We have been in the trenches with Willie and crew from Downieville for about as long as we have been a company. We’ve watched as the Downieville Classic has gone from being a sly little family affair in a quiet mountain town into the “must-do” event of the West coast race season. The race has evolved into a genre defying test of rider and equipment, and has been instrumental in heralding a return to big races in big country – those kind of hard grit affairs that for the most part died off nationwide a long time ago. It is an EVENT – a weekend long bacchanal involving dust, river water, seared meat, scar tissue, gallons of beer, and perverted song lyrics – that keeps us coming back year after year, and makes us remember why we bother to build bikes in the first place. And the nepotistic mosaic of folk at Yuba, the Classic, and the Stewardship, well, they are family to us.

So it sucks to see that family getting raked over the coals by a gaggle of keyboard warriors when the registration process for this heavily anticipated race doesn’t go exactly as planned. Be warned, that linked trainwreck is a long and slow one…

Remember that old line your grandparents used to spout about how it is best to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt? Well, it works for typed words just as well as spoken ones. (On a slightly related note, a friend just sent this link to a grandparent age fount of wisdom, who maybe deserves to keep his mouth open as much as he wants. Apparently the dude even has a tv deal now. F’real…)

For our part, we’re gonna wait, and be ready when the signal flare shoots. In spite of the fact that there are about three times as many employees here who want to race than there are company comp entries (Yes, we get comp entries. That’s because we are title sponsor of the event. You want comp entries? Pay Wayno a whole lot of money next year…), we are ready. Strange rumblings are coming from the build area about a qualifier. Chapin is already talking his smack. And El Gato Negro is already devising ways to turn said qualifier into a devious farce that will reward animal cunning just as favorably as it will brute strength or mad skillz. Hell, even the china-shop-bull who owns this place is talking about coming back for redemption this year. Provided he survives the qualifier. As if any of us know what that will entail anyway…

But, thoughts of qualifiers got us to thinking – maybe this is how they should do it in Downieville. Screw this internet circle jerk and all the pissing and moaning by the self righteous flameouts from the Instant Gratification Disorder Club. Have everyone who wants to race the All-Mountain race show up in town a day early and enter a pie eating contest. Or hot dogs. OR make everyone who wants to race the All-Mountain have to qualify via competing in both pixie-cross and river jump events. Or a gladiator arena, where racers have to face-off against Clampers and mountain lions. Yeah! I’d pay to see that.

We’re taking a week off from our regularly scheduled Weirstalking, and will instead dedicate this Wednesday posting to one of our fallen Free Agents, young Miranda Miller (mistakenly listed in the fine print of the latest issue of Decline as sponsored by Marin. For this heinous offense, Mark Jordan now owes me a bottle of Don Julio 1942. As does the gear editor of Men’s Journal. Still. Slackers). Anyway, right after we decided to send Miranda her 2010 allotment of frames (in “murdered out black” per her request), she went and broke her leg. Hence this email of January 22nd. Sponsors always love to read these:

“Yesterday a few friends and I went over to Vancouver Island to ride Mt. Prevost; with a trail I have never ridden and only dreamed about riding. On the first lap, I had a bit of a freak accident- I was doing the usual first lap go around and check things out, when I tried to go around a small jump. What I didn’t know was that there was a very large root sticking out at about shin level- catching me square on the shin stopping me dead. After a long ride out- major thank-yous to fellow National Team member, Dean Tennant for pushing me up the up hill- I went to emerge to discover I had received a broken tibia and fibula. At this point they don’t think it requires surgery but I will be checking up with my orthopedic surgeon today. I am going to be working very hard to get myself up and going for Sea Otter.”

Turns out it did need surgery:

Which has left young Miss Miller with some time on her hands this winter, to think about the upcoming season and engage in the sporting pastimes that any rightminded young Squamish invalid would generally engage in:

Yes, that is a loom in the last picture. Times must be grim indeed. While Miranda is probably going bug nuts right about now, she at least is benefiting from the whole Nietzsche-an gestalt of things, and will be heading into the season to destroy all her opposition. Last year, she came back from acute renal failure to win the Garbonzo downhill race at Crankworx. This year? Sea Otter, maybe, maybe not. Beyond that? The sky’s the limit, kiddo…

Who knows? Maybe one day she’ll get to have Rhys Ifans tousle her hair and feed her tall cans of Stella just like in this sweet li’l video:

Wait a minute! Thaaat wasn’t Rhys Ifans, it was none other than the King of Sheffield in a clip from Made, and his trusty young sidekick Josh Bryceland. Rumor has it that Squire Bryceland will have an interpreter on hand for the entire 2010 season in order to translate his every word to our eagerly waiting ears. It will be “mega”, we are told. Almost as mega as seeing those lads do stuff on Blur LTs that make most mere mortals either weep with joy or seethe with envy. Me, I’m somewhere in the middle on that one. Weep, seethe, repeat.

Check back in a day or two where we will reveal, right here on this very blog, the dark side of sponsorship. It’ll be something less than mega.