NISSCCOTU & BJOF

I have been singing the praises of cyclocross bikes to Emily for a while now..

After our bikes were stolen in August (her commuter, my cross bike), it was an easy sell for the pusher to convince her to replace it with a cross bike (a Brodie Tesla)

last week I convinced her to ride her cross bike from Vancouver to Seattle (Pusher strikes again), although, truthfully, it didn’t require much pushing…

and this past weekend, after another multi-modal transportation day (ferry to Nanaimo, co-op car to Parksville)

we participated in her first cyclocross race, which happened to be a single-speed cyclocross race. The Nutcase Intercontinental Single Speed Cyclocross Championships of the Universe.

Fittingly on Halloween…

Against my better judgement, I had to outfit Emily with a chastity belt…

A zip tie (or as they say up here, north of the 49th, a zap strap), to keep those itchy shifting fingers from shifting! Although ultimately, as we later discovered, the chastity belt did not work.

Eventually (after registering and ringing the cowbell during the kids’ race) we snuck in a few warm-up laps, and quickly discerned that this race would hurt. and since there was only one race, no subcategories here, single speed only, male or female, we would hurt for the full 60 minutes.

Starting with a LeMans start. A 500 m run. Leave your bikes at the first set of cones. Remove the front wheel (WTF). place them at the half-way point. Continue on to the start-line. run to your wheel, grab your wheel, run to your bike, install wheel, start riding.

umm, “Mr. Race Promoter, we have a problem here. Some of us DON’T have quick releases.”

ummmm.”whiny racer. That’s alright. You can get a wrench, remove your wheel, and then re-install it. or carry your bike for the entire LeMans start”

so, I carried my surly (but I didn’t even pretend to run)..

The course had a bit of everything: off-camber grass,

climbing on grass,

some gravel roads, tight technical section with roots and rocks, corn-field crossings, steep and wet technical climb, slickkery muddy single track in the woods,

more cornfield, and the one set of barriers on the course; an EIGHT barrier run after an out of saddle leg sapping climb up a grassy hill.

HTF did they manage to work in all that climbing without any descending?

However, there was one other obstacle..

An ode to the Nutcaseness of this particular event…

Mother and Mother-in-Law should close this page now.

Mother and Mother-in-Law should not look at the next pictures.

It isn’t all my fault. She is capable of making her own decisions…

Yes! there were two fire pits. Of course, these weren’t mandatory, there was an alternate route.

a longer route.

a slower route.

a route in open view of the throngs of spectators lining the fire option.

Crowd pressure is a bitch so we had Bikes Jumping Over Fire

too bad I didn’t have pigtails

Em blazing through the end of one of her laps

and flashing a huge smile at the finish

afterwards, this had to be the fastest awards ceremony I have ever seen. A BBQ. Cookies. Swag for almost everyone (part of the entry was to bring in a piece of swag for the exchange). A few beers for us (local brewed IPA in a can, easy to carry around in a timbuk2 bag). And a little assistance cleaning up the course for the karma that it brings.

After returning the co-op car, we were faced with a minor dilemma. Our route back to the ferry passed through the park where the Olympic Torch was going to finish the day. Stay, hang out at a pub, chill in the park, watch a part of history? Maybe. Until we learned that the torch wasn’t expected for three more hours, putting us on the late night ferry ride to Horseshoe Bay. We’ll have a chance to witness a part of history in February when the Torch makes it to Vancouver. Instead, we hustled, and with particularly good timing, arrived just in time to board the next ferry for the sunset cruise to the northshore..