Slow Play

 

A pretty solid recipe for Saturday dirt Nirvana:


Just a few showers intermixed with some sunshine and cool temps at night to keep 'er tacky.  Fast corners for one and all. 

You know what's not tacky, though?  Winning.  And winners who know they can win.  A quick gander at the registered team names for the Paranormal duo category, and you'll probably be able to make a pretty quick assessment about who has 12 laps of confidence. 

Then again, it's well known in the professional peloton and poker tables everywhere, that sometimes it's the guy that slow plays his pocket aces that really comes out on top. 


slow play?

Pick your strategy. 
Fill your bottles. 
Tap the keg. 
We'll find out who's serious soon enough.

Up, up, up.

"Stage Fourteen took Marco to his favourite terrain.  Low on the final climb to Piancavallo, with thirteen kilometers still to ride, he headed out into space.  Tonkov tried to match each change of pace, against the advice of his team director Giuseppe Saronni.  Zulle sensibly took the climb at his own pace and recorded the fastest time for the final six kilometers.  Marco won the stage, but his margin of victory, thirteen seconds, was narrow considering the energy he had spent, and Zulle won back the pink Jersey.  It was Marco's first Giro stage win since Aprica, four years earlier, yet his reaction was irritation.  'The game is clear:  I attack.  The others react, or try to.  It takes courage and willpower to ride the way I ride.'  He complained the Giro was designed for Zulle.  Looking back, Orlando Maini recalls: 'But when he began to complain, to get nervous, it was always suggested he was coming into form.'"

-Rendell, The Death of Marco Pantani

Relegated

Happiest dude in the world this week: Marco Pantani. 
Granted, he's not actually in the world, having offed himself on Valentine's day 7 years ago.  Still, it's almost Halloween, and resurrection theories aside, if nice little guys like Levi Leipheimer have been taking the long needle all along, anything's possible. 


It does make you wonder though, doesn't it, just what the hell did he mean?

No matter, we've got better things to do around here.  Like reach a consensus for what kind of costume qualifies a man, woman, or child for a 5 minute head start on lap 1 of The Paranormal. This email came in from a concerned citizen just days ago:

 

From:  The top 1%

To: BRC

RE:  Costumes

To keep the race wieners from sticking a branch in their helmet for a "costume", you guys have a pre-determined selection criteria that gets you the bonus 5 minute start time.... I'm not looking to podium myself, but it does seem like a weak-ass way to shave some time..., lets protect the real costume wearers!

Suggestions:

Costume must be fully obvious

Costume must have required some "effort"

Or, costume must slow you down somehow or be some sort of distraction, like crap hanging off or whatever...

Typically, I'm pretty skeptical about this sort of thing, but the wiener pun in sentence one scored for me, and anyway, he's right.  So, branch-in-the-helmet posers, you are officially on notice.  Legit costume, or you're relegated, and in this case legit means legitimately inconvenient to yourself and those around you. 

relegated.  no appeals. 

 

What else, what else.  Well, let's talk weather.  The Paranormal has hit 80-some degrees in years past.  It's also snowed.  Rain or shine, we pretty much roll, so pack your thick pink undies if you think a little slop might make you sad.  Also, clear skies willing, it looks like we'll have a pretty terrific rising moon sometime around 5 pm.   

 

Waxing half moon on Saturday for the race. 

Perhaps also a waxing half moon on Saturday for the race. 

 You know what I mean.  Or maybe you don't, in which case, good for you. 

The real news here though: Preride. 
Wednesday, Oct 17th we'll have a preride out here on the course.  It should be leaf blown and dialed by that point, so even if you can't hang with the likes of Ben King on the front of the thing, you'll still be able to find your way around the loop a time or two.  Show up after work and get your prerace jitters out, wish Shawn a happy birthday, and then hand him your bike with the long list of shit that needs fixed.  Maybe ask him if you can borrow a light too.  It's what he was put on this Earth for. 


The dude abides.

Up, up, up. 

 

Paranormality

Let's start this off with a little Internet gem just to get the mood right, perhaps the greatest thing on the Internet this week.

It had a broken keyboard. I bought a broken keyboard.

