Anti-race weekend of get the hell outta dodge

The family truckster post Anti-race.

Not the first time OBR and myself have run with the same numbers on our plates, but this is the first time we shared that number with 25 other riders!

This past Friday after errands were run and money was hemmoraghed, yours truly packed the family truckster with one small, and one large hardtail
(one being my own and one belonging to the r-inginal Big Ring himself.) upon completing the packing** we (and by we, I mean me) headed off to Bobcaygeon to meet up with the the r-ignal Big Ring who was headed in from parts quite south of there.
Once clear of the cluster coitus that is traffic around Bank, Heron, Baseline etc, the drive was lovely. Tunes were cranked and karaoke was practiced to Morrisey, Jesus & Mary chain, Sonic youth and Jimmy Buffet among others. It was a textbook example of how to celebrate your own company without need of closed eyes, bitten lower lips and personal lubricant.
..anyway. The rendevous with the OBR went swimmingly and would have made a swiss watch look like a cereal box sundial on account of our timing. The touch-base "where-bouts-are-you?" phone call identifying that with 10min to the evenings destination, and us having started ~700km apart OBR had actually ended up right on my bumper for the last 15min into the evenings destination. ..go team! (infectious catch phrase used with apologies but without permission)

An evening of Bobcaygeon hospitality followed and the morning had us both in the family truckster on route to the Delstalk Anti-race in Collingwood. I do believe that there will be full reports and photos on the wondrous Jager fueled love-in that was Delstalk here & here among others. It was indeed wondrous, there was Jager to lubricate motivation, dull anxieties and generally provide a frivolous Anti-race atmosphere.
(I approved, I imbibed. ..Abide.)

A potentially freakish horror show** was narrowly avoided with the generosity, preparedness and good will of Del himself when I discovered that I'd left my shoes at home. ..(!!!)
I have few personal heroes beyond Winston Churchill, Lux Interior & Vinnie Jones but I can now add Del to the short list of thems' what are worthy.
The ride was awesome, the weather flawless, the company without peer and that first fucking hill drilled a hole in my soul the size of all the worlds problems.

Seriously. That mutherfuker hill made entire solar systems look like styrofoam science fair models. I can't remember sucking so hard for so long anytime in the last several years. Granted, my fitness and especially my cardio is total ass these days but the few rides that I have done this year lulled me into the belief that I could still fake it by employing my inherent willingness to suffer. sortof. Not so much on that climb. Perhaps the worst part (you know apart from ninety million miles of sustained vertical with no reprieve) was that you could see right from bottom to top, arrow straight all the way. That means you can watch the gap(s) widen as you fall off the back while riders tear you off their wheel one by one ..jeezus f'n heartbreak.
Anyway, the hill was climbed and I may or may not have been the only geared rider to dismount and walk part of it. ugh. I'm not a singlespeeder so I'm really not comfortable with the whole walking-bike up steep bits thing. ..I may have to build a singlespeed just to justify that kind of craptasticness.

The rest of the ride was brilliantly, magical, lovelyness though. Smooth flowy single track, a bit of woodsy hike-a-bike, a wee bit of gravel, and some really nice sections that felt like if Dupont Forest and Camp Fortune hooked up and had singletrack babies. Nice, flowy S-track through the woods with the odd bit of technical thrown in to keep things real and test (and illuminate) respective Jager levels.

The apre-ride (thats ski hill speak) was celebrated at Blue Mountains Fire Hall pizza joint. Blue Mountain is Intrawest so if you know what Intrawest is then you know exactly how contrived a reasonably genuine looking "fire hall" can be when you plop it at the bottom of a ski hill in a cookie-cutter pedestrian street village. But hey, they had beer so It's all good if you don't order the hot dog pizza like OBR did.
I approved, I imbibed. Abide.

So, that was my Anti-race. It was truly awesome.
Many thanks to Peter, Del, and the rest of the Misfit Psycles organizers. Good people were met, new friends were made existing friendships cemented.
Tomorrow (or some day soonish) we'll talk about what if anything the hell comes next!

**driving 550Km for a ride only to end up drinking myself legless alone in a bar instead of making badly needed pedal strokes would very probably put me in a truly apocolyptic mood for some time.