I did my third cyclocross race of the year on Sunday. I showed up at the park on time, ready to roll after working all night. I rode down to the registration area without my helmet and Buddy (the official) came up to me and gave me a speech about insurance liability issues. I told him I was sorry and wondered why I wasn't wearing a helmet. When I went back to my car I figured it out. I didn't have one with me. I left my gear bag at home, tucked comfortably into my leather wing chair.

I was ready to give up and start drinking when the legendary Butthead came up to me at my greatest moment of confusion and told me that I had plenty of time to go home and get my stuff and do another race. I decided his logic was solid and signed up for the A race instead of the Single Speed race. This gave me the most time to go home, get my stuff, and keep stress at a minimum. I switched to a geared bike, since they are faster than single speeds.


My leg in this picture looks kind of like an extremely huge and long drumstick. I wonder if it would taste good. I would never know, since I have no interest in eating myself. As usual, Mike Dawson took this picture. He's been at all of the local races lately, taking some really good pictures of me as well as real racers.

I was glad to have gears early in the race. I couldn't believe how insane the first few laps were. It was so fun, I'm glad I forgot my bag. After I settled in and accepted the fact that I would be DFL, the bike I was riding didn't really make much of a difference. I ground out the laps and felt really good. I took dual pint Pabst Blue Ribbon hand ups from Mason Storm on my last two laps. I apologize to Boz for rejecting his more expensive beer. The last thing I want to do during a race is drink beer that has a legitimate alcohol content. That's why I went with the Pabst.

I'm not racing for results. Over the past four weeks I have gone from riding one hour, to 2 1/2 hours, to 3 1/2 hours, to 7 1/2 hours. I'm not in racing trim and I'm not even close to achieving my full potential, but I have regained my muscle memory for racing. In other words, the pain feels good again. Hopefully, I will have the funds to race for real next year. My major issue for not racing very much this year was finances. Times are tough.

sensational alex harvey band - framed live 1974

I stumbled across this performance. I promise you, you have never seen anything like it.

I competed in my fourth race of the year on Sunday. It felt strange. I felt the old fire in my belly, but my ability to kick ass was only partially there since I only ride about once a week. I mostly just work, drink, and sleep...but not exactly in that order.

Notes from the race: I rode the tight sections and corners better than anybody else in my group. But that's not saying much since the Single Speed race (my group) was staged with the C race. I partially credit my success to my mountain bike. I never felt like I was going to slip or had any handling problems at any point in the race. Lack of power and speed were my main problems.

There's a video of the first or second lap posted on Stlbiking that is hilarious. Here's what happened from my perspective: The starting gun was fired. Joe Walsh tried to get in front of us with a St. Louis start but he was called back. I was fairly aggressive after the real start and jumped into third position. Matt Laberta had the lead and was pushing the pace. It would have been no big deal for me to stick his wheel early in the race but the guy between me and him was not riding the corners well. I'm not all that physically fit, so I had to wait for an opportunity to pass him and jump on to Laberta's wheel. By the time I tried to make my move, it was too late. I hate being fat and out of shape.

Destined to finish no better than second place by the second lap, I continued to battle as my fellow single speeders caught me and passed me. The most memorable confrontation was from Joe Walsh. He caught me, passed me, and put the hurt on me in a straightaway section. As soon as we hit a tight turn on a climb, I passed Joe like he was sitting in a folding chair on his porch yelling at neighborhood kids to stay off of his lawn. But it wasn't long before the next straightaway. The track champ put the hammer down and put me in his rear view mirror for good. I hate being fat and out of shape.

Later in the race, Casey Ryback was chomping at the bit to defeat me, his Gary Busey. But I didn't let him sink my battle ship. With three or four laps to go, Ryback begged for his dignity, but I wasn't having it. I dropped the hammer and opened up a sizable gap on him and three of his teammates. When the ashes settled and the results were posted, I learned that I had defeated every single soldier of Team Seagal who had dared to face me on that fateful day. Fuck yes!

I'm a cat 2, I bought my bike at Nashbar.com for $350, I drink a six pack on a daily basis, and I don't give a shit. I think it's a healthy approach to bike racing. Some might disagree.

On October 25th, 2009, I witnessed the "Robortion." First it was from behind. It was a most unpleasant sight.


Dawson's daddy snapped these pictures.

As I crossed the finish line in fifth place, I looked around for Robort but couldn't see him. He was behind me with a flat tire and I didn't want to strain my neck.

In the past few years I have changed from an obsessive compulsive weirdo to a unique individual who doesn't give a shit about anything. I have searched my ever-deteriorating memory banks but I can not remember a time when I've done a bike race less prepared and more completely out of shape. Riding a 42x18 gear on my 29'er didn't help me either. But my outfit was super-fucking sharp. I bleed blue!

The overly high gear was so painful, that I had to remove my mind from the field of battle. I started to think about a gear that would be comfortable on the course and pretended I was in that gear. 2x1. Every time I hit the climbing sections I thought about the perfect gear. 2x1. It was a like a suicide bomber imagining the virgins he would have access to in heaven. 2x1. Allah also provides rivers of milk to the extinguishers of infidels. 2x1. Why would anybody ever look forward to a river of milk? 2x1. Even if it was breast milk from the virgins, I would rather eat a cheeseburger. 2x1. Some people are so fucking stupid. 2x1. How long would it take a martyr to impregnate 72 virgins, considering the fact that he would be shooting blanks most of the time? 2x1. Why the hell is heaven full of virgins? 2x1. If you think about it, it's a really sad waste of potential. 2x1.

