Buell Brothers wild and wacky mountain bike adventures

Racin

2010-05-16T11:48:00.000-06:00

Chalk Creek Stampede 4x day

Moab

2010-05-11T16:09:00.000-06:00

First post from the I phone!!!

Part 2

2010-05-11T15:43:00.000-06:00

Day 1 started bright and blurry at 6am, I went down to the bike room to learn that they don’t open for another 30 minutes, this would only cause for more stress and a shorter time span to get done what I needed to do. I didn’t eat breakfast with the whole team, instead I was in the parking garage with all of my stuff sprawled out. Graeme the man was my extra hand when I needed help building my bikes.

This process went on into the morning, lots of things were happening internally, I had to whip the bikes together, change into my kit, and take my credential picture…the morning just drug on and on. All teams were grouped together taking vehicles and shuttling themselves while team USA was trying to get help, and was receiving none No respect I tell you! Joey took it upon himself and used his Spanish abilities to snag a ride on the back of a truck, I thought this was foolish due to what we have been told about traveling in this country, but for Joey it was a great experience minus the diesel soot in his eyes.

We finally flagged down the appropriate truck and got on the bus, still wondering if our bikes were going to meet us at the venue we headed out into the heart of the city with a motorcycle police escort and a officer standing at the front of the bus with a really big gun. The next 40 minutes was an experience as everyone was rubber necking looking out of both sides of the window trying to take in all of the sights. The landscape changed from big buildings to cinderblock shanties, tiny shops, open air markets and bars littered the roadside all the way out to the venue.

The race venue was situated at a National Park, it was a really great area, and it is also a tourist destination with a petting zoo, a gondola to the top of the mountain (which I wish we were able to us), a ropes course among other recreational activities. Upon arrival nobody knew exactly what was going on, where the courses were or who to contact about this. Bike coach extraordinaire Scott Sharples took my extra bike and body armor, that’s where we got separated, he went to the bottom of the course, and we went to the top. Chris Van Dine rolled by and gave us the lowdown; he is an encyclopedia of knowledge when it comes to races like these as he always has friends in areas like

Guatemala

. Without my upper suit I fallowed Chris down the track blind, slowly creeping looking at one intense section after another. The lack of course tape and course marshals was a bit concerning as there were loco Latin American pinners rallying themselves as practice fully got underway. The DH course was intense especially for this being the first time back on a bike in months. Section 1 up top was fun single track that flowed well right into a peddly road section that was made more exciting with small jumps tossed in.

Into section 2 the road dumped into a sweet step down mandatory gap into a wicked right berm, this was the start of a minute long ribbon on trail that was fast, had loose moon dust descents and the steep track caused for lots of swapping and cross rutting.

Section 3 continued into some really steep loose chutes but then quickly moved right into one long massive rock garden, scattered with tight chicanes and derailleur bashing goodness. Near the end there was a near vertical rock roll in that had a missive G out fallowed quickly by another dusty rock section that was guarded by VW sized rocks.

While I was inspecting this section of trail I saw a girl commit to this roll in after a slight hesitation and once she hit that compression her hands slipped the brakes and she went flying straight towards me lawn darting head first into the rocks threading the needle between some big boulders. I was the first on the scene as there were no course marshals or medics available. I had to be the medic while Graeme played the roll of the marshal shutting down the track while the local emergency response team was alerted. This whole situation was very real and things suddenly became clear that I really was not in Kansas no more. Once past this section of trail there were a few high speed rock sections before the sprint to the finish line road gap jump. At about thirty-five feet or so this was a rather large jump.

Many of the competitors had never jumped anything like this before in their lives, it was a great added feature to the track but due to there being no go around lines it was definitely one of the most frightening places to watch practice as there were too many close calls. Chris Van Dine supplied the shuttle truck, a barrowed vehicle from a friend for much of the team for the day. My day had been cut short after that one practice run due to a mechanical, and with no mechanic on sight there was nothing for me to due. Instead I jumped on the shuttle and became team USA’s film crew. Most of the riders that day got in a few laps and some of them were starting to get comfortable with the course. Later in the day as most of the downhill competitors were packing it in I set out to practice the mountain cross course. The weather was threatening more most of the afternoon and right as I was peddling up the road to the track the sky unleashed the rain upon me canceling my mountain cross practice for the day.

While most of the team took shelter under umbrellas I took to the dirt and tried to make something out of a rainy afternoon since I was already soaked to the bone. Not a good day for me as I worked well into the night with the help of my coach, Graeme and teammates we got busy getting my bike ready for a brutal 5am wakeup call the next morning.

Day 2

After a wonderful 4 hour nap Team USA met for breakfast at 5:45. Blurry eyed we wrangled up a 6:30am shuttle to the venue where I would partake in a team course walk directed by Scott.

It was great to start feeling some team unity as we all discussed line choice, track conditions and reminisced about yesterday’s near misses, accomplishments and problems. This race was so loosely run that there was not pit area at the venue, teams did their best to find a spot or venders like we did to place our valuables and in my case other bicycles. Luckily I was equipped with my kryptonite coil lock system and was able to take care that and keep my bike safe. I got two practice runs the whole day due to a non existent shuttle system, it was a better bet riding out to the road and trying to hitch up to the top. I was not the only frustrated rider out there! Many others were upset with the shuttling situation. Finally when I did catch a shuttle I felt like a cow being shoved into a crowded cattle truck, the heat from the enclosed box truck only intensified the stench of sweaty people and new bright and shiny bikes came out looking like last years race machines.

My goal of obtaining world cup points and representing my country well was going to be a tall order the next day as a lot was left unaccomplished on the track. I had to quickly switch gears as the mountain cross final was quickly approaching. I got one look of the course the day before and made use of this course knowledge by quickly getting up to speed during practice jumping right into it riding hot laps until I couldn’t stand to hike the course again. After the amount of work it took to haul, build up, tear down two bikes for the week I was extremely glad to have raced mountain cross as just being able to ride my bike on a fun track over and over and over made me extremely satisfied.

Mountain Cross Course

One of the best mountain cross courses I have ever ridden! Situated in the heart of the forest the course weaved through trees and used the natural terrain well and had a great variation of features. Most of all, it was a blast to simply ride. From the start gate it was a complete sprint to the first turn with a choice of berm right or inside line that would set riders up for a double into a massive berm left.

A rhythm section fallowed five rollers into another massive berm right with optional inside tight berm line.

A large step up set up a berm to berm chicane, a hip pocket double left would then lead the rider on a sprint into the final straight. Speed management was important as the straightaway started off with four rollers and then into a double that was extremely easy to overshoot fallowed up lastly by a large double and then a quick sprint to the finish line.

Mountain Cross Race

After qualifying all the riders headed back up to the top for the first round of the race, qualifying results took a long time to get out so there was a bit if gate practice before the main event. Once the brackets had been formed the chaos began. There were a lot of very talented and fast riders competing and when it came time to line up to have the number one qualifier on a downhill bike, something was not right. Riders contested the qualifying results, results that I really never understood either as I new I was probably not in the right qualifying position too. This went on for about 10 minutes in the start house, lots of bickering back and forth on radios but in my mind I was there to race and I at this point really didn’t care who it was going to be. I lined up with poor gate position due to the botched qualifying brackets and had my work cut out for me. With a better gate start than my competition I tried to edge over but they held strong, I didn’t want to make too much contact so I raced the inside line. On the second turn I leaned the bike over and stuck out my foot drifting hard right next to my competition, I managed to make the pass and was home free in second place, or was I? Still protecting the inside line I ventured off the main line where it was sandy, knifed my front wheel and took myself out. My day was done and I was pretty disappointed but I was in good spirits as I knew I was riding well. The rest of Team USA, Shawn Neer and Chris Van Dine managed to advance but in the second round both ended up well off the track due to some aggressive riding. The locals were cheering loudly for their rider, but when he got disqualified for the finals things changed, the rider was outraged and the fans were not happy. I left the area when I saw some guards with shotguns approaching the disgruntled fans. USA riders both skipped riding in the small final and protested the event by riding a victory run boosting the jumps giving the confused fans something to cheer about. The whole evening was a mess, my rotor was bent and I was hungry, time for a mango on a stick!

The rest of my evening was spent disassembling my mountain cross bike and putting it back into the bag, cleaning up the downhill bike and being mechanic for anyone left in the bike room. Somehow I was still the last one in the bike room cleaning up after everyone and myself as the clock was once again striking midnight. A quick visualization of the downhill course that I have only managed to ride on three times and I was lights out only to wake up in the morning feeling like I just closed my eyes.

My Grand ol Adventure Part 1

2010-04-20T23:10:00.000-06:00

Howdy everyone and welcome to yet another year spent on the road, on the bike and in the dirt. Still in the month of April and there is so much to tell you all about, the adventures have begun!

I worked my last weekend on the slopes and come the beginning of April I was busy moving out of the house that I had residence in for the last 4 years. It is amazing how many things I accumulated. All the while I was moving out of my house I was preparing to leave for a 3^rd world country to compete in the Pan American Continental Championships for Team USA. It was really hard to fit everything in that last week, reality set in and I had to buckle down. I was prepared to drive the 18 hours out to California alone but a few days before I was surprised by my girlfriend Holly who found a flight back from Sacramento the day I flew out for Guatemala, so I had a great co-pilot for the adventure.

We departed for California Sunday morning still full from an amazing dinner Saturday night with my family. We drove 9 solid hours, Holly had a great play list created that played all the way to the resort/casino town of Windover, outside of Salt Lake City and the salt flats. Did a bit of room rate haggling, and then took a walk to the Nevada side of town where we did a bit of gambling on the penny slots. Lost 3 dollars total overall but had a good time and enjoyed the walk back to the Utah side, lots of bright lights along the way! Day 2 on the road was a bit more adventurous, visited a few roadside attractions including the Thunder Mountain Indian Monument which was pretty incredible, Mount Rose Ski resort and the Shores of Lake Tahoe. Breakfast, lunch and snacks all provided by momma Buell along the way to help keep me and Holly going strong. Near the end of the day we made it to our final destination, the Pitts residence in Nevada City, CA.

It was like Christmas morning all over again! Due to the minimum time I had before departing, Graeme nicely built up both of my shiny new Banshee bicycles. Did a bit of a fashion show for everyone while trying on the new kit, had to get the approval from the Holly and Leslie that everything looked good. Team Geronimo’s clothing company, Wrex, did an awesome job, everything was custom made for me and I could feel the difference. I went to bed that night feeling great, Holly had a great time meeting Leslie, Gary and Graeme and we all enjoyed a nice dinner together.

The Next day was filled with activity! Did a photo shoot in the new team kits with the shiny new Banshee bicycles. Leslie and Holly were the photographers and for almost an hour we fired off pictures from all over the yard, it was really fun. Trailer detail ensued with a stop at the hardware store, old trailer stickers are incredibly hard to get off. The rest of the evening was a blur, to much stuff to get done, bikes had to be torn down and packed, personal bags packed, checked, double and triple checked. With a 4:30am wakeup call that next morning I unfortunately did not receive much sleep as thoughts of all different kinds circled within my mind.

As soon as I went to sleep I awoke to the sound of Angels, my harp alarm clock. I hit the ground running making sure that I got absolutely everything and proceeded to toss all of my equipment in the truck. Holly and I were a bit blurry eyed and sleepy, luckily we had an hours drive to the SAC airport to wake up. Airports, I dislike them very much, even though a lot of excitement is generated within an airport, goodbyes ensue, stress levels go up, people are usually drained and tired and there always seems to be problems with someone’s carry while in security, Mix 1 is not a weapon! It was great to have Holly with me all the way to my gate, it made saying goodbye a lot easier as I waved to her as I walked through the gate. Once on the plane reality again set in, it had begun, we were fully committed and were off on a grand adventure. I took a minute to write in my journal inside the plane, and then sat back and relaxed just as the stewardess told me to do. Landed in Dallas for a short layover where we met up with teammates Joey Schusler, Looch Worl, Shawn Neer and Lars Tribus, before stepping on the plan to Guatemala. Excitement was plentiful, we were all very aware of the surroundings we were about to be immersed to, but there was no way to fully prepare for what was to come.

Our plan landed later than expected due to a late departure so our times of arrival were all later than expected. This caused for a bit of confusion, there would be lots to come. After clearing customs, which I’m always worried I’m going to be fail due to a loose piece of fruit or something, we made our way outside where there was the Venezuelan team also waiting, more on them later. A large box truck came rambling into sight, a little kid that was handling our huge bags with ease helping us with our luggage; needless to say he earned his tip. I had a banging headache from the flight and the humidity and heat only intensified it. The city was chaotic, busy for 8 o clock at night, there were many American institutions that I recognized like McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Burger King, they were usually the nicest buildings on the block. I sat next to a nice gentleman on airplane who has family in Guatemala, his one piece of advice was to be careful in the city, after noticing all of the officers carrying various large firearms throughout the city I can understand way, it was a very dangerous place and we were staying right in the middle of it all.

The hotel Conquistador was a very nice hotel situated right in the middle of a chaotic city, lots of security was needed to ensure all sides and entrances of the hotel were covered. The first night there was in true Guatemalan crazy! After finding Glenda, one of the event organizers, she pointed us in the right direction and helped us get our room assignments. Dinner fallowed and after serving myself from the limited amount of food from the buffet that I could have Glenda came out with a silver platter plate specially prepared for me on a silver platter!!! I hauled both of my bikes into the build room, but with less than an hour before lockdown I did not have near enough time to build both of my bikes. An early wakeup call the next morning would be necessary for me to complete my builds. This would be the start of one of the most chaotic days of my life. To be continued...

And I'm back!!!

2010-04-16T16:55:00.000-06:00

Taking a moment to get things going again on the ol blog here. Many adventures have taken place in the last two weeks that I will need a bit of time to get fill you all in. I'm chilling at Sea Otter right now, just had a magnificent sandwich and now I'm using the first bit of down time I've had since I've been back. Things have certainly been crazy the last two weeks, I've never been so busy with so much going on, my head is literally spinning. Luckily things are slowing down logistically and speeding up while on two wheels. Feeling great on the bikes, Team Geronimo is incredible. So far here in Sea Otter we have certainly caught the eyes of lots of people. Cannot wait to rip the Dual Slalom tomorrow, its going to be tons of fun. For the time being here are a few pics from the last few weeks that will hopefully keep you all amused.

Ride on!!!

Post Mountain States Cup happenings

2009-09-22T14:09:00.006-06:00

In the last few weeks I have done the fallowing: Explored a bit of my local area, climbed around a local waterfall, nothing, slept in and did nothing but watched college football, that was awesome!
Been watching a lot of football, Broncos are 2-0...somehow, unfortunately the Buffs could not fallow suit, they are currently stinking it up at 1-2.
Been playing a bit of Frisbee golf, B Bailey has gotten me into that, plans to possibly create a course on the property are in place.
I guess I have been working a lot, which has been unusual as we have been away usually every weekend.
Did a photo shoot with Devon Balet and got some cool shots of us riding on the property, would like to do that more.
After work, we all have been doing a lot of nothing, just hangin out, I definitely felt this at the last race, should do a bit more to keep in shape!

This past weekend however, there was a collegiate race that happened at Sol Vista. It was put on by the School of Mines, part of the collegiate series I so frequented as a scholar, this year however I just raced the open category. It was a good race, but before the race, I forgot to mention me and Michael rode winter park for a bit of fun...which it was. Back to the collegiate race. The course was Cheez it which I really don't enjoy too much as a race course, it is slow, and technical, lots of small bumps and flat washed out turns, makes you feel like crap on the bike, fun trail, just can't go as fast as you really want to. There were some fun festivities that took place over the weekend, including the Collegiate Pump Track World Championships. I participated in Crocs and my board shorts, and won using Dieder's bike. That night some CU hooligans created a 20 foot tall tepee and then proceeded to light it on fire, it then grew to about 30 feet tall, perfect conditions for it made for a successful bond fire. The next day was the race. Joey took the Men A by a huge margin, he also took the speed trap victory as he was fastest through the rocks at 22 mph. The speed gun died and the open classes could not be recorded, which was a bummer as the payout was a cool $100 bucks. Joey repeated and won the Open improving his already fast time by a second and beat me by a solid 7 seconds, as I felt like I had a good run, but not a fast one my any means, still happy with 2nd and the nice little payday that came of it! After the race, as the fire still simmered from the night before we did a bit of free riding in the rain, watched the Broncos defeat the brownies from the bar and then cruised over to Todd and Julie Olsen's house for some BBQ and pump track action. A sleepy food coma induced drive home and a late night brought the weekend to a close.

