The Sixth Annual Cervélo Belgian Waffle Ride (Trailer)

There Are Two Sides To The Waffle

There is an idea that as human beings we inherently move towards pleasure and avoid pain. This is built on the concept that life is a dichotomy; filled with opposites that are mutually exclusive. Life and death. Order and chaos. Good and evil. There are two sides to every coin—heads and tails—and two sides to every waffle… roads and trails, crispness and buttery, syrupy, softness. We’re here to call BS on that.

The Sixth Annual Cervélo Belgian Waffle Ride: There are Two Sides to the Waffle (trailer) from MMR on Vimeo

With the BWR, a new idea has been born, one that allows for the possibility of pain and pleasure existing simultaneously, thus becoming neither of those. Therein lies the magic that some have attributed to this crazy event with the name that dichotomously belies its challenge. It is here, when one allows one’s self to be outside the realm of opposites, one can experience both joy and sadness, pain and pleasure, laughter and tears at the same time. The interesting part of all this is that perhaps this is what we seek after all… moments of simultaneous pain and pleasure.

“What seems nasty, painful, and evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind and some butter.”

It is in these moments of pain and pleasure cohabiting the same mental space that we realize how subjective the dichotomy of pain/pleasure has become. In a concurrent experience of opposites, a state of flow manifests that transcends both pain and pleasure. It is in this state of flow, whether both are experienced simultaneously or one might say that neither are experienced at all, there is something beyond words, ideas and concepts. An experience that defies logic, science and rational thinking. An experience that approaches true happiness. An experience that makes one want to have a Bad Ass Ale from the Lost Abbey and attempt to recount it to anyone who will listen.

In short, many of us spend our whole lives running from ‘feeling’ with the mistaken belief that we cannot bear the pain. But we have already borne the pain. What we have yet to do is feel all we are beyond the pain. That’s where the dichotomy breaks down and the Waffle’s two sides become one hot mess of emotion.

This year the Waffle offered up it’s sixth course in six years, with 12,000 feet of climbing, 41-miles of off-road across 17 sectors, headwinds in every direction, prickly desert heat and deep sand arroyos, unrelenting climbs and blazing skies, countless obstacles and varying equipment choices, cuts and scrapes, pain and pleasure, tears and laughter. It truly was a feast of dichotomies, except for those that transcended it all.

What follows is the personal transcendental experiences of but some of the riders who enjoyed both sides of the waffle.