Power Love

BIKE RIDES AND PARTIES

Carroll County, IL, is known for its annual festival wherein biker riders from the Chicagoland area show up and ride their bikes through the roads and make jokes and laugh and end up having heart-to-heart conversations with cows.

Here are the cows. They are lifelong Team Power Love supporters and we are very happy to see them out and cheering for us this early in the season.

This road looks pretty, no? As you ride it, though, it turns a bit to the left and gradually rises and then before you know it, you are stuck in the jaw of a demon zombie with teeth as big as a buffalo and as sharp as pitchforks. Then, just when you think you made it to the flats on the other side and you are snickering to yourself ("Sucker hills, think you can get the best of me? HA!"), you are suddenly climbing yet another hill, called innocuously enough, "Apple Tree Hill." Or something like that. Maybe it's "Apple Bottom Hill"? Whatever. It's neither apple-y nor a hill. Hills are things you can climb up. This thing is so steep it actually goes upside down. I am not making this up. It has a gradient of 56%. For reference, if you were to ride your bike up the side of the Sears Tower, you would be climbing a 52% grade. So, Apple Tree Hill is really Barf Hill and the way to get up it on the bike is to lean way over your bars and make friends with your front tire. Or, you could just take another road and not ride that hill at all, but no one was listening to me.

We stopped at the bar. I'm sure you can understand why. There were no 56% grades in the bar.

The last sign before the end of the ride. It is not the name of a town. It is the name of a state of being because not many people make it out of killer hill territory alive.

Ladies and gentlemen, here is your 2008 Olympic cycling team! It is a strict diet of Doritos and beer that got these amazing athletes to where they're at today.

Apres bike activities included celebrating Jason I-Bridged-To-Mark-Schwarzendruber-At-Monsters-And-Took-Second Meshberg's birthday. Finally, he's 21. Good thing, too, since I was getting really tired of buying beer for him all the time.

Here's Jason and Max having a very important discussion on the porch. What are they saying? Well, dear Power Love readers, we have at our disposal here in PLHQ top secret eavesdropping equipment so we can tell you what they are saying! If the government can do it, so can we.