Thursday, June 28, 2007

Stoopid Officials

I sure am glad we don't have to deal with this type of crap at the local level... Watch the whole video from this link from Team Yeti at the MSA race. Details:
4X

The four-cross started off well with Jared qualifying in first position. He felt confident about pulling out the win and getting back in the hunt for the overall. Unfortunately, Jared’s plan did not pan out and instead the race ended in controversy.

In the semis, Jared was out in front with fellow team Yeti rider Ross Milan behind him. It looked like both Yeti riders would advance without a problem. Then Scott Beaumont went for a desperation pass on the inside. Ross boxed him out, but Scott proceeded to run over the flag marking the course. This move should have disqualified Beaumont right then and there. Beaumont then proceeded to t-bone Jared, taking him out of the lead; another automatic disqualification.

Jared protested the move, called for the course officials to enforce the rules, and to disqualify Beaumont. The blatancy of the move was apparent by all the spectators and fellow riders, but the course officials pleaded ignorance, saying they did not see the illegal move. Scott Beaumont did not comment or fess up to any wrongdoing, and continued onto the finals. Jared entered the small final and won by about 5 bike lengths.

A win at Mt. Saint Anne would have put Jared back in contention for the overall, but now it looks like a race for the rainbow stripes.

Monday, June 25, 2007

Darren's Pics from Cranky Monkey

12 Hour Crankey 2007 Monkey

12 Hours of Cranky Monkey

Yesterday was 12 hours of racing at Quantico on the Marine Base. There was a large contingent of City Bikes riders intent on riding and having fun.

Marc, Steve and Chris were going for it in Masters. Scardaville, Tom and Wheaton were racing Expert as were MattyD, Kent and Darren (slow down) Biggs. Tris rocked solo and Ilana and I entered Duo Open.

Jonathan from Family Bikes gave me a ride to the venue with his team and we departed scenic Crofton, MD, at 5am. Yup, 5am. Uneventful ride down, which is to say we told stories and had no traffic.

On-site, we hooked up with all of the City Bikes kids and Posner, his wife and Ken Bell (Team Gripped Films, Open 3person) set up next to us.

I started with the run which was a bad idea. That and the fact that I hadn't gotten a good night's sleep in a week made for a tired first two laps. I figured that doubling-up would be good as I've never ridden the course. It was fun and I managed two sub-hour laps. Ilana went out for her first lap telling me that she had 'a mechanical' and could only do one lap. Ok, no prob. I went back to the City Bikes staging area and tried to eat, drink and rest in the hour that I had to chill. She came back and I went out for two more laps. Ilana pulled the next two laps, I did another double and then Ilana did the last double to finish up a lap ahead of fourth but on the 2nd place lap. The winners only beat us by one lap. That's pretty rad. We only decided to race duo on Wednesday so it worked out well. Podium in our first Duo attempt. We were both tired and stoked. Next time, we both agreed that we should actually try to strategize to improve our position but laughed it off as we both had a good time.

The Master's race was the best story from the race. Viers went out first and turned in a solid lap. Chris went out without a chain tool and, guess what? Broke a chain. He was running and Scardaville caught up to him and gave him a tool. He lost about 15 minutes on that lap. He was bummed. Marc went out next and DOUBLE FLATTED *AND* couldn't get his CO2 to work then borrowed a bad pump. Damn. He was less than happy. They were 35 minutes down. Through the race, they pulled back into first. Chris passed the first place rider, broke a chain, got passed, fixed his chain THEN pulled back into first! STUD! Talk about redemption. These guys pulled from 4th to first and had the race won without sending a rider out before 7pm.

Kent, Darren and MattyD were RIPPING and won Expert 3. Scardaville and his guys came in 3rd Expert as well. Posner's team got first place Open 3 and Siebold and the Family Bikes guys came in first Singlespeed 3. Our whole campsite was on podium. It was huge.

I pulled 6 laps, all under 1hr which was my own personal victory. I rode 3 doubles and had a really good time. It was a SUPER slippery course as it was amazingly dry and loose. There were jumps and great turns and high-speed stuff and tight stuff with some REALLY steep climbs. I managed to ride everything on every lap with the exception of this one section that no one could ride. Steep, loose, big roots, big rocks... I almost cleaned it twice.

I was in full race mode and passed a few people a bit aggressively. I didn't put anybody into the woods or anything, but there were a few times I passed people on inside lines on sketchy downhills. They were clean passes, but I think I may have scared somebody here or there.

