Two-thousand-plus riders left Raymore-Peculiar High around seven-thirty a.m. on Saturday, September 8, 2007. The overcast sky and cool breeze was quite refreshing, considering I was riding on about an inch of cushioning and less than four hours of sleep.
I canoe it last year, (knew is spelled how the word I used in its place, sounds), but you have a lot of time to think while riding your bike eighty-two miles. My fondness of learning was satisfied by what I learned between an odd place and Sedalia, MO and the time leading up to the ride back. These IQ plus-ones include:
1. Never listen/watch the Justin Timberlake concert within a week of spending eight hours on your bike…sans iPod.
Similar to showering, when you ride your bike down a two-lane paved highway between farms, you get that inexorable urge to sing, but you’re not alone. The embarrassment arrives as the person passing you approaches and can hear you singing “Cry Me A River.”
2. Your sense of smell is wickedly keen when breathing in country air on a bike.
Unlike the Delorean, the target speed isn’t eight-eight miles per hour, it is thirteen. Add to the equation an older, sweaty man riding two feet in front of you. He smelled exactly like an older, sweaty man riding two feet in front of me. My oxygen intake was impeded by B&O railroad. Three seconds after the smell hit me, I pronounced: “on your left,” and passed.
Roadkill maintains a fifteen-foot radius of funk around the point of impact that smells like country-cooked carcass – emphasis placed on the second syllable. A great way to vary the aerobic exercise you’re getting from biking with anaerobic exercise, is to turn onto a roadkill-heavy road – you learn to hold your breath.
I’m not sure what the waving wheat in O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A smells like, but the crops that catch a mid-morning wind in M-I-S-S-O-U-R-I sure as (derivative of poop) don’t smell sweet as the OK song would have you believe. I rode through a five-mile stretch where I distinctly remember identifying at least eight different flavors of livestock waste mixed with Skoal.
3. Roadside culverts can be used to dispose of more than just an empty beer can.
I was surprised to see more than a Milwaukee’s Best can on the side of the road. Not only because that signifies someone purchased and perhaps consumed the “beast,” but they also consumed it while driving – NO NO! In addition to the numerous cans, I noted a lamp and a garter belt.
4. You’re never too young to participate in the MS-150.
On the rear end of one of several tandem bicycles I saw, sat a child with the look of someone still learning how to wipe himself. So, whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.
5. The term “better” is a misnomer for “communal.”
One of the women on the committee for the MS-150 flagged me down on my way to a perfectly sufficient personal shower in a green-roofed shack to share with me one of the great secrets of the Kansas City MS-150. Before I begin dissolving her claim laid regarding this so-called “secret,” you should know how turgid she sounded while we walked towards her secret. She sounded turgid.
First off, when I think of a shower, two things come to mind: cleanliness and privacy. A communal shower only possesses the former of the two and still requires you adorn flip-flops.
Next, if the showers in the dormitory were such a secret, then why, after barely wetting my cheeks, were there 110 years worth of men in the pantry-sized, five-person shower with me? To top it off, the oldest of the silent trio must have found suicidal soap, because it jumped from his hand to the floor. Then, to compound the crime, he waited.
What, I ask, was he waiting for? One of us to get it for him?
I rinsed the suds from my eyes and took my towel, toiletries and twenty-five years worth back outside of the dormitory to dry off and change – in privacy.
That was the last time I took advice the entire weekend.
6. The two-beer limit at the Boulevard Brewing Company’s tent is not strictly enforced.
This was apparent after I ordered my first Wheat and noticed they did not record it. After my second, which I only had because the first was putting me to sleep and I knew the second would have my head on a pillow by eight-thirty, it was clear that the sign communicating the two-beer limit was for liability purposes only.
I confirmed the lack of enforcement when I saw one of the bikers getting their CamelBak filled with some of Boulevard’s best. Then, the females in matching uniforms, made their uncoordinated ways to the grassy area in front of that evening’s cover band to not dance.
I was correct in my assumption regarding my two beers. I passed out and slept like a biker after jotting down my day’s lessons and chugging ounces 184 through 210 of Gatorade and water.
