Vague Idea Racing: Trans-Sylvania Epic '22: Stages 3

I'd be remiss if I didn't address yinz concerns about my now dead Lasko box fan. It's pretty important to me as a clothes dryer and also a white noise machine to drown out the tinnitus and also any snoring neighbors while I'm trying to fall asleep. I was all ready to go and buy a new fan at the State College Fan Outlet Store, but fortunately Upper Eagle had a not so shitty oscillating fan that helped ease my sorrow (and almost kept the snoring from eating away at my will to live). Before you say it, yeth I know about fan noise apps. It's not the same. If you don't get it, you don't get it. Real fans are my vinyl records.

Stage Three: R. B. Winter (32 miles, 3,000+ feet of climbing)

If you know me (or pretend to), R.B. Winter has not been my friend for a long time. Sure, I enjoyed the mass start Enduros back in 2010, but since then, it's just not my bag. I don't know if it's the lack of climbs that are just in my wheelhouse or the fact that I've done it in a turgid state and some of the trails aren't as ridden-in, thus leaving impediments to forward progress under piles of leaves and forest detritus. Mebbe it's the two hour round trip drive and the fact that I don't wanna get in a car while I'm at TSE.

Nevertheless, it's always scored high with everyone else on the post-race survey, so it's obviously a "me thing."

Neutral roll out to a steep paved climb where I try to make my biscuits before getting dropped on the gravel to the first trail.

photo cred: Bruce Buckley

The pace is high (for me), and I'm already feeling the previous two days in my leg parts. Out somewhere around the first aid station and I find myself in the company of the younger Worboy single speeder (the one who in my mind is either 1/3 or 1/4 my age). He's really giving 'er the stick, but at some point I decide I can't just roll over and play dead. The Enduro™ (fun) to a trail (not so fun) to a double track that feels like a never-ending rumble strip no matter which track I choose (not fun at all). It literally feels like I'm sprinting trying to hold 9MPH over the lumps and bumps. We get to one of the final garvel climbs, and I'm thinking it's time to make my biscuits again... but the second garvel climb that I remember is not there. We get dumped into the Tram Trail... which in my mind a "tram trail" sounds like it would be an abandoned this:

but it's actually a four mile climb that only gains like 600 feet... but it's entire surface is littered with baby heads, baby torsos, and whole babies... except for the smooth bridges... which are a foot and a half higher than all the baby parts sized rocks. Almost four miles of sentient trail that actively and exclusively despises humans on bikes. Don't think that I'm not understanding what "sentient" means. This trail feels the hate flowing down through the pedals to the frame to where the rubber meets the not-road. It reacts and responds and adapts and sharpens its loathing for all two-wheeled human existence.

Anyways... not a big fan of the Tram Trail.

But it did make for some good story sharing at the finish line.

photo cred: Icon Media Asheville

Another 4th place finish in the SS class... and once again, had I entered 50+... another 7th place. Consistency... it's the key to something or other.

I skipped a much-needed massage before supper because we got back so late, and also a post-supper massage because I didn't wanna be marked tardy for the bike games.

I "won" the "still holding my beer" division in the limbo contest.

But unfortunately, despite my best efforts (and airing my 2.8 Rekon down to almost nothing PSI), I lost to someone with a cockpit that makes Nino's look like a hybrid greenway cruiser.