Big Bikes

The Trial

The Dover Wednesday Night Time Trial that is...not the book by Kafka where jurors stand stooped in a cramped loft above the court proceedings, pillows on their heads to pad them as they bump into the ceiling. Not the Album by Verbal Assault either for that matter. Just wanted to clear that up, I know it's confusing. I'm confused anyway. So another month another Dover TT, although it wasn't just any Dover TT, we had ourselves some drama, oh yeah. I headed down there from IBC with teammates George Shaw and Colin Reuter. We left with ample enough time that we didn't have to TT to the TT, which was nice. We'd had violent thunder storms just a few hours before, water crashing into the shop like a rogue wave, but that didn't cancel the TT. I was honestly kinda hoping they would cancel it, I was, as they say..."not feelin' it". 

     It was a calm day, not too hot either. My legs still shredded from Mt. Snow, but what I had going for me was acclimation to sufferation. Basically the Dover TT is like doing half a lap of the Mt. Snow course, only way, way easier. After a better than average warm up, I hit the line panting and sweating. I've done away with the ipod by now, too distracting, my inner soundtrack is strong enough. Took me a lot longer than it should have to clip in, my ancient Shimano 600 spd "Road Pedals" are so loose in the bearings they just flip and flop all over the place. 

    My very Greg "The Leg" Montello plan was to go out hard like a mountain bike race, settle in for about eight minutes, then go balls to wall for five minutes or to the end, whichever came first. So I go for it, I try not to fidget too much, try to stay  static in the upper body, knowing every twitch and tick will cost me. John Golden doesn't close on me too fast, in fact while he normally blows past me on the first stretch of Dedham St. he wouldn't get me until after the rollers on Farm Rd. on this particular day. 

    As I took the corner onto Farm, the hairpin, a car in front of me pulls  to the right yet throws it's left blinker on, there's a lot of road between the car and the center line, but I know this trick all too well, the old fake right, then cut left move. I slow slightly, see that there's oncoming traffic (hopefully) preventing them from turning into me as I yell out "I AM GOING BY - ON YOUR LEFT!". I didn't die. Then just after John Golden flew by all resplendent in his Aeroness, there was a weird form of Dover gridlock ahead, cars backed up five deep in both directions. We both coasted, assessing the situation, there was plenty of room down the center line, so we went for it. It only seemed like a wicked differently abled thing to do after the fact. We didn't die. 

      Taking the final corner onto Springdale I see Boston bike icon Scott Chamberlain spectating from the corner and yell "Hey Chame-Bo!". A little ways up the road I draw a bead on IBC customer Anthony Oliva drilling it to the end on his Colnago C-50, he throws out a "Go Tommy!" between anaerobic gasps. As I'm sprinting down over the tracks to the line a guy in a car pulls out, not so much in front of me as into me, I swerve around him and continue up the slight grade to the finish. He's actually behind me to the left and he then tries to drive into me again (he did throw his blinker on at the last second). Defensively I throw a foot out and biff his front fender to let him know I'm there and call out my number to the timers. Here I don't know what got into  me but I looped right into the parking lot and laid into this guy all adrenalized, red-faced, sweaty, and spitting mad. "You know you were wrong - right?". "What?". "You cut me off, almost killed me!". "I had my blinker on". "No, not that, two seconds before that, when you drove out in front of me". "I didn't do that". "Twenty people just saw you do it". "Why're you so mad?". "Sorry, you might not get it rolling around safe in your car, but driving like that, you could kill one of us". "You're not a car". "You're a dipshit". "A dipshit?". "Yeah, a dipshit". IBC teammate George Shaw had rolled up by now, he's not quite as tall as I am but one of his biceps is as big as my waist and he has the bearing of someone you don't want to get on the wrong end of. This probably saved my ass. I did have the satisfaction of rolling away as the dude stood there trying to look tough, I taunted "What? You want me to come back?". His answer was "F%# you!". Original. 

    Oh wait, but that's not all. The cops pull up and ask who's in charge. I sidle up to the car prepared to take the blame for any trouble.  Turns out the guy was pissed about another rider who didn't stop when he had gotten out to direct traffic sometime before John and I threaded the needle between those two rows of stopped cars. Nothing came of it. Altogether a pretty hectic night on the roads of Dover. All that silliness and I beat my best time by fifteen seconds,

with a time of  18:08, for an average of 25.7mph over 7.7 rolling miles. Finally, some improvement. Of course Tony Delogne did come out on a "Non-Aero" bike that was not all that Non-aero and crush the record, setting the bar unattainably high for this aerodynamically challenged guy. 

      I apologize for any stress my antics may have caused the Dover TT organizers, I will try to calm down, I swear. I am the guy who earlier that day audibly heckled a Starbucks customer as he whined about how long his drink was taking and chastised the employees. I told my friend Bryan  in a theatrically loud voice of how I had just heard something on NPR about how people waiting in lines too long at Starbucks is one of the greatest forms of oppression in the world today, that the problems in the southern Sudan relate to it. "Yup, folks in Darfur are waiting too long in lines at Starbucks, just waiting there for their Non-fat Lattes when all of a sudden a Janjaweed Militiamen comes up and WHACK! Chops their head off! Faster service at Starbucks would totally eliminate this problem". 

      Alright, that's it for now, things are going to be kinda quiet for a bit, then they're gonna get real noisy with the NMBS in New York and Nationals coming up, watch out now!