What a long weekend.

I’ll try and re-cap the last weekend, it is pretty fuzzy at this point.

I inheirited a sinusy cold from someone on my flight back from Michigan last weekend and I worked a pretty hectic week at the Veloshop. I’ve had the Oregon Dept. of Revenue on my ass about $200 I owe them. “Hey, back off! I can pay you! Geez!” Seriously, it is just a matter of finding the right paperwork and filing it or I am going to be slapped with these huge penalties. You all must understand that I barely know how to run a business. If you were to ask me to fax you payroll forms from the 1st and 2nd quarter, I would stare at you blankly: “um, I can true your wheels for you…”

Back to a busy work week and trying to get my bikes running for another double race weekend. I prepared well, eating right (and a lot), anticipating the long drive there and then the brutal midnight drive back home after the race. I got lots of sleep in the days leading up to the races, drank lots of good juice and took a bunch of vitamins to help fight off the cold.

Last Saturday morning, Steven Hunter and I met up for a quick ride in Sellwood. I wanted to suss out my legs before the long drive.

I felt pretty crummy.

Brian Ellin and I hopped in the car, got coffee and drove North to race the Hagens Berman Starcrossed in Redmond, Washington on Saturday evening.

My dad and his family moved to Puyallup, Washington from San Antonio, Texas about 4 years ago and I made plans to hook up with him for dinner and con him in to coming out to the race. I have not seen him in something like five years! So, I was pretty excited. We played phone tag and settled on meeting in Seattle for Thai food. My dad (Paul Duncan Cameron) is hilarious. He is a really good guy. We have had a pretty distant relationship since I was a teenager. Mostly due to the fact that I am so damn independent. We last lived together in Turkey and I got shipped back to the USA just before the first Gulf War. (the real one, where Iraq invaded Kuwait?) Besides a short stint (when I was like 20) in San Antonio we have not lived anywhere near each other and we just don’t put much effort into keeping in touch. It was going to be cool to see him and bring him to check out a big part of my life.

As you would expect, the drive sucked. We made a quick stop off just before hitting Seattle. You see, I’ve been lusting after these IKEA shelving units for years:

Now, if you have never been to IKEA you cannot fathom the sheer size of this place. For reference, it must be bigger than the entire Lloyd center mall. That is not including the parking lots. And, of course, I decide the best time to go would be a few hours before a big cross race, on a Saturday around lunchtime.

Amazing.

It has become a pretty well know fact that I don’t do so well with hordes of people and screaming babies and nagging parents and bumbling, bustling masses of humanity.

IKEA almost became my undoing. It took all of 2 minutes for me to kinda freak out and just say, “fuck it. Brian, I don’t need the shelves, this is insane. I can’t handle all the people. Let’s leave. Now.” Brian, in all of his gentle lordliness, suggested I ask someone for help in finding the shelving.

Mistake. It took a mere 10 seconds for me to huff away from the useless 14 year old in the red IKEA shirt as they stared dumbfoundedly at their computer screen. (is dumbfoundedly a word?)

INCOMPETENCE!

Again, I freaked and made a bee line for the exit. Except. You cannot make a bee line for anything in this place! The damn store is laid out as a consumerist maze, everywhere you turn is something attractive and stainless steel to purchase and yes, if I had several hundred dollars my house would be beautiful, and stainless, and wooden.

I grabbed a box of cookies off a shelf and scanned the ingredients. Vegan. Great. Whoulf. They were gone. Now I was ready. I started jumping over kitchen sets, kicking over strollers, climbing over shelving. Anything to find the god damned exit.

Oh, wait. Hey, there is that shelf thing I was looking for.

“Brian, are you man enough to carry six of these fucking things?” And off we were. It still took another 20 minutes of jogging to get to the checkout but that, thankfully, was painless.

Now that my IKEA race report is over I can move on to the good stuff:

We met my dad at a decent Thai restaurant in Seattle and ate a little food before jamming out to Redmond for the Starcrossed race. Running a little late we missed the beginning of the elite women’s race but the River City ladies were killing it and Wendy Williams over powered a Kona pro for the win. (Apparently the officials misdirected Wendy at the finish allowing Wendy Simms to technically cross the line first. Hence the mixed up result. Word on the street is Wendy took it by half a minute.)

