Big Bikes

I Get High With a Little Help My Friends

Not on drugs. Not like Flandis (not that the drugs he took got him high. A little Roid-Raging and throwing water bottles at reporters maybe; but not properly high). No, I'm gonna get high like elevation high, like 37,000 feet high, with a little (or a lot of), help from my friends. This is just my really convoluted way of saying thank you to people like VeloCB, Gewilli, Stevil, and assorted facebook friends for corralling people in the general direction of the Breck Epic Blogger Grant facebook page and in the specific direction of voting for me. As a result I have held the lead in the poll for several days now, but I'm not out of the woods yet. Guys like Fixie Dave "Sweet Jiggles" Nice and Montana "The Loose Hamster" Miller are steadily creeping up on Sarah "Ms. Tique" Uhl and me.

Fixie Dave is scary for two reasons: he has a nickname AND a porn name. He's got me beat there. He also has way more facebook friends than I do, and due to the voting format it is really going to come down to a battle of who has the most facebook friends, for that reason I am so glad I am not up against Gary Fisher or Adam Myerson in this contest.

Montana...shit, the dude's named after a state that is way bigger than my home state (although my parents did almost name me "Massachusetts Bradley Parsons." Luckily they sobered up before they did anything legally binding) and he lists "making grunting noises" under his "activities" on the facebooks. Did I mention that he drives a monster truck? None, I say, none of this should be misinterpreted as me making fun of him.


My mother always told me: "Don't make fun of men wielding swords (who are named after large states and drive monster trucks)...especially if they are riding viking cats." I took that advice to heart, but I was never sure if I'd get to apply it in any way. Thanks mom, I think you may have saved my life.

So I guess what I'm saying is this: if you haven't voted yet, please take the time to do so now. Only you and you, yup even you back there, can help me stay on top so I can "win" this thing and earn the distinct privilege of riding 240 miles with 37,000 of vertical over six days. Vote Here now. Thanks!

Oh ya, correction: the other day I was yammering on about how, if I do win a spot at this thing, I will get to blog for Outside Magazine or some other reputable-type publication. That was last year. This year the winners of the contest blog for Mountain Flyer, VeloNews (Singletrack.com), Bike Magazine and Rodale.

And in other news. I'm jealously watching the reports from the Transylvania Stage race. Doug Jenne is sitting in a not-so-distant second just in front of a third place Dicky in the Single-speed race (if only they were live-blogging so we could hear Dicky's smack-talk...), but what I find super-interesting is that Boston-guy, Alec Petro is leading the Masters race. Not only that, but the dude put up a prologue time that would have landed him in 9th place in the Open category, just a couple spots behind Mark Weir. Alec and I have had a few tangles over the past couple years, but recently they have tended to go his way more often than not. Damn I hope I can get to be as fast as him by the time I'm 46. Which is a great thought to have, seeing as I just celebrated my 36th birthday. I've got ten years to work this shit out, Ten years! Sweet. I feel young again.

Hey, if you'd like to do some homework for tomorrow's post, check out Doug "Hill Junkie" Jansen's post about his horribly broken ankle. No matter how crappy you might feel on the bike right now, Doug's situation will make you thankful that you are out there at all. So study up 'cause there's gonna be a quiz on this stuff. OK, not a quiz, but we are going to talk a little bit about how we can make things better for Dougy.