RUMBLE THROUGH THE BRONX 3

June 17, 2006

By Kensyltucky

First off, let me just say I was robbed of best camo by that dude who camouflaged his entire bike. How was I supposed to compete with that? You'd have thought that dressing up as a redneck would blend me into the Bronx PERFECTLY, but I guess that's not what the people wanted. I even cut my hair into a mullet, grew a horrible moustache, and bought a drop dead sexy black mesh tank top (which is actually an ideal thing to ride in on a hot day like that, if you think about it).

Secondly, I'd like to note how Hodari pulled off yet another memorable Rumble Through The Bronx. Unless you live up there, we hardly make it up to the northern borough. Someone's got to organize a Staten Island scramble, just so that borough can get some love. The Bronx though, has more topography than Manhattan could ever show you, making it a challenging race course.

Mike Dee insulted and demoralized 62 riders in front of Yankee Stadium, and with a disgusted "now get out of my face", the race was off. Bikes were unlocked, and we all made our way to Ninja's place, less than two miles away. You'd have thought there'd be several people at his place signing manifests, but you'd be wrong. This either made the first checkpoint absolutely horrible, or nearly perfect. The crush of impatient racers was unbearable. People were shoving to get ahead, accidentally punching you in the face to get their manifest closer to being signed. I finally pleaded with Ninja to sign mine & let me go. I thought the holdup there had blown my whole race for me. What it had done was significantly spread out the pack.

As is typical in any race, Austin & Alfred were long gone. It wasn't until City Island until anyone saw them again. Austin had prepared a bit for the race, but Alfred was doing it cold. Fortunately for the both of them, they agreed to help eachother. It was the smart thing to do, since there isn't anyone faster than either of them.

By the time I hit the second checkpoint, some more racers were in my view, climbing hills, and running down sudden staircases. On the way up to Van Cortland Park, 5 of us had a good paceline going on. Getting out of Van Cortland was one of the most harrowing parts of this race. The fastest way was to take the Moshulu Parkway. It's a highway. Bikes aren't supposed to go on it. Unless you're doing a race like this maybe. So we jumped onto the shoulderless road, hammered up the slight incline as hard as we could, and hoped that the speeding cars saw us in advance. Dan NJ almost forgot to take the exit & nearly ended up staying on the Deegan up to Yonkers. It turns out he wasn't the only person to make that mistake. The Deegan was responsible for a few DNFs at the end of the day.

After the checkpoint at edgecombe park, Scotty took us on a brilliant shortcut through some little league games and across another highway over to White Plains road and down to the Pelham Parkway. Then it was 4 miles on the Pelham out to City Island. At Edgecombe park, I looked at the papers, and realized that the only people ahead of us were Alfred & Austin. Once we began the leg down to the bottom of city island, we saw them heading the other direction together, maybe 5 minutes ahead of us, and on their way to the finish line. It was going to be a sprint for the finish. Lucas, who had been riding with us, took a u-turn to get some footage of the leaders. We later saw him coming back in the other direction again, with another pack, and more footage.

With a mile or so to go, I foolishly tried to sprint out Scotty & Jacob and open up a gap for me to take an indisputible third place. Having burnt up all my energy on that futile mashing, I told them to go for it across the parking lot. We ended up all coming in at almost the same time anyway.

The afterparty was a blast. Roz's cooking is always top-notch, and the Rumble Punch was...something to remember. And then the prizes from Level components & Fetish Bikes were off the hook! Ho gave out something like 5 complete bike frames to the top winners. Lots of respect to Hodari for bringing down the loot for his race. Can't wait to do it again next year.

Check out photos from Demoncats.com

Another Photoset on Shutterfly

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