As far as keeping your schedule straight, planning your race season and knowing just how close we’re getting to the coming Mayan-predicted apocalypse of 2012, there’s no replacement for a calendar. Face each day with a smile and a dirty cyclocross racer with the new DFL calendar.
Featuring women that are more roller-derby girl than swimsuit model, each month has a lady or two from San Francisco based-DFL (which stands for Dead F-ing Last) team.
Joe Blanco started DFL about 15 years ago and the tiny team held outlaw ‘cross races — permits and blessings from USCF were never sought. During that first year, less than a dozen racers would show.
But that number has ballooned to about 150. Still technically illegal or non-sanctioned, races are $5. Guys who “cross dress for cross” save themselves a fin and get in free.
To celebrate the series’ decade and a half, DFL decided to create a calendar for 2010. Accomplished photographer and bike geek “Pamela Palma” shot all the pix. They include racers outfitted in costumes ranging from cow girl to Wonder Woman. One is described as “Hot summer nights.”
The limited release has been such a success that there’s already talk of next year’s calendar. Possible theme for 2011? Cross-dressed men, which could possibly be the only way to accelerate the apocalypse of 2012. Calendars are $20 and available directly from Pamela at ppalma@pamelapalma.com
—Stephen Krcmar lives in Mammoth Lakes, Calif., and is the organizer of a semi-annual stair-loving ‘cross race called “Thus Climbed Zarathustra” in Los Angeles.
