numbness.
Just in case the horses in the stable were getting lonely; N plus 1. That's French for "Federal tax return."
Giddyup, up, up.
Monday, February 26, 2018
Long Live The Kane
Ain't.
No.
Half.
Steppin'.
Less than 3 weeks out...Sign up for the JGST:
https://www.bikereg.com/crc-fundraiser
Up, up, up.
Thursday, February 22, 2018
James Gist Short Track - 3.17.18 - SIGN UP
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You probably know James as the one time president of CRC. 2008 or so, I guess. That's pre-Scanlon presidency, which is, of course, before McCardell got his filthy paws on the presidency, which immediately precedes the long hike to the top that now makes Will Leet our leader. (I offer the word "hike" without further comment.)
Outside of bikes, I put together an incomplete list of other rad stuff that James Gist is into:
Remote control things
Poker
Electronics
Paintball
Anything fast
Parenting
Grills
I'm forgetting a ton of things here. James is, without compare, the most well-rounded person I know. He is literally good at everything.
James, in case you haven't heard, finds himself in a fight with ALS right now. You can follow his story here, pause for a moment and sob to yourself, HOLY SHIT, and spend the rest of the day pondering all the things in life that you cannot control.
Once you've done that, and pretty much all the problems in your own life are put into perspective as mere peanuts, you'll probably wonder...what can I do? Here we go:
1) Give. You can do so via the link. https://www.paypal.com/pools/c/7ZMZTyZ4uO
2) Sign up for the inaugural James Gist Short Track. There was, in the mid 00's here in Charlottesville, no fiercer short track racer than James. (He could also fuck up a plate of brownies faster than a Saint Bernard.) It will be, I hope, a proper way to do him proud, come together as a community, and support his family financially and otherwise.
More to come about James, the cause, and the race in the coming weeks, but I'll trail off here for now and let the links above do the talking.
Make a difference, and keep looking up up up.
Thursday, February 15, 2018
That was a slog, eh?
On Sunday, I was pretty shocked when 60-some masochists showed up in my driveway looking for the slightly adjusted start line of Il Pantani 2018, bound and determined to do that to themselves. The Pantani route on a dry day is one thing, but Pantani in the mud is a real slog.
The lineup, too, was impressive, and Dave Flatten came away with the W. He's now won the two most treacherous Pantanis on record- outsprinting superpro Jeremiah Bishop a few years ago in a frozen tundra hoth-version of Pantani, and then riding local hero Johnny P off his wheel in the slop this go round. It was a dogfight up there, I've been told, but apparently "Flatten" - when it comes to word choice - is a misnomer. That guy does not suck.
The view from the back, as always, was less dramatic. There was this long stretch in the middle of the afternoon when my legs and I simply had to talk it out, nearing the start of the brokenback climb, and we've both done this enough times to know what was coming. Veterans of this negotiation, we both knew we couldn't get everything we wanted out of this relationship any longer. I, for one, was insisting that we go up brokenback, because we might be nearing 3 hours already but I still have my pride for heaven's sake, and my legs, on the other hand, were demanding we swing by the store and Dyke and just see, for a few minutes, if they had any sausage gravy we could lie in for a while.
In the end, a deal was struck and up we went - a 3 mile, 1600 foot compromise where I agreed not to demand too much if my legs agreed to just get it the fuck over with. And so I didn't and they did. 4 hours and change later, I made it home and, like always, I was a mess. After trying to stuff my gravel bike into the trashcan for the first little bit, I settled down and got some food and I was OK. The bike didn't fit, fortunately, but that reminds me I need to put a new cable and housing on there, plus a rider who can actually pedal it worth a damn.
It puts me back together every time.
So thanks for coming out, you bunch of loonies. Until next time...Up, up, up.
Thursday, February 8, 2018
The Long Arm of the Laws of Physics - AKA Your Chronological-Pantani Guide
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| Pantani 1, 2005ish |
And let's be honest, you probably shouldn't even be running in the first place. I'm not sure if you've noticed, but foot travel is miserable, awful stuff, a leading cause of overuse injury in former athletes such as ourselves. Which only makes my point for me: the truth always comes out.
