Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Mudslinger

What the f***?
This is April 20 not January 20.












This is the Northwest not the Midwest.

I raced my mountain bike at Mudslinger west of Corvallis Oregon on Sunday. As you can see, it snowed. Actually the snow wasn't a problem. It was muddy though. A lot of the course was logging road which was hard gravel. Some of the course was single track which was deep mud. I just pushed my bike on the muddy single track. I figured that the up hill was too much effort to try to ride and the downhill was too dangerous. I would have wasted a lot of energy crashing and getting up. Overall it was fun.

This was a steep section on the road called the stair steps. I hadn't reached the mud yet.











You can't really tell how muddy it was from this picture. I am walking though. I should have taken a picture of my bike at the end. When I got back to the road there was so much mud on my tires that I couldn't tell if they were flat or holding air. I didn't care. As long as they stayed on the rims I was going to ride on them. By the way, I'm running them tubeless which seems to be working out ok.

The locals are doing their stage race this weekend. Two time trials, a road race and a hill climb. I don't think I'm going to do it. The hill defeated me last year. Gardner Ridge Road. I've never made it to the top.

I'm racing my mountain bike again on May 3. Spring Thaw in Ashland. Susan and I are taking the trailer and Frank and Sally are coming with their trailer. We have reservations at New Sammy's Cowboy Bistro on Saturday night.

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