24 Hours of Attitude Adjustment
by Gary Dudney
 

It's our team's third year at the 24 Hours of Adrenalin mountain bike race at Laguna Seca in Monterey, California, and trouble is brewing. Team Mudmen has always cultivated a studied indifference to the results of the race. We're there for the fun, the camping, the staying up all night. Oh, sure, there's the riding around on mountain bikes, but we consider that something of a necessary evil. But now we have an issue. Snake, one of our very own, actually cares how we're doing in the race.

All the signs are there. Checking his lap times. Warming up. Coming back from his loops all spent. Adjusting the air in his tires. It's sickeningly obvious. Then comes the straw that breaks the camel's back. We catch him in the results tent checking what place we're in. I beg to say something to him, but I'm shouted down by the others. "We're Mudmen, damn it," they tell me. "We don't say things!" So I suck it up and keep quiet.

All I can do to deal with the problem is ride. I put in my ten-mile loops and stew. Between rides, I sit around camp focusing glumly on having fun while I graze from the mound of junk food on the picnic table.

But then Snake comes back from his loop all, "A guy got in my face! A guy wouldn't give me the trail. Some guy threw an elbow." Who are these "guys"? I wonder. Most riders are on teams like ours, enjoying the event, riding for the fun of it. The poor solo riders are mostly quiet, too intent on their own suffering to bother with us. Sure there's some serious competition going on, but out on the trail people are amazingly polite, especially the pros, and they have the most at stake.

I get into my sleeping bag that night all bent out of shape. I really want to tell Snake off. I can imagine myself railing at him, "We've built this team up from nothing! We've done as badly as anybody out here! And now you want to compete! Compete!? The word doesn't exist in our vocabulary!"

When my turn to ride comes up, I'm fast asleep, snuggled so deep in my sleeping bag a spelunker couldn't find me.
"Your loop, Hammer King," a voice somewhere out there in the cold world says.
"Someone else go," I say through my sleeping bag material.
"Your loop, Hammer King. Get up."
"I'm too old."
"We're all too old."
"I have nothing to wear."
"That's a laugh."
Okay, that is a laugh. Since I lack all bike handling skills and since I also lack training, speed and courage, I have to pretty much rely on my wardrobe to make my mark. I get up and pull out a couple of bundles of carefully packed outfits. Hmm…should I go with the jersey with the big Pharoah head on it or the one with the big hairy tarantula? Tough call, but I go with the spider.

My tentmate Blade is on his back snoring loudly. Blade is our ex spook. At least we thought he was our ex spook until he became very hard to find during the Iraq war. Now we think maybe he's our active duty spook. Blade is all very cool about the race. He just rides and chills, which is funny because he's always the most impatient one to get going when we get together for training rides in front of my house. He pops wheelies up and down the street. He bounces off my brick wall. I'll be sitting on my bike trying to adjust my helmet straps, or I'll be stopped cold because one of my gloves has a finger inside out, and he'll have a hissy fit.
"Hold your horses," I tell him.
"Get your shit together," he'll suggest helpfully.
I pull on my spider jersey and emerge from the tent all resplendent in my get up. Out by the campfire, Slug is holding a charcoalized hotdog over the flame.
"It's two o'clock in the morning," I point out.
Slug looks up at me. "I got hungry." He's sitting on the wheel of his bike, which is lying next to the fire in the dirt.
"You're bending your spokes, Slug."
"Let 'em bend."
Slug is our clean up hitter. That is, he rides last because he's not too extremely fast. His training has consisted mostly of sitting on his couch and eating potato chips. We think he keeps his excuses for not riding on a Rolodex so he can just flip to the next one when we call.

Swede, the heart and soul of our team, volunteers to take me down to the transition area. He's been up all night fiddling with our bikes (a good thing in my case since I can barely change a flat). Swede, who coincidentally is from Sweden, can outride all of us, but you never hear him say a thing about it. He's not looking at lap times or making a fuss about how fast or slow anybody goes. He could fit into a much better team but he seems happy with us. "We have just fun, right?" he always says. I've been telling him about what is happening with Snake but he just puts me off. "It's cold," he says.
"You mean, 'It's cool,' right?"
"Yes, it's cool."
I put on my helmet and gloves. The gloves are still damp from my last ride. We swing over to the table where my lights are charging up. To get there we have to cross a section of the course that cuts directly through the camping area. Riders flash by periodically, lights glaring, their knobby tires ripping at the asphalt. They sound like spaceships re-entering the atmosphere.
Swede connects up my lights for me. I walk the bike over to the transition area. Star Wars is playing on an enormous screen, blips and zings blaring out of a bank of speakers. A few people are sprawled on the grass watching, but mostly people are focused on the mad crush in the transition tent. Timekeepers are marking down splits on huge sheets of paper as riders leap off their bikes and run into the tent like they were announcing Armageddon, "TWENTY-EIGHT IN! TWENTY-EIGHT IN!" The timekeeper nods nonchalantly.
I try to stay calm by busying myself with a cup of sports drink, but all the jumpy riders waiting to go out are hyping me up. I decide it is time to recite the Mudmen creed, which I wrote myself:

"We're the Mudmen, the mighty Mudmen,
Suckin' down energy gel.
We ride the night on our pricey bikes.
We're all heart and we never fail.

