I’m going to come right out and say it: I love me some End Times. The pageantry, the potential for amphibian-based weather phenomena, the suddenly driverless Hummers. It all gives me an uh-oh feeling in my bathing suit area. That’s why I was especially stricken with the eschatology jollies when I heard that the good folks at Velodirt were going to reprise their Rapture ride in the desperately remote mountains outside of Yamhill, Oregon.

Meant to coincide with crazy coot Harold Camping’s prediction for the end-of-days, last year’s inaugural edition was the highlight of the cycling calendar for those lucky enough to make the cut. Imagine if you will: Hunter S. Thompson and Jack London drink a sixer of Four Loko. They put together  a Gran Fondo. In Borneo. That was the first Velodirt Rapture in a nutsack. A lot of man vs nature /man vs man / man vs stupid Hutchinson Bulldogs, frozen hands and a fucking minipump. And maybe throw some locally-produced beefsticks in the mix. Just for flavor.

When I first learned that the Rapture was happening again, I had an epiphany. Which I think is Greek for when you get stung by a bee and then have a boner for like alot more than six hours, which the doctors tell you should be somewhat fatal but often turns out pretty okay. But it is also means an idea that comes to you like lightning. Which this did. “Rapture,” said the thing I read. And then I went into full free-association mode:

“Biggie Smalls wrestling a bald eagle!

Holiday gift paper that doesn’t ask for permission before it touches you in your no-no place!

Disembodied mom jeans on the 405 freeway!”

And then I remembered this:

The Heaven’s Gate doomsday cult.

These duders and duder-ettes were hard to the mu’fuckin’ core, and on my level on so many levels. Fixation with UFOs and early Star Trek? Check. Affinity for name brand athletic footwear? Check. A penchant for matching sweatsuits that would make the cast of The Sopranos reconsider their fashion choices? Check. Mate.

But, alas. If you want to buy a team’s-worth of purple Nikes and athletic apparel in Portland for a May cycling event you have to have that shit locked down by the previous April. We are far too lazy for that shit. I mean, c’mon. I just got around to putting those sweet anodized purple Kooka cranks I got in 1996 on my hardtail race bike. Square Taper 4 Life, Bitches.

Back to the Velodirt Rapture. It took place outside of Yamhill, Oregon. A town once renown for its papermill,  Yamhill is now the largest exporter of sad, coffee-related wordplay in the continental U.S. Mourn you til I join you, Yamhill.

But this is a bicycling-associated social media platform. What about the 4000-word diatribes on the struggles one undergoes when turning pedals purely for recreation? Where are the masturbatory, monochromatic photo essays? The self-congratulatory recounting of that one time someone got a flat and the Sprinter van was still five minutes out?

Fuck it. We got weird, lit shit on fire and then drew a dong with a light stick and a long-exposure camera. That’s how we party.

A huge thanks to the fine folks at Velodirt for another amazing event. We’ve said it time and time again: They put on the most consistently mind-blowing, well-executed, challenging cycling events we’ve ever taken part in. We would follow them to Siberia in January, Death Valley in August, or Beaverton….whenever. Class acts all the way. Chapeau, Velodirt. If it wouldn’t violate the terms of our parole we would totally take you across county lines and make you ours.

Thousands of cycling fans from all the corners of the Fred-dom will converge on the storied roads of Europe (and the bedtime-storied roads of California) to stand around and gawk at their heroes. Heroes who are, for all practical purposes, regarded by the majority of the US population as the sporting equivalent of the high school AV Club: A dweeby, spindly curiosity.

To celebrate the start of the Grand Debacles, JVA Industries has decided to update our Jens Voigt Soundboard. Like the pros on their trainers before the race start, as much as we’d like to just stare blankly, listen to our iPods, and pretend like no one is looking at us, eventually we have to get off our asses and do something. YOU CAN’T RIDE THAT THING FOREVER, BUDDY! YOUR OBSCURE LINOLEUM SPONSOR GOTS TO GET PAID!

To deflect the responsibility of doing actual work ourselves, we’ve decided to give you, our readers, the chance to help create the Internet’s next big thing. We are proud to announce the first annual JVA Jens Voigt Soundboard “Get Jens On Tape” Soundbite Bounty Hunter Challenge 2012 (JVAJVSGJOTSBHC2012). We’ve compiled a list of quotes which we feel the world needs to hear Jens say. If you can send us audio or video footage of the actual Jens Voigt saying any of the quotes below, we’ll add it to the JVA Soundboard, harness the power of our media empire to give you a huge shoutout, and send you a bona fide, team-issue JVA cycling cap. If you can get him on tape saying all ten, you will receive our new, super-secret, not-yet-released, reality-bending team chapeau.

This contest is also open to Jens himself, his relatives, his teammates, and the proprietor of the pet store from which he buys his tropical fish.

