There is an odd conundrum in the world of downhill mountain bike racing: is it fast to pedal a descent, or “work” the trail features to gain speed?  Having no chain means you can’t pedal, but twice in the past month, the “chainless times” have been faster than the fully-equipped times that had been previously set. This is a curious development, and raises a lot of technical questions and ideas about how bikes are ridden; all I know is that I still tried to pedal out of a corner or two and almost ate it.  These events are always a hoot and bring smiles to the faces of the riders. I was making all sorts of happy sounds as I speed-tucked, pumped, drifted, and white-knuckled my way through two race runs. Several people actually commented on how much fun I seemed to be having and was making them laugh as I flew by cackling like a madman.

Lazy racing means sitting down and hanging a foot. @si_williams_ through the looking glass.

That event was on Saturday, and then there was another race on Tuesday night, one of the series races put on by the gang at Vertigo Bikes. That particular event had some of the best shit-talking and queue line banter I’ve heard in a while.  Before we could even start our runs, we had to throw a disc-golf frizbee at a sign, and hit the sign (four tries to get it done) – like a true champion, I nailed the sign on the first toss; didn’t even wait for the disc to hit, I knew it was a good throw!  The race itself was less than stellar, as I crashed twice. The only damages were my destroyed water bottle cage (I had to throw the bottle to a spectator, who kindly returned it to me at the bar after the race), and the pile of logs I plowed into, after pinballing into two trees. I managed to knock a small-person-sized log into the trail and had to remove it before I set off again. Not my finest showing at a race.  The after party at the local bar was a hilarious night as usual.  The day’s winner of the race was suspected of riding the wrong trail, hence beating 2nd place by 10-seconds.  But, who really cares when there is free beer at the end of the race?  I ended up going out until 2am that night, all in the name of “why not?” In true Second Summer fashion I woke up at noon the next day, but it was a fun mid-week bit of shenanigans. 

@tommyawilkinson on the Trigger; Nearly ate it trying to roost him for the shot.

Unrelated: this page has just reached 1,000 views, so that’s also pretty neat  My updates have been sporadic because my computer is on the fritz again.  It’s ‘fixed’ now, but the computer dude didn’t really ‘fix’ the problem – I’m not entirely sure what he did for the hour I was billed.  I’ll be having a follow up chat with him on that…in the mean time though, I should be back to regularly updating this page at this point.