Sunday, February 11th, 10:00 AM. Delusions of grandeur. They're so easy to let seep in. On the drive out Earlysville rd on Sunday morning, quite possibly in a wide open deluge, it'll be tempting to imagine yourself mixing it up in the top 10 of Il Pantani Ride on Simmons gap, maybe taking a surge or two near the front, and then dropping everyone on the way down Wyatt Mtn with your imeccable handling skills, never to see them again. That's a solo attack, on a descent, from 21 miles out, and in your daydream you make it stick.
But somewhere along the way, be it the first car you see when you pull into the possibly submerged parking area or when you finally hit the wall on brokenback, physics eventually sets in. It Always Does. You can't hide from it. No matter how much time you might have spent pretending you don't weigh 190 lbs, or how many half-hearted intervals you did on your indoor trainer that doesn't quite fit, or how often you considered trying to get up tomorrow morning and do a big ride before work, the truth comes out.
10:30 AM - Hopefully, that happens early. Ideally, you pull into the parking lot, and it all goes up in smoke right away as you watch carloads of skinny, fit, racers put on a shocking lack of clothes, grab a single water bottle, and head for the start line. They look like super-fit extras from a Lance Armstrong documentary. Best case scenario - you immediately have a gut check - like, right in the actual gut, which is poking out of your bibs around the edges like some kind of small alien. These guys are here to race, like, real, fast wide open racing - and you're just...not. I mean, you'll have fun, don't get me wrong, but you quickly have the personal reckoning necessary for your own survival - right there in the parking lot - and you make a promise to yourself and your legs that you will let them go down markwood at the start. Do not chase them.
So you do.
For 3 miles.
11:07 AM. Before you notice it, there's a gentle rise - this is arguably the first real hill, and it's barely that - but some asshole at the front has stood up, mashed a gear or two, and the elastic has snapped somewhere about 5 bikes in front of you. How has this happened already? You don't even have your queue sheet out yet. There's panic all around you as riders scramble to make it across the gap, on the first hill, and you're not even 10 minutes in yet. You bury yourself, but you don't make it either, and you settle into what might be called "chase 3" were such a commentary taking place, which it is certainly not. A left turn across traffic, an insane amount of drafting and hammering, and you finally hit the first bit of gravel, and holy shit, you are popped, and it's bad. You look at your odometer, and it reads 7 miles. It's real bad.
11:15 - 12:30ish. For the next several minutes, you weave in and out of consciousness and hallucination, on gravel, pavement, and mud-road, at times with others and at times alone, wondering where in the world you possibly are. Thunder cracks somewhere to your left, and it starts to drizzle. 1 PM. Near the top of a terrible long climb, someone in Camo pants and a pink Hello Kitty sleeveless romper hands you a jar of what might be bourbon, and you suck at it, greedily, like a baby goat. What will be will be, you tell yourself, the idea of your own fate being sealed is actually comforting for you at this moment. This is actually the last time you look at your watch.
Sometime after 1 PM. Down, down down from there - into the abyss that is Bacon Hollow, and down the pavement even farther, looking for that right-hander, harbinger of doom - the hell climb sign for brokenback mtn rd. You see it, turn right, hit a 20% gravel wall, and immediately you cramp and everything goes red, and the walls along the side of the road start to collapse around you. You're pretty sure you black out.
2 PM? Here, we cut to a montage - 10 minutes or so of you rolling around in the mud and leaves on the edge of the road, down into the gutter, spliced to footage of your childhood, riding bikes in the yard and actually enjoying it, that time you ate all of your halloween candy the first night and threw up in your bed, your first real heartbreak, the birth of your first child, and back to you, rolling around. You're actually downhill from where you dropped your bike now, fully in the gutter, and squealing like some kind of injured, wild animal. Oliver Stone-like cut to Piggy in the chase scene from Lord Of The Flies...and, you black out again. Time and date: Unknown. A while later, farther up the mountain, and you regain consciousness just long enough to realize people are staring at you while you are having some kind of grown-man tantrum. It's unclear how you've progressed up the mountain as far as you have, but it appears you've taken your front wheel off and thrown it off the road, down into the woods, and someone you recognize has actually gone down there, picked it up for you, and is trying to convince you to put it back on your bike. NO. You fall back into a rage-filled, bonk-induced tantrum, and it all goes red again. It's unclear, doubtful even, that you will be going further.
