So sometimes

my ideas sound good in my head but aren't so good in practice. Take yesterday, for instance. I thought it would be a good idea to go ride for a few hours, eat a little breakfast and then ride home. Well, maybe if it had been a little breakfast it would have been a sound plan. However, the 2 by 6 at the Railroad Inn located in Downtown North Freedom is a substantially greater quantity of food than "a little."

2 eggs, 2 pancakes, 2 pieces of toast, 2 sausage links, 2 bacon and American Fries (yes, I know that's not 2 of something but whatever.) Add syrup to taste and voila!

So the ride home went like this, "Please keep this 3 lb rock in my stomach from forcefully ejecting itself." Meat, Bryan and I were all in the same tenuous condition. I can honestly say that it's possible to have too much of a good thing. I can also say that I look forward to doing it again.

Time to breathe

So we got home on Friday night in time to unpack and reload to drive up to Eau Claire for the Firecracker. We got to race a race named The Firecracker 2 weekends in a row, isn't that special? I'm especially thankful that I was able to finish the 2nd race not feeling like I did in the photo from the 1st one! Holy cow, that was a whole different kind of pain. I must have gained some red blood cells or something at altitude as I was feeling pretty good yesterday. My second best ever finish at a WORS race as I pulled of a 4th here. Craaazy. Fun race with lots of fun singletrack and enough open area to allow passing and playing catch up. The last stupid rock pile we had to ride through allowed me to pilot my sweet ass bike over the stupid sharp loose rocks faster than the guy who attacked the last 1/2 lap and I got a pretty good gap to going into the finish chute. Still not with the Big Dogs but I may be inching closer. Now it's time to recover from vacation and back to work. I have to start playing the lottery more often.

It's all downhill from here

At least when we were at the top of the lift. Today we went to Keystone Mountain and met up with Terry (former Baraboo area resident) and we rode bikes the easy way. Sat on the lift up and launched ourselves down the hill on some sweeeet singletrack. It was like 2 1/2 hours of Super D practice without the annoying running at the start. We put on almost 30 miles of descending! The Epic was amazing and we all had big grins on our faces and we were laughing and yelling on the way down. Having fun on bikes is a great brand of fun to have. We tried one of the runs with the added "features" or "attractions" and had a couple close calls. Bryan tried to eat a log that was innocently laying by the side of the trail after one of the said "features" and earned the new nickname of "The Beav". He was ok for the most part but lost some skin on his nose. The crash looked pretty ugly, we were glad he got up. Sponsor showed us how to do the table top jumps and Chris showed us how to ride with no rear brake since his decided to blow a seal.
When we first got there some dude on a full on DH rig recommended we "lower our seats because it gets pretty steep." Yeah, I'll do that right after I put on my baggy shorts.

Firecracker 50 Explosion!

Well, I did anyway. The course was amazing although on the first lap as I was riding said amazing trails I couldn't help but think that I had to ride all this stuff again! Holy crap! I managed to finish the race but it was far from pretty. 13th place wasn't exactly what I had hoped for but it is what it is. Everyone had a good time especially Michelle and Lisa who took 2nd in the Women's Duo. Lisa was in a two up sprint for 2nd at the finish. I missed it as I was in line getting us beers when it happened. Yes, the us was Lisa and I. I saw her coming down the switchbacks to finish following what I thought was a guy and then turned out to be the girl in 2nd place. So it was another good day of riding bikes. Now we get to ride for fun!