Coverage of the 2014 National Cyclocross Championships

I, like many of you, traveled to Crunchy Country this weekend past to watch the National Cyclocross Championship races. What happened was: I took the above picture and then my camera died. What that means: you'll have to imagine everything in your own head, just like you did in the 1930's. It also means: I can report whatever I want and you have to believe me because there's no photographic proof to the contrary.

Let's begin first with the day's attire. I own or have access to at least the following costumes, but probably more: Batman, velociraptor, tiger, hula girl, and Osama Bin Laden. I also own some tightee whitees that I can wear over pretty much anything. Did I wear any of those things? No. In fact, it was one of the few times in my life that I dressed exactly right for the weather. This makes me, I think, something of a failed human being. Anyone who passes up a chance to run around shirtless in the middle of winter in a Batman mask must be dead inside. So what I'm asking is: I've made a New Years' resolution, and is there anyone out there who's willing to bail me out of Texan jail after next year's Nationals?

Here are just a few of the things that I saw, but almost everything that I remember:

-A woman from Drunkcyclist.com passing out Natural Light. I'd never had one of these beers before. Beeradvocate.com rates this beer at 43%. Yawpcyclery.com rates this beer at 70% because it was free. If it had been purchased, maybe 5%. Yawpcyclery.com also had a flask full of Stranahan's in its pocket, so there was some kind of law of averages at work.

-Beer expertly sprayed from a spectator's mouth into a very fine mist alongside the 5280 run-up with the hopes that such a mist would add to the racers' enjoyment, and yet despite the expert technique the beer fog was manufactured repeatedly into the wind and thus condensed not upon the racers but upon the human vaporizer's very own eyelashes (et al). The human vaporizer was, in fact, a compatriot, and we hope that in some way this makes up for the very sensible outfit (see above).

-Flights of stairs ridden up without pause or even, it seemed, effort.

-A vuvuzela planted in a pit toilet in the same way one might plant a flag on the moon.

-Pro cyclists riding the brakes because they were afraid of a corner. This makes the lot of us here at Yawp Cyclery feel deep relief.

-A golden retriever puppy so soft that your hand could pass all the way through him without touching anything but fur.

-Some very very very very very very very good cyclists wadding it up in a creek bed.

-A lot of people from cycling's relatively small community whom I knew, or recognized and wished I knew. 

-A large galvanized tub full of Sierra Nevada Torpedoes, which did subsequent damage to the integrity of many a hull.

Did we see you? If we didn't, we wish we would have. We would've had a good time together.

Cold Medicine

Most of this post about a bike ride down the Splat River will be written by cold medicine. That is to say, we are operating without the benefit of Yawp's charm, wit, and good judgement. For this, we apologize, but we no longer have the good judgement to go ahead and not write the following.

Last week I went on a ride with two friends and a banana. The banana was the most cheerful of all when the ride began, swerving its bike into all of the puddles and honking its hoota honka horn about six million times. My friends and I were looking back and forth at each other like maybe we should try to drop that there banana, but the banana turned out to be in better shape than I, and thus we were stuck with the banana and its stupid puns.

A majority of the path was dry, but there was lots of slop and slush and messy goose poop to ride through. Not every cyclist's kind of ride, but there were still a lot of riders out, one of whom passed us singing AC/DC out loud despite his not wearing earbuds. The banana honked persistently at this.

In the photo below, you can see my friends up ahead riding at a "conversational pace." I, the photographer, am hammering out of the saddle with the camera zoomed all the way in so that they appear in the photo to be cyclists and not schmutz on the lens. The banana was behind me, ramming my rear wheel and doing its Robin Williams on cocaine impression. 

All of a sudden, the banana--as bananas are wont to do--turned. We didn't see it after that. 

I don't think this ride had anything to do with the virus that is now wrecking my body, despite the general uncleanliness and weird smells of the Splat River. I imagine I contracted this cold as I contract many of my diseases; by habitually opening doorknobs with my mouth.

