PLOT
Premium Rush: A hotshot messenger, Gordon-Levitt takes delivery of an envelope that a dirty cop named Bobby, played by Michael Shannon of Boardwalk Empire fame, covets. A wild bike chase ensues.
Quicksilver: A hotshot stockbroker turned messenger, Bacon must employ his financial acumen to save his pals from drug dealers. A wild bike chase ensues.

MONEY QUOTE
Premium Rush: “Fixed gear, no brakes. Can’t stop, don’t want to.”
Quicksilver: “I go as fast as I like. Street sign says one-way east, I go west.”

EPIC STUNT
Premium Rush: Gordon-Levitt dismounts, slides under a flatbed truck, and remounts without missing a beat.
Quicksilver: Bacon bike-dances with a sexy chick in a leotard in his gigantic loft apartment.

BIKE
Premium Rush: Track bike with bullhorn bars that emits inexplicable freewheel sound and turns into a trials bike for parking-garage stunt scenes.
Quicksilver: Track bike with drop bars that emits inexplicable freewheel sound and turns into an artistic-cycling bike for steamy bike-dancing scene.

WARDROBE
Premium Rush: Haute “fakenger,” complete with messenger bag, minimally vented helmet, and chain lock around Gordon-Levitt’s waist.
Quicksilver: Helmet? Pshaw! Bacon wears a beret.

VERDICT
Premium Rush: A few years too late—thanks to Internet delivery services, you’d be hard-pressed to find an actual messenger these days.
Quicksilver: High art from a golden age when the stock market was soaring, there was no such thing as email, and a bike messenger could afford a giant loft apartment.

The post Spin Flick appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

I'M RIDING THROUGH Brooklyn when an old Buick appears at my side and, like an amorous cow, begins to rub up against me. At 20 miles an hour, I lose control, launch into the air, and roll to a painful stop. The driver pulls over—eventually—and just stands there as I limp toward her.

A racer at Portland's 2009 Single Speed Cyclocross World Championships

A racer at Portland's 2009 Single Speed Cyclocross World Championships

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“Why'd you hit me?” I ask.

“I thought I could get around you,” she says.

I've often dreamed of living in a city where you can spend an entire day on a bike without once suffering an act of aggression or a near-death experience, and scarcely a day goes by that I don't hear or read someone going on about a city just like that: Portland, Oregon. The New York Times calls it “Bike City USA,” and more people commute by bicycle there (over 7 percent) than in any other metropolis in America. Portland also boasts an extensive light-rail system (trains and trolleys) and biodiesel buses, all of which accommodate bicycles, and plans to triple the length of its 300-mile bike-route network by 2030.

But it's not just robust statistics and support for alternative transport that make Portland seem mythic to cyclists in the rest of North America; it's also the bike-obsessed populace, the artisans and small businesses that serve them, and the consequent social interaction that people call a “bike culture.”

While storied Italian frame builders like Colnago have mostly embraced carbon fiber and begun outsourcing work to Taiwan, Portland is now home to the world's greatest concentration of custom bike builders (currently about 30), who work primarily in the classic medium of chromoly steel. They build road bikes, mountain bikes, cyclocross bikes, cargo bikes, townies, etc. The most famous is Sacha White, of Vanilla, whose wait list is so long (more than three years) that he's not accepting new orders. The rest of America's businesses are in the grip of the Great Recession, but Vanilla won't even take your money.

Portland is also home to some very recognizable names in cycling attire and components: Rapha, Showers Pass, Chris King, and Portland Design Works are among those who've hung a shingle in town. Then there's all the riding. The Cross Crusade, the 17-year-old, 12-event cyclocross race series based there, is the largest in the world, seeing some 9,000 participants. If you're not competitive, there are also the theme rides, both planned and impromptu. When Michael Jackson died, scores of Portland cyclists materialized en masse and started riding around dressed like the King of Pop. The Flaming Lips recently shot a music video at one of the city's 250-plus parks; it starred a bunch of naked cyclists and a gigantic vagina. Sure, there's all that rain, which peaks in the winter, but the city is also drenched in quality coffee and beer, arguably the ideal pre- and post-ride beverages, so you can always slip into a café or bar while you wait out the weather.

