Mountain Bike Mafia Crosses the Border
http://bikemag.com/news/mafia081104/
I had a crumpled, flattened, brown paper sack on which I was writing notes to record the following events, but I lost it?not sure where?probably
somewhere around the US-Mexico border, so you'll have to take the following on faith.
The plan was, meet at Cook's Corner at nine, knock back a couple of bloodies and hit the freeway by ten. With thirteen of us going, it would be
important to keep on schedule, lest the chit fall apart. Naturally, the chit fell apart. Hey, we're talking about the Mountain Bike Mafia, Orange
County Chapter. I'd give you a little background on us, but screw it, that's none of your business, and the less you know, the safer you are. Anyway,
this is a story about one of the funnest, biggest, best organized bike rides in the world: the bi-annual Rosarito-Ensenada 50 Mile Fun Ride.
Each April and September this thing goes off, and I've yet to read about it in any credible national news organization. Which is good: any time 15,000
of my closest friends and I can do what we like to do, at the same time, in the same place, while improving the local economy and meeting others who
like the same thing, well, it is what it is. I'm just telling a story here, not inviting your ass into my world.
This year Rosarito-Ensenada was slated the same weekend as the Sea Otter Classic, giving me the perfect excuse I needed to avoid the annoying company
of a bunch of leg-shaving, Gu-pushing, whining XC boneheads (my friends at Bike Magazine excluded.) No, I was going to spend the weekend doing what I
do best?pound beers day and night and get a little riding in. Of course, nothing makes a good thing better than a dumb decision.
In this case, the dumb decision found light when Johnny Fuel decided an unused Trek frame hanging in his garage might do better damage elsewhere.
You've got to understand, Johnny Fuel had status: the man could climb. According to him, the red plastic Marlboro gear bags he carried his stuff
around in were "from before." All we really knew was, the SOB used to ride, a lot. So when he suggested taking a perfectly good hardtail and
chit-canning the transmission, we got excited. "Dude," I probably said. "Let's ride our singlespeeds in Mexico."
Anyway, as I said, the plan was screwed. I think it was around noon when someone noticed we were still standing around Cook's, picnic tables littered
with empty pitchers and Bloody Mary glasses, and the rest of our crew hadn't even arrived: a few guys were held up at work (some people are so serious
about work), another guy was on his way in from the airport after a week-long drinking binge in Chicago, and a coupla yahoos still had to go by the
bike shop and get tubes. No one was sure who was riding with whom, and all the cars were out of gas.
The rolling chaos finally split the Shell station around one, and with two-way radios in every car, we promptly broke up, losing all radio contact by
the time we hit the freeway. With a no drinking rule in effect until we crossed the border, we actually made good time and rolled into the Las
Gaviotas Housing Compound, just south of Rosarito with daylight to spare.
We dug into a case of Dos Equis and reviewed the compound's written ground rules. Someone wondered out loud who would be the first to earn line item
number 10's charge, "Disorderly Conduct- $100.00."
Anyways, I was minding my own business just fine when my buddy Squire (technically, "Young Squire" because the punk looks so much younger than the
rest of us) pointed out the golf cart. Game on.
What he failed to point out was the black-clad security guard dozing in the passenger seat. One high-speed downhill run and a Indy car-worthy fishtail
into the parking space later, I was surrounded by three Mexican rental cops talking at me all at the same time, loud and fast. Then, the big one
whipped out a laminated copy of "The Ground Rules." "$100 for taking a cart for a ride? You're out of your mind!" I told him. 30 seconds later, the
guards rolled off in my cart, each with a twenty in his pocket. "Disorderly Conduct- $100," my ass. Hah.
The start of the Rosarito-Ensenada ride is always a frantic, nervous, big-assed waste of time. Ten thousand, fifteen thousand riders of all shapes,
makes and models crowd the street thirty abreast and a mile or two long. Inevitably, terrible techno-crap blares from loudspeakers, non-riding DJs
shipped in from San Diego's rock station blather stupidly, and then the ride begins.
