Story of the Mask

So Jon Severson was out in Utah, drinking beer apparently and who's mug should be on the bottle he was sucking on... you guessed it! Ironically I rarely drink... anymore. A few years ago I came to the realization that the less I drink the better I feel which led to not drinking at all for a couple years. I spent too many hours wallowing in maudlin nastalgia or the gooey future that never came. Clarity in the present moment is a beautiful thing. In another odd twist of beer fate I won a New Belgium Brewery cruiser earlier in the year and did have a beer in New Belgium's honor. I would probably drink one of these if I could get my hands on one. Shades of Pale Brewery made a limited edition beer to help promote the Park City Point 2 Point, a race I've always wanted to do but have actually never done because it has conflicted with the Dakota 5-0, I think? How they decided on a picture of me from what looks to be a local SandCreek race, I will never know? It must be the cool mask on the jersey or something. *edit* All truths have been discovered on Facebook, ha! The photo on the bottle is from a Wednesday night SandCreek race. That is Jj(#4) and I lapping Adam Jeffrey of Southern Colorado Velo. Jj and I traded pulls for the full 60 minutes. It came down to a sprint finish and I pulled out of my pedal coming out of the last corner less than 100 meters from the line.

Speaking of the mask... "I thought it was a scary clown or a horse's head looking up from a trough." Kate's Real Food had a FaceBook contest about what the mask was and some guy said it looked like, "a horse's head looking up from a trough full of water." Haha! It is actually a Himalayan Buddhist mask, sometimes called a "happy mask". It is said to protect the wearer form anyone who would harm human life. I won't go into all the mask metaphors, or what I think the five little heads represent? The five senses? The five sheaths? I just thought it was cool and it spoke to me at the time. This is a picture I took of the very mask our design is based on, it is at the Mountaineering Museum in Golden, Colorado. I was at the Colorado Trail Foundation holiday party a few years ago and I took the picture then, it was another year or so before the mask made its way into the Bandwagon logo. Michael from Eon Studios and I worked out the drawing. We added a tooth here and took out a tooth there... I love how Primal used the mask in the new kits! Let me know if anyone you know ends up with one of those bottles.