How I met Smithers
January 30th, 2007 |Smithers bothered me long before I knew him.
I first knew him as the spank in Belgian team kit lined up at my Cat 3 races, astride a bike painted in the Belgian tri-color scheme. If you show up for a local MN race like that, and you’re not vacationing from Oudenaarde, then you’re a spank, right?
I was the guy intent on blowing the race apart to see what would happen, maybe a break would stick and I’d get a result, eh? I was so sick of Cat 3. He was the guy who seemed to follow my wheel, looking for an opportunistic sprint.
At the St Paul Capital Crit, I eyed him on the line thinking, “Not this time spank, I’m getting rid of you and winning solo.”
Capital Crit was a long race for Cat 3, 1 hr, so I had time. The gun goes off and we ride around as we do at our bike meetings. A few laps go by and somebody attacks, a few guys follow and we’re racing. Nobody’s chasing and I’m staring at Mr. Belgium as he looks at me, like, “why aren’t you chasing that down”. Someone else says it for him and I’m all stoney about it. Another lap goes by and Mr. Belgium takes off and I follow. He sits up when he notices me there, he flicks me and I say “Forget it. You want in the break, you’re going to work for it.” Then spank looks all hurt like.
So I’m thinking, good time to go. I go, he gets on my wheel. We get to the hill, I go again. I’m stronger here, I keep it steady past the start/finish, but then it all comes together. This goes on for the rest of the race. We eventually get in THE break together, I roll the dice a couple times on the hill and blow the break apart, but I don’t win solo. I think spank was second and I was fourth in the final sprint. And spank raced smart and did his share in the break, so I was fine with him. I remember this as a great race.
So, that fall, I’m all cx guy and one of my cx guys, Ped, was trying to hook me into a new team, giocatore interne sella. I wasn’t sure. He was relentless; he and some Q guys were getting it all set up and it was going to be cool. I wasn’t sure. He told me about a meeting they were having at the Q and I should come check it out. I agreed to check it out.
I show up, and there’s spank Mr. Belgium, but he’s not wearing kit with too many vowels, just Q office guy clothes. And he and Ped clearly had some closeted issue with EuroPro worship, pro kit and videos and our kit has to look like ONCE’s Vuelta kit and foofy crap like that. Anyway, I stuck it out and ended up spending lots of time riding with Smithers.
It turns out we have lots in common. We even wear the same size and ride the same size bike. People sometimes mistake us for one another on the bike. One way to tell the difference: my hands and feet are way bigger (and Smithers insists on setting up his bike like he’s Roger de Vlaeminck with his ass 12 inches above his bars).
He moved to ABQ and WifERob and I went to the big Smithers wedding in New Mexico, had a great time. We were pulling for the evil cereal scientist aka Mrs. Smithers to transfer back here, it happened, and here I am, pulling double blog-duty while Smithers is up to his tits at work in France.
