I’m at the point of my season where I have come to kinda hate bikes, and because I hate bikes; it’s really hard to bring myself to write about bikes right now. This feeling is nothing new. Like the returning Swallows of Capistrano, or a Lindsay Lohan DUI, my hatred of bikes happens on an annual basis. In fact, if I weren’t lazy, I could run a search on the site and come up with journal entries from around this date from past years and find entries that describe my ennui and cantankerousness. But this is unnecessary, I know what I’m going through, and like all years before I know this feeling will pass.

My cure for this annual melancholy is to stop bikes for a bit and then wait until I cannot stand to stay away any longer. I have yet to take my break this year, but it is coming soon. My body is creaking and making (surprisingly non-gassy) noises that mimic those emanating from and aging battleship, and it will need some time in dry dock to be able to operate correctly. But in the meantime, I decided to race at the final night of the Rockleigh Thursday Night Series.

If you were to make a black concert t-shirt of the Annual Schmalz Race Tour (which would have a bitchin’ illustration on the front of me in a loin cloth astride a liger with a lightning bolt striking my spinning nunchucks), there would be a serious omission on the cities and dates listing on the back if Rockleigh wasn’t represented. It just doesn’t feel like a full season if I don’t do at least one Rockleigh Race. The Rockleigh Race is the bike equivalent of a mom and pop store, you always feel welcome there, it has an easygoing atmosphere, and if you are lucky you can get a hot dog, even if you are holding nunchucks.

My main non-nunchuck reason for racing on Thursday was to support teammate Dylan in his third place in the overall classification. He was three points behind second place and had an opportunity to move up on the leader board, and since I really had nothing else to do on Thursday night other than parenting, I decided to ride out and support him in any way I could. The field for the A race was the largest I have ever seen at Rockleigh. There were 52 racers signed up, which is a far cry from past years when I’ve done the Rockleigh A race with only 10-15 other racers for company. We pushed off for our two neutral laps (Rockleigh rookies many times will jump away on these laps only to be chastised to return to the pack by the race official—it’s a rite of passage), and when the whistle blew, we set about trying to murder each other in an athletic sense.

The pace of the race was very speedy, often stretching out the race into a two hundred meter long conga line of panting, lyrca-clad salesman at a pain trade show. I blame Greg O. He was at the front for the entire race, and if he wasn’t jumping away, he was planning to jump away. To put it bluntly, he really wanted to jump away. This wasn’t really a surprise—that is what Greg does. And so the race rolled along, Greg jumping with other going with him or not. I managed to get my battleship behind to the front a few times to help the team effort.

When we came to the 2 laps to go mark, Greg embarked upon his final jump, which would prove to be very successful. Those of us left behind were left to try and claw Greg back—something we didn’t do. Greg held on to win the race by about 100 meters or so, despite any nunchuck action going on behind him. I consoled myself with a post race hot sausage (not a euphemism) and enjoyed the fact that Dylan held on for third place in the GC. It was a fun race, but not fun enough to make me not hate bikes for the moment.