We can't all be heroes, because somebody has to sit on the curb and applaud when they go by.

— Will Rogers

You know you’re not in Colorado Springs any more when you see an Adopt-a-Highway sign reading, "NORML for Boulder." We don’t want to know what’s normal for Boulder. Not after the whole Ted Haggard thing. We have our own problems.

The NORML sign was just west of the Weld County border, near the intersection of St. Vrain Greenway and Irony. I made a mental note and kept driving, looking for something called Xilinx and the U.S. Gran Prix of Cyclocross.

The Xilinx Cup, day one of a USGP double-header, was the first event of national stature in our flyover state since the late, lamented SuperCup, and I figured I would be a good deal more comfortable there than at a same-day presidential fertilizing of Greeley, a subsidiary of ConAgra, which lies a little further east on the Irony Viaduct. I went to school in Greeley, at the University of Northern Colorado, and after three years of cartooning and other misdemeanors I was not so much graduated as released upon my own recognizance.

Like our government, Xilinx does things I don’t understand. "We are in the programmable logic business," it says on the company website. O-kay. Me, I’m into sophistry and cyclo-cross.

Happily, so is Xilinx. The cyclo-cross part, anyway. I would kiss the company on its programmable-logical lips, if it had any, because it hosted a really brutal ’cross on Saturday, the kind I always hoped I’d double-flat at, as far away from the pit as was humanly possible, so I'd have an excuse for quitting the son of a bitch.

Treefarm's speed turned sand into glass. Really. Go look, if you don't believe me

Photo: Patrick O'Grady

It wasn’t remotely muddy, unless you count that subtle frosting of dust and sweat that makes a guy look lightly stuccoed. Still, even the people who were kicking ass had their yaps hanging open like photocopies of Edvard Munch’s "The Scream" after a few go-rounds. The parking lot looked like a Wal-Mart on the day after Thanksgiving, the crowd sounded like a traffic jam at a clown college, and there were more cameras clicking than during an "unannounced" White House visit to someplace they’d rather not be with an election coming up. Not Greeley.

Xilinx was my first close look at Katie Compton, and that’s all I need. She is a Cylon agent, and would be in a wire cage on Gitmo before nationals if anyone could catch her. Ryan Trebon I have seen before, and anyone who thinks altitude training gives him a leg up on Treefarm has been smoking too much St. Vrain Greenway. This dude scores some serious vertical gain just straightening up after tying his shoelaces.

As I clicked away with my little digital Canon, chatting with some charitable souls who have yet to file restraining orders, a couple of folks were kind enough to tug on my coat sleeve and say they thought my columns didn’t suck too bad, were even kind of funny, in a troubling way, after a couple or six beers or a closed head injury, assuming there was nothing on TV. Some of them asked whether I would be racing.

Now that would be funny. My fat ass challenging the design limitations of Lycra at the speed of smell. Sorry, guys, the National Earthquake Center in Golden is just down the road, and the last time I crashed Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station went to condition red. Not with Backseat in Wyoming and the Cyclist-in-Chief in Greeley, thanks all the same.

I’d like to see the second half of this double-header in Boulder on Sunday. And I ain’t no Katie Compton. I can be caught, if I make a big enough noise to attract attention. We can’t all be heroes.

Coming up Sunday: A mad dog at large in the People’s Republic.

Off the front, or DNF? Send the jury's report to webletters@insideinc.com. Please include your full name, city and state or nation. — Editor