 |
| Jonathan Page Planet Bike Cup // WCA Cyclocross 2008 Series Race #1 |
what i don't have a picture of is me running through wal-mart in my full kit (i think i took my helmet off, but i really don't remember...) looking for stove bolts.
after warming up, i went back to the car and decided my saddle was a cm too high. you can probably guess that adjusting it an hour before my race was a bad idea. while tightening the collar, SNAP! stripped threads. (to paraphrase Bjarne Riis, if you don't ever over tighten, you'll never know how hard you can screw.) so, here i am, warmed up at the venue, in full regailia and a floppy saddle. if i tried to go back to madison and get a new seat collar, i'd never make it back. if i did nothing, i wouldn't race anyway. so, i decided to try to go get another collar. while dirving i thought that if i just had a bolt & nut that would fit in the now striped out collar, that'd work. U-turn into walmart and clomp, clomp, clomp past the cart nazi. in what must have looked like the scene from the David Lee Roth music video for yankee rose ("gimmie a bottle of anything and a glazed donut... TO GO!") an employee notices the sort of cross between desparation and cluelessness on my face and offers assistance. "nuts and bolts and things, please?" before you know it, i was respectfully declining the offer for "a bag for that," and was on my way back to the angell park speedway.
20/20 hind sight:
1). don't make bike mods 45 minutes before launch
2). Dan Z. suggested that i prolly could have gone to one of the bike manufacturing tents or bike shop tents & begged.
THIS is what the folks paid to see (ok, it was free but you get the idea...). Todd Wells, Jonathan Page, Troy Wells & Tim Johnson racin' yyyyyeeeeehhhhhhaaaaaawwwww! 
wonder if the UCI officials gave Johnson crap for no right shoulder bib number?
the Boss went to work
the fans just went ape for the man they paid to see. i mean, look at that enthusiasm.
as for me... you'll have to hear of my wal-mart adventure later.