Currently, its cold out and I feel the ski season creeping ever more closely, already looking at ski stuff on the web, doing a little research!

End of the season review

2009-09-12T12:04:00.008-06:00

Started the month of August off right by winning the Colorado Crankworx Dual Slalom and a thousand dollar novelty check, stoked on that! The race was a mud fest and I think my all mountain riding skills and ability to adapt to conditions won it for me as I never dropped a race.

Only video I could find: http://broadbandsports.com/node/28443&loc=mostpop

The next weekend Snowmass held the Colorado State Championships. I had been looking forward to this race ever since last year when I got cought in a freak lightning storm at Sol Vista. Team Geronimo and the Juniors had a great showing with a few state champions being crowned. Unfortunately I couldn't hold it together to capture a jersey. After qualifying 4th in 4X I was knocked out of the final by Jon Watt and into the final where I law darted into the back of a roller...8th for me, 6th for Michael. The DH was a great course and was holding together on race day. I qualified 10th on decent yet mistake riddled run, I tried to clean it up for the final but I had a mechanical and had to play it safe all the way down. I was saved possibly and flagged down near the bottom and was rewarded a re-run. Using Michael's bike I had a grea trun going until I lost it, got off line and slid on my head for the second time in 24 hours. A crash and a 14th place result left a bad taste in my mouth as I knew I had a top 5 in me.

Snowmass video
http://www.superhumanmag.com/content/view/1553/1/

We took a bit of a business trip to Tahoe instead of racing out east for a three week planned trip. It was a very productive time as we coached with Gene Hamilton and World Champion Greg Minnaar at Northstar, CA. After the camp we stayed with our friend and fellow racer Graeme Pitts for a week. It was a great time and very vacation like as we slept in everyday and ate very well thanks to Leslie and Gary Pitts. We rode XC, swam in lakes, built trails and did a bit of sight seeing. I would recommend riding 'toads wild ride' as it was really fun, technical and flowy.

The last race of the season went down last week at Sol Vista and it was fittingly called the Sol Survivor. I was in first place for the overall heading into the race and had to do well to retain my lead. Michael was also in the hunt in 5th. First race of the weekend was the 4X, the same course that was used for the national champs. I had an interesting qualifying run and ended up seeding in 1st, just ahead of Ross Milan, Chris Boice, Dave Zeigmond and Michael. I cruised through my first two heats and then met Milan, Zeigmond and Petr Hanek in the finals. There was a big pile up right after the first straight that involved Petr, Ross and me. I had a bad gate and ended up fallowing in on the wheels of Ross and Petr until Ross slid out into Petr causing a road block for me. I tried to jump the pile but got caught and crashed. Everyone scrambled to get back up and onto their bikes, Ross was first to the next turn, Dave who crashed all by himself above the pile up got up and passed me while I was running to keep in the hunt. I could not reel them back in and ended up in 3rd, earning some good points for the overall. The DH was held on the classic course 'Cougar' I had a good practice and seeding run landing in 2nd place .01 behind Chris Heath for 1st, Chris Boice qualifies 3rd. In my race run I made mistakes all the way down the track and was a second and a half slower than my seeding and ended up with a disappointing 7th and a 2nd Overall in the series. I'm happy with my season, made progress and found myself in position to win, thats all I could ask for. Michael moved into 4th place for the overall.

Sol Survivor, 2009 Mountain States Cup Final - More Mountain Bike Videos

Next up are some collegiate races, and the Red Bull 12 hour races to finish up the season. In the mean time, I'm gonna have some fun exploring and relaxing in the valley as I'll be moving back to Boulder soon.

Pictures

2009-08-25T22:53:00.005-06:00

Some pictures from the last few races!

2009 National Championships: Sol Vista part 2

2009-07-25T22:11:00.004-06:00

I awoke Sunday extremely lethargic and exhausted from the previous night, and I didn’t even party, just a late night. I felt pretty bad too, not sick, but not into it. I tried to focus as much as possible, but after missing my practice run that morning, all I could do was stay loose and ride around a bit. I approached my qualifying run differently then I had all year, instead of going for the win and replicating a race run, I just wanted to hit some lines and cruise. It was the most asleep I’ve ever been during a run, I was so relaxed, but not in a good way. I even hit the three amigo’s without much thought, just hit em and that was that, didn’t even think about it. Next thing I knew I was at the bottom blowing the last berm and then through the finish, seeded 32nd. I attempted to take and nap and refocus over the time between seeding and my final run. I studied my Go Pro Helmet cam footage and visualized the course. Going up the lift I was calm, but still could not feel anything but sick in my stomach, maybe a bit nervous. Did a little warm up top on the trainer, but when I got off I felt like I just got off the trampoline, I was all wobbly and tired, not cool! I took a few swigs of water and then got in line, the UCI made sure of it. I tried to get my legs moving last minute before my run, no luck, time to ride. The course felt even more blown out right out of the gate, held a decent line up top with ok speed, but then the blown fest began! I was losing my feet left and right throughout the loose rocks section, blew a few turns in the sandy section and tried to make it all up by peddling. The rest of my run after the jumps was ok, blew the big berm again, definitely never figured that one out and when I crossed the finish line and saw my time it was a big disappointment. Instead of mingling in the pits like I usually do, I never stopped after my run to talk, just kept going all the way back to the pits to think about the past 2:30 minutes. I slipped into my street clothes and saw the exciting finish that had my good riding buddy Joey Schusler finish 5th and Aaron Gwin take 1st. This race left a nasty taste in my mouth, I know I had a good 4X finish, but that’s not what I was here for, I wanted a great DH finish! It was a tough weekend and I’m pretty proud of myself for overcoming some obstacles this weekend, but I was just hoping for a different outcome. Not the end of the season, not by a long shot. In the next month I will be competing for the State Championship in both 4X and DH, traveling to the East coast and possibly a world’s nomination. You’ll just have to tune back in to see what happens next!

Thank you to all of my sponsors who have helped me get this far: Team Geronimo, Kona, Tom's Sportique Eyewear, Wind River Trees, Bonsai Communities, Basalt Bike and Ski, MRP, Rockgardn, SRAM.

My final run:

Brian Buell National Championship final run Sol Vista from Brian Buell on Vimeo.

2009 National Championships: Sol Vista

2009-07-22T22:47:00.007-06:00

The dust has settled and I have cleared my head allowing myself a chance to analyze the weekend and my performance at this year’s National Championships. This whole season of racing had been in preparation for this weekend, my training was geared so I would peak at my highest level for this race, a lot of time and effort had taken place and it was time to perform on America's grandest stage.

Training pre race

Being a Colorado resident this race is perhaps considered to be in my backyard, home court advantage if you will, but let me tell you this, there was no such thing as home court advantage this weekend. After inspecting both the dh and four cross tracks which were new tracks being introduced at this years National Championships, I realized that it will take a lot of effort to do well on either track due to the massive amount of terrain, the difficulty of the obstacles and the risks that will be taken to enable a fast run.

Thursday: Both tracks were in need of getting ridden in, especially the four cross track. To get an idea of how large and tough the four cross course was, I practiced Thursday morning on my Kona Stab downhill bike instead of the Cowen hard tail like usual. Practice went well, the course got burnt in nicely and I had a ton of fun on the big bike. The Pro only downhill track was raw, to get a good idea of what it was all about imagine clearing an 8 foot wide path through loose baby head rocks, deep sand areas and toss in three large doubles ranging from 30-50 feet, then add some high speed berms, jumps and moto whoops. It was a recipe for a hard race course that was great for spectators and the progression of the sport. Practice went extremely well minus a near weekend ending case on the 48 foot gap on my very first run. I did 5 runs and was feeling completely up to speed was a great feeling. Thanks to some bad sausage I ate that night the rest of the weekend was turned upside down and left me playing catch up.

Friday: I woke up feeling absolutely miserable Friday morning. I couldn't even sit up without getting sick, laying down was the only thing I wanted to do and the only thing that was at all comfortable. I had to get up though, the sun was baking me out of my sleeping bag only causing more discomfort, it would end up taking a monumental feat of will power and mind over body to rise to my feet that morning. Unfortunately I would be unable to practice both downhill and four cross due to my illness, instead I sat still in a camping chair in the Team Geronimo pit all day, unable to help with our junior riders, paralyzed with sickness from a few bits of sausage that had obviously expired. Towards the end of the day I felt my body fighting the stomach bug off and I was able to ride around and later watch the Cat 2-3 four cross. Team Geronimo Rider Roy Benge did extremely well on this demanding track finishing in 3rd place, good job Roy! Team Geronimo Riders Tanner and Tyler Spence, Robert Pettit and Alec Toney also had great runs and did very well impressing me as all were extremely competitive out there. The day ended well as I was starting to perk up a little with the help of my wonderful mom and her extensive knowledge of Chinese herbs.

Race Day Saturday: DH practice & Four Cross

Four cross would have to wait until the end of the day, there was DH practice to be had. I awoke this morning alive, awake and best of all nausea free ready to ride and make up for lost time. The three amigos jumps on the downhill course had been in my thoughts ever since I cased number three hard Thursday, I didn’t have a fear of them as there was nothing to be scared of, I had just wanted to hit them for the last 48 hours. Downhill practice went really well and on my first run through I greased all of them without a worry, over clearing all of them a little bit actually, it took a few more runs but by the end of the day those things were second nature. Highlights from that practice included a top to bottom helmet cam run with Mike Kreger. Thursday I had the chance to ride and film behind Shaun Palmer, which was pretty cool! I was nuking it through the roughest part of the course and high sided landing hard on my back and head, thank goodness for full body armor. After I got up and dusted myself off I realized that my helmet cam mount had snapped off leaving my camera sitting on top of the rocks…rough!

The one hour of practice for mountain cross ended and I was extremely exhausted! Where did all of my energy go? Yesterday’s sickness was starting to take a toll on me, luckily I had a chance to recover while watching CAT 1 qualify, I also ate a fair bit of Almonds and a Laurabar that my mom provided me. Without a real reason I waited and was one of the last to qualify. My quail run was fun and full of hucks to flat, Canadian head slaps and rear tire roosting me into 9th place overall. The hard tail was a bit rough on this course but it made it that much more fun. After many, many delays, debates and decisions the pros finally got their chance to run it at right around 8:30pm. The lights were causing funny shadows on the course and made things a bit distorted as it wasn’t completely dark yet, luckily I had just switched into clear lenses. Here is a round by round reply of how things went down:
Round of 32: Heikki Hall had opted to not race making this a three horse race. Logan Bingelli and I would easily advance after a sketchy start by us hard tail riders.
Round of 16: This time the round was packed and I was left with 3rd lane choice. I had a great gate start and pimped Logan on the inside and rode second all the way down on the wheels of Mitch Ropilato.
Round of 8: Again was dealt with 3rd lane choice and was going up against some great gate starters, because of this I let them all get in front of me and tangle up in the first corner allowing for me to go from 4th to 2nd again riding the wheels of Mitch to the finish line.
Round of 4: The final! 4th gate choice as I was the slowest qualifier. I was going to stick with the same strategy as the previous round but during the first straight I had a great start, hesitated for a second and then saw the bottom of the turn wide open. I came out 3rd behind JD and Mitch, JD would crash trying to take Mitch on the inside of a tight flat corner. I was in 2nd looking to make a move on Mitch when I missed my high line through the grass, this allowed Houseman to slip in on the inside to take 2nd position, I fought for position but Houseman is a big man. This is how we would finish up, Mitch 1st, Houseman 2nd, Me 3rd, JD 4th.

Immediately fallowing the race I was informed I had to take a piss test, this made me ultra excited as I had never had a reason to do this before, I had made the big time at last. It was an insane race, so many spectators, it was night and somehow I managed to make it to the final of the National Championship four cross with the defending national champion, the nation’s best young racer and probably the most talented mountain biker. It was a pretty surreal experience overall, the whole night I never was a bit nervous, I had no expectations, I felt right at home and it was more like a jam sesh then a race, somehow I kept coming back up to the start. The crowd definitely was pumping me up as they were chanting my name and yelling people’s champion, great stuff! The best part was my whole family was there on hand to experience it live and a bunch of young ski team groms I coach were also in attendance just soaking it all up as well as our junior racers. I just felt like a kid out there, not a care in the world just having a blast doing what I love to do!

I would have to thank my brother though for giving me the low down on practice the day before and also my mom for keeping me energized and of course all of my supporters out there that were behind me the whole time making it a night to remember!

Some Videos:
Fallowing Mike Kreger Helmet Cam:

Go Pro helmet cam Brian Buell fallowing Mike Kreger on the Sol Vista National Championships pro only DH course from Brian Buell on Vimeo.

Mike Kreger chesty cam:

Pro Downhill Track POV Cam - 2009 U.S. National Championships from Litter Mag on Vimeo.

Filmed and edited by Noah Sears for Western Slopestyle Productions & Bike Magazine: Just click on the image below!

2009 US National DH Championships from NoahColorado on Vimeo.

Whistler to Colorado

2009-07-10T00:41:00.005-06:00

Pretty mellow ending to Whistler, once the Lanes left the weather got crappy and cold. Phil and friends arrived but we were only able to muster one top to bottom run with them as the rain was taking its toll on us and the mountain. I felt like I was swimming while riding, everything was soaking wet, I was riding a bit sketchy, fast but taking some risks especially since I could see anything. It was a good few runs total, but in all honesty, I think we had our fill of Whistler. After loading up and drying off we headed over to Brian Lopes's cabin where the crew was staying, hung out then hit the road.

The wet weather had foiled my plans of riding hard all day and then riding the next day in Vancouver with Kristen Smart, a ripping local, but it was best we just start trucking. Then Pacific Northwest is a real cool place in all weather conditions as the fog and clouds make the landscape look incredible which made for a nice drive to the USA Border where we would run into the grumpy patrol. First off, as we pulled into the open lane, the dude working it decided to leave...huh? After backing up and driving to a new lane the guy comes back, nobody helped Michael back me out and into the new lane, they just sat there all pist of looking. We pull in and turn off the loud diesel handing over our passports and get the usual barade of questions and reasons why there are only two of us and 13 total bikes in the trailer. Not a surprise we go to immigration, grumpy patrol man treats us like we are criminals and rotten eggs and at the end of the search pretty mush tells us to get the hell out. I'm gonna check off the possibility of being part of the border patrol. Did some fueling up at in the USA and later that night found a parking lot ontop of Snowqualme pass where it misted on us all night, somehow I still fell queckly to sleep.

Day 2 of travel was long! Washington and Oregon are so slow, speed limit of 65, give me a break! Also on one of the hill climbs the truck overheated and when we popped the hood I realized that the propane line was broken of and was spraying liquid propane everywhere, not a good situation! We got that fixed and put some water in with the coolant and away we went. Made great time in Idaho and Utah hovering around 80 something the whole way. With no working fan, the windows were open the whole day and for periods of time I felt deaf as I could not hear a word Michael would say to me. Camped out near Green River on HWY 6 at a, enduro dirt biking spot we found a few years back, really wish we had em today, would have been awesome! Michael climbed in the cab and gunned it towards the finish line way before our navi system(navigator Nancy) said we would get home, I finished a book I started at the beginning of the trip, success!

It sure is hot out, but it was great to get back! The Ranch is so nice, I can relax a bit, sleep in my own bed and eat great! Now, all I can think about is getting prepared for National Championships! More to come about that, hope you all enjoyed fallowing us around the Northwest , get ready for some more racing action as the National Champs come to Sol Vista next weekend, I'll be ready!

