I passed up entering the holiday Mercedes raffle at Kenwood Mall the other day. Besides smelling like a sulfurous telemarketing junk mail scam, I’m not a very lucky man. While I may disagree when I feel the leather driver’s seat hug my buns, nature knows that I’d be a tool in a convertible Mercedes. My wife, on the other cleat, has been blessed with beauty, a knack for numbers and the ability to attract unexpected fortunes to herself…nearly a luck savant.While she has yet to be on TV accepting an oversized check with an overabundance of zeros or answering the Publishers Clearing House knock on the door with her hair in curlers while wearing fuzzy slippers, she matched 4 of 6 numbers in the lottery once and scratched her way to numerous tiny fortunes. She always brings home the bacon at race raffles. She’s cleaned house at the Six Hours of Power and Dirty Divas women’s mountain biking clinic raffles by purchasing 25 dollars worth of tickets and winning on nearly every single one. I think the only thing I’ve won in the past ten years has been an IF water bottle and a fat measuring scale that I have yet to figure out how to operate, which I blame for having 2 pack abs. The only luck I’ve had was her saying “yes” when I asked her to marry me.
This is precisely why I asked her to send me good karma for yesterday’s end of season raffle for the OVCX. If you don’t have good luck yourself, it’s completely okay in the world of luck to know someone who’s lucky. If it’s your spouse, that brings even more luck. That’s why James Bond has his babe du jour kiss the dice at the craps table. It works.
After the last race yesterday, the racers gathered in the park building for season awards and the raffle. This is no ordinary sock and water bottle raffle. There was big stuff up for grabs: a custom Shamrock CX frame, a Jamis Supernova frameset, two Redline frames, Chris King goodies and a set of drool worthy all-carbon cyclocross specific Zipp 404 wheels. Only the people who entered at least ten of the 13 races qualified. While I didn’t see the list of the names, I estimate there was only 50-60 people vying for the goods, pretty good odds to win something sweet. However, I totally expected to go home cold, smelly, dirty, sore and lighter in the wallet and parts department than I arrived.
On race day mornings, my wife usually sends me off with a kiss, the phrase “kick some ass,” and a wink. I told you I was lucky to have married her. Yesterday, we skipped the “kick some ass” and she said "good luck winning the wheels." I had been talking about them all season. While I had some success on the bike this season, the raffle stewed in the back of my head and made the missteps of bad days on the bike seem worth while. At the race yesterday I had a wheel/tire issue, ended up grabbing the pit bike on lap 2 and did not kick any ass. Oh well, there was still the raffle. I smiled. It was just fun to race on snow in 15 degree weather. Besides, at a party the night before, I had jokingly told people who thought I was a buffoon for racing in cold snowy weather that I was just going for the raffle.
With the Elite races over and the car packed, I grabbed a snack, my cell phone and went inside for the raffle. When I sat down with my teammates, I saw I had a text message waiting. Here’s what it said:
From: My Wife
“Here’s a good luck wish for the raffle! How was your race”
Xxoo
My reply:
Thanks for the vibes finished 12 had an issue with rear wheel on lap 1 had 2 switch 2 pit bike phil took 2nd raffle is starting now xoxo
And here’s the message I sent just minutes later with the photo above:“I won the zipps omg!”
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