Double Header Gongshow

With the ’09 mountain bike racing season coming to a close my buddy Simon and I had a little adventure lined up to end it in grand style. The plan was to race the 70 km Cheakamus Challenge in Squamish on Saturday then hop in my nascar racing truck and drive 11 hrs to Bragg Creek for the Bow 80 on Sunday. We figured if everything went perfect we could be in Calgary by 1 am for a decent sleep before a nice sunny ride on a beautiful Bow 80 course followed by ice cream cakes and swimming with hot girls in a lake afterwards.

At 10 am Saturday morning we set off with 260 other riders to race up to Whistler on some super fast rolling trails. Things went pretty straight forward with Marty Lazarski (Rocky Mountain) and I battling it out for the win. With around 8 km to go a stick slammed in my derrailure, I stopped for 7 seconds to get it out, Lazarski gapped me and I could never close it with him eventually pulling away for a 2 minute win. Simon would come across the finish line soon after in 13th place and then the next race was on as we hopped in the transport machine and peeled off to Alberta at 3 pm. From this point on the small korean guy with the big stick began wailing on the gong.

Between pit stops, highway construction, a crazy rainstorm over rogers pass and a 1 hr time change our perfect schedule ran ontime like a ukraniane wedding as we rolled into Bragg creek at 4 am. We were hoping to party with the Bow cycle guys at there end of season bash but they were being good race organizers instead of hardcore partiers as they had already gone to bed. With the race starting at 7:30 we figured sleep was a good idea and pulled our sleeping bags out and slept in a meadow. At 4:45 it began to rain and soon after Simon took off for the truck and I moved below a large pine tree for shelter. At 5:30 the rain began dripping through the tree. I tried to think like a fish and enjoy the wetness of my soaked sleeping bag but I'm not a fish and was soon off to the pickup to find Simon. At this point we were both not super stoked. The next hr was spent contemplating our decision making skills and searching around my truck in 2 weeks of piled up gongshowness to find our riding gear and food. After being told I couldn't race by the lady at the sign up desk then being allowed to race as the other lady remembered me from last season I made it to the line just in time to head off with the other racers to try and defend my title from last yr.

Early on I realized the day was going to be hard work as the internal racing system was short circuiting and I felt more like a 13 yr old hockey player with a concusion playing in the 6 am sunday morning game of a five game tounament than a biker. Probably too my advantage the weather on the day was short circuiting worse than I was and the light drizzle we left in was a full on downpour and pretty soon frosty began spitting large snowflakes down at us. I was super stoked as I hadn't been in the snow in over 16 months but that feeling was overiddened by an odd numbness which would take over for the rest of the day. If it was a treeplanting day we would've planted for a half hr to make camp costs and then started lighting things on fire. This was a bike race though and Brian Cooke and Brian Bain were riding hard for the win. Cooke would drop off but Bain was taking advantage of my concussed hockey player riding skills on the technical sections and I was clawing back on the climbs. With 15 km to go Bain and I were riding togethar and going down one hill he told me he was going to die. Soon after we began running up most the climbs to stay warm and coasting slower on the downhills to prevent wind chill. It was fricken cold still, probably in the top 2 of my coldest rides ever next to another eskimos day in Chile.

We had no choice but to ride happily on through the snow with Bain eventually dropping off on one of the climbs. Riding alone in the lead I did a sketchy endo in a hub deep mud puddle but felt zero pain when I landed thanks to my numbed body. Pretty cool I thought, I was now a feelingless human pin ball but somehow the legs still went around which was nice. With .5km to go from the finish I came to a sign reading "Tom's Snow re-route", pointing right off the main trail. Thinking like a concussed 13 yr old hockey player I went right as I figured some guy named Tom had made a re-route to shorten the course due to the snow. Apparantly it wasn't the right way as after a while I finally re-connected to the real trail to find myself in 2nd place with Brian Cooke 20 ft ahead. Feeling like Frosty the snowman on drugs I chased up to him and said "Hey", he looked back confused asking "what???what the hell are you doing here??". "I'm cold." I responded as I sprinted ahead to take a 6 second victory to defend my Gold Buckle from last yr.

