“If you’re going to walk out, I think you need to go that way, “ said the hippy race volunteer, pointing to the right.

“Really?” asked Tim, “Are you sure you have the map turned the right way?”

“Oh huh. Right,” she spins the map around,” Yeah, I guess you go that way,” pointing to the left.

Needless to say some of did not have the best race Sunday. Germ took some unscheduled stops on some sandy turns (although still managed to beat me by two minutes) and Tim managed to get a flat at the perfect spot on the trail–as far as you can get from the start or the finish. Before the race we’d checked in with them and finding out Tim only had a pump with which to change a flat we said, hey dude, take this CO2 canister, if something does go wrong, you’ll be able to get back in the race faster. Or, maybe not.

As somebody said we took away the device that Tim was fully familiar with (a small pump) and gave him a new fangled thing that neither he, nor apparently anybody on the trail knew how to use, and thus was unable to inflate the tube once he got it changed. There’s a usability study there. Needless to say chaos ensued, Tim actually ended up doing a kind of triathlon where he rode seven miles, reversed and walked back up the trail another three (for the second event), and finished up with a creative-explicative event (that replaced the normal swimming part of the tri – he excelled in it, apparently).

In the end, we all lived. I also have to say, despite their reputation for building excessively windy trails, Austin Ridge Riders did a heluva job putting this thing together, the first race to happen in a Travis County park in many a year–hopefully the first of many.

My Pics | Germ’s Pics

For those of you not hip to this jive, normally part a and b are attached to each other in a fashion that allows one to shift gears, while simultaneously maintaining tension in the chain and generally keep the bike moving in a forward, or at least semi-forward, direction.

We’d already had a crap crap crap ride, due to some erroneous information about the general dryness of the trail. When this forum says it’s dry, remember to take it with a kayak-sized grain of salt, because you’ll need one to cross all the flooded creeks.

Inexplicably though, after we were almost at the last major crossing (just before the fun part no less), on a stretch of flat reasonably level trail, these two parts decided to go their separate ways in mildly spectacular fashion, without any reasonable provocation. I’ve been riding a bike on trials for almost 12 years now, and I’ve never had this happen.

Yo bike gods – I apologize for any past transgressions (making fun of Gary Fisher’s goatee maybe?), but can we please, please stop this?

Apparently I’m doomed to fail as a cyclist because I am genetically lacking in a crucial department: facial hair.

When one thinks of mustaches, the connection to the world of cycling might not be the first thing to come to mind, but upon further inspection, there is in fact a long and very esteemed list.The top of which would undoubtedly be occupied by none other then Ned “The Lung (Flanders)” Overend. A near second to ‘The Lung’ would obviously be Tom Ritchey (as well as many other of our mountain biking forefathers.) If any of you ever happen to ride the trails in Occidental California, rumor has it that part of Toms Mustache is still attached to a tree he crashed into at the second of the legendary Ring of Fire races.

Yes, sadly, the entire combined qualifying field for the womens Olympic cross country team has more facial hair than yours truly.