This time of the season a cyclist’s fancies turn to the joys of Interbike, CrossVegas, the USA Crits Finals and, of course, the Team Clif Bar Foosball Invitational.

Thursday afternoon at the Clif Bar & Company booth (#1953) in one of the massive Interbike halls, a tiny little ball will drop on the artificial green of the foosball pitch—and IT will be ON.

Dave Towle on the mic, teams of TCB-sponsored cyclists bringing their foosball A-games, beer raining down from the heavens—or at least being poured by some sort of jolly beer guy, and the Court Date band punching out tunes to inspire even the most worn & weathered foosball players who may be well past their foosball tourney primes.

If someone tells you it gets any better than this, that someone is probably right.

But that’s not really the point. The TCB Foosball Invitational is what it is. Good, bad—fun, stupid—played by astronauts, not played by astronauts?

Who cares?

Who really knows?

What we do know is that there’s a big, shiny, plastic-y red & gold trophy with a cup on the top of it and that beauty is up for grabs; which means that the lucky (or possibly even talented) foosball duo that wins this whole gig will get to hoist that puppy above their heads for the barrage of photos then drink their fair share of something refreshing, like Night Train, out of that shiny plastic trophy right there in the middle of all the thrilling madness.

And you do know what that Night Train’s really going to taste like. Yup, bacon and/or glory. Or maybe it’ll taste like the little rubber washer or the big glob of super glue that’s keeping the liquid in the cup. But let’s not get too caught up on details—we’ll just leave it at glory.

Cuz glory, as we hopefully all know, tastes pretty damn sweet.

Mark your calendars.

This time next week there’ll be two new TCB Foosball Invitational World Master Champions on this planet. Fancy that.