At the finish line I was escorted bye Mrs.Bain to the medical trailer where Brian Bain and I would spend the next 1 hr curled up in sleeping bags, drinking hot coco and acting like drunk 13 yr old concussed hockey players. As the day wore on only 40 of the 180 riders would finish as the other 140 were either pulled or had enough logic to pull themselves from the snowy gongshow. My buddy Simon spent his race leap frogging from warm car to car to keep warm as he was determined to make it two for two on the weekend as well. By the time the last rider crossed the line the sun poaked through the clouds but there would be no ice cream cakes or swimming in lakes with hot girls this day.

The next day Simon and I were unproductive. We left our campsite at 1 pm to find the ranger had locked the exit gate on us. After trying to move some rocks we put the 4x4 on and made our own road out. Tuesday more of the same continued as we went for ride in revelstoke and ended up hiking our bikes in the dark below some huge rock bluffs for close to an hr. Today is Wednesday and nothing has happened yet as we are having coffees and green teas discussing a no body moves, nobody gets hurt tactic for the day.

USA Marathon Finals

The road trip to Cali hit a small bump in the road at the boarder crossing when we forgot to claim our apples. The boarderguard asked if we had any fruits or veggies but we figured he wouldnt check so said no but he checked. My bro had 1 bag in his backpack and I had two bags in different areas of the truck with the patrolman finding one of them and not looking to pleased with us for trying to smuggle them into the states. After a short lecture on apple bugs etc.. we were on our way south 1400 km to Soda Springs, CA the sight of the USA Marathon finals. Friday evening after two solid days of driving, camping in the woods and getting lost in Portland we arrived on race site with Tinker Juarez rolling up beside us with his bodyguard/mechanic. Tinker Juarez is probably the most identifiable mountain biker in America with his long dreadlocks, Mexican skin tone and 20 plus yrs of Olympic and world cup race experience. Being on site caused quite a stir in the other riders as they constantly wandered up to him asking for autographs and pictures. My bro and I were pretty tired from the days of driving so we hit up a local campsite for a short nights sleep before rising at 5 an on Saturday for a 6:30 race meeting and race start shortly after.

Race day was a bit of a gong show with us waking up a little late, hitting road construction on the interstate and then having a valve fly out of my front tubeless wheel about 10 minutes before the start. The valve posed a bit of a problem as my front wheel was now empty and the piece I needed was somewhere below my truck. Somehow I must of ate a four leaf clover somewhere along the way and managed to find the valve below my pickup and pretty soon the bike had two inflated wheels and I rolled into the start just in time for the gun to go off. Another lucky charm on the day was that the opening 6 miles of the 92 mile race was down hill, this gave me a chance to pop out of the sleepy daze I was in which ended also requiring a 2x caffeine gel's 10 minutes into the race and half a bottle of cold water down my back. Going along in the top 15 I was watching guys flat all over the place as the terrain was super rocky and dusty which posed huge problems for the poor guys with tubes. Once we hit the bottom of the hill I encountered another problem as the bowels were sending signals reminding my head that it had forgot to hit up the john before the start. This was a problem as the pace was picking up and Tinker and 4 other riders were quickly riding out of sight and there was no time to stop. I began thinking of the Hoover dam to keep things clogged up and set off to catch the leaders.

Pretty soon I was up with the leaders just in time to watch Tinker and a Chico rider attack up a hill. Soon after the Chico rider blew up and then it was just Tinker ahead going into a 4 mile decent. All the way down the decent I followed Tinker’s Dust and was able to close the gap a little before he pulled away on the next climb. I soon pulled some time back on a 10 mile single-track section before running into Tinker as he had beat a volunteer to one of the junctions and didn’t know which way to head. I was pretty stoked to be back with Tinker with close to 1/3 of the race down but soon after on a long steep climb the 135 lb Tinker began to use his special dust to fly away and out of sight around a switchback. BAAANNNGGG!!!!, just as Tinker went out of sight either his wheel blew up or someone was opening up shooting gallery. I was scared to go around the bend but having paid $160 in entry fee’s I wanted to get my moneys worth on the day so I kept going to find an old school hick with a rifle across his shoulder. Tinker was now a long ways up the road and riding way faster then I’ve ever seen someone climb. I’m not sure if this is how he always rides or if he was freaked out by the gun firing hillbilly but this was the last I would see of him as he would claim victory on the day in 7 hrs 24 minutes. Getting past the crazy hillbilly was my victory on the day as I would cruise along the last 50 miles solo in the spectacular rugged California countryside to claim second around 20 minutes behind Tinker and his special dust.

