Don’t cry for me, Art Gentina.

A peculiar aspect about working for one’s self, is that even in the event of a vacation, there will still be responsibilities of some sort waiting for you when you get home.
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(This image is supposed to convey a guy saying “I’ll get to that in a minute. Right now I’m just gonna party.”)


Now of course I don’t mean to imply that I don’t wake up every day and fist pump a hundred times in a row on account of because I so throughly enjoy what I do for a living, because that would be wrong. I do that regularly. However when you’re off grab assing and the house of cards that you precariously left behind in order to engage in said grabbing of ass is always just a gerbil sneeze away from toppling, I’d be lying if I said that didn’t wear on me occasionally.
Case in point is that as I looked at my oversized novelty calendar last week, I noted that the day after I was to depart to the Whale’s Vagina, was actually the day that my Bandit Jersey order was due into Captain Bill at EW&R.
That goes from being bad scheduling all the way around the dial to no scheduling. Luckily for me, and anyone who happened to wait until the last possible second in which to order one up for themselves, Bill was his usual unflappable self and let me slide. This slight adjustment ends up meaning one thing, and that is if you dropped the balls-o-plenty and didn’t get around to placing an order, this is the wire that you can squeak under.
My order has been placed with them, but should you have happened to turned over that one sofa cushion where you drunkenly stashed your dog track winnings, until you no longer see the jersey being made available on this site, you can get one for yourself.
That aside, I was blessed with the standard array of randomness in both my inbox as well as my PO box. The latter of the two holding an item so astoundingly beautiful, I dropped to the ground where I stood and did the Worm;
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As if that wenen’t enough, Master Igleheart very thoughtfully included a t-shirt and some decals (or if you’re Canadian, some deckalls) in my prize pack.
I’m not sure what I did to be worthy of such a generous gift, but I am very thankful none the less and will have to do some rummaging deep within my closet in order to find something to properly reciprocate with.
Second to that, the world’s smallest bike shop sent me what I think would be technically considered a metric shit-ton of ‘Listen To Ben Harper’ stickers;
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Should you feel the need to assist spreading this message of wisdom, send me a SASE and I’ll get you out a stack.
Then, back in my virtual PO box, I spent the better part of Monday wading through the gold pile, occasionally pulling out gems such as this one sent to me from El Lucho of Cycling Inquisition;

Just as anyone who reads this site understands that occasionally you have to wear stretchy pants, these fellows feel the same need to don some pointy boots.
Andy from Fymomasomethingorother also got in touch regarding a topic not relating to pointy boots in the least;
“Even though you won’t come, I thought I’d invite you anyway.
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I’d invited someone else you might know too.
ride safe
andy”

Andy’s event is scheduled over a month after Jesus is supposed to return and take all the earth’s good people away in his spaceship, so it’s fairly certain that I won’t be in attendance, but I hardly ever say never.
One event that we all would be able to attend though is the Cleveland Tweed Ride that Brian sent me a heads up about;
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If you happen to reside in or around the Land of Cleve, rob your grandparent’s closet and get cracking.
For my part, I actually do stand a better chance of ending up in Australia than I do ever putting on tweed anything, but arybody’s got they own kind of pointy boots.
Sean Hurl gave up a howyadoing to let me know that besides the fact that there are people out there looking good so I don’t have to, the more things change, the more they stay the same;
“With the dirt classic this weekend and Lemurian around the corner it’s oficially mtb race season. We are locking it down hard for AHTBM on this side of NOR-CAL. Actually we havn’t won anything but we look damn good trying;
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Photo by Tim Westmore.
Race season also means hand up season so here’s Hodge and Mark showing how we were doing it in 1999. Some things never change.
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Love you brother,
Sean”

Those second two images are almost enough to get me to twist tie a number plate on again for old time’s sake.
Almost.
Speaking of the Sea Otter, that particular train wreck is coming to town again, and as I was discussing with someone recently who had never attended (in this area, finding someone who hasn’t attended, let alone raced at the Sea Otter always surprises me in the same way I would be if I were to meet a virgin in a whore house) I suppose it’s worth going just to witness the fiasco, if only to attend the Reverend’s Town and Country race;
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Anyway, it’s been two years since I’ve been and probably nine since I’ve raced, and I still don’t have even the slightest tinge of interest in doing it again.
However seeing those old shots gets me feeling a tinge of melancholy, and inspired me to dig this one of an incredibly dashing looking fellow poaching that race in what I would guess to be 1997;
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I put the ‘nonsense’ in ‘racing career’ though the gerbil sneezed on that house of cards long ago.
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3 Responses to “Don’t cry for me, Art Gentina.”

  1. bRado April 15, 2011 at 7:22 am #

    when Ben Harper speaks; People Listen…
    that Fork is Pure Sex!

  2. badbeardo April 15, 2011 at 9:20 am #

    Nice Gitmo race-suit.

  3. uncreative April 15, 2011 at 2:18 pm #

    wow, those pics bring back memories of dicing with Mark Weir in the expert class and getting drunk with ferrentino after the Ring of Fire. good times.