SSWC08 Part FiveNapa, CA
This One Goes to Eleven
Saturday AM we headed on back up to Napa to check in and pre-ride the course in it’s entirety. What we found was a totally transformed campground, it was completely overrun by Single-Speeders. We set up camp, then Matt O’Keefe, Miriam, and I went out on the course to get a better idea of what we were up against now that it was all marked. There was a good deal of confusion about the laps. The first was different from the other two. The first lap would be extra hard, the remaining two just hard. I would stay confused until I was actually out there doing it.
When Miriam and I rode Wednesday we didn’t see any of the really nasty climbing or the massive run up, hike-a-bike thing. And I was going to gear up, bad idea. The course, like SSWC Scotland is tied for best course ever, but in a completely different way. Just fast, dusty, rocky, nutty CA trail riding. It was, as they say out here…”Hella sweet”.
That night, Miriam, Matt, and I rode to downtown Napa, stopping at the bowling alley where the selection event was being held for SSWC09. Keeping with tradition, we missed it, getting there just in time to hear the outcome - Durango. It’s gonna be sick, those kids know how to party. There might be some good trails there too. I was rooting for New Zealand, but I’m not sad about going to Colorado, I’ve always wanted to ride that stuff.
Buck and a guy we just called "Jesus". I have no idea why.
The beer started flowing at the brew pub and picked up velocity, luckily Miriam was there to check myself before I wrecked myself. Got to bed at a reasonable hour, only semi-sotted, and awoke not-still-drunk in time to eat more than a Clif Bar before the start. The costumes were amazing, I should have had my camera at the start line. Search Flickr for “SSWC Napa” or “SSWC08” if you want to see some real crazy shit. Two of the fastest guys there had the best costumes, Wicks and Decker. Ridiculous. Other fast dudes in attendance included Travis Brown, Marko Lalonde, Mark Weir, Fuzzy John Mylne, Dejay Birtch, Buck Keich, and local Favorite Cameron Falconer.
Before the start they had us pile our bikes across a field and come back to the Start/Finish where a running race was held to give folks who weren’t registered a chance to get a spot. Allegedly only the top twenty were in, but at the end of the race they were told that everyone did such a good job that they were all in. So in your face you whiny douche bags who talked smack about Curtis Inglis on your douche bag forums, threatening to boycott his company Retrotec or sue him because your douche bag buddy got in and you didn’t. Seriously, if you gave a crap about this event you would just shut up and show up. I’m sure you wouldn’t have any trouble registering for D.B.W.C. (Douche Bag World Championships). The upside is they have accurate scoring and timing so you can see how you stack up against all the other douche bags, being a dick to lapped riders is encouraged (because it really matters if you get any place but first at one of these things, you douche bag),and The Douche Bag World Championship will never be decided by a Go Kart race, although the selection for next year’s venue might be decided by who has the coolest vanity plate on their BMW.
The start was Lemans style, something I always find terrifying. I ran next to Barry Wicks for a bit until I stepped in a hole and my right knee kind of got tweaked. Then I went “oh ya, if I roll my ankle before the start of the race I will be severely bummed out”. I still got a good start, even trying to hop on Decker’s wheel as he blew past. Of course he was pushing like a 56” gear (34 X 16 on 26”) and so he was going deceptively fast despite his reasonable cadence. I didn’t last very long, but was close enough to the big kids to see Wicks and Marko head up the crazy, long-ass, loose run-up. First lap we criss crossed a section of the course and went down a loose, rocky descent, the dust was flying, a “what you can’t see can’t hurt you” policy was in full effect. Somehow local CA riders weren’t blowing by me like I thought they would, this not being my kind of descending. I’m more into slow speed, wet, rooty technical stuff. This stuff was so damn fast, I felt like I was having an out of body experience, like I was on an amusement park ride, only I was missing the germ-ridden safety bar. During the pre-ride I had encountered a virtually unrideable (unless you go all No Way Hans Rey on it) switchback. There were just oddly placed rocks all through the middle of it. As I anticipated a whole bunch of dudes bottlenecked there, but apparently a few riders before me had encountered the same thing and had decided to cut the inside of the switchback through the poison oak, showing me the line. Not ideal, but better than waiting for the switchback to clear, hopefully the poison oak will clear sometime soon too.
