Scenes from Felasco Eve

Macon Ken-venture (Without Ken)

This little trip of ours did not quite turn out as expected. Aside from the general destinations, everything else was rearranged. The original plan was to hit Thomaston on Saturday, stay in Macon that night, ride Dauset on Sunday, and then hit JL's BBQ in Macon, on the way home.

Mother nature had other plans. The rain predictions for the weekend swung wildly the entire week leading up to our departure. By Friday night, the predictions were for rain to start midday, early afternoon on Saturday, with 70% chance on Sunday. It wasn't looking good. We revamped and decided to leave early and hit Dauset on Saturday. That trail system gets closed after heavy rain, and we didn't want to miss it. The fog was so thick you could cut off slabs and eat it on your sandwich. You could hear water dripping from the leaves while we got dressed. It actually started to sprinkle as we rolled out from the parking lot.

Dauset's trails are super fast and well groomed. Half the fun is just being able to rail corners at mach 9. Not when she's this wet though. The wet clay surface would turn your tire loose with little to no turning pressure. The game of the day became more about who could ride the nastiest, wettest, rootiest, rockiest sections without dabbing. Before long, everyone was laughing and carrying on as if we were not coated in a 1/2" thick layer of trail grime. 2.5 hours and we only averaged about 7.5 mph. Everyone was pretty well toasted when we decided to call it quits, and head for a pressure washer and a hotel.

We conned Ray, the hotel maintenance guy, into hooking up a hose for cleaning the bikes. This was great, but the hotel has industrial pressure wash pressure at the hose, and Ray keeps insisting that he help by blasting all known lubrication from every bearing surface on the bikes. It will be interesting to see if any of us has to replace a bottom bracket this week.

The next morning we wake to find everything soaked outside. A big time thunderstorm had pushed through, and we knew we were in for another swamp fest. Amazingly enough, the rain we expected to be with us all day, disappeared as we drove to Thomaston! By the way if you own a Garmin navigation system for your car, hit it with a hammer, drive over it with your car. The whole time it will be screaming to turn left or right, to avoid its own immanent demise. Then buy a map, and read it yourself. For whatever reason, Big Jim Slade's Garmin took us up through Birmingham to get to Thomaston. We just kept saying that the longer we drove, the drier the trails would be. It all worked out... eventually.

Thomaston was to be a true Ken-venture, without Ken. I was the only one who had ever really ridden here, and it had been at least 5 years. Apparently no one is really riding this truly tough, and damn well worth the drive trail system. Why the locals don't ride here every weekend, I'll never understand. This trail has 3 main climbs, all granny gear style for yours truly. The 1st is a mile long switchback beast, with plenty of loose rock and roots thrown in for good measure. To top it off, you start this damned climb .9 mile into the trail. Forget a warm up, it's straight to incinerate, for your poor legs and lungs. We wandered this system for some time. Some of it I recognized right away, others not so much. If you see the GPS track of our route, you see lots of fingers off the loop, where we had to backtrack as I realized yet another error. We always found our way back, though. Unfortunately, we added in a couple of hella tough climbs in the process!

About an hour and a half in, you could see chinks in people's armor. Folks were cracking, both physically and mentally. Derwood, Little Ball, and I started taking turns, moving down a piece of trail, to see if it was correct, to save others the effort of having to climb back up another dead end downhill. Everyone was more than ready to see the trailhead. Wrecking Ball kept me sane, telling me over and over again, that adventures are almost never as much fun when they are actually happening.

By the time we reached the trucks, legs and patience were toast! We cleaned up, loaded up, and headed for the highway. Unfortunately, being in Thomaston, it was just too far to back track to Macon for JL's BBQ. There had been enough back tracking for one weekend. We headed south in search of food, but apparently everyone on Hwy 19 is a farmer who grows his own food and never eats out! We got skunked all the way to Albany. By then everyone just wanted to be home, so drive through fare it was , eaten by exhausted, cranky folks, with sore legs.

Despite his claims otherwise, Big Jim Slade was running out of gas, and his patience was being tested. I was glad to see him smile and relax on the journey home. I don't want to be the one who runs him off, for another 9 years.

Felasco Vocabulary Terms - "Preparation"

This seems like a pretty straight up term, but my experience indicates otherwise.

To some, Felasco prep is taken on with purpose. Juancho, for example, has been logging hour after hour on his bike. I'm not sure how many miles he's doing in those hours, but his taint should be properly seasoned by now.

