Monthly Archives: July 2005

june 19, 05

There he is folks, the gentle man-beast foraging for nuts and berries to feed his offspring. Some intrepid shutterbug dared to get close enough to acquire this irrefutable evidence that Sasquatch (Sasquatimus 29emus/ bigbendia) still thrives, and apparently wears tie dye.

pain

We were talking about “skins” which is the Palmetto, FL slang for slapping, thumping, or popping your bros for a variety of real and perceived transgressions. Slimy, bonked, and already in a general realm of pain and suffering, I stood inert as S’quatch demonstrated a few of the “oldies but goodies” from his high school days. A bunch of grown men revisiting their violent high school practices might have signaled a red flag, but I was too worn out to care. Besides, this is Sasquatch, bosom buddy, who carries ill will towards no one. I’m still not sure what the intended “skin” was he was demonstrating, but it did not go as planned. Somehow he hooked a finger beneath my jaw bone and snapped my teeth like Flea plucking the bass.

Last week, while out of town, I cracked a tooth on a stone in some black beans (Do you really risne and sort them every time?) It has caused me some pain, but in general I’m fine, just waiting for this week’s dentist appointment to assess the situation.

Of course, S’quatch did not know this.

My teeth clapped together like a rat trap, and a choir of demons immediately launched into an aria of pain. My vision closed to a dark circle, surrounded by a blinding white light. At the end of the tunnel, oddly reminiscent of a gun barrel, stood S’quatch with his back to me, unawares.

My reptilian brain, base and conniving, rifled through the options. I could tackle him. I would catch him off guard, wrest him to the ground, pin his shoulders beneath my knees and then.. then.. well I thought of some options. We don’t call him Sasquatch for nothing. The man is large. He would easily tower over Magnus Backstedt, and you know, Magnus is BIG. Trying to save me, and itself, my frontal lobe injected an image of S’quatch at the gym, pounding the punching dummy with thunderous right hooks that start somewhere across the international date line. OK, there’s that, but PAIN will not be denied. Take him! Now, while his back is turned! Get him!

A voice came from my mouth, “I’m having an irrational response to pain, stay away from me.” Surprised and confused, he immediately moved towards me in a sympathetic gesture.

Now! screamed pain, Tackle him NOW!

Puzzled, and probably a little dismayed at the filth coming from my mouth in his direction, he turned away.

Crush him! Revenge! Revenge! Revenge!

My arm came up. I tried to will it down, but the water bottle was in flight. No big deal, it wasn’t a brick or anything, but it was an escalation in a now absurd scenario. The rest of the gang was caught so flat-footed they were still trying to understand what, if anything, S’quatch had done.

The bottle caught him low around the kidney, and I thought, “Ah shit, now you’ve done it.” The angry italicized voice subsided. I began to consider “Flight” over “Fight” for the first time.

Like Bruce Banner apologizing for turning into the Hulk, while he is in transformation, I stuttered out, “I’m s-s-s-orry, you !#$&! I’ll be fine in a second you ***!!#$, hurt tooth-much pain–%$%&*(%@!

So, if you learn nothing else here at the Big Ring Circus, learn this-

Rinse and sort the black beans every single time.

It may be a bit of a struggle for me to make the necessary connections between what I feel like writing this morning and the irreverent, bicycle-dominated diatribe we have come to know, if not love, here at the BRC. I want to write about what happened in a tiny country in Eastern Europe 10 years ago, and how it changed everything for some of my closest friends. That doesn’t have much to do with mountain-biking, but I think I see the angles…

It was 1996, one year after the massacre of 7,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebenica, far away in Bosnia. Meanwhile, I was pedaling around Tallahassee on my 1988 Jamis Dakar, yellow with black spots. I guess they were intended to be leopard spots, but in my mind they were “bumblebee spots” even though everyone knows bees don’t have spots. I was back in town, along with the guys you see in this picture, in order to stop the killing in Bosnia. I know, go ahead and laugh, but it’s true. You see, these guys were in Bosnia at the time of the Srebenica massacres. They were humanitarian aid workers, and they were running desperately short on “aid” to say the least. We figured all we had to do was explain the situation to the good people of Tallahassee, and they would rally behind us to save the bosnians. Uh-huh, right.

