Picking it up, and putting it back down again.

Much like the average American’s waistline, the mail bag has bloated to almost unrecognizable proportions.
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Photo by Henrich Kimerling

Some days I find that I really have to scrape to put some sort of post together. Certainly my existence leaves some things to be desired in as far as blog worthy fodder goes. Luckily other days I receive such a large array of correspondences, I have a difficult time organizing them all.

Perhaps at least as far as this past summer goes, folks were too busy being forced into going to family reunions and six year old’s birthday parties to have any kind of real fun.

Thankfully, for whatever reason the flood gates have opened, and at least as I can tell from the email barrage, the real fun is now happening in spades.

Starting at the bottom of the pile first, Cousin Mikey got in touch to notify of us at least one person whose race was ruined by only themselves;

“Inspired by the handups he enjoyed during his race….a young man finds peace in displaying his spoils;

Just another nudge to come enjoy a ChiCrossCup race this year. The double header 11/13 and 11/14 or the state championship 12/5 would be good bets.

Love,
that one guy, Cousin Mikey”

As you may know, if they aren’t by now, helmet cams will soon be made illegal to race with, which is a shame simply due to the fact that the world would miss out on whatever that guy happened to capture on film.

Then, a day or two later Ken got in touch with this lovely nature shot;

“Congrats on mawwage and not passing out.
Thanks for the TyK calendar reminder, gotta pick one of those up for a pal.

Attached pic from a week or so back at a little place called the glory hole in a little town called Decorah.”
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It looked to be an enjoyable evening out with friends under the warm glow of a full moon.

It was either this Ken, or the other one that sent this email of a related sort;
“No foamy, but we try… figured it was high time to send in a little coozy action shot.”
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Beer Spilled on pants? Check. AHTBM cüzie? Check. Fire not quite big enough to fall into? Ken’s gonna have to work on that.

Ben made contact with a clip that serves as a reminder that all of the technology in the world can’t make you a better bike rider;

“Stevil,
I know it’s strange to get random emails from people you don’t know. But you don’t.
Our conversation yesterday had me laughing and confused till I went to bed.

Make sure you watch this. Wait for it…”

If the Santa Cruz bike helped make him a better rider, I shudder to think what kind of liability he was before.

Case in point;

At first I thought maybe she was retarded or something, but as it turns out, it was her first time ever riding a bike.
Nothing like having a drill sergeant screaming at you to make that the best experience of your life.
Anyway, getting back to the grill again, Max got in touch with a short and sweet notification concerning the AHTBM foot bags;

“Your socks were put to good use.”
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Arybody got they own kind of victory salute.

In news of an un-bike related sort, Dan emailed me to let us all know that some sadness has fallen over the Big Apple;

“Pass this along to your readers, because as we all know life is pretty empty without your unicorn;
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Oh, and I keep telling your fans that they’re ruining the races, but they keep handing me beer. I guess I better keep drinking it.”

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but my guess is she’s already been lead to slaughter for the burgeoning black market jellybean trade.

Moving on down the list, Nick also made contact, also regarding foot bags. Also;

“Mr. Stevil,
I thought you might like to know that this Halloween I found myself racing a bit of the cyclocross in lovely New Jersey adorned with some fine AHTBM footwear and sporting none other than the fabled “666” race number;
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It was truly a glorious day. Thanks for the great foot swaddling.
Nick H.”

You may have noticed on occasion I would point out an image like Nick’s and mentioned that ‘the wrong socks were on the right feet’ or vice versa. That comment is in reference to an observation Sean Hurl made on our recent Oregon trip. In his mind, and something I hadn’t thought of before, is that the black socks were good for your right foot as they would be less susceptible to the grime of a drive train.

For a dummy, he sure is smart.

Now as we continue to shake the sheets, I find a correspondence from Patrick;

“Stevil-
Also being of the newly-wedded set, I thought I’d toss this your way. In convincing my bride to ride a tandem in her wedding dress on our wedding day, I agreed to racing in one. This is a shot of me at Surf City last weekend.
AHTBM cap, and a wedding dress in a cyclocross themed athletic pursuit. I hope you approve;
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I even ruined the race for everyone to a 7th place in the SS race. I think the ruffles distracted the competition.
-Patrick”

I absolutely do approve. You made a lovely bride.