But, moments of blackness later, by some miracle you do pop back out of it. It's not good though. You're in some kind of a trance, dragging your bike uphill by the front wheel, derailleur side down. It occurs to you that you're weeping and you don't care. It's super steep. Like, self-arrest with your ice axe if you fall kind of steep, but you're near the top somehow. Did you hitchhike? Were there cars? All questions you don't have answers for. But you come to the top and that guy with the bourbon in the Hello Kitty Romper is there again. Someone says this is an "aid station" and you yell Don't Touch Me.Down, down, down again from there. All the way back down simmons. It's both pouring rain and the sun is shining, which doesn't strike you as odd at this point. And there are still some pour souls on their way UP that mountain. You tell them how awesome it is back there behind you, where hell happened, and somehow you really mean it. That was amazing.
3 PM - Back onto pavement, there's sunshine, and a tailwind, and you realize you're actually getting hot and it feels amazing now. You join up with a few other weary riders, in various states of disrepair, and together you limp back up markwood. Somewhere near the finish, you sense the group starting to splinter, and someone jumps to sprint for the finish in what is, more than likely, the bottom 50 or so. You finish, pretty destroyed, a shade under 5 hours.
4 PM - There's no shame at the finish line of Pantani, but there is a lot of beer. Suns out, guns out, and - half-naked in the backseat of your car - you eat all the soup you brought that you intended to share with your fellow podium standers, back before the awful truth revealed itself about who and what you really are.
Pantani, if he could see you now, would be worried.
But you'll be fit next year, eh?
Keep dreaming.
Keep looking up, up, up.
Tuesday, February 6, 2018
Your 100% Accurate and Dependable Pantani Weather Forecasts
The weather forecast in February here in the Commonwealth can be difficult to interpret, especially when you're planning on riding Pantani this weekend and your life might depend on how you dress. On Sunday morning, what does "50's with a chance of rain" actually mean when you poke your head out of the shire and then decide to put pants on before noon for a change?
Allow me to stand in and give a more precise, Pantani-cast.
Suck it, Punxsutawney Phil.
Here's the forecast. SUNDAY: 60 Degrees and clearing skies. Chance of a shower, but not really. When I say a chance, what I really mean is it'll be amazing outside. Great weather for a hike, Will Leet.
Orrrrrr....
SUNDAY: High in the low 50's, but the really low, shitty ones. And by 50s, I mean 42. Rain. But when I say rain, I'm talking about down here in civilization, where life exists. Back there in the holler, near the top of Brokenback, it's like you're on a different planet, and the heretofore predicted 50 degrees and rain is actually a full on blizzard. 90% chance of frostbite with a 60% chance of Donner party type shit. Take a weapon and shoot first.
You
Are
Welcome.
That clears it right up then, eh?
You know, when it comes to the weather, it's OK to be concerned.
So please, get chatty in the comments section, for the good of mankind.
Up, up, up.
Thursday, February 1, 2018
What Bike Should I Ride for Pantani?
For years, when people have asked me what bike they should ride for the Pantani ride, I have referred them to a bit of Qwadsworthian wisdom that he was given in a peyote-dream long, long ago. It goes like this:
"The Pantani course is a lot like this sex dream I keep having about Joan Rivers. It starts off pretty hot, she's young, I'm into her, she's digging me. But then I get her up to my room, and all of the sudden it's more like one of those naked at a public election dreams, but Joan is still there, and holy shit, she's way older than I thought, and then the whole dream goes Sci-Fi, and she's got this huge green lizard tail growing out of her tits. And then it gets really violent, and I have to escape, and I won't go into details, but it's moments like that when you're glad you're not on a road bike. That's how the Pantani ride is."
I pasted that in fuchsia because, you know, peyote and all.
Recently though, someone reminded me that Joan Rivers had passed away, and I should stop publishing such filth. Joan Rivers would never let a scuzbucket like Qwadsworth see her lizard tail, even in a peyote dream. And they are absolutely correct. So I had to go back to the man, the oracle himself, one more time and get a more up-to-date quote from him about what bike he would ride at Pantani and why. And he responded a little something like this:
Mountain bike. They are for mountains.
If Pantani had ridden MTB he’d have never died.
He’d be toking up in the green room snacking on jelly beans
It's hard to argue with that logic. In fact, it made me go a little misty-eyed. If there's one thing that this world could use a little more of right now, it's a stoned, mountain biker version of Marco Pantani - professing the truth about what's important in life and how close he came to self-destruction - and helping to get others back on track to the good life.
