Scorched Earth Scurry...

Putting on a little SSOFTeam ride this Saturday. It’s a double-loop, fat-tire, fixed-gear ride over the rollickin’, rollin’, asphalt-smooth dirt trails at Rosaryville in Uppah Marrahburrah, Merylin. All are welcome. Here’s the official four-one-one:

Scorched Earth Scurry
Sponsored by The Bicycle Escape and Single Speed Outlaw Factory Team
Location: Rosaryville State Park, Upper Marlboro, MD. First parking lot on the right after the gate.
Date: Saturday, December 4. Meet at 9 am, wheels down and rolling at 9:15 am
Terrain: Mild. The loop is hardpack singletrack with plenty of whoop-de-doos. Short up- and downhills. Fixed gear and singlespeed friendly.
Ride level: Moderate to advanced, depending on the players.
Description: A 20-mile fixed-gear dirt ride. Fixed gear recommended, but all mountain/cross bikes are welcome. What better way to warm up the winter engine and prepare for the onslaught of cooler weather than going coast-less in the woods of (moderately) wild, (moderately) wonderful Upper Marlboro, MD? Come on out and pedal every inch of the 10-mile dirt loop in one direction, then hit it again going the other way to double your pedaling pleasure. This route is pure bliss, a veritable roller-coaster ride guaranteed to have you grinning from ear to ear without feeling like you had to suffer for it!

Ursa Magna and Diluvian Depression...

"Why do I keep fuckin' up?"
—Neil Young, "Fuckin' Up"

Okay, so if you're local to the DC area, you have a pretty damn good idea of what the weather is doing this very moment, what it did yesterday, what it's going to do tomorrow, and what it will do for the remainder of the week and possibly the remainder of the month. The word—the epithet, to be precise—for Spring this year is "rain," as in precipitation, spelled N-O-D-I-R-T-R-I-D-E-S-F-O-R-Y-O-U, or, more succinctly and poetically, F-U-C-K-M-E. And yes, all caps.

Look, I bike to work every day, come what may, been doing it now for almost three years, proud of it—righteous even. I pedal through it all, pat me on the back, everything a bored child could imagine, rainsleetsnowhailicesmogfoghellfirebrimstonetreacleabsinthe and a pint and a pinch more. You name it, if it falls from the sky or leaks from a car's ass, I'm out in it, on the fixie, rolling through it, wearing it wherever it sticks, sucking it in, every work day, not one missed, dedicated, committed, resigned. You get the picture.

But when the odds run this way, when the bad streak stretches, when things begin to look deliberate, when coincidence and fate join forces and begin to take on the shape of evil, willful intent, well, even the Metrobuses—daily scourges of the inner-city cyclist—begin to look cozy and inviting. It's enough to drive one utterly batshit, this interminable water torture. I'm not going to break, but goddammit, I am going to bitch and moan my share. Someone or thing somewhere needs to get its hands on Tlaloc and give him a swift kick in the ass. And then another (this time like you mean it).

Enough already. The joke is wearing thin, and with it my patience. Have we a deal, oh most inscrutable Lady Nature? Huh?

Bah!

Okay, down to the point. In four short, rain-ridden days, it's on...the Twenty-four Hours of Big Bear. Last year it rained just before the event, and this year looks like—surprise!—a repeater. Let me take a moment to celebrate this good fortune:

yay.

Word is that the team coordinators have been working to reroute early sections of the course to avoid the numerous tar-pit-like mud bogs that blistered the trail last year and sucked at one's tires like a two-bit strumpet angling for early retirement. I applaud their laudable efforts and wish them luck. Well, whatever luck is left after I wish it on myself. I'm riding it fixed again this year. The Outlaw approached me at a MORE party several months back and mentioned it. Having already put down my share of beer at the time, and with a freshly uncapped cold one in my hand still breathing a vapor trail, I smiled and said "hell yeah." It was an exchange eerily reminiscent of the one last year that started this team. And again I find myself at this time in less than stellar form. I think I've ridden dirt three times this year—laziness and la lluvia sharing equal blame. Last year, upon finishing the race, both RickyD and I said "never again" to racing it fixed. Rick stuck to his guns.

Damn. I gotta stop drinking. Ah well, whatever transpires, it'll be blog food, if nothing else. And Pan knows I need that.

All of which brings me around to tonight. The rain outside my window is all punched out now and sits slumped in the corner of the ragged ring that is the metro area, gathering strength for Round 12. It's going to come out swinging in the morning, about the time I throw a leg over the top tube. I'll be ready for it, the fucker. But for now, I'm in the process of busting down the single style of the Monkey and building it up fixed, a nice Founder's Red's Rye PA standing nearby as silent witness, beads of condensation forming on the pint glass like tears of sympathy as I pull the rotor on the rear wheel and replace it with a brand new TomiCOG. It's going to take more than a newly designed team jersey to get me through this.

Full report when it's all said and done. In the meantime, I'm going to keep telling myself this is going to be fun...

In a Dark Time, the Eye Begins to See...1

Excessive flashpoints, beyond all reach/Solitary demands for all I'd like to keep/Let's take a ride out, see what we can find/A valueless collection of hopes and past desires.
—Joy Division, "Twenty-four Hours"

[In which a relatively uneventful, digitally undocumented² (but nonetheless fun) ride is amplified and embellished and passed through the filters of La Chouffe's N'Ice Chouffe³—and an increasingly small bit of gray matter—to spill freely onto the screen in all its hyperbolic, overblown, pixellated glory, for your crepuscular titillation, as you sip your morning coffee and wonder why you continue to work where you work. Yeah, that's right, it's all about you. Reader, bruder⁴, let's get on with it.]

I’m early, so I duck out of the cold and into Pizzeria Paradiso to see what’s on tap. Outside, my bike, the newly reanimated Cross-check, a.k.a. the Kab Killer, dangles from its u-shaped yoke near a wobbly bus sign pole, whose countless scars and nicks suggest its secret real value. Nearby, Jesse’s aging fixie leans against a lone sapling, absently awaiting the barkeep’s emergence sometime after closing.

Inside, the bar area is empty, save for a busser huddling around a salad plate, stabbing impatiently at the green leaves with his fork like a gaucho knife-fighter, his back to the door. The morbid majesty of “Decades” trickles into my ears as I grab a beer menu and take a seat at the bar. In five minutes, the lure of quality half-price drafts and the icy fingers of a merciless wind will begin to pull people in off the street like a vacuum. I'm early, yes, and maybe just early enough to sneak in a quick one before Anna arrives.

