Friday, March 18, 2011

O Hill and Pivot

So, yeah, here we are. The day after the OHill Meltdown.
Hurts, doesn't it.
That's why we have a doctor around. Geoff Keenanstrong, 3rd place in sport at OHill, is your guy if you suspect that climbing the powerline 3 times at race pace might have caused some permanent damage.

Dr. Geoff Keenanstrong (technically, The Albemarle Center for Health and Rehabilitation)

So yeah, OHill. Not much to report really. Kev29er dominated. I cramped up and rolled around in the leaves for a while. SSRamsey did some braking with his face. Business as usual.

I asked Scott this morning how his grill was, and he replied with this picture. good times.

"My face is a bit swollen, but I'm alright. I have a couple small abrasions on my nose and upper lip, and the upper lip is swollen but it's receding. Those types of crashes are good for the shock factor of spectators, timekeepers, etc. looking at you and saying, "Oooh, wow, that looks bad."

Shock factor, eh? Call it what you will, I'm just saying that the repeated occurrence is making it start to seem like less of a crash and more of a technique.

Other notable finishes, SOT2.0 got around that thing in 2nd for SS, dropping the remarkable re-emergence of The Original Ted Shred as a racer to a not-so-distant 3rd in SS. So I guess that's a podium sweep on home turf as well as a rivalry in the making. Whedbee? 2nd in expert. De-Witt? #1 in Sport. And on that note, let the blog-based, ugly, sandbagging accusations that discourage kids from participating in our sport commence.

Poignantly, I was reminded, mid-race, why I bought a Pivot. And it wasn't what you'd think - although I was surprised multiple times by the kind of gnar this bike has the ability to stick to at speed. More so, I was reminded that I bought the bike because of the people. Shawn has put together a great bike shop, connected with the right people to form a bike culture that fits our scene, and now he's putting on badass local races that draw national-level talent to our 'hood. Even if he weren't my brother, buying a bike from Blue Ridge Cyclery was a natural fit for me.

And, on a more national scale, I've been to Arizona twice in the last 3 years. Both times, Chris Cocalis, founder and owner of the once great Titus Cycles, and new founder and owner of Pivot Cycles, has procured a sweet Pivot demo bike for me free of charge and taken me on a guided ride on the lesser-known of the local goods on South Mountain. I'm a nobody (although I've had the good fortune to travel in AZ as part of an entourage with connections.) In the bike industry, Chris is most certainly SOMEBODY. But he's got this down-to-Earth way about him, and like you or me, he's constantly looking for an excuse to skip work and rally. And he brings demo bikes with him.

So I bought one. In the grand scheme of life, buying the things you want from the people you like means something.

And let me tell you, it rallies. Not many bikes will push Bender's tongue out of his mouth in exhaustion quite this far, especially on a powder day. And apparently, I'm not the only one that thinks so. Bender and Bailey aside, I think the local Pivot owners club is up to about 10, plus Stephanie from the RIC (who I'm told could use a higher quality roof rack) and Hiser (who eschews the club because he was Pivot before Pivot was cool.)

Anyway, I'll descend my Pivot soapbox, but only because I've got stuff to do.
Like train for BRS Ride the Ridge. Demon Voice *Sunday, Sunday, Sunday*.

Up, Up, Up.
And Up, yet again, to really get in the spirit of the thing.

2 comments:

  1. O-Hill Meltdown 2011 was one for the records. Huge BRC presence, both in number of racers and number of helpers. Great show of teamwork out there, folks! Now, 'scuse me while I put another band-aid on my lip...

    ReplyDelete