events
21 07 2008This week has been full of all sorts of events. Some were good, some were really bad.
The wednesday night race was rough, I got clobbered by ODB, Pat, and Shawn. But they are all real quick, so you need the a-game. A last minute decision was made to race single speed at nationals and take my brothers along for the ride. Rather than running a stupid chain tensioner I decided to go ahead and get a new Kona Kula 29er frame. It came on thursday so I could build it up in time to leave friday. The national championship race is always a good place to test ride a new bike.
The test ride went well. Single speed competition was fierce, I was 12th. My time was good, so I’m pretty happy. However I did notice that there were a few pros who skipped the xc to race ss, namely guys on the podium. That is kind of lame. I know, I know, I skipped the xc to race ss too, but… Us semi-pro racers have to qualify for the xc, the pros don’t. And plus getting hit by a car kind of threw a monkey wrench into the periodicity of my training/qualifying schedule. And, these dues put their gears back on for the short track. Whatever, I’m out for fun not glory. Real men would have raced the ss and xc though, like Betsy did.
This week I am rolling to Cape Cod for a job interview. That could be awesome, although it is kind of sad that my (relatively) carefree student lifestyle is coming to an end after a 27 year run. But the prospect of having a savings account with money in it or maybe getting some dura ace or xtr is quite exciting. I don’t know, the jury is still out on all that high end stuff.
So the really bad event this week was the death of my friend Tim Putman, in a motorcycle accident. He was a bike racer, we weren’t super close friends, but it was hard not to like him. We went together to Highland Hex a couple years back, it was pissing rain and everyone else we knew bailed that morning. You couldn’t have spent a shittier 6 hours on the bike, he was tough. We’ll miss him and be praying for his family.
I’ll avoid ending on a low note at the expense of another local mtb racer. I’ll try not to name names (sorry Chris). At nationals Stan, my brothers, and I were staying with a bunch of guys, among them several friends from Ithaca who work at/are affiliated with notubes.com. After the pro men’s xc race we were hanging near the finish, and one of said friends was talking with Ryan Trebon, who had just finished 2nd. I was trying to be cool, putting out the vibe, like “yeah, I am with these guys who are chatting it up with pros and whatnot”, guilty of being awesome by association basically. All of the sudden Trebon goes “Whoa that guy just ate shit on those stairs” and I look to see our local friend lying tangled up in a three-way with his Scott and a pine tree. I pulled a total Judas and was like “Oh man, who is that guy?” Sorry, Chris. But after Trebon went away I went to see of Chris was ok. He had mulch all over himself and even in his mustache.
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