Who wants to be found when you can get lost?


Well Jimmy… It looks like I’m gonna have to eat you, starting with those fine child-bearing hips of yours.

As I mentioned on Wednesday, it was my turn at the helm of this year’s annual Strawfoot Easter egg hunt;

I wasn’t sure how I was gonna pull this off, because up until 11:00 in the morning it was raining sideways, and as much as I am one who loves adventure, spending the day with trenchfoot was not at all of interest to me.

Luckily, just as my day’s compatriot arrived;

-the rains concluded and we began our adventure;

Now I don’t know how it works in other parts of the country, but here in the eastern part of the Bay Area, if one is to post an image of a particular stretch of a trail or road, there is an eager peanut gallery waiting in the wings to announce to the world that they know where the photo was taken. I can’t for the life of me figure what purpose this serves, but reckon it is somehow associated with the fact that any time I post a photo of a bike, legions of people chime in to tell me how I should solder my cable ends, or that I should use different grips, or that my valve stems really should be more perfectly aligned with the logos on my tires.

Guaranteed, if I posted a photo of a bicycle frame tube set, and called them ‘bike pipes’, or referred to Juli Furtado as Paola Pezzo it would make a dozen people’s heads explode;

Must… let… the world know… I… have… the answer….

It’s a curious thing indeed, and a topic I promise to revisit again before this post’s end.

Anyway, armed with this knowledge, I knew I was gonna have to be a bit more crafty/ambiguous with the hints I was to sprinkle on Instagram throughout the day.

Beginning with the following;


Getting to this spot required a short 50 yard hike-a-bike across a horribly muddy stretch of fire road through East Bay clay that is a mix between hitch grease and wet cement. Because of this reason, we stuck primarily to the roads, but at least for the first stop, we made the sacrifice;

For those who are gonna say ‘shred responsibly,’ or whatever, I repeat; This is a road that more often than not is completely trenched out by service vehicles, and is plowed regularly. Our trudging through it caused no harm to anything besides our own bikes;


So with stop number one/hint number one wrapped up with no takers, we moved on to the next stop;


Again, nobody picked up on the subtle, and kinda crappy visual queues of this one, so we were left with no takers and eventually moved on to spot number three;


We sat there for about an hour when a sweet old lady named Aida came out to ask me for help getting her an Uber car. I spent about thirty minutes monkeying around looking for an internet connection before heading into the neighboring fire station to see if we could use theirs.

Thankfully, once inside we were able to snag one, and before long we got her safely tucked into the backseat and on her way.

At that juncture we began collecting our stuff to head down the hill and offer the most obvious clue yet at which time I was going to write something along the lines of ‘good god, people. What do you want? You want me to come to your house and hide the package under your ass?’ Just then, Steve rolled up with a big shit eating grin, and made his way to the top step of the day’s podium;

Our buddy Young Carl had recently been hired as a wrench at the new Trek store in Berkeley and earlier in the day we’d gotten the heads up that they were going to have a grand opening party that evening. It seemed like a good way to finish our day, so with Steve’s winnings securely in his hands, we pointed ourselves down hill and let ‘er rip.

Wouldn’t you know, upon our arrival to the shop, the first person we see should be this cat;

We drop down into Berkeley, and who do we run into? None other than the father of mountain biking himself, Mr. Tom Ritchey.

A post shared by Stevil Kinevil (@allhailtheblackmarket) on


To my previous point of cyclists being squares who demand that their voice of wisdom be heard proving themselves to be correct on whatever banal topic is at hand, feel free to scroll through the comments and count how many times I was corrected on my assertion of who this individual is.

If you don’t care to, then I’ll simply say that it happened more than a bunch of times, proving once and for all that I need clearly to get up a lot earlier in the morning to get over on this batch of clever detectives.

Whatever. Bike dorks will be bike dorks and I will continue to fart into their brains at random.

The important thing is that nine hours after it started, the AHTBM leg of this year’s Strawfoot Easter egg hunt came to a close, and it seems as though we’ve al lived to tell the tale.

It’s with that, I bring today’s effort to a close, thank you of your attention, and lastly, and probably most importantly, kindly tell you to get lost.

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6 Responses to “Who wants to be found when you can get lost?”

  1. Jamie April 14, 2017 at 7:28 am #

    I wont correct the name, but he’s still one dapper summama bitch. A twelve pack of PBR strapped to a bike is an iconic image.

  2. tsp April 14, 2017 at 8:02 am #

    I won’t claim to have any idea where that kid, sitting in class with his head about to explode, happens to be, but i can tell you with complete ambiguity that many a young dude has been at that exact same place, some more than once. That kid had only two things on his mind, the second of which precluded any action on his part regarding the first. The second little thingy he had on his mind was that he just realized that could no longer stand up after sitting in that spot next to his classmate for more than five minutes. This little thingy precluded him from rushing to the first spot on the Easter egg hunt that he had just seen on Instagram 30-seconds before. I have no idea where clue #1 happened to be, but that kid sure does!

  3. Smithhammer April 14, 2017 at 8:13 am #

    The bike dork comment that really grates on me for some reason is when I post a pic of my bike and someone says “driveside out!” Jeezus, who gives a fuck, you little shit gibbon.. Have you never seen a cassette and a derailleur before?

    Oh, and Tom Ritchey was a lot cooler when he looked like Tom Selleck.

  4. Squally April 14, 2017 at 8:43 am #

    Tom Ritchey would not be caught dead in that outfit.

  5. Eric April 14, 2017 at 9:07 am #

    Holy fuck! Gary Fisher is still alive! And also, the 1880s called, they want their clothes and silly facial hair back….

  6. Paul April 15, 2017 at 7:55 am #

    I don’t see why you need to explain why you do things to others, you seem pretty adept at just doing things that you, do there is no need for justification in my mind, the others should focus upon themselves right?