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Showing posts from June 4, 2023

Hardly Boys And The Mystery Of The Stroka Bots

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Here’s my WR Kit. “Think what I’ve done for the sport…” I'm closing in on 5,000 miles. HOLY FUCKING SHIT. So much so that I need a FAST BOOST! Technology, narcissism and a credit card are gonna give it ALL to me. #StayHardly* This mystery is tailor-made for the Hardly Boys. And their sidekick Nancy "Drew The Short Straw." But all is about to change. She's fed up with being an apostrophe in a a high-asterisk occupation. The Hardly Boys just don't see her for what she is. She's not getting any. Frank Hardly has several drinks too many one night. "So, uh, Nancy, you like to play Tag, right? Well, how about tag... TEAM??" <crickets> Nancy stubs out her Lucky. She looks at Frank. ”You think I was bone yesterday?” ”You mean ‘born’, right?” ”No shit, Sherlock. I said BONE. Draw your own conclusions” Frank's eyes glaze over when he sees the Cuban fishnets. He wants to call his brother Joe Hardly, but knows he's at the weekly Rick Astley VR Zoom

AC100: 2023 Is A Matter Of Course

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The 2023 Notional AC100. The venerable Angeles Crest stumbled into 2023 with a finally redone website.  Congrats! Most of the photos are bright and shiny, and non-synchronous to actual locations. However, it's a considerable improvement. No idea if the signup is as buggy and weird as it was when the Next Day Lotto was unleashed several years ago. Everyone Has A Plan… RACE CANCELLED FOR 2023: SKIP TO THE END The Race has been able to rejoin its point-to-point origins, with continued mods by fire and bio-edict. RIP incinerated Mountain Yellow-Legged Frog [MYLF]. 2022's out-&-back is now an asterisk in the rear-view mirror. The new course map and descriptions are confusing. It was deja vu to 1990 for me all over again, only in color.  Map shows a Chantry pass-thru, while text indicates an out-n-back from Red Box to Newcombs, then up the Kenyon Devore over Mt Wilson. Thence over the top down to Idle Hour, to its eventual conclusion at Loma Alta in Altadena CA. Any Kenyon Devor

FKT, WR? NGAF

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Nobody gives a fuck about your FKT or World Record. Nobody gives a fuck about your FKT or World Record. Seriously. Both are stunts on a continuum. In Before Times, a John Muir Trail FKT was the Holy Grail. Sometime in the 90s Blake Wood did it out of curiosity, having backpacked it with his dad over ten times as a teen. Fast forward to now. Why anyone would want to race thru spectacular Sierra topography is beyond me. But they do. There have been some hilarious misfires on JMT FKT's , one noted here. Actual races, on a defined course, with a disinterested party running the clock is where bullshit gets taken to the woodshed. This is also where the Last Man Standing idea is brutally savage. World Records are a different animal. Like how many London cabs can you jump over with a pogo stick sort of thing. Things you can argue about while drinking. The Guardian keeps an eye on this . Sharp minds have seen ways to game that genre. World Records are a personal obsession that is bent to mo