More from Whistler

2009-07-06T21:26:00.006-06:00

Yo Everyone, Michael here,
Weird you may be thinking, Michael is actually posting something. I definitely don't get a chance to post as often as I'd like to. Most my time usually gets eaten up pretty quick with Team stuff and what not. I think about posting a lot and then never get to it. I guess I tend to all the other stuff so that in turn Brian gets a chance to spend time doing this kinda cool stuff :)Brian's been doing a pretty good job though of keeping everyone up to date on our sweet adventures. This seasons definitely been awesome, feels like its lasting forever yet flying by at the same time. We've had a bunch of sweet adventures and a ton of good riding, in a lot off cool places, currently up in Whistler BC at then end of a sweet trip which included a race in Mt Hood and two awesome day's riding just outside of Seattle.
We'll there is my short post for now, mostly just wanted to add a few photos of myself, since Brian seems pretty partial to posting all the sweet ones of himself. So enjoy, and hopefully I'll keep up a bit better with this blog thing here. These are photos from throughout the year as well as this trip.
But before I log off I wanted to extend a thank you to Ace and the rest of the Lane family for making this last trip possible for us!!!
One more day here at Whistler tomorrow, then back to Co, next stop Sol Vista and National Champs

Whistler

2009-07-03T01:18:00.006-06:00

First real day was a Beauty eh! Rode all day long, not much more to say. Trails are a bit dusty, but I was chucking my meat all day long and having a great time. The day was capped off with a sweet hike a bike up from the top of the mountain to a sick bandit trail, oh it was EPIC!!! The trail also ended right at a killer food joint with the biggest plate of nachos that I have ever seen in my life! Overall, about a 10.8 on the stokage scale for the day. Pics and stuff to come!!!

Sick, just saw a Turner DW link bike cruise by! I'm chilling here at the GLC restaurant which is located at the base of the hill and has a great view of the riders coming down the mountain. Its been a great stay here in Whistler with Ace and crew, we had a ton of fun, learned lots and progressed! Michael and the Lanes are currently on route to the Vancouver airport leaving me here to fiddle around and rest. I've been needing some rest as the week has been filled with adventure and constant activity, mostly mountain biking:) We got here on Canada Day, July 1st, experienced the 4th of July in the great White North, had some great Lake adventures, Village adventures and of course adventures on the mountain. The Magic Bus is on its way back home too right now, safe and fun travels to them, it was epic! Lets do it again!!! I'm not totally alone though, part of the Sol Vista Crew and Alex Vidal has made it out, and we are going to shred tomorrow, our last day here. The weather here has been awesome, sunny and very warm, I was a sweating machine, but it made for a great atmosphere. At the moment it is misting and I can't see the top of the mountain, this means the trails are going to be super sick tomorrow! Can't wait to ride again, but resting is just what I need at the moment, I went so hard yesterday afternoon, I closed down the park! Anyways, feeling fast as hell and the Kona is killing it. More stories of the weekend to come, for now here are some pictures, yes I finally took some yesterday and they are pretty cool! Check em, out!

Also, in the mean time check out this quick vid from Mt Hood that I dug up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOmM4GVpWJk

Road Trippin: MT Hood to Whistler

2009-06-30T10:40:00.005-06:00

Status update! Didn't make it too far from Hood. Yesterday we headed up North on I-5 to Seattle. From Seattle we hit up I-90 East towards Snowqualmie for a little riding at some secretive locations. Just Mike and I as the Bus shot straight up to Whistler, we will meet up with them shortly! Non of the guys on the bus have been, so they were all anxious to get up there. After some fun riding, we found a lake with a rope swing at the bottom of the trail, did that a few times to cool off and clean up before heading back to where we are now, Renton, WA. We stayed the night at Sully's (owner of Rotec Cycles) house and are now hanging out watching his daughter paint, she is quite the little artist. Soon we are going to go ride some XC with Super World Cup Pro Luke Strobel and maybe a little dinner with Colorado friends Mikey Gilbert and Jenna Greene. More adventure to come...

Made it to Whistler! Had a good time in Seattle, rode some sick trails with Strobel and Cam, even found some time to sit down with my good friend Mikey and his faience Jenna at their place in Renton. It was great travels, even found our way up near Mount Baker to camp for the night last night. Made it through boarder patrol and all of the construction, Michael played limo driver as he picked up Ace and family from the landing strip in Pemberton, and I looked after the trailer while he was gone. Now we are just chilling in the Village, we have our very own room in the middle of the village equipped with a stove, so we are all set! Tomorrow we will ride all day, do some coaching with Ace and family then hopefully meet up with the bike crew and shred! I will also get some pictures up shortly, but in the mean time check out the video from Mt Hood that I posted in my Mt Hood feature! Enjoy!!!

Mount Hood

2009-06-26T22:54:00.012-06:00

Recap:

Took off after a long day of packing late Wednesday afternoon and started heading west! Made it to spanish forks and hunkered down with the smell of cow crap lingering in the air. Woke up to some cows looking at us really confused like, they were starring like they were trying to figure out what were were. Anywho, we drove all day yesterday in the big rig and finally made it after a sweaty ride resulting in no AC fan. Luckily MT Hood, Oregon is nice and cool. The DH is rad, such a fun track, everyone loves it! Our pit/camp spot is prime and the magic bus is great, what a good road trip this is turning out to be! This is a bit short, but I'm about to be kicked out of this milk shake joint and I need to find some new interenets because this one is pretty slow. Pictures and Video to come as well as race reports! Peace!!!!

Sunday Sunday Sunday!!!

Qualified 2nd and ended up in 5th! Pretty stoked, got paid...enough to make it to whistler;) Here is a little something to check out before I get the full recap up later on because now were heading out to hang out at the sickest lake ever!

Race Day, June 28, 2009

Just ran my qualifier and nearly achieved my goal of qualifying 1st. Lars Sternberg of Transition Bikes bested me by .2 of a second. My run was pretty good, had some mistakes up top, took the fire road a bit conservatively and rode a smart line into the bottom flat out sprinting to the finish. Pretty happy but I wanted to be the last man down the mountain! Michael is fixing a flat so his run didn’t go to well. We are both looking to get after it in the final. I’m setting a few goals for myself for this afternoons final run:
• High Energy, calculated/smart riding.
• Calm “in the zone”
• Loose body
• Look ahead
• Pedal hard but rest and relax, open the lungs, shake the hands out!
Ultimate goal: On the box with the top spot.

Just checking in, still dripping wet from the lake adventure! Awesome day thus far, and tonight we are going to party like its on sale for $19.99! First, here is how my run went down:

Made no mistakes up top like I did in qualifying, went real fast on the fire road section and nearly had a catastrophic crash going real fast but kept her rubber side down, no biggie, just a bit of a scare. Smashed some rocks going 100mph then sat down to catch my breath. Sprinted into the bottom woods section of the course, rallied the rock garden and ripped the loamy berms, all was good until everything went dark. The dense forest does not allow for light to enter in and it is impossible to see exactly where you are going, so instead you ride by feel! I rode this section calculated and kept my line, didn't feel very fast though, still was told I was going quick. The very bottom section where the begginer/sport and Expert/Pro course merge, it got blown out by race day and the berms were break bumped out and loose. I went so slow through that section to make sure I didn't do anything stupid that I was forced to peddle extra hard all the way about 20 seconds worth to the finish flat out! Bummed I didn't get on the hot seat and that I was off of the box, but I was a mere 3 seconds of 1st place on a 4 minute track and I was less then 2 off of 2nd. Joey ended up 4th, 1 second in front of me. A good run, but not great and I have yet to find the top step, but I feel it coming and with Whistler looming I feel the speed and a big result rapidly appraoching. Pretty stoked on 3 straight podium finishes, gonna keep this momentum going into SOL VISTA for National Champs! Anyways, hands are freezing up outside the huckleberry inn and the guys are probably waiting for me back at camp, so I'm gonna sign off. Thanks for the read and take er easy out there, good night!

P.S. Made a salamander friend at the lake today, her name was Sally!

Qualifying video to come! My finals video didn't turn out as the batteries died on the Go Pro 10 seconds into my run.

MT HOOD Video:

Helmet cam of 2nd place qualifying run:

Fluidride #3 Mount Hood 2nd place Qualifying run from Brian Buell on Vimeo.

Here is a quick video clip of the podium finishers from the FLUIDRIDE Cup last week:

Crested Butte Wildflower Rush

2009-06-17T23:37:00.009-06:00

Its almost time! State champs is this weekend and I'm extremely excited to get out there and ride to the highest of my ability and get a good result which will hopefully be State Champ! I've had my eye on this title after a rough outing last year where rain, lightning and slick rocks ended my chances for the title. I feel stronger and faster than I did last year and I'm on a new bike, so I'm looking to give everyone a good run this year. Keep checking back for daily updates and my thoughts during this weekend!

Photo Caption: Yeehaw!!!

Saturday Evening Update:

First off, let me extend a big ol Happy Fathers day to the big man! Dad ,without your constant love and support non of this would be possible, THANKS YOU!!!!

Its amazing how fast you can go from being on the top of the world, everything seems to be going your way, and then it all comes crashing down on top of you! Well, today I experienced this exact feeling, and it made me sick to my stomach! Before I start explaining myself, let me give you all the full weekend update.

Arrived Thursday evening and secured an awesome pit spot right next to RPM, Roy gets mad props for helping with the setup, good work Roy!!!

Friday: Early morning sunshine brought about a beautiful day! Things started crackin when we met our good friend Bergin Parks, our Mechanic for the weekend. Registration went smoothly, then all of us loaded the lift to do a full DH run inspection. The lift lines were out of control, took 30 minutes to get through the line ride to the lift. The course is pretty nice for a National Forest approved trail, a little lame in spots, slow and hard to maintain good momentum! There are 3 sections that pretty much divide up the track, all with different terrain, flow and speed. Bergin was an awesome help as he dialed in all of the kids bikes and ours too. Feels good to have a mechanic, definitely allows us to focus on ourselves more for a change. 4X track is new and was really fun, short but fun. A bit of everything mixed in, lots of wide passing opportunities, grass turns, good rhythm section to the finish. Got in as much practice as we could muster until we both started to get light headed. Rest of the day was full of working on bikes, hanging out with friends and making delicious food before an early bed!

Saturday: Woke up to an overcast sky and cool temps. Made a proper breakfast full of eggs, sausage, beans and toast! Early DH practice ensued and about a minute in I got to know the dirt on the inside of a berm real well, took a bit of a soil sample, wacked my hands and tore my jersey(which was brand new). It was a good rest of the run as I was looking at lines. 2nd run took a top to bottom, I'd say about 80%, not too much peddling and got down to the bottom with a 3:55. I predict the winning time will be a 3:39 depending on the trail conditions. Qualifying is going to be interesting, I'm going to go hard and try to simulate a race run, peddle hard and put up a good time. Top 5 is the qualifying goal, top 10 is reasonable too, but only if I don't have a good run. Finished off the day with two more fun Dh runs, fallowed and discovered more lines and started to find my speed in various sections of trail. Bergdog is doing an awesome job, he is keeping my bike in good shape, nice and clean. Next up was 4X.

4X dialed in the lines, had fun interacting with the crowd and friends. SMBA/EMSC Athletes Grant and Ross Ellwood were here cheering me on and giving me good impute on my runs. The rain,drizzle started to come down as qualifying got underway. I opted to watch riders take their runs hoping the course would get tacky, however that was not the case. It rained hard for long enough to make the course slowing and slick. I qualified 8th with a conservative run. The rain picked back up and Michael and I went back to the pits and switched to mud spikes for the finals.

Race: Round of 32. Gated my way into first and cruised the rest of the way down advancing, Michael would do the same. Round 16: Me and Tommy T gated everyone, T made a very aggressive move forcing me inside, the rest is a bit of a mystery, but the next thing I knew I was on my back and my bike off the course. Definitely a huge disappointment as I was feeling and looking good out there. The day wasn't so sour as Michael made it to the final and ended up on the podium in 4th. The mountain cross was really fun and the mud made for some awesome racing. Props to the kids as they killed it today too: Roy 3rd, Bobbo 4th, Alec 7th, Tyler and Tanner also did well, but I forgot their places. It was Tanner's birthday today too! A lot of things went wrong for a lot of racers today, I'm happy Michael capitalized and kept up the moral leading into tomorrows DH race. Note: After I got back on my bike, I won the unofficial flat turn contest with a full out moto style drift in the mud, so at least I got that going for me. I"m stoked and pumped to get after it tomorrow on the downhill course especially after today's result! Might need to find some extra strength for tomorrow as today was very tiring! I'm determined though, so lets hope things work out. I need to sleep!!! Buenos Noches :) Pictures and video to come!

Weekend thoughts: Thoughts on
DH course: An improvement and a step in the right direction. I think they did a good job of creating a fun race worthy National Forest approved public trail. I know many, especially the locals would agree upon this, it is a fantasy of mine and I hope it comes true, that someday we are going to have a race in Crested Butte, the cradle of mountain biking, that will use all of the terrain and potential this mountain has to offer. Favorite part of the course would definitely have to be the ski jump above the finish arena, the spectators were so loud!
4x course: This course was well thought out start to finish! There were a ton of things that I liked about it, it definitely made up for the course length: variation of terrain, flat and bermed turns, wide open, line choices, passing lanes, grass(I would like to see more of this), rhythm. Suited all riding styles but the mud added a degree of difficulty making things fun and interesting. To do well being fast wasn't going to be enough, riding smart and assertive was the name of the game. Short but very sweet!

Qualifying Run: I felt great after my qualifying run! Ran cut spikes on the front and swamp things on the rear so I wasn't too weary of the greasy spots on the track, but I still kept it pretty conservative. I wanted to simulate a race run in a way so I peddled a good amount just to gauge how hard I should go in the finals in order to have enough fuel in the tank all the way to the end. I went about 85% and finished with plenty of strength, or maybe I was just so stoked on the biggest bar hump I've ever done in my life on the ski jump that I didn't notice the pain. I was just stoked to hear I came down number one!

Final Run Plan: Pretty much emulate my qualifier run minus the bar hump. I took what I learned from my qualifier, to peddle hard and keep good momentum all the way throughout a faster tackier track then we had for qualifiers. One thing that I did not plan for was an epically gnarly headwind going into the bottom jumps! I was psyched to be the last man down the mountain with a goal of running a 3:39.

Final Run thoughts: I would like to congratulate Chris Boice first on his run, because he had a great final run plan and pinned it to perfection. I had a good run and as I came through the finish line I thought that it might have been a winning time but I would have to get lucky as it wasn't great. I went to hard up top and should have chilled out a little more, I didn't take any time on the course to open up my lungs, I was straight sprinting every time peddling was necessary. I botched a few key turns where exit speed was important and had to stay on the gas hard to make up for it. I toned it down through the bottom single track aspen tree section, but when it came time to sprint and squash the table tops I felt sluggish and could not pump the landings very well, so I only maintained speed instead of accelerating down the transition. If you watched Greg Minnaar's run in Fort William you could see how important pressing and sprinting those jumps were and how much time he made up on Sam Hill in 30 seconds. I was immediately disappointed because I failed to achieve my goal but Chris was the faster rider and deserves top spot and I'm definitely more than happy to be standing beside him in 2nd as this years DH race was extremely competitive with a lot fast riders all gunning for the top spot. Also, I thought 1st place would be a great fathers day gift to my dad!

I would like to thank: My parents and family, my brother/teammate michael, my mechanic Bergin Parks, Team Geronimo and all of the junior riders/ parents for their enthusiasm and support, Ace Lane @ Bonsai Communities, Willy Warren @ Kona Bicycles, Gene Hamilton @ Betterride.net, Mark @ Rockgardn, Basalt Bike and Ski, Smith Optics, Ergon Grips, Sram, and everyone else who has supported me throughout!

Next time we'll be on the top of the box :)

Sunday: 1st Place Qualifying run:

Crested Butte 1st place qualifying run from Brian Buell on Vimeo.

final run 2nd place video:

Crested Butte Final Run GO PRO HERO Helmet Cam from Brian Buell on Vimeo.

Sick Geronimo Bike Park Ride Sesh

2009-06-10T23:54:00.004-06:00

Did some shuttling today with Mayhem, Roy and Mad dog! First day on the DH trails, was a ton of fun!

Here is a link to our sweet Dual Slalom track video:http://vimeo.com/4424421

Geronimo Bike Park Dual Sl Test Ride!!! from Michael Buell on Vimeo.

Last weekend we took a mini trip to Sol Vista! Got in a ton of DH and had a wicked good time with friends on the best tracks in the state! Unfortunately I was lazy and didn't take any photo or video.