My dad was really excited and helpfull, I registered and took a couple laps of the course.

Fast, dry, grass. Starcrossed.

I’ll try to make it short: I got a decent call up right behind Shannon and had a good start. (read: no crashes to avoid) The lead group was forming and I was riding behind Dale Knapp watching things happen ahead of me. Something happened with him the first time over the barriers, I think he may have clipped my bike while remounting (hey sorry Dale if I got you tangled up there!) or something but, he waved me through and I had a decent gap to make up to get to the lead group. It took me a few laps but, I made it to the lead group and latched on behind Russell Stevenson and Shannon. We trucked along and at one point I swear I saw 15 to go! The laps were really short! With about 6 to go I pulled a rookie move put my foot into my rear tyre and knocked it off. I had to run a good minute to the pit and just pointed to my spare bike as I came running in. Joe (Team Redline/Seattle bike supply cyclocross pit god) came to my rescue dropping his team’s bike and giving me a perfect exchange! Thanks Joe! I got back in the race, recovered for about half a lap behind a chasing rider and then attacked him to roll in solo for 9th place. Honestly, that is about where I would have finished even if I would have stuck with the lead group so, I was not too disappointed.

With the race wrapped up, we faced the daunting drive home and I, the prospect of re-gluing my wheels and getting some shut eye before the first Cross Crusade of the year!

And that is what I did. Stopped by the Veloshop on the way home and grabbed a new pair of TUFO Flexus tyres, some glue, sealant, and sat up till 4am watching Battlestar Gallactica, gluing my tyres up and drinking green tea.

I’ll make the Alpenrose Cyclocross Crusade race report short because well, this post is getting epic and it was a short day for me! I got all of 5 hours of sleep. I had stuck my wheels in our bathroom with a space heater on high and shut the door. (Any mechanic will tell you, it is NOT smart to race on tyres that you have just glued up! But I don’t have any other wheels! All the loaner Veloshop wheels I had already given out to our teammates and friends!) I grabbed the still wet wheels, prayed to Allah they would set and headed off to Stumptown coffee.

Now, a year ago at this race, I saw Shannon’s secret weapon. This I cannot divulge but, I promise you it works.

We drove to the race and were floored by how many people were there! It was insane! The Alpenrose parking lot was filled to capacity! I lucked out with a sweet spot next to the Veloshop cheering squad/tent/pink foam fingers and took a lap of the brutal, bumpy course.

The Cyclocross Crusade is rad. I love racing the events. All of our friends are there, the courses are killer, the atmosphere is epic. Someone in Seattle said something to me like: “it is just a Cross Crusade.” And I knew they did not get it. There are no UCI points, there is no podium, no per race payouts. I could finish in the last 50 of every other out of town race this season but, as long as I was doing good rides in the Crusades, I would be satisfied.

So, if you were there, you saw how it went down: a 50+ stacked field, Slaven with a hole shot, some hyper chatty guy in a Hamburgler kit stacking it in front of Carl Decker and I, Shannon ripping off the front in the first lap! The five of us started putting time into the field. Adam Mcgrath and Eric Tonkin chasing Shannon for the first half hour. Tonkin counter attacked and I went after him. Carl Decker sitting casually on the rear. Eric had a slow leak, I attacked got a pretty good gap and thought I could win it for a second, I had 4 to go, Decker had started to bridge up and once he caught me I figured I could latch onto his wheel and try to take it in a sprint. There was a bumpy run up round the back and he put a few seconds in to me every time around. (He rode up it, I chose to run it) With one to go, I knew I was not getting him back and had to work on keeping a charging Tonkin from catching up to me.

I rolled in solo for 2nd place. What, 10 seconds down?

Exciting! My best Cross Crusades finish yet, on opening day, in front of what will likely be the biggest crowd all season long!

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 5th, 2006 at 7:24 pm and is filed under Living the dream!, Racing!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.