I am magic

In 'cross there are many unwritten rules:  A keg MUST be provided by the promoter, you cheer for everyone, you always take pictures of riders on the worst section of the course, etc.

But in 'cross, many hard and fast rules of the universe fail to hold true in particular when it comes to magic.

Don't believe me?  Fine.  Let's have a review of events past, OK?

Last week, Danny Summerhill got the hole shot in the men's open race and lead the pack thru the first turn.  Upon seeing this, I said to the folks around me "Watch this guy.  His bike handling skills are amazing."  Summerhill immediately dumped a chain, lost 30 seconds or more and two laps later, launched himself over the handlebars in an attempt to look like Greg Louganis.  Applying Holmes-ian logic, I, Cap'n Slow, am a harbinger of doom.

Lets look at another example from that day.  Brian Graves is totally slaying it out on the course.  I, Cap'n Slow offer him a handup so Brian can continue to drop the pain on his rivals.  Brian takes said handup as well as the advice "Now make it really hurt, Brian" from me.  He immediately falls all over his bike as if he's been shot.  Once again, Holmes would reason that my words doom racers to flying over the handlebars.  But I reason otherwise.

See, all it takes is one counterexample to disprove a theory.  And so, I give you the example of Danny Flapjacks climbing Wildebeest Hill.  Flapjacks got to the top successfully to the cheers of thousands.  Upon remounting the bike, burned down and fell over.  He was able to save his bike by allowing it to land on top of him.  Right before the savagery of that scene, I had yelled "Go Danny.  Clean remount!"  And then he crashed, rolled around in the dirt for a while, and finally got back on the bike.


Ok, not the best example for disproving the spellcasting theory.

But really, do my words bring horrors and distress to so many people?  Yes, I may have received the eye-of-the-zombie from Summerhill when I shouted JOKINGLY for him to move to the front and take a pull.  And yes, I once said to my brother "there's no way I can hit that rabbit with this tennis ball" right before I knocked it senseless from 60'6".  And, fine, I once said to an ex-girlfriend that "I can last all night" and then fell asleep 5 minutes later.

So maybe my words hold a certain power.  I plan to test the theory this weekend in Frisco as I cheer for all my rivals in the 35+4 category.  I expect that many of them, now knowing the power of my words, will simply not show up.  In fact, I'm counting on that.

And Brian is counting on someone else giving him handups.