New mexico Road Trip Part 2

2009-06-03T13:38:00.006-06:00

After a very eventful and tiresome weekend, one that will be remembered for its close calls and bad luck, but also for an extreme boost in confidence as I was riding extremely well all weekend with good focus and having fun, Michael and I headed to Albuquerque where we would spend our days riding, eating and playing freerider 2! Joey and Camillo joined us as we convoyed out from Angel Fire. We would also be providing and ride for Vince Sanchez(trail guide) in exchange for a bed. After a glorious lunch at Quadilahara(sp) restaurant, I got the fish tacos, its a great dealio, we headed to the Santa Fe area where mucho DJ'ing would take place! Vince provided the local knowledge and led us to this great spot called the Garbage Pit. Protected from the wind and boasting great dirt jumps and a single slalom track, we were all psyched to ride, even though we were all beat up from the long week at Angel Fire. After an hour or so we demanded Vince bring us to the famous riding local known as the Santa Fe Dirt Jumps! I had seen video and was excited to ride this spot. There were some sketchy yet inviting locals who enjoyed our presence as the busted out sketch ball tricks and their cameras when things got too hairy. We were all feeling good and progressively moving our way through the lines towards the large jumps. It was a little windy but the conditions could not have been much better. We would session the the jumps until we were all well worn out. Big props go out to Camillo Sanchez, Yeti Regional Team rider, for not riding trails too much, his confidence grew and he managed to hit every single line without much problem, he was mucho estoked! The night would end at Chris Boice's house where his family gladly welcomed us to stay in their home!

The next few days were a blur of riding, eating, riding, video games, bowling, ice cream, crashing, photo shoots, we all felt like 15 year olds again and it was awesome! We were so well taken care of at Chris's house and the NM locals showed us a lot of great riding. Sandia DH was soooo mcuh fun, Chris gave us the full tour, these trails are incredible, no wonder why Chris is so fast! The fun didn't stop there, dirt jumping was just a short pedal away at Vince's house. We rode until dinner time which was 7pm every night at the Boice Residence. The jumps were technical and fun, thanks Vince for letting us shred your yard!

Thursday: Rest day and shredding at Vince's. All was well until Camillo went OTB onto his shoulder. He sustained some damage, but nothing broken and he seems to be recovering quite well. Heal up quick little Colombian buddy! Another awesome day spent riding, playing a ridiculous amount of freerider 2 and eating a glorious dinner and desert repaired by Lisa and Mark, thanks you two for all of your hospitality and kindness!

Friday: Half day spent ridng DH and filming and shooting with Long Nguyen, check out his pictures, they are mint! We shot the loamy turns on one of Vince, Boice and crews newest creations for a long time, it was so much fun! We made our way down slowly, searching for great spots to shoot. We were all pushing ourselves and pinning it the whole day! More freerider 2 and Dinner ensued later that night to cap off another great day spent underneath the NM sun.

SAT and SUN: Early wake up call Saturday morning as we packed and left our home away from home and journeyed our way to Pajarito, NM. This small ski resort located just above the famous city of Las Alamos known for its involvement in Nuclear research in the early 20th century. It was an interesting drive, all bleary eyed from too much freerider 2 and X Box, the terrain changed rapidly and somehow we went from a barren desert to an amazing lush, rocky forest with humongo aspen trees. The Pajarito Punishment was a great Locals race! Only 9 pros showed but it would still be really competitive and fun. Practice Saturday was fun, Loamy new course designed by Chris and Vince ( Kung Fu trail designs) something like that, I'm pretty sure they made that up on the spot. Well done though boys, it was fun. Only got in two runs, had some mechanical s, changed tires to wets and the lifts shut down. Camillo the Colombian Camera man got a ton of foty of us riding each section of this steep technical track. Later in the evening we did a bunch of dirt jumping and ridng on the mountain. I finished off my night by revamping the jumps and digging until I could not see anymore! A great starry night sky was out and was great to stare at before I went to sleep. Sunday, race day came around and I got in 3 quick laps in before the morning practice ended. I banged my rotors up a bit and barely had time to fix them before my race run. It was a best of two run format as there were not very many riders and there was enough time to do so. I really enjoyed this format, except for the short recovery time between runs. The course was tough to ride top to bottom, my brakes were bad to begin with and by the time I was nearing the bottom I couldn't hang on very tight. I took it pretty easy and made it down, that was the goal. Next run I would ride a similar race run, trying to be smooth and on lines all the way down. I hit the top great and had a similar run all the way down, just barely holding on, my breaks were shot! In the end I would finish 3rd behind Joey(2nd) and Chris Heath(1st)I won $100 bucks and a chile pinata filled with candy...AWESOME!!! It was a great race, Tony Gradillas from BikeWorks bike shop did an awesome job putting things on. Too bad he was injured and didn't ride with us.

We left town and started our trek back home but opted to extend the vacation one more night at the Great Sand Dunes. I had never been to the Sand Dunes before so we high tailed it there! Rallied the Rover hard on this sand wash road, so much fun, ate dinner, took Camillo's bike out for a spin on the Dunes, which was soooooooo much fun! Did some more Rover rallying and fell asleep next to a roaring camping fire.

What a great road trip, thanks for all the good times friends!

New Mexico Road Trip

2009-05-28T23:08:00.005-06:00

Sweet Weekend write up and a picture of me on: http://mountainflyer.com/news.cfm?itemid=206

Here is the race report and some other randoms from the first half of our NM road trip! Lots of stuff to read, will get pics or vid soon. For immediate Angel Fire enjoyment visit littermag.com!!!

Day 1 Thursday, May 21st –

Here I am sat in the passenger seat of the Rover(switched seats with Michael due to a food coma induced by the Leadville burrito cart) while the high alpine countryside surrounds me outside. It’s a wet and rainy travel day as it has been on and off the whole trip down. We currently have no clue where we are and we like it! A dear just ran out in front of the car! I feel like I’m in Europe, the mountains are still patchy with snow and there is a heavy fog in the air, if these are the current conditions in Angel Fire, we are bound for a fun weekend of racing and riding in the wet. I’ve been looking forward to this race since missing it last year in preparation for Europe. Let’s see if the off season training has paid off! Time to get back to gazing at beautiful views of this incredible landscape that has been laid out in front of us. Course updates and further thoughts about the weekend ahead to come!

I’m laughing my ass off right now! That beautiful drive that we just experienced was a huge detour. Somehow we missed the 285 exit and stayed on hwy 17. I really don’t care, it was really enjoyable, and it’s extremely funny as we are now farther away from Angel Fire now as we were 1 hour ago. Time to buy a map I suppose or learn how to use Michael’s iphone. Looks like we will be rolling in late…

Day 2 Friday, May 22nd –

KONA!!! I hucked a sick jump to a flat landing Canadian style today on the downhill course my first run out, it was sick! This particular jump rumored but yet to be confirmed, built by Shoey Juicler is a complete huck to nowheresville! I’m pretty sure I was the only one that hit it all day, but it had to be done, the Kona had to be tested and as expected it handled the flat landing like a PRO haha. Anyways, the first run I was having a blast, it felt so great to get back on a rough course on a different bike that brought like Obama a little change and excitement back into life/riding. This change brings expectations, I’m not gonna raise the bar too high here as I’m still dialing in my bike, and my hands by the end of the day could not hold on very tight, but I would really like a podium. Looking at the competition on course there is nothing I am not doing that the others are. Qualifying will be a good measuring stick to see just where I am compared to the rest of the field. We get a few more hours tomorrow which I’m really looking forward to.
MountainCross!!! The newly designed track modified by Wentz and co was a pretty big hit today. I had a lot of fun experimenting with some new lines on a section of course that is completely different. Racing is going to be tight, lots of rubbing I think, but it should be exciting. Tactics and line choice will eventually show and become more evident tomorrow morning as the full field should be practicing and pinning it. I fell good on the course, a few things to work on still, but I think I can do really well on this course.

Other random facts: Everyone is in new kits so I can’t tell who anyone is, I expect they will say the same for me. The Rockgardn Warbird helmets are a hit, everyone thinks they are a custom pain job. Broke and bent a few things on the DH bike, MRP G2 came loose and smashed up a derailleur(it is Angel Fire)! Working with the suspension, trying to figure out the winning combination. Walked the course, about to visualize, but it definitely helped big time, sooooo many lines I did not see riding. Kristin is stoked on her new DH bike, she loves it! Can’t wait to see her pin it on it. 11pm, my bed time, up and at it again @ 7am for 8am 4X practice. Pretty sick day!!!

Day 3 May 23rd…I think –

Thought it was June, only three days in to this trip and I’m already losing track of time! Heartbreak city, the Nuggs lost, we were all a little bummer over that outcome especially as it had already been a tough day. 4X in the morning was fun, but I got tired. Right after swapped pedals and loaded up for some of the slickest greasiest DH EVER! Two runs and a derailleur later I was fried. The day however was not over…4X qualifying was to come! I made some food and tried my best to get some energy back, was even thinking about a nap, the rain made that a little difficult today, heck, it made everything a little difficult today, except for the 4X. Without any practice for most Pro’s qualifying went off. I was super tired and was exchanging yawns with a few folks and knew I had to snap out of it. I waited until I near the back end of the group and then entered in for my gate, ran the course through my mind once over and snapped out of the gate. I felt relaxed the whole run down, no tricky moments, just solid riding, safe really. After keeping as low as possible over the triple set and casing the last one a bit the clock read 52.51 with a 4 next to my number. I got a few thumbs up and was told it was a good run. It didn’t feel spectacular, just no mistakes, and good cruiser run. Fixed bikes and ready for another early morning tomorrow! Bring on the rocks!!!

Day 4-5 May 24-25th –

“The races are over, everyone has packed up and got out of town, the arena is empty except for one man who keeps driving and striving as fast as he can, the sun has gone down and the moon has come up and long ago someone else left with the cup”… This weekend has reminded of this Cake song which I poorly quoted. Things definitely did not go my way this weekend! It wasn’t because of lack riding ability, I was riding as fast as I ever had this past weekend, I qualified well at both events and from many different people both riders and spectators was told I was destroying it in practice. Most people didn’t know who we were since we were on different bikes, and in a different costume. I was focused and properly prepared for both races this weekend which is always something I strive for. I had my lines dialed for both events. This is how my race runs went down…
4X – Choose lane one and was going to go inside on the first corner. Had a good gate, Wentz and I both started to move towards each other and his bar went on top of mine and he went down, I advanced but was later DQ due to the UCI 10 meter lane violation rule, which was in my opinion BS and I had video to prove it. Michael was on a role until he took himself out in the second round.
DH – Qualified 7th with a cruiser run, hit my lines, and kept my energy up! Race run I was focused and relaxed, made sure I made it into the woods and once I was there it was a smashing good time! I was going so fast skipping and doubling over everything! I decided to let it all hang loose, it was working well until I destroyed myself on a rock huck to flat. I thought my Kona could take it but I was off balance and ended up catapulting into a sapling! I got back up and was determined to finish strong but I ended up hucking huge off a rock into the flat peddle section all sideways, nearly died, ran out of the tape, then back in and then nearly high sided after sustaining a front flat! I was happy with how things were going. Lets see how things go next weekend!!!

March, Training, skiing and riding!

2009-03-06T00:50:00.004-07:00

I'm bored and figured I should do something somewhat productive since I have no homework these days. It is now march, its 70 degrees out and prime biking weather! With it still being the offseason, it is quite a funny feeling to be consumed with the thought of riding my bike instead of by powder sticks. I have a feeling it is going to change soon, given that March is always one of the snowiest months I still am looking forward to finishing out the ski season strong, I still haven't really gotten to use my skins yet! The offseason has been the most productive one since i've started racing! For the first time I have stuck to a structured training schedule and it feels good to be good about the beginning of the season as it has always been my weakness. For example, my first race last year was the Andorra WC race, this year I already have a race under my belt and felt great. Its been great ski coaching this year, I cannot wait to carry on to the bike season as we have a ton of great Juniors riding for our team, TEAM GERONIMO, NICOLAI, SRAM, MRP, DT SWISS, ROCKGARDN. We are super excited about the new sponsors for this year, should be a steller year! Still working on the schedule for this year, getting things ordered and settled...bike season is upon us!

We are still alive!

2008-12-07T18:29:00.005-07:00

To Brian Bailey, Cory Ross and anyone else who occasionally checked this blog!

It has been a very long time since I have last posted, there have been many events that have happened since my last post!

The bike season is over! The season was a long one, it ended pretty well with a second place finish at the collegiate national championships. I finished 3rd overall in the RMCC Collegiate ranking behind Cody Wilderman who took two 1st place finishes at the conference championships to take second overall. My teammate Joey Schusler destroyed the field every week and won conference and the Collegiate National Championships. Collegiate racing is so much fun and I hope to try and accomplish my goal of becoming the D1 National Champion, that means I'll have to still be in school next year which will most likely happen but where? That is still to be determined! I would like to also thank my mom again for feeding the whole entire CU Cycling team, and even though most of the kids seemed to under appreciate her efforts, I know I really enjoyed all she did and having her there!

Other highlights from the bike season and the trip to Banner Elk, NC included: 1st place at the CSM collegiate open race. Getting a full page picture in Bike Magazine. Joey manipulating the presidential race in North Carolina. The Mud fest in Durango. 2nd place in the Sol Vista G3 stage two race. 4th in the Sol Vista Dual Slalom. Dirt Jumping and shredding with friends. Golf course sliding contests. Getting 2nd to Joey in every race almost. Um...lots more...

After the bike season ended the ski season has officially begun. Michael and I are in full swing coaching mode working full time! I have school and Finals, so I'm unable to work full time right now. I will be taking a semester off this winter as I look for new educational opportunities, devote more time to coaching full time and to train hard for the 2009 bike season! Michael and I started training 3 weeks ago using James' MTB Strength Training Program which has so far been a great experience! Better than any past weight training programs I have tried thus far that is for sure. I really enjoy how the program utilizes and recruits muscles used most while riding, I recommend this program to all aspiring mtb racers!

Thats about it folks, other than the Buffs missing out on a bowl game, the broncos playing different every week, not too much else is going on. This time of the year things seem to slow down, most of the sponsor requests have been sent and now we play the waiting game. Next year things are again looking to be very promising as we will once again be part of a new growing MTB team, Team Geronimo, and will most likely be sporting some new sponsors.

Moving back to Boulder

2008-08-14T21:51:00.002-06:00

Taking a break to watch the Olympics which has pretty much consumed all of my downtime this past week, but I'm packing up and moving back to B-Town for the rest of the summer and the beginning of school. I'll be starting my first semester at CU after transferring from FRCC. I'm really excited to be apart of an actual team this year for Collegiate Cycling, don't get me wronge, FRCC was an awesome experience and creating my own team and floating around hanging out with different teams and riding in a swaetervest was sweet! Maybe I'll find a sweet CU sweatervest and continue the tradition? Thats all gonna happen in a few weeks, so we'll just have to see how things pan out!
Last weekend was the G3 mudfest in Snowmass, and let me tell you...it was slippery! I love the G3 format, I think its great; a stage race creates so much opportunity for lead change and opens things up in the overall. I have been plagued by bad luck on my first race every time, crash, flat, crash and this time 45 seconds from the bottom all the air let out and I peddled hard smashing a brand new rim to pieces. The night before I spent all my time building a new rim that had a lifespan of all but 5 minutes. If I didn't have two more races ahead of me I think I would have saved it for another day! After a slick and mis fortunate first run I started nearly last in 16th position in the Super D. After a 50 yard sprint the super D trail winded down single track through the forests and wide open flower filled fields, however I didn't really get to enjoy the flowers and all that good stuff due to all of the mud caked on my glasses; glasses were a bad choice in the rain and mud! The track was sooooo much fun though, I passed two guys, including michael who had poor tire choice and was sliding every which way. The best part about the Super D was that it was taped through the mountain cross course, and theres nothing more exciting then riding an xc bike over 20 foot doubles in the wet:) An 8th place overall helps my position as I move up in the standings, but i really had no chance at the podium after the first race anyway, but I still wanted to get the best result possible. Sunday brought the rain and mud. People were scrambling for tires and we turned into tire salesmen practically donating our extras to the needy, including our sister who had the race of her life, so far at least by staying on the bike and passing 3 others on her way to a landslid defeat finishing first! For Michael and I it was a different story, no passing or even staying on the bike. The weather had been fluctuating between constant rain and then the sun would poke its head out drying the track making it greasy. Many riders had trouble staying on their bikes, I had trouble staying on the track as I was trying to stay loose, but it didn't work as I was staring at silly lines that had engulfed earlier riders. I hit most of my lines but managed to run some turns wide into the tape destroying my momentum. Without any major falls, but many mistakes I ended up in 6th and 6ht overall, one off of my pre race goal . Michael had a rough weekend with some crashes, but for the most part was riding really well in practice. The new 31.5 inch bars made an instant impression as I felt more comfortable and stable on my machine which is how I've felt all year, but its all coming around and I feel that I will end the season strong at Sol Vista for another G3. I'm off to Sol Vista tomorrow to break in the new trails and to also train for the upcoming race!

