Big Bikes

Dude...What's Your Ratio?

That was one of the most prevalent questions of SSWC weekend. With 5,000 feet of climbing in a very short amount of miles looming on the horizon this was serious business. If you don't talk about gear ratios you are:

a.) Oblivious as to the the workings of your bike
b.) Someone who rides "two to one" on everything, regardless
c.) Too cool for school and "So over" talking about gear inches
d.) A geared rider

I talk about gear ratios, I love talking about gear ratios, I bust out my cell phone at any time to do some quick calculations, I have scraps of paper littering my home and workplace with all different combinations scrawled on them. I have piles of cogs and chain-rings, powerlinks and extra chain links to install if need be. I study Garmin data (other people's not my own) whenever possible to try to predetermine what ratio to run at a particular race. In fact, I have the Vermont 50 profile on my desktop screensaver right now. I am a bloody mess.


Mega Bottle Ride has been doing a great job scouring the web for SSWC08 Photos. Here's another one of me Wheel (More like Dust) Sucking. They call this "Picking Daisies" or "Paper-Boying", the extreme rocking side to side motion SSers use while climbing steep stuff.
Photo: J. Suzuki

These photos, like my thoughts are totally out of order. I think I'll have to be inserting SSWC stories into random race reports over the next month or so to get everything in my fried brain out.
I call this "SSWC Eve Sunset". I like unicorns too.

Matt O'Keefe and I took a pre-ride saturday afternoon while all the smart people were taking siestas or already drunk. We'd stop periodically to go "Wow, that was awesome!" then "Crap, I'm standing in Poison Oak!".

Dust to Glory. Three hours after the race I removed enormous, crusty shnoogs from my nose while black tears hung from the inside of my eyes.


Matt and I picked up a rider from Santa Cruz. He was ripping in a 32 X 18 on 29" with a rigid fork.

Matt was one of the first guys I knew to ride a Single Speed. I have seen him do things on a bike so Jedi, so Ninja, so CGI, I will never come close to doing them myself.


Does he look like an East Coast guy riding a switchback? Hell no, he's ripping. I was coming to a track stand and Trials hopping through these things. You West Coasters wouldn't understand how alien these things are to us.


We ate dinner here, I think it was called "Downtown Joe's Super Busy Bar With Only a Single-Shooter Men's Bathroom Good Luck Not Pissing Your Pants Pub". They call it "Downtown Joe's " for short. We were sitting and eating as the majority of the SSWC crew rolled up. The reaction of the regular clientele was priceless. People moving as far away from the throngs of weird bearded raucous dudes as possible.


I was sitting in a perfectly civilized fashion drinking Sparks, while being thoroughly entertained by Nat from Seattle, when the Durango crew rolled by on their bikes blaring Oingo Boingo and declaring that they were having a dance party in the tree house up the race course a ways. Safety ropes were very necessary. Beth from NC was buck wild on the dance floor, a fool could have gotten knocked on their head at any moment.


The guy in the upper right hand corner should be at every dance party. A song would come on that people weren't into and he'd be all "No! This is the SWEETEST song you've ever heard! C'mon! This is it GO!". Then he'd climb way the hell up the tree, it's OK he was sober, just like the rest of us. I'm in the lower left hand corner either leaping for my life before the whole deal comes crashing to the earth or about to bust a windmill to back-spin and subsequently send everyone on the dance floor flying to their deaths. I have a feeling that SSWC09 Durango is going to be fucking nuts. Oh, and don't worry Douche Bags, there's no cap on registration (so I hear) so you and all your Douche Bag buddies can come, you can even bring your Douche Bag Lawyer too, he can give you consult when someone moves your bike before the Lemans start and you want to sue them or someone (Like Buck Kiech) keeps you up all night because he's yelling "Topher! Topher! Topher!" before dragging Topher out of his tent in a fashion which fills Topher's drawers with Napa soil.

Apparently one of you Douches made it to Napa because some card carrying Douche Bag slashed this guy B's new Subaru tire either because he was annoyed with on course heckling or shenanigans involving a Potato Gun the night before the race. Both things only a true Douche Bag would get annoyed about. It's alright because as aforementioned DB sped away in his Douche-Mobile my girlfriend got his plate number, oops. From the sounds of it this Mr. Massengill will be lucky if the guys involved keep it strictly legal.

Soscol Cafe was the place to go after a weekend of hammering our livers and legs. A perfect combination of grease and protein. Here we ran into to the man himself and got to thank him for pulling this thing off in such a truly awesome fashion. He said he had meant to give Miriam and me a prize for our registration story, but, how can I put this without bringing forth images of puppies and a horribly sardonic "Aww" sound...our prize was just getting to do this thing which wasn't just a one day race, it was a week long celebration. God damn, that sounded lame, but I mean it. So suck it.