I actually visited Portland once, years ago, but it was a bikeless overnighter that I remember only as a blur of precipitation and flannel. So while I'm familiar with the Portland myth, I don't know if it's true or if there's really such a thing as a “bike culture.” I'm still picking scabs left over from the Buick incident when I pack up my bike and board a plane to find out.

NATURALLY, IT'S RAINING when my plane lands on Halloween morning, but by the time I cross the Willamette River into downtown, it's cleared. As I step into the lobby of the Ace Hotel, I notice that the 20-foot bike corral outside is brimming with practical yet stylish rides, like a hitching post in a hipster western.

“Is it OK to bring my bike through the lobby while I'm here?” I ask the lady at the front desk.

“Of course,” she says, as though I've just asked if the complimentary matches are free.

Once inside my room, which manages to evoke a doctor's office on a sailboat, I set about reassembling my bicycle and am soon out the door, headed for—surprise!—a bike show, where I'm certain to run into some of the attendant culture. The Oregon Handmade Bicycle Show is part of a six-week celebration of cycling. As I ride across downtown, I'm struck by how calm the traffic is. With my coarse NYC riding style, I feel self-conscious, like someone dining in a formal restaurant after decades of throwing elbows at a country buffet. And there are so many people on bikes—normal people, not miserable-looking messengers and delivery folk—that I feel like I should be waving to them. But this would be odd, akin to giving the thumbs-up to the guy next to you at the urinal and saying, “Isn't peeing fun?!” In New York, there's so much fighting for space, I sometimes feel like I have to run lights. Not here. The sensation is refreshing, like getting to the beach and exchanging your boots for flip-flops.

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By the time I make it to the show, not a single motorist has honked at me. My entrance fee includes a pint from one of the 35 breweries in town—the keg rests in a purpose-built “beercycle”—which takes the edge off a long, early flight. The bicycles, all displayed in and around an elevated model-train circuit, are not gimmicky carbon race bikes, nor are they like the fixed-gear scene's exercises in color coordination and co-branding. Vertigo shows a bike with rack and fenders that swiftly converts into a full-on cyclocross racer. English shows a belt-driven winter bike with an internal hub. These are bikes that speak of daily commutes with off-road detours, of long after-work rides, of fun and practicality, of cycling integrated tube-in-lug with life.

After sidling over to a table to rest my beer, I fall into conversation with a few friendly strangers.

“Did you read that Bike Snob post?” one of them asks when talk turns to a certain cycling clothier I've written about. He has no idea that I not only read it but wrote it, yet I immediately turn red and try to change the subject. I've never heard anyone reference my blog in conversation before.

In New York, I'm a traffic cone. Not here.

IF YOU GO SEE A JAM BAND, you'll find a game of Hacky Sack, and if a city has a cycling scene, you'll find people playing bike polo. I have a deep hatred of ball sports that dates back to a head injury incurred during a softball game at Camp Hillel, but I suck it up in the name of science and ride east across the Willamette to Alberta Park, where I've heard a game will be in progress. It turns out to be what I expected: A bunch of people with cycling caps, tattoos, and various facial-hair configurations ride single-speeds and chase a ball around a de-netted tennis court while others wait their turn on a bench, smoking cigarettes and drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon.

I watch them for a while through the fence. It seems like an insular group, one I'm hesitant to approach, but like an aspiring hippie in 1967 San Francisco, if I don't want to be taken for a narc, I'm going to have to eat some acid.

“Ever let new people play?” I ask.

“Sure, you can play right now!” says a guy on the bench.

I'm led to a polo-appropriate bike and a mallet, and I warm up by riding around and trying to hit the ball. This proves quite difficult, and despite total sobriety I seem to have the ball-handling skills of a drunk mini-golfer. The rules, however, are simple: Try to score a goal and “don't be a dick.”

“It's too late for that,” I reply.