As things cleared out and climbing conga lines formed I could see DFL Cameron up ahead with about five riders between us, I’d heard he was a wicked fast guy so I thought this was good. The first section of singletrack climbing had some nasty, steep pitches which forced us to hop off and run. It was the classic Single-Speeder “Rider up…riding!”. Then the guy would hop off right after he passed you, then you’d hop on and do the same thing back to him ten seconds later as the hill kicked again. It made us all really mad, because we are very serious racers.
Most of the real climbing was over after the first part of the lap, we got that over with and started the snaking singletrack traverse, a couple punchy little bastard climbs popping up here and there. I’d opted to run a 32 X 19, feeling that a 32 X 20 was a little low through most of the course. It felt good on the traverse anyway and I was only suffering kind of horribly, dreadfully on the climbs.
When you’re racing against 400+ people and it is statistically 100% impossible that you are going to win, all you can do is ride as fast as you can and have fun, it’s quite liberating really. Ya, I’m competitive and yes I am trying to beat the guys around me no matter what the scenario, but I felt a sense of camaraderie with these dudes kicking my ass, like we were on a brutal group ride not so much racing. When you line up next to Decker, Wicks, Weir, or any guy named Lalonde, you can’t take things too seriously. Especially when two of them are basically wearing nothing but thongs and capes.
The course was all Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde. All the mean stuff was in the first section the pay off was in the second section…after the gnarly moonscape, totally exposed to the sun run-up above Lake Marie. It wasn’t all down hill from there, but it sure felt like it, comparatively. The most nerve-wracking bit for me was the traverse above the lake. It was a narrow goat path, with a cliff wall to the right and a precipitous drop to the left. On the second lap it got interesting as you came up on lapped traffic. Like I said, no reason to be a jerk, especially when there was physically no way to get around people on this section. Although coming close to a track stand next to an abyss is not, not terrifying either.
The real descending and tight, steep, east-coast-kid-baffling switchbacks were all in this part of the course. My favorite spot turned out to be the section from the pre-ride video Miriam took with the bouncing down the rocks action. The stuff above that was great too, a rocky climb around a tight corner, down a trials-ish, rocky, switchback, then down the aforementioned bouncy, bouncy bit. There was a fast as hell, rutted out downhill after that with some crazy high speed drops and all sorts of other goodness. Pete’s fork tuning paid off big time, it was a huge advantage.
This was far and away the best event fan-wise I have ever been to, including the NMBS in New York and Nationals. Given my races are usually first thing in the morning and no one is up yet, but whatever, this was insane. The costumes, the beer hand ups, the super soakering, freakin’ brilliant. Coming into technical sections people would call out lines…this did not always mean it was the good line, sometimes it was the craziest line and you would wind up flying through the air screaming.
For the most part I was with a group of about five guys, we were too busy choking on dust to introduce ourselves, and I didn’t run into any of them after the race, so if any of you remembers the dork in the mostly white kit with the pink helmet and the dirty face – hi my name’s Thom, it was good riding with you. Thanks for wailing on me for two and a half hours. I think because I was riding in a group I wound up dirtier than most other riders, I don’t think I crashed at any point except for when I was trying to ride up one of the uphill switchbacks with a telephone pole in the middle on the later part of the course. That’s my trademark – the uphill stack, get’s me every time.
That about says it all.
Alright, I’m actually going to cut my loquacious ass off here because I’ve found that after a week of sleep deprivation and inebriation my mental faculties are at a severe deficit. I maybe slept seven hours last night and all day long things have been coming back to me, really obvious things that I’d been trying to think of for days now…like how many fingers I have. I’m like an amnesiac. I’m sure many other things will be remembered over the next couple days and I will add an addendum to this post, hopefully with more photos.
The short of it is this: I came across the line top 11, happy that six of those guys who beat me were seriously bad dudes who I can’t beat on my best day, and that only four of the four hundred other folks kicked my ass. Curtis, Jeff, and all the other guys involved in this thing did a spectacular job, the course was just about the best thing ever, and I have enough happiness and good times in the bank to last me through another New England winter and a good result that might help me with my mission.
