This event was one of the funnest times I’ve had that involved bikes. The people, the stages, the mud, the cold all made for a great time.

It was a lot of firsts for me… first time in a staged race, first time to see a derby and first time having Santa Claus pass me on the trail.

The event was made up of 10 stages. Five stretches of singletrack, two road climbs, one derby and then the up/down. The five stretches of singletrack were all sloppy. Lots of creek crossings and sloshy mud. More mud then I’ve ever ridden through and it got real fun after 100 people had hit it ahead of you. The coolest portion for me was the last part of the Stage 1 with a pretty steep run that you got to do in front of the large crowd at the bottom (it’s the first part of the video). I had already biffed at the bottom on Saturday during the pre-ride and I did pretty much the exact same fall in front of the crowd. Rock on.

Although there were only two stages of road climbing, there were actually a total of five road climbs including the ride back to the firehouse after the race was over. I did them all during the pre-ride but sat the biggest one out on Sunday. I was way to toasted to try it out, plus it allowed me to actually ride the parts I wanted to. I’ll skip a road climb to ride singletrack anytime.

The derby was a lot of fun to watch. From what I hear it was a pretty tame one as derbys go, however there was still some kicking, pushing, ramming and falling. Not to mention the brilliant displays of balance among the last ten or so.

The stages that were the most fun to watch was the up/down. An extremely steep and rutted out portion of fire road was the place for this. The first stage here was a race to the top were everyone scrambled up while carrying their bikes. The second stage was a race to the bottom. There were no spectacular falls that I saw but it was still pretty crazy watching everyone poor down the trail at top speeds.

Other stuff that happened that stands out…

The guy going through the huge mud bog, falling and catching his head on the tree. He was fine, but it was funny to watch.

About three pedal strokes into the take off for the first stage a guy endos hard just to the left of me. I’m not sure what happened to cause it, but I’m sure his face was jacked up and he got hit by more than one other rider.

Hearing “On your left…” and then being passed by Santa Claus.

Going down a muddy hill, tapping the breaks and ending up completely sideways. Yes… I fell.

Riding trails with the likes of Sov and Mike from Surly Bikes and the whole Dirt Rag Crew.

Finally, a big thanks to Dirt Rag for putting on the event and to Brad Quartuccio for giving me a place to sleep and introducing me to the world of KSWA. My life will never be the same.

I’ll leave you with a picture of me a split second before I was up to my waste…

Want more? My pictures/videos are here and there are some other picture galleries here and here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 5th, 2006 at 2:32 pm and is filed under Crooked. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.