Paranormal 2011 Results

Duo Coed	Name	Lap Count	Finish Time
1	Andrea Dvorak/Paul Buschi	8	5:33:24
2	Bev Richardson/Whit Zirkle	7	5:29:54
3	Mandi Goetz/Danny Frizzell	7	6:28:46
4	Mark Munn/Robin Robinson	5	6:35:58
5	Lauren Mills/Chris Petz	2	1:48:32

Duo Coed

Duo Men	Name	Lap Count	Finish Time
1	Jake King/Ben King	10	6:05:09
2	Ethan Lindbloom/Ian Marcuse	10	6:19:45
3	Jon Ciambotti/Patrick Norton	10	6:34:07
4	John Gonyo/Jason Plank	9	6:08:18
5	Peter Hufnagel/Chris Keeling	8	5:22:14
6	Ian Critz/Kevin Murray	8	6:29:48
7	Steven Cook/Scott Ramsey	8	6:34:32
8	Dave Tevendale/Shaine Smith	7	4:36:59
9	Lorenzo Battistelli/ Coleman	7	4:54:40
10	Sam Lindblom/Eric Magrum	7	4:59:16
11	Joseph Hoskins/Tim House	7	5:11:09
12	Brian Decker/Sean Graves	7	5:24:15
13	Dave Evans/Brian Mershimer	6	4:37:11
14	Spencer Ingram/Bryce Lowrey	6	4:48:48
15	Ted Smith/Matt Eckert	6	5:14:28
16	John Compton III/John Compton II	6	5:42:02
17	Joe Gibson/Tyler Cloutier	5	3:58:11
18	Carl Bailey/Michael Crockett	4	3:58:05
19	Robert Orgeira/Alex Pruneda	4	5:38:04

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Solo Men	Name	Lap Count	Finish Time
1st	Kyle Rodland	9	6:15:46
2nd	Jay Catlett	9	6:20:00
3rd	John Petraylk	9	6:22:31
4th	Alex Kurland	9	6:2548
5th	Marcos Lazzorato	9	6:32:47
6th	Geoff Keenan	9	6:33:41
7	Chris Cunningham	8	5:42:50
8	Benjamin Padilla	7	5:15:21
9	John Lewis	7	6:25:59
10	Joe Perpetua	6	5:06:45
11	Bruce Wickham	6	5:29:23
12	Dave Hardisky	6	5:34:49
13	Wood Thornton	6	6:05:05
14	Joseph White	5	4:45:05
15	Shane Griffin	5	4:54:37
16	Jim Fisher	4	2:56:45
17	Bridge Cox	4	3:35:22
18	Donny Peppard	4	4:01:19
19	Cory Woods	4	4:22:23
20	Andy Yost	4	4:29:56
21	Luther Barden	4	4:31:35
22	Rob Breckenridge	4	5:05:35
23	Thomas Burke	3	2:22:22
24	Robert Eiserman	3	2:36:04
25	James P. Morgan Jr.	3	3:11:23
26	Ethan Seltzer	3	3:1408
27	Tony Brown	3	3:49:44
28	Phillip Robb	3	4:00:05
29	Alan Bewley	2	2:14:18
30	Daniel Reilly	2	4:27:51
31	Jack Funk	1	3:59:38
32	Eric Fletcher	1	48:53

Solo Men Results

Solo Women	Name	Lap Count	Finish Time
1st	Jenny Whedbee	6	6:08:05
2	Nikki Chambers	5	5:43:07
3	Amy Coleman	4	4:05:25
4	Paula Smith	3	2:23:24
5	Stephanie Blanch	3	3:48:30
6	Dreama Davis	3	5:03:32
7	Ellen Ramsey	3	5:05:05
8	Stephanie Shephard	3	5:05:07

                       

Duo Women	Name	Lap Count	Finish Time
1st	Crista Fore/Jessica Riddle	6	6:15:26
2nd	Deborah White/Geana Wray	5	6:36:20
3rd	Maggie Neterval/Emily Heymann	4	5:03:34
4th	Carey Hill/Kristi Lomard	4	5:22:22

11-11-11

Putting aside for a moment my concern that this blog is really just becoming a shrine to Danny Flow, tracking his every moment, praising all he does, I'd like to announce that the kid will be back in Foofville a week from Saturday.  That's 11/19.  Reportedly, he's going to celebrate his back-in-townness by hosting cyclocross disorgaraces three consecutive days in a row. 

