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:: JUNE NEWS ::

June 1st
>> let me just start off by saying that it is now officially Monday. It’s 12:23 a.m and I am still up and just now writing this so my humor factor is non-existent. I’m just going for the basic run down of the race day so deal. It’s downhill day.
I already told Lisa I’d be her pack mule for the day and help with anything she needed for the DH. Moseley, Lucky, and I rode up to the venue and I started to get everything ready.

>>The women’s quali’s started and the top three women went like this…Celine Gros with a time of 4.49, Sabrina Jonnier 4.50, and “The Mo” (Tracy Moseley) also with a 4.50. Lucky’s qualifier was “a-ight”, in her words which I think meant O.K. On the men’s side of things it was the crazy little Frenchman on flat pedals, Michael Pascal in first with a 4.08, Fabien Barel with a 4.09, and one of my favorites Cedric Gracia with a 4.12.

>>In between the semi and final I was running around doing my team manager duties getting results and start lists. With the final about an hour away, Lucky and I headed up for the gondola. I got her all set up, joked around with Chris Cross (Luna chix mechanic) for a bit and then timed the gondola ride down so that I could see most of Lucky’s run. Well, it started out good till’ some kid must’ve got stuck between the doors and the stupid gondola stopped. I had timed it perfect but it wasn’t meant to be. I did however get to see most of Mio suemasa’s run and she was looking pretty quick. As it turned out Celine Gros won it the little skinny girl that she is with a time of 4.42, Sabrina second with a 4.45, and the French jr. downhill champion Emmeline Ragot in third with a 4.49. So after taking a look at those three I figured my theory of the weight ratio didn’t stand a chance. Between Celine and Emmeline they probably only weighed in at 150 lbs. Man what do they feed these girls?!!

>>The men’s final had started and I planted myself at the finish. Peaty ended up racing and I think finished about 17th, but if you’d have seen his ankle you would’ve never known how he made it ten feet out of the start gate. Think Michelin man. Anyway, Rennie ended up third with a stellar run, Pascal in second, and Gracia taking the win.

>>All in all the weekend had some great racing and the fans in Scotland are just awesome. I mean the downhill and the Dual was packed from start to finish with people and they would have stayed rain or shine. I can’t wait to come back.

Wednesday, June 4th
>> Fast forward…the last three days have been a whirlwind. Lisa and I have somehow managed to make it to france the day before the airport went on strike. Whew…close one. So much has happened I don’t even think I can remember it all, but I’ll give it a go.

>>Monday we had an early morning to catch a ride to the airport from Will Corry and the rest of the crew. We had a race with the clock to make the flight and we did just in time. The flight to Lyon, France was pretty easy and the local sitting next to me gave me the heads up about Lyon and what a cool city it was. So far so good. Oops, I spoke to soon. We made our way to the rental car office that looked like an N’Sync concert line. It took 2 ½ hours to finally get the “correct” car and get out of there. Oh did I mention that it was raining the whole time so our bags were soaking. Twenty five minutes later we were in the city and finding a parking spot would prove to be a challenge. After cutting some frenchie off I decided on the sidewalk. We had dinner and found a hotel in the middle of town. We got into the room rung out our clothes, and made it to bed about 3 a.m. Up at 10 a.m. to make the 11 a.m. check out and to move the car before it got towed. We rushed to the car as we saw two policemen scribbling away at their ticket books. Lucky was in such a hurry she swung the door open and all I heard was…THUD!!! Lucky got knocked the f@#% out! All I know is that there was blood and now she’s got a fang. I knew better than to say a word so I zipped it till’ the coast was clear.

>>We window shopped and people watched for about 5 hours until I felt like my feet were gonna fall off. After one of the best cappacinos ever we had to get back to the airport to pick up Will Jr. and steve-o. We got there and I scan the board….flt. 362 – Cancelled. What!!!! After finding out about the airport strike and making some phone calls Will Sr. shows up from the drive from Scotland. He gave us our bikes, wait for T. Bosch to chat up some girl while getting a rental car and start making the drive to Alpe D’ Huez at 11 p.m.

>>What was supposed to be a two hour drive turned into a 5 hour freakin’ ball up. Let me just give you a quick run down of the signs in Europe. In two words….THEY SUCK!! If you see a sign that says Alpe D’ Huez and you exit the highway, you don’t see another for a ½ hour if your lucky. We must’ve asked 20 different people where the hell the mountain was and they all looked at us like we had four heads. I mean it was a joke. I felt like there was a hidden camera in our car and someone was getting a good laugh. I got to the point around 3 a.m. where I just turned delirious, threw my sour patch kids, and started laughing hysterically. At like 3:30 out of the corner of my eye I saw two frenchies. I slammed on the brakes and all I could muster up was yelling to Lucky…”People, people, people!” and pointing. She got out, ran over, and showed them the map. They were super cool and told us to follow them. Oh my god, we finally made it up the infamous swithchbacks and eventually found the office with the keys. They left a map to our chalet and things were looking good. It’s too bad we passed our street that could’ve doubled for a bike path about six times before I had an epiphany and realized that was it. Holy s@#% we had made it. We only took out something to sleep in and found our room. But the fun didn’t end there. Once inside I hit the light switch. Click, click…..click, click,click. Nothing….not a damn thing! No electricity. It was all a bad dream, but I was past the point of getting pissed. All three of us just started moving around by Braille. Todd tripped on what he thought was a couch and was asleep before Lucky and I even stumbled upon more bunk beds. I fell into the bottom bunk and it was over.

