Cookin' the Goose

I've heard the rest of the nation spent the night watching some freakin' football game, but for anyone into the Anchorage winter riding scene, the last Saturday of the month can mean only one thing: Frigid Bits Tailgater.

Bikes, beer and beef, baby. To hell with televised spectator sports!

This time it was back to the roots of the Frigid Bits series—racing criterium laps on Goose Lake—and Tim "The Grillmeister" Kelly's trusty NRS was the star of this show with 1,000 watts of face-melting, skin-tanning, little-ol'-lady-scaring halogen brilliance. He cooked up this contraption in his home shop a couple of weeks ago, and it was so cool, it just had to be part of a Frigid Bits event.

Tim provided the legs and lights, and I provided the 50-pound Honda generator for him to drag around the lake for five laps while he looked like a 737 on final approach to The Ted.

Along about my fourth lap, I found myself staring down The Grillmeister's twin 500-watt lamps as we went head-to-head on adjacent turns. Those suckers were so bright that, for a second there, I thought my overworked heart had finally exploded and I was "moving toward the light."

After the race, it was time for beer and bullshit by the burn barrel. This is the good stuff.

Sports on TV is for suckers.