I give you your spirit animal, Alan Cassels.

The Victoria raccoons that rummage through my garbage every night remind me a lot of Alan Cassels. While slightly more intelligent than a rat, he is far less graceful and every bit as much of a pest.

Early on in my Strava-doodling days, a fellow Tripleshotter goaded me into bike-writing a seemingly harsh message across Victoria, BC.

“Alan Cassels,” it said (in an elegant Cannondale-crafted script), “you suck, Mr. Hairy Nose.”

Not surprisingly, other members of Tripleshot lauded it as one of my finest works. (One called it “the pinnacle of realism and artistic truth.”)

It was also Alan who hounded me relentlessly for Strava porn. To hush him up, I Strava-sketched this beauty. She seemed to satisfy him for a while, but now Alan is back at it.

While I have no desire or intention to fulfil his request for a high-profile critter congregation that’s more than likely fake, I thought I’d go ahead and doodle a raccoon.

Alan has much in common with the common raccoon, which is slightly more intelligent than a rat but far less graceful and every bit as much of a pest.

And then there’s this: during a Tripleshot ride back in 2012, a fearless raccoon threw himself under Alan’s front wheel and sent the blowhard tumbling ass over teakettle, all for the amusement of the rest of the critters in the roving raccoon pack. Pest versus pest, and the smaller pest prevailed!

See it on Strava

Note: The GPS points will render correctly only if you are logged in at Strava.com