There was a set of doubles on the backside of the course and I hit them after seeing them on my frist lap. It was a solid one-foot-high jump with a solid three-foot gap. Huge, eh? I got behind a guy in a MORE jersey a few minutes on my fourth lap but couldn't really get the power up to pass him. When we got in sight of the little jump, I was going to go right if he jumped or jump if he wen't right. He went right so I kicked it up a bit and came by him just when I hit the jump and came past him on the landing. It was pretty cool. He gave me a little 'whoa' and at the bottom of the descent at the sharp right, he said 'you could have given me a little heads up' and I apologized saying 'I was trying to find the coolest way to pass you and that's what I came up with. Sorry.' He said, 'All I heard was a WHUMF and I saw you in the air next to me.' I managed to ride away from him but I want to find out who he was just so he knows I'm not a complete assclown. I said COMPLETE...

Great event, good fun, good outcomes for all. I didn't take one friggen picture but I'll try to snag some from the rest of the team.

Big thanks to my main sponsors, Susan, Emma and Jeremy. I really missed them at this event...

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Laird's A Good Guy

I've been debating whether or not to post this email from Laird. I sent him an email thanking him for another great race at Big Bear and he sent me this response. I think highly of that guy and it seems like we all rarely take the time to say nice things about people we like or admire. I don't want to be boastful (no laughing!) but this is more to show how cool of a guy Laird is, not to illustrate Laird's thoughts necessarily. Here you go...

==================================

Thanks Mike,

Thanks to you and your teammates (and support crew). I really appreciate everything that you all have done to support our events and for your participation in the series. But mostly, I want to thank you for who you are. You represent everything that I love about mountain biking and mountain bikers. It is people like you who keep me motivated to stay in this business. It's an honor to host such fine sportsmanship and fun-hogery.

Cheers,
-Laird

Time to Kill?

I don't mean that as in 'It's time to KILL!' but more like 'do you have some time to kill? If not, avoid THIS like the plague.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

I Loves Me Some Chong

Friday, June 15, 2007

Lock Your Bike

Top 10 cities in the US for bike theft

Top 10 Cities for Bike Theft
1. New York City
2. Chicago
3. Boston
4. Philadelphia
5. San Jose
6. Los Angeles - tie
San Francisco - tie
8. Seattle
9. San Diego - tie
Washington, DC - tie
Portland, Oregon – tie

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

24 Hours of Big Bear

Thanks to Laird for another great event. Results.

Rain threatened on Friday but mostly held off. It was a beautiful sunset even if the ground was a little soggy. The course drank it up and it was tacky at worst and dry otherwise. Laird has really nailed the venue and found a place that is basically impervious to weather. This is my third 24hr event with Granny Gear this year and every course is rideable regardless of weather.

Emma and Jeremy had plenty of kids to play with. Susan rocked as usual, taking care of me and the kids. Her burritos were a huge hit with Chris and Wheaton. There were a ton of families there and lots of innovative campsites and base camps and a TON of RVs.

If you have never ridden this course in WV, Big Bear Lake is one to hit. They even took out a small section of road and added MORE singletrack. I think the only section of anything that looks like a road has a total length of 1/4 mile. There are two short sections throughout the entire race course. It's pure East Coast singletrack goodness.

I drew fourth in the rotation following Mike Pearce, MattyD and JoFo. Mike ran and got a flat. MattyD came in clean but JoFo came in with a flat. I was worried...

I had a clean lap at 1:11:04. I felt great, rode REALLY hard and had a great time. The next two laps in the dark had a variety of issues.

It's hard to even recall what happened when but my first night lap had: bad shifting including a stick getting lodged into my derailleur and locking me into my highest gear in the rear, a flat that I pumped up with CO2 to avoid having to change it, a pedal strike on a rock that almost kicked me off the bike and my battery coming unplugged. I pulled a 1:23 which was a bit faster than my slow laps back in 2006. In 2006, my fast lap was just below 1:18. Had we sent out another rider before Noon (which we should have, looking back), we would have been a lap up on last year. We got 14th last year, this year we were 5th overall, fourth expert.

The boys from Athens kicked ass all over the course. They only beat us by two laps this time, which is why I now realize we should have sent another rider out. I wasn't paying enough attention.

