Jane and I spent the weekend cradled in the loving arms of twee (aka. Portland). It was a mini vacation that both drained and recharged my batteries somehow.

Joshua and Brit Bryant were nice enough to let us hole up with them for a couple of nights while our dogs played non-stop until they passed out.

I had tentative plans to race Cross Crusade in Sherwood, OR on Sunday, but I couldn’t decide until well into the work week that I would attend. I knew that we would be eating and drinking too much. Everything went according to plan too. I ended up a sloppy mess on Sunday, and there wasn’t even mud on the course.

Our hosts were wonderful as usual though. We only ended up going out a few time thanks to some great in-house cooking on their part.

We rolled in Friday night a bit later than expected and debated what our stripper budget was looking like for the weekend. You really need to keep a limit on that kind of thing, the money goes really fast. Those are some talented women down there.

We set out to Horse Brass right away and got some fresh hopped beer. My long day had me settling in a little earlier than I had planned though. Work +1 Vacation 0

Once it finally got rolling, Saturday was a whirlwind of bikes, pizza, beer and shenanigans. Oddly though, no strip clubs were … uh.. partook. I’m not sure what exactly happened, but the fatigue kicked in again. I’m a lightweight on the fun these days, I guess.

Sunday we got rolling out to Cross Crusade to make the single speed category at 1pm. Thanks to a last second flat and some general confusion, I barely got in a test lap before hitting the start line (at the back, of course) with two ridiculously large fields. The start got called and I just did my best to hang on. I’m not positive how many were racing around the same time (there were 90 just in MY field), but I felt like I was getting passed over and over for 45 minutes straight.

The course was super dry and bumpy as hell. It shook the shit out of my arms the entire ride. The start was fairly technical with a bunch of fast, downhill, off-camber 180 turns followed by a screaming decent into the woods. That was followed by a ridiculous run-up, probably the longest I’ve had to take on yet. The first time, it wasn’t a huge deal, but by laps 3-5, I was begging people for a beer hand-up. There was a woman on this climb that was supremely adept at the art of the heckle. Somewhere around my 3rd lap, she quipped, “That 25 dollars (the entry fee) would have bought you a lot of beer.” DAMN YOU! It’s true though. Something to consider for next time.

There were two barrier sections, one of which included a small creek that you had to jump across. Some of the more adventurous riders were bunny-hopping the first barrier and riding through the muddy moat.This was followed by a second and third climb to the finish line. They weren’t especially steep, but once the energy was sapped from my legs, I had to run up a bit of them each lap. I messed up my remounts a number of times here, much to the crowd’s dismay.

Somehow I grinded out 5 laps of this nonsense. I think the winner got 7 in, so that should tell you something right there. I laid out on the ground after tossing my bike down and let my stomach settle before drinking anything. God damn, that race hurt. I’ll need to take better care of myself one of these days.

We drove home (after a required Kenny & Zuke’s stop) and get back in to Seattle around 9:30 or so. I hit the bed fast, and Chibi was apparently right in behind me, literally.