Until next week.

One of These Knees is not Like the Other

Yes, this blog is only months old and already it has broken the rules. We here at Trogdor the Blogingator have a pile of excuses. However, this blog will once again conform to regularly scheduled updates beginning Monday, January 6th. If you are worried that waiting until that date for another post will put your sanity at risk, we will write you a prescription for your bicycle: must ride twice daily with water.

It's been over six weeks since the author of this blog has ridden a bicycle. That kind of hiatus hasn't happened since he began commuting to work over six years ago. For the first time in years, his thighs yield like a cheap wedding cake when gathered in a fist, and he is winded after scraping the ice from his car, which hehe h is driving more now than in six years. Needless to say, his sanity is at risk. So, why this switch from two wheels to four? He's getting old. Injuries tend to catalyze more injuries. The author has begun to injure himself in his sleep. When he wakes to find he cannot move, he further injures himself while reaching for his reaching stick. For six weeks, a smallish (but not that small) swollen growth shaped like a breast has been swaying from his left kneecap. As it was the author's best feature, he wasn't sad to have it, but he missed his bike.

Odds are that the author ought to be completely healthy every now and again, and this is one of those times. The hiatus was an undemanding six-mile Pugsley ride down the bike path. The author cannot convey how good it felt to be on a bike path, despite the farty odor of the exposed creek bed and a landscape determined to appear urban.

"Do not mistake me for a fjord!" says the landscape.

By the way, the bike path was busy for a chilly day in mid December. High five, Denver.

There is little more about the ride that deserves mention. We saw some manmade waterfalls that were frozen and pretty, several cyclists inexplicably dressed more for a space walk than for a bike ride, and over two hundred ear buds. 

Note the author's uncharacteristically un-bedridden posture.

This next picture somehow ended up in the folder of photos from today's ride. It was drawn by the author when he was eight. The monster on the right eerily anticipates many of the skeletal complications faced by the author as an adult. The monster on the left eerily anticipates how much the author enjoys golf as an adult. As a child, the author never drew monsters riding bikes, much to his discredit.  

See you back here in three weeks.

Stickers

Due to scheduling conflicts and injuries, this blog has suffered some the past couple of weeks. Here to tide you over until next week is a picture of some stickers and a little foreshadowing: next week may bring some very big news.

Stupid Whiny Times

Things are going very well. Yawp has been offered the lease for the space it wants to occupy. There may be some rad events in the works. Life, as they say, is as good as puppies on a rainbow trampoline. 

Despite the general top-notchness of things, there come days when everything inexplicably seems horrid, and a person comes to hate one's own marvelous life. This is the worst kind of badness. This is even worse than first-world problems such as "I've run out of storage room in my larping shed" and "I hate how long it's taken me to count all of this money." This kind of problem is saying "I'm alive in one of the best times and places that has ever existed on this planet, and it sucks." 

I knew I was in the midst of stupid whiny times, and there I did not want to stay, so I took a trip to Three Sisters. I rode up to the fork near the top of Evergreen mountain and told the trail "I'm having stupid whiny times," but at that point I realized that I was no longer having stupid whiny times because I was really enjoying myself. Stupid whiny times had ended, unnoticed by me, within two minutes of the trailhead.

Riding a bike is preventative maintenance for stupid whiny times, eliminating at least 80% of them. So lets do ourselves and all of our friends a favor and get out there as often as we can. Sometimes I wonder what my dog would be like if I didn't walk him for three days and then gave him a bunch of and caffeine. He would be like the Flash in that he'd be able to vibrate through solid walls. People probably aren't much different.

Tangentially related, here are all of the pictures I've taken at that particular fork. In fact, let's have a quiz. Question: which of these bikes is not like the others? 

Answer: the invisible one. You're right!

In closing, I hope your week is free of stupid whiny times.