Why these men belong in the DBD Adventure Society

Some of you no doubt are aware of the obscure, yet compelling Trans-Wisconsin Race. Kershaw and I partook last season and did the 600+ miles in 88 hours. The effort greatly aged my colon plus lead me to contemplate taking up smoking hashish and even to vote for the Tea-Party favorite, Ms. Bachman. In any event this year's version was a bit different in both scope and direction and even more obscure. Thus, as best as I can figure it, only two stalwart brave fellows showed up at the commencement. Namely Jim Reed (of Duluth) and Lindsay Gauld (of Winnipeg); two courageous, yet amicable souls that I am lucky to call friends. I have spoken with Reed on his T.W. exploit and he assured me that a great insight into the nature of one's self was gained and that he too now oddly felt a pang deep within his innards, perhaps the colon? And that he now often thinks of smoking opium in the same manner as Sir Cannon-Doyle did. Also of interest is the ironically strange sense of rage he now feels for any kind of collective labor negotiations (he is a fire-fighter)...But I had not heard from Lindsay so I wrote his faithful Man-servant, the noted nautical archaeologist and all around good-guy, Dr. Andy Lockery, to ascertain the fate of old Lindsay. Below is the full correspondence. I hope you find it as delightfully entertaining as I did and furthermore it is my hope to continue to make the case for both Andy and Lindsay for induction into the DBD:

Hi Charlie,

Great to hear from you. !

The Trans -Wisconsin was interesting in that only Lindsay, and a photographer from Milwaukee showed up . Lindsay raced on his own and did very well . He was averaging about 2 kms an hour faster than last years much longer event, but hit a snag at the northern most point of the race. We think that Joe (the race director) must have used an out of date map to select the route as the trail just disappeared into a bog and despite searching for a way to continue for about an hour and a half the bush was so dense that there was no choice but to take the same trail as he had travelled north on. Lindsay's plan was to retrace his steps south until he crossed an east west trail and then see if he could refind the trail that Joe wanted to use in the race. That didn't happen as Lindsay crashed and the front tire came off the rim . Since it was a "Stans" tire there wasn't enough air in a hand pump to reseat the tire , Lindsay had to put a tube in the tire. This seemed like a good solution, apart from his new, award winning, Lezyne pump eating the core out of his Stans valve. he had other tubes but without a functioning pump he was out of luck. By this time he had wasted about 4 hours , it was the middle of the night , it had been pissing down for six hours with severe thunder and lightning, so he decided to walk about 10 miles to Ashland where he phoned his faithful manservant , who crawled out of bed and drove from Cable to Ashland , picked up a small soggy wizened Hobbit and drove him back to Cable where he arrived at about 3am.

He rode about 500kms and was about 150km from the finish when he quit. It was a good experience as it resulted in some revisions to his pump and also gave him a good feeling about his ability to ride long distances without sleep. Hopefully it will benefit his Iditabike effort next February.

He also had an interesting experience during the first night on the trail. He was planning to catch 2 hours sleep at 2 am but it was raining cats and dogs . He rode on to a place where the trail crossed a gravel road and he could see the reflection of a light about 2 or 3 kms down this road. It turned out to be a Biker bar, [ Harley type of bike] Any way, these large hairy gentlemen were captivated by this hobbit sized, lycra clad, wizened old character , who had been riding his bicycle in the bush , totally on his own, for 18 hours and was still quite chirpy !. They were keen to adopt him as a mascot and plied him with alcohol and Pizza. At one point a Harley drove right into the bar and proceeded to make crop circles on the floor of the bar to the delight of all the occupants including the owner, who advised Lindsay that this was nothing out of the ordinary.

Glad you enjoyed the puns !

Cheers

Andy