Durango weather in the fall: dodgy.  Better go home and race. 

Look for the kid to "tweet the dets," as the kids say, sometime in 'tween now and then. 

Moving forward, given the anachronism in the title here, it's probably obvious that I tried to write and post this yesterday.  Failed.  But, thematically speaking, I think it's more appropriate to get this one up on a Saturday anyway - a day that becoming a Dad only makes better. 

Dadurdays, if you will.  BRC has had a couple of good ones coming down the stretch here.  To start with, it would appear that K-Rod and Ken Tank had themselves a Dadurday at Tidewater Challenge and won the men's duo by a landslide, while newly recruited EnduroStud JP got mixed up in a Solo Enduro sprint finish that got the better of him.  Still, a damn fine day for Dads all around.  A week later, C-Ham hit the 18 Hours on The Farm right square in the manparts, won men's duo there with the help of superhero, Captain America, and now can plunge headlong into an offseason dominated by PBR, Basketball, night riding, and a son who believes he is Darth Vader reincarnated. 

The neat thing about Dadurdays?  Eventually, if you work the sytstem the right way, all days become Dadurdays.  Just ask my own pop, who's been making en effort on that front himself, just got himself a new Fuel EX in dadurday-black - just because he can - and has outridden both of his sons this fall about 3 to 1. 



Next week?  Some serious Dadurdaying needs to take place.  Check out the VORS scoreboard.  It's tight, notably in the team category.  The VORS season finale will be going down at Pocahontas - a little Junkerman conceived Duathlon to cap the year.  Nice.  Good news - BRCR is 450 or so points up in the series.  Bad News - mathematically, we're catchable, and this race just happens to be home turf for the 2nd and 3rd place chasers in the Team Cat.  Back to good news - if you've been to a Duathlon lately with the BRC crew, you've probably seen some teal BRC colors on the podium.  At least I think that's teal.  Final good news:  K29er has a dog in this fight, that dog being 1st place in VORS SS, again.  Anyway, if we can get the right weapons out of their cases, dust them off a bit, and Justin Riddle oversleeps, we might take the top 5 spots and button up another VORS year hanging off the front.  Carpool?

The future? Tuesday night trainer sessions, all winter long.  Newly relocated host, ELF, will be our dejay, coach, and allocator of penalty intervals.  Awesome.  Although I might go on record here and call him out for a penalty interval himself - the Lantern Rouge at the entire paranormal.  Turns out fast cars don't directly equate to fast bikes.  Unless you qualify a Honda Element as a fast car.  Which you probably don't. 

Tomorrow?  65 degree sunshine in November areyakiddinme?  sunday, sunday, sunday, BRC gravel rides start up again, rolling out of Broadus Wood at 10AM.  Bring it.

And today?  Certainly a dadurday.  I'm fixin to get to Preddy and back if the dice roll the right way.  It's been too long.

A little tunage. 

Puts me together, every time. 

Up, up, up. 

Occupy Goochland

Two days in our nation’s Capital this week, 2 roundtrips up and back on the northeast express train #171 from Foofville to Union Station, much exposure to the brushfire political climate happening out front of just about any federal building where one might squat and holler, a half dozen greedy meetings for work, and I’ve got one thing on my mind: Bikes. 

The whole Occupy thing rings to me a little bit like the debate for steel vs carbon road bikes.  But of course it's older than that, as old as Plastic vs Soul, or Technology vs Tradition, or even Love vs Money.  And no matter where you stand on the occupy issue, at the very least, it’s a rift in our nation’s collective soul that you can’t pretend isn’t there - especially not when you’re in an environment like the D.C. where suited businessmen rub pleated elbows on the street with the angry, the homeless, and the remarkably stoned.  Here in the city, where we all have to walk down the same sidewalks, our econo-political split is more noticeable than it would be in say, my native Earallysville, where my own illicit wealth/destitution is hidden by the trees a bit from my neighbors on the opposite end of the spectrum, whatever end that might be, and we don’t attend the same parties.  So of course it’s D.C. where the action is, and the wall between us and them, whichever your us and their them might be, is so readily out in the open to spit on.  Neat. 