While the more dickish part of me feels about playing bike polo the same way that Sacha White would probably feel about working for Huffy, another secretly hopes that I will be awesome at it. Sadly, I begin sucking almost immediately, though I do manage not to break my collarbone. No thanks to me, my team wins, but since I failed to score a goal and mostly just circled the action, I assume they'll be glad to see me leave. Yet as I begin to make my retreat, the guy who invited me says, “That's it?!” and implores me to stay. And though I'm moved by my new comrade's earnestness, it's not quite enough to overcome the memory of that blow to the head from the kid with the yarmulke.

PORTLAND IS EVEN MORE famous for bicycle commuting than it is for bicycle fabrication and recreation; the way the locals embrace practical, everyday cycling earns the city international attention and sets it apart from the rest of North America. So despite having no job, one morning I join the masses of people streaming over the bridges and into the city center on bicycles. I fully expect the peaceful downtown of the weekend to have given way to fuming gridlock, but while there are more cars on the road, nothing really resembles what I'd call heavy traffic, and even in the thick of rush hour I pass over both the Hawthorne and Steel bridges multiple times, unable to provoke a driver to try to kill me.

At no point do my fellow cyclists look at me judgmentally, attempt to race me across the bridge, or speed brakeless off of it, run a light, and scatter a group of schoolchildren—all crucial to cycling in NYC. The Portlanders simply ride, unflappable save for their jackets, which flutter in the autumn breeze.

I can't even manage to get lost, since everywhere I go there are not only bike lanes—some even curbside, buffered from traffic by parking spaces with door zones—but directional signs specifically for cyclists: DOWNTOWN 1.5MI 9MIN.

There's only one uncomfortable moment, as I exit the Hawthorne Bridge without indicating my direction.

“Nice signal!” a woman behind me snaps.

“Sorry!” I call out, though I want to explain that I'm the cycling equivalent of an abused child. I wish I could convey the sensation of being squeezed between a bus and a stretch SUV limo while a pair of cops in a Crown Vic take a coffee break in your bike lane.

So why is Portland so bike-friendly? It came of age in car-centric 20th-century America, not post–World War II Europe, and despite all the blond dreadlocks, I've abandoned my theory that the citizens are space aliens.

“Everything that happened with the auto and urban trends from the twenties through the sixties also happened here,” says city transportation official and Oregon historian Scott Cohen. “Things changed in the late sixties and the seventies.” He figures a crucial early boon to cycling came in 1974, when a vocal populace and the city council finally defeated the proposed Mount Hood Freeway, which would have bulldozed through southeast Portland, severing the city's readily navigable grid system. “They said, 'We're going to value our neighborhoods,' rejecting the patterns that developed in many places out west.” So the freeway plan—like disco, racist sitcom characters, and Sid Vicious—didn't survive the seventies. The funds went to projects like the MAX light-rail system, begun in 1982. Another example of livability prized over the automobile is the 29-acre park along the west bank of the Willamette. (Created after the city removed Harbor Drive in 1974, it's two miles of prime waterfront, and with the East Bank Esplanade across the river, you can ride laps around the Willamette via the Steel and Hawthorne bridges.) Pivotal bike-infrastructure policy came in the nineties.

OK, but this place didn't invent being progressive. There must be something else compelling all these Portlanders to ride in the rain.

AFTER MY COMMUTE to nowhere, I point my bike toward the West Hills—a.k.a. the Tualatin Mountains, the backdrop of downtown—and climb into 5,100-acre Forest Park, where the pavement gives way to gravel and the paths are lined with lush vegetation. This is how I've always imagined the Pacific Northwest: It's moist and full of ferns, a place where you might encounter a brontosaurus, Bigfoot, or a feral eighties grunge band guarding a marijuana crop. Near the top of the climb, I make a left onto a fire road called Leif Erikson; after a 20-minute descent, I find myself right back in the city.