I stow the Shuffle and order an Old Rasputin, a perennial favorite whose complex nature seems to intensify even as it flows from the tap, as if the keg were an alchemist’s cauldron. Beyond the warm wood hues of the restaurant, M Street is awash in the stop-and-go, red- and white-light bustle of rush-hour traffic, as a single goblet is set down before me. The temperature outside hovers in the low 30s, with a windchill of approximately who-the-hell-knows. Regardless, I’m overdressed. Through the windows, shoppers, freshly liberated from sterile cubicles and stuffy clothing, stroll by, clogging the sidewalks of the spectacular nonstop paean to rampant empty consumerism (SNPREC, for short) that is Georgetown. Damn. Still, the beer is good.

I sip the rich elixir between walks to the window to check for Anna. She’s unfamiliar with the place, and I’m not sure whether she expects me to be out front. We didn't work out the details, but she knows me well enough: cold air outside, warmth and beer inside: no confusion, really. The stout is disappearing too quickly. Presently, I see her crest the hill amid hulking car bodies, then dart across when the traffic light smiles on her.

In case you don't know her, let me begin by saying that Anna is one tough chick, though her appearance gives you no such clue. As proof of this assertion, and by way of introduction to this long-winded post, I offer Example A: Anna moved recently, from DC, where she still works, to Frederick, MD. Without going into too many details, Anna occasionally commutes by bike.

Yeah. Something like 50 miles one way. And, hey, it's winter time...dark...cold.

Did I mention that Anna is tough? Want more proof? Okay here ya go, Example B, arguably the most damning bit of evidence: her initials are AK. As in Automat Kalashnikov. Russian a little rusty, comrade? I'll pause while you Google it. There, then, it's settled, n'est ce pas? Okay, let's plod on...

On this very night, I plan to accompany Anna for about 15 miles as she heads westward into the advancing night on the C&O Canal Trail. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement: I get a nice ride out of the deal, Anna gets a little more security, and we both get some company that we may or may not care for by ride's end. It's that last element of uncertainty that, for me, makes it all so appealing. I meet her at the door, and she comes in, trailing a gust of cold air.

While she scans the beer menu, Anna relates the whole u-lock ordeal and, after sampling what's left of my beer, decides to have the same one herself. I pay for mine, and we head downstairs to the Birriera, to take advantage of happy-hour pricing.

Beer flows (too little, truth be told), and it's suddenly time to head out. We settle up with Jesse, then make our way up and out into the chill to saddle up. Anna discovers that one of her lights has decided to go on strike. It's a big beast of a thing, a veritable dinosaur as lights go, with a long, cylindrical battery on which is printed the word Nightstick—an apt title, since truncheon is the only role it can hope to muster this blustery evening. Anna posits that if we ride by my light alone on the way out, she should have enough juice in the battery of her second light (another brontosaur) to get her home.

With my light set on stun (a stroke-triggering strobe)⁵, we head down an alley off M, dismount, hike down some stairs, then roll on to the arguable start of the C&O Canal Trail⁶.

We pedal along the still, dark water, awash in ambient city-light for the moment. There are joggers and cyclists on the trail, not unusual given the proximity to the district. We talk, Anna and I, about everything. The structure and safety and brightness of the city soon give way to the inky stillness of more rural surroundings, and I switch the light from strobe to low. With the conversation, meters turn quickly into miles. I like Anna, she's got a good sense of humor and—let's just get it out here—she can pretty much kick my ass on a mountain bike. It's okay, I'm comfortable with it, since the alternative would mean a helluva lot of work this old man ain't willing to put in, with no guarantee of anything. I'm pretty sure I could take her ass in a dojo, though, just for the record. I'm good with my fists.

Time and miles pass, and the moon hangs high in an ebony sky. We encounter a few odd folks out in the middle of nowhere, including a spooky old guy wearing a black hoodie and riding a cruiser bike, sans light (and scythe), who either waves uncertainly at us or tries unsuccessfully to shield his eyes from my light. Random dog walker and drifter emerge now and again from the blackness ahead as we move along the crushed limestone and packed earth of the trail.

Mile marker 15 comes and goes, and I feel good, so I continue to ride with Anna. We talk and ride, ride and talk, and somewhere just shy of mile marker 18, I stop to say goodbye. I apologize for my actions—I feel like shit cutting out—but Anna is having nothing of it. She's got what she needs to get home, and there's nothing else to it. I promise to go farther next time, but it's meaningless tonight, as the cold and darkness impose. But she's a tough chick.

So I turn around, pedaling a little before pausing to look back, thinking again that I should have pushed on a bit more. In the distance, a feeble cone of orange light rapidly recedes, is swallowed up by the darkness. In seconds. I set off again.

Some ten miles out of Georgetown, I stop and eat an apple, a Pink Lady, something I offered to split with Anna during the ride (bring on the Garden of Eden jokes), but a Pop Tart she'd eaten earlier was enough (I told you she was tough). The apple is delicious and satisfying and all that I need to stoke the fire. I pedal on, and it isn't long before I'm close to Georgetown. To my left, beyond the silent canal, looms the eponymous Canal Road, lit up like a Las Vegas landing strip. In a matter of minutes, I hit the little dirt uphill that leads to the bridge over the canal, then dismount to take the stairs up to the cobblestone alley. From there, I pedal a block or two westward and circle around to M Street and the entrance to Paradiso. I've got some unfinished business inside: a pizza to kill and two pints that beckon. It's a good night, and when the moon finally puts me to bed, I've racked up 55 miles for the day. Not bad.

[Here, now, the present: the bottle is empty, the glass is dry. Good night. And good morning. Thanks for reading.]

1. From Theordore Roethke's poem, "In a Dark Eye". Goddamn, I love poetry—life, love, distilled.
2. The lone shot above, taken with a cellphone camera, fuzzily depicts the inimitable Brasserie Dupont's brewed beatitude, Avec Les Bons Voeux ("With Good Wishes"), with a bit of the Birrieria behind it. Taken after the ride, when I decided to return to Paradiso to fuel up.
3. Thyme and curaçao peel? Who the fuck knew? When it comes to making beer, the Belgians can't be touched.
4. Baudelaire, by way of Nabokov (Lolita)—see the former's prefatory poem Au Lecteur, from the most excellent collection Les Fleurs du Mal.
5. I love this light, a NiteRider Minewt X2. Lightweight, powerful, long-lasting, reliable, useful, and not too pricey. Not much else to ask for.
6. Key Bridge, where we started, is actually Mile 1 of the C&O Canal Trail. The true (and truly elusive) starting point, Mile 0, is a little east of Key Bridge, near the Thomson Boat Center.

No Coastin' for Bold Men: The 24 Hours of Big Bear (Part 2)...

