Jayson’s Weblog

This story, “First Mountain”, is a short story I wrote as an entry in a magazine writing contest, for Dirt Rag (dirtragmag.com). My story did not win or even come very close, but it did make the top 10 (out of 200 entries) and Dirtrag have published it on their website.http://www.dirtragmag.com/blogarific/the-dirt-rag-literature-contest-top-12/ Now, I want to add a disclaimer.  There was a word count and my story initially went way over that. So it had to be cut down a bit and in doing so, seems to kind of not make much sense, especially in the begining. But I am trying to fix that. Here is the story as submitted:http://www.dirtragmag.com/web/article.php?ID=1003&category2=web_exNow a little about this story, what has been done since and an introduction to the start of the release of the original. Like I mentioned before, the contest was in cycling magazine. This also had a word count restriction of 3000 words. My rough draft ended up close to 5000 words and so a few days of hacking happened and this 10 min version of the thing was sent to the magazine to help weight down their wastebasket. So here I am attempting to re-work cut bits, back into the story, as well as to remove some Dirt Rag tie in pieces I added, to make it seem more appealing to them. I Do not have a ton of time to work on this at the moment, so I am going to put sections up here for reviewers to comment on.Thanks for the interest. Historical notes:Though this is fiction, the major historical events depicted should be quite close to actual events surrounding the 1905 Tour De France. Here are some tid-bits from that history for those who are not cycling nuts.- On 10 July 1905 a mountain called “Ballon d’Alsace” was the site of the first official mountain climb in the Tour de France- This first mountain day was won by a René Pottier.- René Pottier, would later abandon the tour, possibly due to tendonitis.- René Pottier, would win the 2006 tour, die, possibly by suicide, shortly after.- In 1905, cheating still went on in the tour. Nails were thrown on the road and riders were beaten up by mobs of fanatics, with the result that only 15 riders reached the finish when more than sixty had started. Riders took trains to cut the course, as well as to escape the mobs waiting for them in some locations.- René Pottier, climbed the Ballon d’Alsace without dismounting, and at an average speed of over 20km/h.- The bikes raced in those days had single-speed fixed gears, as on a track bike and the riders could not freewheel (coast without the pedals turning). Freewheels had existed since 1898, but were not thought proper for the tour. In 1906, the freewheel gained popularity and showed up in the Tour, making a difference. Mountains had to be descended, and a fixed gear was a pain, because it forced the riders’ legs to spin as the rear wheel forced the cranks to turn.NOW, Get ready for part one (and no real thought out stopping point was chosen, just I stoped after some paragraph and that was that.)j