Not To Be

4 and 5 AUGust - As of initial draft of this post I still don't know if i'm qualified - talking to others I don't thnk i'm too far off the qualification time - everyone seemed to have made a screwup or two - all in all, i'm pretty happy with the route I took but my speed might not have been up to scratch. The offroad course certainly doesn't favour fixies ... Quick journey back to basecamp to deal with various issues meant a bit of a timeout from the festival atmosphere - which is pretty much what the whole event is - i'd liken it more to a decentralised kind of Glastonbury with less people trying to make the sell, less bands (but a few nonetheless), no one location (other than the entire city of dublin beingthe site) but with the same hardcore dedicattd mix of old school, hipsters and groupies. Delayed golden sprints meant I was kept up way too late - my capacity for drink does not seem to have been improved by latest amounts of imbibing - I think i'll always be a lightweight compared to the compatriots - be they kuriers or be they anyonese else I happen to drink with back home. Well, perhaps its got to do with the fact that whn I pass out drunk I wake up with two pieces of plastic wedged to my corneas - which is happened when I came to half an hour after the main race was due to start. Abeautiful Dublin day with grey skies and heavy drizzle may have been the reason why it was delayed three or four hours but it may just have been the incredible organising skills of the Dublin massive - in any event, it was a good thing because a fair number of people hasn't turned up anywhere near the expected start (pretty much the same as any of the events held this weekend) - the sodden, muddy and slippery course scard a few people who qualified out of competing (it was around this time that I discovered that I didn't actuallyqualify - which was another disappointment but from what I can gatehr my time was actuallyokay, it was just the fact that it was in a heeat that had very fast people in it - at least that's what i'm goingto keep telling myself). Fortified myself with iorish coffee and swiss chat before heading to park to see the top fifty riders throw mthemselves around the coure a couple of dozen times with various levels of efficiency - disappointing result for Shinos (???) the fastest man in japan who suffered a puncture as well as a high pitched little courier (who couldn't have been more than 14) who suffered a broken chain (that was luckily fixed by some helpful bystanders, a few spills (none serious) and a lot of mud that coattd all the riders and their bicycles - event was taken out by austin (from new york, not Texas), a silentish type who'd dropped out of the london Dublin ride in order so that he didn't break anything before riding (soft). Very fast rider though. Broke out of the events for a while to try to get some clean socks (a man has to have priorities) and then having aa rather joyful reunion with an old travelling companion from the deep blue south of America - always nce to see people who you know from one side of the world on the other - drank and ate a bit before heading to the next kurier event, more golden sprints in the voodoo which I failed at misrably (not my week) when my contact lens popped out just before I started - what do you tell a roomful of drunk kuriers when you're supposed to ride on an elaborate exercise bike for their entertainment and you've just been blinded? Not much. Got locked into a dank local bar where they served decent sized shots of whiskey at very reasonable prizes (and the tender even seemed to know that 'rocks' meant ice which was an improvement from some of the places I drank at that night.