A change of speed, a change of style/a change of scene, with no regrets/A chance to watch, admire the distance/still occupied, though you forget/Different colours, different shades/over each mistakes were made...
—Joy Division, New Dawn Fades

I don't like this arrangement
Your wild schemes are nothing but pipe dreams
I don't like this arrangement
And we can't win without the kid
—Royal Trux, Yellow Kid

[Ed. note 1: Back to the machine gun¹...finally. Just when you thought you didn't give a damn anymore about a race that took place a month ago, this fractured mosaic, this tattered patchwork of Indo-European, West Germanic symbols and universal blank space comes along and confirms your feelings. Such is life. You want posts on fresh races? Go here and here and here...you ungrateful, insatiable bastards!]

[Ed. note 2: This post was written variously under the influence of hops, malt, water, yeast, caffeine, ennui, a mysterious sort of literary inertia, and Joy Division's inimitable chef-d'oeu·vre Unknown Pleasures, and likely against the tacit advice of both the caudate and quadrate lobes of a certain bile-producing organ that is far too forgiving for its own good. You've been warned, and now the lawyers have all gone home for the evening to leer lasciviously at their bloated bankbooks and dream of eternal litigation. Yay!]

Seven in the Morning, Saturday (Race Day):

We emerge slowly from our tents, like zombies dreading the dawn. All through the night, the aforementioned newborn pushed his lungs to their limit, wailing and screaming as if in the grip of some unimaginable pavor nocturnus. Each time he paused for breath, his brother, apparently upset by the sudden, frightening silence, would take over in a lower key, but with every bit as much gusto, as if a gold medal hung in the balance. None of us slept well, save Ricky and Jo, who showed up late amid the horror show soundtrack and decided that camping a little out of range might be a good idea. Now that the sun is up, the children are eerily quiet. Mission accomplished.

After breakfast, I decide to forego the parts-swap I'd been counting on to help me get through the nasty stuff. So, instead of installing the shorter Sugino cranks I'd recently acquired, I choose to "run what I brung" and stick with the 175 mm cranks already on the Monkey. I guessed at the correct spindle length when I bought the new bottom bracket a couple days ago. And now, this close to race time, I don't want to break down the drive train only to discover my guess was wrong, then have to cobble everything together and hope I get within the proper torque range to keep it all intact. I figure the current set-up got me through Lodi, it'll get me through this race as well. I'll pull and toss the ISIS² shit some time post-race, when it makes sense to do so.

One Forty-five in the Afternoon (Race Day)—Introducing "The Kid":

The Kid is tall and whipcord lean, with longish hair that lends him a slight lionine quality. Built for speed, he looks like a cyclist. His racing bio on the team page informs the curious that he is a mere 20 years of age. But looking at him, you'd guess someone somewhere must have rounded up. He's quiet and unpretentious, preferring, it would seem, to let his riding do the talking for him. He's got a good sense of humor. He's new to this group; we met him last year at SSWC in Scotland. He doesn't seem the least bit disturbed by hanging out with a lot of old(er) fucks. Perhaps he feels we've a few bad habits he can adopt by mere association—sort of a mainline approach that gets you there quicker without all the trial and error and, yes, rational thought. Time is on his side, true, but somehow he fits right in with our gearless ad hoc group like a shiny new upgrade. With less than two decades ex utero, he's already a far better rider than me in every way, and right up there in terms of speed and endurance with my other two teammates, the Outlaw and RickyD. The latter two need no introduction. Me, I'm the dark horse, the question mark, the filigree thread (for you third-rate poets) from which Second Place dangles precariously. Bottom line (for you first-rate philistines): I've got nothing to lose, baby.

But it's not my time, not yet, though the hours run away like wild horses over the hills. (Unlike Bukowski's besotted yet prolific imp, my muse is a lazy little bastard, content to corral the fallen fruit with a couple kicks rather than reach for the ripe offerings overhead. Alas, the span between earth below and limb above is the chasm between mediocrity and genius.)

Back to The Kid, who has just banked his first lap. His time is good, especially considering he did the running start. Oh, and he's racing on a Soma Juice with a nice little crack developing at the bottom bracket/seat-stay juncture, a nonticking time-bomb waiting to blow up when the moment is right. The Kid knows this and races it all the same. Like I said, he's young and invincible, and McFate³ doesn't want to McFuck with him right now. There will be time. He's speckled all over with mud, and some of the first words out of his mouth are, "That was tough...well, tougher than I expected."

When Joe returns from his first lap some 83 minutes later, he makes a similar remark, adding that he just couldn't seem to get his legs going. Doesn't seem to matter much—his lap time is the fastest in our class. For the entire race. So much for sluggish pistons. [Ed. note: The Outlaw has since pointed out that, in fact, he had the second fastest lap in the SS/Rigid class. See his comment to this post.]

Sometime After Midnight, Lap 2:

The stream is almost as tricky as the forearm fryer that gave way to it.  Rather than cross it, the course runs through it, following the orphaned artery as it seeks level ground.  The water is deeper than I expect, and the rocks are the size of trolls.  There is no "line" for me; I negotiate my way as much by caroming off obstacles like a hapless pinball as by picking my way through them.  But this section is short, and soon I'm back on more stable ground; "stable" being a relative word.

The trail is degrading by the minute.  Each tire that rolls through the muck acts like a blender, sucking water from the puddles and churning it into the surrounding soil to form an inky batter. The mud tugs at my tires, stealing precious momentum.  I approach and pass a few riders, then settle in on the subtle crests and troughs of the trail, keeping the cranks moving and finding space between islands of rock.

It isn't long before I sense a rider on my ass, or so it seems.  I ask him if he wants to pass.  No response.  A minute passes. I ask again. No response. I ride a little further, and still I hear him behind me, closer this time, I think.  I ask again, and he responds in a frustrated tone, "I'll let you know if I need to pass."   Okay, asshole, have it your way, even if that means pulling my rear tire out of the new gap between your front teeth on the next descent.  I just ain't that fast headed downhill on a fixie.

About five minutes later, I negotiate a tricky section of rocks that are like talons, squeezing the trail edges together so that only a narrow slot remains.  Seconds later, I hear the silverware-set-down-a-flight-of-stairs jangle of sound that announces the spectacular yard-sale of the uptight rider behind me.  Karma, baby.  I call out amid the glow of shadenfreude, asking if he's okay.  No response.  I press my luck again, and this time he replies, "Yeah, I'm fine...thanks, man!"  Huh, change of heart.  I roll on, putting some much-needed distance between us.

