In addition to bike riding, I’m also a scuba diver. Whenever we go out on a group dive boat, there’s always one what we call ‘Joe Diver’, some guy who knows more, has been to more places, has all the latest gadgets and will tell you how much he knows. Louis, my dear, you are Joe Diver.

I’m relatively new to mountain biking, I’ve been a runner and road biker and swimmer and gym rat; I can say the FC blog was one of the factors that made me comb Craig’s List to find a used small framed full suspension Trek.

I adore FC but don’t check every day. I read somewhere else that Lance did Leadville and I knew that Fatty did Leadville so when I finally got here was expecting a Lance/Fatty lovefest and so was very surprised at the post.

So, I’ve read the two posts and the two hundred or so comments.

Louis, you are new to this race so you should not have been up where Fatty was. If you were up there you were ignoring the rules. The crash was your fault. You admitted you didn’t listen to the pre-race prep. Take your lumps and learn. Don’t whine and blame someone else.

Fatty maybe should not have written your name, but your number was there and anyone could have looked it up so he just saved his loyal readers a collective 5 minutes. That 5 minutes x his zillion readers = more productivity. That much increased productivity x that many readers = an increase in GNP. Really. So while I know it’s not nice being humiliated in public, you did a great service to the economy.

My god, I know it’s hard to suck up and swallow and say…gee, I might have been wrong. You did that then backed off. That is confusing. I know the public forum is not easy so I’m not trying to slam you but be a man, OK?
_____________________________________________________

Fatty, thanks so much for posting that pic of you and Susan 20 years ago. I think we all teared up.

I ordered a jersey. Fatty and everyone else, I buy all…(most all…I do buy bike shorts on line) at thrift stores. To pay this much money for a piece of clothing …what can I say….I’ve got a Cannondale jersey and a Nashbar jersey I found second hand for under $3 each so ….what can I say….I’m supporting the cause…

Win Susan.

And I think you were very gracious in the above post, and it is your blog after all, people are not required to love what you say.

Best wishes to your family and especially Susan.

“Things were tight, and the neutral zone rule didn’t cross mind especially as I listened to my mp3 player”

This is where you lost me. A little early in the rant, it must be said, I cannot help being curious. . . since this race is, as you put it, “one of the most difficult mountain bike races around” I wonder why you would choose to absent yourself by listening to your mp3 player? Surely there was lots of time for the mp3 player during less busy stretches? I would have thought the opening few minutes you’d want to be keeping your ears open with all the cyclists around you.

Wonder if Lance wears mp3 players while racing. . .

I’m not sure if you’ll remember me, racer #845, aka Louis Baker, circus bear, douche baker, dillweed, knucklehead, color-blind superhero, bonehead, well you get the picture.
The Crash. The gun went off at 6:30a.m., and I – along with everyone else – started pedaling. Things were tight, and the neutral zone rule didn’t cross mind especially as I listened to my mp3 player getting ready for one of the most difficult mountain bike races around. Then this happened: Ladies and gentlemen, meet Elden Nelson (Fatty) – feeling all the riders around him were following the rules except me, but lacking the skill to stay upright when things go bad, leans into me almost making me crash. Somehow I manage to catch my balance and simply try to keep moving. Unfortunately, Fatty was not so lucky and got caught up with me or something on my bike. Though I kept moving forward and didn’t check back on Fatty for fear of causing a pile up, it appeared to be a slow moving crash and I hoped Fatty was ok. As most of you don’t know, I am not an angry, resentful, sadistic person. In fact, I’m one of the most positive upbeat individuals you’ll ever come across. Hindsight, I should have checked on him. This is what I remember happening in the heat of the moment. But the rest of this post is going to be sarcastic. Why, Oh, I dunno. Maybe because some ballerina with poor balance fell off his bike and blamed me publicly. Despite Fatty’s lack of balance, I cringe at the idea of someone being hurt in these events. Anyway, if you don’t like my side of the story, you may want to read Angry Fatty’s post one more time. Oh, that atrocity of cycling garb. I feel inclined to explain. You see the day before the race I was unlucky enough to get my matching race jersey signed by Lance Armstrong and Dave Wiens putting me in somewhat of a jersey dilema. Do I ride with an original signed jersey of these legendary men? So off to the local bike shop where there was a plethora of jerseys (only 1 medium) to choose from. Now I knew going in this looked ridiculous – but I did have a cool signed jersey! You may be saying to yourself, Louis intentionally cut Fatty off and was gunning for him because of his celebrity status knowing he was the king of cycling web blogs and the ripe opportunity to be famous. Yes, that was it, forget about being in a cool race with Lance. Oh, and that picture, it clearly explains what happened. I intend to use it as a brochure in my new line of cycling clothing called “Take Out Fatty”. As for Fatty, well, let’s take a look at how much injury and time he lost in the race. Ok, this is his twelfth year doing this race, that is very cool, not a bad time at 10:06. Let’s see, my time was 10:38 and this is very new race for me and Fatty is three years younger than I am, shoot you got me…this time. Elden, some advice: next time you race, you may want to bolt on some training wheels, I have some if you want to borrow them.

As I mentioned before, I’m not an angry, resentful, sadistic person. Maybe because when someone feels the need to be judge and jury and abuse their power, I get a little worked up. Like this week, when my wife, friends, co-workers and boss got to read this garbage. Initially I thought about responding in anger, but resolved myself to take the high road and post an apology for the good of the order aka Cyclist. Power comes with a higher level of integrity and to do the right thing. I considered not writing this response but in Fatty’s words “ it’s how I really feel at the moment” This too may not be my most noble moment, but I hope it will make Elden think before he posts…In response to Elden’s cooled down state:

We all hopefully learn from our mistakes.
We all have done stupid things and there are two sides to a story.
A blog is not a place for revenge. A simple email or phone call would have been nice. Elden, you have a responsibility as a leader of your community and web master to control the content of your communication. I’m sure you are a good person and this incident is not really what you are about.
About that gut, I’ll lose weight if you will…

Best regards to you and your wife.

Louis Baker

Cheers for giving up playground rules!

b21

WIN

I’m happy you didn’t take the other down, but even more happy you wrote this one. “The pen is mightier than the sword.” That’s true… pens can be used to sign peace accords.