Bam! The gun went off. (I apologize that “Bam!” is the only word I can think of to literarily describe the thrusting of a bullet through a gun barrel.)
And, knowing the locale, there existed about a 74% chance it was a loaded gun and not some pansy blank starting off this epic land race. After all, Caldwell, KS was quite the rough and tumble place back in the day. Marshals were killed in the streets, saloons and brothels filled up the downtown, and people said stuff like, “He’s as crooked as a dog’s hind legs.”
We were Dodge City, just without a good PR department.
So this wasn’t the first bullet to be fired into the airspace above Caldwell, my hometown that’s inconveniently positioned two miles north of the Oklahoma border. (Think: the crotch of Kansas.)
But it was a festive bullet in that it signaled the beginning of the always anticipated Ghost Riders’ Trail Race, a 10-leg relay race in and around Caldwell just like we tell ourselves the old-timers used to do it.
They even start the race at High Noon. (Call back!)
The first leg of this spectacular spectacle worthy of spectators is a biker, who is charged with pedaling ¾ of a mile west down First Street. Or, in Caldwell lingo, from the bank to the park.
Our biker was pretty good and by “pretty good” I mean that he’d at least been on a bike since 10th grade. We’ll call our biker “Tad” because, well, that was his name and because I’d like to acknowledge him for running us out to a healthy lead.
This is good considering I had acknowledged Tad the night before at the standard Pre-Race Roast as “the guy who enjoys cycling, which is one of those sports that isn’t a sport, just an activity you learned when you were five. Congrats, Tad, you can ride a bike. What else are you good at? Shoe-tying?” Tad didn’t laugh as hard as I hoped.
Oh well. First place. Crisis averted.
The guy he handed off to? Now he is an asshole, as evidenced by the roast script that read, “Craig is an asshole. Craig is really big into the martial arts. He does Aikido, which translated from Japanese means ‘asshole.’”
Craig lost us the lead, which normally would’ve been a total asshole thing to do, but in this case, he was running a quarter-mile against a college kid who currently runs … the quarter-mile … in college.
You see, on one hand, this is a tiny race with only a few teams that takes a short amount of time in a small town during a little weekend festival. But, on the other hand, there’s nothing stopping us from blowing it way out of proportion.
Exhibit A – I invite 11 men and their families down to Caldwell every year for this race. We have a cookout the night before with music, food, a keg, and free liquor supplied by our Team Manager, who happens to, ahem, work for a liquor distributor. We have a campfire and a roast and a Presentation of the Shirts and the shirts are UnderArmour. Suck it.
Exhibit B – My brother does the exact same thing. Yes, seven race teams and two of them are Shaffer’s. (Bad ass.)
Exhibit C – The presence of a twenty-year-old college runner. He belongs to the Yunker’s Team – the New York Yankees of the Ghost Riders’ Trail Race – who were going for their 8th straight win in this event. I doubt he belongs to the Yunker family, but I appreciate their competitive spirit.
Still, we were a close second when Craig handed off to the first four-wheeler. Mind you, this race is held yearly during the Chisholm Trail Festival, which pays homage to the semi-famous, old cattle trail that ran through Caldwell. Alas, I’ve yet to see any grainy pictures of ATVs helping settle the West.
One team even brings in professional riders with alcohol-fueled four-wheelers. (Damn Yunker’s.)
While our guy Mike’s ATV is plenty efficient at, say, running fence around his own property, it’s not quite as efficient in chasing down a Banshee that’s going 109 mph.
At this point, I, as Team Captain, had to be ferried to the starting point for my leg, unable to cheer on my teammates.
This is a shame because I would’ve paid to see FlipCollective creator Paul Shirley – our “mudder” – lumber through fields and down creek embankments and through a creek and up another creek embankment and through another goddamned field to eventually hand off to the second four-wheeler.
God bless his enthusiasm about it, though, because Paul completely soaked in the Caldwell culture over the weekend. Walking around town, visiting local businesses, even purchasing a Wiffle Ball set from Dollar General. He did his very best to absorb the town, understand its history, and meet its people.
In return, the people asked Paul, “How tall are you?”
