“Don’t worry….we’ll turn off the lights when we leave”
Like all unwanted guests, we’re often the last to leave the party, bar or cross course. So perhaps it was destiny we found ourselves on the cover of the final issue of ROAD magazine from the shit show that was SSCXWCXPDX.
Tubthumping may have been our theme song for the weekend. Please don’t ask why…We swear Adam…we did NOT steal your race packet and take it to the gentleman’s club2016 really needed to fuck off. Is it to early to tell 2017 to do the same?
We enjoyed a particularly indecent relationship with the fine people at ROAD that included trips to Philly, Bikini Baristas, the grail (RIP) and our very own Hot Laps Craig contributing to a number of issues with a column titled Hot Topics with Craig. The shuttering of their doors is further proof that we just can’t have nice things.
Within a week of the announcement the website was turned off, and we were informed that no print version would be available. We did manage to download a copy and have it available if you want to give it a gander.
Should you trust something we put on the internet for you to download? Probably not. But go ahead and do it anyway.
The last couple of weekends have been a whirlwind of activity for the Hodala crew. A couple of weekends ago, a bunch of us split up into three teams for GoMeansGo’s Nine to Five scavenger hunt.
It all started out with a double rainbow
Seriously. Double fucking rainbow.
and then there was a bunch of scavenger hunting before this happened:
and then there were some bars and more scavengering and then 6 am breakfast greyhounds at the 5 Point.
Everything else is sort of a blur of frantically collecting a ton of random objects that I still need to clean out of my messenger bag. Greg has a nice wrap-up of the event over at GoMeansGo. It looks like Randy & Joe took 5th, Marcy’s team was maybe 10th 4th, and Nate and I ended up something like 18th. I’m assuming that Joe got 100 extra points or so for that photo above.
For people who are awake around 5 am everyday it was surprisingly easy to stay up all night as long as we kept moving and we only really ran out of steam when we sat down in bars for awhile. The vintage 4Loko that we drank around 2:30am probably helped a bit. I’m hoping that we’ll get more of the team out for this event next year. Ryan and Greg at GoMeansGo put on a really great race.
This past weekend was, of course, Wizard Staffs Across the Universe.
The day started out being shitty and rainy, but if we let the weather stop us from getting drunk then the terrorists have truly won. Fortunately, RaleighUSA fully supports all of Hodala’s activities and we had some tents to keep us dry.
Meanwhile in the Dirty South (Tacoma), Myers apparently thought it was a good idea to add an element of danger into Wizard Staffing – welding.
Those Churchkey’s might kinda taste like crap, but you can’t argue with a steel can.
Up in Seattle we kept drinking
and drinking
until we all decided to take our hard-earned wizard status on a walkabout to the nearby PRIDE celebration where some Canadians in tutus did body shots off of F-Joe
and DR managed to take his underwear off in the middle of the bar for them without getting 86’ed. It was truly a miracle of drunken assholery.
There’ll be a video and more photos up as soon as Sally can get though the nearly 10 hours of video that we shot on Saturday.
We did manage to add a new wrinkle to the fine art of Wizard Staffing – the “lips on staff tip.” Basically, you can tip another drinkers staff up with your own wizard staff and they’ve gotta keep drinking for as long as you do, but you must have your lips on your staff in order to force someone else to keep drinking. So here are the current Hodala rules for Wizard Staff day:
1. You aren’t a wizard until your staff is as tall as you are (I’m 15 beers tall).
2. You must have your lips on your wizard staff in order to force a person to keep drinking when tipping their staff.
3. You need a lot more duct tape than you think you do. Go buy some more.
After a day of letting our livers rest a few of us went to scout a new ‘cross club course and alter a few of the ones from last year. We’ve got the courses mostly set and the beer sponsorships nailed down, so dust off your ‘cross bikes; the 2012 Cross Club season kicks off a week from today. If you aren’t currently on the list and want to do some less-than-legal ‘cross racing in public parks every Tuesday night, sign up for the email updates.
That’s all for now. Keep an eye out for the WSAtU video and we’ll see you next Tuesday.
USA Cycling Rule 1A33 – The cyclo-cross season begins September 1st of one year and ends on the last day of February of the following year.
…we tend to enjoy getting rad all year round. This past weekend was the second race in the Frost Club series – a special couples-themed Valentine’s relay/madison-style cross race for all of you lovers out there.
The HeartBraker began with a 3-legged Le Mans start…
Sally and I are embarrassingly good at the 3-legged race.
Now that I look at the photo, does anyone else see that Myers and F-Joe aren’t connected while they’re stepping over that barrier? I feel like this should be added to CXMagazine’s Readers Choice awards for “biggest controversy” after Rapha not getting tattoos at SSCXWC and SF basically keeping the race instead of sending it to Philly (No, we’re not over either of those things.)
… Where were we? … Oh, 3-legged Le Mans. Partners grabbed their bike and had to trade off 3 minute-ish hot laps around a surprisingly hard course and pass off the bike that they were sharing.
Half of the reason we decided on this format was to see whose bike Tyler and Trista would ride. They chose hers:
All of you need to buy some more Nuun so that they can replace that Kona with a shiny new Raleigh.
After 12 laps, each rider on the top 3 teams had to slam a beer before their final laps.
Nat doing what he does best.
Myers and F-Joe ended up running away with the race, which is a little less surprising now that there’s evidence that they were cheating from the start line.
That flower is like the scarlet letter of cheating at fake cyclocross races.
Fortunately, there’s another race coming up for the rest of us to try and steal their glory. The Ides of March will be a ‘cross alleycat on March 17th. Show up to Schooner Exact around noon. There’ll be more info coming soon so keep an eye out here or over at Red Lantern Races.
Bring some money with you as well because you’re going to want one of the new Frost Club shirts.
I promise that you'll look this good wearing it.
All of the proceeds from these races and the t-shirts goes to the Leukemia Lymphoma Society so just buy one already. If you want one and can’t make it out to the race just email me and we’ll figure it out – hodalacx [at] gmail [dot] com .
After drinking beer and riding bikes, it certainly seems like our favorite thing to do is make videos of ourselves drinking beer and riding bikes. Fortunately, it seems like Cleveland has had some extra time on his hands recently and made these for your enjoyment.