Easily crossed bridges on one side of me, quiet wooded roads on the other, and bike lanes everywhere—this town is indeed like a revolving door of cycling pleasure. Still, I've always been afraid of revolving doors, and I suspect Portland must be like one of those really happy people who, it turns out, is on eight kinds of medication to suppress his suicidal impulses. So, using my real name, I contact Jonathan Maus, editor/writer of the widely read news blog , and simply tell him I'm an adrift New Yorker seeking a greater understanding of Portland's bike culture. He not only replies but invites me to his office, next door to a coffee shop with a “bike-thru” window.

Maus is tall, friendly, and polite and looks kind of like the actor Eric Stoltz. His bike, which looks Dutch, heavy, and practical, is parked outside, unlocked.

“You know, people are saying you're the Bike Snob,” he tells me after greeting me. (It appears I've been popular-search-engined.) I laugh this off and tell him what a relief it is riding here: considerate drivers, protected bike lanes, bike boxes at intersections, separate signals for cyclists…”Really?” he says. “Here in Portland we feel like we're being outdone by New York.”

“No kidding?” This seems like Alec Baldwin worrying that little brother Daniel will eclipse him with a stint on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew. However, New York has added 200 miles of bike lanes in the past three years, and Portland bike advocates evidently see this growth and fear complacency.

“Portland has the richest bike culture in the world,” Maus continues. “We're very proud of that. But because Portland is a smaller city and it's such a popular subject here, it's easy for some organizations to associate themselves with it in order to get press. Did you read about the bike chapel in the paper today? Front-page news.” He goes on to explain that St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, downtown, has dedicated a shrine to the Madonna del Ghisallo, the patron saint of cycling, possibly because bikes are more popular than God in Portland and the church thinks they can use them to fill some pews.

Being a cycling pilgrim, I head over there in search of spiritual guidance.

A REPURPOSED HANDICAP ramp serves as the chapel's bicycle entrance, and there's a piece of paper that reads BIKE SHRINE taped to the door. The chapel is bereft of souls as I enter and lean my bike against a pew. On the north wall is a painting: It's of a mountain bike standing alone in a desert; the baby Jesus hovers over it amid some heavenly smog while suckling on the Madonna del Ghisallo and flashing the peace sign. The bike appears to have been copied from a manufacturer photo, since the cranks are at a 90-degree angle and don't include pedals, but it also has a freakishly long head tube.

It's difficult to be contemplative in front of such a distracting image. Why a mountain bike? Does Jehovah ride off-road? It seems like something more abstract and universal would've been a better idea—a penny farthing or classic road bike, perhaps? Then again, Chris DiStefano, of Chris King Precision Components, says that Portland's dirty little secret is that, for all its cycling awesomeness, there's very little singletrack open to riding around here, so maybe this is a prayer for mountain-bike trails. But, really, is a bike chapel a true gift to the community, fulfilling a need for members of the bicycle culture, or is it just a slapdash attempt by the church to seem “with it,” like when my ninth-grade math teacher wore a Van Halen shirt?

And this isn't even the only place in town where religion and cycling collide. I cross the river to visit the Bike Temple, “a non-profit, pan-faith movement that seeks to heal the world by having fun and deepening people's relationship with their venerated transportation form.” It's dark when I reach the address, an ashram in northeast Portland. I find it empty save for two people doing yoga and one spectrally attractive belly-dancing instructor who's never heard of any Bike Temple. I begin to think I'm in the wrong place but wander outside and discover a rickety door with a logo. Beyond it I find four men and one woman in a musty basement filled with crappy bike parts and an old mountain bike on a repair stand. (What is it with God and mountain bikes?) The templars look up from what appears to be takeout chicken.

“Is this the Bike Temple?” I ask.

“Yes,” says the guy working on the bike. “I'm Moses.” Of course.

“So what do you guys do here?”

“It's not about worshiping God so much as a way of expressing love for the bike and its environmental friendliness,” explains Moses. “We also do theater.” I cringe a bit.

“What kind of theater?” I ask. Moses says that during their grand opening he preached from a pulpit.

“Do you believe in bicycles?” he asked those gathered.

