wors cup weekend

saturday morning, true to my word, and only slightly late, i showed up at scott's. john d joined me. we moved some stuff. and had a few laughs. and i called it quiting time at noonish, as i had to fix the bike and finish packing before we headed north for yerke.

and by fix the bike, i mean look at it. i looked at it. it looked green and black still, so i called it good. and actually, for a change, was shifting moderately well with only minimal tinkering in wisconsin. <--hey, that's good for me! sadly, i should have given it a nice once over and checked everything. oh well, it wouldn't have occured to me to check the tire sidewalls even if i had performed a nice pre-race check up.

joined john, drove up to pick up yerke. saw yerke's soon to be sweetest-paint-job-on-a-1-x-1-ever. grabbed some lawn chairs and headed off. the drive up: relatively uneventful. highlight: shaved llamas.


we got up to devil's head while it was still daylight. so we set up camp in the open field designated for camping. crummy ground as yerke and his lack of a camp pad can attest for. $10 per tent. can you believe it? outrageous. oh well. john had a nice shade shelter thingy. it was awesome. we cooked us some dinner. courtesy of john being a clever and prepared camper. without him, i would have eaten crackers all weekend.
sunday morning we woke up, ate us some breakfast. lounged around for a good long while. fell in love with john's shade shelter again. eventually got up and dressed, did a bit of a warm up on a nearby road. i flatted in the parking lot shortly before the race. swapped out the tube. noticed the sidewall was worn through in spots on my front tire. cleverness would have prompted me to put a dollar bill in there to try to avoid further flats. sadly, i am not that clever.

anyway, we all raced sport. we started a bit less than half way up the hill, and the gate put us out on a nice big long climb. we were all riding together, and having a good time. i decided that the group was going slower than they could, so i started passing some of the other racers on the right, happily both john and yerke followed me, and we put a nice portion of the pack behind us on that first climb. still, a bunch of racers ahead of us, it bottlenecked quite badly at the first single track, and lots of times thereafter as guys wouldn't manage sections and would hold us up. some jokers behind me were getting a bit impatient, and nicely a fellow infront of me told them all to calm down, afterall it's just a sport race. i chimed in with a race comp if you're that serious guys comment. the trails were great, in and out of singletrack mixed with ski hill climbs and crosses. i thought it was a pretty rocky course. not continually rocky, but lots of little gardens with nice, decent sized rocks to weave your way through. it was a lot of fun. plus the ground was super dry, and thus dusty as all get out, so much so that my eyelids felt gritty. yerke finished an impressive 6th, with john right behind him in 10th. way to go guys. me, on the other hand, i finished with a not-so-impressive DNF. flatted for the 2nd time 3/4 the way through lap one of three. i raced for about 20 some odd minutes. i am pretty bummed about it, as the course was a riot, and i think i was riding well, and still feeling strong. but, the biggest bummer is just missing out on the riding. oh well. yerke and john did great, and i had fun while i was there. all in all, a good weekend.