THE RAMSBOTTOMS

The past weekend makes me tired just rethinking all the mayhem. Friday night was the Brew ride, Saturday featured a cross race and a wedding. Sunday I did as little as possible and I needed every second if I was to have any chance of surviving the following week. I always have to make time to relax or else I'll run wide open, blow up, and get sick.

Friday night was the infamous Brew Ride of 2009. The Brew Ride usually occurs after the 12 HOT and Swank 65 as a end of the season party. The race consists of teams of two which have to go to predetermined check points, complete a special challenge, there's no set route, each check point requires the consumption of a minimum of one beer per racer, and cheating is encouraged. The team who completes all the check points and returns to the start finish is the victor. Since the beginning the Brew Ride has always been a small even intimate affair with more check points than teams but all that changed for 2009. We started with 12 teams I think, it was hard to tell due to the amount of pre-racing going on in the pits. Hell we even initiated a 2 hour time limit to force some semblance of order but 45 minutes after the time limit had expired we had only seen 4 teams finish. I have only seen the pictures of various check points most of which were to graphic to show so a journalistic approach is worthless. Lets just say I now know where the Wild Things are.....
A highlight for me was Johnathon the wrestler. Originally, a couple of us had this elaborate checkpoint lined up but after Johnathon mentioned that he wanted to wrestle one team member in just a Speedo well we just canned the whole thing. For the record, I have never seen one man get so brutalized in the name of fun before in all my days. I had a feeling that as the race developed through the night that complete disregard for Johnathon's safety was not out of the scope. But like all activities that are infused with booze the wild card will always make an appearance. This years wild card was MO. Mo took the wrestling matches to a whole new level and sometimes that level should have been left alone...

Nonetheless, some team won a fitting trophy, fun was had, and next years Brew Ride has some big shoes to fill!

Johnathan aka Luchador of the Night!

JMag applying the 2009 Brew Ride stencil

Shawn vs. LOTN vs. the craziest chick EVER!

LOTN vs. Eric....
Its was heinous!

Saturday, Sarakate and I got up early and drove to Johnson City for the 4th MSG cross race. I had a good warm-up, practiced some sections of the course and felt hungry like the wolf on the start line. The gun went off and I was damn near last place coming into the first turn so I knew I had to get busy if I wanted to be apart of the race. By the start of the 2nd lap I was in 8th place and feeling good so I decided to push it as I could see the leading group ahead. I was 5 place by the 3rd lap and still feeling strong so I knew I had a good chance to at least catch the first chase group. I let the freak out of its cage for 1/2 a lap allowing me to move to 4th place closing down the gap to the front group with only 1/2 the course to go.
I knew that if I caught the first chase group we would all come together leading into the run up. Leading into the run-up we backed off the throttle to see if someone would attack but on one moved as we almost coasted in to the final meters. I then plotted my closing move which would be at the run up followed by a sprint to the line on a slight uphill paved parking lot. Sure enough we (2nd place, 3rd place, and I in 4th) came into the steep run up shoulder to shoulder battling for any slight advantage in the final sprint. I reached the top of the run up just a little behind the other two but I remounted quickly and set the freak lose again! I looked up and it was only me and the 2nd place rider side by side in a full sprint with the other rider off the back running with his shouldered bike. At the line I got beat by 1/2 a bike length but I'll take a top 3 in a sprint any day.

Start of CX4