Sunday, June 29, 2008
Broken Bikes equals many friends here in Germany!
Race Recap
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.
Friday, June 27, 2008
This Just In
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!
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Germany
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!!!
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Shladming Adventure Continued
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
Saturday, June 21, 2008
World Championship Update
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!!!
Friday, June 20, 2008
Its about time - World Championships!!!
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
Saturday, June 14, 2008
HAPPY FATHERS DAY DAD!!!
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!
Love,
Michael and Little Bull
PS Let me know when your email is back up and running!!!
Colds can't keep me down!!!
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!
Friday, June 13, 2008
Just another day in Morzine, France.
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
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!!!
Thursday, June 12, 2008
My Morzine mansion, or should I say...Chalet!
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
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.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Michael's Section
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
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
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 3rd 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
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.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Traveling: Ft William to Morzine, France!
Ft William: Race day!!!
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
Friday, June 6, 2008
Ft William... DOING IT!!!
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
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
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.
Joey