A quarter mile later, Karma returns, ponders the previous event, weighs the cause and effect, the action and reaction, the crime and the punishment, and decides to make an adjustment to the cosmic balance.  On a curve hidden from me by a cluster of branches and the limits of a bar-mounted light, I come around too wide, and overcorrect by leaning the bike and jerking on the handlebar.  My front tire washes out in the parfait of mud and pebbles that signals the boundaries of a weak stream.  The bike follows the tire and I follow the bike.  It's not a bad spill, by any definition.  A little trail rash, a flush of embarrassment, and I'm back up and rolling again.  

I cross the shallow stream—hardly more than a trickle, really—and immediately there's a problem.  Something feels off, and in the darkness I'm certain the impact has twisted my stem to the right.  I dismount and check out the controls.  But all is as it should be.  I remount and try to ignore the odd feeling, to make sense of the dubious feedback that reaches me through cromoly conduits.  It's a proprioceptive glitch; a stutter in the flow of nerve impulses that has me questioning the relative position of my hands, the handlebar, and the track the bike takes as I pedal on. Eventually it disappears, and my confidence returns.

The parts of my brain not busy keeping me awake, upright, and moving safely ahead now split the duties of intermittently reminding me that this lap is passing slowly and making sure that "New Pleasure" plays on an endless neural loop in the stadium of my skull.

In the distance, a rider appears, disappears, then reappears as the snaky path my light takes falls in synch briefly with the spectral figure slaloming through the woods ahead. I catch up, and see that it's a chick. She has on a particular outfit for the race. I find out later that she's one of a handful of female racers known as the Live Dirty Girls. Like her teammates, she is dressed à la gamine; in pleated skirt (pink, plaid), black sleeveless top, and white knee-socks, to be precise. Her petite body enhances the illusion. In the grainy circle of light that opens the darkness ahead, I find her image refreshing and energizing, a welcome bit of whimsy amid the dark lumps that sprout from the trail like massive fungi.  She rides with skill, taking the downhills with the kind of confidence that suggests she might have designed the course.   We talk as we ride, and I find out she is one-half of a duo team. I have the opportunity to pass her with each climb, but I hang in behind her instead, talking and riding and mirroring her good moves. She's setting a decent pace and would likely catch me at each downhill anyway. We ride maybe two miles together, and near the end of the lap, I pass her with an effort.

Within the last half-mile of every lap at any race my energy seems to build with every turn of the crank. This lap is no exception. After the last rocky drop-off, where the trail begins to mellow in anticipation of the finish, I lay it down, building enough momentum to climb the ramp seated and at a good clip. I crest, pass over the section where the trail bends back on itself, then relax my legs and let the cranks take over on the descent. A quick arc left at the bottom through loose rock and dirt, around and under the ramp, and I'm through the gate. I locate the baton, hand it over like it's kryptonite, and send The Kid off to war on his third lap. My time is not good, but it's good enough. It's 1:20 in the morning, Sunday.

8:53 a.m., Sunday:

I finish my third and final lap, coming in with just enough time left in the race that, if The Kid and the Outlaw ride true to form, Rick will head out for a fourth lap. It's an evil move, but not one I pursued with malice. I used it only as motivation to keep me moving through my lap. I know where we stand, I know there's no hope for a first-place finish, and also no need to pile up laps to secure second place. We're done, pretty much, as long as Joe and Dan complete their laps in a decent time. I'm done, regardless. Beer time.⁴

We end up taking Second Place—as the Outlaw had predicted—in a three-team category, Single Speed and Rigid. Or, as someone else pointed out, first place in the unofficial Fixed and Rigid class.

Death or glory, indeed.

All photos by D. Ross, except photos 1 and 12, stolen from R. Deleyos and T. Baur, respectively and respectfully. Special thanks to Jojo and Donna for support above and beyond the call of duty. We couldn't have pulled it off without you. And uber props go out to Team "The Wild Bunch," who dug down deep and gave it everything they had to pull off a second place finish in the Women's Sport class. Belated congrats, ladies!

1. Yeah, I know, the relentless march of technology renders the metaphor as obsolete as the equipment itself. I like it anyway, so it stays.
2. The original ISIS system—a large, splined, hollow bottom bracket spindle coupled with bearings the size of flea shit—was a feeble solution to a problem no one had.
3. Humbert Humbert's term personifying the force responsible for a series of uncanny coincidences that Nabokov throws his way in the literary masterpiece Lolita.
4. A quick thanks to the ale-swilling emissaries from Breckenridge Brewing Company, whose beer station was a welcome oasis in the shade-less camping area, and whose free beer was even more welcome. Hard to beat a nice, cold 471 IPA any time, let alone post-race. Thanks, gents!

No Coastin' for Bold Men*: The 24 Hours of Big Bear (Part 1)...

(In which now-gimmicky cinematic filming techniques à la Memento and Irreversible¹ are borrowed to inject excitement into a long and otherwise urbane race recap. This one goes good with a cold one; I suggest a nice Russian Imperial Stout such as the gold standard, Old Rasputin, from North Coast Brewing Company. That, or a heady, hopped-up red, such as the one under whose influence I type these words, Hop Head Red Ale, the bitter brainchild of the Green Flash Brewing Company. Morrison had it right, at least when it comes to good beer: the West is the best.)

"The consciousness of self is the greatest hindrance to the proper execution of all physical action."
—Bruce Lee

“It’s getting bad out there.”

Rick has just turned in his second lap, a slow one for him. He looks tired. He manages a cherubic smile, his trademark if you discount the goatee, deep laugh, and erstwhile Pinoy ‘fro. But there's something wrong with it, this smile. It looks a little off, a little strained, like there’s nothing behind it. His words come out in a neutral tone, soft and weightless. If I didn't know Rick well, if I hadn't ridden with him many times before, I might be tempted to dismiss his warning as a paper tiger. But I know better.

I accept the baton, fumble with it, then manage to stuff it into a zippered pocket in my shorts. I jog out from under the harsh yellow light of the pavilion and into the darkness, where my bike, leprotic with flecks of drying mud, waits among others on a community rack. The time is 11:16 p.m. (EDT).

Forty-five Minutes Earlier:

I’m sitting at the start/finish line waiting for Rick. Surrounded by other riders, I pass the time by retracing in my mind the tricky spots of the course, most notably the quarter-mile rocky downhill, aka the "forearm-fryer," that is sprinkled with loose baby-heads. I’m anxious to ride, to get this night lap underway and over with. The light on my helmet, a NiteRider TriNewt, is heavy. I can feel it pressing on my head, as if my anxiety has assumed a physical form and now weighs on me like the Sword of Damocles. Earlier, I spent a good part of the night wrestling with the decision of whether to go out with just the bar lamp mounted or to go with two lights. In the end, I decided having a back-up on a course like this one was crucial. To deal with the extra weight, I’ve tightened the straps on my helmet to the point where they feel uncomfortable. There's a throbbing in my neck just behind the condyles of my jaw. I readjust the buckles, but there’s no sweet spot. The tightness of the helmet threatens me with a headache whose origin can be traced back to the acrosonic wailing of a newborn in the tent next to me last night—what the hell were the parents thinking?

