We are Here to Win Fucking Races
Photos by Dylan VanWeelden, words by Kyle Von Hoetzendorff
Charlie and Alex arrive at a bar. They’re friends, they met through bike racing, they’re both good at it, they’re both tall. Charlie, usually big on words with questionable substance and unquestionable humor is noticeably quiet. Something is troubling him. Wit isn’t lacking in Alex however, he powers the conversation, something he has never had a problem with, throwing out easy jabs, blockable shots, lazy passes, hoping to get his friend into the game.
Alex knows they’re competitors, that, while he leaves himself open for body blows, Charlie, in his current state of discontent, is vulnerable and it would be easy to land a couple of devastating hits, but this isn’t where they compete, and that isn’t how you play the game. In their field time is the perpetrator, the villain.
A few drinks of various substances later it comes to light that Charlie may be be struggling with a minor existential crisis, his season so far hasn’t been tops, the podium sombrero, its emerald velvet seas covered in dust, lays in the back of his champagne Town & Country, even the color of his trusty minivan has gone flat.
Alex understands, he knows that life is fraught with challenge and choice, defeat, that malignant force of doubt and disgust, is scattered about like a minefield in some long forgotten impoverished country, unavoidably everywhere, unavoidably lethal.
Confidence though is a panacea for the woeful racer’s plight and once found can straighten curves and flatten obstacles, it can endow speed and extinguish fatigue, vision becomes more precise, decisions more sure, there is no longer any doubt. Alex knows this; his season has produced some notable wins and over the course of a few, many, tons of drinks he begins to instill a mantra into Charlie, a dictum of unquestionable truth, a incantation of undeniable power.
Alex repeats it over and over again, and as the drinks continue to arrive the night begins to brown, then blurs, then go black. In the morning, through the haze and the hangover, Charlie can still clearly remember what Alex kept repeating, its stuck in side his head like a hummingbird on Ephedrine in a tropical botanical garden, crowding every thought, everywhere at once.
Three weeks later Charlie wins the last stop of the North American Enduro Tour and the final of the Oregon Enduro series, the podium sombrero is dusted off and worn like the crown that it is. Alex takes second on the day, and for his efforts receives a triple XXX blast of champagne, he is the 2014 Oregon Enduro series overall winner. It worked, that little piece of truth, that short bombastic little phrase, it did its job. “We are here to win fucking races.”
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Dylan and Kyle work for Chris King, where they handle all things “social” including race commentary.
