Good Morning, RVA: Rad racers

Both intense road racing and the threat of rain moves in.

September 25, 2015; 7:01 AM • by Ross Catrow

Photo by: The Bode

Good morning, RVA! It’s 65 °F, and the streak of perfect weather had to end at some point, right? Today a big storm moves into the area, and the chance for rain–lots and lots of it–is pretty high beginning after lunch and continuing straight through the entire weekend. For obvious reasons, this bums me out. But, in this respect, cycling is more like football than baseball: rain delays do not exist.

Water cooler

Well, here we are: The final weekday of the Big Bike Race™ and the beginning of the road circuit races. If you don’t know why this is such a big and exciting deal, Susan Howson has the (fascinating) primer for you. Because she’s all bike race all the time, she has also written up everything you need to know about today’s race including road closures! Good ol’ Susan “All Bike Race All The Time” Howson.

The UCI Underground Facebook page interviews local businesses about their experience thus far with the Big Bike Race™ and the crowds and customers or lack thereof. It’s some good, first-hand data that you should familiarize yourself with if you’ve got an incurable case of bike race fever.

Remember how the James River High School field hockey team violated their school’s dress code by wearing their field hockey uniforms? Well, I had no idea that violators of the dress code are issued sweat pants with a Hester Prynne-inspired “DRESS CODE” emblazoned on the leg as replacement clothing. Way to publicly shame young girls Chesterfield County! Here’s a longread on the topic if you want to get fired up / really sad.

Richmond Magazine is rerunning their 2001 profile of John “The Greatest Chief Justice” Marshall, as yesterday was his 260th birthday. Did you know dudeman is buried right here in Richmond in Shockoe Hill Cemetery (which is definitely not in Shockoe Bottom)?

If you’re looking for things to do that do not involve the modern velocipede, we’ve got five of them right here (including a super rare First Fridays on a Last Friday!). Oh snap, and another five here!

You guys, I think our goverment officials got through Popemania without embarrassing us!

Across the country, today is iPhone delivery day. Treat your UPS person with kindness and respect.

Sports!

• Spiders host Maine at 3:30 PM on Saturday in their first CAA matchup.
• Kickers begin their trip through the playoffs with a game against Charleston Battery Saturday at 7:30 PM. You can watch the game live here.
• Hokies head to Greenville to face ECU in an always challenging series that seems like it will never end. Kickoff at 3:30 PM on ESPN2.
• Wahoos wrap up their incredible out-of-conference schedule with a Friday night home game against Bosie State at 8:00 PM on ESPN.
• Nats were, in fact, swept by the Orioles. They’ll start a new series with the Phills today at 7:05 PM.
• Washington lost to the then 0-2 Giants, 21-32. New QB Kirk Cousins, did not have the best of games, but who’s left on the bench to take his place?
• D.C. United squares off against the Montreal Impact, Saturday at 5:00 PM.

This morning’s longread

The Internet is looking for who designed this cup.

Well, this is both weird and weirdly written. But you’ve definitely seen this cup and, now that you’re thinking about it, are probably interested in who designed it.

A continuous broad teal brushstroke, topped with a finer purple one. If that doesn’t ring a bell, imagine it on disposable cups. Over the past couple decades, the pattern has been mass produced on millions of them, in addition to other products.

The design is called “Jazz,” and it has an oddly passionate fan base. You can buy it on T-shirts. It’s been spotted on cars. It has a few thousand fans on Facebook.

This morning’s Instagram

Can you say….#pavé? richmond2015 #uci2015 #libbyhill #cobblestones #rva #rvanews #bicycling #roadracing #visitrichmond #visitvirginia #loveva

A photo posted by Rick Chittick (@chitticksadventures) on Sep 24, 2015 at 5:32pm PDT

— ∮∮∮ —

Email

Want to automagically get Good Morning, RVA in your inbox every morning? Sign up below!

September 25, 2015 7:01 AM 1