Cyclocross puzzle

Sunday, as I was huffing into mile 12 or so of my "really somewhat epic" 18 mile round trip ride, just coming up the hill near the lake, I hear the tinny voice through the megaphone: "...elite men coming up next!" A little further and I see cars with bike racks, flags, and pop up canopies-there's one that says Shimano, is it a fishing tournament? No! It's my first sighting of a "Cross." No, not that; I mean, public property and everything, but it's a race, not a...cross. It's a bunch of guys who look like roadies riding really swell looking bikes-al carbon frames and everything-and I must say, somewhat slowly, around a dirt track meandering along a section of open space within the confines of the lake property, the trail marked by thin wooden stakes with bits of surveyors tape knotted on at the top. Unless I'm wrong, like if the surveyors tape is to frighten birds away, this is what they refer to as a Cyclocross Race. But it doesn't look like much of a race, I mean, they're riding so slow, why is that?
When I was 12-13-14 years of age, all of my friends and I would ride-and I mean ride-everywhere, as fast as our legs would take us. Dirt tracks, sidewalks, homemade jumps, small hills, big hills, we'd ride from the flatlands in town up into Bel Air-and I mean up-down Mulholland Drive and back down Roscomare or Beverly Glen or Sepulveda. We covered a lot of ground in a day, we worked hard at it.
So when, a few decades later, as I'm just trying to keep the E in epic, and I come across these dudes chugging along like Shetland ponies tethered one to another at the carnival, well, it's just not very impressive. Will somebody please tell me what I'm missing? I have respect for anything bicycling that anybody wants to do, don't get me wrong. I just don't get it. Beefing up an otherwise fine road bike-and rider-tossing some mtb stop you now rocks and all brakes on it, along with some knobbies and call it ..what? Slow riding on a road bike in the dirt? Wouldn't you just use a real mountain bike for that? Wouldn't it be faster?

Keith Richards; Living Life

Keith Richards' memoir "Life" was published recently, and despite a sense of "here we go again, another dip in the Look at Me, I'm a Celebrity" pool, I took a look.  It turns out that that what Richards has crafted, along with his writer pal James Fox, is a life story so compelling and readable, so loaded with swagger and sureness of place, I was really quite surprised. It turns out that Keith is not just another too big for his britches star type, and he's not one to miss the nuance and texture of day to day life. His memory is-apparently-very good, and the stories he relates, and the sensitivity he shows to the times and to the individual players, is remarkable given our (my?) natural tendency to dismiss those with massive notoriety. He goes deep here, like someone trying to set a few things straight. A great read, and the audiobook is read partly by Johnny Depp, and part by a Brit whose name is name is Joe Hurley, Keith himself reads a bit, too. Very worthwhile, whether you have a strong interest in the Rolling Stones, or were just alive and recall the time a little, it's great stuff.