It's a sign...

After moving Mike Piazza's horse farm to the backyard I realized I had a lot of free space on my work bench. That led me to scoot some things over, which led to some organization, which in turn led to a total and entirely inevitable cleaning of my bike room. Over on my table (which currently has a bottle feeding kitten with a heating blanket on it) next to my work stand my stack of number plates from 2009 laid in a heap, under some small ziplock bags of various nuts and bolts. I always wait till the end of the season to pin my numbers to the wall, and I guess I might as well admit that 2009 is officially over. It's a bit of a cathartic moment when I put the numbers in chronological order and mount them to the wall to remind me that another year has passed, and yet I still find that I have some internal drive left to make next year better than the last.

Most of the numbers on my wall have some sort of significance. I don't just save every XC and cross number plate, since I doubt that I'll ever have a life changing moment over the course of 30-90 minutes. Here's a random sample of a few that happen to be next to each other for no apparent reason.

On the far left is my number from my first ORAMM back in 2004 (which I won the SS class on my Spicer with a 5" fork). It was my first endurance race on a single speed, and the experience I had allowed me to think I might be able to finish LaRuta on a single speed (which I did four months later). The next is from the 1996 NORBA National in Traverse City, MI. I raced in the sport class back when the classes were huge at these kind of things, and an annual license only ran the average sport class racer $35. It was my first NORBA National, and I'm pretty sure that's when I figured out that all those demi-gods that filled the glossy pages of Mountain Bike Action were just humans... very strong humans, but humans just like me (except very strong). The third one is from the Long Cane Massacre (1999??), which wasn't even a race at all. It was a two day 100 mile ride down in McCormick, SC that included a poker run, camping, pasta, pancakes, and fun. The best part of the whole weekend was the breakdown of Eric "PMBAR Honcho" Wever's Volvo on the way down to McCormick at 11:30 at night. We packed up all our shit and rode fifty very eventful miles through the wee hours of the morning to get to the event. There's a lot of shit that went down that weekend (a very long story Eric wishes I would tell in great detail), but Eric will agree that the events that transpired definitely tweaked our perceptions of the possible possibilities we might have previously deemed impossible. And lastly, the number on the far right is from my first 12 hour race, The Night Train (2000). It was really the first "some number of hours of something" that started my obsession with that format of racing, and an experience I'll never forget.

Ahhhhh... a walk down memory lane. Nothing like it to stir up a little inspiration during the off "season".

BTW:

There's a cross race in Charlotte this weekend, and nobody told me?

BIKE RACE

I have commitments that day, but perhaps I'll get out for some cowbell ringing in the AM. Have fun bastards.