Forty-five Minutes Later:

On the bike now, I enter the woods on a long and winding ribbon of dark, damp earth to take on my second lap. The trail is rocky, not a bed of rocks by any means—not here at the start—but enough to make the ride far from a smooth experience. The jarring and jolting is relentless, it travels up the steel frame and fork to tear at my body like lingchi. I do my best to balance speed with control, eyeing each upcoming rock with the goal of avoiding pedal strikes as the fixed cranks spin like a perpetual motion machine. On the first lap, I kept a loose tally of the number of times my pedals hit something hard, and lost count after twenty. The bane of the Karate Monkey, besides its portliness, is a comparatively low bottom-bracket. This, along with the 175 mm length cranks I'm running, has me overly concerned about an involuntary pole-vaulting whenever I approach a bumper crop of rocks.

The two-light system illuminates the trail nicely, giving me time to adjust to the topography well in advance. The efficacy leaves little to be desired. But the goddamn heavy helmet lamp delights in pushing my helmet down and forward, where it comes to rest on my sunglasses. The bridge of my nose becomes just that—a truss for the poundage perched atop my head. I deal with it, sacrificing one comfort for another. But I curse myself for not trying out the light as a helmet lamp before the race.

Soon the rocks give way to the first patch of goopy mud. Like a rotten spot on the earth's skin, it's as black and sticky and treacherous as a prehistoric tar pit. The best strategy seems to be to ride straight up the middle, through the really wet stuff where, beneath six inches of wheel-swallowing, diarrheic water, lies a relatively firm bed of mud. It works. Most of the time. When it doesn't, the threat of a mud facial looms large: during my first lap, my front wheel was swallowed by a huge puddle of pudding, forcing the rest of the bike up and forward in a slow motion arc, taking me—still pedaling in denial—with it, and bringing my junk to within an inch of the meat-mallet² stem clamp before settling back down safely on two wheels. I avoid that mistake now by wheelie-dropping the big puddles and grinding the rear wheel through it all.

A little over two miles into the loop, after a short climb that, oddly, has many a rider spinning out and walking, the trail turns upward. The slope isn't dramatic by any means, nor is the terrain rough. But the climb is long, and even seated, I quickly and easily catch and pass a number of geared riders who have shamelessly resorted to the granny ring to stay in the game. I say to myself, what the fuck was Rick talking about...things are getting bad out here? Everything is pretty much the same, it's just harder to see it.

I grind through the long climb mostly in the saddle, and the trail levels off more or less for a couple miles. Small mammals scurry across the path ahead of me, nonplussed by the sudden advent of concentrated daylight. Eventually, I enter what is surely the shangri-la of this race: the hallowed pine-forest section. Here the mud and rock give way to a rich and loamy layer of black dirt and soft pine needles that slaloms left and right through bermed corners in the fractured shadow of a grid of identical conifers. It is, hands down, the most enjoyable part of the course. And the most scenic.

At this point, I've had enough of the goddamn helmet lamp. The situation has deteriorated. The excessive weight, combined with choppy sections of trail, mean that my sunglasses are slowly vibrating down the slope of my nose—walking the plank, as it were. Riding fixed, I'm reluctant to take a hand off the bar every couple of minutes to poke them back into place with a deliberately chosen middle finger. And the forearm fryer is approaching soon. I'm pretty sure I'll need both hands on the bar to negotiate it. I weigh the pros and cons; more light and aggravation vs. less light and peace. Peace wins.

I pull off the trail, propping the Monkey against the bole of an obliging pine, and go to work on dumping the helmet lamp. I'm slow and clumsy in gloves. Several riders I passed earlier now pass me. One asks, "Enjoying the fixie?" as he sweeps by, and, in my concentration and haste, I can't tell if he's being friendly or sarcastic. Whatever, I'll catch his polite- or smart-ass on the next climb, and then we'll see who's enjoying what. I jam the light and mount into my bladder pack, zip it all up, strap it on, and take off again, carving through the pine grove with renewed vigor, a little more peace, and a lot less light.

Approximately Three Days Earlier:

The Outlaw sends me an email asking me to join his fixed-gear team for Big Bear. He's pretty sure, he tells me, that we can beat one of the two other teams competing in our class. Joe has already run through a string of better and/or more experienced riders before coming to me, in the waning hours before registration ends, with the offer. Most either had obligations or didn't find the idea all that appealing. I have to decide quickly, because time is running out and if I decline, Joe will need every minute to track down and convince the next hapless fool that riding a 24-hour race on a fixed gear is a good idea. We go back and forth with the emails, with me trying to secure a 19t TomiCOG to match up with some 34t, 165 mm Sugino cranks I have on order. Finally, foolishly, I simply say "yes." The Outlaw ends his last email with the dubious phrase "Death or Glory!"

It isn't until a little while later, when I check the Granny Gear site to have a look at our competition, that I realize we're racing in the SS/Rigid class. SS, as in single speed. As in freewheel equipped. As in "not fixed." As in "coast on the downhills and gnarly stuff." Joe's plan, his winning strategy, is to race fixed against two single speed teams. Of course, he failed to mention this up front, and I can't help but think I've been duped into something that's pretty far over my head.

I spend a sleepless Wednesday night wondering if perhaps I've been duped into something that's pretty far over my head. Since Lodi two weeks ago, when I raced fixed—rode fixed—for the first time off-road, I've straddled the saddle of a mountain bike exactly one time, and that was for a single-speed ride at Rosaryville on a 26er. For about ten miles. Not exactly specificity training by any measure. It'll have to do.

Approximately Three Days Later:

Rick was right. It is getting bad out here. The second half of the course is a nightmare. It seems the darkness and drop in temperature have spawned a layer of dew that slimes the rocks and makes even the once-dry sections of trail damp and slippery. Pair up this development with mud-clogged knobbies and you've got a recipe for carnage. Whenever I deliberately ride the off-camber edge of a rock to avoid getting slotted in the "v" it makes with another outcropping, the tire gives in to gravity's seduction and slips abruptly into the gap. If it's the front tire, I get the bonus of a pedal strike that jackknifes the bike toward the opposite side.

