Ironclad Cycling

There will come a horseman, and his name shall be Brody, and said Horseman will ride through the trails, spreading pestilence and disease, along with warm canned beer. And with the Horseman shall ride Esmerelda, Queen of the Undead, and she will cast spells on all the woodland creatures and spread enchantment through the two wheeled brotherhood.

A bunch of other dicks will fall down and bloody themselves drinking mad dog 20/20 and eating salted goods.

Training for Cyclocross is so much fun! WOLFPACK STYLE.

Thanks to Josh and all the folks at Bridgetown Velo, Castelli, Cyclepath, Hammer Nutrition, and Matador Beef Jerky for putting on the Cat and Mouse series again this year. Anyone that has raced it can tell you it’s a real zinger hum dinger, where your heart rate becomes a punching bag and lactic acid fills up your legs like a shopping cart at Costco. Holy flying fuckles, that race can hurt.

We brought Mr. Mark Crawford into the last event of the series carrying a lead in the points for the overall, and he defended in style against a hard charging and classy Bicycle Attorney.com squad, securing the series win. Last event of the month, of the series, of the whole cotton pickin’ year – now road season is 100% done and dusted for all of us.

For us, it was our winner Crawfy, Rob Thompson, new recruit Cristina, Dave, McCoy, and Trevor all drawing swords (and the occasional silly dick picture on a dusty windshield) to assist. Our recovering recruit Erik Bakker made the trek to sit in the stands and quietly heckle through his broken ribs.

Kiel Fletcher nabbed a nice picture at the end of the race, so we’d like to show that to you now.

Ole!

Some days you’re the hammer, some days you’re the nail. Our dear Stephanie Croy was a whole box of nails it seems. First, she got rear ended in Gresham on her way to the race. Pressing on, she made it to the race, pinned on the numbers and donned the silly clothes, and jumped in the fray, where two crashes saw her dislocate her pinky – twice. (check that, word from the doctor is finger’s broken. Possible torn ligaments in shoulder) Poor kid. She got wise and exited the race.

tape job courtesy Mike Murray, greeting courtesy Levo

A bunch our other wolves donned our exclusive wolf suit and began falling down in the mud. Sharon Sandoval picked up her teammate after her fall with a sweet 2nd place in the MST B race, and also racing were Ace, Trevor, Anona, Levo, Barker, and Willis, seen here just before he broke the sound barrier.

sound barrier’s gonna take a whoopin’

In other bicycle related pursuits, this author went to the Chris King shindig for the Oregon Manifest with our sponsor Stevil Kinevil from All Hail The Black Market, which meant titty bars and lots of beer. It also meant seeing Tony Periera win the event, congrats Tony. On the other side of town and decidedly more difficult, Robbie Carver and Rob Thompson took part in the Echelon Gran Fondo, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Greg LeMond and 1,000 other riders. Here’s all smiles before the start:

good day, good friends, good ride

So all in all, a pretty busy weekend, and it shows no signs of letting up anytime soon. See you folks around the ol’ two wheeled pursuits. Y’all come back now, y’hear?

We’ve been laying low on the CX side, but we’ve been busy sharpening our swords and tightening our chin straps, and we’ll be out there, in numbers, really soon. That’s a lot of commas.

We hope to see you soon, and if we don’t ride bikes, we should just engage in some sort of physical combat. Like this:

Hey, either way we’ll all end up with the same amount of bruises and have to clean our underwear with industrial strength pressure washers. Six in one hand….

Another year in the books, 100% official as we held our 2011 Road Season awards party last night at the Sanderclark ranch. Most everybody on the squad made it, and we went through our usual schpiel of taking a good hard look back at the year behind, and what a year it was. Lots of big wins, moving both men and women into the elite ranks, and continuing to foster new and young riders in the sport. Every year keeps getting better. The honest effort is what needs emphasis, and when a team does that, the results will follow. No need for numbers, or staring at wattages. That’s not the path. The path is paved with blood and guts, cheap beer, and a willingness to do anything in one’s power to help one’s team. Congrats to everyone, and special congrats to our Rider of the Year, Dan “The Fuzz” Penner.

Now, before we get all misty-eyed, gaze at this image from last night’s party.

idiots

Mark Crawford took home the win tonight in the September “Cat-and-Mouse” race at PIR! Nice work, Crawfy.

We’ll have some roster updates forthcoming. In the meantime, here’s a pointless image that Kmac found:

Photo by Catherine Cooper

Then you might want to consider the Hood River Gran Fondo, as the one and only Greg LeMond will be riding the event!

You can check out all the registration details right here.

You can ride it and be rad, or you can register for the Oregon Knight Cancer Institute as a fundraiser and be ultra-rad, the choice is yours.

Don’t worry, just call Emiliano at Template Cascade, because he’ll fix your shit right up.

For some reason, big dick pill makers, dating sites, large titty photographers, and investment opportunity spam-bots descended on our site all at once, and made a real mess of things. We didn’t invest, our penises are sadly the same mediocre size, but we do have a lot of nice new booby images to kick around. Hooray for us. Now, on to the news….

Krueger’s Kermesse was a lot of fun, and a couple of us went out to take on the farm action. And lo, our dear Stephanie Croy came home with the big win in the MST 35+ field, setting the tone for the upcoming cross season. Nice work Steph! Koller, Dave, Willis, and Barker all raced too.

Croy slaying things

Another season of PIR is in the books. Mondays, with it’s whining old men and hot young women concluded this week as did the Tuesday world championships. Rob Thompson secured final victory on the night, as well as the monthly overall for Tuesday. We also had our team photo snapped that night, courtesy of Catherine Cooper.

Afterward, we retired to HQ for a fire and about 14 metric tons of teriyaki pork ribs. We slept like a pile of gerbils in the back yard after eating and downing a few hundred cans of shitty beer.

Sadly, on Monday, our new recruit Erik Bakker took a digger due some just flat out piss poor riding by rider-that-shall-remain-nameless-but-you-know-who-you-are and ended up with a laundry list of typical cyclist injuries, but in greater numbers. After being hooked up to the diagnostic machine at the local Jiffy Lube, body mechanics discovered 7 broken ribs, a collarbone shatter in 3 places (requiring 9 pins and a plate) and a skinned hand. But, being Dutch, he’s maintaining a good attitude and was released from hospital just the other day. This wasn’t the announcement picture we were hoping for, but here he is in all his glory.

stoned and broken but smiling

And on that note, we’ll be announcing some other new riders for both men’s and women’s team soon. Our hiring for 2012 is going well and we plan on being on coming out of the gate strong when road season comes back around.

Some of us are into Cyclocross, and the wolf suit will be out and about. Others among us are sickened by the idea of it and will fade away to prepare for road 2012. We shall see. We’ll certainly try a few hand downs for you this year, and of course our usual suspects will be out breaking legs and hearts. The rest of us just want to fall down drunkenly in the mud with a valid excuse.

Alright, gotta clean up more dust and broken glass around here.