CHILLERS EVERYWHERE, SHIT JUST GOT REAL AND #EVENMOREWATERSHED

ETAPA NO. FOUR OF THE 2014 EUSKAL HERRIKO ITZULIA RUN-DOWN RUN-ON

You wake up and it’s bright, cars are honking, kids are playing football in the grass below your window in the field between apartamentos and it’s kinda hot and mid-day stuffy, it’s 10:13, you went to bed at 5:23, you try to do the math but you can’t do the math because you’re At The Races, you pee, your pee smells like coffee before you’ve even had coffee which is cool, I guess, you pack again, everyday you pack, you don’t even look under the bed anymore, but that’s cool, you don’t care, you probably have everything, the place looks damaged, pizza boxes and water bottles and gummy bear wrappers and gummy bears and pizza crust and spent batteries and wet towels are everywhere but everyone is waiting for you in the elevator, you check out, you drive to the start but then on the way to the start you stop for cafés con leches and tortillas at a bar because that’s apparently where you eat breakfast-lunch-and-dinner in Basque Country, on the way to the start you stop at a light next to the Garmin-Sharp soigneur who you’ve been running into all week and who you like but whose name you can’t remember and but for the purposes of this story you decide to call him “Ted,” Ted is from Canada, you remember that, that part is not made up, that part is true, anyway you pull up next to Ted in the Team car at a light and the windows go down and you’re joking and talking shit about shit, this familiarity is new but #toteswelcome because it maybe means you’re making progress with your blog, the start area is deep with chillers because by and large 82% of Basque Country Citizen Fansies (BCCF) are mad crazy chillers, everywhere you look you see #hellatight casual game which reminds you of Kasual Klub #forchillin, Manual for Speed’s first ever Lifestyle Experience (Coming Soon), you do photography at the start area which photography entails, momentarily, putting Pro-Not-Pros11Folks who are Professional at Not Being Professional—it’s a desirable skill. in front of Team Buses which confuses spectators who look at you like…what? wait just a minute, you drive to the first corner, you get kicked off a train bridge over-pass deal, you pass a lake, you miss the climb, you stop for cafés and to photograph the race from a pedestrian bridge, you take a Renessiance-style (MFS does chiaroscuro) Family Portrait of a Cuban family in the café, the race goes past, downhill and too fast and you’re almost going to miss it so you have to run and you drop your Oakley #heritage Eyeshades on the concrete ground but it’s worth it because you make it there in time, you drive up a mountain and on the way up the mountain you fart a postcard—maybe two—and because of all that #fartingpostcards you’re running late and feeling hurried and so you drive too fast and too close and accidentally clip your passenger side mirror with the driver side mirror of the car next to you but #whateves this is racing, so you photograph the chillers and the racers, which racers are at this point making faces and sweating, you drive through Eibar22A city and municipality within the province of Gipuzkoa, in the Basque Country of Spain. The city was chartered by Alfonso XI of Castile in 1346. Its chief industry since the 16th century has been the manufacture of armaments, particularly finely engraved small arms. It was also the home of Serveta scooters. , a Next Level mountain village where verticality and European engineering parties meet, you drive to the top of Alto de Ixua which alto is popping-off crowd & sitchback-style Big Time, you struggle to park, you buy an ice cream cone and walk to a sitchback while forty-nine motorcycles come past like a pre-game firework show, the first Pro-dude arrives too soon so you’re forced to throw your unfinished chocolate cone into the grass next to a tree and the end of a used cigar and squat in the apex and watch the race explode and explode and explode and explode, and before it’s all the way over Ted hands you two Official Garmin-Sharp Water Bottles and says look for my dudes, if you see my dudes, give my dudes these bottles because I gots tah go!, and you geek-out in spite of yourself, you feel honored and connected and involved and integral and insider all because of this one little insignificant task so you say to yourself it’s just water bottles, bro but you can’t help it and who cares anyway? because when the overly-packed Autobus finally rolls through you’re happily standing in the corner with a pair of blue bottles in your hands, but Ted’s dudes don’t see you or they aren’t thirsty or whatever so later, between that lap and the next lap, you photograph yourself hydrating various random spectator dogs with “water” from an Official Garmin-Sharp Water Bottle, thirty minutes later you photograph the next lap (more or less on the same hill, only with a slightly different finish), you take selfies lying on the ground, you get some Pro-dudes to driveby #peacefingers you, at the top of the alto near where you parked after the race is over, you drink cafés in a chalet, you descend the mountain to Eibar where you stop-gap-eat boccadillos and cafés, you drive to Bilbao and locate Garmin-Sharp’s hotel, over email you communicate with Garmin-Sharp’s Director Sportif and lock-down hotel access, so for the first time like ever ever ever ever ever ever ever you are allowed to photograph the team in their hotel rooms on your #bestbehavior while they chill and get massages and do laptopping and whatever because #theyrejustlikeus, you bro-out with Caleb about Amarillo, Texas and you make plans this fall to document his attempt at The Big Texan 72oz Steak Challenge, you talk to Ben about Jay Moglia, West Virginia, Lost River Barn and Guns Grit & Gravel, you take a portrait of Koldo and his family in a quasi-tender moment, later you have drinks with Garmin-Sharp mechanic Sam in the hotel bar/café zone, you talk about everything and it’s easy and you’re relaxed, Ryder shuffles in to laptop and chill, then you leave because it’s late and you’re forty minutes from your hotel which hotel is the first hotel of this race to completely and totally suck; then you download, charge, write, transcribe, edit, format, rename, save, spellcheck, upload and brief until 3:34 AM.