Finishing 2nd to Tinker was a wicked day for me and to celebrate I jumped off a dock into a 2ft deep lake. I hit the bottom hard, came out with a bloody toe and am now contemplating a better way to celebrate the next celebratable moment. After the race closed out we headed back to camp for a little relaxing around the campfire with apple ciders in hand. Today my Bro watched NFL sunday, I went for a wicked singletrack ride up in the mountains and tommorow its off to Oakland for Monday night football! (We'll be the guys hanging off the rafters with binoculars.)

Road T to Cali!

I tried finding work for the fall but the bush scene has dried up so I have had to resort to plan B, A Road Trip to California! Yah, life is tough in this economic downturn so it looks like the fall is going to be full of spinning pedals, not planting trees. Tommorow its off to the west coast to pick up my Bro and then southward we go. Theres only one thing guranteed for sure on the trip and that is getting stopped at the boarder and being pillaged by the boarder patrol for having hemp seeds on the dash and a sketchy looking black truck.

The unknowns include trying to scalp tickets to a monday night football game in Oakland and racing in the USA Marathon 100 miler finals in Nevada. The race is the main excuse for the trip and has me pretty stoked as its 100 miles through the mtns up and down gold miner trails and down old outfitter trails. They call it the most wild and remote of the 7, 100 mile races and it sounds like an adventure in the making for sure.

After the XC Provincials last weekend it was back to Jasper for the week to ride some local trails I have yet to hit up this summer. After the last 5 days of sweet riding I have confirmed that Jasper is the #1 place to mountain bike in Canada. Other places such as Fernie, or Squamish come close but being able to ride a different trail full of wicked flowing singltrack for 2 weeks in a row without crossing the same line is pretty tough to beat. Add in the road rides up to Cavell, Marmot Basin, Maligne lk or down the south highway through towering mtns and you have a smokin place to ride around. My oppinion may be slightly biased but I was pretty pumped to get out to explore around my own backyard for a while after travelling around for the summer. Later on in September once the races are done it will be time to scale some peaks and check off a few epic rides i've had in the books for a while.

Race Weekend in the Foothills

The Provincial XC race was pretty sweet on the weekend. Thanks to Crazy Larry, the Froehler family and all the other volunteers that showed up things went off pretty smoothly. Having a black bear with her cubs on course chasing racers the day before the race added to the weekend although it seemed a little dangerous so I called the fish and game warden to chase them away. He showed up 26 hrs later, sunday evening as we cleaned up the course. He walked the course with a rifle trying to find the bears. I'm pretty sure he was probably off duty and actually hunting as the last racers had gone home 3 hrs before and nobody is probably gonna ride the course again until next yrs race.

As for the race the local Freewheel Jasper team did pretty good as Loni Klettle won the Elite Womans Race and I won the Elite Mens race. Andrew Bovard was second in Master Sport, Derek Anderson was third in Seniore sport and Angus Jenkins won the U15 Novice mens race. All and all not bad day for the small town of Jasper. Being the race organizer I didn't think I was going to get to race but thanks to all the helping hands I was able to hop on my bike at the last minute. Cody Canning kept things close for a couple laps before I gapped him on the climbs as I was pretty motivated to get my first Provincial Jersey. Pretty stoked to be able to win a race so close to home and have the chance to wear the Provincial colours next yr!

After the race Crazy Larry kept everyone entertained giving away swag and tossing out comments from left field that only he could think of. Sunday night Larry and Brian Bain stayed at my house. We were all bagged but Larry iniated a midnight game of glow in the dark frissbee with a bunch of 15 yr old girls in the middle of the street and then a strobe light dance in my living room (without the 15 yr old girls). Spending the weekend with Crazy Larry was memorable to say the least. On Monday he set off from Jasper with a 50 lb backpack on his way to Banff with a random lady from Australia. They were hoping to make it there by Tuesday morning. Haven't heard from them yet but I'm sure they made it or are out there swinging off a bridge somewhere along the way.

One of Crazy Larrys many dreams is to be able to bike to races across the province to announce at them. If anyone has any ideas to how we can get him a decent bike to do this let me know as he is a great guy with a heart of gold and the ability to make a chess match between two 85 yr old blind men more exciting then any superbowl or world series game. Crazy Larry will be at next yr's event as we hope to fill the weekend with a xc race, night crit, marathon race, midnight game of glow in the dark ultimate frizzbie and dancing Costa Rican girls!