You’ll thank me all for nothing at all/Legends

Drunk Benny says I must write. Drunk Benny says I must start my post off with a photo of this guy. Hey, I don’t make the rules…. So here he is.

Tony Brown apparently, according to Benny, is a Legend. Tony Brown, according to Wikipedia was the agriculture minister for the Isle of White(sic), or some shit. Anyhoo.

I was going to talk about my last outing in the short course of the winter series last weekend and all, but you can learn about that over here if you want to (and other cutting edge things such as new fashion trends). However, the more I thought about the idea more it just seemed lazy. So then I got thinking about legends (Thanks Drunk Benny!!). If  Benny gets Tony Brown  then I would like to introduce you all to someone whom, the more I think about it, qualifies as a legend. Someone whom, whilst very new to our fair sport (art) fairly glows incandescently with his love for the two wheeled, rigid, and single. The man has gumption and determination in spades.

Everyone, Say hi to my Dad. Keith.

Some background: Now, brother K up top here decided to re enter the bicycling world after some 17 years off. Tipping the scales at well over a metric 100, 60 years old and with little to no experience riding off road. That was back in April. Dad rode with me twice down here at Whakarewarewa before deciding to enter all three of the long course Enduros for the ’09 season with a voucher he scored by winning the 20km SS cat at the Highlander (I highly recommend the long course. Well worth the trip over) on only his second time off road on an SS !!( A hoopty ass, ghetto home job, which he totalled on Billy T). Long story short it’s now July and he’s two races into the series. The fitness increase and weight loss has been sustained and impressive. Every time the man goes out on into the forest astride  his new ride,”Penny” (29er, SS, rigid) I’m sure he gets a year younger, several degrees calmer,confident and more humble. He’s bullheadedly gone out (again with little to no off road chops) and done both the long course enduros so far and is all hyped with a view to the third one, 50km of single track at Whakarewarewa in August. It’s an amazing (and reassuring) sight to see him come over the finish line and have him tell you, with a slightly glazed expression that he fell off (which he does a bit of) and landed on his Gels 5km in exploding the bottle that they were in thus forcing him to either lick his thighs or go without. It’s stunning, that this quiet, methodical and historically risk averse man will now calmly explain over dinner “I thought to myself when I came off, Ah, I’m on my head again. I knew that because my feet were above me, in the air”, smile and then keep eating. I guess why I’m around to thinking that my Dad is a legend is he’s just getting out there and doing it, sure, it nearly kills him and he hasn’t been DFL but he’s been close, but it doesn’t matter to him in the slightest. It’s a million miles away from my experience of late (worrying about not training enough, not this not that etc etc) and as loath as I am to say it, I could learn something from his “just get out there and do it” attitude. It’s still nerve wracking riding events with him, as I’m in front a bunch going “ah, will he pull that off?will this hurt him? Have I killed my Dad?”. But you know what? he’s made it through every time.

Thanks to his love of bikes Dad’s life has (more than likely) been lengthened and the quality vastly improved. It’s given us something of interest in common (no mean feat) and strenghtened our at times distant relationship. It’s a great thing.  To paraphrase Steve Smith, my Dad can ride a bike pretty well, but is slow. However I’d rather spend three hours in the woods with him, tooling around and learning about stuff (like how to enjoy riding a bike again) and talking, than I would “Getting rad” or knocking out hot laps by my self on some endless hampster wheel training ride. So, here’s to my Dad and his legendary (and at times quixotic) pursuit of the SS dream. Ride on, old boy! Ride on.