I was really looking forward to this weekend. Had the bike all ready to go. Fork seals were holding their mud, thanks to wirefryer, a football and a couple of monkeys....everything was looking good for a change.
Rolled into Milford on time, got all signed up and it was time to hit the course for a practice lap with wirefryer. As soon as I hit the course area from the parking lot, I made a tight left and the back end of the CRF passed me by. Right then and there, I knew I should head back to the tent and release around 4500psi from my tires.....but that would take too much time. Waited for Schrock to get his goggles squared away, turned around and Tim was history (yeah, I'll say it....you lost us before we started, Tim). Darren and I rolled thru the finish area to make sure our transponders were reading and it was ON!
Got going and I felt like I was performing in the Broadway production of Firefighters on ICE. The bike was all over the place on that butter, which made the jagged rocks look 10 times bigger than they actually were.
Darren and I took turns biting it, but we were all smiles because the Rekluse was doing it's job. Got into a couple of flat spots and we felt like a couple of Flat Tracker's sliding around. Came Flat trackin' around one corner and my back tire was tryin' to make a pass on me....luckily a few of those jagged rocks came into play and stopped it. The bike flipped and my gut met the business end of my bars. I laid on the ground for what seemed like 10 minutes trying to get a breath of air into my lungs. I won't lie....the thought of internal bleeding crossed my mind more than a couple times. Finally picked my butt up off the ground and picked my STILL RUNNING bike up (Did I mention I LOVE that Rekluse???). In pain, I threw a leg over the bike and went to grab my front brake....but OOOPS!, It wasn't there....One of those demon rocks had snapped it right off.
Limped the bike and my beat up body back to the tent....and all I could think about was Wirefryer, hobbling up to me (newly aquired walker in tow
) and giving me the third degree about my handguards (or lack thereof......I'll have them ordered this week, Tim...lol). Luckily, I met a Husker from Nebraskaland in the pits, who was awesome and sold me a brand new lever set (at a discounted price) to replace my fractured front brake lever. I can't express enough how nice and giving people are in this series.... it's just awesome!!!!Got the lever changed out, but my personal Paramedic (aka, my girlfriend...who happens to be a Paramedic) gave me that look. Apparently she thought my ribs were cracked.....A day later and I think she might be right.
Anyway, made the right choice and decided get more bang for my buck and ride sweep (very carefully). Glad I did.....once the rain started, the race was pretty entertaining. Thanks to Dan, Wirefryer, Husker (I think his name was Jarrod) and everyone else that made this weekend fun and memorable!