In a terrifying and bewildering turn of events at Thursday’s Bike-a-thon For The Weary, a community cycling fundraiser for the local Narcoleptics Anonymous, at exactly 12:30 pm this past Saturday, as the 23-mile race was winding to an end, with hundreds crowding the Plaza Veronica to get a glimpse of the leaders, a stranger on a bicycle zoomed across the finish line and scooped up the winner’s trophy from the judges’ table.
‘The judges were of course all snoring softly by that time,’ reported stander-by Judy Fullaver, a domestique assigned to the north side of Rapport County Road, ‘and did not notice until the man had disappeared down a side lane, first-place trophy raised in apparent triumph.’
‘He was [yawn] wearing a grey flannel suit and cape,’ judged one of the judges, Rick M. from the N.A. southest chapter (NA1355). Rick claims that the judges were not asleep, but ‘resting their eyes’ before the final leg of the race.
Other observers, however, have come forward with visual evidence both that the judges were asleep at the wheel, so to speak, and that the man who scooped the winner’s trophy may well be the winner of the race.
‘Look right there, you can see his face. That is old Farmer Winfred,’ one young man who claimed to have been in attendance at the race, told Gorko cub reporter Nadira, showing her a photograph on his cellular phone.
Nadira reports that the photograph captured the man in the cape in the instant he was snatching the trophy from the blue felt of the judges’ table, and that a preliminary internet facial recognition search returned 3 possible subjects, one of whom was Raddy himself.
‘Yet Raddy’s alibi appeared to check out,’ the diminutive reporter wrote in The Nadira Nose (Issue v, No. 27). ‘The editor-in-chief of The Gorko Gazette claimed he had been out to lunch with his family of dogs at the canine-friendly Woof ‘n’ Chow at the time of the race. Manager of the fine dining establishment Patty O. and line cook Rambo confirmed Raddy’s presence there from noon to two on the day of the race. Of course, Rambo is also Raddy’s housemate, so TNN shall continue to probe the city for witnesses in the hopes of corroborating his whereabouts at the time of the crime.’
The second suspect was, as is usual in such cases, the Peoria Mayor herself, Jeeves Washabye, whose iconic eyepatch was, however, missing in the photo. Reportedly Washabye has never been fitted for a glass eye since the dunking-in-pool-of-nails-of-various-sizes incident of last Octoberfest, so the idea that she would be galavanting around Peoria in the garb of an elderly Welshman is more than a little off-putting.
The mayor’s office refused to comment on the possibility or offer any kind of alibi.
The third suspect is perhaps the most intriguing: John Winfred Griffiths, dairy and grain farmer in New Cardigan, Illinois, whose name in fact appears in the competitor’s registry for this year’s Bike-a-thon For The Weary.
‘Oh yes, John Winfred has been cycling in this race for the last three years,’ explained the race organizer, Bellypop Poutain, from the N.A. Peoria HQ on Wallabye Avenue, ‘and our theory is that Farmer Winfred DID in fact win the race. Just that none of the judges were awake to see it.’
According to Poutain, very few of the winning cyclists have ever been reported by the contest judges, who are carefully selected from the N.A. ‘crocodile’ community for their seniority in the organization, their honesty and work ethic. The downside of course is that the judges are liable to slip into light dozes at inconvenient moments.
We would continue our investigation but we are feeling downright drowsy, and might take a little nap.
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