Cispus Camp-out

A while ago we talked about the ubiquitous one-day trip. Let’s take a bit of time now to talk about the big brother of the onesie, the overnighter. A good way to maximize your driving around time is to do at least two separate activities, connected by spending the night somewhere. In this particular instance, the two activities are going to be kayaking on the Green Truss section of the White Salmon River and the Upper -Upper Cispus River, both in Southern Washington State. Somewhere along the (extremely) scenic route between the two will be the location of the night spent.

The only other Class V kayaker in Bend, Oregon who seems motivated and available to travel at a moment’s notice is Kim Russell. She’s always down for an adventure, even a midweek one, and can always be counted on to stomp the lines and landings on whatever run we happen to be floating down. Although she’s an aspiring professional paddler, at the impressionable age of eighteen I can still convince her that low water boating is worth doing in the name of good fun… This would be key on the Green Truss Section of the White Salmon in southern Washington State…

As with most overnight trips, this one started out on a whim. Kim had been interested in checking out the Upper-Upper Cispus run for quite a while, continuing her progression as an explorer of the river environment. I’d been on the Cispus once, alone, with borrowed gear, (thanks, Cooch) six or so years ago, making me an expert on the topic. One evening, while discussing said run after an evening run on the Deschutes in Bend, we bucked up and agreed to leave the next afternoon for the region surrounding Mount Adams. Done.

Now, a brief interlude to discuss photography. I’m a professional athlete. I ride bikes for a living, usually in the woods. People often like to photograph this pursuit. While I’m happy to oblige, this isn’t really why I do what I do. I like to ride, not stop and screw around with photos. Again, when it’s my job, I’m more than happy to. But when it’s not my job, such as when I’m on a kayaking trip. I don’t exactly make time for documentation, other than that of the “one’s own memory” variety… Kim, as a budding pro kayaker, is always taking photos. I use my seniority and blunt manner of speaking to squash most photo attempts, at least those that will intrude whatsoever on the purity of our river experience. So, we don’t have many photos. The ones we have were snapped before I could tell Kim to put that shit away. Sorry.

Since we don’t have any photos whatsoever of the Green Truss run, and we’d done it a bunch of times already, I’ll just say that it was really fun. We ran some waterfalls, raced through some rapids (it was a tie, two-two), watched the sun set, bummed a shuttle from some local guys, and generally enjoyed our pit stop on the way north (by west).

Here’s where the quality, if low-consequence, adventure started. With forest road 23 over the western flank of Mount Adams closed because of a (probably burly) wash-out, we had to find another route. Some consultation with the Washington Gazeteer (pronounced Ga-zee-ter) and cross referencing with a Forest Service Map Kiosk determined that our best route would be west toward the Lewis River drainage then north past Mount Saint Helens and over Elk Pass before dropping into the Cowlitz Drainage and heading back up the Cispus River to the takeout. This route consisted of, near as we could figure, mostly paved, twisty, two-lane, awesome roads. Good thing we’d packed light, summer gear only, to keep the WRX as close to it’s optimal performance level as possible. With darkness descending rapidly on Mount Adams, we set about charging seemingly endless dreamy tarmac, hoping our route would pan out. I love the challenge of reading virgin road and putting things together as they unfold in front of you, whether it’s that perfect on-camber compression right into a cresting left, leaving the grocery-getter tail happy and singing a high note or getting the perfect late brake/downshift/handbrake combo that leaves you roosting out of yet another switchback. Driving is fun. As a means to get somewhere, of course…

After a bonus ten-mile section of buttery smooth gravel drifting, and the drop into the Lewis Drainage, with a stop to admire the moonrise and subsequent reflection on Mount Saint Helens, our adrenal glands were starting to reach their limit. We decided to find a place to throw a sleeping bag on the ground ASAP. Our first opportunity came at a random turnoff on the top of Elk Pass. Turns out it led to a beautiful meadow with a whole lot of welcoming grass for sleeping. Done. About nine minutes of “camp” setup and a few of stargazing set us up for a good cold, dewy, night’s sleep. Although the pesky full moon did wake us up a few times as it poked above the ridgeline…

Morning came early, but was welcomed on account of warm sunshine, granola and the fact that car camping only takes about 12 minutes to completely pack up for departure.

