Saturday night at Frostbike (FB), means one thing….The Surly Pug Race! This year featuring the 45NRTH snow lounge. Q somehow sculpted a danish modern living room, conversation pit, lounge, complete with sofas, tables and drink holders and then covered them with white shaggy upholstery….add in two raging pallet fires and twenty cases of beer and you’ve got the makings of either a bud light commercial or the highlight of this year’s Frostbike. Boombotix.com supplied the tunes and the rather tall, Eric Sovern, acted as master of chaos. There was a race of sorts…with wrestling and a clown. The race takes place right out in QBP’s front yard on the demo course that they create for dealer test rides. This years, voluptuous winter gave birth to the best course that I’ve seen in the last few years.
The festivities were allowed to come to a full boil before the intentionally blurry race parameters were concocted and explained to the contestants via Sov’s new megaphone. Rule number one – have fun, rule number two – rules are meant to be broken, rule number three – there is no rule number 3…
Mi primo, Colin has been training his whole life for the Surly Pug race. Colin brews beer in 1500 gallon batches for a living and rocks a black ops pug that he calls grave digger. He chose this race as his holy quest for the weekend and looked forward to taking home the grand prize for winning such a prestigious achievement and sharing it with the rest of his small village of River West.
Colin – Chill’n before the race.
Team Plaid with their race face’s on.
Colin at the start, where he would take the hole shot and never look back.
Things got physical during the first bike exchange.
They tried to bury Colin with snow, but he emerged victorious, in the end and was awarded the gold medal, the next morning, by yours truly.
This is what was up for grabs. A lifetime of training and sacrifice for a sticker.
The Pug Race was a stone cold groove……and I don’t use that term lightly. If you find yourself saddled with the responsibility to attend something like FB, it’s nice to know at the end of a very long and hard day, there’s something to sing the savage beast that lives in my brain a lullaby.