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The Golden Ticket...

Saturday, 22 September 2012 02:10

Photo - Helmetless, Bonnie does some alternative training for Leadville 100 MTB.

Part I

By Bonnie Deeann Neff

Last February I won the golden ticket. Thee golden ticket. The ticket so coveted that in the past one woman actually showed up at the race posing as a chosen participant. Due to some unforeseen circumstances, a chosen female racer could not attend and made a deal with the poser to take her place. The poser spent time in the klink. Thee klink.

My husband and I had entered our names as a team into the lottery for the Leadville 100 Mountain Bike Race. When I had received the electronic acceptance I was ....

not able to contain myself and all of Minneapolis shook from my joyous hurrah bellowing up from within its bowels. The coveted electronic notification to the ultimate in pure mountain biking race experience lay in the palm of my sweaty hand. Life as I knew it would be changed forever. And that was a good thing.

Learning is a relative term. We learn to take smaller bites when we choke on the food we just wolfed down; we learn to give better responses to police officers when they pull us over for speeding (Try the diarrhea excuse. Works every time.); we learn that no matter how broke we are we can somehow afford that new bike we need. So what that the city has shut off the water, who cares that the electricity is gone! Neighbor