Country Music

A friend has been promoting a stage race in Eastern Oregon for the last few years after taking it on from the original promoter. Initially it started as the classic bike club desire to "give back" and ended as a FUBAR mess where the majority of volunteers flaked out like dander off of Ally Sheedy in the Breakfast Club. Word gets out that the monotony of holding a stop/slow sign at an intersection of farm roads in the middle of nowhere for 6-hours is bad for ones fitness so said bike club volunteers disappear Selsun Blue style.

This year I decided to join a few friends who have come through for E-Racer in years past and helped put on perhaps the best little stage race around. With the gimp hip I figured I'd be working a fold-out table with the officials doing such menial tasks as picking numbers from the finish line photos. Maybe handing out primes after the Saturday night Criterium. Was I wrong!

When I saw this car I thought I hit the jackpot. Maybe I'd get to drive the lead car for the category 1&2 field?


For a short time I got to drive this little jewel. Perhaps because I can drive a stick or maybe because the only cars I've ever owned that didn't get stolen or wrecked were Subi's. I take that back, I did have an 86 GL get stolen but it was found. Anyway...



Eventually I found my niche driving a 1985 Ford F150 and towing porta-potties to the edges of deep no-where and back. It was surreal for a number of reasons but mainly because the loaned vehicle came with a single cassette tape of Thriller by the late gloved one, Michael Jackson.



I've NEVER been a fan. The Jackson 5 hasn't helped me find my soul nor has setting my hair on fire ignited a taste for Pepsi nor have I had the need to dress like Corey Feldman . But when the disdain for MJ was thrown out by truck co-pilots TK and Strader, I laid down the law that the cassette could never be turned off. Turned down...perhaps. Turned off...never.

Amid warm, cloudless skies, a quiet open road in the middle of nowhere with Beat It audible over the trucks idling, TK and Strader tried to hammer a coat hanger into packed rock on the side of the road meant to hold up a 3k to the finish sign with a roofing hammer. They were about as successful as home schoolers on a field trip to Watts passing as locals. Watching their display pained me. I turned MJ's best work to full volume, limped across the highway and pounded a hole into the rock with a 2 ft strip of rebar, inserted the sign and told the fella's to get back in the truck.

At the 2k to go, TK tapped the rebar into the rock deep enough for it to stand on its own, then swung the hammer down on it without a bracing grip. The rebar shot off onto the highway almost tearing the tapered leg of his designer brand distressed jeans. Strader chased after the rebar like a puppy and ultimately had better luck punching a hole into earth. About an hour later the MJ cassette went out the passenger window to spite me.

The weekend wore on like a dry frat party. We spent 70-miles following the slowest women racers in the state. Two of whom got dropped on a flat road 2 miles after the race got started! All that driving at 15mph made me hungry so we stopped and ate.



Back in the truck we started up the big climb of the stage and continued to eat as the girls suffered over the top and toward the finish. Our job was to pick up trash, water bottles and fried racers but the girls all rallied and made it to the finish just as the finish line equipment disappeared down the road in a trailer behind another truck.

For the final stage there is a respectable climb after 100 miles of riding into banjo country. I once found an Elk skull on the route and hung it in my backyard. Eventually the skull was stolen.



At the summit finish area a local brew pub throws a party. Pretty cool except for the fact we drove the last official race vehicle and only got to the top as the party tents were being put into the trucks. The sign of a good party is the aftermath and I suppose the same goes for a bike race. Especially one in Oregon where bike race and beer tent go together like ham and eggs. Except for the vegan population. So as we cleaned up, the question came up of where to put the forgotten bikes. Yeah, you read that right! Who goes to a bike race and forgets to take their $5,000.00 bike home? The safest place to stow the thing I figured was where no other equipment would do any damage...