Rumpsters Rejoice: 04/16/05 Here is the story about the 6th ever winner of the American Road Cycling Ridgebury Prime jersey. As with all Ridgebury competitions, these results stand firm unless successfully overturned by one of the participants or their legal surrogate or estate filing a complaint with American Road Cycling. The statute of limitations on contesting results is 47.5 years from the date of the competition. BTW: This installment of Tales from the Hump is again written by SlingShot, because although Nuclear Dan is finished with his vacation sweeping sewage out of his basement after the big rains, he is now in training for his race season which begins May 22. Black Widow (turning onto Pumpkin Swamp), "That's it, Patrick. We're done." Patrick, "Oh, good. I've been done. I thought this was supposed to be an easy ride." The problem here is this. Just because it is The Hump bass-ackwards, and thus called The Rump, and just because it has been stated that we go this way to avoid early season overtraining, and just because because...that does not mean we do it to avoid all training. Therefore, one might encounter a certain intensity at one point or another along the way. In any case, Patrick's expectations were not really so far outside the realm of reason at the moment he turned around on The Hump (as so many have done before) to hook up with the Merry Rumpsters going in the opposite direction. Actually, despite our bass-ackwards course actually being "the hard way" things are indeed a bit easier on The Rump, just not easier enough so's anybody might notice—a situation that math majors amongst us have calculated and confirmed, derived from the fact that we always meet up with the fast group just shy of the half-way point. But one has to take the good with the bad, so Patrick had to endure a not so leisurely pace. However in so doing, he managed to be the first one to the top of Rumpster Ridgebury, thus winning the 6th ever American Road Cycling Ridgebury Prime jersey, in accordance with the Dr. Art Doctrine of Finish Line Fickleness. I know it is so, because I was there to see it, and here is how it happened. At first I almost didn't recognize Patrick when he turned around, due to the fact he has not yet shaved his legs for the season. Also my introduction to him was brief and by virtue of my wife, the Black Widow, commenting about him when he showed up for his first ride a couple years ago. She said, "There was this incredibly gorgeous man at today's ride," like I needed to hear that. Since then I have generally not been fast enough to find Patrick anywhere on a ride other than long gone, so I usually have to double check that it is him when I see him. Be that as it may, American Road Cycling does not give out awards for incredible good looks. What American Road Cycling does do, is give out awards for incredibly refined smarts. Therefore, when I took off spinning at the bottom of the final hill topping Ridgebury (just to see what I could get going), and moments later a line of riders hammered by on my left being pulled by Patrick...well, I thought, "Here is genius," and Patrick took the top. Patrick's genius was this: on failing his first attempt to take Ridgebury, he just turned right around and tried again in reverse, from the other (harder) direction, and won handily. Dude! Rumpsters rejoice! We have a winner!
this page last updated: 02/01/2015 10:38:49 PM |