The requested quotes, in no particular order:

1. “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”
2. “There’s still meat on that bone.”
3. “Pretty much everywhere, it’s gonna be hot.”
4. “We’re in a tight spot!”
5. “Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me. Aren’t you?”
6. “Sometimes I get them menstrual cramps real hard.”
7. “Rectum? I nearly killed him!”
8. “Get to the chopper!”
9. “Say hello to my little friend.”
10. “A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some
fava beans and a nice Chianti.”

BONUS. “Cinderella story. Outta nowhere. A former greenskeeper, now,
about to become the Masters champion. It looks like a mirac…It’s in
the hole! It’s in the hole! It’s in the hole!”

So put on your finest Boba Fett costume, grow out a frosted mullet a-la-Dog Bounty Hunter, and help us make some magic. The Internet is counting on you.

Reign on, you crazy diamond.

It thus puts me in a bit of a philosophical quandary to admit that JVA has been experimenting with a lifestyle choice that runs counter to my Neo-Luddism. We’ve been wanting to try it, and we’ve been thinking about it for a while, and we had this friend who really wanted to try it with us, and if we’re honest with ourselves we’ve been kind of waiting for someone to want to do it with us. In short, JVA is binary-curious.

The folks at CatEye have been our sponsors for about as long as it takes to fully gestate a baby rhino, and in this time they have been all we could ever want in a babydaddy. They don’t care that we don’t “win” any “races”. When we leave our drinks on the bar to go have a whizz they hardly ever roofie us much at all. They ask little and give so much. They are the cat’s pajamas, the cat’s ass, and yes, even the cat’s stevens.

That’s why we were doubly honored when we received an email from CatEye’s crack marketing department saying that they were willing to make us custom team computers. And not just any computers, mind you. Computers that answer deep, meaningful, existential questions. Questions like: How fast am I going? How fast was I going? If you had to average all the speeds I went in all the times since when I started until right…now! what would that average speed be? If I left Portland at 6pm traveling 20mph and a train left Dubuque at 5:30pm traveling 43mph, who am I and why am I not wearing any pants? Remember the cyclops in the movie Krull who knew how and when he was going to die, and whose pathos and selflessness pretty much defined what it meant to be a cyclops for an entire generation of acne-scarred American youths? The CatEye Strada wireless cyclocomputer is that cyclops. It knows its fate, and it will be your friend.

You want pedigree? These computers have pedigree up the USBhole. During the course of painstaking genealogical research, we learned that the Team JVA CatEye Strada was sired by none other than the actor who played Dr. Theopolis on Buck Rodgers. It’s mother was a highly-educated Wang2200 who was one of the first microcomputers to run interpretive BASIC and who may or may not have deep blew Deep Blue at an AV club mixer at MIT sometime in the late 70′s. That’s practically royalty.

What is that? You want to Supersize your epic-ness?  Well, the good ladies and lads at CatEye were also kind enough to produce a limited edition Strada in the Jahvahaah Internationale flavourway. The Jahvahaah edition is handcarved from Corinthian alabaster by only the tiniest, most nimble of  non-locally sourced hands. The pigments are harvested from the ink sacs of a rare octupus first described by Jacques Cousteau on the very day that Jacques Anquetil won the Dauphiné / Paris-Bourdeaux double. Like Cancellara after a sand-heavy meal, it displays Swiss quartz movements. Both the JVA and Jahvahaah versions share the features of the stock CatEye Strada Wireless (Full specs here). No, it’s not GPS-enabled, but if you need to be constantly tethered to a global satellite system in order to justify your existence and muster the motivation to ride your bike you should probably just get into orienteering.

Watchu talkin 'bout, Dr. Theopolis?

The Universe works in crazy, mysterious ways. Dateline: Yesterday. Yours truly was bemoaning the cycling-related schmutz I accumulate during rides. I’m not overly perspirational, but I know how to get an honest day’s work out of a subaceous gland. If you’ve got time to lean, you’ve got time to make me unclean, that’s my motto. And not to toot our collective horn, but JVA has been logging some serious miles these days. Winter has been mild in the Pacific Northwest, and we’ve been taking full advantage of La Niña. Not “taking advantage” in a weird way.  We’re all post-modern feminists up in this bitch.

But personal hygiene is important to us. We don’t want no chanterelles growing on our swingbags. We have reputations. And they need to be upheld. Like we are the dude figure skater and our reputation is the lady figure skater and we are upholding her as we twirl around in a graceful fashion, but not for so long that some skeevebags can try to peep her lady bits. That’s how we are, our reputation and us.

All this to say, the cyclerati expect a certain level of cleanliness from JVA, and until now we had no surefire way to guarantee our lady/manparts were daisy fresh post-sortie. Enter Action Wipes. They are performance filth-mitigation towelettes par excellence. And we have snagged them as a sponsor.

You want high TPI? They got high TPI. You want a pine-fresh scent? They got pine-fresh scents for fortnights. You got schmutz? There’s a schmatta for that. You got stinks? There’s a schmatta for that. Out of astronaut diapers? There’s a schmatta for that.

