Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

Windham, New York, USA: Heading into this weekend’s debut races on Windham Mountain’s new World Cup Downhill and gate courses, there is a tight battle for the top position of Gravity East’s season championship. Jason Memmelaar (2wheelfreaks.com / Manitou) with 2430 points holds a narrow lead in the Pro Men’s category over Alejandro Ortiz (NEMA) with 2340. Nine riders are still within one win of the lead in the championship.

The wild card, however is dropped races. 2009 race winners Neko Mulally (Specialized Team America) and Sean McClendon both used one of their 3 drop races when they bypassed last week’s event in Seven Springs Pennsylvania. Of the two, Neko Mulally has the upper hand as, with a first and a second place, he has the best average finishing position of any racer on the circuit in the races he has attended. Mulally also leads the e.thirteen Dual Slalom standings. With the next Gravity East event incorporating both Downhill and e.thirteen Dual Slalom, there is every expectation that Mulally will attend, especially as the event is taking place on the brand-new courses that will host next year’s World Cup Finals for both Downhill and 4cross.

Friday, June 19th, 2009

Colorado Springs, Colo. -- The UCI Mountain Bike World Cup is set to return to the U.S. next year for the first time since 2005 as Windham Mountain Resort in New York has been chosen to host the series finale August 28-29, 2010.

After successfully hosting a 2008 national calendar event, Windham Mountain resort hosts a UCI Category 1 event this year as the sixth stop on the 2009 USA Cycling Pro Cross Country and Gravity Mountain Bike Tours. When the World Cup visits Windham in 2010, the resort will set the stage for the world’s top mountain bikers to duke it out one last time in the cross-country, downhill, and four-cross disciplines before heading to Mont-Saint-Anne, Quebec for the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships, August 31 – September 5, 2010.

Thursday, June 18th, 2009
Sometimes you’ve just gotta stick your neck out and MAKE things happen.  I’m really torn these days on the topic of just what kind of racing is going to provide the most satisfaction, and, more importantly, entertainment…  The Ashland 12 Mile Super D has always been on my list of important stuff to do.  This year it looked like I’d miss it yet again as I needed (and wanted) to be in Colorado Springs for a stop on the US Pro XC Tour.  But wait!  The Short Track was on Friday and XC on Saturday.  So, if I could find a flight from Denver to Medford, OR (like the 8:15 departure, midnight arrival I found for cheap on Alaska) I could feasibly race 12 miles of alleged radness in the Siskiyous on Sunday morning. 
 
Fortunately, the race organizers in CO must have known what I was up to as they shortened Saturday afternoon’s XC race to four laps.  I’d totally have time to take a shower on the way the DIA…  And wouldn’t have to get quite as tired…  I cleverly finished off the podium so as to avoid waiting around to receive “awards”.  Felice was kind enough to ride shotgun while I drove to the airport, we had plenty to talk about in the form of the obligatory afternoon thunderstorms circling the high plains.  I was pretty sure the biggest, blackest one was attacking the airport region.  It was.  Have you ever ducked when hailstones hit your windshield?  I did about seventeen times in the last few miles on Pena Boulevard.  The odds against my flight departing on time were confirmed when I stepped out of the car in driving hail to hear the wail of what could only be a tornado alert siren.  Awesome.  Somehow though, DIA pulled through and by the time my flight departed on time two hours later the skies were clear and a beautiful sunset had commenced.
Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

I just spent ten days in Colorado without wasting a single one.  Here’s a bit of insight into just how each and every day was made special in it’s own little way…

 
June  4-  Off The Couch kayak racing isn’t the best idea.  Or, how to make lemonade out of getting smoked…  Lizzy English and I drove to CO on a whim so we could compete in the Homestake Creek Race at the Teva Mountain Games.  She reckoned it’d be a good way to run the brown and make some cash.  I figured I was from the East Coast and could shred manky some low water Class V kayak racing.  We decided riding bikes in Salt Lake with Tom Daigle on the way over would be a better use of time than “practicing” on the creek.  Turns out if we’d “practiced” more than one run just before racing I might not have tipped over in a few inopportune spots and she might have paddled fast enough to make gas money.  Oh well, at least we know the lines at 72CFS for next year…  Some people were amazingly fast and precise, so that was a good example for us, embracing the lazy kayaker ideals isn’t always the go.
 
June 5- I’m way better at bike riding.  Carl and I pre-rode the Teva Games XC Track, which used some of the 2001 World Champs terrain and was strangely familiar.  Unlike the perfect first tracks we found on some freshly melted out North Loop across the Vail Valley.  Fortunately, our awesomeness at riding through the woods was catalogued for the next people to ride there by perfect dirt with perfect tracks freshly laid.  I hope they appreciated the amount of backing it in that went on…
Saturday, May 30th, 2009
Adam Craig and I have never had so many people think that we ROCKED!  When we decorated the car with our initials separated by a lightning bolt, we thought we were clever.  Then when people saw the AC/CD car at the Oregon Trail Rally last week, maybe they thought we were clever.  Or they thought we were with the band, AC/DC.  I'll admit, I've been mistaken for a roadie before.  But not that kind of roadie…
 
Oregon Trail, the 4th stop on the Rally America National Championship tour, would be the first race in a long time for Adam 'n' Carl's Giant Team4fun.  The trusty Wheels of Teal had been through a transmogrification of sorts.  In the last year, she'd changed from a lowly Group 2, two-wheel-drive, 130 horsepower car into an Open class car with 300 horsepower and 4-wheel drive.  Over a base coat of sweat and tears, a coat of white paint was applied.  And on top of that, some stickers.  Now we'd see if she (we?) were ready to race against the quickest cars and drivers on the continent...