I can't explain it. Maybe it's the costumes. Maybe it's the very first clip that feels a little like the mass start every year at The Paranormal (costume idea # 3890087: note the giraffe). Or maybe it's actually, full-stop brilliant. Either way, that horn is right. Though maybe don't crank it up too loud at work though.

With that cranked up loud in the background, let's dig in. Roundabout this time every year, I pick the Pararnormal winners from 2 weeks out. By "pick the winners" I really mean "show everyone why I don't gamble for money." When it comes to picking winners correctly, I'm softer than the midsection of a middle aged mother of twelve.

But I'll give it a Nostradamus-like whirl anyway. Because, what the hell else am I going to do, train? (Absolutely not.)
 

Solo Men: Not sure if you've noticed, but BRC racing is a whole lot faster than it used to be, and it was never really slow. But, look, without even knowing if they'll actually turn up to the homelogo's home race, it's still easy money to pick one of the teal jerseys that's been off the front pretty much all year. Morrey. Fawley. Qwadsworth. If I were an unreformed bettin' man who wasn't saving for his kids college, I'd probably stick the easy money on Zach. Fawley's racing skinny tires in mudpits and sandboxes already, and there's a fair chance Qwadsworth's costume, presumably custom sewn to show off as much thigh as possible, will fail, become entangled in his single gigantic gear, and he'll be caught pantsless and de-chained before the crowd even sorts itself out in the first quarterlap.

 

But that's not who I'm actually picking. The right blend of motivation, ludicrous amounts of training, being a badass local, a fearless cornerer in the dark, and loads and loads of testicular mass leads me to believe that, in fact, Captain America will be at the front when the last keg finally kicks.

Unfortunately, the real Captain America was unavailable for photo at the time of print, so I had to go with a stand in who was way cuter anyway.

But, from 2011, you know who I mean.

Byrom. Steep. No shit.

You know who I'm sure as hell NOT betting on to win the men's solo? The dude who built this most luscious piece of backyard onetrack.  Though he's a devout member of the occult now, C'ham's been doing too much raking and chain breaking to really be a threat at the front, and bless his 10-foot tall heart for that.

Women's Solo winner? Always a tough call, and I should probably just stop guessing, but given that a) last years winner has stepped up her game with one of these little sleds and b)the dirt jumps should be in full effect by game time, and I'll take Whedbee running away with it in a landslide.

You heard me. Dirt jumps.  (or maybe just the structural beginnings of my septic field.)  Either way, you're gonna need a big bike. 

Duo?  I don't actually know who's signed up in duo.  But a quick glance over here, right next to where you should be signing up, and I think the obvious horse is the Ramsey/Cook duo.  But given that 90% of the duo teams seem to show up half-sauced, buddy up, and figure out their level of commitment somewhere along the way, and that pick will likely change by the time the time the shotgun blasts.  (Note to self, locate shotgun before that time.) 

 

 

 

Trick or treaters, be warned.  A gun lives in this house, and its been drinkin' since noon. 

 

Up, up, up. 

Singleator: (n) street slang for "I can't keep buying new derailleurs."

Before I owned a van, I owned a singlespeed.  Multiple singlespeeds, actually.  I've been developing a theory, still pretty loose and grossly abbreviated here, that the things we do in our lives are necessarily and certainly predicated upon each other, one on top of the next, in such a way that, at least in hindsight, your path through life is pretty well determined by your early mistakes.  For me, singlespeeding is one of them. 

And like most things, I wish I'd held on tighter. 

Singlespeeds.  Cursed harbingers of the Apocalypse.  The promise of a better life.  Both, and neither all at once. Everything you've ever heard about singlespeeding and singlespeeders is pretty much true but also 100% false.  It would seem, as a complicated population called "cyclists" that is constantly dividing and subdividing itself to really define ourselves as individuals, that we'll soon have two distinct subcategories in this, already fringe group:  Singlespeeders (those who can focus on something besides gearing ratios and booze for more than about 5 minutes) and blinglespeeders (those who cannot.) 

Case in point.  See below, Kev29er's blinglespeed.  More titanium than most South American countries.  Worth more than the gross national product of Yemen.  A tidy, simple machine. 


Simple?

(Insignificant side note:  Elusive, tertiary category of singlespeeder that is on the rise:  The Professional Singlespeeder.  One gear limitations being as profound as they are, this is really the impairment of being able to perceive such limitations at all.  God bless em.)

