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I spent too much time on the road bike this weekend. With this little 24 hour party coming up soon, I decided I better start putting in some miles. But let’s be honest, I’m not an athlete by any stretch of the imagination. I save silly things like “training” for the hardmen like Snake and Gnome. But what I seem to be really good at is long rides that sound like bad ideas. I was in the middle of one such bad idea yesterday when my music started to bore me and my mind began to wander. I pondered things like who would win in a cage fight, Ronnie James Dio or Glen Danzig? How many yuppie triathaletes are going to try to race the Tour Divide after seeing the movie. Or will nobody want to because Lance wasn’t there? Are Ricky Carmichael and Anne Caroline Chausson actually the same person? Think about it. You have never seen them in the same place at the same time.
The one subject I pondered the longest was the fact that I have the best extraction team known to man. My hobbies and my constant battle with boredom always lead me to do some pretty dumb things. If I get myself into a sticky situation, all I have to do is make one phone call. Unfortunately,I have had to make that phone call about a half dozen times in the past couple years. But each experience makes for a good story in the end. If I have problems with the moto I call one friend. If I need of a tow or in a place that requires 4 wheel drive I can call a couple others. If there is navigation or any kind of route finding involved I also know who not to call. I even know the best person to call if I am just plain bonked in a huddled mess on the side of the road somewhere in the desert. Any time, day or night, I can rely on a crack team of about 5 friends to have my back. This system is seldom discussed, but it only works because they can count on me any time they try to act on a bad idea. Plus the extractor never pays for gas and always drinks for free that night. I am truly grateful for this network of friends. They allow me to get out there past my comfort zone and really push my personal limits, and therefore enriching my life.
A raise of the pint to all the people out there that make our silly adventures possible!
I will leave you with a little video of my good friends back east living out their own bad ideas. While I was pedaling and shivering in 40 degrees this morning, these knuckleheads were surfing Lake Ontario in an 13 degree snowstorm. Keep up the good work boys.
keep it dirty…
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It takes a village to extract in style.
Maybe heart rate monitors should be disallowed from `11 TD in preemption. There’d be nary a style point in wholesale yuppie-tri GDMBR extraction.
GoodStuff~!
yea man, we all gotta have bailout options. If I know anything, I know the smell of a DNF. That said, I gotta get on the gas & get riding. My challenge will be like yours, to not listen to the excuses in my mind.
i hear on that DNF smell… mine usually smelled like fermented grains…
surfing the rio in fucking december? that is the best worst idea ever. i’m humbled.
(and dude, i full-on love bad ideas. even more so in failure than successfully on paper.)
I’m hip to this.
u truly have a great team
dirrty, sorry to hear your idea went bad, but thats cool you got your back up. always good to have back up.
as far as your buddies – they surf really well! but WTF? how cold??? that’s insane. i bet it took hours for his balls to return to a normal color. can you imagine?
Dio would eat that pussy’s still beating heart.
Well, ah, no sharks anyway.
To be fair, Ontario is never exactly warm.
shit, man – long rides that somehow turn into bad ideas or really bad ideas (sometimes really, really bad ideas – perhaps involving injury, some whores and Waffle House)…those are the best, IMHO. laughed my ass off w/ your pondering the cage-match betwixt Glen Danzig and Ronnie James Dio. had myself a very similar experience, several years ago – heated debate (heavily fueled by whiskey and malt liquor)…as to who would prevail in an all-out brawl to the death between Glen Danzig and Hank Rollins. Rollins – ‘natch. Danzig is a total douche. great post; let me take a quick stumble down memory lane…ha!