Wal-Mart has dirtjumps now

Not really but the Wal-Mart down in Nasty-City has some pretty sick dirtjumps a couple of feet away from the parkinglot/campground. Checkitit out this video, darkness was falling so it is a bit hard to see.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v638/Fonse03/Bloggg/?action=view&current=MOV00658.flv

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.

Pro winner Cameron Cole (photo. merrrjig)

Honkey-Tonk Hank Cadle, on his way to

Domination-of-Alf (photo by Merrr, duh).

*First photo www.downhillnews.com

Weekend of destruction.

Off weekends (weekends without racing) are always interesting. They often end up being last-minute/spur of the moment "let's do this" type of deals. That was the case this past weekend. It all started with Hank calling me up late Friday night and informing me that Brad and him were on their way down to my house for some shuttling and Dirtjumping. Cool, I said...and in less than 2 hours they arrived at my house.

On these particular types of weekends there is no rush to do anything. We (Hank, Brad, my brother and I) woke Saturday at about 10am and proceeded to go down to the garage and ready the bikes for riding. We ended up leaving the house at about 12pm which turned out to be perfect timing. We met up with local tweaker T.J and other local DHers to shred some trails that were in superb condition. Brad found my "sarape" (Mexican blanket) from when I was about 5 years old and wore it the whole day. I found some super fly astro shades that my grandma must have left behind and was sportin' those to get maximum UV protection.

The trails were epic. It had rained the day before so the dirt was extremely tacky and oh so niccceeee. Quote from Captain America himself, Hank Cadle: "I felt like friggen Sam Hill or something down those runs, grrrraaaapppppp!!" Unfortunately for Mr Hillwannabe his semi slick had different plans and he popped it on the 4th shuttle and was demoted to shuttle driver.

After Ted Williams we decided to head out to the dirtjumps and try our hand at some gnarly steep hits. We were wiped out from the day's descending so we only jumped for a little while.

Saturday night was long, as in we saw the sun come out and we were not even heading home yet...Oh my.

Sunday. Well, let's just say we were a bit tired. We headed down to the jumps at around 10am and jumped for about 5 hours. Bradical was still feeling the effects of the previous night but still had enough in him to jump. Got to shoot a couple of photos with the old Fujifilm s1pro from like 1990 which was different and interesting. A quick trip to In-and-out and the weekend was done, another epic weekend that had no planning whatsoever involved.

New Jerseys!! and stuff.

Along with Sea Otter comes fresh new gear...This year I'm riding on "Amp'd" racing alongside Semi-pro-Aaron Potter, Semi-pro-Tommy Hollenbaugh, Pro-Hank Cadle and Pro-Lisa Reinhard. We debuted the new jerseys at the Otter and for the most part, people seemed pretty amped on the design. Dre2k seemed to like the "insurance minded" logo in particular, crazy Mexicans.

New bike

So the 2007 season has officially started now that Sea Otter has come and went. I decided to retire my original M3 and buy a new 2007 model. These photos were taken before Sea Otter, the bike has since then aquired many parts that were supplied by my sponsors. More photos of that to follow.

My RAW M3. Photo by me, NOT Mer...using manual focus, haha.

Intense photo

"Rocky Pass" was the perfect place to take the new rig out and get a feel for her.

Hank wanted to hog the photo.

Sea Otter Classic

The Sea Otter Classic went off in fine fashion this year. We arrived on Thursday and set up camp near the DH course. This was to be the first year of camping at the Otter in my 4 years of attendance...It was not as rough as I expected. Thanks to Wes' Sports Chalet employment, we had ourselves a pretty legit tent and stove which took the edge off the rugged wilderness.

After a particularly rough drive by our standards; which consisted of leaving Orange county at about midnight, taking an unexpected detour off the 5 to the 91 to the 405 back to the 5, finding Tyrone Thomas' credit card, nearly running out of gas because Wes insisted on finding the cheapest petro possible and Hank urinating on the streets of Inglewood. After all of that, we finally arrived at the carnival that was Sea Otter 2007.

