We are all lame

Veelz, my 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo team captain, is going to be well bent pretty soon. Why? Because on this day, Saturday, October 14th, 2006, just two days before registration for the 2007 event opens and about a month after one teammate already withdrew, BeanSS and I have decided that we're also going to sit it out.

The decision came yesterday afternoon. A brief call from the office to tell BeanSS that I was about to leave for the bike ride home turned into an impromptu heart-to-heart talk about the whole thing. Reasons, excuses, whatever they are, are many and varied.

Our little cancer survivor dog, Kona the Wondermutt, is presently in the midst of a veterinary vision quest seeking to restore the use of her lame foreleg. February, the month of the event, also happens to be one-year from when she achieved remission and ceased chemotherapy, and it might well be time to begin a second round, aka a "rescue". And besides the pup, we've got our own issues.

I've been riding, lifting, and hiking my damned fool head off for many months but wonder if I can equal last year's performance, much less improve upon it. BeanSS, being Kona's mother, caregiver, and personal veterinary technician, has had much less time to ride and prepare. I'd been thinking about bailing but didn't want to take away BeanSS's opportunity to ride the event a second time. BeanSS had been stressing over wanting to withdraw but feared I'd think she was copping out. Its a good thing we talked about it.

The rest of our justifications - the fairly steep entry fees, the hassles of camping in the cold and trying to run a pit area from a table under an EZ-Up, the meteorlogists' indications that this will be a wet winter, the massive project at work under which I'll be buried at that time - aren't really insurmountable barriers to racing, but the fact that we're focused on living for our furry little quadrupedal child means are heads aren't in it now, and probably won't be come Presidents' Day weekend, either. And as for Veelz, I'm sorry that after backing out of the "Piss and Moan" duo concept, I ended up being part of jeopardizing the continued existence of the 4-person GnomeBrew squad.

So yeah, that's that, and despite the fact that BeanSS and I have become the very same kind of flake-outs that nearly derailed everyone's participation last year, it still feels like a big relief. And who knows, we may go out there for a day just to spectate and root for the people who did make a go of it. I hope Veelz is among them, because I've got some serious heckling to do.

In other random bike-related rants, I don’t have my copy of Dirt Rag 124, and yet I saw one in a bike shop in New Mexico last Thursday. I know Silver City is a bit closer to Pittsburgh than Tucson is, but not by that much. Where the hell is this thing? If I'm not committed enough to race, I'd like at least to be able to read about riding. Of course, now that I’ve bitched about it, it’ll show up in today’s mail, which was really my intent all along.