Snowmass G3

2008-08-07T23:57:00.002-06:00

Gonna try to get back on this blogging thing, been pretty busy the last few weeks, lots of working, riding, and traveling. Its the night before the Snowmass G3 kicks off and its been raining all afternoon, looks like there will be mud!? Its been a 3 weeks since Blast the Mass, and I think I am finally comfortable on the DH bike...finally:)! We've had an awesome last few weeks of riding our backyard trails, got some suspension testing done this week, and with the addition of 31.5 inch bars(HUGE!) everything is rocking and ready to go! I have high hopes after coming off of a relatively successful weekend at the Colorado State Championships in SOl Vista. Sol Vista by the way put on one hell of a race, mad props go out to Wentz, Thompson, Sharp, Moga, Andy W, Mike Mac, and the rest of the Bigfoot productions crew for putting on a race to remember. Check out the link for additional coverage from an awesome weekend:

http://www.littermag.com/2008/news/newsarticle.php?newsID=1230

The fourth place finish, second place qualifier was confidence inspiring especially while rocking the hard tail on a bumpy and fast Dual Slalom track, the best I have ever experienced! I learned that night that consistency counts as I watched Brian Lopes and Chris Herndon advance to the final, I started off the night smoothly, but the runs were getting so fast, I lost focus a fews times and thats what hurt me in the long run. Still stoked to get on the podium while riding well. The DH however was a little different story! Still not entirely comfortable on the bike, I had some great practice runs, my qualifier however didn't go as planned with a fall in the rocks even though I thought I was on my line. The weather was a little quirky, lightning was flashing above but the race went on, I was on deck when a flash popped, people's hair stood up inside of their Helmets, Joey's brake levers shocked him, did we stop the race...no! Concerned for my safety I stayed crouched on my toes until the final ten second count down where I rolled up the ramp, looked down the ramp and was off. The rain had just started creating a greasy track which I noticed immediately making me a little conservative, I didn't take any risky lines, was cautious and used my brakes a wee bit too much. I didn't hurt, but it also didn't help seeing a blue flash surround you while riding and the boom fallowed immediately as I entered into the tree's. It was pretty neat though as not too many people will ever get to experience anything like it. I came down first, the race stopped and was held for an hour until the storm went away leaving a fast tacky track for the faster qualifiers. Many had conservative runs as they didn't know what the riding conditions were like, some improved their times as the ruts formed firmly in the usually unsteady sand. Mike Kreger 4th, Kain Leonard 3rd, a disappointed Chris Boice 2nd and a huge breakthrough for Joey Schusler as he came across the line in first 2 seconds in front with a broken transmission. Congrats Joey, you earned it! This weekend in Snowmass I will be looking for a good result, but most importantly I want to have a fun weekend, few mistakes, clean runs, successful working bike set up and of course to beat everyone else!:) I'm not going to put pressure on myself this weekend, I will do the best I can, and go hard. A top 5 overall is the goal, top 3 in a race run with 3 total consistently fast race runs. Michael I'm sure is also feeling the sam ewaqy as both of us are looking to get back on top in the DH department after a hard beginning to the season. Tune in for further updates and pictures(maybe!)

What a Weekend!!!

2008-07-27T23:16:00.002-06:00

We had a ton of fun this weekend! We had all the Kids over this Saturday for the World Cup Races. It was a blast, we all watched the DH, then went and rode bikes, I stopped riding early and started the grill. After the Mountain cross was over and everyone ate, we all went out again. Then I got invited down to the ski lake and went tubbing with the kids, it was a pretty good time! After that, we came back up to the house and had a campfire and made smores and a water fight as well.

Today we were invited to Tyler Spences birthday party. No pin the tail on the donkey here though, we woke up at 7am, left around eight for carbondale with kids in tow and from Carbondale we drove down into gleenwood canyon to the grizzly exit where we put in our rafts, ducks, tubs and kayaks for a day on the river. It was a ton of fun! I haven't been rafting for I think about 8 years and it was great to be out on such a beautiful day paddling down this stretch of river while getting to check out the canyon from a different point of view. It was hilarious to watch all of the kids in tubes flip over in the big waves and gnarly rapids, Michael flipped his boat a few times on purpose but I don' think people knew so they assumed that he was a terrible rafter. For the most part I was usually towing around two or three kids at a time and the whole time we were pretending that we were riding bikes and doubling the rapids doing tailwhips. I tell you what, while living over here I don't get to spend much time with kids my own age but these kids sure know how to keep me feeling young as they are full of energy and stoked on everything. After playing around in the play wave which Cory flipped in and cruising through south canyon we finally made it to our pull out spot. It was a great day on the rive, we had lunch and sang Tyler the birthday song as well on a nice beach by a large eddy. The adventure however wasn't entirely over, it never is. After rafting, all of the kids came back to our place to ride bikes. Roy Binge also showed up and was stoked for his first day of riding our trials, I'm pretty sure he has been dreaming of this day for at least a year or so! All of the kids really impressed me with their riding skills, Roy hit everything and was incredibly smooth, I tell you, in a few years he will be dominating! Tyler and tanner were killing it and as always the Lane bro's were ripping it up on the big bikes boosting the big table at the end. By this time of day I'm exhausted, I was extremely tired after rafting, I can't believe I even made it out to bike. So this weekend was extremely eventful! We got a lot of pictures, video and all had a great time! I definitely would have liked to have been out east riding Mount ST Ann, but the kids made this off weekend one to remember, I don't know what we would do without them!

Check out for pics:

http://ridemonkey.com/forums/showthread.php?t=206437

Brian

AMERICA F@&K YEAH

2008-07-09T15:53:00.002-06:00

Michael says: So Europe was fricken sweat, but its good to be back on home soil. Were currently sitting in the Chicago airport eating big burritos!!!!! Hopeing to catch the next flight on standby as we missed our connection earlier. Either way we'll be in Boulder tonight, minus our bikes ( thanks again to Iberia airlines again) there 24 hours behind us:( hope to we many of you soon.

Colorado here we come!

2008-07-08T16:58:00.002-06:00

First time we have had internet in about two weeks, sorry about the lack of information, ever since we started camping power has been an issue! Well, the day is finally here, Michael and I will be finally coming back home, and how great that thought sounds. Throughout everything we have been through over here, its been quite a lot we have never quit, our desire to finish what we started is how we made the last few weeks work. There has been a lot of downtime, problems and setbacks, but I believe we passed the test! When I arrive back in the states I will work on a full recape of the end portion of our trip and maybe an overall summary, but in the last two weeks Michael and I have braved the weather, rain soaked nights, my diet has been that of a squirrle-bear, broken bikes yet no broken bones(hurray), but with all of this came great sights, riding and new friends. One thing though that was rock solid the whole trip, the KANGOO! We goo'ed up and around so many mountain passes, made some of the most delicious Nutella rice cake meals and ate so much tuna fish in our KANGOO kitchen. Somehow, I really don't know, that thing survived and passed inspection when we dropped her off. So there is a ton, metric to be exact, of information that I will bestoy upon you all soon, so keep checking in often as there will be more wicked sweet stories and pictures of our rocking European adventure!

The adventure never stops though, once back in Colorado its off to the races once again as we get to enjoy the comforts of our own home cooking half an hour away in Snowmass, Colorado! Just had an awesome vacation day in Barcelona, lots of beach action, oceaning to be exact, I'm burn't, I'm tired and I'm ready to come home. Thank you everyone for your comments and support while we were here in this very foreign land, it really was an experince of a lifetime, not too many people have probably done what we did, which is really cool!!!

Broken Bikes equals many friends here in Germany!

2008-06-29T10:45:00.002-06:00

So our bikes took a beating this week, the frames are fine but many other things have been buelled! However when a kid from the USA is in need and is very far away from home, it is no problem for many people to go out of there way to help us out! Our neighbors helped me, as well as the swedish junior team, the whole race organization knew who we were and were stoked to have racers from the USA, we were very popular with everyone. The race was good, I'll talk more later about it when I have battery, but I was just glad I could race so the result didn't matter too much, but I got 21st out of 65 racers. I sat in the hotseat for a while because I ran third due to a mechanical in Saturdays seeding run, in that run I also tried doing a no hander over the finish line jump no clipped in and nearly biffed it huge, but was able to save it for the most part, that was also a good way for people to know who you are. Michael was a little bit behind me, had an OK run but would like to be faster yet so would I. We both hope to due a little better in Switzerland for the next IXS cup. It is in Scual(sp). Thats where we are headed next! We will try to update all of you soon, we will have to find power first! Thule, Germany was great, the people are awesome and the rider was good. Free camping, showers and a DH only race with a good turnout here in East Germany. I would like to see more of this back in the states where the race organizers really care and the mountain works with them to put on the best race possible. I was told to tell all of you about this race and hopefullly more people from the states will race. Germany sure was fun, now, it is off the Switzerland!!!

Race Recap

2008-06-29T10:42:00.002-06:00

Michael Says:
So Don't have much computer battery so this will have to be quick. Just wanted to do a quick recap on the weekend. Everything ended up working out pretty well. We got Brian's bike a squared away on Friday so he is now back in the Game. My bike however suffered the same blown shock problem today during my last practice run, I was also able to get a hold of a shock to borrow for the race run. The race was greate, IXS cup puts them on well, the competition was strong. At then end of the day Brian finished 21st with a 3:12 and got to sit in the hotseat for quite some time. Due to some technical problems during seading he was one of the first out of the gate and held the lead for a while till some of the higher qualifiers came down. I finished 30th with a 3:14
All in all it was a pretty awesome weekend.
Next we'll make our way back south towards the Alps and Scoul Switzerland, and hopefully do some riding at a few spots along the way, if I can find a shock. I'm sure I'll be able to get one to use at the next race just not sure about for the next few days. If not maybe we'll just play tourist, and go swimming in some sweet lakes or something.
We have lots of pictures for this week as well but will have to post those after charging the computers.

This Just In

2008-06-27T03:23:00.002-06:00

Michael Say's:
Turns out we won't be coming home early, as changing our tickets would cost something like $4000 dollars, so well instead find something else sweet to do over here in Europe land for another week like originally planned.

Then there were two; The end of the road is near!

2008-06-27T02:47:00.004-06:00

The last 24 hours have been interesting! First off, my bicycle is out of commission due to lack of product support over here in Germany, secondly we had to make a midnight hour trip last night to the Hanover Airport to drop Caleb off for his early flight home, the trip home was a hoot as Michael and I got lost seriously ten times driving around in circles till nearly 3am, the European road system is either terrible or they need to dumb it down for us Americans, thirdly we have decided to cut our trip short, returning to the states early so we can prepare for the Snowmass mountain states cup race as well as to save for a possible trip to Canada to race two World Cups up there. Our bikes will need a little loving when we get back, but I think this trip has prepared us greatly for the rest of our race season back home, and we both are looking forward to possibly eating some burritos and sleeping in an actual bed, but first Michael and hopefully me have to kick some German butt this weekend, sleep on the ground for a few more nights and if all goes right party on the streets with all of the other Soccer hooligans Sunday night if the German futbol team wins the Euro Cup VS. Spain. Sorry about the lack of pictures, blogger didn't want to upload mine last time. I'm sure we will poach this sweet spot again for internet and give more updates on the race weekend, maybe some friendly people will provide me with a bike so I can ride, I know I would try to help someone out if they were in a different country without a bike!

Germany

2008-06-26T04:43:00.002-06:00

Michael Say's:
Now up in Thale Germany, North east of Frankfort. Parked on the street in front of an apartment building, stealing the only unlocked internet we've found in a long time. Hear for an IXS cup race this weekend, www.ixscup.com I think. Should be pretty sweet. Hiked the track in the dark last night, looks like a ton of fun. Hope everyone had a good time in CB.

IXS CUP RACE: Thule, Germany!!!

2008-06-26T04:39:00.004-06:00

Quick update here for ya'll, Caleb is in the driver seat about to melt, pass out, or freak out. We have been cruising around the lovely country of Germany for a few days now taking the bike park tour, finding places to ride on our way up to the IXS Cup Race here in Thule. Here is a recap of our last few days; after leaving Italy, we drove up through Innsbruck, Austria, accidentally found ourselves lost doing round about donuts through Munich, and cruising 95mph but still getting blown past by Ferrari's on the Autoway. We spent two days riding in Winterburg, they're bike park was really fun, small, but I felt like I made some big improvements, then off to Willingem(sp) for a day on the WC course which claimed my rear shock. We hoofed it up here from there walked the DH course last night will fireworks from Germany's Victory lit up the night sky above. Trying to find a shock right now, hopefully I can find something a race, cause this course looks awesome! More updates to come, Calebs about to lose it!

Shladming Adventure Continued

2008-06-22T02:00:00.004-06:00

As I was saying before we were off on another adventure, this time up north to the Country of Austria to ride Shladming's bike park to ride some serious DH! It was quite the effort on Michaels part driving and finding his way up there throughout all of Italy's confusing highways. As we ventured farther north into Austria I started to feel more like I was at home. The scenery, architecture, and vibe that the land was giving off reminded me of Nederland and other Colorado mountain towns. I really like the fact that the Gas stations stay open later, and they also have water faucets with drinking water just another plus! I'm not saying that Austria is cooler than Italy, but it sure is more convenient to travel through. The Euro Cup is in full swing right now and Austria was playing Germany, so there was nobody on the road providing for the easiest night drive in Europe so far. After about five hours we made it, found a sweet place to sleep up in the mountains and since it wasn't threatening to rain it made for a good night.

The next day we found the information desk, bought some tickets to ride for the next two days, built up our bikes, geared up and got after it! The first run my bike was making weird noises, so I look down and miss a switchback, go careening down the run, bottom out on the next switchback, go flying and land on the road. That was only the first 20 seconds of my run! After I tightened a few loose bolts, we rode hard all days blowing my hands by the end! The riding was awesome, it was a long mountain but steep so I really put a toll on your brakes and trigger finger. We all had fun but ended up getting rained out mid afternoon a few hours before the lift closed, it reminded me off a Colorado downpour! This ruined our camping plans so we went on the hunt for a bed. There were a lot of B&B's in Shladming, I rung the doorbell on one of them and was greeted by a very nice old man who did not speak English, so he sent in his wife who spoke very little English but somehow we together managed to settle a room and a price in their lovely house. It really did boost an awesome view of the mountain and was situated right above a lush green valley. The fallowing day we rode some loose wet muddy terrain, got dirty, went big over some sweet jumps and overall pushed ourselves hard for the rest of the afternoon. Once packed back up we hoofed it back to Val Di Solle and found our camping spot yet again. So our journey to and from was successful , the Kangoo survived and we had ourselves one hell of a weekend cheering on our boys/girls in red, white and blue.

Mountain cross was epic last night, the USA kicked some butt and Ross "the crusher" Milan killed it yesterday showing everyone when it goes bar to bar he is one not to be reckoned with. Brian Lopes(lopez) looked good, but couldn't put it together like last year and Carney and Nelson each had a great day, got some valuable experience and will be much wiser the next time around. The night ended up in the streets with most of my riding idols stumbling around, there were plenty of hugs going around and Texans getting loose. It was really fun and now we are planning out our next adventure. I believe we will be heading up to Winterburgh or Winterburg, however its spelled, but we heard there is a fun bike park up there, so we will once again be loading up the Kangoo for another adventure with our bikes!!!

For all of you who raced CB this weekend shoot me a post and let me know how things go eh!

Take care all and have a great day!

