There are so many things I love about bike racing. Watching racers fall in love with cyclocross on and off the course is pretty much the greatest thing ever. There are a lot of things that are different about spectating CX, but I think the thing that stands out most is the camaraderie between everyone on the course. There’s always someone to stand next to and laugh with. I’ve met some of my best friends by just showing up. 

Fresh off hosting the Midwest Single Speed Championships and then the MN State CX Championships podiums, I’ve learned a couple of things. The best part about hostessing a podium actually isn’t the Elite races. It’s arriving at the course at 8:00a to superfan the Juniors and seeing the looks on their faces when you hang the medals around their necks. It is also spending all day alternating between superfan/podium girl from the 4s and the beginners to the Masters and the Women’s 1/2/3s all the way to the very end of the day with the Elite Men and Women. 

I will happily stand outside in below-freezing temperatures from the crack of dawn until the sun goes down, wearing a satin dress and high heels. I will hug your Juniors and help you solve problems and jump in wherever you need me most. I will cowbell until my arm falls off, and then I’ll pick up the cowbell with my other hand and keep going. I’m an asset to your media campaign and I’m really nice! I also smell good, and I work for free. 

Anyway, I invite you to enjoy a really long summary of my qualifications. I break it up with a bunch of pictures, though. I figure if the Internet likes it, you might, too. Either way, I am insanely qualified and I have excellent references.

December 2002: I find employment at a law firm as an office assistant in a high-rise building in downtown Minneapolis. Here, I meet many of the nicest people I will ever meet in or near an office setting. These people are bicycle couriers, and before I know it, they’re teaching me how to fix my bike and I’m working checkpoints at their alleycats. 

February 2003: I work my first Stupor Bowl checkpoint at Mayslack’s and eat what may be the finest chicken fingers I have ever consumed. This is the first of nine consecutive years I will work a checkpoint during this race. 

June 2003: I attend my first Nature Valley Grand Prix. I sit in the open window of the old messenger space on Nicollet Mall and watch the criterium circle around and around and around and I fall in love with everything. I make more friends that summer than I expect I ever will again. 

September 2003: I get married. That night, when we arrive at the Grand Hotel after the reception, a bike gang shows up outside, swigging PBR out of cans. They bring a card signed by twenty people, and a gift. It is a blank book tied together with an old inner tube. 

February 2004: I work my second Stupor Bowl checkpoint. I will now cease to mention this unless I have a neat photo to share because I am already tired of typing it in, and repetition is useless. 

June 2004: I ride my far-too-big silver Raleigh singlespeed until five days before I deliver my daughter. I appear to be a house on wheels. As soon as I am able, I ride again, alone. 

September 2004: I discover the Internet. More specifically, I discover BikeForums. I dabble a bit and lose interest because I think the Internet is full of assholes who should get off the damn computer and go ride their bikes, you know?

June 2005: I rediscover the Internet, which I believe somehow has magically morphed into a place I can learn new bike tricks and post photos of aforementioned bike tricks.

December 2005: The law firm in the high-rise in downtown Minneapolis takes the entire firm to London for a week. I bring my bicycle and alert the Internet of my imminent arrival. Jack Drury organizes an alleycat and we all have a grand time:

February 2006: Stupor Bowl 9. 

April 2006: I receive a Surly Steamroller frame and fork. Unbeknownst to me, this will become my second child, my best friend, and an impossible money pit. I put together my first build. I am incredibly proud of myself. Meanwhile, on the Internet, a splinter forum is created and I am invited to ChiFG despite living in Minneapolis. 

May 2006: The first Girls Gone Grumpy ride occurs, and I make my first real girlfriends on the bike scene. I am shy, and then I am happy. I learn to ride my bicycle in dresses. I force Jeremy to create Minneapolis Bike Love, our own city-specific forum. 

July 2006: The first Bicycle Film Festival is held in Minneapolis. We all get drunk, and we all have a wonderful time. Floyd Landis wins the Tour, and so begins my love affair with professional cycling. 