A brief hour of (slightly more responsible due to daylight conditions and possible oncoming massive log trucks) driving on more awesome roads found us at the takeout for the Cispus. Flow looked good and there was, surprisingly for 9am on a Wednesday, another kayaker vehicle parked there. We quickly stashed our shuttle vehicle (my trusty ten-speed) and rallied up to the put-in, hoping to find the owners of the ‘Yota and paddle with them. Turns out we missed them, no bother, the two-person team is always a good way to travel too (unless you want to set up a legitimate rescue…).

Now, I’d remembered the Cispus starting off with a bang, some kind of entry waterfall guarding the miles of classic boulder gardens lying downstream. I seemed to think it was good to go and a good time, but a scouting/personal morning ritual mission determined otherwise. There were a whole bunch of logs in the runout gorge section. Whoops, no happy-go-lucky fifteen-footer to start the day off right. Instead we got a portage to seal-launch combo, which was fine with me, I like sliding off a rock and into the water anyway…

Once we were on the water a good groove was immediately established. Whoever was leading would roll up to the lip of a boulder garden, peer downstream, make a quick call whether to run or scout, or hop to a lower eddy, and we’d proceed. Scouting sometimes to ensure we were on the most fun line, running on a whim and a feeling sometimes, taking some questionable lines, and generally having a great time getting in the groove with the river. Oh, and I did the best rock spin of my life somewhere in there. Better than any New Hampshire Granite spin I’ve ever done. It was amazing…

Now, the Upper-Upper Cispus has two big rapids nestled between all the sweet boulder gardens. Island and Behemoth. We arrived at Island and decided to scout from the island proper. Right channel was a pinched eight-footer into a boily hole mess followed by a fairly stout pourover hole. Hmmm. Left channel was a techie sliding boof that would land you right next to the big pourover, sideways and at a dead stop. Hmmm. We elected to appreciate the sunshine and good juju so far by going for the high left line and bonus fun seal launch below the maelstrom.

Now we just had Behemoth to sort out. Approaching what was clearly the gorge leading to the falls, identified by treetops downstream and an obvious mist, we spotted an unmanned kayak and paddle on the right bank. Thinking the folks before us might have some issues, we clambored out of our boats and across the scree slope. Nobody to be found. Hmmm. At least the search for the abandoned craft’s captain gave us a unique scout of the Behemoth lead-in rapid and falls proper, in addition to some good scrambling on narrow ledges above eddyless, unportagable, grade 5 whitewater… The falls looked sweet, in kind of intimidating, “you’re here so you’ve got to run me” way. Sloping off the ledge and plunging 25 feet into a caved-out, boil-filled punchbowl where it sprayed mist up out of the gorge and into the sunlight, it was quite a sight to see. We probably should have taken a photo… But, we were much more interested in getting back to our boats and downstream as planned. The lead-in rapid holes were bigger than we thought, but we pulled through. I won a quick reaux-cham-beaux in the pool at the lip, meaning I got to go first. Hmmmm, did I win or lose? I fired a boof off the ramp and set it town flat and forward in the pillowy boils below, then snuck around the massive hole guarding the exit to the punchbowl. When I looked back upstream I saw Kim launch a similary sweet boof into the sunshine, but she got kicked into the cavern at the base of the falls. Some maneuvering with a giant old-growth log and a couple proud ferry attempts, while I stood next to the exit hole with a rope, and Kim earned the privilege of exit. Another mile of decreasing difficulty classic boulder garden boating had us out of the canyon and floating to the takeout.

Turns out we almost caught the other crew at the put-in, they were lunching and lounging at the takeout, getting gear dried out for their drive on to British Columbia for some high water summer creekin’. It turned out one of the guys was from New York and had a bunch of the same New England buddies as me. Another was from Corvallis and keen to hook up for some Oregon rainfall boating this winter. The girl who gave me a ride up to our trusty Subaru was from Hood River and keen to have some more chick creekin’ partners. The circle of whitewater love is small but continually amazes me with it’s depth.