Micro, however, has taken a completely different approach. His prep so far has consisted mostly of looking for his bike. If you've seen it, drop a line here, to Bigworm's lost and found. Unless he's developed some new hobbies I'm unaware of, Micro's taint is in for a rude awakening.

Micro's brother, Beefcake, is always a mystery. He was a long time mountain bike legend. Well at least his grouchiness was legendary, but he has really has always been strong on the bike. Last year he rode in the caboose with the Spanish Mackerel, coining humorous phrases regarding blows from the feet to one's genitalia. Oh well, if his legs give out, I'm sure his Arnold-like pythons will welcome the chance to tear the pedals from the cranks.

There are also those who don't need preparation. Marcus, aka Bikediet, will not ride at all, yet somehow be able to go as fast as anybody on the whole damned trail. No really, I'm not bitter about that fact. (Well, actually, I'm quite bitter about that fact.)

Spanish Mackerel is the anomaly of the "no prep needed" crew. He claims to be getting ready, yet always misses the rides. He swears he'll be there, but instead is spotted at some sporting goods store, with the tell tale pillow wrinkles still on his face. Somehow it doesn't matter for him. Apparently just thinking about training, gives him the mental toughness to finish, year after year. By all rights he should be shriveled up beside the trail with Sasquatch kicking sand in his face. But it won't happen. He may not be the first to finish, but he'll come out of the woods again, with that goofy look on his face, like a puppy who's been lost for hours, and just found his way home.

Red Dragon has been training his lungs with a vengeance. If you don't believe me, just ask him. I'm sure you'll get some kind of long winded story, excuse, or anecdote, that will more than prove my point. He'll bluster and blow. He'll wail and howl, and all that hot air will send him sailing to the finish.

Lil' Ronnie, the Angry Haitian, pretty much runs on pure hate. I figure he'll ride his bike until his legs fall off, just so he can look down at them and tell them he hates them. Then he'll slither off his bike, and tell it he hates it, too. Next he'll call me to tell me he hates me for making him do this damned ride. Somewhere in there, he'll tell me I'm hard to be friends with, and that he hates me for that. You want to see something funny? Be there when we pull up to the parking lot Friday night. Lil' Ronnie will be so stoked to see us, he'll cry like a little girl, and then he'll hate us for that. And with that, his preparation will be complete.

Wrecking Ball will ride like there is no tomorrow, in fear that Red Dragon may blow by. The only problem is, he'll ride his bike into oblivion, and all of its parts will fall off the week before Felasco. At which point, he'll go into manic breakdown and I'll have to nurse him back to health. He's not called the Wrecking Ball for nothing.

Bab McCarty's prep will be highly specialized. Actually, F#*k Bab! Who cares what that prodigy assed rock star does?!! I'll tell you what he doesn't do! He doesn't ever update that lame ass blog of his. His last post was due to my heckling. Check it out. What the hell are you waiting for Santana??

Alright, this may be getting out of hand, so let me wrap this up. For me the prep just isn't going to matter. No matter how much I stress about it, no matter how much I ride, it just doesn't matter. After all the trash I just talked, I just sealed my fate. Hopefully I can just keep up with the caboose. Through all of the cramp induced pain, and vision blurring bonk, that Fate is sure to dish out, I just want to have enough left in the tank to remember the stories.

Common Ground

"I sat outside on the green slab next to the oil drip, and the window. 4 riders approached from west on University, but they were unlike any riders I’ve generalized about before. The leader sported a flat-brim white Yankee’s hat, sagging pants, White belt, white puffy gansta jacket and big shoes. The rest that followed him, looked same same but different. Rolling bright deep dish rims on white frames, the only thing separating them from typical, was that the were all rolling fixed. Hip-Hop-Deep-Dish-Fixed… It was a sight for sore eyes. Hoods on bikes. Indeed things are changing."

That was a quote I took from Gnome's write up over at Drunkcyclist, about this year's Flight of the Pigs ride. It was my favorite paragraph in the whole ride report.

While I'm not one of the activist types that thinks bikes will solve the petroleum challenges of America, solve world hunger, or end global warming, I do think they can change an individual's outlook. Bikes bring many things to many people. They bring freedom to a 7 year old kid, who can now easily explore the whole neighborhood. They bring transportation to those who have no other way. They bring stress relief to those of us who can let our blood pressure alarms ring too easily and too often. To some, they bring something as simple as a new fashion accessory.