August 2006: I build a singlespeed bike solely because I want to wear high heels on the first Freeride.

So I do, and I become legendary.

September 2006: The first All-City Championships are held. Mark Kiecker is visiting from L.A. and meeting people I knew on the Internet is still absolutely blowing my mind. 

October 2006:I attend my first Homey Fall Fest with my first flask and I proceed to crotch myself so hard on a mountain bike that I see stars. 

November 2006: I travel to Chicago for the inaugural Sadie Hawkins Day race. I buy and ride in a very fluffy dress in freezing temperatures and do not win best-dressed. I am pissed. I meet so many people from the Internet that it becomes normal to hear “MINX!” shouted across the room. 

February 2007: I work my traditional Stupor Bowl stop, but this time all of my Chicago friends travel to Minneapolis to attend the race. We dress up and have fancy times the night before the race. The day of the race it is thirty degrees below zero. 

April 2007: I go to St. Lucia. I bring my bike. This is a huge mistake, but the locals are amused by this bike: “No bricks? No bricks?” Bricks? Brakes.

Still April 2007: I learn how to trackstand, no-handed, in heels. The Internet proceeds to absolutely lose its shit. 

July 2007: I begin dumping serious money into my bike. 

September 2007: I volunteer at my first Bicycle Film Festival. I make much mischief and meet a man at the liquor store who asks to kiss my boots. His name is Shorty, and he gives me a flyer with his information on it. This has nothing to do with anything, really. If you’d like his information, his flyer is still hanging on my refrigerator because it’s not every day you get a flyer from a man who asks to kiss your boots at the liquor store. 

November 2007: I travel to Chicago again to attend my second Sadie Hawkins Day race. 

March 2008: I do this. 

And the crowd goes wild. 

June 2008: I am invited to take part in the Bicycle Film Festival’s Frame X Frame exhibition at One on One Bike Studio.

October 2008: Team Pegasus releases their 2009 calendar. I appear on the cover.

May 2009: NiteRider hunts me down to create and appear in one of their new print pieces. 

September 2009: I am shot for the Masi catalog with my friend Spencer. I do wish I had photos of that. I also travel to Sun Prairie, WI for the USGP. It is my first introduction to cyclocross. I lose my voice from yelling and my arm hurts for a week afterward from cowbellin’. I see Erwin Vervecken and I am starstruck. 

February 2010: Stupor Bowl. Again. As it is every year, marvelous. 

Summer 2010: I fall off my bike. A lot. 

November 2010: I am cast in a Schwinn Holiday 2010 campaign. We ride bikes and ring out holiday songs on bike bells. It is an extraordinary amount of fun. We also do a live satellite media event and appear on morning shows all over the United States. 

2011: Stupor Bowl, Bicycle Film Festival, All-City Championships. I jokingly call these the “three bike events I do every year.” I realize I am no longer joking. 

June 2011: I soigneur for Team Mountain Khakis during the NVGP in the Midwest. I meet Adam Myerson. I am again, obviously, starstruck. I have the time of my life and when the boys leave, I have five new friends. 

July 2011: I start a weeklong joke for a handful of my friends that thousands of people find funny. But wait! I don’t just objectify, I’m factually accurate and the Dudes love it. 

August 2011: I have an urge to go to CrossVegas to see old friends and meet new ones. And so I tell the Internet, and the Internet loves it. But Brook hires an EXTREME SPORTS MODELING AGENCY instead, and the Internet is sad. (I hold no grudge! I still am dying to meet him!)

September 2011: I begin writing about CX season. The Dudes lose their minds. I go to USGPCX in Sun Prairie. I have an extraordinary time, as always. 

December 2011: BDIPC is rated at #4 in Outside Magazine Online’s Top 10 Biking Blogs and is one of Bicycling Magazine’s Five Websites We Love. I post up for legitimate journalistic recognition. 

Please, don’t hesitate for a single second to contact me with any questions, or for extensive references. 

All the best (no, seriously, I am the best!)

KMR