I stay loose and try to take things with as much speed as possible. I pass several geared riders at the side of the trail who are frantically digging at their rear derailleurs, trying to dislodge the lumps of sludge that cling to the delicate mechanisms like caramel on a candy apple. Right now, I'm thankful not to have that "advantage."

Between miles five and six, I arrive at the top of the aforementioned forearm fryer, the one part of the course that consistently works the adrenal cortex just as hard as it does the flexors lexor digitorum superficialis, digitorum profundus, and, lest we forget, pollicis longus, among others. Oh, and then there's a little thing called the cremasteric reflex that kicks in about a quarter of the way down that we won't get into here (suffice it to say that, for men, it gives us a wee bit more clearance for getting back off the saddle). This sketchy downhill leaves no room for hesitation; like a horrible sin, you either embrace it utterly, giving yourself over to it, smiling idiotically in the face of doom...or you leave it the fuck alone. On a fixed gear, the chasm between these two options is even more vast. Two words describe this downhill: steep and rocky. Steep as in fast and relentless. Rocky as in loose and everywhere.

I start down the slope with speed, balls out (cremasteric reflex notwithstanding), banging a pedal here and there as I try to glom a line, any line, that will get me through this run intact. Unconsciously, I employ a counterintuitive strategy the Outlaw imparted to me days ago, pedaling against the force of the front brake which I feather vainly for control. Somehow, this sloppy gonzo approach pays off, and despite the soccer-ball sized boulders I punt off into the woods, I manage to maintain control down to the bottom. There, I see Julie, of team The Wild Bunch, negotiating the last bits of technical terrain on her single speed just before the course dips left into a creek bed. I call out to her as I roll past, saluting her for her dogged perseverance. Then I drop down into the thin stream that signals the end of this epic interlude. At least for this lap.

[End, Part 1]

Most photos by D. Ross.

*With apologies to Cormac McCarthy and the Coen brothers.

1. Apropos of nothing, one of the most disturbing movies I have ever watched.
2. Damn, that would have been a fine name for the team: The Magnificent Meat Mallets.

Grimace and Bear It...

"Must...finish lap...in time to...make Rick...go out for...another lap...must...finish lap...in time to...make Rick...go out for...another lap...must..."

(Lodi on my mind, ha.)

24 Hours of Big Bear: We Came, We Fixed, We Conquered...

Okay, 2nd Place ain't exactly conquering, especially in a class (SS/Rigid) of three teams. But fielding the only rigid fixed-gear team is close enough for me.

Damn, I'm spent. Time for some pale ale dreams and hydrocodone wishes...

Full report coming soon.

Fuxed, Redux...

Did it again.

Yeah.

Just fucked myself for the second time in as many months. And once again, I managed somehow to avoid the sort of elaborate contortions that might otherwise make the endeavor less…uh…attractive. (No, that’s not really the word I’m looking for.) And this time I did it without the dubious benefit of a high BAC.

You see, there was not much time for thought. Let me explain…

This morning at work, I received a rather urgent email from the Outlaw asking me in no uncertain terms whether I’d like to join his merry ménage of masochistic miscreants to form a 4-man fixed gear/rigid team for the 24 Hours of Big Bear race in West Virginia this weekend.

That’s this weekend. As in the day after the day after tomorrow. Seventy-two already-fleeting hours from this very moment. Last time I made such a commitment, I had six days notice; this time, it’s three. And, because registration ends at midnight tonight, and because waiting till 11:58 p.m. to give myself time to talk myself out of it meant that the Outlaw et al. wouldn’t have time to beg, cajole, blackmail, or otherwise strong-arm some other fool into the role, I said yes¹.

Never mind the fact that these guys are desperate, dispense with the likelihood that I’m their last shot, perish the thought that the little electronic invitation, so nondescript in its subject line, was an afterthought.

It doesn’t matter now.

The fix is in.

Photo by D. Ross.

1. My first response was to tip the spot over to Dave B., who shared camp with me at Lodi and also rode the race on a fixed rigid. Dave and I had been toying with the idea of fielding a single speed team for Big Bear, but some last minute freelance work on Dave’s end and an inexplicable and lingering malaise on mine meant that scheme would never become manifest. Then I suggested the Disco Cowboy. Alas, he, too, has another commitment.

Bastards.

All's Weld that Ends Weld...

Okay, braze is the proper word here. Let me have my fun.

Tom Palermo of Palermo Bicycles (Baltimore, MD) has agreed to breathe new life into my old and disabled Cross-check. On a suggestion from the Outlaw, I recently shot an email to Tom and explained the otherwise grim situation. Tom replied within minutes, outlining a detailed plan of attack and quoting me a very reasonable figure for his services. The idea is to hack off the old dropouts at the chain- and seat-stay ends—a process that necessarily eliminates the original “dome ends” of the stays (fine with me, I think they’re an ugly style anyway)—prep the inside of the tube ends to ensure a good, clean, solid fitting (oxides kill), then brass-braze the new dropouts in place.

That’s the process, in a nutshell. With regard to the shape of the stay ends, I expect the result will be something like what’s shown in the pic above (minus the fancy "arrow" file-work on the dropout slot), which I pinched from the Palermo Bicycles flickr page. Of course, the new bits will likely be Campy-style knock-offs; the one pictured is a very nice Paragon Machine Works product.

The downside to all of this? Well, it’s not a downside, really, given that I’d have to scrap the frame if this option were not available to me: the dropouts will either be rattle-can flat black or raw, my choice. Regardless, once I have the repaired frame, I plan to tape off the stays and rattle-can the dropouts gloss black to match the fork. But let’s be honest, when your frame is “bean green” to begin with, it’s hard to pretend that esthetics are important. Function is paramount here.

Over the weekend, I dropped off the frame with Dave B. (thanks, man!) in Towson prior to biking into Baltimore to hit Max’s Taphouse. It appears Dave plans to deliver the frame to the shop this afternoon. Won't be long after that. And good thing, too. It's randonneuring season and I have a nice Tubus Cargo rack that's itching to get nasty with some panniers!

Death of a Surly...

Crack Kills!

Alas, the Beast—this Beast, my Beast¹—is no more. My Cross-check has checked out, given up the ghost, bought the farm, bit the dust, kicked the bucket, taken a dirt nap, shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain, joined the choir invisible, cashed in its chips, hung up its spoon, had its ticket punched, sung its chant du cygne, earned its wings, gone tits up.

It is finished.

Damn, so many fine memories (*sniff*). Life is short—remember to hug your bike and tell it every day how much you love and appreciate it.