By eleven a.m. we were in the zone. By noon, the thirteen of us had convened three times, toasting each other with Tecates at each stop. Nothing can
make a great ride even better than freezing rain and a crosswind. Like a marooon, I'd left my fleece inside my car and was running a cotton Brooks
Brothers dress shirt with the sleeves cut off and a Mountain Bike Mafia logo silk-screened on the back. Soaked, I wasn't sure I shouldn't just throw
the thing away and run my windbreaker commando-style, but I figured if I did that, then the wind and rain would stop, and I'd be the shirtless dork
everyone laughs at.
We had agreed to regroup at the bottom of El Tigr?, the ride's infamous big hill, so I rolled into the bar a shivering, chattering spaz, and ordered a
pair of ice-cold Bohemias to warm up while waiting for the rest to catch up. The nice thing about beer is, it's got water and carbs in it. What do you
need to sustain a high level of physical exertion? Water and carbs. As athletes, we recommend beer.
I figured we would have a few beers and Squire and I would flop our hubs back to the 18's for a little relief on the climb. I was ready to stop, not
so much for me but for Squire's sake. The spidery little bastard was still beating me on the climbs in our 16's and pushing it hard on the flats, not
bad for his first time on a fixed gear. But I was simply scared chitless watching him coast down hills at forty miles an hour, knees and feet bent
back with his cranks and pedals spinning like blender blades. See, my Surly came with a flip-flop hub, but Squire's White Brothers Eccentric did not.
I could practically see a pedal severing his foot at the calf while he attempted to re-engage.
As the sky darkened overhead and the bottles on the table continued to multiply, I stumbled outside to whiz and tripped over the fleet of bikes lined
up in front of the shack?half a dozen Specialized S-Works FSRs, Cannondales, Treks, my 1x1, XTR chit all over the place, hydraulic disc rotors
gleaming, all leaning against one another like soldiers in the midst of battle. It was time to roll.
We attacked El Tigr?. Even as my core temperature continued to drop, Squire and I continued to drop the rest of our pack and countless others,
grinding up the hills on our single speeds, not because we could, but because we had to. You know, keeping the momentum going and all that.
A guy I once knew used to always say "some climbs will really screw with your head." El Tigr? is one of those. I watched Squire pull away from me and
continued to grind. I was vaguely aware that I was passing hundreds of others who had gotten off their bikes to push. And hundreds of others who were
still hammering. I was climbing much, much faster than I was used to and couldn't afford to slow down. My legs burned. The Hill beckoned me to get
off, to relax, to buy some fruit from one of the hill-side stationed vendors, but even as my fried brain continued to shut down from hypothermia,
alcohol and fatigue, I recalled the head-screwing phenomena and turned the cranks.
El Tigr? topped out, and the road served up seven or eight miles of rolling, mostly flat stuff before the next scheduled bar-stop. Twenty-two miles to
go, and a lot of it uphill.
Hours later the radio on my shoulder coughed noise at me, and I found myself rounding the last turn of the last climb, the seaport of Ensenada
sprawling in the distance and the sun breaking through the clouds. We gathered our crew for the usual group photo and took our last whiz over the
guardrail. It was all downhill from there. Eight miles to go. Eight miles of flat, crumbling, Mexican asphalt, herds of diesel-belching semis, the
smell of a rotting fish cannery, and, mercifully, the official ?Finish Line' banners.
Something like 6,000 riders took part this April, but I know for a fact that in nice weather, 10 or-15,000 riders will sign up. Almost all of them
head for the fiesta at the end. The organizers put on a great party with taco stands and beer vendors all over the place, a stage, a rock band,
massage tables, girls, guys, a no-chit secured bike-check station, and shuttle rides back up the road to Rosarito. The ride organizers definitely have
their act together?lots of water stops, food vendors, portable outhouses and medical support throughout the entire route, and it is for the most part
closed to automobiles. Those that are on the course are escorted by the Mexican state police, and the only time you need to worry about sharing the
road with cars is the last stretch through downtown Ensenada. And even then, you only have to worry about the cars that trample the rubber cones to
get in the decently marked bike lane. If you haven't already heard of it, check it out at www.rosaritoensenada.com.
This year, the Mountain Bike Mafia bailed from the official party after a quick half-dozen beers, to verify our friend Bull's story about another bar
called Papas & Beer. "Dude, that's where all the chicks from the cruise ships go looking to get laid!"
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