Vampire Century #2 ("Turd Edition") and Bonus Rant

Greetings, Team Seagal Connoisseurs! The heat is back. And I'm not talking about what we do to female loins. The weather now is routinely in the 90's, and that can be less than fun when going to ride. What better way to crush out mileage when in heat than to ride at night - a page from D-Wayne's book. This saTURDay we will be heading west once the sun goes down - not to return until the sun has come back up.

Here is the rough route that Jerkward spear-headed, being the birthday boy. I know it is just shy of the full 100 miles on paper, but we can easily do a detour SOMEWHERE while riding that will easily get us over the top:
http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/235396753

Currently there is no off-pavement stuff on the route, so skinny tires should probably be fine. However, we're a bunch of jerks so good sTURDy tires (with extra tubes) will benefit you. I know there are gas stations at about mile 20, 35, 50, 60 (QT at the Grants Trail), 74, John's Donuts at about 75 (if he's open still), and by then we'll be in the city and headed through Forest Park. It would be a good idea to bring cash, as not all donut shops take credit card.

We're rolling at 9:30 from Casa del Crotch-O. Makes sure you have lights, because we'll be without the sun for like 6-7 hours.

By the way, You should congratulate Dr. Roland Sallinger for his back-to-back 100 mile MTB races, one of which he crushed the souls of everyone else in his way - 1st Place at ICCP! Lets not forget the 1-2 punch of Team Seagal teams at the same race, manned by the man-trains of Nico and Titty, and Pry0r and Weink0rn. Nice fucking work.



On a totally unrelated note, I have been meaning to get something off of my hairy chest. That is, as a bike mechanic and all around bike enthusiast, the overwhelming propensity for bicycle and bicycle accessory manufacturers to integrate bottle openers into every possible tool they can, is getting old and very overly-kitschy. Look around and you'll notice these things squeezed into everything. And I'm not talking about promotional cheap bottle openers that have the company's logo on it and are given away at trade shows, I'm specifically referring to the adding it onto existing tools that have other purposes. It's like when an entrepreneur thinks he has a great idea by taking an existing idea, and simply adding a clock or a radio into it. Then all the bro-chacho's, when given a gift by all their bro-chacho buddies, will be like "Sweet, brah! This headset press you got me even has a bottle opener on it!"

May I present the evidence:

This is the derailleur hanger on a Santa Cruz Chameleon. The opener is completely useless, unless you went out of your way to purchase an extra one and put it on your keychain.

Not to mention the hundreds and thousands of hits you get if you do a google search.

Because these rotor-truing forks weren't functional enough.

Because Thule didn't realize that their shitty wrench that is included with every hitch rack will never be used by anyone who has any real tools.

This is an Avid bleed block, and you may have missed the bottle opener. Good thing they have it though, because all the time you spend bleeding Avid brakes will require refreshment. Or maybe it is best to drink away your memories of all the times you have to bleed/service Avid brakes.

Felt and Pedro's both make extra cute tools that get mounted onto the water bottle bolts of your bro-tastic singlespeed or fixie-brah, because everyone know that singlespeeders are the hippest and most drunk of all cyclists, right? (This is in addition to Pedro's other bottle openers.)

Pedro's Trixie - and it doesn't even let your put a cage over it.

Felt's tool that comes with the Breed, and is required to remove the rear wheel on account of their shitty dropouts

Don't forget Surly, the most crunch-tastic brand out there. They offer two kitschy ways to remove caps from your beers:

The Tuggnut

The Jethro Tool - marginally better at tightening your nuts than removing your tops.

Park makes a pretty elegant wrench (which I own) and I'd carry it around more if it didn't weigh as much as my entire combo-wrench set (not to mention Park's other bottle opener):

Timbuk2 sews an opener onto their apron, which would be cool, if I didn't actually want to look professional when trying to convince a customer to let me charge them money to install some really expensive and finicky shit on their mega-expensive bike:

Personally, I prefer my Malliard Helicomatic cassette tool, which beat all these other kitschy tools to the integrated-bottle-opener-tool punch by like 35 years:

 And besides, everyone knows that an Shimano SPD pedal works great as a bottle opener, something which can't be said for Crank Bros pedals. (Just another reason to not use 'em.)

See you SaTURDay, and then again the following Sunday for the Team Noah Century.

-Casey F. Ryback