 

And then there's C-ham's new Whip:


They call her Vanna White.  Pat Sajak, eat your heart out. 

So yeah, C-ham, the latest convert.  Like bird flu, it's spreading. 
I must admit, his recent trail side text message correspondence, though sent in the dead of night and mostly illegible, reveals pure glee and half-drunkenness, and has me hankering to catch the bug a little too.  It makes sense on some level.  For example, a list of things that you do less of as a dad:
Install new derailleur pulleys
Lube chain
replace cables and housing
ride
most things, really.

So I see the usefulness of one massive, evenly deteriorating, mostly unbreakable gear.   

Trouble is, as I said before, I've been down this road.  The first time, in Colorado, my whole riding crew bought into the singlespeed fad one winter, like snap bracelets but slightly sturdier, and suddenly everybody had one.   Gear inches were debated, suspension shunned, and I'll be honest, mistakes were made. Rides that should have taken two hours took entire goddamn days to complete. A lot of walking happened. Injuries occurred and recurred. A girlfriend or two were lost.   Lives changed, and not necessarily for the better.

 

Gun shy now, I'm not always eager to jump right back into the whole singlespeed thing every time the bug bites a riding buddy. Cham had been talking about getting a onespeed for a while, which makes especially good sense in his case because he really only rides one speed: fast. Plus, he can drink-rally with the best of them, only a logical rung or two on the ladder from being a full time retro grouch.

And anyway, I think the real consideration to be made from all of this is that if gears can't get you the W at the Paranormal, maybe a lack thereof is the real ticket to the top step.  Say what you want about the lack of logic therein, I really think that could be true.  SS friendly.  Fewer pieces that are vital to forward propulsion to be crushed by C-ham's appallingly long appendages.  A sense of purpose.  Home turf.  Etc.  Besides, making sense isn't really what this is about anyway. 

Couple all of that with the global all-clear to eat chick fil a again, which thematically dovetails right into this somehow, and the message from above is clear:

Grow a moustache.  Register here.  Gear down and boogie. 

up, up, up.   

 

Big day

A huge gravel ride (2 miles) and some epic trailwork (30 minutes, practically in the yard). I love my kids.

The details have changed but the story's still the same.

Up, up, up.

Hero Dirt

What do you get when you combine 6 inches of August rain with 9 days of September sunshine?

Hero Dirt.



get busy digging or get busy digging

The sort of tacky, wonderful loam that you just can't help but dig the far reaches of your sidelugs into and hope.  Sweet, sweet cornering.  Chances are, this week anyway, that probably turned out OK. 

Unless, regrettably, you're big John in Richmond:

From: BJIR
To: BRCR
"Found out that there is a limit to the amount one can lean the 29-1 tire and expect it to grip." 

Yeah, there is that.  But nice work pushing the boundaries of what's possible.  Enjoy the shades of grey there on the outer limits.  Wear your helmet. 

Patriot Day, otherwise known as 9/11, came and went, and the conditions, as you may have noticed, have been exceptional.  Here's hoping you got out and did something worth doing, whatever that may have been, and maybe even managed to remember that it doesn't come free. 

Rally, rally, rally.  Stop to ponder those who gave their lives for the relative serenity you take for granted.  Rally, rally, rally. 

Repeat as necessary.

100 flights of stairs, straight up into hell as the story turned out.  But up they went anyway. 

We remember. 
Up, up, up,

Hank hates it when you call him Hankey

Hank hates it when you call him Hankey

Now look what you've done...pissed the ol boy off.  Sub 10 hour goal, whatever, you're just lucky you rolled out of there alive. 

Deluge and delirium. The mountains win again.

Unless, of course, your last name conjures the notion that your legs have value, in which case, you got 3rd SS, got paid, managed to cram your gigantic hammies into those tiny teal shorts by some miracle of the lord, got back up on the podium and yet, somehow, still failed to fly your true colors. 

For shame.  You know who you are. 

This is your second warning.  Ruffles on the top step soon, or it's your ass.  Mark my words. 

Otherwise, congrats to all the Teal that went, saw, kicked ass, wept, mixed mud and blood, and generally poured themselves into what appears to have been a hundo for the ages.  You make the home front proud. 

Keep on flying the flag.  Keep on looking up, up, up.