My teammate Aaron is a nice person. It’s one of the first words that anyone who knows him will use to describe him. “What’s Aaron like?” “He’s really nice, he rides a white bike, no outstanding warrants we know of…” By contrast, when associates are asked about my personality, they would use the following words to describe me: gassy, spiteful and surprisingly hostile when it comes to henley shirts, the word “vacay” and pleated pants. And this is an accurate assessment of my peccadilloes on their part. But when Aaron gets tagged with the four-letter “n” word, an odd association happens. To be tagged as “nice” in this day and age is akin to being called weak or timid; a nice person is a pushover who takes baths in his underwear and takes his sister to prom. And this is wrong—we should all strive to be nice. Nice is good. And the notion that we would perceive someone who is nice as somehow deficient is more a reflection on us as terrible people, not on the nice person themselves.

But I digress. Last night I made the wise decision to put on my bibs shorts before getting into the car to drive to the race. I was picking up Mihael and Aaron for the drive out to FBF, and after loading them both on the West Side Highway, traffic became as clogged as Chris Christie’s bus after a campaign stop at the Iowa sausage festival. Years of experience has taught me to allot extra time in the travel schedule to FBF on Tuesdays, as we travel through four potential traffic quagmires: the GWB, the West Side, the Battery Tunnel and the Belt Parkway. If three of these stars align, it’s a tense ride to the start—and if all four hazards become ensnarled in traffic (which has never happened)—we start searching for a nice place to have dinner.

We managed to hit three out of the four stars. The West Side, Battery Tunnel and the Belt were all snarled, which necessitated a lot of cursing on the Belt Parkway, a change into racing kit in the driver’s seat and an alleged burst of speed on the FBF runway. After a frenzied bit of urination and a hurried assembly of bikes, we threw our money at the registration table and made it to the race with seconds to spare. Our first race had been won.

There was a stiff wind blowing, creating a headwind between turns three and four. It wasn’t a classic “winning wind” but it could potentially split the race up or discourage a chase from behind. Last night’s race was also a bonus points night, which upped the stakes in the chase for the now un-dirty shirt. Official Denise gave the signal and we pushed off. There was a smallish field, so it made sense to put pressure on the race to see if it would split up, so that’s what we did. For about four laps, we were at the front keeping the pace up and covering any moves up the road.

We heard the bell for the sprint after three laps, and as we came around to the sprint in the headwind, my rear tire rejected the air within its tube as if it were a bearded Brooklynite tasting a Bud Light. I used some sailor words, pulled over and began my walk back to the car. As I made my way down the runway, I saw that Aaron was in a break with two other riders. I screeched some encouragement, and set about changing my flat tire. I can proudly attest that I was able to change the tire before they came around again, and again I shrieked encouragement. I waited to see what the gap to the break was, and it was a large one—probably a whole straightaway. The only thing that would stop the break would be a flat tire or an act of God—both of which happen regularly at FBF, so I kept my fingers crossed.

I rode the course backwards and outside the cones to watch the race. Aaron and company came by in the opposite direction and I shrieked once again. I made it to the finish line as they came to the bell and saw that the group of three was down to two, Aaron and a racer I met later named Jimmy. They had dropped the third rider, and would contest the race between the two of them.

A two-up break is normally where a nice person would be content with finishing second after a hard night’s work, rolling in after meekly attempting a early sprint, but last night Aaron did not finish nicely. He put himself on Jimmy’s wheel after the last corner and bided his time, and when the moment was right, he hit it, put it in the gutter and never looked back. Aaron held it to the line for the win and due to the bonus points, moved back into first place for the series lead.  Nice.