I knew it would be a fun-soaked weekend with Tookie, Big Ed, and Tookie's mom within the first couple of hours. Along the route from Argilite, Kentucky to North Carolina a moment of comic gold presented it's self. While on a pee break for Jeff, who's bladder is the size of something everyone considers small (Randy's junk, Abels' book of sexual escapades, etc.) we ran into a bonafied Appalachian Holler Whore. Now, understand the word is actualy spelled "hollow." We are in hillbilly country though, so it's pronounced "holler." The difference between "holler" and "holler" when describing a place AND a form of hillbilly long-distance communication is still unclear, since they sound exactly the same. I'll try and use them in a sentence..."I was a' hollerin' at ye te cum down outta' the holler fer yer supper!"
Does that help? Me neither...so anyhow, back to the A.H.W. So we stopped for the aforementioned pee break at a road-side gas station. All but me went in and upon returning to the car were approached.
Not more than twenty, she had a dirty pink purse full of cigarettes and no shoes. Silver spray paint glistening in the summer sun on her upper lip, she had been huffing probably just minutes before and was clearly lacking that thing the rest of the country needs to handle the most basic human life functions..brain cells.
She hit up Big Ed to use his cel phone, at which he laughed and said no. When I asked her why she had forty dollars in smokes in her purse but no change for a pay phone, she looked at me for a second...then drooled in the utter confusion of the question. She said she had quit four times while she was pregnant with each of her four kids, but couldn't quit. I wondered if it was the cigarettes she couldn't quit, or the flat-backin' in the back of her pimp's windowless van that was the issue.
Jeff was next, and he was foolish enough to agree.
She would talk on his phone for twenty minutes before we finally had to pull the plug and roll out. We burned the phone at the next rest stop. It smelled of seafood and over-ripened liverwurst and we decided it was for the best. She would provide us with comic relief for the next five hours until reaching our destination in Wilkesboro, NC.
On arrival to the venue, we set up camp right before a huge rain storm hit, but it was a warm night and we slept well.
The race wasn't until noon Saturday, so we slept until 7a.m. and had breakfast. Jeff was nervous and had not done a solo 24hr race for five years. We got his meal plan worked out, got him registered, and began loading several bottles with life saving Amino Vital powder.
It was to be a LeMans start (not Le Mond Start), then off to the races. With 76 solo riders to compete with, it would be a fight to the death. Jeff was really great until about 4 or 5,
when the shock to his system began to force his body to revolt a bit. he was actually in 3rd place at the time, behind the #1 and #2 guys in the 24 hr game being the Santa Cruz Syndicate rider Mark Hendershot, and some guy who often beats him. Jeff would hang on, continuing to race without rest until 3:30am when I asked him to get some sleep. He slept for three needed hours, and awoke in 22nd place. He would climb back in the saddle and slug it out back into the top twenty to finish, turning some of the fastest laps on the board.
Saturday night was much colder than Friday, so I slit open Big Ed's belly like a TaunTaun on the Ice Planet Hoth for Jeff to crawl into and sleep in the warm and inviting body cavity. Knowing that he had stayed with the best and made the top twenty with a job, college, a wife and a daughter was a great experience. This guy was all heart out there!
Big Ed and I tried to heckle him as much as possible to keep his morale low, "hollerin" things at him at each lap like "HeySkippy, that thing got a Hemi?" and "Don't suck, ya pickle smoocher!" Gay digs don't go over well here, where even mountin bikes have gun racks. A girl who was racing solo some time around 2am had blacked out on the bike from exhaustion and fell into a "crick." Apparently, this is some form of hillbilly stream, but it didn't end well and she was removed from the course on a stretcher. Jeff's mom would explain her surgeries to us throughout the night, at one point even removing her shirt to show me the Frankenstein-like slashes the dungeon-master doctors had carved across her. Being completely un-apathetic, we goofed on her as you would all expect. NOBODY gets special treatment here!
Jeff's 29r was great, but needed a new seatpost binder and it was slipping causing major cramps. I cracked my magic toolbox and KAZAM! TWO binders that fit that bike! He was off and running, so i checked over the backup bike. It was an old TREK 3900, and was in bad shape. I replaced the cables, the chain and the middle ring just in time for his next lap. It ran perfect, and no more bike issues happened during the race..not even a flat (thanks to the KENDA KARMA 29r tires)! We began to tear down camp while Tookie was out on his last lap, and by 1 pm we were out. The drive home would be one of the most hilrious few hours I have ever experienced. Many things were discussed...
Event sponsor Burn Energy Drink has Guarana in it because of it's caffeine content. While Big Ed was driving, Jeff read the ingredient label out loud. When he said "Guarana," Big Ed chimed up in his best Billy-Bob accent and asked "Ain't that Guarana one of them Mexican bitin' fish?" to which we exploded with laughter and had to temporarily pull off the highway until we could safely operate the vehicle. That was seriously one of the funniest summbitchin' things I have ever heard. We also discussed the proper spelling of "summbitch." Big Ed was the driver, and we were using Jeff's "TOMTOM" gps unit. While overdosed on Blue Grass music and punchy from laughter, Big Ed broke into song parody with his new hit tune, "TOMTOM Take The Wheel." It was too much to handle, and I blacked out..
We asked important questions like "Why do all Dodge trucks have a decal of Calvin and/or Hobbs pissing on something in the back window?"
We discussed the factual validity of large West Virginia billboards claiming the existance of "Clean Burning Coal."
The next sign we saw was for a law firm that specializes in mesothelioma (lung cancer) cases. That answered the previous question.
We also tested the merits of home schooling on the local populations as we stopped for food/gas. It doesn't work.
All in all it was a great trip. Tookie did great, the company was funny as hell, and the sponsor product worked great. The SIGMA EVO and EVO X lights and batteries did a great job of allowing Jeff to see everything. The Amino Vital product allowed him to NEVER have to stop due to cramps.
The 661 gloves and SUNLINE V1 carbon bars took the sting out of the trail, and the KENDA KARMA's
never flatted or holed. The NOMAD was used to keep the bike in perfect condition...and as a shower after the race! People were super jealous as Jeff bathed in a shower-free environment!
BOTH the sets of XPEDO pedals worked great,
as did his Hydrapak for the HOT as hell day laps. Thanks to all for the great products and to Jeff, Big Ed, and Momma Jeff for their support!
