West Virginia Whirled Cup/Van from Man-Tuk't Tour '2: Part Two

Wake up at the Tea Creek Campground and head to the Shoe.  Get there and go for a ride on the back country trails that used to be pretty cool (back in the '90s) but seem to be slightly ignored now that people would rather pay for lift tickets than access to even more WV XC trails.  

Signs for trails that don't exist anymore, missing signs at intersections, or just plain faded out to the point of being illegible from the sun.

Bill Nye found a place to huck his meat on Lower Beaver Dam, a trail that I have decided is maintained by all the water that flows down it.

Obligatory WV moss pic.

Obligatory WV sunset pic.

At some point during the day, we watched the downhill qualies and poked our noses around over at the XC track.

Wake up for day one of actual downhill racing to what I consider the best van life breakfast money can buy (that can be made in ten minutes).

We made our way down the entire course over the duration of the race and ended up under an empty Red Bull tent.  Then the visitors arrived.

Wilson from Kona who we didn't know was Wilson from Kona until we bumped into him at a brewery in Fayetteville a day (or two) later... because who remembers?

Missy Giove came by to deliver an IPA to Bill Nye.

Shaggy stopped by to just be Shaggy.

I said, "Hey, Bill Nye.  You should walk over to the finish line jump and get a picture of someone hitting it."

And this is the first guy who came along when he posted up:

"Okay.  I got one."

At some point the race ended and we found the remains of the Whale Tail feature that Snowshoe built at the bottom of the course that the UCI did not like... and we made it into a giant five man teeter totter for awhile.

We headed up to the top of the mountain and somehow ended up having a beer or two with some guy who was at some point "from Charlotte" but is from another planet now.

He was not the most fascinating human there that night, but the bar was set pretty high (as were some of the humans).

We woke up the next morning kinda late... and headed back to Fayetteville.

Why Fayetteville... again?

Wolf Creek was that much fun.  We hadn't seen it all, and we both wanted more.  That and spending more time in the Jon Danger Zone sounded optimal.

Smaller group means more time to play around.

Meat hucked once more... and a pinch flat with Cushcore followed.  Surprise!

And that's how we ended up at the same brewery we started at on day one and met Wilson from Kona who we didn't know was Wilson from Kona the first time we met him.

Then we settled back into Casa de Danger to actually watch the downhill race that we only saw flash past us all day without having a clue who won.

Chumpy was not impressed.

I'll keep this up next week since nobody reads blerhgs on Fridays if they read them at all.