“Yes, I believe in bicycles,” they'd reply. Then he'd anoint their bike chain with a drop of lube.

OH, WELL. I SUPPOSE I secretly hoped Portland “bike culture” was so highly evolved that people were actually using cycling as the basis for spiritual and metaphysical discussion in the same way that the psychedelic scene of the sixties inspired some to explore Buddhism and alternative philosophy. Instead, the “collabo” between bikes and religion seems to be only a PR tool or an excuse to hang out in a basement and (judging from the general vibe, anyway) get baked.

Depressed by the shrine and temple, I ride mopily about, but I just can't seem to shake this glumness. It's going to take the catharsis of intense physical effort. Fortunately, it's a big cyclocross weekend, and I've signed up for tomorrow's Single Speed Cyclocross World Championships, which will follow the day's series races.

The next morning, I swap out my slick tires for knobbies, flip my fixed rear wheel around to the freewheel side, and hop on the MAX train. The novelty of taking public transportation to a cyclocross race is exceeded only by its ease. The MAX costs only two bucks and is outfitted with convenient bike hooks.

Cyclocross is like freebasing competitive cycling. The races are short but intense and distill the sport to its essence. But what propels me through the peanut-buttery mud more than anything is the noise of the crowd. And though there are plenty of serious riders competing today, many wear costumes. (One rider has at least nine stuffed monkeys on his back, and another races a tiny folding bike and wears formal office attire.)

Bike-world celebrities like 2008 U.S. national cyclocross champion Ryan Trebon, teammate Barry Wicks (dispensing cans of beer to the crowd), and fellow blogger Stevil Kinevil are here. We're routed through a giant “Thunderdome,” complete with mutants suspended from the latticework, fire jugglers, and a nearby Black Sabbath cover band providing soundtrack. For the price of a dollar, you can skip a section of the course and run your bike through a school bus full of strippers.

I lose track of the lap count and eventually finish in a sprint against Stevil for what must be a high-double-digit placing, thoroughly exhausted but happy.

“Was that the end?” we ask each other afterwards—not that either of us really cares. The sun is setting, the band is winding down, and, no matter the count, we both decide that it is.

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A MAN IN A BORAT UNITARD RIDES past me like some sort of gravity-defying, sexually perverted superhero, easily climbing the rocky Northern California incline up which I'm struggling to push my bike. I paw at my dusty water bottle and watch his bethonged ass shrinking in the distance. In about an hour he'll be named the 2008 Single Speed World Champion. All I want to do is survive.

SSWC

Cross-dressing and indecent exposure are pretty much de rigueur at the SSWC

SSWC

SSWC

Blood, sweat, and beers: clockwise, tighty-whiteys; Sycip Cycles pre-party; nasty strawberry; American Cyclery pre-party; pro rider

Illustration Branded

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What the hell am I doing here anyway? Well, it all started years ago, when my mountain bike's rear derailleur decided to disassemble itself during a ride. Naturally, this occurred when I was as far from the trailhead as possible and, shrewdly, had packed none of the tools I'd need in order to make the thing rideable again. Even if I had, the various pulleys and bolts had scattered themselves along the trail like so much gorp. So as I hiked through the woods, back to the relative civilization of suburban New Jersey, walking my bike up climbs and then coasting down, I resolved to convert it to a single-speed.

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A single-speed, if you don't already know, is a bike with a single gear ratio: one chainring up front, one cog in back. Like a BMX. No shifters or derailleurs to fail on you, no granny gear to bail you out, and nothing to think about while you're riding except riding. Instead of hunting for the right gear on hills, you attack them at speed so your momentum carries you to the top, and on all but the steepest and most technical climbs you get up there faster and more effectively. Basically, single-speeding is both totalitarian and meritocratic, in that it offers you neither choices nor a safety net.

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Over the years, the single-speed “movement” has attracted a large number of mountain-biking devotees, whose intricate facial-hair patterns and tattoos counterbalance the simplicity of their bicycles and whose disdain for things like officially sanctioned races, spandex, and sobriety runs as deep as their aversion to gears.

