Bailing or Flaking?

/ chollaball / 1 Comment

Byron had to cancel last night on our AM ride. He is incontrovertibly weak and has his priorities wrong, but its crucial to our ongoing jockeying for bragging rights to determine if he flaked or if he simply bailed.

The Facts:

  1. he waffled all week, but committed to the ride Thursday night
  2. he took an ugly spill on National on Thursday, PRIOR to committing.
  3. he sent me 2 emails asking for directions and clarification to the parking area on Friday
  4. his cancellation occurred just outside of the 8 hr window for a decent night sleep.
  5. he has a longstanding reputation for being wussy about getting up early
  6. he is a better technical rider than me, so had at least one huge advantage in his pocket for in-ride heckling.

The Analysis:

  1. In for a penny, in for a pound. Once you commit, the door to second-guessing has been opened.

    2. Verdict – flaked

  2. He said the fall was no big deal.
    • Point: a spill on The King can have lingering physical, equipmental, and psychological effects only discovered later much like a concussion. One must be respectful of this power.
    • Counter-Point: Byron said the wipeout (which I did not see, but only heard and shit it sounded bad) was a long extended save and really resulting in nothing but broken rhythm.
    • Point: Byron lies to show how tough he is.
    • Counter-Point: Byron is tough

    3. Verdict – push

  3. The emails indicated a clear pattern of commitment.
    • Point:One might say they were necessary to the information gathering required for a competent ride decision to be made.
    • Counter-Point:While he might not have known the exact trail head, he darn well knew mostly where he was going and could not claim it was soooo much further than he originally thought.

    4. Verdict – flaked

  4. 8 hours is 8 hours.

    5. Verdict – bailed

  5. Byron’s prior sleepy-headedness can not be held against him, since he did give fair notice. But we know he is a soft little meatsack about crack’o’dawn. hmm…stupid fair notice trumps all, grrr, stupid fair notice.

    6. Verdict – bailed

  6. Cancelling a ride where you can whoop-up on your buddy’s skills is poor strategically, but actually to my benefit. Byron would never miss a chance to acknowledge how he got something that I did not :-).

    7. Verdict – bailed

The Conclusion:

As much as I hate to acknowledge this and not be able to lord it over Byron on subsequent rides and \or siteeations, this was a clean bail.

1 Comment

  1. I ended up ordered landscaping on Friday to complete our backyard resort. It will complete the tropical landscaping around the pool and desert landscaping to replace a good amount of bare dirt on the west side of the property. Install is in ~3-weeks.

    Instead of riding Saturday morning, I started clean-up and grading of the areas to be landscaped at 5 am and kept at it all weekend. But, there is still much to do including, relocating 3 Aloe Vera plants and about 8 wheelbarrows of river rock, much more grading, killing off two stumps where I had taken out trees earlier, hauling off 1-2 pick-up loads of brush, trimming up an olive tree, and removing the old kids fort.

    The fall, although somewhat scary and noisy, was really no big deal, minor bruised ribs and inner thigh, scratched knee but thankfully, no bike damage. It was definitely a fall and was not presented otherwise. It had no bearing on whether to ride Saturday.

    I really would have rather ridden, it was Pass Mt. after all. But, I’m glad I got the work done since, next weekend I will be out of town and there is still a lot to do.

    Jason said he had other riders going so, the ride had to be 5:30 (his can be inflexible on when to ride at times), I bailed thinking it was no big deal. He did inform me at the time of the bail that the others had also bailed but, I was already in mid-bail and didn’t want to un-bail and appear flaky. I’m waiting for the analysis of the other riders bailing.

    I am not big on pre 6:30 am rides for sure. Getting up at 5:00 is too fricken early but, 6:00 is usually cool. And, all recreation rides are subject to bailing at any time, they are just recreation rides after all..

    Conclusion – Bailed. Jason has taken slander to a new high tech and over analyzed level, typical of his behavior pattern.

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