Now then- I have to sheepishly admit that I wrote a bulk of today’s post early, as I was nose deep in the previously mentioned SF Bike Expo. I knew that the weekend would be filled with things other than sitting in front of a computer, yet as it turned out, a majority of Saturday I spent behind a desk anyhow which provided me with this view;
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Then a couple hours later, I had this view;

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Though I had an eventual and occasional crush of people roll though, which netted me a bit of dough for my wares, nearly 90% of the people who came by and checked over my array of stickers looked pretty much like this;

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Eventually I stuffed myself into my stretchy suit (which I am well aware is not flattering in the least) and lined up with a bunch of other people with equally poor fashion taste and rode around in a dizzyingly confused state.

To my credit, the long and dirty run up was the only spot in which I excelled. The rest of the race however, I pretty much felt like this;


Luckily for me, Pamela was there with her sharp eye, and documented that which I could not;

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When all was said and done, I capped off the afternoon with my peeps from Swobo;

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Here Gavrilon Blacker and The Skipper™ hold it down in style.

By far my favorite story of the entire weekend was one that Gavrilon shared with me over beers on this very evening;

“Yo..
nice seeing you out there at the exposition. Sell stuff? We managed to get rid of a good pile of old bike parts, see a ton of people get rad, get plenty of beers down, and watch a handful of painful looking diggers on the cross course. I saw something new out there, next to the run up they had a ‘run down.’
Yeah, there were a few rebels who actually rode their bikes down the hill and took advantage of the perfect right hand berm at the bottom, but a pathetically large handful of the guys walked it. I know, I know, it was steep, but I call bush league.
And speaking of bush league, we watched one angry fellow in the C category throw a proper tantrum during his race. It was short and sweet. I’m not sure if he was cut off (ha!) or maybe his brakes were squeaking or his knee warmers were slipping, but something really pissed him off good. I heard a squeal (a yelp!?) and looked over just in time to see him hurl is Vanilla Speedvagen right over the ribbon and onto pavement. It was still bouncing when the booing started. He recovered pretty quickly and skittered off head down, leaving us with our beers, asking each other, wasn’t there some sort of screening process for those who wanted to buy those bikes? If there is, it’s busted! Ha!!

Good times.
GB”

Well played superjockcrybaby. Well played.
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As I mentioned at the top of today’s post, though my existence might sometimes leave something to be desired, the Vanilla tossing cat C racer’s most obviously does not.
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Leave a Reply

9 Responses to “Picking it up, and putting it back down again.”

  1. greeze November 8, 2010 at 8:19 am #

    “…black socks were good for your right foot as they would be less susceptible to the grime of a drive train…”
    maybe so, but the left footed path leads to darkness… if we put hands & feet in the same category, and i say why the hell not!? (This is the part where you say “Why the hell not indeed.”)
    & i know i’m soooooo late, but congrats on tying the knot! i want to- it’s way overdue too, but it’d just be silly to kill her credit! marrying up is definitely the way to go!

  2. Jim November 8, 2010 at 8:53 am #

    Who produced that video claiming that Santa Cruz bikes make you a better mountain bike… Niner?

  3. georgous November 8, 2010 at 10:09 am #

    dude, I can’t believe people walked that hill. you’d pretty much have to be wearing a hypothetical skirt to not ride that. because I bet that people that were wearing skirts rode it. fucking amateurs.

  4. db November 8, 2010 at 11:21 am #

    I feel 20% more epic just for completing my cycle commute this morning without falling over.

  5. J Thrasher November 8, 2010 at 2:43 pm #

    Glad I could help purge that sorry-ass table of some merch. Maybe next year I can afford the other shoe.

  6. velorambling November 8, 2010 at 6:28 pm #

    Looks like you dun and shaved your melon

  7. One Eyed z November 9, 2010 at 11:15 am #

    I have found in my vast experince of riding with women (??) that screaming at them to “push harder” always seems to work.
    Reminding them how miserable & how much pain they are going to be in helps too.

  8. big jonny November 11, 2010 at 7:08 am #

    That second vid, the one with the idiot screaming boyfriend, that’s a joke, right? No one is that much of an asshole.

  9. Stevil November 11, 2010 at 7:20 am #

    That wasn’t a boyfriend. It was a ‘coach’, and in that show in particular, the young woman wanted to become a mountain biker. (The shows called ‘Made’. If you haven’t seen it before, that’s good.)
    The ‘coach’ is actually a really good guy, but based on that clip, it’s understandable that one wouldn’t assume so.