A Stupid Plan

That's what this trip to Tucson, AZ for SSUSA is. No two ways about it. I leave directly from school at 12:30 tomorrow. I have just enough time to get to the airport, if all goes well. I don't even know what horrible thing is going to happen yet, but it's already sounding foreboding.


Chelada Challenge News
Before I go on, just in case you missed yesterday's post, you could go look at the post itself but here's the deal:

For every $50 that gets dropped into my Paypal account (donate button, upper right there) between now and tomorrow morning (Friday Feb 4th) by 11:00 AM, I will consume one tall boy of Chelada. DURING THE SSUSA RACE. What's that, it's too expensive you say? Exactly. I am not going to make this easy on you because it ain't gonna be easy on me. I will also be capping my intake at six cans. Just six cans OK. Only six. This doesn't mean that you have to donate $50 yourself, just so long as the total is $50. And to sweeten the deal I will be rounding up to the nearest $100. Which in my thinking means that if I raise $151 I will drink 4 tall boys of Chelada.

Documentation.
All my cameras are working and will be along for the ride with me. I will either be taking Helmet Hero footage or Canon Digital Elph video footage of the drinking of each can. That I promise...um, dude.

As of 10PM Thursday night we have raised exactly $0.00 toward our goal, I'm going to take this as a gesture of kindness on the part of Big Bikes readers and not as a sign of the unfathomable unpopularity of Big Bikes. People just don't want to see me ON VIDEO puking tomato/clam juice and beer into Dejay Birtch's ample sideburns in the Arizona desert. Hey suit yourself.

To honor Eric and Zen's donations to "my cause" I will drink at least one Chelada during the event. I'm still curious just how horrible those things are.

We now continue with our regularly scheduled program...

I realized about two hours ago that "my" bicycle hard-case (really my equestrian friend Deborah's. She now has a much larger hard-case for when she flies with her horse.) was missing. Seems I forgot to retrieve it after lending it out last time around. Thing is I hadn't even planned to use it. I had this brilliant idea that I was going to screw the airline while they were trying to screw me; only they have the fine print on their side.

I thought I could get away with splitting my bike into two small boxes: a wheel box and a frame box. I recall only getting charged the $25 (now) standard baggage fee for a wheel box when I went down to NC a while back. But just to be sure, I checked Delta's baggage guidelines. They go with the length + width + height must = 62 inches or less total so we can totally screw you equation. My wheel box was bigger than that. I'm pretty sure most suitcases are bigger than that, but they look at a suitcase and go "suit...case," they look at a small box and go "smaller...but...not...suit...case...me...want...money!"

If they deem that your luggage is oversize or "special" they will hit you with a $175 fee per item. AAH! That means if they nailed me for both items (which according to their demented rules would be well within their rights) I would end up paying $375 as a result of attempting to get of the $175 bike case fee. Even I am not quite dumb enough to play the odds on that one. Long story short...oh wait that is the long story, I opted to go with the bike case and walk into Delta check-in fully prepared for the brutal financial reaming that awaits me.

Now I just need a bike case. Right now I'm waiting for my neighbors Matt and Mo (ya I got awesome neighbors) to get home so I can steal one of theirs.

I'll get into Tucson around 10PM and head straight to The Surly Wench (not The Surly Wrench as I've been calling it all week) for registration and maybe a beer. I'll be heading to The bar in Randy Jacobs car, which will also be serving as my sleeping quarters. Depending on how things go or go off, I will either be sleeping (Tucson man-raper-and-murderers stop reading...now) outside The Surly Wench in Randy's Honda (hey Tucson man-raper-and-murderers you can start reading again but will you go ahead and tell the Tucson bike thieves to stop reading...now) with my Superfly SS locked to a pole outside (OK Tucson bike thieves you can start reading again. Hi Tucson man-raper-murderers, why are you still here? Why are you looking at me like that? You're freaking me out.). I may head out to Sooter's house that night or wait until the AM. Of course if somebody says "hey you can sleep on our couch as long as you promise not to make us look like assholes on your blog," I might take them up on it.

At some point I have to find time to put my bike together before the 9AM roll out. Ouch, why so damn early? Grr, I'm a tough single-speeder, I ride really, really hungover, grr, grr!" Then it's 47 miles of riding with my new best friends!

I leave Tucson for Boston at 2PM Sunday. Like I said, stupid plan.

Excuses for why I couldn't write a proper post Monday.

-t

Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?
Do You Really Want to Make Me Cry
(Tears of Tomato/Clam Juice, and Beer)?

Alright, I'm going to yammer this way and that and that and then make you people an offer that many of you will not be able to refuse (it involves making me suffer horribly...wait for it).

Sorry my bold claims from earlier in the week have proven false. No I will not be writing a book review of Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne this week. I promise I'll get to it soon. OK maybe promise is too committal of a word, how about, I swear I'm gonna do it...um, dude. And we all know that you come down here to read Big Bikes for the book reviews not to look at me taking my shirt off and doing Magnum P.I. impressions — "Now I know what you're thinking...". Ya, that's much more convincing with the jungle bird shirt, Detroit Tigers cap and mustache. For now I'll just tell you that I liked it and more importantly that Chip liked it and he's much smarter and more discerning than I am.

I have to apologize to the Harpoon ITT. My write up on the 29er Crew blog yesterday portrayed it in a pretty dark light. I lost count of how many times I used the word horrible to describe it. And it was horrible...for me. For almost everyone else it was awesome (except maybe for the guy who's bike I borrowed. He's probably still wiping beer and beer-reeking-sweat off his frame). The guys from Harpoon and Fast Splits did a great job with the thing, really impressive and well run. And man, those folks had to have worked 16-something hour days. It had to suck, but they were all smiling when I got there...twelve hours into their work day. Shit, I work at a bike shop and about six hours into my workday I'm ready to staple people's asses to their faces. That's just me though, everyone else at The Shop is really, really nice.

