Fun Friday

Let's starting drinking and get this shit going.

It's race day tomorrow, and I'm pretty excited.


Or maybe a little nervous.

We'll make it short today, for tomorrow I'll be out “racing” with over three hundred of my closest friends. But really, it's all about me.

See y'all Monday

Fun Friday

It's that time again, and I’m bringing the funny (or whatever the hell you wanna call it.)  Lunchbox gives me photos, and I give them to you.  Maybe I should just let him start posting up on Fun Fridays.

Nah, he’s too busy for this nonsense.

Since he’s riding a fixie every day now and the Handmade Beard and Mustache Show is here in Charlotte, I’ll start this one off with one that fits that theme.

With all those hipsters (with their fancy beards and mustaches), handmade bikes, and other less mainstream stuff going on around here, it’s probably gonna be okay to walk around in “public” drinking beer (only if it’s PBR I suppose.)  Not going to the show or are afraid of being seen drinking some uncool beer?  No problem.  Here’s a guide to drinking in public and getting away with it.

That could work.  Maybe.  Worth a shot I guess.  Just don’t put a baby in there with your precious cargo, okay?

If you don’t wanna tempt fate by trying to drink in public, you could always go down to the local watering hole to get your fix.

Yeah.

I’m off to Georgia in a few hours.  Y’all enjoy yourselves this weekend.  I’ll probably be back Monday if I don’t decide to sleep in.

Prohibition Repeal Day

This is gonna be a short post. You're welcome.


On December 5^th, 1933 a great thing happened. After thirteen years Prohibition ended, returning things “back to normal.” The 21^st Amendment repealed the 18^th Amendment, which “prohibited the manufacture, sale, transport, import, or export of alcoholic beverages.” It's the only time that a Constitutional Amendment has ever been repealed.


That's because here in “Merica we're serious about our alcohol.

Most of us that ride bikes enjoy drinking beer (or even liquor or wine) so this is a day that needs to be recognized. Eighty years ago people fought to make drinking legal again so we could resume our debauchery. The best thing you can do today is tip a glass to our forefathers, and remember one of the reasons that this country is so great.

So let's party like it's 1933, shall we?

Cheers!

I Should Be Training

In the first two races of the year, I kinda felt like a cow chasing a cat.

Of course I have a photo:

I’m out of “racing shape”, and everyone just seems so much faster than me.  A smart cyclist would use that as motivation to train harder, but since I don’t really train I found something else to do.

Like trying different kinds of beers.

I know, it’s not an IPA.  It’s actually a milk stout, and it wasn’t too bad.  Since I couldn’t drink a ton of them though, I had to switch it up immediately.  To counteract the stout, my best bet was to go with an Imperial IPA purchased here locally.

The NoDa Imperial IPA, from right here in Charlotte, NC.  You can get it at NoDa Brewing Company.  That place is right on my way home from work.  It doesn’t get any better than that.

Since beer seems to be an obvious distraction from my “training”, I had to figure out something else to do.  I’ve been running the stairs in the building at work quite a bit, and that’s about it.  It’s back to being cold and rainy around here, so getting out on the bike just plain sucks.  You know what sucks worse?  The trainer.

I don’t care for road biking, even though I know it does wonders for bike fitness.  Even as bad as I feel about riding on the road it’s still a shitload better than parking in in the house and riding nowhere.  I’ve tried watching cycling videos and even Star Wars movies, but I quickly figured that I would rather get beat to death by an old lady than ride my bike indoors.

Maybe I should just harden the fuck up and get outside to ride.  If I don’t, I’ll keep getting my ass handed to me on the race course.

That still sounds better than riding the trainer.

In other news, tonight is the big night.  That’s right, Lance is finally coming clean…we think.  What really happened in the interview is that Oprah came clean too.

                                   

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Lance Armstrong's Interview with Oprah
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Will you watch?  I’m sure you will.  I mean, who doesn’t love to watch Oprah?  Okay, no one does, but come on, it’s LANCE FUCKING ARMSTRONG!  The seven time best cheater in a sport filled with cheaters.  If the interview doesn’t sound like it will be exciting enough for you, then you can play a little drinking game.

Go here:

The Oprah Winfrey Lance Armstrong interview drinking game

Of course, that’s courtesy of the mad men over at Drunk Cyclist dot com.

Drink up!

