Toscani's Super Secret DBH Recon Century

Greetings, Soldiers of the Jerk Army! It's that time of year, the time betwixt the fat holidays, and the warming-weather. The time of year when some people cry themselves into riding their train0r, whilst others will get buff at the gym, and completely forget about their bike. Others still, will press on, getting ever more hardened, through a process of cold forging. And, as we know from the back of Nico's Nico Toscani action figure blister package, "hardened" can be defined as

1. Strengthening - having been made harder or stronger 2. toughened by experience - sufficiently experienced, to have become unconcerned about something that most would find unpleasant or difficult.

With this ultimate goal in mind, Nico had the idea to achieve heinous (rhymes with anus) centuriousity this past Sunday. The weather called for the day to becoming slowly warmer, however this would be without the help of the sun. Unperturbed, our "murder" was to meet at Casa del Toscani at 0830 hours - a murder consisting of Orin "Arm Baby" Boyd, Samuel "Concave Braking Surfaces" Axel, Harlan "Reflection of Jesus" Banks, Nico "One Chainring" Toscani, and myself, Casey "Why Did I Remove My Fenders" Ryback. Manifest Destiny was the call of the day, as we have been destined to ride west, in order to do recon on the region that we'd be assaulting once again in a month. In doing so, we realized that the tailwind from the southeast would be helping us keep a full head of steam on the way out, but would then leave a steamer the size of a head on top of our attempts to go full steam once we turned back.

We set sail, taking a sneaky route out to Creve Coeur Lake, and realized that this is pretty much what the day would look like the whole time:

With conditions like this, I was having flashbacks to the rainy years of the Rim Wrecker race at Council Bluff, where at the end, no one had any brake pads left at all.

Going through the flats of Creve Coeur, the wind was vicious enough to have my 215 lb ass wishing for the first big hill - Hog Hollow. Of course, that hill's wrist was snapped before we even started the fucking ride. My HR didn't even get over 170. Continuing our sneaky path, we entered onto the old Marquette Ride route, wherebouts we ascended Shepard, and had to make a quick guerilla-style photo attack of the snake mailbox:

As we were clipping back into to start pedaling, the front door cracked open just enough for the ten year old kid who lives there to finally get the chance to curse in public, as he yelled out "Get the fuck away from my mailbox!" immediately followed by the door slamming shut again. As you might expect, we were as intimidated as you could possibly be from a 10 year old who hasn't hit puberty.

Circling around, and giving the middle finger to Bartizan as we passed by, we continued up, down, and around, finally stopping for provisions at the Six Flags Gas Station. Apple turnovers, creme-filled donuts, and McDoubles never tasted so good. Re-boarding our man-train, we were freezing cold, so we took refuge on the slopes of the Allenton Loop. As Mr. Axel can atest, it warmed us up quite quickly. Curving around and slogging up Alt Road, our legs were reminding us how many miles we had traveled already. No matter, as we used our minds to snap the wrists of the wills of our legs, and proceeded to destroy that hill. Not long after, we found ourselves on Woods Road, a glorious stretch of asphalt. We passed by an amazing statue that had me thinking "If I had wings I would fly, let me contemplate..."

Not long up that climb, we got to see just how much stronger of a climb Mr. Banks is when he has a gigantic ice boner. However, photographic evidence of this currently only exists in my brain - and until we can transfer those images to a printer, we may never be able to re-experience it. Miles ticked by, through the stop-sign farm that is known as Hutchinson Road, and from there Clayton was our ticket back. Mr. Axel hit the target with his banana peel:

Around this time, Army Baby started to become severely afflicted with some severe pains in his knee. I was surprised, because I had figured that if he were to develop some aches, cramps or something like that, it would have been urethra cramps, as both he and Snurb were pissing approximately every 7 to 8 minutes. It had me wondering if they had gone into the doctor for the stomach-stapling surgery, but the doctor fucked up and accidentally stapled their bladders instead, leaving them with bladders the size of a hot mountain tip.

Snurb, Axel and Tr0rscr0rnr0rz0rz kept their pace choo-choo-ing home, while LegTitty and I rolled back in a more Snoop-esque way - laid back. Lack back, that is, until, at the intersection of Hanley and Clayton, we looked to our left and were amazed to see see a navy blue Chevy Malibu being driven by an actual, 6 foot tall penis. Literally, an anatomically correct penis, shriveled balls, curly pubes and all. It was disproportionately short for how wide it was, and sitting kind of slumped over, not fully erect like a properly-functioning penis would be. Regardless, it was big enough to drive a car, arms and all. It managed to extend one of it's penis-fingers over at us, telling us that we were number one, as the other penis-hand honked the horn. I tried to accelerate, as I wanted a second look at that man-sized penis that somehow was piloting this car, with it's two shorter, more limp-looking penis friends in the passenger seats. My tired legs deflated my sprinting attempt, so I gave up. Much to my delight, I saw that Malibu less than 1/2 mile down the road, stopped in the middle of the driving lane, blocking traffic (totally something that a penis would do if it were driving a car) with it's windows down, waiting for me. That penis could drive AND talk! It told me, quite emphatically, to Fuck off, because I was on a bike and that I was a pussy. I asked that penis to get out of the car so it could tell me that face to... shaft, but it declined. I guess it wasn't motivated enough, so I encouraged it again to get out of the vehicle, and I was a little louder this time, thinking maybe it had some fumunda cheese in it's penis-ears. But I can only assume that since it was so slumped over in the seat, perhaps it couldn't even stand full upright - otherwise known as impotent. It then turned into a neighborhood - the whole incident just leaving me to believe that penis to be just a poorly functioning DICK.

I was glad to hit the home stretch, passed the State Hospital, which was in an interesting state of fog - it kind of summarizes the day:

Quite exciting, was our Westerly Recon. We learned many things, and are now getting excited for Death By Hills, which we'll say is happening on the same days as Froze Toes. The hills will be relentless, and so I have an image for you to burn into your memory for when your valiantly ascending the hills - Tommy "The French Tickler" Voeckler:

-Casey F. Ryback