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Just after the start, the Cat. 4 race turned into a forum on American Pacifism and the Christian ‘just war’ theory. Whaler and I were talking about the proliferation of ‘so-called’ Anarcho-pacifists, you know the followers of Leo Tolstoy. Jaybone piped up and suggested that they were no more than Nihilists. “Maybe,” says Pink Floyd (Jungle Jack version 2.0), “but can you still talk smack and be a pacifist?” Interesting query (we’ll get to that later) as the glass shards, oops, no the biting sleet starts attacking our faces on the 1st lap. The 30 or so racers also feel the pain of White Lightning's accelerations up the hill lap-after-lap and Cho-cho Charlie tells us that we have to be joking, because everyone thought the were WMDs before the invasion and jumps off the front for a solo stroll that pops a coupla riders off the back....I wasn’t talking to you anyway. Whaler starts listing famous pacifists like John Lennon, Buddha, and Native American Chief Seattle and I begin to see the close resemblance his facial features have with THE ROCK. I had just watched DOOM - the movie (one star, no nekkid chicks, but plenty of gore) and there he was, Jerry wielding a plasma gun. This certainly makes our conversation surreal because as you know their really hasn’t ever been an “unjust” war. Godfather Conti chimes in and brings up fictional pacifists like Jeff Lebowski and Stimpy (from Ren & Stimpy). Stimpy? Don’t ask, Godfather does a few powerful turns and settles back....how many laps to go? Two, ok we run around the backside. As the boys get jumpy and the skinny OS-shoe rider collides with the 16 year-old from Pennsylvania. More about that later. The COBC train has whittled the field to about 8 riders and Andy makes a break with 2 other guys. We come together on the backside and Bolt-man calls a lead out about 1/2 mile before the finish. forgetaboutit. George powers through again, Andy jumps and gets first.
We revisit the pacifism issue after the race when the OS-shoe rider wants to fight the skinny kid he collided with. I told the shoe-dude that if he wanted to fight the kid, he also has to fight me, because this is a race and crashes happen. I was bluffing, and also wondering if the bluff was somehow counter to the pacifist code? Long story short, Bob Marley and the Whaler circled the shoe-dude, reminded him that he too had made an aggressive move, this was just an accident, and then sent him off with his tail between his legs.
Moral of the story: I was quite proud to ride with this league of gentlemen. Clean and fair racers who defend the other riders and the race itself. Maybe the Godfather was right, the big Lebowski did say, “This aggression will not stand, man.” Somebody ask him to explain the stimpy thing...
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