Six Hours Of Beer

I mean “racing.”  Although I admitted to being burned out from racing and other assorted shit, I think this weekend’s activity might just be the ticket to lift my spirits.  At this point of the year, I’m not really itching for any kind of competition.  A six hour race just means that I will be out on the trail for six hours, occasionally riding fast and stopping between laps for refreshments.

Like beer.

After each lap, a beer will be consumed.  If I’m feeling froggy, then I’ll drink two.  Laps ridden will be equal to (or even less than) beer consumption.  I think this will be a great way to get back on track and rediscover my love for riding and drinking beer.

I won’t do it alone though.

While I am indeed racing in the solo single speed class, I will have a guest in my pit area.  Local Internets celebrity Rich Dillen will be there racing (in the Duo Co-Ed category for some reason), which means that in between laps he’ll be drinking all of my beer.  At only four apples tall you wouldn’t think that he could consume that much, but I’ll make sure to bring extra just in case. 

As far as a strategy, I have none.  I plan on changing the gearing on my bike from my normal 32X18 to a 32X20 this evening after work.  It will be way too fucking spinny at first, but I will appreciate the extra help as I get drunker and tired-er.  It could make for an interesting story if I can remember any of it.

At least I will have some tunes to help pass the time, and also to provide a soundtrack to my drunken suffering.

Hell yeah.

Single Speed USA Part 2

Continuing on...

At the halfway point, there was plenty of this:

The “aid station” was stocked with all sorts of booze, including beer, whiskey, and tequila (courtesy of Drunk Cyclist.)  Most people drank a lot.  In fact, we drank so much that it was hard to tell that we were “racing.”

Just ask Daisy Dukes Guy:

Or Unicorn Man:

Even Sandie the school girl got in on the action, discussing the finer points of 40oz drinking with Wonder Wo-Man:

Mandy was there, and asked if I was having fun.  I was riding my bike and drinking, so I answered in the affirmative.  As much as we wanted to though, we couldn’t stay there all day.  

A group of us took off from the rest stop…

Every single one of us drunk as shit.

We crossed the road and hit some more trails, and they went up, up, up again.  All of us were suffering, but at least the alcohol numbed the pain a little bit.  When we got to the top, there was a fun downhill section.  I flew through it, taking the worst lines possible.  I was full of confidence because I was pretty much wasted, and luckily I didn’t bust my ass.  I think our whole group rode better because of that rest stop.

We exited the singletrack into a clearing, with no course markings in sight.  We were lost…again.  Daisy Dukes Guy and Wonder Wo-Man did their best to help figure out where we were.

They took off down the hill, but the rest of us weren’t sure if that was the way to go.  We hung back and had another beer, and then we decided to back track.  We eventually rolled up on the course sweeper with a couple of other guys, and he directed us to the turn we missed.  We had a pretty good group of drunken idiots riding along trying to survive, and we rode like that for a while. 

At one point when we stopped to regroup, I happened to look down and notice something on Sandie’s fork.

That pretty much summed it all up.

We kept going, having no idea how far we had to go.  I heard someone say we had twelve miles to go, and I wondered if I could make it.  As the alcohol wore off, the suffering increased.  I decided that I didn’t want to be out there anymore, so I picked up the pace and left everyone behind.  I was hurting, but at that point I had no choice.  I popped out of the trail and into a parking lot, and I thought that I was almost finished.  I was way wrong.  I crossed the road and headed up a steep climb, full of switchbacks that seemed to go on forever.  I eventually made it to the top.

I forgot to mention that I grabbed a beer to go, and used my Awesome Strap to hold it in place.

After all that shit I still had a little more gravel road climbing.  I felt like it took forever, and there was no end in sight.  I started to think I was gonna die out there in the woods, and no one would ever find me.  Buzzards were circling overhead, wairing for me to fall over and take my last breath.

Just then, I hit a long section of really fast, swoopy downhill stuff.  It was fun as hell, but I kept wondering when the next climb would come.  I was tired, but I still had a smile on my face from all the fun stuff.

And just like that I heard a crowd of people cheering and I saw a bridge up ahead.

I had just finished the most horrible and most fun thing I’ve ever done.  Six hours in the saddle on one gear, well over thirty miserable miles, and a shitload of alcohol.  I really enjoyed Single Speed USA, and I’m glad I made the trip up there.  Big thanks to George and Mandy (and anyone else around there that helped) for hosting a kick ass bike event. 

Maybe tomorrow I’ll get into the aftermath.