How to Tell if the Dickey Brothers Have Been to Your Town
1. The pavement is badly stained.
2. An explosion has closed your local bike shop.
3. There is a scent of burning aluminum emanating from the forest.
4. You are connected to an IV and a bag of saline but don't know how it got there.
5. You finished further down in the ranks at your favorite race than expected and the race organizer underestimated how much beer to provide.
The Dickey Brothers, Happy Fun Ball and Jonny One Thumb, gleefully wreak havoc upon western civilization wherever they land. It's like there's four of them such is their power. A lot of high-octane sugar burning wattage coming from them. Legend has it they were a combined 37 pounds at birth and cooled down on rollers in the delivery room after exiting the womb.
Race report from Breckenridge Firecracker 50 via HFB:
Johnny One Thumb and Happy Fun Ball headed to Colorado for their sister’s wedding and they tricked their families into going early so they could both ride in Breckenridge for a week and hit up the Firecracker 50 Fourth of July race. Breck is the home of trails that make you giggle like a schoolgirl. It did not disappoint.
HFB’s last trip to Breck was 5 years ago when he was shamed by the 60+ year old class at the Breck 100. Despite the beat-down those old guys put on him, the trails were awesome. Fast forward to 2017 and a ton of new trail work has gone in, including a 1 mile long flow trail that drops into the center of Breck and a new bike park/jump trail/pumptrack, in addition to miles of new singletrack. All the riding fun you could have outside your door, plus no shuttle time back home to get started with beer and whiskey.
The riding before the race was incredible, as usual. It was hard to back it down to save anything for the race, but just like the times before Leadville 100 and Breck 100, no legs were saved. Lots of climbing, lots of singletrack and all fun.The Firecracker 50 is a 2x lap event, starting with the 4th of July parade on Main St. in Breck and immediately going uphill for nearly 6 miles on Boreas Pass. HFB was blown out the back of the 40+ age group field just half a mile into the first climb. He wished he had brought his ESF flask to dull the pain.
Despite the first kick in the teeth, the course turned into mostly fun singletrack for most of the remainder of the day. Little French Gulch was nearly rideable. The snow piles on the side of the course looked good for a nap on the second lap.
Things got blurry after that. Little French Gulch on lap two turned into a ride too far for HFB. He appreciated the encouragement of the 66 year old singlespeed lady (everyone had their age written on their calf) as she rode by him, but the allure of a nap in the snow was a bit much and he slowed to walking 5 steps and taking a long break. JOT’s ingestion of rocket fuel a/k/a Five Hour Energy chased by two Honey Stinger waffles turned out to be the right call and he turned in his second lap in nearly the first time as the first lap. Riding a guy with an Ironman calf tattoo off his wheel was also significantly motivating.
HFB decided that slow was the order of the day and lost nearly an hour in lap two and still crashed, wrecking his crotch in the process. Falling on your saddle when it’s sideways is as good as a kick in the balls, with the same resulting trauma. It puts having blue balls to shame – nothing like getting black and blue balls, along with other nearby genitalia.
Finishing beers in Carter Park dulled the pain.
Oh, and the wedding in Carbondale was awesome with even more riding at Snowmass, Red Hill and Prince Creek. Melissa picked a winner whose idea of a pre-wedding good time is a 2.5 hour ride with friends.
