Thursday, December 09, 2004

Walker Starr: "Who Am I?"

If you don't know Walker Starr, all you need to know is that he's the man. Not like "The Man" who's always trying to get you down, but just lowercase "coolguy" the man. I'll get to why Walker the Stalker is the man in a jiffy, but first you should probably know that things at the Small household have plunged into complete chaos.
I found out a few weeks ago after all arrangements had been made that Andy's mom had run off with some dude and left the family for good. This puts my stay in Auckland a bit up in the air. Nevermind though, because Andy assures me that although this sucks the big one, it's all good and he could use the company. Fast forward a few weeks, here I am and everything seems allright. Everybody's moving on and outward appearances show that things could be worse. After the first 2 days seemed like nothing had ever happened. Life was moving forward, Andy goes to work, his little brother goes to school, his other little brother plays computer games, his dad goes to work, I do some riding and bum around town for the day bothering people with my stupid "American accent." This morning shit goes pear-shaped. Andy stays in a guest house out back that you can see from the computer room window. We've had breakfast, chatted and Andy's out in his villa getting ready for work (works at a bike shop, SURPRISE!). Anyway. I sit down to check my emails and notice what looks like wrestling going on in Andy's room. Poke my head out the door and Andy and his dad are engaged in a full all-out fistfight. Whoa. Run in, tell Nick (Andy's 15 yr old bro) and he laughs like I'm joking. Not joking. We both hear muffled swearing and he knows it no joke. By this point they're on the floor in Andy's room, Nick breaks it up, Andy calls the cops and I walk out the door with Nick. Time to dissapear. They were both at work by the time we got back. Enter Walker Starr.
Walker's a kiwi with dual citizenship who races in America (trying to get on the American track team), so of course he gets heaps of crap from both sides. He's a great guy but doesn't help his reputation by showing up at the crit last night in an Australia national team skinsuit, Rudy Project stars and stripes glasses and a kiwi bike. Identity crisis aside, Walker the Stalker is a unit on the bike and a cool guy off it. He walks in a few minutes after we get back and says he heard about Andy's troubles and offers me a room at his place. We'll sort everything out with Andy tonight, sounds like he might be staying with Walker for a while as well.
As far as racing goes, the weekly crit's a pretty cool deal. 10 bucks kiwi gets you a half hour of windy bayside racing with hot spot sprints every 5 minutes. Pretty hard on the legs if you're going for it, and money's good enough to make it fast. Andy finished 5th on points and pulled down 20 big ones. Mitchem could learn a few things about prize money from these guys. Cool course as well, couple hard corners, a big sweeper and a long finish straight. Couple of true wankers out trying to kill themselves in every corner and each other on every sprint, so its just like home. I stayed out of trouble and checked out who the hard units are for next week. With the ride beforehand, the ride to the course and the ride back it ended up as about a hundred km day in shorts and a jersey. Sweet. DT

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