Lick the Toad?! WTF?!

For years I've had the handle "lick the toad" @ Yahoo or Google for my free email address. Just to set the record straight: I've never licked a toad nor do I have an interest in licking a toad. I know my favorite poisons and cane toad sweat isn't one of them.

When I arrived in California, full suspension bikes were ridden by yuppies and most mountain bikers I knew rode XC hard tails with 65 mm of front travel, flat narrow bars with bar ends and long stems. I met Eve on a ride and we were riding and hanging out together. We would look for new rides and we hooked up with Team Wrong Way and started racing with them. Pretty soon we were taking road trips and we headed up to Lake Tahoe for some riding. The high point of the trip was to ride "the Toad". Mr. Toad's Wild Ride is definitely one of the classic California mountain bike trails. Along with the Flume trail, no Lake Tahoe mountain bike trip is complete without checking out Mr. Toad.

I had ridden Mr. Toad the previous year so I knew that it was a technical challenge for my Rocky Mountain hard tail. Back then it was difficult to ride and I had to walk or dab some sections. For this trip it was my goal to clean the ride. To "clean" Mr. Toad meant riding all the technical challenges without dabbing.

We rode the trail and the carnage was impressive. I was riding with the lead group and rode every section but I would dismount and wait to regroup. Contrary to Mike Gin's account of the ride I did clean the trail. I would ride every section and exclaim "lick the toad" after I cleaned it. When describing the ride I would say I "licked the toad" - with the obvious double entendre.

Soon after that trip I found the need to create a Yahoo email address and used "lick the toad" as my handle. When I got a gmail account, I carried this tradition forward. As I get more engaged in civic life "lick the toad" has become a bit of an albatross. The handle elicits explanation or perhaps not being taken as seriously as I could have.

Over the past few months I have been steadily transitioning away from this handle to something more conventional. Perhaps it's a sign of maturity.