Brian

World Championship Update

2008-06-21T09:19:00.004-06:00

HOLY CRAP! Just popping in, the cliffhanger story will have to wait, but for the time being I thought I would give a quick update on Championship Saturday here in Val Di Solle. Sam Hill killed it all the way till the end, he crashed, and still ended up third!!! One of my Idols Steve Peat was in the hot seat till the last racer, I thought he just might finally win a World Championship, but fellow countrymen Gee Atherton took the Victory alongside his sister who won the Elite Women. I called Gee for the win, but I would have loved to have seen Peaty win one right in front of my eyes! Joey finished first American, and had a good run considering his rough weekend of getting his ankle crushed, pretty proud of him for gutting it out and giving all he had. Joey will be leaving us as he will be heading back to the USofA to his sisters place for some R&R. I hope he rests up and kills it out there! So our crew has been trimmed from 5 to 3! Michael, Caleb and I will be heading up to Winterburg, Germany for some DH action tomorrow after all is finished here in Italy! It has been a great day so far starting with a hike through the forest from my campsite to the DH course, and will probably end somewhere in town after the USA boys go for the Mountain Cross gold. Its almost time for the big show. First I need to re-apply more sunscreen as my face is burning to a crisp!

Good luck Kristin, hope your having fun this weekend, good luck with your race, hope all goes well and can not wait to here how everything goes!!!

Its about time - World Championships!!!

2008-06-20T12:55:00.003-06:00

So sorry for the delay on this post, it has been nearly a week since my last update and for that I apologize to all of my die hard readers. After talking to my parents for the first time earlier this week I learned I have quite the readership, I'm really happy that this has made a difference and has kept everyone updated on our adventures. Also its great to read all of your comments, so keep them coming!!!

Since the last read the adventures have not stopped, everyday has been one big adventure for us.

Traveling

Morzine to Val Di Solle was quite the journey, definitely a little more than we bargained for. Of course the drive was longer than what we thought, we got lost trying to drive through towns, the freeway is pretty easy, but the tolls are fairly substantial and are starting to add up, the bike box straps started to make a heinous vibrating noise, kinda like we were a huge bumble bee! Gas is really expensive, especially in Italy. Gas stations are full of crap in France, but occasionally you find something worth consuming, once you enter Italy, the Auto Grill greets you with delicious sandwiches, I used to live for these types of sandwiches, now I cannot enjoy them, it is fairly depressing! The wine and olive vineyards are stunning and everywhere in some parts, mom you would be in heaven over here! Fun fact of the day: Wine is cheaper than water!!! Don't buy fizzle water, its terrible but it does make you drink it slower, so at least you have water! Castles are everywhere, its incredible, we haven't done anymore wall rides on them but Joey invented a new game called "dibs" where you point and "dibs" the castle, if you do then it is yours and you gain more castle strength. Basically it was a way to argue with each other about who has the coolest castle! After a full day and who knows how many Kilometers later we made it to Val Di Solle!

Val Di Solle

Our mission was to get Joey here in time to get everything done and ready, Mission Accomplished! Now we had to figure out what to do that we were here with five days till the races. First things first, find a place to camp out! Bingo, a circle sign with a nice road leading into the forest, it must be a campsite or something right? It was a glorious spot situated in the spacious Italian Woods, the only problem was it rained that night. Good thing I had my tent all set up! We slept in that next morning until the rain slowed, broke down camp and went to town. After going to the market, which by the way closes for like four hours for lunch, a little inconvenient for us but really cool for the locals, I wish we did that, it would slow the pace down to our daily lives and we would all get more family time! We went exploring more into the crazy mountain villages, it amazed me that people built and continue to build on the hillsides with the steepest switchbacks needed to get around. It was foggy up in the high altitude village so we didn't get to see the view but it must have been incredible! Back into town we went with one question on our minds, what were we going to do next? We asked around for a bit, did some research and settled on Shladming Bike Park, home of World Cup races and a really tall mountain boosting tons of vert for some good mid trip downhill mountain bike training. We were told its a 3 hour trip, but traveling in the Kangoo I'm sure it will take us longer!

Tune in next time and find out whether or not we find the place, if the Kangoo makes it, we all sell our bikes and buy a vineyard and turn into major Wineoes! I figured that I would leave this story to be continued as it will be a long one and also that I have to head on out into the rain find Michael and Caleb and set up camp. Check out the race tomorrow on freecaster.tv! It should be showing around 6am for you Colorado folks, it'll blow your minds what these riders are riding down!

All of the USA Team members are going to bed now, many of them beat and bruised from the long weekend, but they will all be going for the gold tomorrow morning risking everything down the gnarliest course ever! Dustin Belcher would like to extend a hello to everyone and that he may be down right now, but he is not out as he will be back riding soon looking to prove to everyone that he really did deserve to wear the Red, White and Blue!

Still having an awesome time, watching a little futbol right now just enjoying the last moments of comfort inside the USA hotel before I head out into the night, into the rain, spiders and forest! Next blog also will include world championship racing action and reports, so check back in about 24 hours for full coverage!

Goodnight,

Brian

HAPPY FATHERS DAY DAD!!!

2008-06-14T17:06:00.003-06:00

Being after midnight over here it is fathers day, so I would like to extend and Gigantic HAPPY FATHERS DAY to our father Mr Tom Buell! Thank you dad so much for all of your support in making our dreams a reality, we have the greatest dad in the world. In my 21 years of life, and I'm sure Michaels 24(dang he's old haha), my father has been such a great influence and inspiration to me and if he wasn't such a dedicated father to all of his children I wouldn't be the person I am today, that I am sure of!

A few things I admire about my dad and what has influenced me to this day!

His work ethic: I've never seen someone so hard working. I don't think anyone will find a nicer man, someone who always wears a smile on his face and is there to greet you the second you walk into his shop.
Attitude: Always positive upbeat and cheerful! Now you all know where I get it from. and Mom too, they are both great people, but mom its dads day so let him have his glory:)
Motivation: Up @ the crank of dawn, coffee brewing, ready to meet the day dead on no matter what lays ahead of him!
Perseverance: Once he starts a project he finishes it! I'm getting better at that, one thing at a time right?
Kindness: Would drop everything and go out of his way to help a stranger fix, pull or push anything.
Leadership: The best trail boss, keeps everyone well informed and grouped together! Can't wait to come back and ride dirt bikes!
Being Tall: It doesn't hurt being tall right? Reaching things in high places so my mom doesn't have to climb on the counters:) Just kidding!

There are so many more I could list but I should stop because he is also a very modest man and doesn't brag about every good fortune, I know he likes to talk his kids up and show everyone what we are doing, but it is him who deserves the credit and praise, if it wasn't for our dad none of this would be possible! So anyways before I make this thing a biography, HAPPY FATHER"S DAY DAD, we hope you enjoy yourself on your day! Wish I could be home on this day with you riding dirt bikes, eating a home cooked meal by our wonderful mother, and watching the sun set sitting outside in our own backyard!

Love,

Michael and Little Bull

PS Let me know when your email is back up and running!!!

Colds can't keep me down!!!

2008-06-14T16:05:00.004-06:00

hahmhm, or whatever noise you make whenever you have a frog in your throat. I think Joey was kind enough to share with me his cold yesterday, and today I suffered a bit with lack of energy, but I still managed to have an awesome time on yet another beautiful day of riding! We explored Les Gets this morning. We all got up earlier than our usual 9am wake up time and found our way over the mountain to Les Gets resort where the 2005 world cup was held. It was fun to ride a new area for a while but we got bored of riding break bumps, swampy rutted jumps and flat wooded trails, so we adventured back to Morzine. It was an ADVENTURE cause we didn't know where we were going, all we knew was we were going down and towards the valley! The hiking trail I believe that we were on was called the grand tour, and was it ever. There were a few good elbow dragging berms, but most of the way down consisted of fire roads, bike trail and cow trail. The weather was fairly nice out and the track in Morzine had surprisingly dried out substantially and mud tires were a little sketch on some of the dry corners. Because of this we rode mostly in the tree's where the traction was excellent and the roots and mud made for good fun! Joey called it early, probably figured that he had survived a good week of riding and didn't want to risk anything else before worlds. I cannot blame him since we were just riding faster and faster, yet were getting more tired which eventually leads to disaster. Michael and I took one more and after playing around on the roots up top I had my best run on the bottom of the whole week! It was fast, loose and fun! That was a great way to end it so I called it, I was also tired, because of Joey's stupid cold and hungry.

Eating snacks has got be be one of my favorite activities! Anything tastes great after runs on the Pleney, and my choice of snack for today was about five rice cakes with chocolate hazelnut spread, jam and nuts, a banana, orange and an apple! I told you all I've nearly eaten a fruit basket everyday! Snack time however was cut short to wash my bike. I love how the bikes when wet look so nice but when they dry they look like pieces of junk. All of the dirt streaks show up, its just unpleasant. Anyway, after greasing every bolt on my bike and putting it in my bike box we all went to the store where I bought a heap load of snacks for the next days journey to Italy, and Gluten Free pasta which would be accompanied by an awesome salad! It was the best meal I've had all trip and to top it off I found some chocolate quinua cereal and had that for dessert! Now I am extremely full and stuffed to the brim, even had to unbutton my size 32 shorts, it sure beats not having anything to eat the night before, yet that adventure was worth it and provided me with found memories I will cherish for the rest of my life! No crazy adventures tonight, just some dance offs, packing and general goofing around.

Being in Morzine was a great break from the previous intense race weeks. Riding here I hope has made me a better rider as I feel I am more comfortable now riding on my own bike that doesn't feel so new anymore. This place was so much fun I really hope I get a chance to come back here, and when I do I know I have a place to stay! Now its off to bed and in the morning Val Di Sole Italy for the World Championships of Mountain Biking where Joey will be going for the Junior Downhill gold, GO JOEY!!! We will be team USA personal assistants and will help as much as possible, but also we will all learn as much as possible from the best riders in the world as they too will all be vying for the top box and to be called world champion. Its gonna be awesome, I can't wait!!! Who knows when I will find more internet so for the time being, this is Brian Buell signing off, stay classy America!

Just another day in Morzine, France.

2008-06-13T14:14:00.004-06:00

For some reason I'm having a hard time committing myself to writing this, it feels like homework. The reason being I had such an epic day and I want to go to bed! Lets just say another beautiful day in paradise, 8 laps on the DH, some timed runs, fun runs and slippery runs. In the afternoon after riding some of the sickest trails ever, we walked down our driveway to the road where a road race was taking place. In one day this sleepy town transformed into a road biking mecca, and after the racers went flying by with Michael and I cheering them on, they tore everything down and probably started to head to the next town. Never have I seen a camera man standing on a motorcycle pointing the lens at a cyclist right next to him, nuts I tell you. Road biking gets way more exposure than I could dream downhilling could ever get, and this is just a warm up race for the tour, I can only imagine what the tour is like! That was pretty neat though, I have never witnessed a road race before, so I appreciated it! Cleaning the bikes is turning into a daily choir just like doing the dishes, its non stop mud! I'm not complaining, its so much fun and I can tell I'm getting a lot more comfortable on my bike! Finally after a few days of settling in and working on bikes and other stuff, we all went and explored(everyone but caleb as he was preparing for a date with this french lady from Paris) . Mike, Joey and I took the Kangoo)rental car) up to Alvoriez for the ride of its life! The town is crazy, dead like most other resorts during the off season, but the architecture of the buildings and hotels were something out of Dr Seuss. It looks like someone found as many wood boards as they could, nailed them all together and called it good, but the best part about this place is its situated over a huge cliffside, you don't see that in the states! We went on some four wheeling adventures with the Kangoo and it Kan got err done! We tooled around on some fire roads for a while on the mountain, went through a tunnel, did a car wall ride in it, the Kangoo can go anywhere. So after we tried to rally down the mountain into the town below the cliffs but found a road block and when we tried to come back up, the grade was steeper than what we thought! After some pushing and going nowhere, Michael backed her down the hill, revved the engine and peeled out shifting into second and keeping her pinned the whole way up, sparks flying, rocks spraying, axles stressing. I swear if someone was watching out of one of those hotel windows, they probably would have thought this thing flying up the hill making terrible noises was a rally car doing the Pikes Peak hill climb. I was doubled over rolling on the ground trying to avoid the spray and also laughing so hard, probably the hardest I've laughed in a while, at the sight of michael gripping the wheel close to his chest grinding his teeth trying his hardest to not let up, it kinda looked like he was laughing uncontrollably. Definitely my trip highlight so far, by far the most awesome thing that has ever happened in a Kangoo! After regrouping, we did some photos on the cliffs and did some driving on the sweet curvy mountain roads through montroude nad back to Morzine. I honestly thought we were not going to get back in time for Caleb to go on his date! Now I'm here, just ate about a whole fruit basket today as my food supply has dwindled. Looking forward to some more good riding tomorrow as Les gets lifts open for riding! I really have to pee so good night and god bless! Made it through another friday the 13th!!!

View from outside my window

2008-06-13T01:31:00.004-06:00

It was great sitting here by myself eating breakfast and looking outside the window down out at the town of Morzine and the mountains that surround the area. Its such a good view I figured I should share my breakfast views with all of you! About to suit up and ride, as soon as those lazy bums get out of bed! Yall have a great day now!!!

My Morzine mansion, or should I say...Chalet!

2008-06-12T15:02:00.005-06:00

Its interesting to compare mine and my brothers style of writing, I don't know who is more interesting, but he sure can supply some interesting filler pictures! Anyways, right now I am listening to the wind, rain and church bells outside, Michael, Caleb and a fellow named Peter who shares the mansion with us, its actually called the Eira Chalet, check it out @ http://www.chaletfinder.co.uk/viewpropertyimages.htm?pid=28944
I didn;t rea;;y think about it until now, but the place is pretty much ours!!! HAHA, its glorious, just have to make sure we keep the joint clean otherwise we might have to pay, don't think it will be a problem even with all this mud! Its so nice though, we have a power wash to hose our bikes down with, boot dryers, like a hundred of them hanging on the wall to dry all of our stuff, they are a huge lifesaver, cause evreything from top to bottom is soaked after each day of riding! Yet today I wore my fisherman pants which are real fisherman pants and a simple spray down is all you need to clean them and everything underneath is dry! I love my fisherman pants and was stoked to wear them! We were all in rain stuff today, it didn't rain though, it was just peanut butter, I wish I could find peanut butter, they have no peanut butter! How am I supposed to make a PB&J sandwich? Anyways, the riding is super excellent, great for training and will help in our quest for getting faster! Yesterday was fun because we got to ride all new trails, but today was awesome because we knew what the tracks were like and got to bomb down them getting really loose in the mud...I LOVE MUD! My bike doesn't though, I was working on it for like a day and found about a pound of mud stuck in to nooks and crannies. Shes all ready to go now and I'm so ready to get rowdy tomorrow with my mud tires! Caleb and our British buddy Peter are all hanging out now in the couch room, talking smack and having a good time. They all just got back from the pub which was kinda deserted, certainly no good looking French ladies. I have been on the computer trying to upload pictures, speaking of which check out my facebook photos or my on Flickr.com, http://flickr.com/photos/16919417@N05/ I'm trying to get all of the photos uploading in one place or another by hopefully tomorrow, trying to take full advantage of the internet here! I kinda don't want to leave, I could definitely see myself living here, but I would definitely have to learn some French first, speaking here is really hard and the people are not too helpful either. Found some gluten free bread yesterday, I finally can eat a sandwich, now I need to buy some dough and make myself a pizza, or past! I think I have been living on way too much fruits and veggies even for my taste. It was awesome however when we went down to the farmers market yesterday and I bought a roasted chicken and potatoes, good energy food for riding and great for making delicious salads!!! I'm feeling very good though, been riding hard and no bad injuries or sickness! The mountains here are stunning and I haven't even touched the surface yet, tomorrow after riding I think we are going to to some exploring and check out some of the mountain passes and towns. I will be taking tons more pictures in the next few days so look out for those! I should go to bed about now if I plan on riding well tomorrow, but as you can tell I'm having a great time. Wish I could have some cereal in the morning, cannot find any cereal though, I'll make due! Could go all night, already have just about, but its time to call it a night! More pictures and updates tomorrow!

