Hold on...

this one's going all over the place.

So yesterday was my birthday, and I finally found out the true purpose of Facebook. It exists so on your birthday you can get a shit ton of email notifications from Facebook letting you know your facefriends have wished you a "Happy Birthday", "Happy Birfday", "Happy Dickday", or all manner of other well wishes of birthing. I appreciate it folks, I really do.

What did I get for my birthday? Well speaking of Facebook I got word from BCBike Parks that I did not make it into the top ten for the Ultimate Summer of Freeride contest. I, like you, am slightly confused since I was always towards the top of the page for "MOST VOTES" (currently showing sixth), but these contests always seem a bit ambiguous.

The public may vote online to help determine the finalists during the voting period. The voting period.... Vote tallies will not be displayed to the public. A total of ten (10) finalists will be selected from the public voting process.

I glanced at some of the chosen ones, and there certainly seems to be a demographic pattern of full face helmets, pads, and dare devilry. I'll keep my complaints to myself as I'm sure there is a reason I was left off the list. Perhaps they were afraid I'd give all of British Columbia and the five bike parks my...

SEAL OF SEMI-APPROVAL

Oh well. They get it anyways.
Contest fail.

So I'm not going to Canada this year... or maybe I am. Yesterday after talking to The Pie it seems like I have the go ahead to attend a little three day race up in Canada. I'll talk more about that in the near future when I can iron out all the details, but suffice it to say that I'd be stoked to do four stage races in 2010, not to mention see my favorite Canadian (her, not him). My biggest motivation for doing four stage races in one year would be based on the fact that Lynda Wallenfels (coach to the stars) had this to say about recovery periods:

"Mountain bike stage races such as Trans Rockies, BC bike race and Breck Epic are similar to 24-hour solo races in that recovery rate is highly dependent on the manner in which the athlete raced. Generally, 7 day stage races fall in the 3 week recovery time frame. Scheduling 1-2 stage races per season is reasonable for most athletes."

Good thing I am not "most athletes" or "reasonable."

Doing this event would totally rule out doing the PMBSR and the SSWC2010 (assuming something came through that probably won't), so the choosing to do it would be a choosing to not do others... VICTORY!!!

Yesterday's "Weir Exposed" post shoulda went a little further as I had originally intended. I had other photos that my friends up at Youngstown CSI had fixed for me, but I ran outta time to post them. I had a nice one of Evan Plews plowing through the lingering bubble pile yelling "Get the fuck outta my way sudsy fiends!" There was a sweet one of Jebediah Bisquick getting a hair gel hand up outside of the feed zone (the photo shopped image makes it look like they're high-fiving). They also let me know that the photo of me with two wheels on the ground was doctored as well. As I mentioned before they had told us that the road gap was for "Weir only". I guess Mike and Ray were nervous about the single speed class getting all single speedy and rule breaky, so when they saw us spinning up to speed coming towards the approach they dumped a bucket of Gorilla Glue on the ground to keep us from making Mark look bad. Sad what promoters will do to appease these mamby pamby pros.

Why did I run outta time yesterday? Well, I'm participating in an event this weekend called the New Belgium Urban Assault Race. Wednesday the promoters published a quiz that would determine if you got an early start on the race, so I devoted an unbelievable amount of time to the quiz. It was fucking hard, and I was at my wits end (around three minutes of concentrated effort). Some of the questions were beyond the realm of google, and others involved publications I don't subscribe to (or even write for). I thought about posting some of the questions here for input, but it would be an unfair advantage to tap into my intelligent audience for information. With a little help from my UAR partner Big Worm we managed a score of 76%. I haven't found a score as low as 76% acceptable since my second senior year at YSU. So maybe we don't get the best start time, but Big Worm and I will be bringing our 25+ years of experience to the streets of Charlotte and doing what we can. Worst case scenario? We're well on our way to an afternoon buzz by 12:30PM.

I'm sorta excited about this event. The following from the UAR website took a little wind outta my sails:

Afterparty: Come one come all! You don't have to ride in the UAR to have all the fun. Come and join us for a beer starting at 11am (in most cities). All beer sales...

Sales? Sales?? Are we paying for the beer too, or is that just information for the throngs of tifosi?

Free beer = good
Beer in exchange for money = bad

Meh.

So check back Monday for the UAR race report. Big Worm has offered to wear the GoProHD camera, so perhaps I'll have some edited video for your viewing pleasure at some point so you can see what it's like to win the UAR Charlotte or be slightly inebriated at 12:30PM. Either way it's a victory.