One way for an already kickass bike shop to become more so? Hold free concerts. With free beer.

We raced at Comfort this weekend, and to say it did not go well is a magnificent understatement. Here’s how I remember it at least.

Ok, here we go wade. One minute, timers, running…30 seconds… we’re going to roll, off clip in, sprint for the first turn, cut it on the inside, and then just hang on. And here we go…holy crap that worked! I’m in 4th! Well now 5th, well now 6th ok, shut up and keep place, don’t mess this up. Here we go, first technical section. And crap. Wow, you screwed that up horribly…so much for that, look there goes my entire field. Fantastic. Ok calm down we’ll catch back up on the climbs…and here we go, we’re climbing. And climbing, and jesus did I take a wrong turn? I’m stuck in some repeating climbing loop that never goes downhill. Ok , no it’s cool there’s some down…oh wow, more climbing, awesome. Look 500 feet up the side of that hill – more riders… wow that’s my group. Ok not going to catch them, lets just finish this thing. And we’re climbing again. Oh look a solid wall of rock, nope not going to ride that. Ok, cool just got passed by a junior girl who started 30 minutes after me…yeah this is not going well. And we’re climbing…ok the end is near. The end of me, not this race. Liz, I’m sorry for leaving the toilet seat up. Mom, dad – love you. God is that you? You’re black, that’s rad! Oh wait, no that’s just the course marshal. Holy crap it’s the finish…there’s my car… there’s beer in that car. Wonderful little beers, I’m going to finish this wretched ride for you…

I’m going to defer to Cormac McCarthy to describe my first lap at the Mellow Classic this weekend. If you haven’t read The Road and don’t plan on seeing a grizzly Vigo Mortenson this week when the movie comes out, the brief synopsis is a boy and his father surviving in post apocalyptic America. In lap one this weekend, there was mud, cold, mud, bleakness, mud, and despair. There was no touching father son interactions (my dad was wisely at home grouting a bathtub) and I was not being chased by a horde of starving cannibals (although the NRC Pedal masher team makes a good substitute), but read the book, or really any of McCarthy’s work and you get the idea.

Lap two was more about me spacing out and trying to figure out a few things.

1. Exactly how bits of mud had made it into certain parts of my shorts that will remain unmentioned for fear of site censorship at various workplaces.

2. Exactly how many miles I was from the cooler or Fireman’s #4 that awaited me in the back of the Hotel Subaru.

3. The precise weight gained in mud and gravel that had affixed itself to my person, my bicycle and it’s tires.

4. How many more of the 12-and under group were going to pass me before I finished the fucking race, thereby further crushing my spirit.

5. Thinking on new adjectives to describe the state of my person, as simply muddy wasn’t really cutting it.

Upon finishing lap two, and the race, my chief accomplishments were grandly tallied up as not being last, not falling down, and making it back to the car to find the previously-mentioned-sextuplet-of-blessed-golden-elixir.

Riding at Lance’s house is fun though. You get to watch National Champions Race. You get a (peanut butter like mud aside) fantastic course, and of course great spectators. Mellow Johnny’s deserves credit for putting on a helluva an event, even with uncooperative weather.

Also of note – this race was not impossible for some, as Germ pulled second and from what I understand, was just edged out of first by a slippery rock.  And to the racers who donated their prize money back tot the LAF foundation – damn classy move.

Germ’s Pics | My pics

It’s 8:30pm, it’s still about 98+ degrees (even though the sun is down) and I’m sitting on the back porch at Rudy’s with rob, clad in full spandex-riding gear, shot gunning a Lonestar, after having walked three miles up from the bottom of the greenbelt. But let me back up…

I’m a firm believer that everything should have general operating parameters. Don’t not use this toaster in the bathtub. This tuna best eaten before 2062. This bike is best ridden in non-fatal temperatures.

On that last one, I think perhaps we maybe exceeded our advisable temperatures range today. In hindsight the bike probably was fine, (the tires were not), but the rider (me) was functioning a little below optimal efficiency. Now I’m a big believer in getting out when it’s hot, and I’ll take this any day over the nefarious winter version of this extreme. If you can ride your bike in Texas in the summertime, you can ride pretty much anywhere. But at 5:30 we were pushing 104 with a Heat index of 107, so things were going from epic to stupid pretty fast.