We got some jeep road shortcut beta from our new acquaintances on how to get back to Hood River without the massive detour and set out on the trip home. Ten miles of dreamy tarmac led into ten miles of buttery gravel which led us to our marginal shortcut, but, thanks to the skidplate and some clever angles of approach, we made it through just fine. Lunch in Hood River and a swimming stop at Clear Lake on the flanks of Mount Hood kept us fed and refreshed.

I had decided to be ambitious and get dropped off in Warm Springs,, about 70 miles north of Bend, and ride my trusty Ten-Speed home, gently pushed by the perpetual north wind. I figured three hours of daylight to ride 70 miles was plenty. Regardless of starting at 1500 feet elevation and eventually finishing at 3800… The tailwind would make it possible to average 22mph or so, getting me home just after 9pm… Well, in august it gets dark at 8:30. I got home at 9:30 after an awesome ride into an awesome sunset. Gotta get in shape for Worlds, after all…

Rally Colorado 2007

It was a great return to the rally scene at Rally Colorado this past weekend.

3rd place in the national G2 class,

2 first place wins in the regional class,

& one second overall and a third overall in the regional events.

As with any rally I usually have the first stage nerves...

however this time was a bit different as I had not been in a rally for almost two years.

as the timer counted down the seconds my heart pounded harder.

3,2,1,.. before I knew it we were flying down the Wolf Mountain stage,

a fast flowing road with blind crests and loose corners.

Brian McGuire was calling the turns next to me but I really did not hear much of what he said, It was a bit surreal.

We finished the stage with a respectable time, ahh what a pleasant surprise.

Warm up over... time for business.

The next 3 stages are some of my favorites, rough and technical.

I got into my groove and actually started to hear what Brian was telling me.

Elkhead flats was one of those stages which no matter how much I enjoy it I cant help but remember "my corner" on this stage.

Or maybe it should be called Corrado corner, the place where I had my worst crash to date ( 9-03 ) with my old VW Corrado. I believe it was a double front flip with a twist ending in a tidy mess.

Some of my best times of the day were on this stage, it was time to move on.

The rest of the day went well till the Stokes Gulch stage where communication problems hampered my ability to keep on the gas over 100 mph blind crests.

We lost time but pressed on.

By the end of day one we were in 3rd place in the national and had won 1st in class in the regional, 3rd overall.


The next morning I awoke to see LOTS of rain had fallen overnight and it was still coming down.

Uhh Oh... mud fest!

I scrambled to get the crew together so we could get to grooving tires to shed the mud we would soon encounter.

(something I should have done last week... Dooh! )

We were able to get only 2 tires done before the race started, but it was better than nothing.

The first stage of the day was Sage Creek, fast, technical, and slicker than snot.

I passed a subaru in the first few miles and nearly went off many times but made it to the end in one piece.

Stage 2 "Salt Creek" was new for this year and very fast and flowing.

Thankfully it had a very solid base of well packed gravel so mud was almost non existent, at first.

The organizers decided all of the other roads were so rained out and muddy that we were to run Salt Creek 4 times in a row to finish the day.

The rain continued to fall as we started our first run on Salt Creek and was not a big deal until the drivers side windshield wiper broke in the middle of the stage.

Let me tell you, driving a rally car in the rain without wipers and trying to keep it at full tilt is pretty exciting and very challenging.

We finsihed the stage and tried to fix the wiper. It turns out the internal mechanism had broken in half so the drivers side was finished but the passenger side still worked.

We tried Rain X on the next stage which was not so good, however we managed to drop 14 seconds off our previous time.

Then Brian suggested the euro look for the wiper, so we adjusted the passenger side wiper to clean a V shape in the middle of the window,...

Mmm much better, we drop another 5 seconds.

Then my inner "MacGyver" decided to move the wiper even further to the drivers side, tape and zip-ty the other wiper arm to it, Viola! a new twin / single wiper!

It worked great.

As we rolled up to the start of the final stage the rain stopped.

I was almost disappointed I would not get to use my new invention.

We dropped another 7 seconds but it was not enough to capture 2nd place in the national, we were 3rd.

I did manage to stomp the regional competitors with a 1st in class and second overall. ( watch out boys, Im back )

All in all we were happy to have finished, and even happier to have placed well.

