the Eel
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- Sep 23, 2000
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Fun weekend. This was a 2-day "modified" desert scramble with a pro purse for the 2-day overall. The format was a 20-mile loop run 4 times. They had completely different 20-mile courses on Saturday and Sunday. This was not a bomb start deal. Riders got in line and took off every 15 seconds. Elapsed time was recorded for each rider. I guest-pitted with So Cal MC this weekend. Great bunch of folks. They nearly fed me to death on Saturday night. Unbelievable amounts of grub. I got out there Saturday morning, checked in with So Cal MC, signed up, suited up, got in line. I rode the A course on Saturday and the C course on Sunday. Saturday didn't go too well. I went down hard in a fast open section on the 1st loop and was pretty shaken up. Smacked my head on the ground and the inside of my knee now has an impact bruise the size of a grapefruit. Not fun. I went out and finished the 2nd loop but my day was done. I was riding so bad I thought I might hurt myself even worse so I stopped in the So Cal pit after two loops and chatted with the So Cal pit team. They plied me with Jack Daniels, which actually worked out nicely since my leg was hurting bad. I really didn't enjoy the Checkers A course. Alot of people seemed to like it but I thought it was just plain ugly. Not fun for me - maybe all the crashing spoiled it. Pitting was fun though. I'm glad I decided to call it quits. The downside to drinking Jack Daniels and 3 beers after doing 2 loops and crashing is that I went back to camp, set up my tent, and promptly passed out. A drinker I'm obviously not. :( Saturday night was the aforementioned club feed - they had bbq ribs & chicken, potato salad, cabbage salad, texas toast, brownies, cherry pie, apple pie, pecan bars, mac & cheese, etc. A ton of grub. I likened the barbecue grill to one of those little cars at the circus, but instead of midgets coming out of it, food just keeps coming out, nonstop. Good people like I said. It was a warm welcome. I went to bed pretty early. I was hammered after the Saturday ride but decided to try to race Sunday anyway. I had been hearing that the Sunday courses were alot easier than Saturday's. Good deal. All that went to hell when I overheard someone chatting to his friend in the start line about how a Checker had told him the night before that the Sunday course was actually significantly harder than Saturday's. Boy was it. Absolutely national level - significantly harder than DMC actually, for comparison's sake. In fact, when I finished the 1st loop, they told me at the loop-finish chute that they were cutting the race down to 3 loops instead of 4. Thank god. Off camber rock fields from hell, rocks, rocks, rocks, a downhill that had me on and off my bike for well over a mile, and several extremely tricky uphills - one that that I biffed badly on the last loop - dropping my bike 3 times trying to get up it after falling over near the top. :think: I'm pretty stoked - I got my pin. It says "KERS". And if I had stuck it out on Saturday I would have had the other half to go with it - which says "CHEC".