The idea was, lets put down some miles on the road getting out to the trail, do a figure-eight loop with a few gut-buster climbs, roll back in to downtown the road, drink a beer at Royal Blue. It was solid, it was great, it was fucking retarded. The problem comes from me being cheap. Sometimes this works in my favor, sometimes it ends in me shotgguning lonestar’s at Rudy’s. Six months ago, I bought some very lightweight tires to race on and liked them so much, I’ve kept them into the summer (since my racing season was one race), and well past the useable life of the side-walls. Whether it was the heat, my ever-exapnding girth, or just my Karma coming back to bite me for being a cheapskate, At mile 3 everything started going wrong.

Keep in mind, I’m an Eagles Scout so I leave the house on a bike ride pretty well prepared. There’s redundancies in place to keep things from going to hell. Well, first the sidewall split and the sealant, which had pretty much cooked off in the heat, didn’t really cut the mustard. Then the tube i had was a narrower diameter than recommended for the tire. Then the whole thing exploding a second time, just as we finished our second descent to the creek bottom. So, at this point, as the british would say, we are good and fucked.

I guess we could look at the positives of this experience. I didn’t throw my bike into the woods like I tempted too (I did throw a few rocks). The bums that populate that area of the Greenbelt learned some new choice, f-bomb-laced phrases. Germ got to run an evac to get the car at time trail-speeds and find a new exit out tho the road that, in his words, smelled like death and dead things. And Rob and I got a scenic walk back through the gated community next to the bum camp (from which we almost did not escape), down 360 which was pleasantly radiating the days heat back into space and our faces, while Semi’s barreled past at mach5.

Not a good day, but we leaned some things – like don’t be cheap when it comes to something like a tire. Many public thanks to Germ and Rob for tolerating the chaos that I caused, and the facilitating the evac. New, thick bastard tire with a gallon of sealant, is going on today.

It wasn’t the whole reason, but it was the final straw for sure – after two days of missed appointments and way-too-long phone calls, the AT&T U-verse dude informed me that, due to our apartment’s electrical system being so old it was actually installed in 1836 by Mescalaro Apaches hoping to trade some day-labor for some booze, we will in fact, not be able to have cable installed, and more importantly I will not be watching the Giro de Italia this weekend.

What follows is my not-so-PG-13 rant on this subject. If you are easily offended, best just to press on down the road. Read the rest of this entry »

This is possibly the greatest invention since penicillin or human flight.

Take a fixed-gear bike, mount it on a roller with zero resistance, and get fools to pay you $5 to sprint their hardest for 20 seconds to qualify (or not in my case). Add crowd and liberal alcohol, and a jeering MC an you’ve got my fairly badass evening.

More pics, including my own epic fail.

Cars used to be relatively simple – the VW bug is a great example, you can take the entire engine out with three bolts. As we stared into the guts of Germ’s Subaru in Junction, Texas looking at the smoking viscous mass that had spewed onto one of the catalytic converters (yes there’s two – twice pipes, dude), I realize that things are a bit more complicated these days.

Driving in West Texas is always an adventure. I-10 starts to look like a deserted (albeit big) county road, and the distances between towns get bigger the farther out you go. You have to do fun things like the cracker game to keep from passing out.  So events like running out of gas, or breakdowns get a little nerve-racking, especially after you make that left turn down into the Big Bend. Hence our little Ft. Stockton layover. Ft. Stockton pretty much defines the pimple on ass end of no where. The mechanics at the shop we rolled up to were cool – turns out our viscous mass was just grease from a blown out CV boot – nothing to worry about. They’d have us out of here in no time, cause holy shit you wouldn’t want to get stuck in this town. “Come on, there’s got to be something fun to do,” I said. You’re looking at it they told me, as they rolled the car into the bay.

Man, that is bleak.

The purpose for our little jaunt west, was of course the Mas o Menos Marathon mountain bike race in Terlingua – 30 miles (or 60 depending on your stupidity level) of serious suffering through the Chihuahuan desert. Sand pits, Gravel pits, and a small hill at the end. It’s kind of like a bike tour of Tatooine. By about mile 20, it’s common to puncture your own tires, just so you can catch a breath. Really it’s quite fun.

Actually, what makes it fun is the crowd and festival atmosphere of the thing, what makes it worth 8 hours each way in the car. You can tell folks are hurting because attendance was down, and the vibe was much more subdued. Hopefully it picked up on Saturday night – it’d be a shame if an event that cool went the way of the the McRib.

At the end of the day, we actually had good races, Germ shaved 30 minutes of his time, I shaved 20, placing just above the halfway marker. Respectable and well worth the drive. And nothing can really compare to  topping out that last hill, and staring out across the desert for fifty miles into mexcio.

Photos