05 January, 2009

Grand Canyon Day Negative One

This'll be it on the 'ole blog for a while. I made it to Flagstaff after a whirlwhind week.

Doug was in town and we did some great riding all week; Fish Hatch Loop, Laurel to Pilot, and on New Year's Day we joined a group of 11 to climb Old Toll and dropped Heartbreak. I'm pretty sure that last one was a bad day so close to race day. But it was a great ride, perfect skies, lots of cold, but it made the climbs feel pretty good.

Friday was more packing than I've done in a while. 4 objectives; Snake Creek Gap Race, 17 days of rafting equpment crammed into two dry bags; Extra riding clothes to do SSAZ in Tuscon, and then a weeks worth of conservative business attire for a week in Red Bank, NJ directly after SSAZ.

Saturday meant race day. In rain and fog and pretty sloppy conditions. I don't know if I have the time or energy to write that race up again. I felt pretty lousy, the mud didn't help, and the jury is still out on whether or not I liked riding that course rigid. I got a 3:27 something; good enough for the lead for now, but that's 11 minutes off my best of last year. It was a fun day, and the first time since last season that I've seen a lot of my friends. There were some notables missing, all of whom are friends, and all of whom are faster than me...Jamie, Chip, Shane....hopefully see you guys in February

Sunday...lots of travel. Bunkhouse to ATL, ATL to PHX, PHX to Flagstaff via Highway 17 and a bad snow storm over the pass from Phoenix. Lots of flipped cars. Hopefully that will be the most danger we run into....Or I did buy this drysuit, maybe I should get some use out of it.

Tomorrow is an all day rigging festival...building boats and assembing oar rigs. I don't know what any of this entails, I'm a grunt on this trip and happy to be so.

See everyone in February.....

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