We had Joel, Kent, Chris and Wheaton camping with us on the other DCMTB/City Bikes team racing Vet. They got 8th overall. We also had Illana racing 5 person open and Darren 'Time/Space Warp' Biggs racing (sandbagging) on a Sport team. SHAME!

That Tecate Rides Again team had some of the most random mechanicals EVER! Broken (shattered!) granny gear (?), derailleur, four chains (three were on Darren's last lap), flats... They laughed the whole time.

I'll find some pictures. You have GOT to make plans to race this next year if you haven't already. It is worth just going to RIDE, let alone trying to race. It's that good. I mean, hell, you start at the TOP of the course!

The pics of the start with Mike, Kent and Darren are up top, right. The run, MattyD in the foreground with the boys in the back, Susan waiting for the run to start and me playing guit after my last lap.

I've got more...

J-rock kickin' it like MF karate in Wheaton's chair. This is probably the only time this kid stood still. He's rad, he jumped in the mud, he was 'talking to the froggies' with his sister, they threw rocks into the swamp, they played in everyone's tent, they shared food at our camp and others...

I'm not sure what Emma was getting into at this point, but she's sitting down, which was rare. It's probably why Susan shot this pic. She's got MattyD's bike in the foreground. She ALWAYS smiles for the camera. She's not afraid.

Maybe she was in trouble...

This is the never-ending uber-editing post, eh? I bet nobody realizes that this is the third or fourth set of edits that I've done today. I'm such a pain in the ass.

Here's more pictures of the fam, MattyD, me and Laird after the race. Obviously, the shirts were orange this year. The art from all of the shirts so far this year has been great. One of the things that I miss from a lot of the California races I used to do was the rad shirt artwork. Susan still has the Cool Mtn Bike Race t-shirt that I got back in 1998 from Cool, CA (yes, that's an actual town in the Sierra foothills, outside of Sacramento). Laird got the art from the boyfriend of an ex-employee, if I heard the story right. I'm not a 'bright-shirt' guy but I'll wear this one fo sho.

Jeremy was playing 'Superman' with this improvised cape, courtesy of Susan. He was running around 'saving' people. It was pretty hot in the sun but this damn kid had to have this heavy-ass towel around his shoulders.

By the way, if you haven't seen Knocked Up yet, leave the house right NOW and go see it. It's funny as hell. Also, check out the movie Grandma's Boy (which I think went straight to DVD). It's pretty funny. Inappropriate, to be sure, but really, really funny.

10 days until 12 hours of Cranky Monkey down at Quantico. We'll see how that goes. That's a lot of local pressure. I'll get some more burritos going for that one, fo sho.

Monday, June 11, 2007

It's About Damn Time, INTERBIKE!

Interbike Sponsoring Las Vegas World Crit Championship

JUNE 08, 2007 -- SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, CA (BRAIN)--Interbike will be the presenting sponsor of the World Criterium Championship, to be held in Las Vegas the night of Thursday, Sept. 27--day two of Interbike's international bicycle expo.

The World Criterium Championship is the final race in the 10-city 2007 USA Crits Championship Series and will be held at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas.

"Each year we consider several after-hours events to entertain show attendees," said Lance Camisasca, Interbike's show director. "This year we are excited to support the World Criterium Championship, a world premier bike race. Besides it being a great event for the industry, it will also be a great event to promote cycling in Las Vegas, as well as nationally with lots of media attention."

The World Criterium Championship will be produced by Swagger, a sports marketing and event production company based in Athens, Georgia, which produces many of the country's premier cycling events, including the legendary Athens Twilight.

The World Criterium Championship will have Men and Women Pro-Class races, and for Interbike exhibitors, an Industry Cup Challenge. The Pro- Women's race will be at 7 p.m., the Industry Cup at 8 p.m., and the Pro-Men will race at 9 p.m. with an after-party hosted at Mandalay Bay.

The fast and technical, six turn, 1-kilometer course will wind through many of the popular areas of the Mandalay Bay resort, guaranteeing large numbers of spectators for the event.

For more information about the World Criterium Championships, visit www.worldcriteriumchampionships.com.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

I Want One

Cross season is only a few months away. AND there's an as-yet unannounced DC race coming in Sept. Keep your ears on for that announcement.

In the meantime, I want one of these.

Yeti doesn't make these bikes every year. $1100 for frame/fork/King headset is downright reasonable. Hell, that Easton fork retails for $600 alone!

She's pretty...

Friday, June 01, 2007

O My God

Hit this.

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