- BLOGGER APP #1: Team Dicky

NAME: Rich Dillen

SPONSOR/TEAM: Team Dicky

HOMETOWN: Charlotte, NC

Where are you from? Charlotte, NC
What kind of bike do you ride? I still don’t know what BRAND I’ll be riding, but rest assured it will be a rigid single speed 29’er with pink wheels.
What do you love about it? I don’t have it yet, nor do I know who is going to make it, so the anticipation of the unknown is quite thrilling.
Solo or team competitor? Why? Solo. All my former teammates from previous stage races still have restraining orders against me, so my options for a partner are quite limited.
Done any ultra-endurance stuff before?
Two La Rutas
Two Trans Rockies
One BC Bike Race
Tour de Burg
Twelve hundred milers
Twenty+ 12/24 hour events
A myriad of other bicycling related tests of fortitude
Favorite food? Oatmeal cookies washed down with Amstel Light
Movie? Three Amigos
Book? If Chins Could Kill (The auto-biography of Bruce Campbell)

Worst experience on a bike? By far doing the Cohutta 100 on a fixed gear the week after my dad died was the worst time I’ve ever had on a bike.
Best experience on a bike? My first 24 Hour World Championship in 2000. It was the first time my dad got to watch me race my bike.
Tell us about your favorite ‘local’ ride: Getting up every morning, riding my bike to work, riding for a living, and then riding home. Some days I forget what a gift it is to be a bike messenger, but when I think about it what could be better?
Describe a sponsor or company you admire and why you admire them? The Bare Knuckle Brigade is the best sponsor anybody could ever hope for. They have taught me to hate, but with compassion. To destroy, but with empathy and kindness. To be the absolute best ever, but with humility. They are a cult of excess personality with a capital “P” that rhymes with “T” and that stands for “Tool”. Did I mention we’re just a club that loves show tunes?
Who will play you in the Breck Epic movie and why? Tony Danza, of course it would only be shown on the Lifetime Network for Women. If he were not available the producers would probably give Rick Moranis, Martin Short, or Ben Kingsley the nod.

Tell us about your history as a cyclist or in the industry: I started riding mountain bikes back in 1989 or so while attending Youngstown State University. I sucked at the very start, but over the years I got slightly better. I floundered around in the beginner class at some local XC races, and eventually worked my way up to being a slightly better than average sport class racer. When I started my job as a bike messenger in 1996 I started getting stronger, and when I discovered endurance racing in 2000 I knew I had found my niche. I had some success in the first few years, but I burned out pretty quickly as I focused mainly on 24 hour races. After a tidy little hiatus I sold all my geared bikes and took up single speeding thinking I had left endurance racing and the idea of ever doing a classic stage race behind. Little did I know that over the next four years I would race my single speed for thousands of miles all over North and Central America, and have some of the best times of my life. Yeah, that sums up my lifetime’s worth of cycling history in 200 words or less (199 words to be exact).

That's fascinating! Tell us more! (editors note: the sarcasm is mine, and yes, I know that sarcasm is, A: verbal violence, and B: often a greater statement about the issuer than the subject.): When it comes to endurance racing my goals have morphed since I first started. I used to do it for the pure challenge of pushing my limits, but now I think of it as an advanced form of speed touring or just a painful vacation from the real world. Now my goal is to be the guy who can squeeze the most fun out of every event I enter. Sure, there are times when I want to do my best, but for the most part I just want to ride new trails, meet new people, and come home with new memories. I may not come in first, I may not have the most popular cycling blog, and I really only remember about 50% of the grammar skills I learned in college, but I am the most proficient blogger when it comes to describing my experiences with run-on sentences, and you will definitely have a hard time finding a better single cogging, humor blogging, fun hogging, brain fogging, eggnogging writer to help you live out the Breck Epic in a vicarious manner.

Links to my work:
Smacktalkapalooza: http://teamdicky.blog.com/2684031/
Shove Industries: http://teamdicky.blog.com/3117453/
La Ruta 2004 (caution: @ 4,000 words): http://teamdicky.blog.com/489784/