Hey, Battley Harley

Why don't you have this on the backs of your bibs? I don't understand.


77 miles with some of the GW boys this morning. Lying completely still and listening to Stuntin like Mufasa, some sort of mashed potato something or other by El Ten Eleven and Li'l Wayne. El Ten Eleven is playing Tuesday night in Arlington(wtf? come to h st).

CX Porn

These pictures are beautiful. Many thanks to the small hipster in my life who stumbled upon them.


Did you see that the CX Worlds are coming to Lousville in 2013? Pretty effing exciting.

No song this time. Just go see of Montreal the next time you're within 100 miles of a show. They were good ol' fashioned awesome at 930 last night. Who needs a hype man when you've got a HYPE TIGER?

Matt & Kim, Major Lazer, and Phoenix, oh my!

It was a big weekend for awesome music in DC. Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head is still going strong in their June Friday night residency at DC9, Bacardi put on a free show at Rock n Roll Hotel Saturday night, and Camera Obscura played the 9:30 club Sunday night while Phoenix played RnR. I made it to the Bacardi show (Matt & Kim and Major Lazer) Saturday and the Phoenix show Sunday. I booked a room at the RnR Hotel Saturday night to cut down on travel time.

Hot, Sweaty, Smiley Dance Party with Matt & Kim

I want you to think back to all the shows you’ve seen in small clubs. Remember them? Don’t forget when you saw the Kings of Leon under their original name, Three Brothers and a Cousin from Hendersonville. Ok, good. Now think about the most fun of all those shows. Got it? Now, tally up all of the smile-hours emitted by the audience during that show. Get out your times tables, I’ll wait. Perfect. Take that number and multiply it by two. That’s how much Matt Johnson and Kim Schilfino smiled during their set at the Rock n Roll Hotel Saturday night.

In addition to being smiling goons, Matt & Kim are very proficient, energetic, personable musicians and performers. Matt told a story about the roots of the Rock n Roll Hotel–that it had most recently been a funeral home–and suggested that they change the name to Rock n Roll Funeral Home. Sounds pretty swish if you ask me.

Matt & Kim

Kim is all smiles, all the time

Moral of the story: Matt & Kim put on an awesome show and you should go see them if you every have the chance. No exceptions.

Bacardi B-Live Tour

So I mentioned M&K and Major Lazer were part of a Bacardi tour… the only thing I’ll say about this part of the night is that the mixologists Bacardi makes you wait 20 minutes for are worth it. Holy shit. Bell peppers, pineapple, cilantro, honey, jalapeno, blood orange soda, and rum makes a delicious cocktail.

Guns Don’t Kill People, LAZERS DO!

Major Lazer are Diplo and Switch, two British DJs who had nothing better to do with their summer than pretend to be a Reggaeton dance group. I used to pretend to be a DJ (look for dj sun on the imadj record label. you won’t find anything), so I dig live DJ sets. It was cool when they would get into songs that were recognizable from their album, but it was basically just a dark, sweaty, hip hop dance party with a potentially-Jamaican emcee. The visual entertainment was provided by two dancers (I’ll imagine they’re Jamaican too) and some drunk and suggestable audience members. Their photos are omitted, just in case.

Diplo and Switch are behind that big boombox. Promise.

Dancers. Presumably Jamaican.

Phoenix–More than just a Dot on the Map in Arizona

Phoenix are a 6-piece French band out of Versailles that the Decider calls the “un-French French band.” I don’t know what that means.

The first thing I’ll say about Phoenix is they’re all excellent musicians. Thomas Mars sounds live exactly like he sounds on studio albums. It’s really remarkable. I’m not sure if vox just generally go uncorrected with this hipster music (Matt sounded pretty spot-on Saturday), but Mars has the kind of voice that sounds like it’s totally uneffected by seasonal allergies. So clear. All said, good show, would’ve liked to have been a little better versed in their catalogue, but not knowing songs doesn’t really take away from a great performance.

Phoenix were more interested in seeing us than in us seeing them.

If anyone when to see Camera Obscura Sunday night, I’d love to hear how the show was. Listening to French Navy for posterity's sake.

Murad first place (minus 500m)

I really like racing bikes. Training hurts and cuts into my DC socialite schedule. Racing hurts and makes me drive more than I want. Still, I really like racing bikes.

When I rolled into the parking lot in Poolesville this morning, I panicked that I had forgotten my cross bike. That "parking lot" would make for a fun, fast cyclocross course. Focus, Rich, you're writing about a road race.

The Men's 5 race was a smallish field--the final results showed 30 guys. Right off the bat, I felt good about my chances at a top 25 finish. My last two weeks of training were pretty shite what with the rain and all, so top 25 was about all I was expecting. I had a good ride with the group over at HP Thursday night, so I knew I had a little gas in my tank, but how much remained to be seen.

