I don't think it registered that someone was standing there shooting until I was right on top of him this past weekend. I don't know how Benji does it, it is almost like he's everywhere at once on the course. You see him from the corner of your eye shooting out between the trees, and maybe next time he's standing in the middle of the baseball field, and then, there he is bam! with a camera in your face.
This is not his regularly scheduled PROgraming, but you know, when you look that good, how can you resist? Especially when you can shoot it in slo-mo so that you have all that jiggly motion going on. Whew, lookin good J. Apparently he is really out there shooting some video for those crazy cats over at Signal Cycles. God damn, they are doing it so right. Keep it up.
And thanks to Kyle over at Trackosaurus for jamming that video up t-minus five minutes after it went live. Talk about Plugged in.
So, yeah, back in the real world we did some racing this past weekend.
Day One: Steilacoom, Washington. MFG Series (Mud Fun Gears?, Mother Fucking Good?)
First up was our man Zac Daab's race outside of Seattle. Great race, super fast. The thing that struck me about this race was the lack of both participants and spectators. Someone, I think it might have been The Godfather himself (ZD) said that this was because no one out here on the West Coast wants to race on Saturdays. "Excuse me?" Was my response. "Well, you know, people have families and whatnot." Yeah Cyclocross Familes.
(or maybe they knew naked man was going to be there, and were avoiding that?)The second reason (excuse) given was that people didn't want to drive a long distace to race. I didn't know if he meant the 25 minutes from Seattle or the 2.5 hours from Portland. Not the 6 hours to Philadelphia or the 10 hours to Reston, VA, or even the 4 to Maine. Excuse number two doesn't seem to be cutting it either. Strange. Luckily these guys made the trip.
I have already heard it too. The chatter this week is whether or not to do a mountain bike ride or a Gourmet Century on Saturday. I mean I guess I would opt for the Gourmet Century, being one that is easily swayed by food.
I almost forgot. Pal Hahn Rossman was there too. I must admit that I have never seen him in his race kit before. Only Rapha gear. It was fun to see him there though and I spent a good amount of time trying to convince him that he should actually race instead of just sit there and drink beer (little joke.) His response? As you can see from the below photo was one of Shame. Rightfully so. Sweet Focus bikes though.
We also stole something called the Grail that day. No idea what it really means to the good people of Portland and the so-so people of Seattle, but when I saw Slate running across the parking lot dragging what looked to be a retarded beer keg and shouting
"Start the van, we gotta Go NOW!"
Well, then I do as I'm told. A woman dove in the passenger side door and onto Dylan's lap claiming that she wanted to have his children and dedicate her life to making his great website even greater. But, alas, we must stay true to the grail so we dumped her into the street and spun gravel into her face. And that is when I got my first look at it. What a sight. And then things started to get weird.
Close your eyes if you don't want to see it.....
Ok, that's good.
Brace yourself....