I would like to thank my sponsors,


Thule Car Rack Systems, Salta Motorsports, & Go Fast Sports.

My totally amazing service crew, Andy, Erik, Brian & Erica from Salta, Mom & Dad, Kurt, Matt for his tire groover, and my lovely wife Jen who took all these great photos.

& of course Brian McGuire for riding shot gun & calling the turns.

I also must thank the event organizers and volunteers for an excellent event.

I could not have done it so well without everyone's help, Thank you all so much.

Best regards,

Brooks

Euro Road Trip

The gateway to summer for me has been the same the last few years. It always involves hopping on a plane and flying to Europe sometime in the month of May to chase the Mountain Bike World Cup series around for a while. This chase has involved various forms of transportation over the years. Everything from hitching rides with random race people to being forced to purchase a last minute flight within Europe has been employed to get where I need to be. Where I really need to be is owning a villa on the Italian coast somewhere with an Italian car (complete with racks) awaiting my arrival to drive at gratuitous speeds to whatever event the Continent can cook up for us. Until then, we at the Giant Mountain Bike Team will resort to planes, trains and, in this case, overloaded Mercedes rental vans…

Before we get into this latest trip around Central Europe, let’s reminisce for a few minutes. You see, back in the day, I loved the challenge of getting myself around on a shoestring budget, flying by the seat of my pants. It was a nice change of pace from having things “planned” out all the time. I’d arrive in Frankfurt, Germany, sometimes alone, sometimes with someone I’d tricked into coming along for the adventure and some racing (these poor suckers include my current teammates Carl Decker and Kelli Emmett). The first step would always be to purchase a EuroRail pass and figure out how close to whatever town you needed to actually end up in you could get on the train. This was usually pretty easy, and you usually got pretty close. Sometimes you’d have to hitch a ride, take a taxi, or possibly a tram up a mountain. It always worked out though. Once settled, usually in some random tiny hotel room, your bike was your lifeline to the outside world. Need groceries? Ride to the market. Gotta make it to the team manager’s (which you are) meeting? Yup, another bike ride. Hopefully all that riding was good for the legs… The beauty of the low-budg travel was all of the bumps in the road and the satisfaction and education of smoothing them out. I loved it. But, it did make actually racing a bit more of a struggle. Oh well, you’ve got to cut your teeth sometime…

Fortunately, after a few World Cup Cross Country podium performances on my own support system, Giant has been gracious enough to start supporting my racing effort on the Continent a bit more thoroughly. This support has grown in stages. Initially I still had to get to the races on my own, but once there someone from the Euro Giant Team was there to help out a bit, from bike washing to handing up bottles during the races, it was great support to have. From there I grew into an honorary member of the Euro team, even getting the occasional massage.

Unfortunately, the Giant Racing Team in Europe is no more. This forced us on the US team to set up our own support once again. Fortunately, with the 2008 Olympics looming on the horizon, Giant USA was happy to send Kelli and I over with a mechanic, Tom Neb, and soignieur, Elke Brutsaert. We’d pick up the aforementioned Mercedes Vito van and spend three weekends racing around Germany, the Czech Republic and Switzerland. While it seemed like a plan low on adventure, I was sure we could entertain ourselves along the way, keeping the spirit of the initial Euro struggling alive and morale high for the group.

This time we flew into Zurich, Switzerland, which is a pretty darn central jump-off point for most racing excursions. This means that both Kelli and I were familiar with how to get out of the airport and headed in the general direction of Germany, where the Black Forest town of Offenburg hosted the second round of the UCI Nissan Mountain Bike World Cup Series. Under threatening skies, we made our auspicious arrival in Offenburg.



