Dirty Critty Brunch Race

Babbling
"Somebody's calling your name," Matt yelled to me as we pedaled hard up the rise. "Back there, somebody called your name." I think that's what he said. I don't know. We were into about the second of six laps and battling it out for a live chicken. He'd said something to me earlier that I didn't understand either, something about the number five. He's a nurse. Works weird hours. I don't always count on Matt for coherence and he wasn't letting me down during this race. He'd probably been up for fifty hours straight and I know that I babble by mid-afternoon of most days even with a good night's sleep, so I let him ramble on. He was pulling ahead of me, though. At the beginning of the race (he'd shown up late) he was complaining about not having it together.

The Poto & the Fly
He'd already done that a few days earlier on the Poto. I'd called him up at the last minute to see if he wanted to go do a loop. I woke him up. It was 2:30 in the afternoon. He was game, though. He hadn't ever told me that he'd made ripping people's legs off on the Poto a blood sport. I'd like to say that I sat in his draft, but it wasn't that pretty. I saw him up ahead every once in a while.

That same ride I got a fly in my ear and I pushed it into my head. I've never done that before. A fly buzzing in my brain. It's an experience everyone should try at least once, especially if you're not sure it's a fly. If you're worried that it's a bee then the thrill factor rises right off the charts. And there's not much you can do with a bug inside your head with only a multi-tool at your disposal.

Oh yeah, Matt's a nurse. They do get some kind of medical training, right? He didn't have a great urge to use that training in this instance. He just asked me what it felt like. Not a real medical question in my opinion. Helpful Matt kept looking at me like I was some freak with his eyes spun round looking inward. He had no suggestions like jump on one leg and tilt your head, or wiggle your ears, or anything of any significance. I think it was a good show for him and he didn't want to spoil it by getting the fly out anytime soon.

Anyway, Matt, to answer your probing question, it felt like a fine digital fly recording through Sennheiser headphones. Only it was really in my head. I felt claustophobic and I wasn't the fly. In such a tight space it hadn't yet stung me, so I thought it must not be a bee. Then buzzzzzzwhit! It flew out of my head. That was it and off we went. Matt looked a little disappointed, but he was out of sight pretty soon, so it didn't make much difference.

DCBR
That's my experience with Matt on the Poto, only now we were on a dirt road flying along with about fifteen or twenty other people in the First Annual Dirty Critty Brunch Race (DCBR) on Labor Day morning put on by Wendy and Ben Caldwell. The weather is seventies and sunny. The bikes are cyclocross, with a few intrepid mountain bikes thrown in, including Jason Lummis's 29er (which I think is equipped with some kind of silent motor because 29ers don't go as fast as his does just with legs alone). There's food and beverages waiting for us when we're done, put together by many of the people trying to pass me and make sure my legs hurt a little more.

Rich keeps going off the front even though he sounds like someone who just crawled out of the ocean after sixty hours, mostly submerged. Respiratory Rich. He says it's a cold, but I think it's a ploy to throw off the competition for cyclocross season. I can sound like him if I want with just a few dousings of my salinated netty pot up each nostril.

And what the heck is going on with Mike S.? Low key all year and all of a sudden he's slamming along with the pack in the DCBR. Looks like I'm going to have to do something about getting his brakes to rub on a continual basis rather than just when he wants them to.

We'd just passed the start/finish line and Andy's standing there in full TWiT outfit, but he's not on a bike. I thought it was an interesting tactic, but I do know that it's really hard to race from where he was standing. Especially without a bike. Apparently he'd raced the day before in the Erie Street Race in Windsor and the Cat. 1/2s had raced for two hours at about a thirty mph average. One long string of pain. His excuse. Here he was standing by the side of the road. He wasn't sitting. If he was in so much pain then why was he standing? If he could stand, then he could ride. If he could ride, he could race. It's simple logic.













Preems
At the end of the fourth lap I decided to go for a preem instead of doing the smart thing and waiting for the finish to rip my leg muscles apart. I never go for preems, but I thought what the heck. So from about five back I sucked right up the line and catapulted off the front, thinking nobody could have come close to such drafting prowess. I looked back to my left and sure enough, I'd intimidated all of them and there wasn't a soul on my wheel. About ten feet from the line I'm wondering what kind of great thing I'd picked up among the numerous prizes available. Five feet from the line I hear a crunching sound to my right and catch sight of a wheel passing mine. Rodger! Damn, I thought he was my friend. I immediately let him know my feelings on the matter and he said it was all right because he was toast and out of the race from there on anyway. So? All right? He still stole my great prize, whatever that might have been. I actually like Rodger a lot, but I had to let him know that it isn't right to pass me on every sprint. It's just a little too consistent (read dull) for my taste. One way to spice things up is to let me win. Once.

Speaking of preems. At the end of the first lap, Mark L. had one of the greatest sprints I've ever seen roar out of his legs. A few hundred yards from the start/finish line he exploded out of the pack and took a solo flyer for the line. He was total focus, never looking back, lasered on that line ahead, even beyond the line, as is the approach of all great sprinters. Of course, if he would have looked back he would have seen a pack lolling along with quizzical looks and in deep discussion about what the hell he was up to. There was no preem to shoot for on this lap. It was the first lap, Mark! A bell has to be rung to let you know that a preem is imminent and a bell doesn't go off at the start of the race. Great sprint, though. Man it was impressive. All the more so, since we all had the opportunity to carefully evaluate his form as we shook our heads.

The Chicken
Here's Wendy's story. She and Ben were watching the Tour de France and they noticed that every town the race finished in had a prize for the winner that represented the local character. One town would give away a goat, another town would give away a wheel of local cheese, another a bottle of fine champaign. So her idea for the DCBR was to give away something of the character of where they live out there on Valentine Road. In this case, a live chicken. Tour de France/Dirty Critty Brunch Race. I see now where the two have a symbiotic relationship.

Now, I know it's easy to just buy this story wholesale because it sounds so, well, I don't want to say romantic, but it does kind of give the whole race a greater gravitas than the image of a bunch of dirt spewing heathen bike nuts crunching around a 5k dirt road loop at high speed. Throw in a live chicken and voila, there's a grand tradition to it all.

Or...there were a bunch of the neighbor's damned chickens pecking around the yard driving B & W crazy and one good way to get them off the property for good was to make them this grandiose prize in the race. Did I mention that there was one unlive chicken all cut up and sitting in B & W's freezer? This was the alternate grand prize if the winner didn't like to chop heads off chickens and watch them run around their yard in a residential section of Ann Arbor spouting neck blood and freaking out the neighbors. In other words, one of the neighbor's poulets was no longer laying eggs.

I need to warn the neighbors now that Wendy is talking about upping the size of the grand prize each year until eventually they're giving away a whole cow. Guard your livestock! Especially around Labor Day each year.

The Finish
Matt won. Live chicken boy. I sat on his wheel. I don't know if it was a real race to the line or if nobody wanted to win a dirty chicken with fleas. I won a wonderful bottle of maple syrup with a great personalized 1st Annual DCBR label designed by Wendy. I think Brian came in third and he got a jar of honey with the same label. We don't have to pluck any feathers off the jars. Chickens don't come with cool labels. So who's really the winner?

The Truth
Ben and Wendy put on the best crit of the year. Fun and friendly and wacky with good food at the finish instead of week old bananas and stale bagels. Next year it's a grand prize turkey, or so Wendy says. Only she knows which neighbor has what livestock.