Upon arriving at 5:30 am we proceeded to the "camping check-in" which to our surprise was open and kickin'! After being identified as "The No Friends guy" at the check in by some stranger that swore I was from Portland we went up to the 'ground to scope a spot. Hank was keen on a spot that contained no flat ground whatsoever. So I, being the voice of reason, decided on a spot that had a bit better geography for our brown colored North Face tent.

Practice came and went. I was surprised I made it through unscathed in spite of the lack of sleep and my lack of skills. The course was the same as previous years with only a small section after the hip jump/road that was new. This eliminated some pedaling but not very much. There was also a small new section after the big table top near

the top of the course that shot up over a small log and into a 7 foot long rock garden. One thing that was very noticeable, especially for the first couple of days of practice was the ruts left in the dirt from the previous years "mud bog" of a course. All the big boys were out and practicing. Standouts included Rennie, Peat, Kovarick, Hill and the always stylish Cedric Gracia.

Friday's practice went off same as Thursday, with the course becoming more tame and worn in. We got our new team jerseys which I think are quite fresh. Also got the chance to walk around the pits and check out all the new bling. I got to visit and meet many people which is always good. Caught up with G to the Z (Sean Mclendon) and we did some rounds in the pits. Griz had just been hooked up by Troy Lee designs and SRAM so we were walkin' around the pits with plenty of swag which got people's attention. We decided to go up to the Spank's trailer (Griz's dad) to work on our bikes and to get rad with all the fresh gear.

Hung out with Bradical (Oien) at his super factory ODI-Southridge pit. I'm totally stoked that Brad has been given this great sponsorship, I'm sure we will be seeing him dancing on the box at many races this year and ultimately see him compete for the title of JR world champion at Fort William later this year. To the right is a photo of Kyle Adams being followed closely by Brad, both on the ODI-Southridge team.

Saturday. "Well, it just would not be Sea Otter if there was not any rain now would it?" I have heard that phrase so many times in the last 4 days that it makes me sick. Out of nowhere it decides to rain on Saturday, I mean RAIN. I woke up on Sat morning to the sound of rain hitting the walls of the tent, I thought forsure the tent would be destroyed by mid-day but I was wrong. The damn thing held up to the hurricane that pounded it all day, I think it was the brown color that did it.

By the looks of all the rain I thought the course would be absolutely destroyed. Hank, Wes and I went on a night hike on the DH course to assess the damage. With a propane lantern and muscle milk in hand we poached the course on foot. To our surprise the course seemed un-changed from the previous days even though it had rained a bunch that day. We walked back to camp and prepared for the next day.

The weather Sunday proved to be much better than the day before. We (Hank and I)readied ourselves for the race. Two practice runs then it was back to the top to check our seed times.

Hank had a seed time of just under 20 minutes while I went off at a lazy 41 minutes after the first pro. The field was HUGE and jam-packed with all of the world's best riders. The time came for my run and "lucky" for me, Ross Milan was behind me. Ross is a super strong racer who would no doubt be fast on this course...I would do my best not to get passed by him. I wished him good luck, he did the same and I lined myself up on the box. The start lady gave me the speech: "six beeps, leave on the sixth beep." The sixth beep went off and I propelled myself out of the start box. Immediately, I felt the weight of the hundreds of eyes looking at me hurl myself down the hill. First corner, dialed, onto the rhythm section. Smooth, over the step up to the berm, pinned. While in the berm I heard a loud "VIAVA LA MEXICO!!" I knew it was bradical. Over the small rollers, unclip. I was nearing the big table extremely fast and panicked, I smashed the table and could not get clipped in. I could hear people in the crowd yelling "come on ALF", I finally got clipped in right before the log jump. Over the rock garden and up the short sprint on the way to the S-turns, nice. Out of the S-turns and an eruption of noise was heard as I hit the step down and tucked the windy speed section to the uphill. Down the steeps and crossed the road. At this point I was almost completely spent, which is not good. Tried my best to pedal the whole second half of the course but it proved futile. Crossed the finish line with a time of 2:30 which at the end of the day would be almost 15 seconds slower than Rennie.

2007 Sea Otter is in the books, now it is time for the real racing to begin...Well, with the exception of Fontana!!

*all photos on this page by MerrrJig except for the small one taken from the ODI booth. www.MtbphotO.com