Michaux...

Sunday started bright and early at 5:00AM (Campbell, next time the Sport race is scheduled before the Expert/Elite race at a venue that is 3 hours away, you're on your own). Kathleen, our weekend house guest Campbell, and I woke up extra early on Sunday , piled into the weekend mobile and headed as far west as I've been in a while to race the fifth race in the MASS series, the Long Pine Classic at Michaux. Geography note: Michaux is west of Gettysburg, just sayin... The Long Pine Classic was sponsored by Fast Forward Racing, a junior development team, in the hopes of raising enough cash to send the team to Colorado for the Junior National Championships. Read this next sentence imagining that I'm not typing it with any malice, anger, or ill will. If Fast Forward Racing needs to raise funds for next year's junior development team, I will gladly pay them twice the entry fee for Kathleen and I for the next five years if they'll agree to not have this race ever again. Needless to say, I did not enjoy myself. Its not entirely the race promoters fault though, I had a bad day (my worst yet actually), and I was riding a new bike (an aluminum bike which was a rather harsh and bumpy reminder of why I've ridden steel bikes most of my mountain biking years). It wasn't a total loss. It was a beautiful day, Kathleen won the Elite women's class yet again (she's building herself a nice little racing nest egg this summer), Campbell also saw his first win in the Sport Senior II category, and though I "gave up the ghost" ~6 miles into the 23 miles course I managed to pull off a distant 3rd (very distant - first and second took me for 10 minutes). We also enjoyed a nice lunch at an Irish pub in Gettysburg where Kathleen and the waitress treated Campbell and I to a 10 minute dissertation on the upkeep and pitfalls of maintaining curly hair. Now we know and knowings half the battle...looking forward to Fair Hill this weekend.