Dooooosh… Its a public Holiday R.I.M job coming direct today, both here in the cHub and a few places around the traps, hence the lazy sleep in action. Should there have been a big ride today? Fuck yeah… Should I be flu free a week before Europe? Fuck yeah x 2. However, I’ve been dealt that hand, but as everyone has said: “Better now than in a few weeks!” WORD.
There has also no doubt been under the breath mutterings that I’ve over trained (again), which I’m not sure is the case this time around, its has been a big month, indeed the biggest so far this year. I even managed to climb 7,682m in the month, or in Hawk terms: A pre lunch spin in Niseko.
But what about in Giro terms? Well, on stage 19 they climbed around 5,000m and the next day as that clearly wasn’t punch-you-in-the-face-until-you-bleed-your-own-blood epic enough, another 4,200m of climbing and some gravel fisted in for good measure. Holy FUCK that’s hard. Give it a try, hit those numbers back to back fresh and see how it feels, then extrapolate out the pace and number of days/km’s in they were and taste that epicness on your non-PRO palate.
Indeed, its been a crazy race with everything thrown into it – Controversial wheel changes, crashes taking out GC contenders, insane break aways, the Mortirolo madness with some eastern block gents showing zero class, Bertie’s revenge the next day, the near cracking on the penultimate stage and then the sprinters teams fucking it up last night in Milan with their Joy Rideresque chase. More action than you can shake a blood bag at. But, none of it provided as much entertainment as Fabio Aru’s face.
Whilst legal action awaits those that may infer that certain teams in blue (or anything Russian) were doing the Giro on something other than bread and water, I’m pretty sure that its safe territory to take the piss out of Aru’s facial expressions… Apt given that Cuntador gave him a total facial on the Mortirolo stage. He provided plenty of ammo to a waiting Roman audience:
Charades: “A fish giving cunnilingus?”
Pretty soon a whole industry was born around Aru’s facial expressions, check out Instagram for the ‘Faces of Aru’ account, this is one of my personal favourites:
Funnier than a miraculous recovery in the final week
Speaking of faces, Aru needs to take a leaf out of Diesel’s book and learn what a real race face looks like, which is to say you need to have a Wolverine like appearance and REALLY grit that suffering out:
The photo that made the SRAM warranty department go into spasms
Scene of that suffering is the NRS Battle of the Border stage race held over the weekend and massive respect to Diesel, coming back from a broken collarbone 10 weeks ago to mix it up with the PRO’s, making that shit FULL gas and probably explaining the look on the face above. Talk about harden the fuck up, check out the numbers for the long weekend: Fancy around 500km’s and 5,000m of climbing with all the Aussie PRO’s? Think I was still sucking my thumb 10 weeks after the same injury, so big ups to Diesel for getting amongst it and, more importantly, being sponsored by a Beer company.
Speaking of hardening up, everyone’s favourite social media disaster zone had a bit to say after Roger Federer got antsy about security at the French open recently, who can blame him really, everyone hates teenagers.
Don’t know about you, but if I spent most of my time shitting all over my PR profile by taking photos of my pussy and plastering it all over social media to generate more cringe factor than a Sepp Blatter victory speech, I probably wouldn’t be calling the Fed Express out to harden up… Especially with a fuuuuuucken Emoji thrown in to reinforce the fuckwittery:
“I’m going to fist Coco” – In Spanish
Reports are that Roger has now hired a moto to patrol Stage 4 of the Tour de France, so he can pass on the same advice to Froomie when he’s curled up in the foetal position next to the cobbles. About the only person authorised to make the harden up call in the Badger, arm warmers can get fucked…
Zero fucks given about snow… Or anything
Let’s continue on this celeb fever theme then shall we as we burrow deeper into the RIM. Perfect segway to the latest promo shoot from the Dirty Model, the Hawk seen here head-lining another stage race, where he’s identified as a Ronin to be hunted for shaming many many locals in their own backyard, all before morning tea time as well (blue steel race face to be noted #notaru):
Rough Translation: “1 billion Yen reward to slay the white ghost Hawk who shames us on our own segments, in 2015”
Of course its not all road action over the weekend – What about a back to back ENDURO World Series round over the weekend to smash the legs and bodies, yes, the circus moved on to Scotland where kiwi Justin Leov bagged his first EWS win ever!!! It’s been a long time coming, so awesome to see him claim his first win. Rather than steal someone else’s photo from the round in Scotland, here’s an awesome shot I took in Rotorua at round 1 of Justin hitting a line that claimed a few collarbones…
Might miss out on that job as a Pinkbike Photographer I suspect
Let’s take that theme of shredding on ‘little bikes’ and go nek level with this clip from Whistler, and in some sort of lift junkie haze understand that holy fuck, there IS riding outside the bike park! I’m already gagging like a beaver in a artisanal overpriced wooden furniture store to get back there and this video hasn’t helped in the slightest. It basically confirms next time I’m going to have to take both bikes, which means I will need a bike caddy to avoid an excess baggage fisting:
Speaking of rad trails and places to ride, logging recently munted two of the coolest exit trails in the Whaka forest at Rotorua, NZ. In most places, they would stay munted and everyone would bitch about it for a few years until apathy took over and people moved on. But not in Rots, luckily its got an active club and community, but like all these things – It needs some cash to get it happening.
So, if you’ve ever ridden in Rots and feel guilty for never doing any trail maintenance, here is your chance to unload some of that heavy emotional grief by clicking here to make a donation/pledge for the construction of two new trails, one you can take your partner down as they hate for face because you turned a ’45 minutes couple ride’ into a 4 hour epic and an advanced trail you can run a train on with your crew like you all just got released from prison.
That sounds like a perfect segway to the next item on the RIM schedule – There was a PRO Downhill race on this weekend in Mountain Creek in New York, yes, the same hood where we currently had none other than Das Wolf deployed to. What a coup! Hunt down Aaron Gwin like a prairie dog and get him dishing a fist pump in a DN cap, pretty benign brief if ever there was one. Something clearly got lost in translation, as this is what we go back instead… Yup, makes Jack look like a fucking legend in that whole beanstalk scenario:
Well… I guess its the same helmet and goggles as Gwin…
Random alert – Something popped out of the Dirty Design Lab this week that once again confirmed the Hawk is the Jonathan Ive of kit design, just playing around a bit of course, but stay tuned on what may be coming up in the second half of the year as we combine creative Hawk juice with merchandising fever, all designed to make sure non-cyclist don’t talk to you at BBQ’s:
Embrace it
Finally today, we’re starting a new weekly segment which in a cliche move is called ‘Reader’s wives‘… After reading a recent post about the intricacies of why would you love a cyclist, one DNGC member decided to put that shit to the test, what better way to do that than dress your other half in Dirty kit and spam it out to the world, Bravo! This shot says only one thing: Business time
“Guess where this is going if you take that pic…”
And on that digit, its a wrap for this RIM, don’t expect this gratuitous behaviour next Monday, as I’ll be in MF EUROPE kicking off EuroEnduro on the final build up to Trans Provence. Doooooooosh! Its so close its starting to quiver.
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