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Guts,
Butts, and Uncoagulated Glory: Oh My! MKA Pops a Red Eye In Ojai! [Doctor's
consultation notes.] History: Patient describes in florid detail traumatic crash involving self, carbon fiber rim and off camber 90 degree left turn. With escalating tonal passion, patient lays largely irrelevant foundation about the importance of the race (delusional), the size of the field (exaggerated), the quality of the competition (overstated), his resume (fabricated and boring) and his personal training schedule, diet, vitamin uptake, immune status, and tire pressure (inflated self-importance). Patient describes "moment of truth" midway through fast-action 35 plus criterium when Labor "ring dinger" Steve Larsen ramped up a climb followed obediently by the "playas," Ricky Squeeker and G-Spot. Patient "drilled" it to latch on to fledgling separation, leaned bike low into hard left turn. Midway through turn, patient describes troubling sensation of rear carbon fiber Zipp 303 grinding against asphalt at 30 mph. Patient describes sliding on left buttocks as if on silly slide, left fingers still gripped to handlebars, while gradually performing 360 rotation, as the fresh gloves, arm-warmers, jersey and shorts disintegrated. Describes lying on back, seeing sunlight streaking through green leaf-laiden branches of large shade tree, eclipsed by abnormally large acorns, prompting patient to speculate that the species was not Oak, but perhaps avocado. Patient pondered taste-off between avocado vs. acorn hummus on pita bread.
Patient in excruciatingly vainglorious detail describes the "rush" of returning to the pack with a renewed sense of abandon. Likens self to lone survivor of a plane crash. Patient invokes litany of hackneyed sports clichés. He reports "tossing caution to the wind." He "primes his beta endorphin pump" by "pounding the peckerheads." He doesn't "overcome adversity," he wallows in it, goes down deep in it, sucking it for all its worth. He "valiantly attacks for the good" of his team. He waxes cornball. He "is beyond Self. " He has become a gory, mortally wounded axe- swinging Visigoth hell bent to take as many combatants down with him. Or, if the glory of a proper berserker burial is out of reach, then at least he can enjoy the satisfaction of exposing his bloody buttcheek to the adoring public.
First, he suffers remorse from not being able to convert the adrenalin/endorphin cocktail into a bottle of champagne he hypothetically could have sprayed on all of his opponents from atop the podium, had his team done something.
Plus his fingers are chronically coated with oily gunk, raising the risk of benzene-related leukemia. Finally, patient tends to talk about himself incessantly, not once asking me how I stay so fit (note: I entered a public race once; won a saddle bag; huge field, epic, all the studs, attacked, got caught, went again, ran out of water, head winds, nobody would work with me, and so on). Treatment: Immediate psychological counseling and confiscation of all bikes and bike accessories, oils, gunks, goos and all the defective or obsolete crap he hoards in his garage on the laughable pretext that one day he may want to patch all of those used-only-once punctured tire tubes and reuse those 5 pound Time pedals. Consider lobotomy or at least a scrobotomy. * *
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Earlier that day, Labor brought it's A Team to the 35 plus race, which wasn't easy, considering the surf was up and JB hadn't yet found his groove. Larsen and erstwhile bike racer JB pinched off early with half the field. MKA, Wike and Vampire sat around waiting for the race to mercifully come to an end when we stumbled upon the ragged end of the shattered break on the last lap. Fortunately, JB had attacked a few laps before with our rubber-legged hero Ricky Sqweeker. JB broke out the hammer and thongs and made Sqweeker say uncle, which wasn't too hard to do on account, per Sqweeky, he had been up all night doing the humpty-hump and frankly he too wanted to get it over with so he could return to the carnal comforts awaiting him down in Tuna Canyon. In the 45 plus showdown, Labor got crushed and MKA doesn't want to talk about it. Turbo attacked almost literally from the gun and soloed. Labor didn't feel like chasing, so we decided his move was impossible. He proved us wrong, plus his lynch mob got the added pleasure of picking us off one by one. It was a big ugly mess and I don't know what was more epic : Turbo's 50 minute solo victory, or Labor's "all for none and none for all" "strategic" blunder. KK supped on the labor carcass for 2nd, Vampire limped in for 3rd, and the scrofulous Hipp Star "floored it" to beat Tricky Stricky to round out the top 5.