Now, one of the central hurdles to overcome while traveling as an athlete in Europe is finding an apartment to rent instead of Hotelling it. This gives you access to a kitchen and, usually, laundry, immediately solving the two biggest problems in day-to-day existence. Food and Sanitation. Fortunately, our soigny, Elke, is of Belgian descent and studied in Germany. So she speaks the lingo. This gave us (by us I mean her) the option of calling all of the random Freinwoerners (guest houses) in the area until we found a suitable booking for the week. And suitable it was, nestled in a steep valley just above the wine production village of Dorbach, across the valley from an ancient castle and surrounded by vineyards, it might just have been the sweetest place I’ve ever cooked dinner while watching the sunset in Europe. Awesome. Well, not as awesome as the fact that we were only lost for about 10 minutes before we found the one lane road leading to the place, nor as awesome as the nap we took, with shutters closed, as soon as we dropped our bags…

We later unpacked our bags and, while filling up some grocery bags at the Activ Markt, ran into some fell bike riders whom we invitied over to take advantage of our cooking facilities.



Usually German mountain bike race courses involve healthy dollops of dirt roads, riding across bumpy virgin fields and not much else. We were stoked to blunder onto the Offenburg course and immediately be riding nice flowing singltrack in the forest surrounding a vineyard. Nicely worn in, it had the feel of a trail that had been ridden thousands of times, not hastily thrown together the day before. To keep in theme though, something had to be hastily thrown. I figured my bike, down a totally blind fifteen-foot drop-in, was a good thing to sacrifice. For good measure, I threw my body down shortly after the bike, mostly on my feet, but not completely… I looked up at the root and stump laden drop and was glad to not have a red paint (which they organizers cleverly cover all obstacles in, to draw your attention, and front wheel, to) tattoo on my forehead or chest… As I took stock, I heard Kelli rapidly approaching the same trap I’d narrowly escaped. Figuring she’d suffer a similar fate, I yelled a couple warnings up the trail, but to no avail, she appeared at the lip going full tilt and proceeded to tomahawk down the drop, head, then feet, then rear first, landing in a crumpled heap at my feet. Shocked, I immediately started to help her up, but she jumped up with no problem, smiling and laughing it of.
“This is sweet, let’s keep riding.” was her first comment.
“Holy crap, you’re not dead.” Was mine…
Kelli was covered head to toe in clay based mud and had one of the aforementioned spraypaint tattoos on her arm where a stump had tried, unsuccessfully, to tear it off… Other than that she appeared to be fine, so we continued on our way. For about 100 meters… Then it became apparent to Kelli that something was wrong with her shoulder. Her first hint was that she couldn’t pull up on her handlebars. The second hint was the fact that she couldn’t raise her right arm above her stomach… Dang it. One and done, for the day at least.
A few more days of riding around in the Black Forest hills and sleeping ten glorious hours a night brought us handily to race day. Which handily came with torrential downpours just as I left the vineyard to ride down to the race start. Nothing like being cold and wet while trying to “warm up”… At least I would start the race prepared for the shitstorm that it was going to be. The poor women were had started under sunny skies and on dry conditions tires and bike setup, not a sweet finale for them in the rain. Kelli toughed it out like the trooper she is, regardless of not being able to execute a basic high five at the finish line…
The men’s race started fast and furious, as World Cups will, but calmed down markedly after a lap’s worth of carnage in the ridiculous conditions. My personal favorite was watching two guys battling for position on a 40mph paved road descent covered in muddy floodwaters. They obviously got tangled, high sided at full tilt and proceeded to slide about 50 meters into some metal fencing. Worth the position? I don’t think so… Which is why, after the first lap, I found myself in about 50th position. Where I would stay for much of the race as people dropped out or blew up in front of me, only to be offset by the steady stream of guys passing me whilst running their asses off, something I either refused or was unable to do… At least I finished in the “answer to the universe” position- #42… Welp, there’s always next week.
In an attempt to “keep it real” we hadn’t made a plan for the weekend off between the German World Cup and the round #3 in Swizterland. This kept our options open to to wherever looked good and do whatever seemed right. There were a few factors to consider on Sunday evening as we pondered our situation. One, the weather seemed to suck everywhere. Two, since we were in Europe racing bikes, we figured we should race bikes somewhere. Third, we had to consider the possibility of acquiring the ever-valuable UCI (union cycliste internationale) points, which were in high demand as the US of A trys to qualify for the maximum three start positions at the 2008 Olympics, and finally, we had to decide how much we wanted to drive the Vito around in the next ten days. Here’s how we made our decision-