I played yo-yo on the back of the field for the first two eight-mile laps before I decided that was just too much work. On the long back side of the course, I moved up to about eighth wheel. Over the next ten miles, I stayed in the front third of the pack and pulling the group for about a mile. Most importantly, I let off the throttle before I popped. Lesson learned.

So I wheelsurfed around a bit until mile 35 or so, when I jumped up to second wheel. I shared it with another guy--I don't remember what team--and we exchanged a couple of friendly shoulder bumps while we waited for a move to go. In retrospect, I should have tried to bring him with me on my attack. With about 2500m to go, I saw an NCVC guy approach on our right, and he looked strong. Here is my chance, I think. I knew I didn't have enough gas to solo for the win, but I thought if I could trade pulls with one or two other guys, I could stick away from the pack. So I lurch over towards the NCVC guy, and...

me: You wanna have a go? Trade pulls?
NCVC guy: [pause] Uh... yeah, sure.

Great. So I turn on the jets for about 3 seconds and look over my shoulder to make sure I've brought him with me and no one else. Let me tell you how disappointing seeing no one on my wheel was: very. Very disappointing. So I'm all alone and I've got about three seconds on the field with 1500m to go. Well shit, at this point, I may as well make like Andy Schleck at Liege-Bastogne-Liege and just win the race myself. That plan was working swimmingly until I got swarmed with 500m to go. Dammit. So I settled for a 16th place finish with the pack, a pair of burning quads, and a 7 hour traffic-assisted drive to the Outer Banks to round out my Sunday.

I'm at the beach, so of course I'm listening to Girls by the Beastie Boys.

In other news, I went to see a show last week at DC9... 2AM Club. Look 'em up and get on the bandwagon now. It will be full soon enough.

There's a race in my neighborhood!!!

When I got the email last week about Murad being postponed, I was pretty bummed. It was the last race on my schedule for quite a while, and I'm going to be in the Outer Banks the weekend it'll be run. In order to salvage my Fri-Sun three day weekend, I made the executive decision to go to the family condo in Ocean City. That town's so redneck and I love it. So I'm on the beach Saturday morning, reading my book, getting gawked at by the beach rentals girl (yes, my legs are smoother than yours, what of it?), and my phone rings. Apparently just about everybody in the Men's 5 for the RFK Crit canceled, and a spot opened up for me, so I knocked the sand out of my ears and drove back to DC.

The first thing I'll say about the RFK Crit is I loved being able to ride to a race. It was awesome. I knew my body might not be in tip-top, given my Friday beach beer consumption, so I wasn't expecting a big result. The 5 race was smallish—I think 37 starters. Having ridden in the RFK parking lot a few times before, I knew that the wind might be strong enough to allow gaps to develop and/or stick. If it's sunny and still everywhere else in DC, it's windy by RFK. If it's overcast and windy everywhere else in DC, it's a damn typhoon at RFK.

Around five miles in, I decided to give it a go at creating a break—or at least string the group out enough to drop some riders. I spread it out, but I missed two great opportunities to break away from the group because of some sketchy cornering on my part. Apparently, I was going through the turns faster than my level of focus really allowed. In any case, I stayed at the front for about another mile and a half before I was ready to peel off. The guy on second wheel took my move to the side of the course as another breakaway attempt and jumped over to the gutter with me. Another half a mile later, I popped and was swarmed by Evolution guys. I tried to hang on to the back of the group and eventually dropped off. Many thanks to the unattached guy in the yellow jersey (bib 611 I think) for trying to pull me back in.

I'm glad to have pulled for a couple miles, and I can cross leading a race off my list, but I need to work on my recovery time and creating space for myself when I'm trying to break away from the field. It's a good thing my legs still have a lot of races left in them. I came back to RFK for the Pro/1/2 race in the afternoon. Those guys are fast (and maybe more importantly) mostly way older than I am. Maybe some day I'll be able to pull with the big boys. The picture is of one of the back-to-back-to-back primes in the second half of the race.

Listening to everything on Tally Hall's myspace page—saw them last week at DC9 and they put on a solid show, reading hipsternascar.com, and watching every stage of the Giro for free on universalsports.com.

Bunny Flop

You can't be mad at your bike mechanic for not having your bike ready to go when he's left town because of a death in the family. Or you can, but then you'd just be an asshole.

So I'm not racing the Bunny Hop tomorrow, so any of you who were planning to come with me on my 22 min break will just have to go it alone. But I'm taking what the boys from Monty Python always say and looking at the bright side of life. Now I can a) nap before I go to PB&J tonight, b) drink beers at PB&J tonight, and c) take my time finishing my paper tomorrow.

To those of you who are racing: good luck and you'll finish better if you stay upright. Allez.

Oh well. Just need to bust my ass to be ready for the Big 'Mater Omnium next weekend.

Listening to Amsterdam by Peter Bjorn & John to get my mind right.