All right, maudlin sniveling and pathetic anthropomorphism aside, I did indeed love that bike. Over the course of three and a half years and some 18,000+ miles, it put out tirelessly, responding to rider and road and, yes, trail input like a, well, like the well-oiled machine it was. Ever so faithful to this prowling eye, so forgiving of my occasional infidelity, it rolled on proudly, almost haughtily, knowing all the while that however much I strayed, I'd always return to it. As dear to me in its many ways, it was, as Annabel Lee was to Edgar,¹ as Beatrice was to Dante¹, as Laureen was to Petrarch,¹ as Henriette was to Giacomo, hell, as a young Rimbaud was to Verlaine (though not in that way).

Okay, it was only a bike. But...

For two years running, it carried my ass and a pack or panniers into work almost² every weekday, indifferent to rain and sleet and snow and ice.

It toured the full length of the C&O Canal once, and revisited huge swatches of same, including two overnighters to Harper's Ferry and back, and half again as many White's Ferry Loops.

It was my girl for the Outlaw’s Dirt-track Date, graciously overcoming rocks and roots and logs and gravel with a sort of quiet dignity that discreetly masked my clumsy off-road fixie riding skills, and suffered with me through two 1903 Adventure Rides by the same host.

Years ago, when it was young, it endured an embarrassing “mystery” endo at the hands of its drunken owner and hobbled away with one smooth, shapely leg forever pushed in awkwardly toward the other at the pelvis, twisted irremediably (the replacement fork was black, and cost me a third of the price of the original frame and fork). You always hurt the ones you love.

It bounced back from a run-in with a DC cab with nary a scratch in the early hours of a Friday morning last December, when I recklessly, wantonly, heartlessly let my mind stray beneath the burden of too many beers, shuttling me safely home in the aftermath, as blind in its trust as I was in the intersection.

Like a cold-metal mistress, it tolerated my assignations, mere dalliances really, with other bikes—the prissy Casseroll, the lascivious Eros—and always, always welcomed me back, moustache bars reaching out as if to embrace me in forgiveness.

And it died. Today. Died a gear-virgin, fixed from cradle to grave, died quietly, unceremoniously, in the suburbs, on the Custis Trail, in the morning, while on a ride into work, for fuck's sake.

Farewell, my first fixie, my loyal friend. You will be missed...

"Rock-star tongue" action pic by Sir David Blum, Esq., illustrator par excellence, skilled rider, and all around good-natured gentleman.

1. With apologies to one Vladimir Nabokov, whose masterpiece Lolita juiced the muse, so to speak, for the footnoted bits in this little requiem. When you read a book four times, things begin to stick.

2. I say "almost" here because on some of those days, I rode another bike.

Fixed Blessing: The 10th Annual (2008) 12 Hours of Lodi Farm Race Report...

"Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it."
—Soren Kierkegaard

"Isn't it better to triumph by the strength of your muscles than by the artifice of a derailleur? We are getting soft.... As for me, give me a fixed gear!''
—Henri Desgrange, from an article in L'Equipe, 1902

I quickly put my foot down on the dew-stippled surface of the old metal door and try to maintain my balance. It is not a graceful pose. The other foot, my right one, remains clipped into its pedal. I’m half standing on a makeshift ramp up to an old oil tank, a rust-pocked derelict from a bygone era that is seeing new life now as a “feature” of the private race course here in Fredericksburg, Virginia. I grip the front brake lever to prevent the bike—and me—from rolling backwards. I am in a delicate moment of stasis, body hovering between bike and the dark void to the left of the tank. The rear wheel wants to give in to gravity, and take me and the bike with it. Just ahead, on the other side, another old door is positioned as a kind of mirror image to the one I'm perched on, making for a nice transition from the top of the tank down to the trail beyond.

Only the chick in front of me—right in front of me—doesn’t seem to know this last bit.

It’s lap number 3 for me, somewhere around cumulative mile 23, sometime in the wee hours of the morning. The chick has just locked up her brakes. Her front wheel has come to rest at the top of the up ramp. In response, I, too, have locked up my “brakes” halfway up the ramp. Our tires overlap briefly, the knobs grapple, embrace, release. She’s not sure, this racer, but she thinks maybe the race coordinator has thrown in a surprise four-foot drop on the other end of the tank, in the abyss just below the cone of light cast by her headlamp. She has no recourse to a previous lap's experience. Logic and the limits of liability don't intrude here, in this moment, in the darkness, in the gap between caution and competition. She doesn’t want to confirm her suspicion the hard way. She apologizes, I dismiss it, and the thought of how absurd we must look, tangled together on this incline like hapless marionettes, flashes through my weary mind. Satisfied that she will not plummet to the earth face-first in the next seconds, she remounts and pedals over the top, as my left foot begins to slide backwards down the dewy ramp.

[Prelude: The race is the 12 Hours of Lodi Farm, a small, grassroots operation 10 years in the running, and unique in its midnight start time. The course is classic East Coast-style singletrack, tight and twisty and compressed, with plenty of roots and logs and short, steep hills and sinuous swaths that double back on themselves like so much intestines. Several hours earlier, Jason, Dave B., and I agree to disband our three-person fixed gear team, The SSOFT Machines, in exchange for the opportunity to split the top three places in what would be a new category: Fixed Gear Solo. We mention this idea to Becky, who was already planning to ride solo, and she's up for it. It's a lock for three of us to podium, a clever plan hatched seconds before registration by the ever scheming Disco Cowboy. A lock, that is, until I open my mouth back at camp, at which point a flurry of activity ensues, whereby RickyD and JoeP, like piranhas frenzied by an errant drop of blood, scramble to pull the freewheels off of their bikes and replace them with fixed cogs. Left with no choice, TonyB, their third teammate, soon follows suit. In an instant, the erstwhile exclusive four-member Fixed Gear Solo class almost doubles in size. In my haste, I've just fucked myself, and quite possibly the others, right out of an easy podium spot. Of course, a second- or third-place position out of a four-person riding pool doesn't pull down a lot of bragging power. Still, it is what it is.]

I try to check my backwards movement, but with no rear brake, the bike gains momentum and I topple half off the side of the ramp, bike and right leg above me, left leg and arm crashing onto something below. Cursing aloud, I manage to right myself and get moving again. I catch the rider ahead of me near the finish, and she apologizes again, and again I explain that it's not a problem. It hits me as I roll up to the transition that a fourth lap on the bar light is a bad bet. I check in, turn over my bracelet, and head back to camp to eat something. On the way back, I notice that my water bottle—snagged in a quick pause between laps 1 and 2—is almost full: the course is such that taking a hand off the bar when you can't coast presents a danger greater than mild dehydration. In fact, it isn't a conscious decision, isn't a decision at all, really. It just doesn't occur to you. After pounding some pasta (thanks, Jo!), I decide to try to grab some shuteye, and crawl into the back of Moby Dick to lie down after a quick and welcome change of clothing. Despite the noise, despite the adrenaline surging through my veins, despite the cold temps settling in, I fall asleep.