1. The weather, for the first time in history, was better in northeastern Europe than in Italy, which meant ixnay on the coastal house shopping/wine drinking/pizza eating extravaganza we envisioned.
2. There were UCI Category 1 (lots of points and prize money) in both the Czech Republic (Saturday) and Austria (Sunday).
3. It seemed like we’d be clever, point laden, rich and either really in shape or really hosed if we did both races on the weekend.
4. The driving factor is what really made our decision though, 8 hours or so to Ceska Kamenice (in the northwest corner of Czech), then 5 hours to Windhaag (on the Austrian/Czech boder) then 10 or more hours to southwestern Switzerland for the world cup seemed a bit much for both riders and support staff.

We compromised and chose the Czech race essentially on the grounds that none of us had been to the Czech republic before and we might as well check it out…




To rubber stamp our decision to chase the sun north we left our humble Durbach apartment in a torrential downpour, good thing the Vito was loaded to the hilt with all of our stuff, it tracked straight and true in the wet… The combo of crappy weather, heavy stop and go traffic on the autobahn, and the fact that although we had a destination, we didn’t have a place to stay or even any leads had team optimism a bit low. Fortunately, I had brought a copy of SuperTroopers, which Kelli and Elke hadn’t seen, but Tom and I know and love, so the ladies fired the laptop up and watched in the back while we squinted into the rain up front and laughed our asses off. By the time the final scene had ended it was sunny out and we were nearing our destination.



Dropping into the Elbe river valley, which is flanked by both German and Czech National Parks towards sunset we made the call to start looking for digs while we were still in Germany and had our resident language specialist. Turns out the first place we pulled into, a little Frierenwonhung in the village of Bad Schandau (Bad means “on the water”) was happy to rent us a cozy apartment for the week. Cheap too. Perfect. I love it when a plan comes together. A nice evening spin on the riverside bike path to ease the travel stiffened legs, a late pizza and German beer dinner and we were feelilng great about our week ahead.






















The next day Kelli and I set off to ride across the border into Czech to see if we could find the town where the race was and possibly the race course for some rudimentary inspection. I’m in a bit of a precarious position within the Giant team, you see, all of my life I’ve been going on road trips, big and small, so I’ve somehow (probably through my Dad’s subtle teachings) developed a system of always know where I am and how to get where I’m going. We put it to the test getting around in Czech for sure. Back roads immediately after the border and little signage, but I knew we needed to head east so we climbed up out of the Elbe Valley through beautiful sandstone formations on beautiful quiet little roads. After a couple villages we finally saw a sign for Kamenice, 12 kilometers. Perfect. Another half hour and we were there, blundering around looking for the senior citizens home where the race was allegedly going to be held. After some sleuthing around a sort of run down old industrial town of about 5,000 people we finally discovered a map of the town in front of the grocery store and figured out where we were going. Some surprisingly fun trails led us up through more sandstone formations into the park and eventually back into town. It was going to be a fun race.
And a fun race it was. Kelli started out strong and pinned it down a rocky drop that even I wasn’t riding out of prudence and was solidly in contention for a podium spot. Then, on the next lap, she pinned the drop a bit too hard and wadded it on her already sore shoulder. No matter though, in keeping with the theme that Kelli Emmett is tougher than you or me, she soldiered on to finish 5th, solid.

Instead of the normal M.O. of “get out of town as quick, tired and dirty as possible”. We decided to stay in Bad Schandau for an extra two nights. It was everything we thought it could be. Sleeping in the day after a race before making a nice breakfast and going for a nice ride (although it was raining) and finishing the day with massage and watching South Park is greatly preferable to sitting in a car all day or rushing to catch an early morning flight. Excellent.
We did have some driving to do, however, about 10 hours of it, we figured, to Champerey, in the southwest corner of Switzerland, nestled high in the Alps along the French border. The trip started off a bit sour with the telltale flash of a traffic camera recording the speed and presence of the Vito in the second village we passed through. German driving rule #1, if there’s a speed limit posted that’s less than 130kph and is within a town, it’s probably watched over by a speed camera. Hopefully Hertz Europe doesn’t have mail forwarded to the US… For Tom’s sake at least… After that, Elke and I took turns racing down the Autobahn at 160kph, much better… Except we, once again, were getting owned by Execs in Benzes and Bimmers going 200… Maybe next year…

