Boom Island
Sunday, October 14th, 2007For the record, I was selectively heckling riders. I don’t want you to have the idea that I was berating everyone who happened to ride by.
Toddler Smithers and I headed out to Boom Island to speculate some “A” quality cyclocross racing. Half of us were not disappointed.
Toddler Smithers had been talking all day about going to see the bike race and he kept repeating the words “bike” and “race” in the car the whole way to the event. About half way through the race he realized that watching bike racing can ultimately be pretty dull. At that point he began screaming and I had to move him around the course and change the view to keep him placido.
Up until that point I was taking part in the blogger convention that had been loosely organized just past the final barrier before the start/finish line. Homme was there and Toddler Smithers put the hammer lock on his hand to keep him from walking away. We agreed that he identified him as the superior father due to his longer experience in said position. Ray was there and Toddler Smithers was enjoying the wisdom of his numerous life experiences. Dan was there and from him Toddler Smithers learned an important lesson in sportsmanship. Skibby was there and Toddler Smithers appreciated his role as an authoritarian. Jim R was there and, while not officially a blogger (*), Toddler Smithers was able to expand his vocabulary thanks to Jim R’s extensive and liberal use of profanity.
(* As a matter of fact, Skibby declared that Jim R was the worst blogger in the world. This is patently untrue. Jim R is a guest blogger. There’s a difference)
There were a number of bloggers taking part in the race as well. Brian was there, although it looks like he is no longer blogging. Or maybe he’s just making some kind of statement on blogging. Super-Rookie was there and dropped a bomb on the race. The f-bomb that is. He wanted a feed in the race and yelled for us to have Tuffy give him a “f-ing hand up” on the next lap. We were all confused by this request because Tuffy was on the other side of the course and the only way for us to convey this message to Tuffy was to yell across the distance of the course that “Timmy wants a feed! And he’s mad at you! Mad! At you!” So that’s what we went ahead and did. I think Rookie was suffering a bit because the “A” race was the 4th event that he had run that day following his participation in the “C” race, “B” race and the women’s race.
Timmer was there and was wearing some dope ass Briko specs circa 1993. He looked like Cipo or, even better, Tomba. Doug and Dan were there as well. So was Gene-O.
Race report: Cool temps but no rain. Some dude won, not the dude I thought would win. I think the most difficult aspect of the event was making the right call on tire pressure. The course was greasy from last night’s rain so you could not run your tire pressure to high and still maintain good control of the bike. But there were also some pretty rough sections on the back side of the course which caused a lot of riders to suffer from pinch flats if they ran their tires too low. Scotty Rob ran 50lbs and he told me that he got a little loose in the mud but the fact that he suffered no flats means he was probably pretty close in calling the right pressure. I know that riders who ran a bit less did not finish the race due to flats.
It was nice to see everyone as I had not been to a bike event since the last track race of the season.
Once Toddler Smithers wet his pants we GTFO of there.
See you at the races!
