Velocity101: Hack a lung

The Firestone classic went down this last weekend in the backwoods of Santa Barbara. It was my first time attending this race so I was excited, mostly because Sanjay had amped about how great this race was the previous year. The course was fun to ride, not so fun to race. I take most of the blame for it being as how I am in arguably the worst shape of my life. We (Wes, Adrian(my brother) and I) pulled the 'ol "drive all night and arrive a couple of hours before the race" thing, it seems to not be working out too well for me.
Anyway, we arrived at the venue at around 3am, pulled up next to Tommy's trailer and crashed out for a couple of hours. The sun came out and it was already starting to warm up, it was to be a very hot day out in the hills of S.B.
With registration out of the way ($$$) I returned to camp and found that Brad Oien and Hank Cadle were in a tent right next to my truck all snuggled up. We all got our gear on and headed up to the shuttle. The course started off flat and pedaly with a couple of jumps to keep things interesting-ish. A couple of turns later you gained momentum as you hurled yourself down the open hill, just as you start to get stoked on the speed, the dreaded S-turns show up and completely kill the vibe. After the turns you hit the step-down and into the last section which was pretty cool. Fast, loose berms and jumps added flow...That is, till you had to hammer the XC-style finish stretch.

Pretty impressive turnout for the pro division however, in spite of the track. Cameron Cole took the win followed by a slew of top name pros from all over the world. I took the prized spot of third to last for my impressive showing of out-of-shapeness. After the racing was over it was time to head into town. Boo-Koo's (Austin Doner) house was packed. The festivities began promptly and there were a bunch of cool people there to hang out with. Griz, Martin and I decided to bail on the party for a bit and check out the bar scene downtown. Austin's house is within a 10-minute walk to downtown Santa Barbara which is beyond convenient. The bars/clubs were shakin' as always and there were cougars on the prowl. Martin was overwhelmed by the selection at the first bar called O'malley's and Griz agreed that it was a certified "den." We returned to Austin's house at about 2am and to my surprise everyone was still awake. Didn't last long though, as the minutes passed the people began to slow down until finally everyone passed out. The next morning people were not very keen on going riding. Griz had slept on a pack of toilet paper, David K under the stairs and many others on the hardwood floor. After a group breakfast at Denny's we decided to split from the group and drive down to Laguna and ride those trails instead. Thanks to our chiefer Merrrjig we got a fair amount of runs in before the sun went down. After all the shuttling we hit up a local Chinese food place and got our grub on. I made a mistake and threw away my plate in the wrong trash can...Bad news, Roxy got ahold of the plate and made a mess at the Mop's house. Another sleep-deprived weekend in the books, next weekend is the Fontana National not to mention my good friend Sanjay will be back in town. Should be a good one.