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Rolling the dice

Spurred by a strong Northward wind the last couple of days, both Sally and I played what he refers to as the “Seattle Gamble” and rode into work without fenders yesterday. This may not be all that exceptional to those of you at home, but when you work in Kent and Auburn, you learn to live with a stiff headwind on nearly every 20 mile ride back into the city. A tailwind is like coming across a unicorn holding a 4 leaf clover in between its rabbit feet.

I already regret making this.

We’ve both got relatively new Militises (Militii? Militisees? What’s the plural on that, Sally?) and haven’t had a ton of chances to ride ’em with all of the rain and off-season, illegal cross races.

I'm the good guy because I ride a white bike. Sally... not so much.

This is the first carbon road bike I’ve ever had and it seemed like a good excuse to finally mount the rad ’10 SSCXWC CatEye Strada that’s been collecting dust for over a year now.

I haven’t used a bike computer in probably 6 years, so I’m looking forward to the time when I run directly into a curb because I’m fiddling with the buttons and staring at my embarrassingly slow average speed.

I know that I’m a total “homer” when it comes to all things Raleigh, but I fucking love the Militis. The only thing that I can compare it to is the first time I rode the Hodala carbon SS ‘cross bike. It feels responsive in a way that none of my other bikes do. If you’ve got the means and the wherewithal, I highly recommend it. If nothing else, I believe that Joey is driving a van full of them around to some races and events that you can test ride. My best guess is that he’ll be at some crits this season, though I don’t really know what the hell I’m talking about. Seattle Bike Expo, maybe?

Yada yada yada, Sally and I each made our way home from the dirty South and stopped into Schooner Exact for a pint of their Schoon White. Check it out while it is still on draft.

I’m running out of steam so this is probably a good time to tell you that this entire post was mostly just so that I could make that dumb unicorn at the top of the page. I’ll do better next time.

Cheers,

Update: At some point yesterday someone found this site by searching for “loser has to wash the winner’s car in a bikini.” I couldn’t be more proud of all of us.

 

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Badge of honor?

Our good buddy over at GoMeansGo just posted a photo of a headbadge for Aherne Cycles by Karl Edwards.

This got me thinking about what a classic-looking Hodala head badge would look like. It’d obviously have to have the drinking lion of Flanders. A SS cog? A pair of tighty whiteys with wings? “Tonight we drink – Tomorrow we race… and then keep drinking.” The Ham? A drinking sasquatch to pair with the lion? It’d probably need a cougar on there to represent a certain Hodala members recent conquests.

Got ideas? Leave ’em in the comments and I’ll see what I can do to come up with a design that we’ll probably never use anyway.

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Hodala Juniors – may God help them

 

Meet Ellie – the newest member of our surprisingly quickly expanding Juniors squad. Congratulations, Matt and Heather.

Growing up in a brewery, surrounded by a bunch of dirtbag cyclists… It’s going to be a rough childhood kid. Hang on.

Nevermind. This squad is growing even more quickly than previously imagined and this is Sally’s nephew.

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Breakin’ Hearts and looking in the mirror

This weekend had a very Narcissus and Echo feel to it. Step into the Wayback Machine with me and let’s take a trip back to Sunday.

While USA Cyling may not condone it…

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.

Brett and Jamie

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.

Here’s a little ditty about Dirty Randy.

Hodala One Point One: Dirty Randy from Ryan Richardson on Vimeo.

And a video about our scantily clad time in SF for SSCXWC.

SSCXWC: Hodala Sparkle Party from Ryan Richardson on Vimeo.

Just in case you aren’t quite tired of all of this navel gazing, Pat Kehoe produced a rad little video portrait of our own Craig Etheridge.

Craig Etheridge from Circadian Pictures on Vimeo.

That kid is going to take over the world some day.

Alright, folks. That’s all that I’ve got in me today. Put your ‘cross bikes back together and come get rad with us in March. Hope to see you then.