Vague Idea Racing: '25 Pisgah Mountain Bike Adventure Race: Pre-dumbled

I think Watts and I had settled into a routine for PMBAR preparations year-to-year. We've been partnered up for a decade now with only a one year hiatus due to Covid, and last year when he had to bugger off to Spain or Italy or someplace to gravel assassinate something.

Consider that our baby picture or wedding photo, either or both. That's my race bike in the foreground BTW.

We cycle fairly regularly between going too hard in the paint the night before to taking care of ourselves better (almost like athletes but not quite) every other year. Had I looked at the pre-dumble from our last outing to determine how Friday evening was going to look, and also factor in making up for lost time from '24, I shoulda known it was gonna be a long day/night. We were very, very good boys in '23 and finally "won" the single speed category after years of falling ass-backwards onto the lower steps every single other year.

*harbinger of doom enters the chat*

I headed up to The Pisgah earlier in the day to ride garvel with Dr Mike and Bill Nye... but as our ETA grew later and later, I had to request a less arduous adventure. We settled on taking the greenway all the way into Brevard for a beer at Squatch Bikes, then a meetup with Watts at the Pisgah Tavern before heading to Ecusta Brewing for bowls of food stuffs.

I don't remember how late it was when we got back to the van, but whilst watching Aliens and enjoying one (or two) van beers, I realized my phone wouldn't charge. Phones are "required gear," and I assume that means an operational phone, and it's also where my required map is on the Avenza app... so... poop.

It's not as if I wasn't aware of this issue that's been escalating for months now. Sometimes the cord needed a jiggle. Other times, I would wake up to a dead phone and no alarm. It's been livable, and I've just been living with it.

Watts told me all about how there's usually dust, lint, debris and mouse shit all jammed up in there, and all I really need to do is get at it with a toothpick... which we don't have... but a zip-tie? It probably took forty five minutes of careful picking and jabbing and occasional breaks to watch the better scenes in Aliens (most of the movie), but I managed to get it back to careful wiggle charging status and let it be for the night.

When the alarm went off at 6:00am, I immediately appreciated the years when we approached this race with the respect it deserves. I'd been awake since four or five, startled into consciousness by a dream in which Eric "PMBAR Honcho" Wever announced there was a surprise checkpoint at a house that blew up in Charlotte Friday morning.

Hard to fall back asleep once the PMBAR anxiety begins. I managed to mentally quit the next three events I have planned and wondered how I could get my plane ticket to Breck Epic refunded. I got over it, and somehow despite having an hour and forty five minutes to get over to the start, we still ended up locking and unlocking the van multiple times to grab "one more thing" to get over there "just in time," which means shoving our bikes through the huddled masses waiting to get their hands on the passports.
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