My heroes of the TD are…
Deana Adams
and
Blaine Nester
Why?
Sure, there are lots of stand-outs in this race. But those two stick with me.
Deana did it in 2009 with a homebuilt road bike conversion fixie with ‘cross tires and a big gear and slapdash equipment. She was 20 years old. And a vegan. Come on! …She doesn’t wear bike shorts and she uses regular Vans shoes. Come on! She’s the youngest ever to do this event. And she always sounded spunky on her call-in’s! No, she always sounded open, fresh, unguarded. Her calls are still online. They’re fun to hear. Especially the one where she runs into the Rainbow Gathering and gladly lets herself be detoured for an evening of socializing and eating, hippystyle. She phoned in that she was so happy the 70’s were still alive.
…And she rode from Canada to Mexico in 30 days! So…YEAH! And she’s the first to ride the trail on a fixie. So she gets my First Prize. (Yeah, she has an Asterix, but she’s still First to me.)
As for Blaine… He’s an old guy and he seemed to go through hell in this year’s race yet on all his call-in’s he’s the mellowest dude. He wins the prize for always having a sly grin, a smirk even, and being relaxed. One of his last phone-in’s, before tying for 2nd place, was after he pushed his bike thru the mud and rain for 20 miles. He sounded like a librarian in a good mood telling about some cool book, or something.
The guy who was riding near him also deserves a prize or two. Erik Lobeck tyed Blaine for 2nd but had seemingly a totally different TD. He had a couple bad mechanicals. But on his near-end phone-in he had pushed his bike more like 20 miles and he sounded RUINED. He said he didn’t even care when he finished at that point. He’d been through hell and SOUNDED like it. That was the long-range stare coming over the line. Totally justified. Erik wins for enduring blatantly plain misery.
…But Blaine wins for freaking me out. He had to be miserable, too. But he never sounded like it was anything more than a stroll around the block! So maybe he wins the Good Humor Alien Award. It’s a fun prize to give out, anyway.
And kudos to Kent for his big push, too! …His freehub failed on his singlespeed, right in the middle of the huge desert basin they hit in the first few weeks. He pushed about 40 miles…and right on out of the race. Can’t blame ‘im! He’d also just t-boned himself on a barbwire fence coming down a hill, so there was that. Thankfully he wasn’t hurt bad. And he got a brilliant photo out of it. Which see at kentsbike.blogspot.com.
But if I get started on prizes, there’ll be no end. So I’ll keep it to those 4. I mean, those two. Oh, let’s make it four.
