Ride Lugged

i wrote a bit of journal entry before the race and later, after my second lap, i wrote one at 12pm on saturday, when i couldnt warm my feet enough to sleep comfortably, and the rain sluiced off the car with such abandonment and quantity that i felt the car would surely leak.
anyway, here’s my contribution to the story of the race, again written before i had a chance to reflect or gloss over certain details.

friday morning:
collected black berries, a whole pot full, the wind whipping the bushes so furiously that it was like grappling with thorny tenticles.
stove fell, launched off its stand horizontally by the snapping wind, bacon somehow stays in pan, still crackling, the stove still lit…
camped next to 8′ hill crowned with bushes and scrub trees furiously belowing, redolent of a pounding prehurricane surf.
i arrived second on the scene, after kona jeff, we shared a beer, he talking about where he lived and what he was saving money for. all my comments/jokes whatever fell on deaf ears, talking to jeff is like talking to a wall with a dirty blond afro. he had a gold plated pint glass… lives on a peak visible from my camp site.
the meadow where we camp looks out over rolling hills, small mountains and patchwork grey green farmland, the view seems to go on for a 100 miles, but is probally more like 30. the air is clear, odd considering the rolling grey clouds that damp out all vestiges of the sun.
elvis guys show up in the nite, shining headlites into tent, and then flashlites, but i was tired and couldnt be bothered to get too pissed, and didnt end up saying anything, which was good cause they had no idea how close they were and apologized in the morning. they brought a TV and karayoke kit…
pissing up by blackberry bushes, when pissing with side to the wind, urine flys out at an abrupt right angle… very comical, unpredictable.
as clouds become denser, low drizzle, demoralizing, starts in, entire meadow looks ripe for flooding. vienna fingers arnt as good as i remember. forgot soap. rachel will bring…
1.40pm, two hours 20 minutes till theyre supposed to show. Wind is furious, driving discommodious rain around at all angles, none of which are strait down. thank god for duct tape, its not only patching tarp holes but also sealing seams between tarps, holding tarp poles up, and securing black trash bags which are serving as additional walls of my 4×7 room under the rain, very 2006 john steinbeck. must continually lower tarp support poles to lower ceiling as rain increases. winds become monumental, the noise acting like lightning before thunder, a huge gust wails thru the trees and moments later rolls down the hill, lifting and snapping at the blue tarps like a sail luffing aggressively in a gail, the tiller unmanned. the wind comes up, lifts tarps with a waffling snap, strains the stakes and slacks the guy lines making continual readjustment a must.
my window on the world shrinks as snapping/luffing plastic noises increase as i routinely add trash bags to buffer the rain.
5.00 theyre an hour late. this is unsuprizing. tarp leaking gobs of cold water. trash bag walls failing, toes numb, fingers could, cant feel heels, half gallon of beer killed. long cold wait.

sunday morning 12pm:

time will blunt my current woes, so i’ll write now while my pain is fresh. finished second lap about 15 minutes ago. lets attempt to describe the conditions. foggy, visibility less than 5 feet w/ headlite, worse as a slanting fog wrapped, thin but fast rain coats everything with an other worldly jewel like quality, including my glasses which are rendered useless by the combination of elements assaulting them. the ground has been transformed. the course is normally a slightly loamy rock singletrack, but has been turned into a vile peanut butter stew, a stew that not only stunk but stuck to tires and filled in the spaced between the knobs, making your tires heavy slicks, tractionless in all conditions. you slide around all corners, over rocks, across logs, with only a semblance of balance and a glimmer of hope that you’ll stay upright. downhills are suicide, trees being brought into regular employment as a braking agent. such is the nature of the stew that even strait, flat pedaling can cause the bike to slip from under you without the slightest warning.

the rain soaks my cotton and leather gloves, causing leather dye to leach out and roll down to my fingertips, staining the nails a dark yellow brown and making me look like a very tired cronic smoker.

i flatted 3 times on my last lap, mini-tool-less so i had to wait for some slow guy to catch me and offer a tool, and i eventually had to patch tubes to get back, leading to a shit 2.3 hour lap time. i flatted twice on this past loop, getting more and more innundated with the grainy stinking mud every time i had to pull a tube out. my gloves became saturated with the grey brown mire, and started to smell like a septic system.

the climb to the finish is one mile, a mile so steep that all but the most badass pros walk it, and most mortals can only ride the last 300 yards of. its an incredibly demoralizing way to end a lap. even the last ridable section is painful beyond reason, leaving your legs burning and your mind filling with the strange black void called defeat. i enter the tent seeing black spots, guided to my transition table by encouraging voices rather than by sight itself.