This is a bike blog, not a political one, and chances are, unless you’ve become lost in the time-space contimuum of the interwebs like Tron, you’ve arrived at this page because you like bikes not politics, so while I’m at the wheel never the twain shall meet.  Regardless, when you step out of Union station, look out across the street and see the White House – there’s a feeling of your very small role in the very grand cog of all of this, whatever is going on here - and it makes you a tad uneasy.  It’s a big country, and though this gigantic infrastructure around you is attempting to align all parties on the same track, it can not and will not, succeed.  Don’t despair, look right:

The answer, or at least a potential answer, is a few miles on wheels with a guy from the other side.  Just the two of you, being civil in your disobedience, running a few red lights and power sliding a few turns around the National Archives together, having a laugh and a little dose of sunshine and perspective on this very fine Thursday.  Political unrest aside, everyone likes to pick up a sweaty, rental helmet of dubious structural integrity from time to time, and we all agree we have a right to just cruise.  Empathy can be created: you just have to have a little fun with the guy. 

Washington D.C. on a 65 degree day in the fall is a BikeTown.  Cruisers, clunkers, carbon road bikes, you name it; it would appear the metro has been closed for the day.  It’s a damn fine afternoon to byekyle strap your wool pleated suit pants OR your bellbottoms tightly to your calf and ruckus around a bit, even if you get cut off a time or two in the tight turns by someone whom you don’t understand.  You don’t HAVE to understand them. 

I know this sounds hokey.  Maybe not THE answer to political unrest, but it's an answer nonetheless.  Tell me you haven’t had problems in your own life, said fuck it, gone for a ride, and come back to reality to find things far better than you left them.  Nothing has changed.  But everything has changed.  Magic.  Carry forth, I hope, in this spirit good people, and Occupy Goochland this weekend.  Can Shawn roll down there mostly untrained and win Solo? One might say no, that is unlikely (one might also try to recall the last time Shawn tried to win something.)  But with the right kind of spirit, miracles can happen.

One final note about our local train system:  aside from a damn efficient way to get to and from D.C., save gas, not pay for parking, and not wish to gouge out your own eyeballs sitting in traffic on I-66, you can also catch the Cardinal line out of Foofville at about 2 PM any Friday you might choose, and it’ll drop off at Clifton Forge before 5.  There’s a good midsummer route to be had here, Douthat to Braleys or so, hang a right and head East, crank the lights up, a little night ride parkway magic under the stars, then a big rumble down Simmons Gap and in for venison and eggs at my place at dawn.  100 Miles?  More? The details are all possibilities there for the taking, but the real attraction here is that not many point to point shuttles that I’ve been on have involved a locomotive.  Unless you consider C-Ham a locomotive.  Which you probably do. 

Anyway, this one's got a train.  Any takers?

Up, up, up.

11-1-11

Like most blog updates when I've got a lot of ground to cover with no obvious unifying theme or start and end point, I'll just jump in here like I always do and give you the most important thing first: Danny Flow and the great out West

Kid's learning a lot at college:

These pictures keep rolling in while I'm at work, driving a level of workplace dissatisfaction one could only remedy by moving the office to, say, Telluride.  

But that Colorado, Danny, She's a fickle mistress.  Hot for you one day, ice cold the next. 

Fortunately, Danny Flow knows how to ride the ups and downs, the mountain bikes and the snowboards, or a mercurial Colorado relationship.  This too shall pass, homie. 

