Things to Keep in Mind for Death By Hills

Greetings, Early Season hardmen/women. DBH is nigh upon us, and while it and the 25% grades it brings may cause pre-cramps in the quads of the un-superior (or "inferior" if you're into the whole brevity thing) it shouldn't cause problems for those of us who have been gettin' totally "swole" all winter long.

Here in the Team Seagal Conference Room, we've been formulating a few... uh... format changes for this year's ride. Despite this not being a timed ride in any way, shape or form, why don't we offer time bonuses for those riders showing up with the right "attributes." For example, be sure to show up early to get weighed in so that you can get your "over-200-lb" time bonus. Additionally, if your name is Nico, or if you have ever offered to translate the most Ancient of Chinese Scrolls with an off-duty cop, you also get a time bonus.

Additionally, if your name is Peat, and your currently have a broken bone in your leg and/or hip area, then you get a big time bonus, regardless of whether or not you are riding. Or, if your name is Bob and you open your beers with a drill, then you get a time bonus. Or if you show up wearing a weight vest to give you the equivalent weight of one of your over-200 heroes.

Big time bonuses if you are show up blasting out your nips, or sick blast-beats like on my new favorite album:

However, if you piss and moan about every hill as you come up to it, then you get a massive time penalty. No wait - just don't come at all, because you'll be missing the point. No time bonuses for post-ride self-congratulatory back-patting, either.

Please remember, be waaaayyyyy more courteous to drivers than you normally would be - since West County doesn't normally have a group this large come through it on open roads - we will be impeding traffic in the middle of the day a lot more than is generally accepted as ok. This means stopping at stoplights, at least yielding at stopsigns, ect. So I'll stress this point: DON'T BE THE DICK WHO FUCKS IT UP FOR EVERYONE.  At the end of the day, I don't want to find myself saying what I heard every day of my childhood: "This is why we can't have nice things, Crotch."

Shit, that's just good life-advice anyway: "Don't be a dick." And I think Nico often offers up his own advice which happens to be the second part of that: "Don't fuck it up."

Don't be a dick and remember what you learned in school:

The hits keep coming. In an Furthering-Education series, we will now provide a how-to video what equipment not to use when attempting to go off-road:


I'd say that the biggest problem that dude will face on tight singletrack, (aside from the monstrous wheelbase, of course) is the ancient Rock Shox SID, which was already the most flexy fork on the market. That is, if it even still works!


-Casey F. Ryback