Twelve hours later and some clever detour navigation, we rolled into Champerey at sunset. Good thing, I wouldn’t have been nearly as excited for daybreak and the exploring possibilities had I arrived in the dark (usual M.O.) and been unaware of how postcard perfect the scenery was. The Dents du Midi, a massive, craggy ridgeline covered in fresh snow (they got 40cm of snow the week before we arrived on June 4) separated from a vibrant green valley by a limestone cliff face, and, of course, dozens of waterfalls feeding the glacial creek tumbling it’s way down valley. I feel kind of out of place with such a storybook description, but it was awesome. Really.

The bonuses of staying at a Hotel, Le Rose de Alpes, run by some British mountain bikers were twofold. One, you could speak English to anyone you might need to speak to, whether it was about what time breakfast was or what kind of cake was getting baked for tea time. The other benefit was that they could tell you where to go for sweet bike rides. Of which there were obviously a lot.

Ride #1 was a trail that just happened to run through the 100 meter tall cliff across the valley. That’s right, blasted and terraced into the rock face was a pretty damn sweet singletrack. It was rooty and steep on the drop-in, then smooth and buffed into the wall with nothing but a rickety fence to keep you from going over the edge. Somehow, in addition to it’s shocking location, it was shockingly fun to ride, fast and flowy, with jumps and berms up onto the sides of the tunnel. Awesome.



Oh, and I checked out the race course too. Even more awesome. Flat and technical, just like the trails in Bangor, Maine, for the first 2k, then a steep fireroad climb for a few minutes, which delivered the oxygen deprived riders to a steep, slick and rooty, but somehow still fun, descent back to the creek and eventually the start finish. You had to know how to ride to be fast here. Good thing I’m from Maine, where you have to know how to ride to simply ride.



The next day the Brits tricked me into doing a huge sweet climb to an even huger sweeter descent. The Col de Cou sits about 1000 meters above Champerey, I spent an hour and a half climbing a mix of pavement, dirt roads and steep jeep trails to gain the Col. Where, after a bit of snowbank footprint deciphering, I found the ridgeline trail I’d been told of. I’d been told of it pretty casually, like it was pretty cool and I should check it out, but it wasn’t something to write home about. Well, see for yourself. I’m at home and I’m writing about it.



Ripping down a ridgeline on a ten inch wide cow track with clouds swirling over snowcapped peaks and playing tricks on your peripheral vision is my definition of a good time. So is continuing the party down below treeline on even more perfect ancient singletrack. People who live in the mountains sure know how to walk down out of them in style.
After that ride, I figured I’d take a day off , doing nothing seemed like a responsible race preparation strategy, surely more restful than more awesome riding… Nothing ended up being driving Elke up to the base of the Col de Cou and sending her on her way up to the best ridgeline ever. She wasn’t disappointed.



Race day came around quick. Unfortunately, my start didn’t… The triple threat of having gotten 100th place at the World Cup opener (during a sweet case of “black dot” poison Oak turned systemic infection), a lackluster 42nd in Germany and a narrow, steep start climb produced 60th position or so going into the first steep descent. Which was, apart from a crappy strategic standpoint, a pretty hilarious place to be. Lots of crashing. Lots of shockingly terrible bike riding. Even more bitching and moaning by the guys who were stuck walking their perfectly good bikes in the middle of it all. All in all, the only reasonable reaction was laughter and good-naturedly heckling the hecklers. Then, thankfully, hauling a bunch of ass the rest of the race whilst feeling awesome and keeping pace with the leaders from about 2 minutes back. I rode from 60th to 10th as the cheeky British announcer called out the “Impressive ride by the Big American” Thanks, buddy, that makes me feel way better on the climb every lap… Highlight of the race, other than feeling strong for the first time since Argentina in March: Passing convicted doper Filip Meirhaege and saying, in an even tone “Come on, jackess, let’s see what you’ve got now” minutes before hearing his tires slide out on the wet (did I mention it poored rain on the second lap, making a proper, awesome, mudfest) pavement and his drug-addled body crash into the metal course fencing as I rode away. Karma sure is tough…
A decently solid race and nice relaxing evening of more fantastic French/\Swiss/Alpine dining made the 6:30 wake-up and subsequent drive to the Zurich airport for our flight back to the states a bit more palatable. Not much, but it sure was nice to be on the way home… Wait a minute, this trip was awesome. Maybe I’ll do another one someday. By someday I mean in September when we go to Scotland for SingleSpeed World Championships, then the proper UCI Worlds, then over to Slovenia for World Cup finals, and, finally to Beijing for a Test Event on the Olympic MTB course. Might have to write that one up too. Although it’ll be more trains and planes than proper road tripping… It’s all point A to point B though, right?