Bound by mud and bound by blood,
We, uh, shred the gnarly trail.
Beneath the duds and the built up crud,
We're all heart and we never fail."

"Better you not say this thing," Swede says to me, looking around to see if anybody is listening.
"Okey-dokey, Swede," I say.
Suddenly here comes Snake, our misguided Mudman, tearing around the last corner of the course. He's out of his saddle, jerking his bike back and forth, and pumping furiously trying to beat the rider in front of him to the tent. A volunteer has to practically throw herself across Snake's path to get him to dismount before he takes out half the timekeepers. Even Swede looks rattled by this blatant display of machismo.

Snake extracts our baton from underneath the leg of his bike shorts and flips it to me with a sneer. "I could have beat that guy," he snarls.

I trot out to the bike racks. I momentarily dance around in circles when I can't pick my bike out of the jumble of identical bikes. I feel Snake's eyes bore into my back as I lose time. I find the bike, stow the baton in my seatpack, switch on all my lights, and hustle out of the transition area.

At Laguna Seca, just fifty yards from where the loop starts, it's necessary to get off the bike and run it over a footbridge. Riding down the steps of this bridge on the return is something of a gut check. On my first try, I bounced the handlebars of my bike up on the handrail and rode that to a momentous crash at the bottom of the steps. This was quite discouraging. Then some saint told me that riding the hard-edged steps could bend a rim. Now I run my bike down the steps and coolly tell people, "Oh, yeah, man. You know you can bend a rim riding those steps."

Laguna sits down in a bowl so after the bridge it's necessary to climb out to the rest of the course. I get out of my saddle and labor up the bumpy trail. Soon I'm riding free through grassy fields studded with oak trees under a blanket of stars. I quit thinking about Snake and just cruise along enjoying the cool night air and watching the trail rush by under my lights. I marvel in the weird sensation of being up in the middle of the night riding full tilt on a mountain bike.

My loop does not go by without mishap. I work my way down one series of tight switchbacks toward a table where volunteers are checking numbers and directing riders down the next trail. "Number 313," I yell just as I lose traction trying to make the turn. I slide directly under the table, bike and all. The volunteers scatter to save themselves. I pop up and run my bike the hell out of there. "I'm still 313," I yell back over my shoulder as I jump back on and disappear down the trail.

On my way back to Laguna, going up an infamous two mile stretch of the course called "The Grind," I find I'm catching the rider in front of me. A small number on the back of his seat identifies him as a solo rider. His body language as he slumps over his bike just screams pain and exhaustion. Before I reach him, though, another rider having no trouble with the uphill breezes by me and pulls up next to the solo guy. They talk for a minute and then I see the faster rider's hand extend out and come to rest on the small of the solo rider's back. He's helping the guy out, giving him a push up the hill.

Eventually, I make it back to the transition tent, minus a little blood. For me, any lap without a mechanical is a good lap. It takes me awhile to find the baton in my seatpack. It's lost among old energy bar wrappers and disintegrated tire tube boxes. Slug is waiting, ready to go. He's already beet red from the effort of…what?...walking his bike over here? I give him the baton and he lumbers off toward the bike rakes.

The moments after a night loop are magical. I float along in an easy gear through a quiet camp. Muffled voices issue from a few tents. A fire crackles here and there. On the hillside above me, lights appear from time to time and zigzag down the hill.

I roll into camp. My brakes emit a high pitched squeal as I stop. I duck into the tent. "We own the night, man!" I yell.
"Get the hell out of here, you idiot. Your tent is over there," comes the reply.
I go find the correct tent. "We own the night, man!" I yell.
"It's not my turn, you idiot. Go find Swede."
Swede is huddled with Snake next to the dying embers of the fire. It's looks like they're having a heart to heart. "How did lap go?" Swede asks.
"Cleaned it," I say in my best mountain bike lingo shorthand.
"I am telling to Snake," Swede looks up at me and telecasts the biggest secret wink I have ever seen in my life, "how I am thinking. He might like solo riding next year instead of bad team."
"Oh, yeah," I say, catching on immediately. "Those solo guys look like they're having all the fun."
"What about the team?" Snake asks.
"Don't worry. Mudmen okay. It's cold," Swede says. "We can find submarine for you."
"Substitute," I suggest.

Snake kicks at the edge of the coals. "Yeah. I'll probably do it," he says finally.
Soon I'm burrowing back into my sleeping bag with a lightened heart. It appears that the Mudmen will be restored to their rightful position in the Pantheon of totally indifferent mountain bike teams. We will ride oblivious to the tyranny of lap times and the overlordship of the results tent. We may never place in the top half of the field but we will enjoy ourselves and eat heartily.

Oh, yes, and do the thing we really came to do-ride our bikes around in the moonlight.