Here's the important part!

I'm bringing back the Chelada Challege.


Back in December I couldn't commit to drinking a six pack of Chelada during The Ice Weasels race. Not so much due to fear that I would get too drunk, throw up, and crash my bike into a tree. More out of fear of not being able to perform my very demanding race promoter duties (like heckling Colin on the mic).

This time it's different.

I am headed to SSUSA in Tucson tomorrow afternoon. It is a 47 mile Single-Speed race. It is going to be hard for a guy who's ridden his bike 47 miles...during the entire month of January. It is going to be hot by Boston in February standards, about 70°. I imagine I am going to be out there for over five hours. I figure if I'm going to go out to Arizona and suck it big time, I might as well provide some form of entertainment while I'm doing it. Here's what I propose:

For every $50 that gets dropped into my Paypal account (donate button, upper right there) between now and tomorrow morning (Friday Feb 4th) by 11:00 AM, I will consume one tall boy of Chelada. DURING THE SSUSA RACE. What's that, it's too expensive you say? Exactly. I am not going to make this easy on you because it ain't gonna be easy on me. I will also be capping my intake at six cans. Just six cans OK. Only six. This doesn't mean that you have to donate $50 yourself, just so long as the total is $50. And to sweeten the deal I will be rounding up to the nearest $100. Which in my thinking means that if I raise $151 I will drink 4 tall boys of Chelada.

Documentation.
All my cameras are working and will be along for the ride with me. I will either be taking Helmet Hero footage or Canon Digital Elph video footage of the drinking of each can. That I promise...um, dude.

No mas michelada con clamato, por favor!

-t

“Una michelada con clamato, por favor”

The asses have spoken (hmm, I meant to say "masses" but spellcheck doesn't catch that sort of thing, oops) and it seems that the Next Big Bikes Single Speed Worlds Fund-raising event will inevitably involve "Chelada." Not familiar with what exactly Chelada is? Well check out the Boozin' Blog for an explanation (thanks Cary). I snagged the official type promo photo above from that site. We see an idyllic portrait of a glass of Chelada surrounded by the items which give it its unique flavor. We have the limes, the spicy salsa! The guacamole, the tomatoes of course (you know that I Hate, capital "H" tomatoes, which makes this thing so much more abhorrent from the get go) and the...tortilla chips. OK. But what I noticed was conspicuously absent from the depiction of this Clam-Tomato-and beer beverage was, you didn't guess it, but I'm going to tell you — the clams.

No clams are shown. Why? Don't people want to think about drinking clams? Mmm, clam juice! I fill my Camel-Bag with it.

So I took the liberty of embellishing the photo and adding some much needed clams. What better figure to represent the clam species than the grotesquely prodigious Geo-Duck (pronounced Gooey-Duck. Really). It is nicknamed "The Giant Clam," "The Mirugai," and "The Horse Clam."

Although "The Horse's Penis Clam" might have been more to the point.

Oh ya, pour me a tall cold glass of I think I'm gonna puke.

Hey look at me! I'm a miniature jockey riding a giant horse's penis yay!
That's not weird at all.

And what did you think this awesome dude was gonna do when he got a hold of a Geo-Duck? "Huh, huh look, it's a big wang! Get it?" Wow Chad, we didn't see that one coming. Hey guys check out the vivid imagination on Chad!

To drive home the utter, outright disgustingness of this concoction I will now copy and paste text from Booze Blog's site and replace all appropriate words with the words "poop" and "pee". I took a comedy for kids class at The Boston Center for Adult Education. I learned that when you are dying on stage you jump right for the "poop and pee net." No you do not literally hurl your body into a net covered with urine and fecal matter (however close at hand it may be), you just say anything, anything at all utilizing the words poop and pee. It kills.

I had this one bit that went something like this:

"So any of you guys ever notice that pretty much all animals and people have their bums on their backsides? Seriously. I mean like what if they were like on your head? That would be NUTS. You're over talking to Scotty by the monkey bars and all of a sudden he's like 'oh man, I shouldn't have eaten all those prunes — BWOOT! (motions with hand to pantomime poop coming out of Scotty's ear) He starts pooping out of his ear! Pee-pee-poo-poo thank you good night!"

That stuff was pure gold.

I'm pretty sure this kid was wasted

Anyway, on with the illustration of the grossness.

From Booze Blog:

"Latinos, specifically those of Mexican descent, have been mixing pee-pee with poop for decades. Pee & Poop Chelada and Pee Light & Poop Chelada honor that tradition by combining Anheuser-Busch’s classic American-style pee-pee with the spicy, invigorating taste of Clamato Tomato Poop Cocktail, made by Cadbury Schweppes Americas Pee-Pee-Poo-Poo Beverages (CSAB)."

“One look at the can and you know that this Pee-Pee-Poop Beer is the real thing – Pee and Pee-Pee Light mixed with authentic Poop,” Vitrano said. “This is a savory Pee-Poop beer that will appeal to adult Pee-poop-beer drinkers, particularly those who enjoy Pee mixed with Poop.”


Is the point driven home yet? Somebody take away its keys, cuz it ain't driving itself home.

While I can't really commit to drinking a six-pack of Chelada during the Single-Speed race at The Ice Weasels perhaps (for the right price, donate button upper right) some sort of accord can be worked out. I can't possibly, as the race promoter, get that drunk while there's so much race promoting left to royally screw up.

We'll think of something, we have to. OK, no we don't but let's do it anyway.