Vague Idea Racing: Winter Shart Tarck '23: Race Five

Pre-dumbling. Don't know when I started doing it. Don't even know why. Just do.

Can't stop, won't stop. Mess life and all.

I lost a portion of my life on Friday and Saturday to my mom's washing machine and a few other issues that come along with the care of an individual her age. I like working on bikes to some degree. Working on appliances is up there with doing taxes or cleaning gutters. Working on someone else's appliance is more on the level of getting dental work done.

Suffice to say, a few hours of squatting on my haunches and crawling around made me a wee bit sore when I woke up Sunday morning, more so than the thirty mile dirty urban ride I joined in on in Fort Mill/Rock Hill the day before. I'm getting to the point where I'm going to need to do more physical training in order to do pain-free manual labor in awkward positions.

As I mentioned last week, there was no way I was going to move up in the overall standings, lest someone be met with calamity or illness or they got caught with an expired driver's license at the South Carolina State Trooper "safety check" on the Exit 83 off ramp.

I guess there's that part of me that still wanted to best the guys that had finished hot on my six the past four weeks and mebbe, just mebbe snatch a small victory by defeating those that have consistently just been outta reach.

I spent the better part of forty minutes just trying to soak in the experience while only bleeding slightly out of my eyeballs.

photo cred: Pisgah Paparazzi

The heckle pit was on point, and on lap two, the opening chords of Voodoo Child being blasted into my good ear brought me so much joy I wanted to put in a request for more on each and every single lap. Hard to acquiesce said request when I'm struggling to get enough oxygen for my legs to continue moving forward (but still in Bullwinkle shaped circles).

It was a good day. 8th outta 31 (jeebus, 31 single speeders... many of them cosplaying as "single speeders" with jorts, fake mustaches, and sleeveless shorts).

6th overall for the series, so one place off the wide angle podium... dammit. Am I even here for the podium tho or is this just what we do in February? Prolly the latter. At least I went three for five sleeveless, so that's something.