Frenchie

Yeeeeehaaaaw

2008-06-12T11:43:00.002-06:00

Michael Say:
Just got done riding our second day out here in Morzine. The trails are awesome, and we get to be covered head to toe with mud all day which makes things even better. Don't get to play in the mud to often out there Colorada way, so I always look forward to tuning brown once in a while. The slick fast trails are great to train on, and there are ton's of fast riders around, it will be impossible for all of us to move on from here without getting faster. I think the gondola people hate us though, wiping those things out probably gets old after a while.
Sorry no new pictures from the trip yet, but I promise there will be some soon, in the mean time enjoy the angry cat below, and since pictures are usually more fun then words here is a sweet picture of a scorpion I almost stepped on in the grand canyon a few years ago.

2008-06-11T15:57:00.001-06:00

There hasn't been any photos for a while here, so for those of you picture book liking folk, here ya go.

Michael's Section

2008-06-11T15:53:00.000-06:00

Michael’s first post!!!!!

Well Brian has somehow done a pretty good job keeping this blog going with fairly frequent updates, not really sure where he finds the time, especially with always having to go on adventures to find the internet. Now that we have easy internet access I guess I have no excuse not to contribute a little bit.

So far this trip has been pretty awesome!!! Sure getting all our luggage lost for a week, and having to race on rental bikes was a little annoying, and by a little annoying I mean it kind of blew. Oh well though, at least we got to spend those days hiking around in the Pyrenees (which are awesome mountains), and driving the scenic drive to Barcelona and back.

Andorra

Andorra was awesome, Brian has done a pretty good job filling you in on that one. We had a great time. The place can get a bit overwhelming at times being such a bustling city, but the mountains were pretty spectacular, and one gondola ride puts you up above all the chaos on to one of the coolest bike parks around.

Barcelona

From Andorra we traveled back to Spain again, a few wrong turns later, we found ourselves right in the middle of the city center, a nice reward for having almost no clue how to navigate the ridiculously confusing highway system. We drove right past a bunch of the big monuments and squares with all the giant statues and what not, I recognized a bunch of I from the trip I took to Spain back in High School. We explored around there driving down random roads for a while, half just checking things out, and half having absolutely no Idea which way was the right way to go. Eventually we made our way back out of the city and south toward the airport, we found ourselves the cheapest hotel room we could, (TIP, when traveling with a group of five tell the hotel people you have 2-3 and hide the others while your there, seeing as they charge per head, and we don’t mind sleeping on the floor we find ourselves doing this quite often. Our day off in Spain was pretty rad. After finding the hotel room and unloading all the luggage off the roof of the car we got ourselves some food and headed to the beach to relax for a few hours. I hadn’t been to a real beach in six years I think, and seeing as I spend almost every day in the mountains I was looking forward to this. I would of stayed out there all day but unfortunately we still needed to deal with getting our luggage back.

The Fiasco

Not really an exciting read but this is how it all went down. If you get bored reading as I do I would skip to the next part.

So Brian and I both did a pretty good job I think not freaking out about our lost luggage, and bikes, I’m pretty sure about 99 percent of the people in this world would not of handled things quite so well. I guess that just the way the two of us go about life though, getting all worked up about things and letting it ruin your day, doesn’t make anything any better.

With that said though, I was still pretty frustrated with dealing with the airline people, they were full of nothing but promises and never delivered. Now wanting to do nothing but hang out on the beach, Brian and I headed back to the Airport. My 3^rd time there in less then a week. After talking the guys at the car rental lot into letting us park there, we headed in. We had lost the paperwork needed to clear security to get to the lost baggage people (and by we I mean Brian), so after dealing with a bunch of unhappy people, me speaking poor Spanish and them speaking poor English. I got in, Brian was cut of and had to wait. After a half hour of phone calls, they tell me the luggage will hopefully arrive back to the airport sometime the next day. I in no way believed them after they had failed to come through everyday for the last week, but we hoped this time things would work out. The next day we went back to the air port again early. I worked my way through security with the right paper work this time. I get the the office, they call around and now tell me that the baggage wont be back now for 3-4 days, from what it sounded like it was close to the airport, but this is how much time it takes them to get stuff checked back into there system, After letting them know as nicely as I could that this was completely unacceptable, and how bad they were messing up our vacation due to the contents of the luggage, they were able to make a few more phone calls and that 3-4 days turned into 1 hour. Funny how that works. They send us to some back office across the street from the main terminal, I guess this is there way of getting around the check in time, and soon a truck pulls up with all of our stuff, and surprisingly undamaged. Needless to say we were quite relieved to have our stuff back and to finally get on with our trip.

Scottland

Traveling to Scotland was a breeze. All our luggage arrived so already we were about a million percent ahead of last week. The Train ride up to Ft William was absolutely gorgeous. This time last year I didn’t think Scotland was a place I’d get to anytime in the near future, so all in all it was pretty awesome to be there. I’d say so far from all the traveling I’ve done it is definitely up there amongst my favorites. Racing there as well was on another level. The locals are so into the sport, and the atmosphere was awesome. Oh yeah, and they have this Bannana Milk there which is basically like the best stuff ever put in a bottle.

France

Now were in France, I was hoping to do a little better recap on my thoughts of the trip so far but its getting late and I want to get some sleep as we will ride all day tomorrow.

The riding here is really good, and from what it sounds like we have just scratched the surface. We’ve somehow managed to find ourselves a place to stay in this really nice chalet. We were wandering around on the streets and asked a random dude on the street riding a bike if he had any recommendations on where to stay around here he made a phone call and set us up with this guy named Simon who owns this place.

Its off season right now and the place isn’t technically open, there are two other guys more or less living here for the Summer and then the caretaker. So 7 of us total living in this huge place. So basically its like were staying in our own private mansion.

Lots more to talk about but I’m going to bed, more to come tomorrow, and hopefully lots of sweet photos.

Traveling: Ft William to Morzine, France!

2008-06-10T17:26:00.004-06:00

Ugh, we finally made it after two flights, lost baggage and a night sleeping underneath the stairs in the train station in Geneva, Switzerland. Today started out very slowly, and with a security guard staring over me telling me to wake up in french. Travel information desk didn't open till 10:30, and the plan carrying the rest of our bags would not arrive until 12:30, so we all had some time to kill and with the security guard waking us at 6:30 it was a long morning! Luckily I found a grocery store where I bought some fruit, yogurt and chocolate milk. Joey completed his first sudoku puzzle ever and Michael and Caleb spent their morning wandering around asking for info and watching bike videos studying. We ended up renting a car after finding our bags, this car wasn't very big and the pack job we had to do was hilarious, but it got the job done. I'll provide pics after I download them, sorry I can't find the cord at the moment? Anyways, driving through Geneva into France we were informed by some arrogant French security guard that Swiss rental cars can only spend 8 days in Europe, they are not a part of the union? Confused we agreed and moved on, we have the car for 27 days and we all agreed we would deal with that then! The Alps are pretty neat, and I have just seen the start of em! We drove through town after town till we made our way to Les Gets, found information and was told that the lift would not run till sunday, the town was pretty dead so we headed on down the road to Morzine where there is also tons of riding, and when all the lifts are running you can bike into Les Gets and also back into Switzerland. Hungary, we found the only place open, lucky me it was a pizza place, I'm really craving pizza right now, bu they do not do rice crust anywhere! We spoke with a few locals and they hooked us up with this guy by the name of Simon, he runs a Chalet just on the edge of the hill. The place is awesome, two rooms, a large lounge area upstairs with pool, internet and TV, a place to store our bikes and a very nice women who made up our rooms by the name of Jill, It is also the early season here, pretty much the off season, not much going on as the snow is all almost melted off. It was raining and the temperatures dropped from those in the valley, but should make for some awesome riding tomorrow! I can't wait to just ride, train and have fun for a while with now schedules to fallow but our own. It really is a beautiful place here, can't wait to explore the area which we should seeing that we have a car. Wish I could speak french, but its not all that bad because most people speak english as well. Its getting to be pretty late now, Caleb and I are just finishing up on the Internet, which is addicting , and I'm looking forward to a warm bed and some sleeping in, we in to at least 8 I think would be n ice, then riding all day long!!! Still can't get over being in Scotland last week, now we are here in Morzine, finally, it is time to sleep!

Ft William: Race day!!!

2008-06-10T11:10:00.004-06:00

Oh boy what a week!!! I had a very surreal moment in my qualifying run yesterday as soon as I crested up over the Nissan arch jump starring down towards the grandstand finish area. I had watched so many movies and have seen riders do this many times before, but actually doing it at that moment made me pause for a second, and I thought to myself, I’m doing here, doing it, time slowed down for just a second and little video clips of past movies ran through my mind, then time sped back up again and I executed exactly what I just visualized and saw myself not from a riders point of view, but from a spectators, weirdest experience I’ve ever had riding! I think the past few days of riding were catching up to me and fatigue was setting in, or the golf game I played the day before screwed up my arms because I had massive arm pump, it was really bad! Yes, I did play golf and it was awesome! I had made friends with the owners of the Ft William Country Club and Caleb and I played a round as one of their guests. The course was different to say the least, your never going to play on a course like this. It was full of rolling hills and natural terrain which made it tough, but the surroundings were so breathtaking that I didn’t even care how I played, just the fact that I was there was enough make me extremely happy. I figured if I didn’t play golf in Scotland I would regret it, now, back to the bikes. Compared to the first few days, race day I felt weaker, I still haven’t figured it out but it played a major factor in the way I rode my run. I didn’t psyche myself out or anything neither, I was riding well, liked the course and had finally figured out all of my lines. Before the race run I chilled out with my fan club, all seven of em, just a few kids I met at a bus stop, they made me a banner which was awesome! While watching the women qualify I ate an energy bar and drank plenty of water, so lack of energy shouldn’t have been a problem. At the top of the gondola I did my warm up, a variation of one at least; really don’t have a set warm up yet, I more or less just ride around visualizing, looking through turns, do jumping jacks and other dynamic warm ups. The start was delayed for around 20 minutes, I watched some riders set off down the hill before I went up for my run. I also took in the view from the top taking mental pictures all the way up to my race run as I was in the gate, figured it would keep me relaxed. My run was a mixed bag of great, good and bad riding! Out of the gate I felt a little twitchy and not as loose as I would have liked to have been, as soon as I entered into the rough sections I started to ride faster, however I made mistakes and my arms started to pump up causing my hands to lose their grip. After giving all I had up top I tried to be smooth and to have fun on the bottom but it was too late, my hands were gone and my technique was faltering. I made it down successfully through the middle tree section, but it was slow, and as I came out of the forest and entered in the last stretch called the motor way, I was holding on for dear life, death gripping my bars and letting out joyous heehaws off of all jumps as I knew I had just about made it. Then on the last table top jump, the excitement of finishing turned to fear of endowing over my handlebars as my bike bucked me forward nearly ending it all, but it didn’t and I finished into the arena and I could hear my fan club yelling from the top of the stands, I gave then a little point and a wave, my day was done as I finished out of the top 80. The rest of the day was an awesome display of riding from Greg Minnar and Tracy Mosely as they were the victors. Ft William was and probably will be the coolest race I will ever compete in, the fans were amazing, the numbers were outstanding and the environment was a celebration of bikes, also I was listening to the race at the top on the radio, when does that ever happen? After, we rode our bikes back on the bike path for one more time, did some wall rides on a castle and then packed and celebrated our weekend of riding long into the night!

2008-06-06T15:15:00.001-06:00

Ft William... DOING IT!!!

2008-06-06T15:01:00.002-06:00

Glasgow to Ft William

Green street station platform seven, this was where our adventure to FT William from Glasgow begins. After spending what seemed like hours in the apple store I walked outside to find myself engulfed in the city, it was the weirdest feeling walking out of a place that felt so familiar into an unfamiliar city in the middle Scotland. I have experienced these feeling many times over the last week and a half. Just to think that I’ve been to Andorra already and will probably never go back there again unless there is another bike race. I suppose you just have to live in the moment and take everything in as it happens. All of us were stoked to catch the train, we had to talk with the conductor first to make sure that it was ok that we could carry all of our luggage on, but once that was done we were off cruising through the countryside passing sheep, castles and small villages while moving at a moderate speed. The country is amazing out here, I like to consider Moab, Utah as God’s country, I might have to add northern Scotland to the list as the rolling hillsides and the lush forests fuel my imagination dreaming of dragon’s, braveheart, Robin Hood and other fictional childhood fantasy tails. I have to admit though, being up here kind of reminds me about Harry Potter, it’s like I’m in Hogsmead right now! It was a brilliant four hour train ride to the town of Ft Bill as they call it here. While on the train we meet a fellow by the name of Dale, he is a mechanic for the chain reaction boy’s and was one of the nicest people I have met, most people are extremely nice up in these parts, but they have such thick accents that sometimes things get strewn about within conversation and I forgot what the heck I was talking about in the first place. Dale helped me carry my bags to our room once we found a place to stay, what a nice bloke.

Ft William

Like I said above this place is a bit like something out of Harry Potter, the main street at least is. Our hotel is situated above the main street, so the sounds of the bar patrons echo long into the night through our windows. There are many shops, bars and restaurants, but the best deal on food has to be in the super market as there is a salad bar for a set price which we all have taken advantage of. Ft William is the largest village between here and Glasgow and does offer the familiar McDonald’s restaurant with their hilarious tastes of America menu, it’s also a good place to get free internet! I would really like to cruise around town one of these nights and visit some of the local pubs and divulge in some of the customary eats but for right now I’m just trying to survive the long rides to and from the race venue and the DH course at the moment. I saw schools of kids up at the race venue today, massive amounts of people walking the pits and course and its only Friday. As good of job that Ft William does organizing this event, they still need to accommodate the biker without any form of transportation between the town and venue, It is a 7 mile ride to a from the race venue, and on the way there it is about a 4% grade the whole way, definitely a good warm up ride!

The Course

After watching a dozen race movies featuring the same Ft William Course over the last few years it sure was a trip actually being here and riding the same thing! When I spoke of surviving the course earlier, it’s just that, survival out there! I got a pinch flat my first run down, so I got to walk the majority of the course getting a good look of most of the lines and how they were being ridden. It was a tough day as Michael and I had our difficulties getting our new bikes dialed in. I messed up my derailleur a bit breaking the chain and Michael with the crash of the day went flying heads first into a face first slide down the backside of a road gap jump, he also broke his derailleur after suffering a blown bead and an explosive tube that stopped him dead and sent him flying in the first place. Today however was much better! Magura breaks and Shimano have been a huge help as well as Maxxis for letting us store our packs behind their tent and allowing me to use some tools. The first run was tough, my hands were in pain and I was unfocused the whole way down thinking about my soft rear suspension. Caleb helped me dial it in for the next run as we added a little more high speed compression to the mix allowing the glide and skip over the wallowing holes that had developed over the course of a day. There are two different personalities to the course, the top is exposed and all man made on the top of the Ben Nevis, lots of huge rocks and berms, really fun once you can get the flow down staying as loose as possible using every inch of travel whether it be in your fork or your arms. The bottom half consists of some technical woods and a peddle section which jumps called the motor speedway, new to this year is a road gap the bypasses a rock slow rock section. The finish area is really fun, after having absolutely no jumps in Andorra, it is nice to be able to take breaks while in the air before having to peddle more already exhausted from the last 4 minutes of the course. All in all the course is a good one, it took me a while to warm up to it, but now I’m feeling more confident and ready to race come Sunday, still have some work to do finding my lines however.

Shenanigans

Joey being our tour guide to Ft William took us to this sweet castle where we did some wall rides and messed around a little bit. I’ve spent a fair bit of time out in the streets riding around testing my suspension and I’m pretty sure most people think I’m a bit crazy watching me bounce around all over the place. For those who don’t know, there are these bugs that are called midges, and much like mosquitoes, they are annoying, bite and are absolutely everywhere, while talking to Tracy Moseley’s parents, they said it’s the worst year yet for the little buggers. Mountain cross training was tough; Rudy didn’t have a good run and didn’t qualify, so now he is a spectator. I’m developing a sweet Scottish accent and am thinking of getting a kilt. Today I also talked to the owners of the Golf Club who were really nice; I think I might golf one of these days, check that off of the bucket list. Now the boys are in the room eating fish and chips and after they are done we are going to watch 4X and hopefully not get attacked by midges.