In my heaven there are bottles of Trois Pistoles on ice. Triple bacon cheeseburgers are consumed at every meal. Wages are never garnished for child support and each man is only responsible for one woman. Virgins do not exist.

A few weeks ago, while rooting through my basement for drugs, porn, and other paraphernalia that my brother might have left behind after he moved out more than a year ago, I found a vintage bottle of Nyquil. I've been feeling pretty congested lately, so I drank the bottle of 50 proof cold medicine over the course of a week. It was good stuff, packing 50 proof alcoholic potency and pseudoephedrine. What's even better, there was no warning on the bottle about the dangers of mixing excessive amounts of alcohol with acetaminophen. Our livers used to be more indestructible back in the 1990's.

Present day Nyquil contains only 20 proof of alcohol but the doxylamine succinate has been increased to account for the loss of the other depressant. Apparently, doxylamine succinate isn't just an antihistamine, but is also an effective tranquilizer, possessing more potency than many other prescription drugs, perhaps even phenobarbital. Sweet Jesus!

Dextromethorphan is the final key to the Nyquil puzzle. It acts as a cough suppressant when taken responsibly. But when it's abused, it acts as a psychedelic that can cause sensory deprivation. It was developed to replace codeine, which was considered to be too addictive for an over-the-counter drug.

"I've suddenly realized that trying to create, foster or preserve relationships with other people over the Internet will only ever end in total and complete failure. I'm not going to bother anymore."

Truer words were never written. I stumbled across them on my old blog while looking for a video I posted of Jim Morrison singing "The End." I just watched the movie "The Doors" again, and I think I finally got Oliver Stone's point that Jim was searching for the end, while at the same time death was seeking him.

"Sucking on a young man's...blood." I love that line from the movie. I wonder if Jim ever really sang it? His poetry is beautiful and disturbing.

Internet relationships are like drugs. They offer nothing real and provide no substance. When you don't interact with somebody in the real world, it's like you never really talked to them in the first place. You get a short term high that ultimately leaves you feeling empty and worthless.

That's why this blog sucks.

Think about the people who text each other incessantly. They do it at work, they do it while their driving their cars. They do it at the expense of being fired from their precious jobs and crashing their prized automobiles. The consequences are steep but they do it it anyway. But what do they get out of the bargain?

Not much.

People need to talk to each other in the real world.

I can't possibly connect to anybody who reads this crap unless I interact with them in the real world.

But that's just my opinion.

"Jem is truly outrageous...truly, truly, truly outrageous. No one else is the same. Jem is my name. Jem!"

My Co-worker and best friend (for 30 seconds at a time), Daniel, brought a disc loaded with Jem and the Holograms cartoons into work. Everybody was saying this stuff was pure 100% 1980's. One of those people is my friend, Erin. I have talked with her extensively about the sociopolitical impact of Jem's band and their rivals the Misfits. She's ten years younger than me, but she will often make pop-culture references that are from my generation. To be honest, as much as I searched my mental data-banks, I came up with nothing on Jem or the Misfits (at least a Misfits lacking a lead singer named Danzig). I drew a blank when I tried to remember Jem.

As we watched an old episode, I felt sick. I wanted to vomit. Jem and the band escaped from three different situations where they were faced with almost certain death from falling. The first time, they almost drowned after falling into a killer whale and dolphin tank. Strong, sexy, competent males jumped into the tank in their Miami Vice suits to save the helpless girls. All of those who were wet, donned towels after the rescue in order to protect them from the frigidly cold, eighty degree temperatures they faced after exiting the whale and dolphin tank. Oh God, I wanted to throw up.

The second time, some helpless security guard crashed his golf cart (I bet he only had a G.E.D.), flipped thirty feet into the air, and knocked over a tower populated by Jem and the Holograms. I felt like I was tripping after watching the accident. Jem and the crew all jumped to safety. The last person to jump to safety was one of their man friends. He basically said, 'I'm in control of this shit, let's fuck the Misfits up for what they have tried to do here today.' But not in so many words. Jem and the Holograms told the macho fags in control to chill a little bit and everything was cool. I felt so ill that I thought my heart might stop, but I decided to choose life over an easy exit.

In the third scene, the Misfits unleashed a swarm of deadly bats on Jem and the Holograms in an attempt to knock the band of cuties off of a cliff. No such luck. Jem and her crew were saved by a helicopter piloted by a swarm of tough, muscular men. These caring males with their sweet moustaches put down their long range lens cameras long enough to save Jem and her friends from certain death at the wings of the evil cloud of bats. Bats can fly...but pretty, young girls can't.

I never watched the actual show as a kid (I'm a man, by the way), but the theme song was very familiar. I don't strut around in a Miami Vice suit with long, flowing hair (but I could if I wanted to). When I listen to the classic Jem theme song, the memories of the former mass-merchandising campaign flood back into my fragile little mind. I now remember flipping through the channels of my T.V. past episodes of Jem and the Holograms. We got our first television set including a remote control sometime around the mid 1980's. The set top box for cable television had a remote control as early as the early eighties, but that was a hit or miss thing in our household. My mom didn't want cable to bring any negative influences into our household. As you can tell from reading this blog, it didn't. The bad news is, on any given afternoon after getting home from school, I had to get up and spin the knob of our Quasar television set to switch away from Jem. Click, click, click. UHF to VHF. A minor little adjustment to the rabbit ears and I could watch either He-Man, G. I. Joe, Thundercats, Transformers, or Voltron. I didn't watch Jem and the Holograms when I was a kid.