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Just For Fun
Posted on March 14th, 2010 No comments
That’s my pooch, Sienna. She asked to be on my blog, so here she is. 
Today, I was supposed to take my wife down to Galveston, meet up with some friends, and ride our bikes in the annual “BarCycle,” a pre-St. Patricks Day celebration where people decorate their bikes in festive green crap and go bar hopping together on The Strand. Basically, an excuse for gettin’ hammered, I think. However, I’ve had a n unexpected date with an ugly tramp named Bronchitis. She didn’t want me to take her to Galveston. She didn’t want me doing ANYTHING. So I figured I’d use this miserable time to post about some fun things.
Starting with: my Letter of Intent! I sent it in a couple weeks ago and had been meaning to post it here. I tried to make it unique and humorous, but realize also that I have perhaps made myself look just a wee bit corny in the process. Hey, I gotta be me. Here it is:
‘Twas a sultry summer day two years ago when a rickety green Trek, slumbering beneath a blanket of cobwebs, was wrestled up from its rotting grave, where it had lain forgotten amid rusty lawnmower blades and mildewed Igloos for years untold. This Trek’s master, a foolish dreamer whose belly betokened a great delight in the partakin’ of bacon, cursed as he hoisted his ancient steed from its tomb of rubbish and promptly bent its dirt caked derailleur.
“No worries, my emerald stallion,” assured the master gently, “I shall repair you, and you will once again know the light of day. For I have just heard tell of a wondrous race across the entirety of this glorious nation. A race where high adventure awaits only the bravest of souls, where grizzly bears leave warm, steamy tidings in your path, and where the immensity of a man’s suffering is overpowered only by the immensity of the beauty surrounding him. Once, long ago, we were weekend warriors, o’ faithful steed. Let us hereby resurrect one another, and together shall we carve our own legend into the history of our lives! Together, we shall RIDE! That is, until I can afford a better bike, at which point your cumbersome, shambling arse can find another pile of crap to re-die in.”
That abusive bike owner was me, and that summer day marked the beginning of my quest to unshackle myself from the chains of tedium and achieve the very pinnacle of human studliness: the completion of the Tour Divide!
I fully intend to set a new course record…for “Number of Expletives Hurled at a Steep Climb.” For I hail from the lowlands of southeast Texas, where the word “elevation” means “When you get’un idea while ridin’un elevator.” I cannot say with certainty how I will fare on the formidable mountain passes of the Divide, but my heart is passionate, my will is strong, and my sacrifices have been great in pursuit of this lofty goal, and I will not welcome the Specter of Failure casually, lest it bedevil me unto the end of my days. For me, this is not one race among many…it is the ONLY race!
Gods of the Tour Divide, please accept my bid, and let me forge my own grand tale of adversity and triumph, to forever hold dear in my soul, and with which to fill up the ears of future grandchildren, whether they like it or not.
Oh, and to those do-littles who call me an idiot for attempting such “nonsense”…come a bit closer. I need to test my bear mace.
So far, its the most long winded LOI on the list. Pretty funny, considering that in person, I’m not exactly known for wasting words!
I also thought I’d share me and my wife’s best impersonation of Jay and Tracey Petervary. This video is when we went to Galveston a few weekends ago and rented a banana colored dookie tandem (or as I coined it, “The Banookie”) from a bike shop on the seawall:
Hmm…I think Tracey actually helped Jay pedal their Love Shack, but my wife had other ideas, I reckon. We actually had a lot of fun on that thing, and we’re considering purchasing a tandem once I get back from the TD. Here a few more pics, including a couple showing the lingering effects of Hurricane Ike (which we hunkered down for and afterwards spent a week sweltering in the Texas heat without power!)
Now, I’d like to reflect on one extremely important aspect of my Tour Divide training: music! From what I’ve heard, one’s misery on the long grinding days on the divide can be remedied by an mp3 player loaded with one’s favorite music. So it is absolutely vital that a racer figure out just who will be rockin’ his or her earholes for those 2,745 miles.
When I first started training, I loaded a ton of metal and alternative music on my mp3 player, but quickly realized that that type of music only complimented a “balls-out” training effort, like when you’re killing 30 miles as fast as possible. As my rides got longer and longer, my patience with metal grew thin, and I adjusted my playlists accordingly. Think less System of a Down and more Into the Wild soundtrack. Or less Metallica and more……JOHN DENVER!?! Eh, hey, for whatever reason, it works better for me. Also, any song about ramblin’ works pretty well. “Ramble On” by Led Zepplin, “Ramblin’ Man” by the Allman Brothers, “Rambling Fever” by Merle Haggard….for whatever reason, dudes from the 70′s used to love ramblin’. I’ll be ramblin’ a little bit myself come June, so I may as well listen to music concerning that topic.
But I wager the best music will be my daughter’s original songs. She’s 17 and has her own band, The Redgraves, and being able to hear her voice and her talent while doing something exceedingly nutty will go a long way torwards keeping me sane and happy.
Lastly, before I got too sick to to do anything yesterday, I took my brother-in-law for his first ever mountain bike ride out at the Cypresswood trails in Spring, TX. I used my Jamis 26er (I refuse to take my Orbea out for singletrack adventures…it would be just my luck I crack the frame and have to pull out of the TD) and I gave Gary the selfsame hunk of shambling bolts I spoke about in my Letter of Intent above. AND IT DIDN’T DISAPPOINT! Check out the carnage:
We couldn’t find the wayward bolt, so my lovely wife gave up her equally crappy Raleigh so that her brother Gary and I could continue riding. I’ve taken a few first timers out to the trails before, and Gary far surpassed all of them as far as stamina, and he had a natural “go for it” mentality where others would surely be timid. It’s always great to hear a noob gushing about how much fun he or she is having while shredding trails for the first time. I thought back to my first time, long long ago, in a galaxy far far away. Its a great memory.
A few more pics and I’m out…back to my chicken noodle soup, crackers, and Halls.
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