Chagrin River Day 2

You don't have to watch all 410 pictures, view them as thumbnails HERE.

How one's luck can change so dramatically in twenty four hours? With equal legs and similar people showing up, and less crashes, you would think I could pull the same result, wrong!

In fact, the start was so awkward I didn't know how to react. Lets start over, I went second into the first corner. I jumped. I lead into the off camber around the telephone poll thing. I took the dry line to the left and the tap pulls my front brake lever down for me. I stop. It takes me and Paul Donatelli to get it out and everything is backed up. I guess that is what happens.

So I lead through the pine needle tree alignment section on lap one with five or so in tow of the 30 man field. I take the sharp left towards the RV trailer at about 15mph and get one wheel in one line and the rear in another... I flip flop over the handlebars into 6th whacking myself against these wooden planks. ouch, but I slowly got up and see Gary (3rd yesterday) throwing down the smack as I limp around the barriers. It takes me a whole lap to get Jason Leaman who knows to jump right on board.

I take the majority of pulls and he helps when needed. Like four laps pass as we slowly gain on Matt Brockbrader. Now there are three of us going into one to go fighting for 3rd, 4th, 5th placings with 2nd a long way up the road. I take it fast through everything and clean it up through the woods and sprint it up for 3rd. I'll take it. And Gary ended up winning.

Totally a learning weekend. Cool course, perfect for the secret mountain biker in me. And I took home a few bucks and now and am not too far out of overall contention in the series.

Great racing for TLE also today. Shawn Adams let me borrow his 32c Grifo Ksyrium front tub and it worked perfect. He then ran his file tread and bike switched to win the race on a clean bike, man that was cool. Matt Weeks took second ahead of the P.A. boys rounding out the top 5 with Tony in reach. Leader Bill picked up some more series points and showed Gartman who was boss. Johnny showed up with the hair-do-no-more and got 8th/9th A right near the Paul Martin guy with my dad not too far behind him. Scott Marut also killed it and got 7th 'B' not chasing me down today.