Well, it’s been a quiet week here at Lake Slowbegone, my hometown, out on the edge of Portlandia. Shit, come to think of it, it’s been more than a week. Let’s just check the ol’ date stamp on the last blog post…ten months. Wow. We just blew right through nap time, didn’t we. Little known fact: JVA is like Spider-Man if instead of a spider he was bitten by a radioactive cicada. When the going gets tough, we go dormant. In fact, the 2013 road racing season saw us pin on a number exactly zero times. I know, #outsideisfree, but #competingoutsideisnotfree. Our investment portfolios got hit hard during that recession thingy the dude on Marketplace Money keeps yapping about. Let’s just say the bottom fell out of the flavored anal-bead market, and we were left holding the proverbial colostomy bag.
Not that we rested entirely on our laurels. We took advantage of the “us” time to dabble in less skrilla-intensive hobbies and pursuits. Like organizing illegal aquatic baby fights. Take two toddlers, mix in one (1) each shark costume and octopus costume, add water and 30 rabid gambling addicts, and you’ve got yourself a party, my friend. And if you spring for the one week rental on the costumes you can totally re-enact the classic Deborah Gibson / Lorenzo Lamas vehicle, “Megashark vs Giant Octopus.” But with babies. Good fun.
We also made sure to give something back to the community. In July, JVA’s elite donkey squad took the train from Portland to White Fish, Montana, then rode our bicycles part of the way back before totally wussing out and renting a car because we were hot. All for alopecia. Not to promote alopecia, because we are totally down with flowing locks and hirsuteness and all that. No, we were riding and then not riding and then shvitzing and then driving to raise awareness for alopecia. So the next time someone walks by you with nary a sprouting follicle you don’t just assume they mixed the Nair with the Pert. Now you can point, shriek, and yell, “alopecia!” before running in the opposite direction with your arms flapping over your head. Bikes can make a difference, my friends, you just have to dare to hire photographers to document your rides.
What else happened? Oh! We fulfilled our contractual obligation to Rapha North America (for which we are compensated handsomely) to continue to play Drago to their Rocky IV. You might have seen a little ride we put on. It was kind of a big deal in the cross-promotional / collabeaux / derivative-branding scene we’ve got going on up here in Portland.
Sensibilities were offended, Lime-a-Ritas were consumed en velo, and deep carbon rims were declared “officially loose butthole.” All in a day’s work.
I’d like to say that we’re back, and that regular posts will be stacking up like so many Private Benjamins in my banknote roll, but I don’t want to promise something I won’t be able to deliver. I mean, ‘cross season is coming, and talking about races I have no intention of doing leaves little time for things like blogging about races I have no intention of doing. Who knows, I might get bitten by some rabid muse and contract a rare form of what us writers call diarrhea-de-plume. But I wouldn’t hold your breath.
