saturdays alleycat

Yesterday was the big alley-cat race in Cleveland. A day many trained hard to win. Long hours spent starring at my bicycle in the corner of the living. Countless sit ups off the couch to get another beer. And endless miles to the mickey-deez in east Cleveland for another big mac value meal. Finally race day comes, and like any professional athlete I have to work the morning of..and then immediately after the finish. I don't think anyone else there worked ten and a half hours that week, let alone that day. Its overcast, its rainy but not rainy rainy, just rainy enough to kinda bug you, its windy as all hell, and it Cleveland. Just west of the Hope Memorial, (or as real people refer to it Lorain-Carnegie) bridge 30 some overzealous bicycle aficionados gathered and awaited the race doom. And then they were off, and awkward 100 yard hobble to our bikes which had the manifest of checkpoints. 53 minutes 3 shots, 2 beers, and 1 awful nasty nasty nasty bloody mary later I arrive at the finish. The bastard who didn't know the city at all snaked in front of me while running into the bar to turn in the manifests and grabbed 4th place, so I got 5th. Which i was satisfied with, being much better then my previous weeks 19th out of 45 in Cincinnati (but then again i've never been to Cincinnati before so...) Annnnyways everything was cool until we were leaving the after race after party and the people running the race came to me and the 4th place kind and said that the first 3 kids were actually disqualified and we would have been fist and second but didn't since we refused to eat spicy sausages at one of the checkpoints....