Wolf Creek Steepness

With that out of the way, I can now proceed into the thick of things with no sense of order, and yet starting with the thing I lack the most: Paranormal Results.  Look, I was just barely there.  I have no idea how you did, but unless you're Ben King, you probably did just so-so.  Learn to be OK with that, friend.  That's the nature of racing twisty shit in the dark: something probably went wrong and you didn't finish at the front.  One result I'm sure of:  Jude Monoco Ortiz and I got worked, start to almost finish (we didn't actually finish.)  I accept this fact as the new normal in a racing career that was of very little consequence to anyone except the guy who maintains my wheels - and even he never really cared.  It's probably ok to stop shaving my triceps now.  And I can still go out and have fun.  Or at least I can still go out and destroy wheels. 

Denial of your own racing mortality, however, is sort of the point of racing in a lot of ways.  So if you're not ready to throw in the towell yet, I commend you. And I advise you to load up your fast stuff, pack some snacks, and head down to Goochland for the weekend for another singletrack infused beatdown, this one on a slightly larger scale.  By that point, if you're still not sufficiently mashochisted, the Paranormal results should be a go around here.  Or, just check the VORS scoreboard at the end of the year, and you'll have some idea of where you ended up.  Or maybe not.

But on that subject, that subject being VORS, it stands to reason that our local trailwork Jedi, Mr. Hiser himself, has stolen the Paydirt show with a breakaway move, putting in 6 hours in the valley with a rogue hoe, and won himself a sleep or two at the Acorn Inn.  Bravo, my callous-handed friend.  And, on a side note, "6 hours in the valley with a rogue hoe" is the title track off his new release. 

Bonus sidenote, it would appear that 2010 Microsoft word will autocapitalize the word "jedi" to "Jedi." So congratulations are probably also in order for George Lucas, the real winner in all of this.  But that's something else.  Back to the matter at hand, Mr. Hiser, you may have won this time.  But I'm coming back next year, and I'm bringing an army of trailwork goons to take you down. 

Or at least, you're going to have to help me change some diapers. 

Some other stuff that you might dig:

Blue Ridge Cyclery's got Treks.  Lots of em.  You might think that a shop like BRC with limited floor space can't feasibly sell Trek, Jamis, Felt, Blue, Niner, Pivot, AND still have room for Catlett to wheel around on a strider bike and sell stuff.  You might be right.  So BRC is taking over the whole block.  Or at least the bumtanning space next door.  Free bumtans* for one year, by the way, to the first person that buys a strider and gets the thing down the Blue Ridge School downhill in one piece.

*Bumtanning is a logo, trademark, and brand element property of blue ridge cyclery only, with no guarantees or product description of any matter, really, offer not valid in any year divisible by 3, keep arms and feet inside the strider bike at all times, don't eat the yellow snow.  Etc. 

While I don't get to spend too much time in the shop these days, I do pretty much oversee the overall creative design of the place.  That is to say, I monkey with stuff when Shawn's out doing philanthropic bike service in the community.

creative modifications.

Lots of folks checking in and lolling about with ride pictures in the snow this week.  October is officially out of here - ouch.  But our man in Pisgah, Nolanpalooza, checked in with the good news from the land of the pines - and it doesn't include fluffy white stuff unless you're talking about trailside peanut butter-marshmallow sandwiches.

From: NolanPalooza

to: BRC

The seasonal trails in the Ranger District are a pretty amazing thing.  Trails that are open only half of the year: Oct 15 - April 15.  The main reason for the closure is to reduce user conflict and it seems to work,. The other great thing is its mtn biker Christmas every October and like most small children who sneek out of their rooms to catch a glimpse of Santa handing out presents a bunch of bearded mtn people come of the hollers of WNC at midnight on the 14th to be the first ones on the trail!  This year I had the good pleasure of riding with about 20 people from Sycamore Cycles in Brevard.  We rode: Hatchery > Davidson > 475 > 471 > 471D > Butter Gap > Long Branch > Cat Gap.  It was awesome.  The next weekend a student and I hit another classic set of seasonals and rode from the Horsestables>Clawhammer Rd>Club Gap>Buckwheat>Bennett>Clawhammer.  The trails are classic Pisgah and pretty great way to ring in the fall! 

Rumblepalooza

So yeah, if the presence of Old Man Early Winter is dragging down your chi a bit, dial up 81 south and hang a left before you hit the Cumberland Gap.  The promiseland awaits you. 

Up, up, up.