The big thing is, they bring a commonality. They bring one more facet that can bind vastly different people. I've said it a thousand times, my friends walk the gamut of life. Age, gender, economic and social status, religious background; cycling has bridged a lot of barriers to tie crews together all over the world.

Again, I don't believe that cycling alone will bring to bear a bright shining light of perfection on the world. She's more like a well cut diamond, when the light hits her just right, she sure does sparkle.

I thought Boyz 2 Men broke up?

It's Useless to Resist

I keep seeing more and more changes in my direct, and indirect life. Some of them eye opening, and some of them just plain scary.

I was just over at Drunkcyclist, and saw a new post from Big Johnny. For those who follow, Big Johnny was the main guy behind DC, but he hasn't posted much in quite awhile. His buddy Gnome, has been picking up the slack. I've been wondering what happened to the guy. Is he just over it? Nothing to say? I knew he recently moved to another part of Arizona. Did the absence of his friends kill his muse? I just found out, through this last post, that he moved to start law school. He was hit by a car a couple of years back, and spent a lot of time healing a broken back. Now he's started law school so that eventually he can help others like him, who just get screwed by some jackass's lack of control. I hate that he's not on the site, constantly berating the world with his caustic sense of humor, but I'm glad he found a path to walk. He seemed to be just floating after the accident.

I first heard about Drunkcyclist through, Kevin Noble, our Kona rep when I worked at Joe's. Kevin is still at Kona, but his rowdy days have calmed too, I think, with a new kid in the house. Kevin seemed surprised that I had never heard of the site, but I was pretty much internet challenged back then. All I'd heard of was ebay, and as a shop guy, that was the devil.

Just for a little more indirect weirdness, my favorite cycling writer is Mike Ferrentino, over at Bike Magazine. His first, or maybe second, Grimy Handshake article fully reflected my understanding of bike shop customers, from behind the counter. I realized he was a greasy handed, kindred spirit. Another sucker working in his passion, to satisfy the not so thankful public. I couldn't have been happier when he was named editor for Bike, But alas, it was short lived. He took another job, I think with Santa Cruz. Now I'm just glad he still writes his column. Bike just wouldn't be the same without him.

Over the years of reading Bike and Drunkcyclist, I found out that each of these guys is about my age, all worked at one time or another in bike shops, and still carried a torch for the two wheeled, self propelled world. Even better, I found out they all knew each other. At one of the big 24 hour races, there was a media division. Big Johnny, Ferrentino, and Nobles, all on the same team. Sometimes it's just strange how the world ties things together.

On the homefront, my buddy Paulie is leaving on another African adventure, soon. He's pretty amped, and I like to see his enthusiasm. He called me up, all excited, and asked if I would mind being a reference, for this job with Tour de Afrique. Sure enough, I get a call a day later, from a super heavy french accent, presumably based out of Canada. He asks a lot of questions about Paul's character and demeanor. His last question was "What would you say Paul's weakness would be on this trip?". I told him" I know it sounds like I'm just singing Paul's praises, but the truth is he's hard working, self motivated, a strong cyclist, can talk to most anyone, and has spent several years in Africa. What else would you want? The truth is I hate to see him go." The interviewer says the trip is only for a few months and and that Paul will be back. I told him, "Yeah, that's what he said when he joined the Peace Corp. I'm going to spend a year in Africa!" Four years later, Paul found his way home. I think this job is perfect for Paul. And I look forward to following along on his blog.

I guess this issue with my foot/ankle has opened my eyes lately. I was faced with the thought of never riding again, and the fight isn't over, and that spooks me. I'm 38 years old, and have been riding since 1990. 99% of my friends and acquaintances were met through, or are tied to, cycling. The thought of possibly losing something this intertwined with my life really kind of freaks me out. I realize that life would not be over, just a lot different.

It would be time for the next big chapter. I like to think that I like variety, but the truth is, I'm not so down with BIG change. Small changes are nice to vary the ride, but big changes rock the boat. In the meantime, I'll be fighting the good fight, trying to reconcile the thought of change in case of failure, or maybe I'll just be looking around for a good life preserver.

***Big thanks to Juancho for catching an error. I'd cut 10 years out of my riding career.

Whose Line is it Anyway?

"My momma makes baked beans! I love shag carpet! Now you boys need to get the f*(k outta here!"

***

I'm dying to post on this event, but the truth of the matter is, I'll never do it the justice that the author of the above quote most certainly will. In the meantime, this quote just had to see the light of day.