You see, Paul is easily the most famous 6’10” person to ever set his size 16s in my little hamlet. And, yes, I might have provoked the tall inquisitions at the previous night’s roast, “Paul is so tall, he kicks cats out of trees. Actually, because of Taul’s pallness, and a sweet jumper, he’s played for a few NBA teams. And by ‘played,’ I mean ‘showered with guys who played.’”
Putting a 6’10” person’s center of gravity in the leg of a race which features dirt clods and mud patches as a part of every step was probably not the best idea. But Paul was a sport and handed off in 3rd place, just a few steps back of 2nd and a few steps ahead of 4th.
Still, Barbara’s Bathhouse was slipping.
(Um, by the way, our team name was Barbara’s Bathhouse. My mom sponsors my team. Her name is Barbara. My dad sponsors my brother’s team. Their name was Men of Linn. I’ll let you figure out his name.)
Anyway, Mark took the baton from Paul and sped off on his four-wheeler. Since I wasn’t there to witness it, I’ll just make up this next part: Mark threw a turtle shell and knocked off second place. He then ran over a mushroom which automatically doubled his speed for a short amount of time.
Nate M. then took the baton from Mark and ran a 1:50 half mile. That’s what he says, but Nate M. lies a lot. Bottom line … the Yunker’s were being reeled in.
Then came the canoe, where the race is usually won or lost.
This is where Barbara’s Bathhouse applied a little strategy rarely used during the Chisholm Trail Festival: practice.
Yeah, while the Men of Linn and the Yunker’s and the Women’s Team and the York’s Team and the team that I don’t think was really a team just a clan of hipsters whose station wagon broke down in Caldwell were all sleeping off hangovers, ole Bab’s Bathers were out doing a dry run in Bluff Creek.
It paid off. Joe and Nate P. successfully maneuvered the canoe in and out of trouble. They even picked up the canoe and ran with it over the parts where Bluff Creek dried up into Bluff Puddle. “These two Kansas City dwellers are really dirtbag hicks hidden in big city, broken down, closer-to-40-than-30-something bodies.” (Roast, page 2)
It worked so well that Barbara’s Bathhouse closed to within a minute of the Yunker’s. Normally this would be fine, but it was I who was charged with running the next leg. And I deal with pressure about as well as a tent deals with high winds. To make matters worse, third place was a mere 30 seconds behind me.
The urges to catch and not be caught caused me to run about the fastest 400 yards of my life. Problem was, I was running a mile.
For the entire leg of my race, I could taste every ounce of beer and liquor I had poured into my body over the past 24 hours. You see, the ATVs aren’t the only ones that are alcohol-fueled in this race. Hell, I had drunk four screwdrivers and two Miller Lites that morning just to keep with race tradition.
Every step made me regret asking questions the night before like, “What does that brand of tequila taste like?” Painful memories come to mind when you’re in pain. Like my portion of the roast when my brother said, “Keep in mind while you are all sleeping here tonight that Mick has likely masturbated in every room of the house.”
Cringe.
Thankfully, I’m pretty sure the guy behind me was just as wasted. And I’m sure the Yunker’s had Steve Prefontaine running in front of me. Two neutralizing factors that led to me handing off still in second place.
At that point, my co-worker Shawn steered his bike back into town without consequence and my brother-in-law John, whom I roasted with the classic “I do push-ups on top of your sister at least four times a year” line, coasted to the finish in second place.
Second place to the Yunker’s is like second place to UCLA basketball in the 1960s. We’ll take it.
Men of Linn got 6th. They were drunker.
Barbara’s Bathhouse took home the travelling trophy that goes to the Shaffer winner each year. No, I’m not making that up.
We’ll now wait the requisite 365 days until the next race with upgrades like alcohol-fueled four-wheelers, top-shelf tequila, and a 6’10” guy doing something else on the agenda.
There are higher expectations now. And Barbara’s Bathhouse will do everything in its power to meet them. After all, this thing is as big as we want it to be.
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This piece features artwork by Scott Shaffer.
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(Boston Accent) The women’s team went down…and they went down hard…
We didn’t do so bad. We finished only an hour behind 6th place. Just in time to start drinking again!