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It's in this spirit that the Single Speed World Championships were born, best anyone can guess, in 1995. Despite the name, the SSWC is sanctioned by no organization except for a consensus of dedicated single-speeders, and every year it bounces from international locale to international locale like the fugitive from decency and legitimacy that it is. This time around, it's in Napa, at Skyline Wilderness Park.

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When you win the SSWC, you don't get a jersey, a trophy, or cash. You get a tattoo. It's mandatory; you pick the spot. And while the SSWC is a party, it's also very hard and, believe it or not, highly competitive. The 2007 winner was national cross-country-mountain-biking champ Adam Craig, who's in Beijing competing in the Olympics while we're here in Napa. It's tempting to think a race like this isn't as difficult as a “real” race, but the fact is it's even more difficult. An epic-length mountain-bike contest is going to hurt, even if, like some kind of Lycra-clad Mormon, you've been watching your diet, going to bed early, and tapering according to Chris Carmichael's instructions in Bicycling magazine. But doing one hungover and ill-prepared, as SSWC custom dictates, is absolutely excruciating.

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Especially when there's nothing between you and your torturous race saddle but a pair of cotton briefs. Ridiculous costumes are an SSWC tradition. Accoutrements like frilly dresses, neon unitards, Helga wigs, fishnets, feather boas, and faux fur almost outnumber traditional cycling kits—and that's just on the men.

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IF PRO CYCLING IS RIDDLED with dopers, amateur cycling is riddled with whiny, preening, posturing people who take their sport and themselves waaay too seriously. (And also with dopers.) And while I love to race, I have a particular disdain for the noxious atmosphere of pretense that permeates bike racing. You've got to try to relax and have fun on the bike.

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So it was that on the evening of Friday, August 22, I found myself standing in front of American Cyclery, a bike shop at the edge of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. The big race would be taking place on Sunday, and the shop was hosting a “pre-event rally [and] fiesta…a unique opportunity to mingle with the seedy underbelly of San Francisco's bicycle culture and ride with them off-road in the urban environ.” If things like gratuitous tattooing and stickers reading ONE F*CKING SPEED count as culture, then this was nothing short of a renaissance.

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The sidewalk was brimming with 40 or 50 riders, from as close by as the Mission District and as far away as Europe, who were passing the time chatting boisterously and guzzling beer. Nearby, someone produced a joint and was immediately pounced upon for a hit. “It's got tobacco mixed in with it,” he warned, but the pouncer was undeterred.

This being San Francisco, it started to get legitimately cold after a while. Thankfully, everybody soon mounted up and, with a great deal of whooping, wheelies, and merriment, headed the wrong way down Stan­yan Street to begin an assault on Golden Gate Park, which was massed with people awaiting a Radiohead concert. As was clearly apparent from our riding, a good percentage of us were intoxicated.

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We turned onto some dirt footpaths where signs informed us that cycling was strictly prohibited. The guy in front of me, riding a brakeless fixed-gear with cyclocross tires, was quickly undone by the sandy terrain. He wiped out almost immediately, taking others down with him. No sooner would we dart into a copse of trees than we'd emerge back onto the pavement, much to the bewilderment of the many pedestrians on their way to hear the plaintive whimpering of Thom Yorke.

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As we swarmed toward the Golden Gate Bridge like angry bumblebees, I was elated to be riding in San Francisco with a bunch of half-crazed cyclists, but I felt a little pang of guilt every time we tore past some fleece-vest-wearing, designer-dog-walking couple trying to enjoy an evening stroll in the park unmolested. But, then, the pedestrians didn't really seem all that upset. Some even found us amusing: Small gears, though perfect for technical trails, leave you spinning with a comical urgency on pavement.

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We crossed the bridge and made a left, immediately hitting a pretty steep paved climb into the Marin Headlands, where there was supposed to be a cookout. By this time gaps had formed in the ride, so at the top of the climb we stopped long enough to regroup and consume more beer. Once back together and further emboldened by alcohol, we blasted heedlessly down a steep and twisty fire road to Kirby Cove, a small clearing on the bay with a beautiful view. There we found not a grand feast but a pathetic offering of cold veggie dogs. Fortunately, someone passed around a bottle of Jack Daniel's, and another busted out a joint nearly as fat as his top tube.

