On Wednesday, 31 July 2013 18:41:40 UTC+10, Andre Jute wrote:
You won't believe this if I tell you what the fancy calligraphy says, so I'll just tell you it important to decipher the words. http://www.deviantart.com/moreliketh...39?view_mode=2
Ah, Artists, they cannot be logically figured out. If they can be, its because the figure-outerer is probably a philistine, and so is the artist. Art allows ppl to demand huge possible adoration from those with less imagination.
But I digress....
In about 1988, I entered a bike race of 104km, named The Iron Mike, because it had real hills and most clubsmen hated it. But it was a handicap race and club organisers didn't know my form and gave me a long lead time ahead of the scratchies. Well, off I went, two 52km laps, and at 17km from finish it looked certain I'd win, because scratchies or anyone else could not catch me as they were 5 minutes behind me, and getting tired. But at 17km to go, I had to go over the last cattle grid of 6 in the race, and these are done by "bunny hopping" so you are airborne over the grid for maybe 4 metres. The last grid was on a downhill, so the hop is done at 50kph. Well, I jump up, and when I come down, I connect to saddle with arse just slightly hard, but no harder than I'd done hundreds of times before. But the alloy seat stem snapped right off like a carrot, and seat bounces into scrub. So much for crummy Zeus brand components - I'd broken Zeus cranks as well, and they'd bend a bit too.
In about 0.2 seconds I realise there is a razor sharp jagged bit of metal aimed at my arse, and so I could not sit down for the last 17km, so I figured I better quit, because the seat value was more than the kudos of winning, even if I'd done it standing on the pedals for the last 17kms. I searched for and found the saddle, and got a lift to the finish.
Discretion is the better part of valour they say.
The Canberra Cycling Club still runs the Iron Mike. Mike was a godawful tough ******* who rode in ACT in earlier times, maybe 1960s. He'd delight in riding the route of the 'iron mike' twice a week for training, and of course, to get a race named after you, you have to have died because a concrete truck ran over you or something equally grisly, and Mike died like that.
These days I still ride 220km a week, but the cattle grids have all been removed, and the only grids I have to fiddle with now are in vacuum tubes, thank Unkel Fate.
Patrick Turner.