The 2018 PKR is five weeks out

Yes kids, we are def gonna do this thing.

Preparations have begun for the 18th Annual Peckerhead Invitational Bike Ride and Weenie Roast.

As is our tradition, departure will be at nine a.m. from 536 Chevy Chase Road in Mansfield, OH. If a volcano erupts or war breaks out, we will push departure to ten. But we're going.

There will be beer. There will be hot dogs. There will be a marked route.

There will be hills. I will be out of shape. I will ride anyway.

We'll keep you posted here, via Facebook, and periodically thru e-mail. 

Yours,
MGT

PKR 2017 - Bright ideas from a dim bulb

Your feckless leader addresses 150 of his closest friends.
It all went downhill from here.

Well we did it. The 17th Annual Peckerhead Invitational is in the books. Father's Day weekend has come and gone once again and for the management at HQ anyway, it's time for a recap and then a well-deserved nap.

Attendance - 131 registered and documented, probably 150 on the road. It was the largest mass of humanity assembled since our current president's inauguration.

Temperature - It were H.A.W.T.

Hard to imagine my standards being
lower,  but hey, turns out they can be.

MVP(s) - A tie.  Rabbit basically expired 16 miles out from heat exhaustion, suffered all the way back to HQ and then just fell asleep in the yard (he skipped the Gatorade and went straight for beer).  Jeff J. got two flats, broke a valve stem because he doesn't know how to operate a pump, rode the flat back to HQ, had my daughter call me and tell him where my patch kit was, patched the tube, and went back out for 30 miles. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you earn a lifetime exemption and a standing invitation.

Thanks - First and foremost to the hostess with the mostess, Amy. The PKR doesn't happen without her. To my kids and my parents, who carry a lot of weight behind the scenes. To our neighbors who put up with this shit every year and never call the cops. And to all the riders who come from near and far to get together over a bike ride and form friendships and community that carry us all forward.

This group has seen welcomed new babies, mourned dear friends, nursed each other through accidents and injury, felt the joy of a great day on the bike, and suffered the indignity of a bad one. And over 17 years we've made Ohio a better place to ride bicycles.

And finally, forgive me. If there was ever a year when I was tempted to hit the pause button, this was the one. For lots of really great reasons (lame-ass excuses), I just didn't have it in me back in January (too fat and out of shape) to gear up again. But Amy kept after me (told me to man up and do my duty) and yours truly finally got his shit together (in a relative sense).

Boy am I glad I did.

See you next year on June 16, 2018. #PKR4EVR

Had a few friends over for lunch. No biggie.

Acceptable Excuses for Missing the Peckerhead Invitational

No excuses from K-Spick. No sir-ee Bob.

As you may have guessed, there are always a few folks who cannot make the ride. There always seems to be some problem or another that confounds their best efforts to attend. Sometimes, these good citizens allude to the issue in their RSVP e-mails. Though they rarely admit to it, we see these regret letters for precisely what they are: cries for help. 

And so, we put our heads together (both of them) and present the following solutions to the obstacles outlined below.

Case One
"In the last two weeks, my schedule has gotten all f'cked up......while you are getting on your bikes at 7:30 a.m., I will be getting on a plane........heading way way west....sometimes I wonder if it is all worth it."
Here's a clue. It probably isn't. Free your mind and your ass will follow. See you Saturday.

Case Two
"Probably will not attend this year. Running the Canton marathon the next day and even the short route may zap too much at my age. Have a great time!"
A challenging problem, this one. Allow us to offer a solution. Run the Half-Pecker. The money you save on gas and entry fees will buy you a new pair of shoes and the feat alone will earn you a lifetime exemption and automatic entry into the hall of fame. See you Saturday.

Case Three
"Thanks again for the invite but I'll be doing a race in New York that weekend.  It totally looks like you guys will have a great time.  Please keep me on the invite list for the future." 
Here's the thing about races. We love us some races, we really do. In fact there are several races that absolutely justify missing the Peckerhead to go do. They all occur in Europe, however, and unless your name is Schleck or Sagan or Zabriskie, you are not doing any of those races. Balance restored, priorities renewed. See you Saturday.

Case Four
"I'm not gonna make it this year. Unfortunately, I haven't been riding much at all this season." 
Really? Did you know that a guy on a 1956 Humbert finished the Half-Pecker in 2011? Kids do that route. Dudes on three wheeled contraptions with fishing creels strapped to the front finish that route. Saddle up on the carbon vunderbike and get here by nine. And who said anything about riding. There's a pretty good cookout around noon and the old man could use a lieutenant at the grill. Problem solved. See you Saturday.

Case Five
"I wish I could join you, but I'll be running through the night that Saturday, pacing a friend during the nighttime portion of the North Face Mohican Trail 100 Mile Run."
If you are gonna be running through the woods in the middle of the night, you might as well be shitfaced and get naked besides. Hell, I'm up for that. See you Saturday.

Case Six
"Sorry Jay, I tore my achilles a couple months ago and I am still in therapy and recovering.  It is going well but the older I get the more I want to get going and I haven't quite balanced it out yet." 
Allow me to assist. Present your physicians excuse at the sign in table. See you Saturday.

Case Seven

"I’m not going to make it this year; I’m going to try to act “like a Dad” . . . . . and take the clan on a family vacation. . . ."

We here in management endorse the family vacation. In fact, you deserve one! And since it's Father's Day weekend, you deserve to leave any day you damn well please. So here's what you do. Ride on Saturday, Leave on Sunday. Problem solved.

We are grateful to have been given to opportunity to help solve these difficult and vexing conundrums. See you Saturday. Mgt.

Seriously, which arrows do we follow?

IMPORTANT!  Someone had the gall to adopt the distinctive Peckerhead directional arrow as their own and has placed some of these on our route.  The imposter arrows are white.

The arrows we are following are YELLOW. 

Most intersections are marked. However, if you come to one that is not marked, go straight through,

A minivan, a screaming baby, and a perfect day

Newville Church at the corner of Possum Run and Swigart Road

Seventeen years ago right around today (we skipped a year way back when) I took the day off from work to mark a bike ride course for a bunch of my friends.

I was 29 years old - twenty-nine! - and the father of a four-month old baby girl. I had recently traded in my 3/4 ton Dodge Ram 4x4 for a truly spectacular 1996 Dodge Grand Caravan. I don't think I was rocking Dad-jeans at that point, but shit had changed and changed big for me and my now family.

Early in the morning I packed my baby daughter into the shining white family chariot. I brought along two or three bottles of milk for her, a few cans of spray paint, the Ohio Gazeteer, and likely a fifth of gin for me. Off we went, full-on Clark Griswold style.

Back then, there was only one route for the Peckerhead Invitational and it was intentionally horrific. 90+ miles of nothing but hills and suffering. No bailouts. No GPS or Google Maps. No Strava. Barely a cell phone.

I remember very little about the day to tell the truth. Except one moment, and that's this. Ellie and I stopped at the Newville Church at the corner of Swigart and Possum Run to soothe what would be later diagnosed as a lower gastrointestinal problem that would require surgery. Poor kid was was screaming her f*&%ing head off.

We sat under the open hatch of that god-awful minivan while I rocked her to sleep and fed her a bottle. Alone with our thoughts and the veal calves across the road. No Facebook updates. No blog to revise. Just me, the kid, and a tiny church in the middle of nodamnwhere. It was a perfect moment of early fatherhood.

I included that corner in the John Holmes this year. When you ride past the church and head up Swigart into the teeth of John Holmes, try to throw some love to me and Ellie and our minivan seventeen years ago. #PKR4EVR.