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The sun began to set, turning the fog and the Frisco skyline orange. Ibis Cycles founder Scot Nicol showed up in a jacket emblazoned with a talking acorn, which suggested that onlookers should SUPER-RELAX. As it got darker, all that was left was to climb the long, steep fire road back to the bridge, a preview of the many arduous climbs that would follow. As I headed back, I thought I'd finally settled into the spirit of the event. I'm usually wary of anything bearing the hallmarks of adolescence, including “movements,” “cultures,” and wearing costumes, but I was happy to be on my bike, dazzled by my surroundings, and somewhat drunk and stoned.

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I will not worry about acting like an adolescent, I told myself. I will do as the talking acorn commands. I will super-relax.

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WITH MORNING CAME sobriety and the drive up to Napa, and with sobriety came apprehension. This was no jaunt to the Marin Headlands; this would be something like 30 miles of steep, technical climbs and descents on a former World Cup mountain-bike circuit. And while I had no designs on a high finish, I still wanted to acquit myself well, and to me that meant finishing—and not in last place. The prospect of returning to New York without a finisher's SSWC bottle opener was horrible to contemplate.

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My apprehension was not assuaged by a painful pre-ride of the course after checking in. I picked up my number plate (literally a paper picnic plate with a numeral scrawled on it with a crayon) and post-race burrito ticket, then headed out. There were course markers, but they were contradictory, and querying others revealed that nobody really knew exactly which route the course would take. The only sign that made any sense was the one that warned you to beware of mountain lions.

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I followed some red arrows and found myself on a very long, very steep ascent. The previous evening's festivities didn't help my performance, and the air and terrain were so dry, I was afraid the slightest pedal strike would set the entire park ablaze. Finally, after stopping numerous times, I reached the top of the climb, surveyed Napa Valley as forlornly as the guy in Cormac McCarthy's The Road surveys the road, and began a nasty, rocky descent that felt a lot like riding down a spiral staircase.

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I was reminded of an entry on the SSWC blog that had asked, “How do you feel about feeling like shit the next day? Like it? Go rigid.” Despite this, I had opted to ride a rigid fork, partly to be badass but mostly because I don't own any suspension forks. As I picked my way gingerly through the stony switchbacks, I realized that I would indeed be feeling like shit. The pessimist I thought I'd left in San Francisco had returned.

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Tomorrow, he predicted, is going to be ugly. Nonetheless, I arrived the following morning ready to do battle with the terrain, dehydration, mountain lions, common sense, and hundreds of other single-speeders. Unlike a great many of the men, however, I was wearing neither a dress nor ladies' undergarments.

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At a nearby 7-Eleven, I queued up behind a man in black—i.e., a black bandito mask, cape, and bikini—purchasing a bear claw. By the time I fastened my number to my handlebars, I'd also seen a skin-tight orange bodysuit, a leopard-print leotard, a Mexican wrestling mask, and a golden Speedo with, of course, matching cape. Almost half the field was campily attired, and many of them were dangerously close to exposing their genitals.

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It was to be a Le Mans start, so race organizer Curtis Inglis had us all go about 200 yards out, deposit our bikes, and return to the start. He then gave us a briefing on the course and informed us that only the first 150 finishers (out of 350 entrants) would get a bottle opener with their placement number on it.

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“What?!” I gasped. As I've mentioned, I had to have one of those bottle openers. Now I would actually have to be competitive. I glowered at a nearby man in a bra and bunny ears.

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Inglis then announced that there were some tighty-whitey briefs with the SSWC08 logo printed on the rear end. Anyone who wanted a pair had to race in them, with the best finish scoring $600 in swag. A group of riders rushed forward, grabbed their undies, and went off to change. I winced at the ungodly crotchal chafing and taintal bruising they would soon experience. Then, after a few more words, Inglis called out “Go!”

