Saturday, June 2, 2018

Life update on El Conchristador and company

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Just an update on life....

I just finished watching Jarret win Glencoe.  Damn what a sprint!  I watched most of the races up there today from the shop TV via live stream.  I had to switch back and forth between that and the OKC races, which is where the GGB team is this weekend.  The race season is in full swing and so is the busy season at the store so I am in a sort of twisted and mechanically complex part of the year in which I try to play the part of manager of a bike shop, an elite women’s bike race team, an up and coming (and surprisingly strong) developmental race team, and my family at home, which naturally should come first, but often times suffers the effects of the sort of neglect that a cowboy from the late 19th century would lay on his homestead when he’s off doing very important and eminently necessary outdoorsy type stuff.  And I guess that is sort of what I am doing, although my stuff is really not that important in light of this big mess of a civilization in which we live.  But, anyway, bike racing is in full effect and it makes me happy and I wish I had my boombox from 1985 so I could play Van Halen’s “Jump” on 99 and a Half, The Apple and shoot hoops and go to the pool and be all tan and stuff and this sentence just split off into another dimension.  Suffice to say that All Is Well and I feel like I’m doing productive things in life and just maybe I am stretched a little too thin. 

I am happy about the devo team.  I don’t really even want to call it a devo team because most of my riders are already fairly accomplished on the LIttle 500 track and some of them have found success already on the road and crit scenes.  I just did a short out and back trip to the Snake Alley race in Iowa and we had a weirdo time with that thing.  First, Brooke, Josh, and I were out warming up and Brooke’s non-drive-side crank fell off so I had to book it back to the truck and get her sorted out so she could just barely make it to her race start with all the nervous jitters and anxious shite that you carry with you when your team director just manhandled your bike back together by sheer force of will and probably the actual Force, because I honestly don’t remember how I did it…but it worked.  And she raced.  And then there was Josh, who was poised to do well in his field and we were doing a well-organized warmup on the waterfront road and I was looking forward to watching him race.  Then I asked him to stand up and do a 20 second effort out of the saddle to get the sprint legs going and as soon as he stood up his drivetrain just basically went monkey nuts and he fell hard, in slow motion as my brain recalls it, and cracked a bone in his wrist.  So now I have Brooke and Josh on the side of the road eight miles out of town in the blazing heat and I have to do a solo TT effort to get back to the truck so I can come pick them up.  

By the way, in my head, this entire weekend looks like an octopus smoked meth and started shaking a bunch of babies so they would cry very loudly and demand that the heat be turned up to whatever is the hottest and then a swarm of bees came and brought mosquitoes with them and a shitload of teenagers were walking around obliviously playing on their goddam devices and constantly walking in front of me while I was trying to get somewhere.  Also the hotel was basically a giant steam room with what amounted to a courtyard surrounded by little rooms with filthy wet carpeted patios and mucky iron spiral staircases if you wanted to go to another floor to get a bucket of chlorine ice.  In the center of the huge open courtyard was an elaborately planned and shaped swimming pool which I imagine was the bees’ knees back in 1979 but now is just a nuisance which no wants to touch for fear of catching some medieval disease or at least someone else’s hair making its way into their mouth or eye or nose or something…gross.

Faith…the Little Monster.  She WON SNAKE ALLEY!!  I could not believe my eyes.  I honestly had a hunch about halfway through because I had been watching her as she was riding up the snake and she was so relaxed and it almost looked like she was playing or something.  Her bike handling skills are top notch and she was railing the technical downhill sections.  I really, truly, honestly thought to myself that this little nuclear particle was going to win.  As a matter of fact, with about three laps to go, I was certain of it.  I remember telling Josh and Brooke, just casually, that Faith “has this.”  And then it happened.  And I was not surprised at all.  I did have to check my state of mind to make sure that I was not one of my other personalities or otherwise out of touch with reality but my executive function, my little homunculus, if you will, said that everything was A-OK and that she really did win and that dang, Chris, you gots yourself some good riders!  Then we watched Rachel and Bri ripping it up over in NC in the land of that cool Carolina smoke that only comes from a soft-pack of Winstons—in the Winston-Salem Grand Prix.  

So Rachel is currently sitting in third in the points standings in the USA Crits series and also holds the Lap Leader Jersey, which is basically a “most aggressive” sort of category.  I am super proud of what she and the girls have accomplished this season.  It’s a damn shame that Jenette cannot ride right now due to the concussion and I know she really wants to be with her teammates.  But the girls are  holding it together and everyone is doing their part to make this team (Gray Goat - Bullseye) something special.  And with Brooke winning races for Zone-6 and about to upgrade categories and Faith literally finding her Big Girl legs, I see some magic in the making for that team.  Bri is, of course, the force that holds everything together.  She is team manager, team cook, team direction finder, team hotel finder, team social media empress, team human google machine, team 11-tooth attack weapon and all around great rider, and also finds time to do Breakfast of Chicampions with me on Tuesdays.  Betsy is very steadily improving after being thrown to the sharks this year.  Her back seems to be holding up and I believe that she is planning to start a podcast about her six-hour warmups on a trainer in the sun on a hot asphalt road while her fiancee, Gene does what Gene does, which is just about everything that a team soineur, fuck I’m not even going to try to look up the spelling on that one…DOES plus also doing research on our social media imprints and hits and how popular we are and our ranking and he is basically just a genius and I wish I was as smart as him.  Also I imagine he has to wash a shitload of clothes due to Betsy’s torrid warmups, what with all the sweat and all…

I’m gonna wrap this up now before I go on some rant about how my goddam grass is growing two inches a day and I have to mow three times a week and the dogs won’t stop pooping in the yard, which is where they are supposed to poop, I guess, and I need to kill weeds…no…DESTROY weeds with very violent methods and trim the ivy and try not to upset the hornets that always seem to want to build a neighborhood on the front porch just high enough that I can’t get to it to smash it to smitherines.  And they seem to be able to pick up tremendous speed when they attack me.  I have been stung so many times that I no longer swell up at the sting site but shit does it hurt!!  

All I want to do is go eat at Patachou with my wife in peace and then maybe go for a motorcycle ride.  Oh yeah…what the HELL is up with cryotherapy?  You go into a booth and become frozen for six minutes and then…what?  This is a fad.  I stamp my certified guarantee on that.  It will be gone in a year.  Beth said she liked it and I will probably try it but I know exactly what will happen when I get out:  I will thank the attendant and say something nice, like “Yeah, that really felt great!”  And then I will evaluate it in my head and decide that it really just felt cold in a very odd sort of way and I feel exactly the same as before.  Use your wits, ye little boat rockers…


I’m off to bed now.

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