Yesterday I ventured out to one of the local bookstores in hunt of a certain mountain bike mag I've never read or bought before. It's a smaller magazine that only prints quarterly and being that it's published on the farthest reaches of the west coast and costs $10 a pop not too many of us east coast hillbillies have heard much about it. The reason behind my search for this magazine was because it contained my picture, big, bold and well um beautiful, in my eyes. A friend of mine had found it and told me about it, actually gave me a funny award at a Christmas party for it but I had yet to see it so I figured I'd better go looking before it was too late.
How did I get featured in a magazine? Well I didn't really, it was a piece more about my local trails and our little club who built them. Back in spring I was contacted by one of the contributing writers by the name of Kristian who I immediately thought was a female about doing the article. Kristian said she was an editor from Freehub magazine who ironically lives in Boone NC and wanted to come down for a ride and ask a few questions. I said sure and did a quick search on Freehub and thought cool but that was about it. Fast forward a couple of weeks and some hard questioning by Melinda about this woman I was meeting for a ride I decided to Google her. Well to my surprise Kristian was a guy and not just an editor for a cool magazine but also the guy partly responsible for the new bike park, Rocky Knob in Boone.
We were scheduled to ride in June which was suffering from a pretty serious heat wave so we opted for an early ride to stay as cool as possible. When I arrived at the trailhead the temps were well past 90 and climbing. We did a brief introduction and a little history about the place and mounted up our steeds for a ride. All along the way I answered questions about the trails and our club in between deep breaths. About 2 miles from the finish I felt my energy bank bottom out completely and for the first time in a long time I found myself unable to finish the last climb out. I had to do the embarrassing hike a bike up and out. I couldn't figure out was was wrong and I sure felt stupid pushing in front of this guy who was there to do the article.
Once I finally made it back to the car waves of nauseousness started rolling in. I knew this wasn't good because Kristian was wanted to know more, ride more and take a few pics. I tried my best to rally myself and shake it off but it wasn't happening. We opted for a cool rock to snap some pics on that to my relief wasn't far from the trailhead.
I think I rode down that rock 4 or 5 times to get the perfect shot all the while trying not to blow chunks in front of the camera. Finally in my best "I promise I'm not this weak" voice I explained that I wasn't feeling too good and would have to cut it short. I felt bad but he assured me that he had what he needed and I could do some more Q&A via email.
On the way home I cranked up the AC, drank some water and prayed I would make it home without having to pull over and blow chunks on the side of the road. I did make it but pretty much crawled in bed and stayed there for the rest of the day and a good portion of the fallowing. After some self assessment and doing a bit of searching on WebMD I concluded that I was dehydrated and suffering from heat exhaustion.
After my sluggish performance and early exit I felt pretty bad for the club and the hard work that had been put into the trails. Our first chance at a magazine article and I might have blown it. I sent an email to Kristian explaining my sickness and gave him as much info on the trails as possible hoping for the best.
Finally yesterday I got to see the rewards, a sweet four page spread that looked awesome! I couldn't have been more proud and excited for our club and the trails. Surprisingly my picture was featured big and glossy right at the beginning. Thankfully you can't really tell I was feeling awful as I rode down the rock.
Once I finally saw the finished product I was relieved to see it turned out great and I shot Kristian an email thanking him for doing such a great job and shining a light on our little gem.
I'll be autographing copies of the magazine, if you can find one, tonight at the group ride. I'm gonna milk this one for all it's worth, hahaha.
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