>> We woke up the next day which was Wednesday at about noon. We hadn’t had a decent meal in a couple days and had just been snacking. We drove into town and had a pizza with Doug from Siemens, and Billy Baker from Haro and then went up to check out the 4-cross course. We had gotten a heads up from Cedric and he was telling us you needed a downhill bike for it. I mean that gnarly and fast that Jill Kitner and Caile got there, looked at the course, and drove back to the airport that same day. We went to the venue and walked to the top. Let’s just say I couldn’t stop shaking my head. Frank Roman ( the course designer ) had really outdone himself this time. There was a group of us including, E.C, Cedric, Minaar, Mick Hannah, Lucky, Bosch, and myself that walked it with him and were so against it. He had the start coming STRAIGHT down the hill for a good 300 to 350 feet before you even hit the first turn and let me clarify that the first turn wasn’t even a turn it was a slight dogleg more or less. You would easily hit 40 mph. especially on a DH bike.There were no berms and no jumps. However there were plenty of half-ass make shift dirt lips that launched you onto a flat landing that jarred your teeth loose. We had a meeting of the minds to figure out what could be done if anything. I mean he didn’t’ do a thing. I looked like he took one big lawnmower and cut the grass straight down the hill and the UCI actually paid him for this. Not to mention the fact that the downhill course comes into the 4-cross course pretty much at the first turn which means that anybody signed up for the DH and the 4-cross will get about 5 extra hours of 4-cross practice. Yup, that sounds pretty fair. After debating over a number of issues between the UCI, Frank, the race organizer, and the riders, a few of us went and got our gear to ride the course and see if it was safe to race on. At the end of the day I’m not sure what’s going to happen. There are a lot of different factors, but there’s no way around the fact that this course absolutely sucks! The last I heard was that Bas De Bever who is our rider rep for the UCI needed to walk it tomorrow morning and figure out what could be done if anything. So now it’s time for bed and I think I’ll sleep for a couple days. Goodnight.

>> Well, it turned out to be about 9 hours instead of a couple days, but I had to get up and make it to the laundry facilities before every other team on the circuit showed up and I had to vie for position. Today was pretty chill and I just planned on registering for the race, find out what the scoop was for in the 4-cross, and ride this cool little singletrack a few times with Will and Lucky. It looked like after Bas went up to the 4-cross course with the UCI they made some changes, but nothing they do can really make it a good course.

>> So later we went up and did the really fun singletrack a few times until I flatted. By then it was about six o’clock and I was gonna head down for dinner. I fished around in my bag for the car key only to end up emptying the entire thing as it starting to rain and I can’t find the damn thing anywhere. Of course I start thinking about how the hell I’m gonna deal with this one. I’m up in the mountains and the airport is 5 hours away (at least when I’m driving) and I just didn’t need this right now. Boy it’s a good thing I didn’t start thinking too far ahead since I found the key about fifteen minutes later! I think my brain was just fried and it was premature panic. I made it back and steve-o whipped us up a nice pasta dinner. Au revoir.

>>It’s Friday, June 6th and this morning Steve was trying to figure out what day it was. That’s when I realized it’s Friday. Friday means that I’m only in Europe for another three days and all of sudden I got really excited about that. Both Lisa and I started smiling and couldn’t wait to get back to the states. There just comes a time in your travels where you had just about enough crap go on that it’s time to leave and now is the time. But before we do there is a task at hand and that is racing our bikes.

>>O.K, well I’m a couple days off since it’s Monday and I’m on the plane home sitting next to a really nice lady that is sitting in both of our seats. Do I get a discount for this? Besides people watching on the 9 hour flight….and believe me there’s plenty of that between the guy across the aisle wearing the eye shade while picking his nose and the guy sitting behind lucky with “ The Euro Funk “, it’s been alright.

>>O.K, so back to race news. We had practice on Friday and it went pretty good. We were supposed to have an hour, but since the UCI is so on top of things these days we got a bit less. You should have seen the lift back to the top. It was one of those rope pulls and Lucky got to feel first hand a little rope burn on the inner thigh. Oopsy! You gotta latch it around the seat lucky, the seat!!
Anyway, so like I said practice went pretty good and I was stoked that the guys at Manitou were able to get me the 130 mm Minute fork to try out. It was a prototype, but I needed all the suspension I could get. It was a bit tall and I was already having some issues with the gate. It was really steep. I mean everyone that was on DH bikes looked like they were mounting a horse. I had watched some of the guys earlier and Michael Prokop and Dale Holmes were getting killer gates and looking fast especially for being on hardtails. In the men’s final it was E.C taking the win even with the big squirrel out which made Cedric crash, Prokop second, then Boom-Boom, and then Cedric coming across the line yelling something about squirrelly Americans. He was pretty pissed, but E.C went up to him and told him what happened and it was all good.

