Up the Hill, and down again
November 16, 2012 § 10 Comments
PV Bicycle Center is celebrating its fourth year atop the Palos Verdes Peninsula with, among other things, a hill climb featuring the legendary Switchbacks. The race goes off at 9:00 AM at the bottom of Palos Verdes Drive East. Victims meet at 8:45 AM to sign up and receive last rites at the parking inlet off Palos Verdes Drive South, just west of Palos Verdes Drive East. The first rider goes off at 9:00 AM and then successive riders leave at thirty second intervals. Category winners of the hill climb will receive a $50 gift certificate to the shop, and a supply of Athlete Octane.
At 10:00AM riders will regroup back at the shop for prizes, product demos by Marc Pro, free samples from vendors such as Athelete Octane, and for the chance to check out the shop’s 2012 clearance sale.
Guest of honor
This is all well and good, of course, but the real attraction to this event is that you’ll finally get to meet Craig Hummer. Craig is best known to Tour de France fans as the dude who provides color commentary with Bob Roll during the annual July extravaganza that is the Tour. However, here on the Hill, he’s known for something else: Not mixing with the proletariat.
Despite being a phenomenal athlete, the dude refuses to do the Pier Ride. Never shows up on the Donut. Avoids the Holiday and Wheatgrass rides like the plague. Instead, if you want to hang with Craig, you have to troll the Hill or Westchester Parkway long before sun-up, where he’s most likely to be found doing what he lives to do: Search out and destroy your Strava KOM’s.
Yep, this wanker likes to find an area KOM and then devote his life to claiming it. In fact, he used this stealth technique to steal one of my most-prized segments called “The Big One,” a segment I created and owned until it was discovered and ridden by another rider. In short, although Craig wouldn’t be caught dead riding with you, he’ll snatch and crush your Strava dreams under cover of darkness, and his coup stick of KOM’s dangles with numerous climbs around the peninsula.
Although I don’t have any intel on whether he’ll be hanging around after he blazes up the Switchbacks, chances are good that if you have a motorcycle or a net you can delay him long enough to get answers to your most burning TdF questions. I know I’ll be hanging around to find out when he’s going to show his stuff on the NPR.
Cycling in the South Bay 
Well if it’s any consolation to you, Liam McHugh spanked his ass right off the TDF coverage as the anchor and serves similar duty on a lot of NBC sports productions. I never liked his style at the TDF desk.
He’s a badass on the bike!
what did you call those guys who swoop on segments. strava stalkers? segment hitmen? jim alejandre? hahaha
Stravacide.
Btw, according to Peloton, there are some fast rides in the South Bay and some great bloggers/writers. No such luck in the San Gabriel Valley.
Lies. They only print lies.
Reclaim your KOMs with some digital EPO. http://digitalepo.com/ You can crush the competition, start a charitable organization, publicly trash your naysayers, then walk on water. And if anyone wants a blood or urine sample you’ll never test positive. Craig Hummer is going down.
I’m all in.
Wait. Let me rephrase that.
lol! Yea, I think that books been written.
How does it end?