There was absolutely nothing exceptional about last night’s race at FBF, and that was just fine with me. After four consecutive flats in pinned competitions (with three straight flats at FBF), I was just glad to be able to complete all of the laps on offer from the race promoter. My string of bad luck seems to have dissipated, and luckily I was able to torture myself for the full duration of last night’s FBF race. Lucky me.

I would now like to thank my really fat tires for helping me complete all of the laps of the race. After four flats in a three week period, I became desperate. And in my desperation, I turned to the internet, and after watching 2,876 cat videos, the answer came to me—get really fat tires. Which is what I did. Most people don’t know that there are 28mm tubeless tires out there, but they are available. Hutchinson makes a 28mm tubeless tire call the Secteur, which I believe they developed for light farming. This makes them perfect for racing at FBF. I ordered myself one (my front tire [25mm] is still pretty fresh, and I buy all of my own damn stuff, so I’m not replacing a brand new tire—who am I, Andy Shen?) and had it mounted. My mechanic expressed doubts about whether my corpulent tire would actually fit into my frame, but luckily it did fit—if only just barely. See photo below for frame clearance tightness, and yes, I am aware that I run the risk of catching something in there, thank you everyone for that bit of advice.

But I digress. Fat tire mounted, I carpooled to FBF with Mike B whilst basting in Motley Crue’s finest offerings. Because I rode in the rain for 7 goddam hours at the NYGF, I was still feeling the lingering effects of a cold. Although I was well past the "feeling bad" stage, I could still feel that my pH was off a bit, but there’s no other way to start racing again other than to start racing again. And because I am a delusional pretend bike racer, I decided to race again.

That was essentially the most momentous decision of the evening. After warming up and gleefully discovering that the FBF fairy (probably the Parks Service) had patched some of the more egregious craters on the source, I lined up with my compatriots in the 1/2/3 race for my anticipated dose of pain and agony. Our speed ranged from "fast" to "not as fast", but there were no FBF-esque moments of "Christ, I may die doing this" panic. Which was good, because I was still smuggling some head mucous.

My mucous and I raced away. There were many splits, and we BHs tried to be in them whenever possible. Alas, the race wasn’t meant to split up last night and after we hit the bell signaling that there was one lap to go, there was a mini split off the front. I went to the front of the race, squished the hopes of those off the front and then pulled my parachute. Teammate Ale finished a fine third on the night and I finally rolled across the finish line at FBF during the 2013 season, all in all, a successful night.