What did you expect?

Yeah, no, it's going to be a while before I drop this. As I mentioned, I spoke to an Anchorage local yesterday about how so many people - including both he and myself - were screwed out of riding the Single Speed World Championships last month. This guy felt that the bike festival aspect of the whole thing seemed to revolve around dive bars rather than the incredible trails the area has to offer (and which the locals work hard to cut and maintain). I hadn't looked at it that way, but I had to agree.

There's this counter argument that people shouldn't have arrived with so many expectations. This invariably comes from people who managed to get out to the race, have fun, and go home with great memories. But with all due respect, go fuck your collective selves. Can you imagine having missed it? Would you be pissed off if you did? Can you put yourself in someone else's cleats and understand why they might be so bent? And the expectations? Well, it was common knowledge the race was going down at Kincaid Park, so there was really just that one expectation:

What time is the race?

My only prior experience with the SSWC was in 2002, in Downieville, California. BeanSS and I were only spectators, though we did have our singlespeeds with us. It was low key, kinda' punk rock, kinda' underground, and yet, with three sheets of paper taped inside a bike shop window (one was a note for Pete), we, just like the stupidly-fit people racing the event, knew all there was to know about where to be and when.

As I understand it, a few key people busted their asses to make the 2002 event happen, and the end result was that all everyone else had to do was pay a ridiculously small entry fee, show up, find a campsite, and ride. It had this festival atmosphere simply because all of these people were in this stunning landscape full of incredible trails, riding the same sort of bikes as everyone else. Even the swag was epic, and they didn't run out of shirts.

It seems the effort in 2014 was to work really hard on organizing the pre-ride fucking around and deciders and crap, and then ensure the event itself was as non-pro and anti-establishment as possible. Anti-establishment is one thing, but when regular people - still singlespeeders, mind you - get excluded in the process, well, it just sucks.

And that is that.