Golly gee has it been a while since I wrote at you folks! Top ten callers who give a shit win 650B tubes.
Let's begin from the beginning aka last Sunday morning. Reg'lar old Sunday ride, of course, with the exception of po'tentious headwinds, howlin' gales speakin' the secret language of Godhead hissing, "You should have stayed in bed." Yeah, no shit. During the windiest stretch my co-author suffered a puncture and the Mad Emperor Justinian chose this opportunity to launch one of his patented, 40-mile fruitless breakaways, accompanied by Dave Erickson. "Here we go again," we said, weary travelers on the winding roads of Justinology-- the secret and forbidden study of thighs greater than 46 inches in circumference. We spent the next hour delving into the hidden wonders of his Imperial Quadriception, and the fruits of our labors? We caught them on Riverview, so at least we could fucking relax, no more Cam all hounding my ass for 800 watts, yeeeeah right. Some of us are IV's, thanks. I guess there's not much of an excuse because Dave is a four too... Final score: Williamsburg in the form of Mr. N-B and myself one-twos the sprint. Kind of a weak sprint, about 1050 watts. Average for the ride was 209 over 3.5 hours.
The rest of the week was distressingly lacking in luster, due to not riding much. I guess we can call it a rest week, which will also help resolve, with crystal clarity, the centuries old mystery of this year's "rest winter," and may well come to shed light on predictions of a "rest summer" coming up.
The following Saturday night was mayhem as Robert and Sharon celebrated their new house with about eight hundred and twelve people. Not only did I get drunk and swear I would ride Sunday, I even slurred out the Winston Churchill quote about always doing what you say you're going to do when you're drunk, which of course was a terrible, terrible thing. I even told Barry Taylor that I was "DRAWING THE LINE IN THE SAND RIGHT NOW, OH YEAH!" Come Sunday morning, as I stumbled from bed to choke down my runny eggs, I realized that I couldn't stop stumbling, so I took three Endurolytes and went to sleep. Come 8:30, Caitlin woke me up, and the pivotal dialogue was something like this:
C: Are you gonna ride?
S: I don't feel good.
C: You drew the line in the sand.
S: I'm gonna have to eat my words.
C: There were a lot of them.
S: ... Can you give me a ride out there?
When I started down Fenton Mill to find the group, I was still weaving, but with a little help from some questionable friends I soon sweated out the wide sea of whiskey churning in my guts. In fact I was even feeling pretty good, mostly because the ride was moving pretty slow, although in conversation I still took a good three seconds to register what I heard before responding. Unfortunately, while we were cruising, a desperate posse broke away, including an interloper from the Virginia Beach BikeBeat-- the notable Rick Young, who has a history of beating hard on the innocent AKA me. Also present among the crowd of rowdies treatin' us rough was S. Simet, well known to crit suckaz as a rapidly disappearing ass, and PASCAL, who is a sentient computer sent down from 3sports to stone cold crush fools. They plug the waist toggles of his Assos Fugujack into the ports in the Crosslock seatpost joint on his BMC, and whisper into his auditory sensors: "ACTIVATE PROGRAM PASCAL. ACTIVATE PROGRAM DESTROY CHUMPS." And then, we are fucked.
It took some pretty brutal pulling, not that I did any heroic share of that-- most of that was left to folks like Steve J., who was reported to be doing 380 watts for several minutes down Newman. This, for us poor Tidewater souls, is hella power.
Unfortunately for the weaker links among the pursuit, when we hit KOA hill, Cam (who is the boss) told a minor fib, in suggesting that it would be best if we held it together on the hill, which was possibly predicated upon a different "us" for him than for, well, us. Turns out the "us" he had in mind was about half of us, because he booked it with Justin and Steve J. The Good Doctor Doug and I limped home looking sour and sad, but at least we can claim top ten-- whatever the hell that's good for. Average power for the ride was 217 over 3.5 hours. I plugged that into Allen and Coggan's chart, where it ranked me as "Buttmunch." Great.
The only consolation? Race season is almost here, and, if I try hard enough, there might be someone out there foolish enough for even me to school.
