Will Race For Ice Cream

By Tracie Nelson
SLO, Cali

Today was the Hanford Criterium.

Here's a race that's doing everything right: sweet course, awesome prizelist, cornball announcer, great sponsorship, and even bleachers at the S/F for the mobs of adoring fans to sit on and cheer. But the race is still pretty small, not well-known, and psssst.... don't tell them I said so, but maybe because it's in HANFORD.

(Hanford: A town of old trucks, farmers, pedestrians who walk wherever they feel like, and run-down shanty-shacks. Jesus is Lord of Hanford.)

So to honor this underrated crit, I pulled out all the stops: I busted out the skinsuit; donned the new helmet and sunglasses (which make me look like J-Lo, except with a smaller booty and less tan); I even slathered on the tingly leg cream (I didn't put it on my feet this time - I learned that lesson the hard way at Pine Flat). Then we all went out and raced like mad(wo)men and had a jolly good time.


We had a random passer-by snap this shot with Linda's cherished iPhone. I like how it makes me look 8 feet tall. Either that or everyone else is a midget (a possibility, as Erika insists she stopped growing at age 7).

After the race, we knocked up the local ice cream joint - which isn't just any lame old Coldstone or Baskin Robbins (which will do in a pinch), but a real-live old fashioned we-make-our-ice-cream-HERE-and-serve-out-scoops-the-size-of-yo-mama kind of place.

I got a chocolate milkshake that was roughly the size of Texas. It was good.