This weekend when I hit the 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo as a member of the Shady Pirates I’ll be thinking of my friend Steve Vihel.

Steve was going to be a part of the team, but as the summer ended he started getting sick.

Our team name is actually an homage to him.

One of my journalism students did an audio slide show about his bicycle shop There and Back Bikes. In the interview, which you can watch at the top of the post, Steve said he wanted people to trust him because people don’t want to, “buy a bike a bike from a shady pirate.”

Because it seems impossible to live up to the type of person Steve was, we named ourselves the Shady Pirates.

If you need a team to root for, think about rooting for the Shady Pirates. We won’t be in the hunt for a team win, but we’ll probably need the good vibes at 3 a.m.