Thanks to the guys at Mojo for helping me out, The Sycip guys for the Annadel ride, Billy Spaceman and The American Cyclery folks for the city ride, I’m sure I’ll think of other awesome people to thank pretty soon as well. Actually Blogger is buggin' out right now and not letting me post my photos, so I'll be adding some to this one later, that’s it for now, check back soon.
When Miriam and I rode Wednesday we didn’t see any of the really nasty climbing or the massive run up, hike-a-bike thing. And I was going to gear up, bad idea. The course, like SSWC Scotland is tied for best course ever, but in a completely different way. Just fast, dusty, rocky, nutty CA trail riding. It was, as they say out here…”Hella sweet”.
That night, Miriam, Matt, and I rode to downtown Napa, stopping at the bowling alley where the selection event was being held for SSWC09. Keeping with tradition, we missed it, getting there just in time to hear the outcome - Durango. It’s gonna be sick, those kids know how to party. There might be some good trails there too. I was rooting for New Zealand, but I’m not sad about going to Colorado, I’ve always wanted to ride that stuff.
Buck and a guy we just called "Jesus". I have no idea why.Before the start they had us pile our bikes across a field and come back to the Start/Finish where a running race was held to give folks who weren’t registered a chance to get a spot. Allegedly only the top twenty were in, but at the end of the race they were told that everyone did such a good job that they were all in. So in your face you whiny douche bags who talked smack about Curtis Inglis on your douche bag forums, threatening to boycott his company Retrotec or sue him because your douche bag buddy got in and you didn’t. Seriously, if you gave a crap about this event you would just shut up and show up. I’m sure you wouldn’t have any trouble registering for D.B.W.C. (Douche Bag World Championships). The upside is they have accurate scoring and timing so you can see how you stack up against all the other douche bags, being a dick to lapped riders is encouraged (because it really matters if you get any place but first at one of these things, you douche bag),and The Douche Bag World Championship will never be decided by a Go Kart race, although the selection for next year’s venue might be decided by who has the coolest vanity plate on their BMW.
The start was Lemans style, something I always find terrifying. I ran next to Barry Wicks for a bit until I stepped in a hole and my right knee kind of got tweaked. Then I went “oh ya, if I roll my ankle before the start of the race I will be severely bummed out”. I still got a good start, even trying to hop on Decker’s wheel as he blew past. Of course he was pushing like a 56” gear (34 X 16 on 26”) and so he was going deceptively fast despite his reasonable cadence. I didn’t last very long, but was close enough to the big kids to see Wicks and Marko head up the crazy, long-ass, loose run-up. First lap we criss crossed a section of the course and went down a loose, rocky descent, the dust was flying, a “what you can’t see can’t hurt you” policy was in full effect. Somehow local CA riders weren’t blowing by me like I thought they would, this not being my kind of descending. I’m more into slow speed, wet, rooty technical stuff. This stuff was so damn fast, I felt like I was having an out of body experience, like I was on an amusement park ride, only I was missing the germ-ridden safety bar. During the pre-ride I had encountered a virtually unrideable (unless you go all No Way Hans Rey on it) switchback. There were just oddly placed rocks all through the middle of it. As I anticipated a whole bunch of dudes bottlenecked there, but apparently a few riders before me had encountered the same thing and had decided to cut the inside of the switchback through the poison oak, showing me the line. Not ideal, but better than waiting for the switchback to clear, hopefully the poison oak will clear sometime soon too.
As things cleared out and climbing conga lines formed I could see DFL Cameron up ahead with about five riders between us, I’d heard he was a wicked fast guy so I thought this was good. The first section of singletrack climbing had some nasty, steep pitches which forced us to hop off and run. It was the classic Single-Speeder “Rider up…riding!”. Then the guy would hop off right after he passed you, then you’d hop on and do the same thing back to him ten seconds later as the hill kicked again. It made us all really mad, because we are very serious racers.
