SSCXWC 08
Saturday morning. Wake and bake for a dry ride to NW Portland. 3/4 of the way… rain. By the time we show up at Chris King, we are soaked from head to toe. As expected, registration was a smooth and orderly ordeal with everyone falling in a straight single file line quietly without any comotion. Everyone behaved themselves.
For the qualifiers, we take a group ride into Forest Park, and congregate inconspicuously on the fire road awaiting our start time. Most people warm up with energy drinks like Rainier and Pabst.
The time trial is an up hill start, which continues up the fire road, past a no bicycles sign, to the turn into a muddy, single track, switch back, hiking trail descent. Even the best riders ended up sliding off the trail, or wiping out of the flat mud covered rocks and roots. With the morning rains, there was plenty of mud to go around.
The top 101 times continue on to the final race. But don’t worry, if you didn’t make it, you have a last chance alley cat that ends at Vanilla Cycles for the after/pre party. Everyone who raced the alley cat, qualified for the final race. The last man standing after the pub crawl also qualified. He had to show up early in the morning to register though, hehe.
Sunday, Portland International Raceway. The Cross Crusade series is going on all day, and with the good weather, that means over a thousand riders will rip up and destroy the course before we get to touch it. They made a special qualifier for Ryan Trebone to be able to race in the ssxcwc race, which was that he had to race and win the series single speed and the series A race. That’s 3 races back to back. Ouch.
The Hot Crossed Buns are dressed and ready to race.
All 130 something racers line up, side by side in a big grass field for a sprint to a hole shot. The pack takes off into the largest cluster fuck of a start I’ve ever seen, that ended up in most racers walking the first 1/5 of the first lap. The hole shot took you over a barier and straight into the wall of foam which was spuing down on you from overhead. Close your eyes, and hope no one’s in front of you. Out of the foam, down a small drop and into the muddy up hill barriers. At the top of the hill is a spinning mini golf style wind mill which you must dodge, another barrier, and into some off camber muddy descents, turns, and climbs. Back across the finish line into a full 1/4 of the lap of solid mud, including a mud pond.
By the end of the race, I was covered head to toe in mud, I couldn’t see the color of my bike, just mud. I finished 59th out of 138. Craig finished 2nd.
When I left Seattle, I had barely found a ride down to Portland with a couple of guys on craigslist. The whole weekend, I had no idea how I was getting back to Seattle, but I figured it would work itself out. After the race ended, I found a ride for me, and a seperate ride for my bike back to Seattle. And who says you gotta plan shit?
Yes, that is a pony he is riding!
