004: the night I took down Mr. Ying.

In our town there are two sets of hard road rides both falling on Tuesdays and Thursdays and both starting at 5:30. To the north there's the smack-down and piggly wiggly ride. To the south there is the peoples world championships. We used to have one set of rides but all the personalities didn't mesh. The north ride is lead by Mark the Shark; the south by Mr. Ying.

The smack-down tends to be my ride of choice as the ride is closest to my work and the easiest for me to get to. In contrast I haven't made a PWC ride, which is closer to my home, in over a year. Now just between you and me and seriously don't tell anyone, I also tend to go to the smack-down because I am really fond of the ride leader at the smack-down, he talks great trash, strong as shit, gets the idea of the community and frankly after being an all-american tri-guy the fact that he is taking on mountianbike racing makes me respect him even more. But seriously don't tell anyone, I don't want him to get a big head or anything.

I will admit I haven't always gotten on as well with the folks from PWC. These guys were the original gangsters in our area. They are so old school they make me look like a high school freshman walking into the showers in a college lockerroom. They may have not always liked my punky smartass comments jumping in on their fun. I also have to so admit I may have not always tried to go along with the flow down there. Calling someone the "evil emperor" or "Darth Ying" or telling them that they were the Darkside of the force probably didn't ingratiate me to them. All water under the bridge... (i hope)

Today i got out of work early. My original plan was to go north but as I went home first I went to the ride closest to my house. The boys at the PWC were all very kind to me. Hell, Postal Dave, a stalwart of the PWC, invited me to show up for the Saturday ride... That was very nice.

Well, how did I repay their kindness? How did I repay them allowing me to sit in and suck wheel all night? Well, I took out Mr. Ying. In the last ten minutes of the ride I was sucking wheel hanging on for dear life. I focused on the wheel in front of me, not the road around us. The edge of road we raced down turned and dropped off. At the last moment I realized and using my superior cyclocross handling skills, or dumb luck ( I prefer to say superior handling skills), I got over to avoid ditching it in the barley field. Mr. Ying was drafting off of me. I do throw a hell of a draft; like a VW Bug off of a Mack Truck. But I digress, Mr. Ying had no warning and as I narrowing escaped I heard a raucous and looked over to find him was rolling through the barley field and eventually he took a tumble. Fortunately no one was hurt. I won't make that rookie mistake again, I know better than to focus on a wheel. Hopefully they'll let me sit in again at another time in the future. I apologized to Mr. Ying for my mistake. He told me to not worry about it. YIKES that was scary.

Last Tuesday, a number of us geared up in the kit we wore with our Andrew logo on it. We rode up to middle run and had the "three bridges" dedicated to Andrew and his memory. I'll admit it was kind of a heavy moment as we all got ready share our memories of Andrew. Lauri forgot a drill bit so it created a little levity as Jebbagger and James flew home to get what supplies we needed. Over the years since we lost Andrew many of us find ourselves in different places, different teams, different places in our lives. It was nice to reminisce about Andrew at this place with some folks I don't regularly get to see.

Also nice, many folks who couldn't make it out Tuesday sent Andrew stories that we read and were super cool. If you end up out in Middlerun, check out the bridges.Thanks to the DTS for working with us to be able to dedicate this section to the memory of Andrew.

Thanks for reading.

respect.

fatmarc