Most of the real climbing was over after the first part of the lap, we got that over with and started the snaking singletrack traverse, a couple punchy little bastard climbs popping up here and there. I’d opted to run a 32 X 19, feeling that a 32 X 20 was a little low through most of the course. It felt good on the traverse anyway and I was only suffering kind of horribly, dreadfully on the climbs.
When you’re racing against 400+ people and it is statistically 100% impossible that you are going to win, all you can do is ride as fast as you can and have fun, it’s quite liberating really. Ya, I’m competitive and yes I am trying to beat the guys around me no matter what the scenario, but I felt a sense of camaraderie with these dudes kicking my ass, like we were on a brutal group ride not so much racing. When you line up next to Decker, Wicks, Weir, or any guy named Lalonde, you can’t take things too seriously. Especially when two of them are basically wearing nothing but thongs and capes.
The course was all Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde. All the mean stuff was in the first section the pay off was in the second section…after the gnarly moonscape, totally exposed to the sun run-up above Lake Marie. It wasn’t all down hill from there, but it sure felt like it, comparatively. The most nerve-wracking bit for me was the traverse above the lake. It was a narrow goat path, with a cliff wall to the right and a precipitous drop to the left. On the second lap it got interesting as you came up on lapped traffic. Like I said, no reason to be a jerk, especially when there was physically no way to get around people on this section. Although coming close to a track stand next to an abyss is not, not terrifying either.
The real descending and tight, steep, east-coast-kid-baffling switchbacks were all in this part of the course. My favorite spot turned out to be the section from the pre-ride video Miriam took with the bouncing down the rocks action. The stuff above that was great too, a rocky climb around a tight corner, down a trials-ish, rocky, switchback, then down the aforementioned bouncy, bouncy bit. There was a fast as hell, rutted out downhill after that with some crazy high speed drops and all sorts of other goodness. Pete’s fork tuning paid off big time, it was a huge advantage.
This was far and away the best event fan-wise I have ever been to, including the NMBS in New York and Nationals. Given my races are usually first thing in the morning and no one is up yet, but whatever, this was insane. The costumes, the beer hand ups, the super soakering, freakin’ brilliant. Coming into technical sections people would call out lines…this did not always mean it was the good line, sometimes it was the craziest line and you would wind up flying through the air screaming.
For the most part I was with a group of about five guys, we were too busy choking on dust to introduce ourselves, and I didn’t run into any of them after the race, so if any of you remembers the dork in the mostly white kit with the pink helmet and the dirty face – hi my name’s Thom, it was good riding with you. Thanks for wailing on me for two and a half hours. I think because I was riding in a group I wound up dirtier than most other riders, I don’t think I crashed at any point except for when I was trying to ride up one of the uphill switchbacks with a telephone pole in the middle on the later part of the course. That’s my trademark – the uphill stack, get’s me every time.
That about says it all.The short of it is this: I came across the line top 11, happy that six of those guys who beat me were seriously bad dudes who I can’t beat on my best day, and that only four of the four hundred other folks kicked my ass. Curtis, Jeff, and all the other guys involved in this thing did a spectacular job, the course was just about the best thing ever, and I have enough happiness and good times in the bank to last me through another New England winter and a good result that might help me with my mission.
Thanks to the guys at Mojo for helping me out, The Sycip guys for the Annadel ride, Billy Spaceman and The American Cyclery folks for the city ride, I’m sure I’ll think of other awesome people to thank pretty soon as well. Actually Blogger is buggin' out right now and not letting me post my photos, so I'll be adding some to this one later, that’s it for now, check back soon.
The aftermath.
Oh my dog.
3 comments:
Kick ass post...I saw a picture of you roll through a rock garden area. 11=sweet!
long post!! i loved every minute of it, especially when you started whining about whiny douchebags. that almost made me want to whine about how you whined about whiny douches. but then you went and got all positive and i forgot about it.
Thom P: just email me at georouan (at) yahoo and I will send the few I found of you tonight.
Great post and awesome result: The douchebag rant was great because it sure seems like Curt did a great job and I know he is an all around nice guy.
Great story and still wondering how you were breathing with all that dust..
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