[Flashback: Lap 1 sees me lining up with a dead headlamp just before the “rolling start” (the LeMans-style start from previous years was scrapped in favor of something that, at least in theory, spaced out the riders according to riding speed instead of running prowess). What happened? No idea. And no matter. I have a powerful bar-light already mounted. I cut back to camp after the rolling start to dump the dead light (and with it, my hydropack and helmet) and pick up a spare helmet, then head out again, forgetting my water bottle in the process. At this point, I’m dead last, but I’m not far behind the slower riders. I catch and pass several at the first muddy hummock, getting a feel for how the fixie handles the terrain. The first half of the course is the hilliest, with one short, steep climb transitioning to another and another in short order, with some mock plateaus in between for the mental torture. The singletrack is true singletrack—there are damn few places to pass without incident, and riding fixed makes an off-trail sojourn around a rider through a carpet of Mayapples a risky venture. On the climbs, roots reach out from the trail’s edge like the gnarled, boney fingers of an old man, clutching at your tires. Everywhere, trees lean into the trail like sullen thugs, and when they team up, the space between bar end and bark is measured in millimeters. There are bridges, maybe 5 or 6 in all, some sound and stable, some of questionable integrity. The sketchy, washed out, rooty hill leading down to one such bridge—a classic from years past—has been removed from the course in favor of a slight downhill grade that meets the bridgehead almost perpedicularly, offering precious little momentum for the steep, technical climb on the other side. Still in the game from last year is the 60-foot deck that traverses a nasty mudpit...fun, but too wide to be challenging. Lap 2 is a repeat of lap 1 for me, with little variation. The trail seems to be holding up well, and more and more space is slowly but surely opening between groups of riders. Lap 3 sees a film of dew developing on the roots, throwing a little slickness into the mix. It's my worst lap; I'm slow and sluggish and already looking forward to a well-lit trail in the morning.]

I awaken to find both Jason and Dave hanging around the camp. Like me, they had decided to wait out the night to see what the morning would bring. Good thing we aren't all on the same team. We discuss strategy. Each of us stands at three laps apiece at this point. Though he takes a shot at dissembling, Jason clearly has the third-place spot in his sites. He sneaks off to join the race again, while Dave and I focus on the real issue: whether we want to pound a beer first. We decide against it, and I suggest to Dave that he should chase down Jason for the third spot. He heads out, but precious time has passed. I follow shortly, feeling stronger in the legs and lungs than I have a right to.

[Interlude: I've always had a warm spot for Lodi. It's been the venue of "firsts" for me: my first race, my first solo race, my first single-speed race, my first solo single-speed race. And now, with this year's event, it's my first fixed gear and solo fixed-gear race, and despite the physical wear and tear that is part and parcel of endurance races, I can't stop smiling. The Karate Monkey seems to climb better in fixed mode, but it may just be that I haven't ridden a 29er in a while. I do know that the big wheels eat up the roots with surprising aplomb, and my ass is happy for it. Logs are a problem, as leveling the cranks via coasting is out of the question. But soon, the mind seems to dial in the spatial relations and most times the cranks seem to align themselves automatically and without effort. When they don't, it becomes second nature to weave or skid to find the sweet spot in alignment. Breaking with the legs is a blast; the interplay between front disc and rear leg-brake is so much more, well, synergistic than it is with two "proper' brakes. There's somehow more agreement, more cooperation, more communication between the two in a fixed set-up. At least on this course, where rocks are as rare as rubies. The loop at Big Bear would surely offer a different perspective.]

Lap 4 is bathed in sunlight. Every evil thing that hid in the darkness to ambush the hapless rider has come out to fight fairly in the brilliance of dawn. I feel good on this lap, fresh and optimistic. I feel faster, and, indeed, I am. But solo riding is not so much about speed as it is about staying in for the long haul, about enduring the growing monotony. And though I've already forsaken that strategy too, I'm having fun, and that's enough for me (if I want to be fast now, I need to find a time machine). I've dialed in this off-road fixed-gear thing to the point where the occasional pedal-strike is no longer jarring and disconcerting, but simply another part of riding, another "obstacle" to overcome. As I pedal into the transition area, I see Dave off to the side with his wife, taking a breather. Almost immediately, he hops back on and again enters the race to take on his 5th lap.

I come out of the race to check on the others in our group. JoeP is readying himself to enter the fray again, as is Tony. Becky, too, is off the bike and trying to decide whether to go out for another lap. She hasn't turned in her baton bracelet, so she's still on the clock and has the option to wait it out till noon if the thought of another lap isn't appealing. I've turned mine in and have to complete at least one more lap in order to "finish". We talk for a while, Bek and I, and she decides she wants to throw it down one more time. The four of us embark on our final lap, agreeing to take it easy for this one and ride together, since we have plenty of time.

We exchange leads randomly, riding most of the tough stuff, walking some of it when it seems to make sense. Competition has loosened its merciless grip. We break when we feel like it. The mood is one of weary elation, tempered by a strong desire to be over and done with it all. We joke, mostly silly, stupid stuff, but sleep deprivation makes everything funny. JoeP finds a moment to frolic, sans bike, in a field of wildflowers, looking like nothing so much as the King Buttercup Faerie. It is a welcome moment of levity. Soon, the thought of a cold beer, a Red Rocket Ale to be exact, begins to take hold in my brain and helps fire the cranks for the last few miles.

When it's all said and done, I've wracked up a modest 5 laps—about 41 miles in all—on the fixie. Although last year's race with team The Big Meats was hard to beat, I have to admit that I had just as much fun this year, owing mostly to the challenges and joys that come with racing on a fixed gear, and to a well-designed course. Now to look into picking up some shorter, square-taper cranks...the fix is in!

Photos 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, and 10 by D. Ross; photos 3, 4, 7, and 9 by G. Ryan.

Props to all the fixed gear riders for some truly herculean efforts: RickyD (1st Place with 9 laps!), JoeP (2nd Place), Jason (3rd Place), Dave, Tony, and Bek.

Special thanks to Donna and Jojo for support—you ladies made a HUGE difference in helping to make the race such a fun time!

Oh, and TomiCOGs kick ass! Had a racer out on a lap ask me if I was running one. Turns out he knows Tomi...the boy's getting famous.