9/6/11
Open Letter to Al Standley
Dear Al,
Your pals and teammates wonder what has become of you. We understand that you are dating someone. We understand that you are probably happy at the moment. We are worried about this. It is a well-known fact around these parts that your muscles derive energy not from carbohydrate, but from rage and personal angst. We are worried that your muscles will therefore atrophy and become like those of a moss-tooth carnival worker. We wonder how we may aid you in this horrible situation, while sparing your dewy new relationship the awful display of your terrible bike-anger in an up-close and personal manner. We know that you are probably lacking in real motivation right now but…
…hang on I have to review the rental car I picked up this morning while my truck gets Ziebart.
200something Chevy Malibu. This is a horrible car. The interior is so bland it makes me depressed. The exterior looks like the pine box derby car I made when I was ten. The stereo is like angry dwarves screaming into a steel drum. When I press on the accelerator I feel a grinding sensation as the thing groans desperately for sixty in under thirty seconds. In fact, the whole thing just makes me feel awful…like watching old reruns of Barney Miller or something.
So back to Al (I have my truck back now, complete with paint-protection and hood-film).
You know what? Nevermind Al. If he wants to have a relationship and get a huge beer-gut, let him. But I don’t want to hear any complaining next spring when we are all having fun playing paceline punch-out at top speed while he’s dribbling away at the back like an old man trying to piss. I guess our little baby’s all grown up…he’s FOUND that lovin’ feeling, whoooah that loooooovin’ feeeeeeling. No matter…can’t fault him. I found it also a couple years ago and married the chick. But my riding style is such that I ride better when things go well in my life, unlike our hop-addled hero. And so much for all that…
So, Al, cheers buddy!
Now in other news: Hammerfest is all but done for the season, there are no more road races or crits of any consequence left, and silly cross season is looming. This past Tuesday, there were all of eight of us at the start of Hfest and we decided to just go north and do echelon practice into the most awful cross-headwind I have felt in a long time. I named it “Leviathan”. This was a very difficult ride…difficult in a different way than normal Hfest. Don, Damian, Mikey, myself, Jose, Ryan, and Court were all there. Everything is harder when Court shows up. With Court, it’s “no quarter asked for, and none given”. We simply took turns pulling really hard for a minute or so at a time. It was tremendously difficult just to hold your line and try to hide from Leviathan. Mikey is the best at that. He can literally shrink himself down at will and find shelter behind the tiniest of riders in the fiercest of winds. I have seen this dozens of times. Makes me laugh. The weird thing is that he provides absolutely NO draft benefit to anyone behind him! I don’t exactly know why this is because he rides pretty much the same as any of us…but when I try to catch a draft from him…nothing. It’s like he’s a natural airfoil or something. One notable comedic moment happened as Court was pulling at around 26 into a BLOC headwind and Jose tried to actually pass him and start a HERO-pull from second position. He may as well have slammed into a sand-pit because we dropped 5 MPH instantly and all I could hear was a terrible gasping sound and cursing in Spanish. He pushed furiously on the pedals, trying in vain to keep his cadence above 50 and his ass on the seat but it was no use…he was a goner. I chuckled to myself as I passed him and took us back up to 26 until we got to Strawtown Road, where Damian and Ryan had the misfortune of taking us to Cyntheanne and the journey home. The return leg was pretty much 30 to 32 MPH all the way. I did the lead-out at the end and Don and Court sprinted it out. Good ride.
UPDATE: It is now about a week after I started this screed. I could not figure out how to go from Hammerfest to something else…and I really didn’t need to but I wanted to give a shout-out to my dentist. So here is my transition to that:
Transition
So I went to the dentist today (Grin Dentistry, by the way—good people, a team sponsor, very hi-tec equipment, and Dr. Rick’s wife, Dr. Mundy-Burgett is the Chief. In less than an hour I am scraped, polished, fluorided (not really a word), and x-rayed. Very efficient and comfortable with massage dental chairs and TV in each room. I was told, for the hundredth time to floss more. I said I would. But I will certainly not. If everyone who said they would floss would actually floss, the people who make floss would be very wealthy. And I know EXACTLY what that means… The floss industry would explode. We would have floss-IPO millionaires, or “floss barons” if you will. They would marry dimwitted and tanned young coeds and fly about the world behaving like the internet billionaires of the Twentieth Century, all drunk on power and gin but with healthy gums and Maseratis. There would be marketing campaigns with high-powered celebrities looking glamorous and tan in exotic places with bikinis on…flossing. MTV would create a reality show based on the ex-wives of the floss barons with lots of ruthless bickering about alimony and inflatable lips and all of them would passionately hate floss and their ex-husbands and cheap chardonnay. But Snookie would love floss because it tastes “hot, bitch”. Proctor and Gamble would buy Oral-B and create exciting new flavors and maybe even floss infused with green tea or acai berries or even laudanum. Eventually there would be mergers and acquisitions of the various floss companies and antitrust lawsuits and the now behemoth floss conglomerates would begin to profoundly affect the US and world economy. A congressional bailout would surely follow and it would cost us all a lot of tax money. Finally it will be discovered that floss causes mesothelioma and cervical cancer and possibly rabies and pregnant women or women thinking of becoming pregnant will NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES be able to touch floss or they may experience nausea, irregular heartbeat, and possible birth defects for their as-yet unconceived babies. Then there will be many lawyers and class-actions and the floss companies will be investigated in Congress and 99% of the floss on the market will be recalled until a safe alternative can be investigated. Then floss will be considered a Schedule II narcotic, which is the same class as morphine, oxycontin, and amphetamine. Now the drug companies will take over the industry and floss will have to go through many phases of trials with animal testing before it can be placed on the market. Prescription floss will be very expensive and highly controlled because of the potential for abuse.
So as you can see…nothing good can come of this ridiculous floss thing. And I REFUSE TO PARTICIPATE and make the world any worse than it already is.
--Richterissimo