We are pleased and honored to welcome Action Wipes into the fold. Now if only we can snag a seat next to Liz Hatch at the next Action Wipes sponsored athletes dinner. The Paisley Possum has an idea for a sweet collabo.

And now, JVA has Difficult Brown. We have christened her The Paisley Shitmissile. The Fortnight Falcon. She is 26 feet of Itascan lovemachine.  She’s the bartender at the dive bar who you know was super hot 12 years ago, but now is just happy to go home with a guy  who won’t shit the bed at 4am.  We’re not going to to delude ourselves. We know she has a history. If a black light were to shine upon her rayon/poly upholstery, the tales it would tell would rival those of the bards who pen the Penthouse Fora. We are under no delusions. She has known many lovers. But now we hold the keys to Difficult Brown’s heart (and bowels).

Does she have baggage? For days. Her womblike interior is a veritable Smithsonian of Oregon Cycling Ephemera.

Behold the treasures she has just begun to reveal:

This old mare will ride again. From the mold and ashes of her past life she will rise, resplendent in paisley and stripes. And she will bear witness to deeds that will make Cronenberg blush. She will do the great name of Recreational Vehicles proud, or this gentleman’s name isn’t Jack SONAFABITCHMUTHERFUCKER Rebney:

Not to mention, things were just starting to get wet/messy/dirty. But I understand. You come on like a supernova, BAM!, then you’re gone. That’s cool.
Call me the next time you’re in town. If I’m not seeing another ‘cross series (that Blind Date at the Dairy race keeps giving me fuck-me eyes) maybe we can hang out. Get some pho, maybe make out in an alleyway. I’ll wear that skinsuit you like.

It’s officially a wrap, kiddos. A falafel. A gyro. An epic burrito. The self-proclaimed largest cross series in the Virgo Supercluster has come and gone. Seven weeks of cowbellin’, frite-in’, and general psuedo-Euro smugmongery. And JVA was all up in that shit.

The last hoorah was one for the ages. The Admiral, Googles Paisano, and The Paisley Possum arrived on scene at the proverbial sparrow fart of dawn. There were tents to be erected (trouser and otherwise), kegs to be procured, and Masters Cs to heckle. As in races past, we were joined by our new brothers-from-another-mother / sisters-from-another-mister, the good folks at Staccato Gelato. These kids know how to turn the pedals and blast the heavy metals. Plus, they selflessly allowed us to use the outlet in their team van and provided the power for every mohawk we gave this season. If we had the upper body strength we would lift them up above our heads and twirl them around like Patrick Swayze does to Baby at the end of Dirty Dancing.

Speaking of mohawks, a proper one was given that day. We’re not talking some #5 guard on the side, Flock of Seagulls bullshit. No sir. I’m talking Tank Girl with a floater of Mr. T and a Tila Tequila chaser. The fun-sized SandyNomNom of Green Submarine fame knew that we’d have people lined up around the block to get their wigs busticated. Smart girl, she booked in advance. A Snuggie was produced. Beer was proffered. SandyNomNom was swaddled in the finest high-pile rayon and we mohawked her like we’ve never mohawked anyone ever. Yes, it took longer than we anticipated, and, yes, the clippers were a little lackluster what with the full-volume Motorhead sucking the power from the Staccato van. But we got it done. And like Al and Tipper said, it takes a village to shave a mohawk. Luckily, Edwin of Sprout Cycles was on hand to give pointers on our clipper technique, man the shears when we had to speed up production (we only had ten minutes to get Sandy shorn before her race start), and generally act as be-dreaded cheerleader par excellence. We couldn’t have done it without you.

Is he smiling, or is it gas?

We drank beer and manhattans. The Admiral, taking a cue from the “serious” racers took the whisky-soaked cherries from the manhattans and put them in his nose pre-race to open his sinuses and maximize airflow. Then we engaged in cyclocross-tacular athletic pursuit concerns. Some of us flatted. Some of us laid waste to the field while grinning like some deranged jockey from a John Wayne Gacy painting.

The ever melancholy Charlie Brown-son Reilly happened to be celebrating his bornhole day, and we knew he was coming. So we baked a cake.

We gave teriyaki meatball hand-ups. Then donut handups, followed by birthday cake handups. Unfortunately, a race official was none too amused with our “handies” and politely offered to escort us from the property. We respectfully declined, then offered him a meatball. Teriyaki, ferchrissakes. The official thus appeased, order and gaiety was restored. All in all, a Sunday you couldn’t beat with a stick.

So ‘cross is done. Will we even remember how to ride bikes without wearing silly costumes? Will we reflexively flush $25 down the toilet before every weekend team ride just out of habit? Will the smell of french fries and goose poop make us want to give the nearest passer-by a mohawk? Shit, I don’t know. I’ve still got a four-pack of Zima and 3 more minutes on this vibrating bed. I’ve got plenty to keep me busy.