socks

Having introduced the concept of criterium races, in which people on bikes ride around and around a roughly one-mile loop for a specified length of time, now we're going to cover primes ('preems'). Primes are essentially one-lap races in the middle of the race to keep things exciting, and whoever crosses the start/finish line first gets some prize, generally provided by the race sponsor. The race announcers ring a bell and announce a prime over the loudspeaker as racers go by.

So today I was congratulating my husband for winning a prime, netting himself four pairs of biking socks, which I had assumed he had won on purpose because he was, until yesterday, running low on socks. Instead I learned that he "heard the bell and 'wah-wah-wah-wah-wah,'" and he was in a good position, so he went for it. He won a jacket the same way, which was good because it was cold out.

Just so you know, other primes we've heard of are:

• an ice cream cone from a local shop (not bad),
• various items from bike store clearance racks (unpopular),
• a Rat Race dvd (a what?),
• and a $100 voucher for airline tickets that everyone heard as just '$100' (dammit).