Soaked with sweat, carrying 500 moist flyers, a variety of photographs depicting the maimed, the abandoned, and the insane victims of war, I made my rounds. I solicited raffle prizes, free catering, printing services, whatever. The basic spiel was, “Me and my friends are raising money to help victims of war in Bosnia, if you don’t give me something for free RIGHT NOW I am going to make you look at these sweaty pictures of horrific, despicable things. People gave. Our former employer at the restaurant, FGF, all of the shops at lake Ella, the Tallahassee Rock Gym, they were used to our crusades, they dutifully ponied up the goods. I am still grateful to the folks who encouraged us, because there were a lot more who discouraged us (Assholes!)
They didn’t want to help muslims. They thought we would keep the money. They didn’t think we had the connections to accomplish anything. I was on a bicycle. I was 25. I didn’t have a job. I had no business cards.

It was the smallest drop in the bucket, but it felt really important at the time.

Now the long-haired one is engaged to the alluring young woman in the photo, a bosnian-muslim herself. All of his effort to assist the Bosnian people has evolved into a mission to enjoy Bosnia, and protect its natural resources. His organization, Green Visions www.greenvisions.ba/gv/ guides outdoor adventure trips, conducts environmental surveys, and publishes many articles about the natural beauty, history, and potential of the country. The other guy lives in Rome, Italy (not Georgia) and works for the United Nations. In 1997, after the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords, I finally made it to Bosnia myself. Mountains, jade-green rivers, a land for 4-wheel drive and goats. I met a lot of interesting people, and every one of them was worth the sweat, the frustration, the power getting cut off, the humiliation of begging and being told “NO”.

We may not have done much, but we did something.

I’m going to remember that the next time I see some sweaty young dude on a bike trying to do something good for someone else, even if I think he can’t pull it off.

mags

I just read that Mr. Backstedt, the Colossal Apostle, took second in today’s stage (7). Robbie McEwen won, but whatever, he weighs 145 lbs. Magnus almost ran his ass down carrying the equivalent of a sack of mulch over his shoulder, and Magnus can kick McEwen’s ass in the mountains. As far as I’m concerned, today was Big Mag’s day.

The major

This is an excerpt of the full article written by Brian O’ Connor.

“I shall never forget the thunderous applause that greeted me as I rode my victorious lap of honor around the track with a huge bouquet of roses.”
—Marshall “Major” Taylor

The din of 12,000 spectators enveloped Marshall “Major” Taylor and his three rivals as they banked the final turn of the 1-mile world championship at Montreal’s Queens Park velodrome in 1899. Two opponents, brothers Tom and Nat Butler of Boston, had the tactical advantage on the pitched oval, partnering to jam Taylor. But on this August afternoon, the 20-year-old African American was unstoppable.

Unleashing the furious finishing sprint that made him the most feared, most respected and most popular bicycle racer of his era, Taylor flew past the Butlers and France’s Courbe d’Outrelon to win by a tire-width. In victory, Taylor added a new title to his glittering résumé: world champion.
The FastestToday, as Lance Armstrong eyes an unprecedented seventh Tour de France victory, one of the United States’ first sports superstars, a cyclist no less, has been consigned to obscurity. The irony might be amusing if it weren’t profoundly heartbreaking.

Taylor’s landmark 1-mile world championship in 1899 came precisely 100 years before Armstrong’s first miraculous Tour victory. It came a decade before a contemporary, Jack Johnson, became the first black American to win boxing’s heavyweight title. It came 37 years before Jesse Owens debunked the notion of Aryan supremacy at the Olympic Games in Berlin. It came 46 years before Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier. Taylor was only the second North American of color (after Canadian bantamweight boxer George Dixon) to win a world championship.