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And off we went.

THE ENSUING hours of hot, dry, ugly undulation I can compare only to (1) being trapped in a sauna full of corduroy-clad, dry-humping college students on ecstasy and (2) moving a love seat into a five-story walkup by yourself on a hellish summer day.

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Once I found my bike, which I'd strategically left next to a tandem, I hit the fire road. I've been in many races in my life, and, being a rider of meager skills, I've been forced to stare at lots of posteriors, but never have I beheld such an assortment of grotesquely attired ones. I'm thinking particularly of the ones wrapped in official SSWC08 briefs, which almost immediately became soggy, saggy, misshapen, and brown.

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The first climb was too steep for most of us, so we dismounted and trudged up it, finally reaching a flattish section of “flowy” singletrack that could have passed for the Serengeti had it not been for the bagpiper by the fork in the trail. Next came the twisty, technical, gnarly descent I'd ridden the day before, which was lined with spectators in all manner of ridiculous attire. Some cheered, others heckled, and pretty much all of them appeared drunk. It was like a bizarro Alpe d'Huez, in that, instead of going up, on a road, in France, we were going down, on a rock-strewn trail, in wannabe France.

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It was around this point I realized that, for the first time in my racing “career,” I was truly a part of the main event. I've raced (poorly) in national championships, but always with my age group. I've raced in the most competitive category at an event, but only at local races, early in the morning, when nobody's watching and nobody cares. I've raced at a track during a cookout. I've even raced cyclocross in the middle of a state fair, but the only spectators besides friends and family were bemused passersby. Never before had I been an essential component of the thing that everybody had come out to see, one of the hundreds of people who'd surrendered themselves to humiliation and pain all for the love of the bike. At last, I was part of the show.

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It dawned on me that, pain notwithstanding, I was actually super-relaxed and having fun. It didn't hurt that the trail was gorgeous. Due to the extremes in elevation, the course took us through a variety of landscapes, and had I not been concentrating so intently on staying upright I might have taken more time to savor them. But even in my anaerobic state I was moved. At its lowest, the trail took us across streams and through deep, dark woods. At its highest, it led us over arid, white, rocky peaks with sweeping views of the valley.

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Spectators served to further distract. There were sexy women, dressed as referees, administering spankings. A guy in dreadlocks and a blue leisure suit displayed ambiguous cue cards in the manner of Bob Dylan in Don't Look Back. Most distressingly, when I was forced to run up a small incline after not carrying enough speed through a stream crossing, a guy in a pink rabbit suit called me a “failure.” I felt like a madman degraded by hallucinations.

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AT SOME POINT, the 7-Eleven bandito blows by, his cape fluttering imperiously in the wind. The masked man, I'll later discover, is pro rider Carl Decker. When I encounter him, he's lapping me en route to victory.

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As I complete lap two, I'm hurting. The trail has become the world. But I still have a rhythm and am in the proverbial groove. Number three, however, is a slog. I know I'll finish, so I tell myself to treat it as a victory lap, but I'm hemorrhaging strength. And the spirit of the event has become significantly less buoyant: By the time I'm deep into my last lap, many of the spectators have already moved the party back to the start/finish, to shower the first finishers with beer as they roll in. What's more, all those rocky descents on my rigid fork have finally turned my arms to overcooked linguini. I'm getting sloppy.

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A little while back, an English guy asked me how many times I'd crashed. I refused to answer, because I haven't crashed at all and, in my cosmology, talking about crashing makes you crash. Nevertheless, I soon crash at a rocky switchback. Fortunately, the lap is almost over. Decker and women's winner Rachel Lloyd are almost certainly already getting tattooed. I successfully negotiate the final and most treacherous descent and then, like only half of those who started, cross the finish line. Somebody hands me the item that's been guiding me through the race like a lodestar: the bottle opener. It's wonderful, as if my pain has manifested as a small piece of machined aluminum, like an irritating grain of sand transformed into a pearl.

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Ironically, the many, many beers I consume all come in a can.

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