Joeys Section

The trip has been awesome so far. I’m glad things are starting to work smoothly. Andorra was a rough week for all with bikes not showing up and all. I only had a few runs on the track before the race and then had a fairly poor run in qualifying. The track was very slippery during qualies and fairly dry the day before when I was riding it. I had a chance to meet up with some locals there and they showed me some of Cedric’s secret trails. It was really good training to ride on the steep, off camber, rooty, wet tracks there. It will certainly be good for the World Champs in two weeks. From what I’ve seen the track will be steep, rooty, and knowing Europe, wet. Looks like Usa cycling took a full team of 7 for the USA Junior team. I’m really looking forward to that race. Runs are going well here in Fort William. Having ridden this track at last years Junior World Champs has been helpful. The track is the same so I already know quite a bit about it and will be able to improve and build off the mistakes I made racing here last year. It’s such a rough track it’s hard to even do a full run but I think tomorrow I will try to a few timed runs. The Yeti is set up really well for this track and is getting up to speed well. The boys at Fox got my suspension al dialed and a bit stiffer for all the holes on the track. Rough is an understatement for this track. One more day of practice then quails and Race on Sunday. I really want to make top 80 and race in the finals, hopefully go top 50 then. There’s just loads and loads of fast euro guys over here you have never even herd of. Thanks to Maxxis too for letting me pit with them. I did runs with Sabrina today which was real fun. She is definitely fast and a cool person. .She also introduced me to a fast French girl today too and I got to do a few runs with her J I miss every body at home but we are having the times of our lives. The Buells are great guys to travel with and I love how they always keep an awesome attitude no matter how hard the airlines are screwing them. I can’t wait to get to Morzine and Pila next week for some riding with out the pressures of racing. Should be real good fun and good training for worlds too. I will try to do a few more updates on brains blog over the next few weeks as well.

Joey

Apple store in Glasgow, Scotland!

2008-06-04T03:53:00.002-06:00

Here we are sitting in the apple store in Glasgow, Scotland using internet that doesn't cost a dime which is nice because I'm slow at this typing business and thinking on my feet while the clock is ticking is not my thing on a computer at least!

Quick recap of the last weekend and few days!

The weekend was described by as Michael as a sort of of bust! I think the weekend from a riding standpoint was more of a bust, but the weekend as a whole was quite awesome! The level of riding that was on display was amazing, and the atmosphere was great! I love having my stuff, like everything, I packed my house it seems like, but in a way it was nice just totting around only a bag. It was not nice however the items I had to borrow from friends. I was grateful for the help, but it was a pretty expensive weekend since we had to rent bikes. Hopefully the airlines will compensate for everything! That was the weekend, a great place to stay (thanks Caleb's mom!), breakfast every morning, and a brisk 5 minute walk to the gondola provided for exercise everyday!

The race: Michael and I both had one day of training on these rental bikes! They were ok, not high end, tuned machines but they did the trick alright! I dove straight into practice heads first flying as fast as I could, since I new all of the lines and had envisioned it beforehand I was comfortable going for it trying to make up for lost time! Crashed a few times, but I found my speed. Race day quickly approached and after a near successful full practice run, and another run in which i sectioned off the course, I was in the gate ready to qualify in my jean pants and Michael's jersey! I had a great run al the way to the end, I might have been right on the pace, but I fell in the last corner! I had taken it fairly conservative in the mud, which was just peanut butter by now after about 200 competitors had already stirred the course up! It would have been a thing of legend to have qualified, but I was close and pretty happy! All of the other guys faired all right, only the big boys qualified, non from our group, but I have a great feeling abou fort william! It was a great learning experience as always, and we all had a great time at the after party!

The following day, we packed up, still without bikes and bags and drove back through the scenic countryside to Barcelona! By the afternoon we were on the beach, eating fish and checking out the views! All full and tired we retreated to a hotel near the coast and relaxed! Joey and Rudy tried to go to a disco but failed to find one. Michael and I went to the airport to demand satisfaction and that was what was delivered, the next day! They told us 3-4 days, but somehow after a few calls and some custom's clearing, the bikes at 1pm on Tuesday were back in our possession, finally! It was a big relief and I was glad to see that the baggage people actually felt for us as they described this as a colossal mistake, which is still and understatement! Just the first week in our six week Europe trip, hopefully things go a little smoother from here!

After a few flights and some slumber in the airport we are awaiting a train to take us to the FT, but for now I would like to get out of this apple store to explore the city of Glasgow! Hopefully riding in Ft William next time I post! Until then...Cheers!

Yo!!!

2008-06-03T17:46:00.001-06:00

In the airport in London! More to come when I have free internet!

Andorra Update: No bikes :(

2008-05-30T14:36:00.002-06:00

So anyways, I haven't downloaded new pictures yet because I've been busy trying to find out where my bike are! At first I was cool with the fact that the airlines would deliver our stuff right to the door, but when it never shows it tends to get my a wee bit peeved! Right now I am outside of the pizza joint stealing their internet, trying to communicate with the outside world! I feel a little vulnerable right now since I have no clue where the bikes are, there really isn't such a thing as a tracking number over here is Spain. They also have no sense of urgency over here, Michael just today went to Barcelona to look for our bikes and we found nothing, Joey found his bike in the back corner of a room half strung around the room! Its a load of crap!!! They told us they would promise that the bikes would be here today, direct words out of the ladies mouth to michael and still nothing! At least I have the course memorized so when I hop on the course tomorrow on a rental bike that I will have to pay for in order to get my number of runs necessary to even qualify for the event. I'll be the one running a red Commencial in blue jeans and a hoody. At least i had my helmet with me during the flight! I'm still having a great time and learning heaps over here, but even the most patient people become unpatient and I'm tired of waiting! Maybe we will get some sort of compensation out of this ordeal, first class perhaps, who knows? All I know is my bike is not here, I'm wearing the same underwear that I have been since Monday. I'm just greatfull that I am surrounded by supportive people, a great environment, surrounding and bikes! Honestly as fired up as I am for not being able to ride my bike, which is becoming to be torture, I would rather be doing this than just about anything! I am experiencing a new culture and place with very different people who are for the most past friendly. As I sit here starring across the street at my hotel about to wonder over and go to bed, I wonder what tomorrow has in store for me as the whole trip so far has been an adventure and the fact that I'm even over here is still mind bottling! I hope everyone is doing well and having a great summer so far, I can tell this is going to be one to remember!!! Here are some pics to munch on. Buenos Noches!!!

Euro trash

EUROPE!!! This just in, its weird!

2008-05-28T12:17:00.004-06:00

What up everyone, or should I say Buenos Dias, or Bonjour! Currently I am typing within a pizzaria in Vollnord, Andorra with my brother, Caleb Cambern, Steve Wentz and David Camp. Technically it is Day 3 on our European extravaganza of a trip and we all are having an awesome time!!! Here is all of the trip thus far in a nutshell, a really big nutshell! After successfully packing probably too much stuff, we set out @ 4:30 in the morning, once arriving at the airport we were informed that our bike box weighed too much. We had to re-pack and re-weigh until our bike box and bags weighed the appropriate amounts, and then we sat on our butts for 3 hours waiting for our flight that was delayed for 2 hours. This delayed flight will soon prove to be more of a problem later on. A quick transfer flight in Miami and we were 10 hours to Madrid. I should mention that on my first flight from Denver to Miami was awesome because we both were awarded exit seats that boasted extreme leg room, on the next flight we were not so lucky. A little cramped and with a stiff neck we made it to Madrid early in the morning, spanish time, midnight our time in Colorado. Rudy Unrau showed up right as we arrived in Madrid and shared the flight with us, a nice pleasant 45 min hope and skip later we arrived in Barcelona to learn our baggage never made the Miami to Madrid transfer. No worries, the airport will deliver right, lets just get a rental car and start driving. Joey and Caleb successfully arrived earlier, Caleb with all of his stuff, Joey minus a bike and us with nothing. Negotiations and bartering became the name of the game to get a good deal on a car for five people and all their stuff to travel for the week in. We wanted a bike Jumper mobile, but could only manage a smaller sized mini van thing. After the worst pack job with resulted with 3 people sitting up front and Rudy and I in the back surrounded by gear, we found a hardwear store, bought some twine and tide down the bikes to the roof freeing up space in the car for all to have a seat. Finding Andorra was pretty difficult, Michael I swear went in about 20 circles, but we would finally find our way up north along the coastline to the Small country of Andorra. After stopping at several bars along the way to celebrate Rudy's and Joey's legality, and driving through some amazing country filled with castles and mountains we crossed the border into funland. I call it this because Andorra does not tax and cars, motorcycles and beer do not cost very much and they sure like to show it whit stores on all corners. For you Coloradians, picture the town of Vail and maximize it 100 times. After everyone nodded off to sleep several times in the car, we saw it, our 3 star hotel Marco Polo. We found this here pizzarea, ate some dinner and went to bed tired, semi jet lagged and stoked on being in a crazy cool place that in my wildest dreams I never imagined visiting.

Today, Wednesday the 28th, we had all awake to the sound of construction cramped into our two bed box room a little dazed and confused. The place has no windows to the outside, just a wall, so not much natural sunlight actually appears making it seem like it was still the night time and not 9am. The breakfast buffet was real good on a hungry stomach before we went to registration. There are over 250 competitors with my number being 220, and michael's 246. It was sunny outside and warm, which didn't last long but for the time being we enjoyed a nice gondola ride up the mountain. The scenery is incredible, cows littered the mountainside and the Pyranese peaks rose out of the earth in every direction. Later we walked the course, which looks real fun and very similar to those in Colorado and a mixture of some others I've done in the years past. Lots to memorize, best to get a lot of laps trying to get our lines dialed, if we get our bikes anytime soon. We are still currently waiting for our bikes to be delivered as well as the rest of our clothes and equipment. However, even though we are living out of the same clothes we were wearing Monday, at least Michael is, I packed a change of in my carry on, we all are having a great time experiencing a new culture, meeting new people and seeing old friends. Even in my bike never arrives, it should, but if that were to happen I think this weekend is going to be one of the coolest ones ever!!! Its getting late and I'm the only one at my table still typing so I should probably get going, until next time which should be soon, take care and check back later for more wild and wacky European adventures!

Still packing!!!

2008-05-25T22:59:00.003-06:00

Hello friends,

Brian here, as always, I don't think Michael will be posting very much even though I know he is a master emailer with you ski teamers! I'll try to get him to post here, it'll be a nice change of pace from my usually long rants!

Anyways, here we are, our last night in Colorado before we head to Europe! I'm still packing as I write this, almost on my last bit of packing, should only take me the rest of the night as I've been packing and re-packing all day long. I don't think staying up late for three nights straight was such a great Idea but it had to be done! Last night was my Sisters graduation party and the previous nights were spent hanging with friends celebrating the summer, my birthday and things to come!

This trip has been nearly a year in the making and is a big deal as michael and I embark upon the International stage! My feelings are of excitement and some uncertainty as this will be the first time I have been traveling without my own means of transportation as well as being overseas! This isn't the only reason why I'm feeling anxious, the first race of our trip is a World Cup, the worlds largest stage of mountain, and if thats not enough, it'll be my first race of the 2008 season! Ah, we have the skills, just have to make sure our heads are on straight and that we ride and practice smart!

Its starting to get a little late here, and I still have to pack and clean up a little bit. Look forward to catching my next post in Europe, possibly Barcelona as we will be staying the day, maybe hitting up a disco with Juicler(Joey Schusler) and Rudy Rudy Rudy...Unrau, that night, and will be heading up to Andorra via private bus, thanks mike, the next morning. It's gonna be awesome, hopefully all of our baggage shows and I get some sleep tonight!!!

Brian Buell

Working it!

2008-05-20T23:19:00.003-06:00

Hey everyone, hows it going? Today on the hillside it was 128 degrees...WTF! The sun was beating down so hot that my pants were melting to my skin. Let me explain how it gets so hot on the hill. First of all we work on the side of a volcano with Basalt rock littered all about creating an oven that just cooks us alive! However, we do get some work done, even though it is hot enough to fry an egg! The trails are coming alive and the jump trail that we started last year is almost finally done, its a bummer I'll be in Europe when its all completed, oh well!

After work we were bombarded by the team and helping them build their bikes, and before I knew it dinner time had come and gone! Its been like that a lot here lately, not enough time in the day to do everything I want to do! Been going to bed late lately, I'm pretty sure this Europe trip just needs to happen because the anticipation is working me over!!! Michael and I are packing things up though right now and will roll back into B town tomorrow for a weekend of prep and fun before we head! My sister is going to graduate high school which is a trip as it seems just yesterday that it was me walking across the stage. I cannot wait for the days to come as they will bring me ever closer to flying across the pond and giving my all at this DH racing thing! Rant over, more to come!!!

Night everyone!

~Bri Guy~

My 21st Birthday!

2008-05-20T00:29:00.002-06:00

Today I spent my 21st pretending to work instead of working! I lounged around the house and pretty much just took it easy until the guys got off real work. I was with just cruising around the place all day, and I was ok with that because I know my life is going to be a little crazy for the next few months, so when I can get a day like this, I'll take advantage of it!

After the guys got back and two tube swaps on Michael's bike later we were off to ride our bikes! We did some DH runs in Gleenwood testing out our new sick rides. The bikes performed very well so I am very happy! It got dark so we went to the local tex mex joint, ordered my first drink, a house margarita, and ate some good food with good people! To cap off the night I was given a free dessert and a sombrero to wear while the restaurant employees sang me happy birthday in spanish. The dance party in the car on the way back with strobe light wrapped up the night! Time to buy some more plane tickets for the Euro trip and to go to bed! Check out some pics and description here: http://ridemonkey.com/forums/showthread.php?t=202553

Good Day,

Ol' Man Buell

Time to party!

2008-05-19T02:18:00.003-06:00

Hey everyone! As of 12:00pm tonight I turned 21 years old and earned the right to walk into any establishment selling alcoholic beverages! Being that I don't really care to spend money on car bombs and cement mixers, I'm not extremely excited and stoked about being another year older, instead of getting my fix at the bars tonight, I will be using screw driver to fix my bike as Europe is only one week away! Last night I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning building my new downhill rig for the season, I'm super excited about how it came out, I mean it looks great, feels great and actually works while riding down a hill, which is crucial. I still don't know where to draw the line on how long I should write these things, many of you might find my ranting and raving about bikes boring, which is why I will provide as many pictures as possible, but I'll try my best to keep it interesting.

I would like to do a full preseason report filling all of you in on the early season racing and riding as well as just general riding done in preparation for this epic Europe trip. I think that will be my next post after I conjure up some more photos and when its not 2:30 in the am!

Speaking of the Europe trip, which is only a week a way, holy crap, there is much to be done before then! Some good news, while the US economy continues to slip and slid ever further down the drain, at least buyers on Ebay still haven't received this message. I posted 18 items on Ebay to sell, all old bike parts, its like an online garage sale, mostly junk yet in total I have accumulated over $2000 dollars for my trip. On top of that good ol' George has supplied me with some more spending money to use on other countries economies, thank you Mr Bush!!! Other than making/saving money for this endeavor, there is a lot to pack, jerseys to pick up and bikes to test! Speaking of bikes, here is the latest on my NEW Rotec RL9 which was born in my garage late last night after spending 10 hours in labor. She is a beaut and weighs in at 44.3 pounds, but will be going on a diet soon which willslim her down to a proper 43.5lbs. I suppose this has been enough bloggering it up for one night, hopefully for the 10 of you who see this, most likely, it has been an enjoyable one! Thanks for the read, and enjoy the pics!!! http://flickr.com/photos/16919417@N05/

Cheers friends,

Brian Buell

My first post: T minus 11 days till Europe

2008-05-14T23:03:00.003-06:00

Hey y'all, its almost that time! Michael and I, as well as a few other friends will be taking flight in 10 days to Barcelona, Spain, where we will be traveling to the 2nd World Cup of the year, Vallnord, Andorra. I'm really excited about this trip and cannot wait to experience other countries and their cultures! The idea of this trip was a just a thought 7 months ago and now its a reality and is about to happen. I don't really know what to expect, but I know its going to be great! I would like to thank everyone that has made an impact in my life and my drive towards mountain biking, I wouldn't be in this position today if it wasn't for all of you, thanks!