What I Learned at AVC This Year

Lizadies and gizentlemen, I give you the lazy person’s writing style: the bullet list. Here are the things I learned at the Alpenrose Velodrome Challenge (the AVC) this weekend, where track riders from all over the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Dean’s apartment, and probably some other places, came to race and pick up some sweet prize money:

• My son is a vicious pirate.
• He is the one in orange behind the hippo-sized cheetah that is Stephen Alfred.


• I have no idea where all that aggression comes from – certainly not from a little parental teasing in his past (“Ha – ha! He believed me when I told him the car runs on hamster power! He’s so gullible!” “I’m not gullible. I’m four!”).


• The fact that the rest of the sprinters at the AVC outweighed him by about half did not impress him in the least.


• It was no 88 degrees out there. It was more like ninetyleven. In the meager shade of our shade tent.


• Our meager shade made us quite popular at times.


• Alcohol is prohibited at the Alpenrose Sports Complex and Dairy (really), although you can drink as much milk as you like.


• However, they do not inspect your sports bottles to make sure that it’s Gatorade in there.


• I hate it when I realize that I have screamed. It’s so undignified. But understandable when your son decides that the best way around a tight-knit bunch of thunder-thighed bruisers going 35 mph on bikes with no brakes is through the middle.


• Stephen Alfred, a member of the US Olympic team and most recently, a gold medal winner in the 2006 Pan Am Games, still owns the AVC. Luckily, he is a gracious and kind, though unmerciful proprietor.


• Give Dean (the Celtic Ninja Pirate) a year or two and some really, really hard training, and he might get Stephen to hand over the keys.