>>In the women’s final you just couldn’t have predicted the outcome. In my first round it was Anne-Caro, Lucky, Kathy Pruitt, and myself. I had second lane choice, but chose lane 4. We came out and it was Anne-Caro, Lucky, and then I, but I wasn’t about, to back down. I must have taken at least 4 more pedals after everyone else and jumped from third to first into the first turn. As soon as I got into the turn (mind you it’s raining on an off-camber super fast grass course) I thought to myself.” Holy shit, how am I gonna pull this off?” Somehow someway I didn’t crash. Lucky swooped underneath me and that’s how we came across the line. Anne out in a first round…. I don’t remember that ever happening before. It was a bit odd. On to the next round and it was Katrina, Lucky, Marla, and I. I came out and into the first turn behind Katrina. Lucky made her signature move in the turn and dove under me again. I was in third just waiting for a mistake. Lucky made one about 4 turns from the finish and went out wide so I jumped to the inside and immediately swung out wide to take her line. She held steady for a minute and there was a good second that we were just leaning on each other, but I had the better line so she backed off and I advanced with Katrina. In the final it was Myself, Katrina, Sabrina, and Tracy “downhill queen” Moseley. Out of the gate I was in second coming in to the first turn pretty hot and couldn’t quite hold it. Sabrina and Mo came underneath me executing the Lucky signature move once again. Now I’m in fourth waiting to make a move as soon as Sabrina inches to the outside. Unfortunately for me she never did and I couldn’t make a clean move. As for Moseley she was right on Katrina’s wheel and came by her just as they crossed the line for a first place in the record books. I was pretty stoked for Mo and if any downhiller had to win it I would want it to be her. I ended up fourth and not super pissed off just for the simple fact that I felt I rode well and really aggressive under those conditions and not being 100% prepared for that type of course.

>>We finally finished up with the podium at like 9:30 ish’ and I still had to power wash my clothes, pack, and eat some dinner.
The next morning was downhill day and I was running around trying to help out Lucky and the crew. Unfortunately it wasn’t meant to be for Lucky. She got a flat tire about 15 seconds out of the gate and still almost qualified. They qualify 30 women and she ended up 33rd and I think about 5 seconds out. I felt really bad for her, but there wasn’t much I could say.

>>The weekend was over and after all the fighting over the crap courses, the flat tires, the rider protest, and the UCI with their thumb up their assess. I’m glad to be flying home with my fellow American freaks. Au-Revoir.

>>I made it home around 11:00 p.m Monday night only to get up early Tuesday to do laundry, return phone calls, send faxes, and pack the same s@#!. I find that packing the same thing just saves me a lot of headache these days. I mean every time I try to pack something nice I never end up wearing it because we never make it out for dinner before eight o’ clock or I realize we’re up in the freaking mountains so who’s gonna see it. So Tuesday is pretty much shot and it’s time for bed.

>>It's Weds. morning, June 10th and I’ve got a flight out of Ontario at like 8:30 a.m. through LAX, onto Chicago, and finally into Roanoke, W. Virginia for the second round of the Norba ncs series. Right off the bat I knew it’d be a long day when I was the first person to check in and they already were telling me my bike wouldn’t get on the plane. On top of that they wanted me to pay for it. I very quietly pulled the supervisor aside and said….”Hell No I’m not paying for a bike that’s not even gonna show up!!!!” And that was that. Once into LAX I BARELY made my connection to Chicago. I was running the whole way with my 80 lb. Backpack and helmet bag smacking me in the knees every stride. I get there and the lady is just laughing at me and says.”Well I guess we’ll let you on.” Damn straight your gonna let me on lady or else your gonna wish you were wearing my helmet when I smack that smile off your face. O.K, I didn’t say any of that, but it would have been funny if I did.

>>The flight to Chicago went by quick. Daredevil was the movie they were going to show and I figured since I was stuck in this little air tube and had nothing else to do I would watch it. Well, I would have but the guy next to me started chatting and we ended up talking the rest of the flight. Once into Chicago I hit up the local Micky D’s (McDonalds for you that don’t know) since I didn’t have much time. Both Elke and Rando were on my next flight into Roanoke and it was a pretty quick flight. It was now like 10:00 p.m. and I found out my bike would be coming in on the 11:30 flight. So we found some local bar / pub and finally had dinner. Back to pick up my bike and then off for the 3-hour drive to the mountain. I would have slept the entire way if Frank didn’t have the tires screeching and the suburban up on two wheels careening around the every turn up the hill. But hey I guess he had to stay awake somehow. Finally I nestled into bed around 3 a.m.

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