Why I sing the blues
November 24, 2011 § 12 Comments
It was Thanksgiving on the Holiday Ride, all right–or, as Jack from Illinois (not his real name) says, “Wanksgiving on the Holidork Ride.” Us turkeys had our insides ripped out and then got a few pounds of pain stuffing shoved up the place where the insides came out. Ouch.
“Ryote ni hana,” or “Flower in both hands.”
My strategy was a bit refined from the night before–sit on Roadchamp’s wheel and pray for a miracle. The first part worked out okay, but since he was on or near the point for the first half of the climb up the canyon, when the fast and furious launches came from UCI Pros #1 and #2, followed by the utterly predictable attack of G$, the “pray for a miracle” part only resulted in prayer…no miracle.
My giblets and gravy, smeared all over the roadside, put me about fifteenth at the top of Mandeville. Looking at all the wasted, grimacing, dealing-with-the-reality-of-failure wankers who were leaning on their bikes trying to catch their breath while simultaneously trying to position themselves close enough to G$ so that new arrivals might think they summitted with him, it occurred to me to wonder “Why did I do this?”
No obvious answer presented itself, other than “you’re a fucking idiot,” so I decided to ask others why they chose the Holiday Ride in lieu of a more traditional Thanksgiving morning. I learned a lot.
Mandeville Death Rattle
Enormous gentleman with no obvious bike handling skills on a $10,000 dollar rig: “Weight loss.”
Shakes the Clown: “What’s the Holiday Ride?”
G$: “It’s a cool ride where you get to see your friends, catch up with folks you haven’t maybe seen in a while, check out your friend’s new rides, and crush them.”
UCI Pro #1: “Public’s gotta see their idols every now and again.”
UCI Pro #2: “It’s an easy warm up.”
Before we get started, Wanky, I’d like to show you something you’ve not seen before. It’s called a “bicep.”
Critchamp: “See this new bike and the cool paint job and the aero way it looks from the front and side? You’re not going to be seeing anything but the rear wheel come March.”
Roadchamp: “I love the smell of burning egos in the morning. Huh? Did you say something to me?”
King Harold: “Pain is my strength battering your body.”
Jaegermeister: “You can suffer now or you can suffer on FTR. Or, in your case, Wanky, you can suffer on both.”
New Girl: “Even though it’s Thanksgiving and I’m with my family in Tahoe, I’m hiding in the closet reading VeloNews and Wankmeister’s blog.”
Woman in a sexy body sock: “Get away from me.”
Maui Bride: “Because after we’re done, and after I’ve dropped all the other chicks even though I don’t ride anymore, I’ll get to have an extra Shakeology.”
Don’t look tired. Even though you are.
Douggie: “Just don’t let Rodley beat me up Mandy.”
Rodley: “Just don’t let Douggie beat me up Mandy.”
Frankendave: “Hey youse guys! Let’s see how close we can get to that cop’s bumper!!”
Italian Stallion: “Chicks dig me.”
Jack from Illinois (not his real name): “No white shorts. Work together. Your group rides are lame beyond belief.”
StageOne: “See these 200 kits? I designed all of them. Except the ugly ones. They were designed by someone else.”
Blondie: “It’s not for the good looking guys, that’s for sure.”
Fuckdude: “It’s part of my 2012 program, digested from 2,587 hours in cycling coach chat forums, four terabytes of power analysis data, and this cool fucking book I’m reading about Dave Scott and Mark Allen back in the day. It’s fucking rad, dude. Wanna borrow it after I’m done?”
My secret? Lunges, dude, not “lunches.”
Davy Dawg: “I just like to see skinny people cry when I kick watts in their face.”
Fireman: “Fucking it’s so I can identify the Ironfly traitors wearing their non-Ironfly kits in public and put them on the hit list. Where’s your fucking Ironfly kit, dude?”
Tandork: “It’s a blast riding a tandem in the middle of 200 hundred people and weaving from side to side and hearing their death shrieks and the scream of screeching brakes.”
Dying man in the ditch who came off after King Harold’s pull: “Please, please call 911! And be sure to tell them I’m a donor.”
Gooseman: “See this Rapha jersey? It cost almost as much as Stern-o’s.”
New triathlete, before we hit Mandeville: “This ride is really easy.”
New triathlete, quite a long time later, at the top of Mandeville: “Where is everybody?”
Pied Piper after running red light in Marina del Rey: “Yes, sir, officer. No, sir, officer. Yes, sir, officer. Yes, sir.”
Blabbe: “Because I enjoy having you ride up to me every ride and ask me my name, you conceited prick.”
Ourrecord: “You chop me again and I’ll kill you.”
Knoll: “You’ll notice I didn’t do it this time. And there’s a reason for that.”
Cycling in the South Bay 
As per, the ugly kits owned the hill.
Pretty and fancy new bike doesn’t quite get the job done, does it?
What size kit do you need? I think I can hook you up with better looking kits….
Extra tiny. Except in the crotch.
Assigning yourself ‘about 15th place’ seems awfully generous.
Are you the same asshole who dislikes the blog so much that you read it all the time? Please introduce yourself on the next ride so we can see how little you resemble Urs Zimmerman. Cheers!
Thank you kindly for the honorable mention in the Mandy World’s hill climb Championships. Having witnessed and felt the wrath of your recent mega watt outputs, I believe placing WM at15th was a modest accounting of the actual event. You have to love rolling up Mandy at 25mph behind UCI Pros. It’s the only way to go. It’s like harvesting wheat with a massive International Harvester Combine. It gives the tiny grains of wheat a Vigorous and Thorough Thrashing to separate the wheat from the chaff. Hence the reduction of 200 down to 20. It was a beautiful thing to watch as it all unfolded in front of me.
So this is what it feels like to be praised by Jesus. Your wrathful attack created a sonic boom. Ears still ringing.
I missed y’all… but I didn’t miss the other 180 folks. I also didn’t miss the indignity of failing to make the top 15 this year.
It was pretty undignified no matter where you were. The 180 fellow travelers came off in small clumps like popcorn, pop, pop, popppa pop poppity pop pop pop. Others of us just deflated like a giant gasbag.
So who were the top 5-6 at the summit?
Yesterday was my ‘easy’ or ‘recovery’ day, so naturally I had to remain further back in the pack.
😉
G$ won the glory, the admiration of all, and the handshake from the driver of Moto #1. Brian from Helen’s got 2nd. Roadchamp got 3rd. After that I don’t know, but would be happy to improvise. Good choice to remain further back. I remained further back, too, and likewise decided that it was a recovery day…after I blew.