First night tenting in years passed well....only two ventures in the middle of the night to mark my territory.
Wakey wakey at 5:45....nnnggghhghhg already?? Rush rush rush...breakfast...bus... Ps Dopey turned 40 overnight. Welcome to the club.
School buses of the yellow and old variety were used....som didn't make it far before spittting diesel on the manifold. Race start delayed by 30 minutes.
AcDc highway to he'll gets us in the mood and we are off. Hand is doing well - downhill bumps not too difficult - but unfortunaty no warp speed....yet.
Equipa Espana look fine sporting "pedal damn it decals" thanks Drew from Niner. Dopey and missile ride Swiss today....(jerseys).
A quick road warm up for 2km and straight into woods and ....traffic. There's a steep uphill which forces everybody off the bike...but thins out the crowd.
The impatient lady gets....impatient. We laugh and let get go in front. We pass her later. But she can pedal. But we don't care...she's wearing long socks!!! What's with that.
Now....can you say ....fast and flowy!?? Repeat....after...me... .fast and flowy!!! Wow. Twisty turny rock rooty... That was yesterday. This is a carpet ride of LOAM. look it up in the dictionary. L o a m.
Ossum.
20 km of sweeet single track. No major ups. No major downs. Thought the trees and the ferns. Strands of fern rustling against your legs. A stream of dirt kicked up by the rider in front. Sweet traction. Leeeeeaannnn the bike. Yes it grips. Left and right and right and left and flow and twist and .....continue for 1 hr. O.M.G.
At this point Pantani the Aussie speeds past 70's crop for the First Time and then few minutes later gets passed. Repeat n Times during the race. Then Watch the firework explode.
Km 22 to 30....Nascar and Missile suffer backache but valiantly ride on. We make good time.
Aid station 1 arrives. We stock up. The impatient lady arrives and dumps her bike in the middle of the area and hits my leg. Bice. Bye bye impatient lady.
Dopey doesn't hassle me this time...we set off "whenever I'm ready"
Technical downhill on dusty rocks tests the surgeons work. It holds. But the missile is not in the house. I hear he'll be back though.
Dopey is away enjoying the run. He waits at the bottom.
Missile see slimy rocks and bails buy not before a "coming through dude...." and a hot biker chick rides expertly past. I'm impressed. My courage mysteriously returns. On the bike - great...the tricky part is done. Now it's super fast and gravelly. Brakes....what brakes.
But I then miss a turn and have to back track. The first north shore style bridge over a river awaits.....but there's a guy stinking up the place and I have to dismount...grrrr... He complains he has broken ribs... I wave my hand at him with my middle finger(crookefly) showing. Well not really but Joest had a "word" with him.
More floooooowwwwww. Fast fast fast. Dust in our teeth from grinning. We hit a rolling gravel hardpack. We Flyyyyyyy. Rolloung, rolling rolling....keep thos niners rolling....keep those miners rolling...rawhide.... Etc
We blast past 10 people. We Do Rip on our niners!!!! Yeah.
Jean mi: you may now take this opprtinity to place your niner order....
I continue
Aid station 2 informs us that we have 14 km left. They lied. It was less. Yay. It's fun. Wayyy Fun. Bug thd legs are a tad....well...basically. Tired. But our grins are not!!!!
Up. A Little. STEEEEP. Ouch. Northshore is ridden. Well mostly by locals , a little by us. Finally we climb to 360 metres and it's now downhill. Space nugget awaits. Twisty. Rooty. ROOTY. loaaaaaammmm. Down. Ledges. Drop offs. Logs. Twisty turny. We are spat out onto the gravel. 1 km to go.
NASCAR proceed to implant a 5cm nail in his tyre 200m from the end. He runs gone.
We do Rip finish 23 minutes later.
Pantani finishes 45 minutes after us.
Impatient lady arrives after us. Nice pedalling...bad attitude. Booo.
Day 2' 57 km are over. Boo.
70's crop is in 9th position overall
We Do Rip are now In19th overall
Tent city awaits. Bike wash. Body wash. Eats. Coffee. Blog. There...you are now all up to date!!!
See you tomorrow.
Ps we can only send iPhone photos so sorry there are not more.
Sent from my smartphone
Missile, an epic summary of your race, it almost make us believe we are pedalling with you somewhere at the very back......Riding the "terreau" (loam) indeed smooth soil thus soft riding, quite unusual. Tonight we ride Juicy Woods and eat at Cheval Blanc...a bottle to the BC riders "exploits" !
ReplyDeleteIndeed, your summaries are really cool. The text being as lively as a video .... we are there!!!
ReplyDeleteHi to you guys, and happy birthday to Joest
thanks for the post missile, makes us feel like we're in the race. Tell that unpleasant lady to get the hell out of the way and please, please get the phone number of the hot biker chick who passed you on the downhill :)
ReplyDelete