Orphans, returned!

http://static.flickr.com/48/108947839_55d66fe79d.jpg

(Whole Flickr set here.)

Nothing but great things to report from me, either. Meeting people was great, and the race was fun as hell. I DNF'ed after three checkpoints in a glorious explosion of unathleticism and lack of directional know-how.

My best story developed as I was locking up outside of Rockstar...this guy came up to me rolling his bike in one hand and half of a busted Campagnolo crankarm in the other. He told me that he'd snapped it during the race, and...favor time...could he borrow my bike to ride across the bridge to Bikeworks for a new crank?

"Uhhhh...okay." I got some collateral in the form of a credit card and a quick snapshot. He said he'd be back in half an hour, which came and went many times over, and I started getting really drunk and really concerned that I'd been the victim of the single most elaborate track bike-thieving scheme of all time. (Thanks to giboyeux and schlo moe for the nervous reassurances that everything would be okay.) Eventually he did return, was very apologetic about the delay, and bought me a beer. He turned out to be Jumbo, who, despite breaking a crank somewhere on the Williamsburg Bridge, placed 11th. For those not familiar, the descent into Brooklyn off of the bridge is pretty steep, and when I asked him how he navigated it, he just kind of shrugged and said "One foot on the pedal, one foot on the tire."

After racing, drinking, and eating dinner with Monkey, I was ready to pass out around 9, but fortunately my hostess had planned for me to go dancing at some lesbian club in Park Slope. I heart NY.

u pinched me as i was walking by :p :D , lol im kiddin it was good seein u again. hopefully ill run into ya on da st. take care ....

is that a MT t-shirt???

This?

http://static.flickr.com/41/108934724_21a6a63132_m.jpg
http://static.flickr.com/41/108934826_6aefc489b9_m.jpg

Yep.

HOw did you get that?

uhh ... by registering and racing.

If you registered, you bought one, although I'm not really sure how/if they were properly distributed. I was talking to Squid at Rockstar and he gave me mine.

yea i'm missing mine

i got 118th place (with a DQ for turning in a blank manifest).

anyway, big ups to the following:

turd, for the hospitality & couch (hope you enjoy the beer)
salome, for being her usual sweet self and buying me lunch after the race
msngr, ch0mb0, s_9, wangster & dirty_cookie for being all-round cool guys
chimbly & spud for repping the pirates & being awesome
ceya & mr. red for helping me fix my flat tire
all the other forum & non-forum folks i met this weekend and anybody else i'm forgetting since i fail at life...

oh, and a big fat middle finger to the pothole that broke my taillight and gave me a flat. boo.

I registered and raced but didn't hear anything about shirts. Anyone have any idea who to contact about it?

only way I got mine was by seeing the stack of boxes on the way out the door of the bar and getting one from Squid

are the goldsprint results posted anywhere? i'd like to see how badly i did. oh, and who won the skidcomp?

Is there any big alleycats in June or anything..... I will be in NYC for the whole month and feel like i'm missing out on all the ****ing fun.... at least i'll get to go on those morning coffee meets. YEAH.

Puma NA made 200 shirts for us to giveaway to racers/checkpoint personnel. Friday nite we registered 75 heads and they all got shirts.

Saturday was almosat a freeforall but we got shirts to all the checkpoint peeps and all 'day of' registered people who stepped up. Sorry if you did'nt score, be heartened that we raised damn close to $2000 for the nonprofit that we run for NY Messengers!

Special shout out to Michelle who designed and coproduced the HellaCool spokecards, 8 variations!!

And in case you didn't hear, MT8 is gonna be in mother****ing Mexico City. What!

Holy ****! No Amtrak for that one...there's always the Transportes del Pacifico bus.

Mexico City: thats going to be ********, if i make it, well thats step one, step two is finding someone to translate for me.

Is that Mexico City rumor for real?!?

Hawk Wheels oughtta know.

close for some of us. But i would hate racing there. no offense but its not a very advanced metropolis..... some of the roads are still very dirt.

you know what i'd bet would be sweet?

mexican ER with no insurance

True, but it's also enormous. There's plenty of paved racing to be had. I'd wager the traffic is ******* bonkers, though.

i managed to snag a t-shirt but all that was left was x-large. i tossed it in the wash in hopes it would shrink a tad, but if it's still too big for me and someone else wants it, lemme know i'd be willing to hand it over to someone who can use it. i'll letcha know

Anyone else besides me get kicked out of rockstar bar for drinking sparks?

While I'm sure there are plenty of Mexican ER horror stories (just as there are plenty of US ER horror stories) I know a guy who needed surgery in mexico, got excellent care and was told the bill was 200. When he told them he couldn't afford $200,000, they said, "No, $200"

EDIT: Okay, I was mistaken. It was a friend of a friend, but here is the story:

Not long after arriving here [Mexico] she got a serious liver infection, and, after putting it off for too long had to be rushed to the hospital. She ended up having to stay in the hospital for half a week and was seen dozens of times by her own doctor and others before they released her.

As a hospital administrator, the whole time she was there, she kept adding up the things that were happening to estimate what this was going to set her back. She'd guessed in the realm of four or five thousand dollars, so when they handed her a bill for two thousand dollars she was quite pleased.

"Two thousand dollars — that's a lot less than this would have cost me back home."

"No, no, senora, you misunderstand — that is in pesos; about two hundred dollars."

Thanks, It was my first race and it was a blast!!!! If you happen to come across some more shirts send me a pm