After the race, in the parking lot, Labor turned to more weighty matters: namely, whether in cycling there is any correlation between performance and the gap, or lack thereof, between one's jersey sleeve and his muscle bulk.. Our test subjects included famed sprinter, Evander Testicles, aka, BRBs, (see Figure 1) and infamous blood sucker, the Vampire, aka, MoonWalker (see Figure 2). Evander's guns were so humongous he had to cut the sleeves of his jersey to accommodate the bad boys. On the other hand, we were unable to find any empirical evidence of any biceps on the Vampire. We assume he was blessed at birth with same, but years of neglect, constant road training, and near starvation, had atrophied those pups to the point that his sleeve ends actually flap in the wind, like a wind sock.
We analyzed the data in the lab and reached the following conclusion: There is a direct correlation between performance and non-conforming swag. Sprinters need to exude a sense of savagery and unruliness. Thus, there is a tactical value in shredding one's perfectly fine clothing, as it sends a message to the pel that "I have no allegiance to decorum, form or hierarchy. I care not a whiff for sponsors, team or hoopla. If I can nonchalantly cut, tear, or rip my precious swag, imagine what I can do to your face at 40 mph in chaos of a cluster fudge." Note also the benefits to the ego. Whether the burly sprinter actually needs to cut the sleeves to accommodate the biceps is immaterial. It's more important that the message of hugeness be sent, and that the subject believe that his arms are unnaturally large. [We call this SuperKal Syndrome: the tendency to see oneself not as one is, but as one would be, hypothetically, if pumped up on steroids during a raucous, glistening, throbbing Mr. Universe pose-down.] A skinny roady, on the other hand, has no interest in peak power, thrust or top-end. Waifish, emaciated roadies are only interested in restricting calories, denying sex, avoiding people, and transforming self into a featherlight perpetual pedaling machine. The more sleeve flap, the louder the message to hangers-on that aerodynamics and prittiness mean little to a freakish creature who just likes to go hard all the time no matter what, heh heh. Heh. Parenthetically, the excess fabric also serves an important post race hygienic function, as the Vampire cannot ride his bike without generating long ropes of nasal pearl jam which resemble a snot bewiskered fu manchu.
The crowd buzzed with excitement over the prospect of "local amateur" King Karl delivering another cruel blow to the 12k dreamers. Karl looked good, towering over the whippets, who from my perspective looked fairly fungible. The consensus was that Karl's stock was flying since he had ample amounts of time trial power and an uncompromising sprint. The break stayed away for 1 hour and 45 minutes. Towards the end, after the gap hovered around 2 seconds seemingly forever, the field threw in the towel and the lead stretched to over 1 minute. Karl looked fresh, and had zero obligation to pull. The crowd sensed a coup d'etat, and the kids gathered around the finish line to pick up stray dreamer body parts.
With a few laps to go, the attacks came often and viciously. Friedich and Tim Johnson blew off the back. The break split up, and Karl, much to our collective surprise and sympathy, was clutching to hang on. The desperation sort of reminded me of Frank Sinatra in Von Ryan's Express, when he sprinted for the caboose of that train headed to Switzerland and was just about to make contact when he took a Nazi slug in the back. Karl was able to scratch and claw his way onto the tail of the 7 man break on the bell lap. But you could see that the damage had been done. Acton attacked early and soloed in impressively, as Karl limped in for 7th. MKA asked Labor's Giant Killer what he would have done differently, if anything. His succinct reply: "A bottle of water." Turns out the power, the passion, the heart, lungs and liver were all there. Our Boy just got dehydrated and cramped with two to go. I guess I was supposed to feel guilty, having skirted implied obligations to man the feed zone, but I continue to believe to this day that my best and highest use was preserving this historic drama on camera. Besides which, first comes feed zone pampering and the next thing you know Karl will want gas money, radios, massages, and mentholatum-soaked cotton balls he can shove up his nose like all the pros do before time trials. Before you can say "breach of implied promise," he'll be retaining counsel to demand a seat on Labor Power Inc's corporate jet. In the end, Karl seemed content. A mini-fan club of sweet little girls asked Karl for his autograph. He obliged with aplomb, like this happens all the time. They didn't ask MKA for his J.H.Cock, even though I offered to buy them ice cream and show them the most overexposed buttcheek in Ojai. MKA
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pictures by MKA. ** "Ass Fault Gods" nomenclature courtesy of H. Diddy
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