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.