This is my tree

This is my tree.

But back to that later.

First up for me today was the elite 4/5 race, I got there early and it was pouring, but I kind of like the rain and actually the pavement was fairly grippy after raining all night.

Got a good warmup in and came to the line, a few mice, a strong 3rd Pillar contingent, and a few CVC, as well as a strong Berry. 47 starters made up the biggest field I saw today, and within 10 laps we shed half the bunch.

I saw some goofy riding by a couple of select riders, but for the most part 3rd Pillar rode hard to set up their sprinter and by keeping things decently fast we found ourselves on the last corner, myself in the 3 spot, can't ask for better position, well I needed one more cup of coffee or sumpthin'because somehow in my half frozen, half waterlogged state, I elected to start my sprint in a 12 cog, which only works if your cashing a check from a Protour team and are jumping @40+.

So eight was my number and I'm happy, just trying to get those top tens and stay alive, but I resolved to check the back cog before going the next time :-(

35 4/5 was up next with no break and I changed into another jersey with the new number at the car and we are off, I'm already feeling the fumes I have been running on for months and am getting a few crampy twinges, but thankfully we roll out at the grampa pace and slow from there.

A few attacks are attempted, but CVC being the only dominant team in the race is on them quickly, I joined a couple likely efforts when the blue and white were represented, but nothing was going good and getting separation, so I figured a bunch sprint was in our future, especially with every one of us having a fair amount of rest.

Typical 35+4/5 race, all negative racing and slow down and play chicken at the end, the last 5 laps got slower and slower, with more and more braking and absolutely stupid lines being taken.I attempted to do a little coaching with folks, we here on the spidey side of life are focusing hard on developing safe racers out of our sport team and womens bunch as well and have learned a couple of good lessons along the way, but it fell on deaf ears for the most part.

One to go and we enter corner 2 ( the one on the picture, which is sporting a drain grate roughly 3 feet off the apex but was fine all day), I'm in the 2 spot behind the CVC leadout when I hear the brakes being applied coming out of the apex, bad bad bad things are happening quickly, as his bike drifts out to the curb while coming back at me fast.

Options- You can set this to a little Digital Underground if ya like...

A- grab every brake I own, which are ridiculously wet since I wasn't finding the need to APPLY THEM ALL THE TIME and knock the whole bunch down behind me

B- Hit his back wheel and topple into the whole bunch behind me

C- as the curb/ bike gap closes, bunnyhop the island, brush tree A, slide around tree B, and hop off onto N street into open traffic

Well C is what I did, so yo listen up...

The damage- none. A tire track on Merceds' beeyutifull lawn and a scuff on the left shoulder. Now if I could have got back in from the far side of the island, now that would have been a real whalerider, as it was , I was too busy calling them all a whole lotta bad words and really in disbelief I made it out of that one alright.

No t-shirt for missing the trees, though.

Apology for the brake check, ummm, no.