But since we don't have that, we have Qwadsworth.
Which is OK, but obviously not the same.
Still, it's fair advice about what bike to ride at Pantani, and how to live your life.
Not convinced?
Me neither. I have long suspected - even before B-slow rode around the Pantani course in 2:39 or some such bullshit - that a straight up road bike, in the right conditions, on the right day, with the right legs, is way, way faster (despite the fact that I have exactly none of those things.) So I reached out to B-slow to ask. Keep in mind he once rode Pantani on his hardtail mtb too, only getting pipped at the line by Qwadsworth in a sprint - so he's done the ride ridiculously fast both ways. Here's what B-Slow had to say on the matter:
If I give one bad piece of advice for Pantani it’s that I see no reason you can’t ride a road bike. I train on those roads all the time. But other things I do: avoid alcohol for long stretches, ride 20+ hours a week, have salads for dinner and go to bed hungry, and race across the USA. The safe bet is always the MTB. You will never be upset you chose a mountain bike. It’s sort of like grabbing that extra layer of clothing when it’s cold. You’re never mad to be a little warm and you’ll never be mad to have a little more grip and gearing plus mtb shoes are (sort of) made for walking. Just ask Will.
"The Pantani course is a lot like this sex dream I keep having about Joan Rivers. It starts off pretty hot, she's young, I'm into her, she's digging me. But then I get her up to my room, and all of the sudden it's more like one of those naked at a public election dreams, but Joan is still there, and holy shit, she's way older than I thought, and then the whole dream goes Sci-Fi, and she's got this huge green lizard tail growing out of her tits. And then it gets really violent, and I have to escape, and I won't go into details, but it's moments like that when you're glad you're not on a road bike. That's how the Pantani ride is."
I pasted that in fuchsia because, you know, peyote and all.
Recently though, someone reminded me that Joan Rivers had passed away, and I should stop publishing such filth. Joan Rivers would never let a scuzbucket like Qwadsworth see her lizard tail, even in a peyote dream. And they are absolutely correct. So I had to go back to the man, the oracle himself, one more time and get a more up-to-date quote from him about what bike he would ride at Pantani and why. And he responded a little something like this:
He’d be toking up in the green room snacking on jelly beans
It's hard to argue with that logic. In fact, it made me go a little misty-eyed. If there's one thing that this world could use a little more of right now, it's a stoned, mountain biker version of Marco Pantani - professing the truth about what's important in life and how close he came to self-destruction - and helping to get others back on track to the good life.
But since we don't have that, we have Qwadsworth.
Which is OK, but obviously not the same.
Still, it's fair advice about what bike to ride at Pantani, and how to live your life.
Not convinced?
Me neither. I have long suspected - even before B-slow rode around the Pantani course in 2:39 or some such bullshit - that a straight up road bike, in the right conditions, on the right day, with the right legs, is way, way faster (despite the fact that I have exactly none of those things.) So I reached out to B-slow to ask. Keep in mind he once rode Pantani on his hardtail mtb too, only getting pipped at the line by Qwadsworth in a sprint - so he's done the ride ridiculously fast both ways. Here's what B-Slow had to say on the matter:
If I give one bad piece of advice for Pantani it’s that I see no reason you can’t ride a road bike. I train on those roads all the time. But other things I do: avoid alcohol for long stretches, ride 20+ hours a week, have salads for dinner and go to bed hungry, and race across the USA. The safe bet is always the MTB. You will never be upset you chose a mountain bike. It’s sort of like grabbing that extra layer of clothing when it’s cold. You’re never mad to be a little warm and you’ll never be mad to have a little more grip and gearing plus mtb shoes are (sort of) made for walking. Just ask Will.
Is that advice? I'm not sure. But again, it's hard to argue with that kind of logic. Especially the part about Will Leet walking, which, as I may have mentioned, is one of my favorite moments of all time.
But can you really trust a guy who used to do this?
Maybe? Look, I don't have all the answers. Nor do I actually have a point. Mostly, I'm just trying to hide from the reality of what we'll be doing to ourselves in 10 short days, and debating what bike to ride is as good as anything else. I'll gladly accept other questions to distract you from the awful truth about next Sunday, so fire away.
Foe example: Why don't Qwadsworth and B-slow both show up, mtb vs road, and solve this shit once and for all?
Why, after all, the hell not?
Up, up, up?
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