Rule change and more TSE

You speak, I listen. I'm gonna bend my own rules. Although I will still not be allowing jerseys from other manufacturers such as Rapha, Pearlizumi, Giordana, and other non Twin Six companies to enter my contest, I will give in to the demands to allow Twin Six t-shirts. Some folks have even gone further than just demand t-shirts be included, they've gone ahead and just sent the images anyways. So take a picture of yourself doing something totally unrelated to cycling in your Twin Six gear, send it to me at teamdicky at hotmail dot com, and you'll have a chance to win a Twin Six jersey of your choice or a three way Whammer Deal (one of each kind) from Backcountry Research, makers of Awesome Straps. These prizes are valued at 39,877.50 colones and 13,292.50 colones respectively, so we're not talking small boiled potatoes here.

Time for some more Trans Sylvania Epic prerace jibber jabber...

Another day, another threatening email from Peter.

Good afternoon Team Dickface.

I have been pretty quiet of late on the actual factuals of your impending destruction at Trans-Sylvestite.

The insults and threats start pretty early on this one. I got up from my chair and grabbed a cold beer from the fridge before I continued reading on.

First.

Dicky meet Tanya. Tanya was a long time fan of yours. Then she met me and I educated her more better.

http://theveganvagabond.blogspot.com/

Of course you remember Marc and Kim from that time at Clay's farm.

You remember because you can't drink.

They do not blog.

They are more powerful than the internet.

Being reminded that I can't drink I held the bottle to my lips, but kept them pursed so as to only allow a trickle of that nasty devil's juice to get into my system.

Second.

The plan is simple. At the first Tribal council we will create an alliance with Rebecca Rusch and the Fit lady and whom-ever else you've been sucking up to, and vote you out.

Way out.

In the event that you are able to muster the support of that hair product ego maniac Thurston Bishop the 3rd we shall move to Operation Castration AKA: Dicky removal.

Apparently Peter hit himself on the head a little harder than I originally fjeared. He has the TSE confused with a popular reality show known as Survivor as opposed to the show that it's really based on, The Duggars.

Two Mennonite looking adult figures try to keep a lid on their crazy life while 19 immature people reek havoc and misbehave much to their chagrin.

Okay, maybe the number of racers is slightly more than 19... there's actually more than fifty of us signed up for the first edition of the race, but sometimes people are a little worried about being first year guinea pigs for a stage race. Anybody remember the pleasantries that the inaugural Intermontane Challenge served up for the unsuspecting racers last year? No doubt Ray and Mike (the Mennonite couple above) have their bases covered since they've been doing this race promotion thing for almost as long as they've had running water and electricity in their Pennsylvania shacks. I trust that they will make this a pleasant experience, and hopefully they'll be able to handle all of Peter's whiny, bitchy needs throughout the course of the week... or else we'll have to hear about it on his blog for months until the Breck Epic.

Wanna know all you can know about the Trans Sylvania Epic without looking at the actual website? There's a preview of the race in the latest issue of XXCmag (SHIT, Jason busted my mistake early this morning... the preview was in issue #6 not issue #7 of XXCMag. Read them both anyways, or just read the preview here, be impressed, and sign up for a lifetime subscription.) During the race you can check out cyclingdirt.org for some coverage (which usually means there will be daily video of Jeremiah Bisquick, all Bisquick, all the Bistime). There will also be coverage on MTBRacenews, Cush will be making excuses for his poor performance on mountainbike.com, and FitChick will be doing her best to dissassociate herself from Cush during the race over at Bicycling.com. I'm not spending my time this morning linking all those interesting sites and less interesting people. Look 'em up for yourselves.

Although I now own a laptop thanks to the lightning strike that hit my house and a week's pay I didn't need, I still don't think I wanna blog while I'm at the race. I'm under no contractual agreement to blog like I was at the Breck Epic last year, so I think I'd rather not spend my time in PA in front of my laptop when I could be out sampling Amish cheeses and drinking bathtub gin with Peter. Stage racing is an awesome escape from reality and the normal day to day, so I may just focus on the task of having fun and and riding as opposed to posting daily race reports. That can wait till I get back. There may be an update or two, but don't count on it.

LATE EDIT: Click over to Cyclingdirt.org to watch a Jeremiah Bisquick-free video preview of Stage 6 of the TSE.