Yet another thrilling Alleycat

This blog may not be about many things, but I would like to assert that it is about more than just alleycats. Not today though.

Sunday’s WMD Choose Your Own Adventure alleycat was thrown by Jonny of Jonny Cycles fame, and was as excellent as a race could be. For $5 you got a veggie burrito at the start, coffee, beer at the end, and a race. Quite a deal. The theme was a weapons of mass destruction hunt styled upon a Choose Your Own Adventure book. You are the weapons inspector! We were only told the first stop, where we were then given a piece of paper with 3 choices/locations on it , 2 of which were incorrect. This continued for about 6 stops. Each piece of paper would have some discussion about the lead up to the Iraq war with 3 courses of action. At first I wasn’t sure if the correct location was the answer stating what should have happened, or what actually happened. It ended up being what actually happened, with politics and jokes thrown on top of the verbage of course. I’m not the fastest rider, but I ended up getting every answer correct the first time, which was an accomplishment considering most people made a few errors at least (Its funny that I got so many correct considering my politics are very different from most of what the race focused on). There was even a time trial in the middle, unexpectedly no less so as to take advantage of tired legs. I ended up foolishly waiting till the end to get a bunch of WMD components -- an inflated balloon, yellow cake(very tasty), a paper airplane (which needed to be thrown a certain distance), and an aluminum can (ie ‘tube’) – so my correct decision making earlier in the race ended up getting sacrificed towards the end of the race. I did finish in time and made all the stops, which is better than many people did, so I’m happy. Three hours on a track bike is long when you’re racing so I ended up sleeping soon after getting home. I’ll be up north camping this weekend otherwise I’d be at this weekend’s alleycat. Its almost ridiculous, but how can you complain? I’ll make the inevitable dozen or so more races planned before summer drifts away again.

Melissa at allbuttonedupyayportlanditrainstoomuch sent me some excellent b+w pictures of the Uptown Theatre that will soon be hanging on my wall, classing up the sparse dojo I live in.. Hopefully the theatre’s restoration will see fruition. With the rapid gentrification of Uptown I suspect the odds are very good. Thanks again to Melissa for the art – even though I never lived in Uptown I’m a sucker for Chicago history and loved the movie Backdraft more than I should admit.