Testing der Audi

There is an old saying that goes something like this “don’t fix it if it aint broke” Well…. I tried to fix it. What I was fixing is my need for speed. I have spent the last 5 years racing a 2 wheel drive 140hp VW jetta… not so fast. But it has been reliable and a great tool for putting down quite a few stage miles.




So at this point I say to myself “You need an open class 4wd car”,.. brilliant!
Ok so I know this will cost allot more in general… big open class cars make big power and burn lots of fuel, tires, and every other part on the car. But somehow knowing all this does not stop me from buying an Audi A4 and building it into a mean rally car.

Testing begins…
Breaking in a new engine is a fairly simple process but deserves care. Basically I drive the car up and down the highway near my house trying not to go too crazy blasting the turbo etc… be nice to it but firm. Break in complete.

Test track day one…
I head over to my local secret test track for some hot laps. (the moto track parking lot) All goes well, and after blasting the turbo full on a few times I stop the car to adjust my safety harness. Holy crap this thing is fast!
Back to flogging the car around the make-shift track Im seeing just how big of a dust cloud one can create with an audi.
And then… stumble.. sputter,… stumble. Uh-oh… problem captain.
I nurse it back to the truck for further examination. “Captain, she’s out of fuel sir”
Its at this point I figure out the fuel efficiency is pretty bad on this rig.

Test track day 2…
For my second outing its off to CORE, a 100 acre do whatever you want dirt motorsports playground where the local rally community has put together a 3 mile rally course for all to enjoy. In other words, big fun. All goes well and I scare myself frequently. Mmmm, love that adrenalin.

So I could bore you with all the details but Ill give you the basics…
Over the period of 3 months I break, then fix the engine multiple times. The engine comes out of the car and completely apart 3-4 times, then buy another motor & proceed to quickly break that one.
So basically this car has crushed my spirit and my bank account.
Ohh but that speed was great!, ohh wait I hate it!
Uhh errr… hey where is that 2WD Jetta?

The new plan is, Jetta for rally, & audi for hillclimbs (if I don’t set it on fire first). Hillclimbing the audi might work better than rally as hillclimbs are usually 3-10 miles long, vs rallies, which average 140 miles. However this time I may skip the whole turbo idea for the audi and use one of audi’s V8 motors.

So we will see what happens as I change my mind every 5 minutes but that’s the plan for now.

Best Regards,
Brooks
http://4040racing.com

Oakridge Day Trip

Not every “Roadtrip” has to take up weeks and involve sleeping in the back of a car in random gravel pits. A common theme this winter for me has been the “One-Day.” Shockingly, this involves one day of traveling with someone, or yourself, to do something, hopefully worthwhile. Now, some of you may be thinking that this sounds strikingly familiar to the old “day trip”. It might be, but for the sake of feeling like we’re talking about something exciting and new, not another trip to aunties for a reunion, we’ll stick with the one-day moniker. Maybe we’ll even think of a clever acronym….

Living in Bend, Oregon, there are infinite opportunites for one -day trips. The reasons for the one-day are accentuated by the situation I have in Bend. A vagabond at heart turned professional athlete, I’ve been kind of forced to settle down somewhere so I can be, or at least seem, grounded between month-long trips around the universe racing bikes. I was tricked into hanging out in Bend by an old buddy from Maine, Tim Jones, and my esteemed Giant teammate, Carl Decker. Turns out I like it here and have settled down as much as I’m able to… Great people, recreating, sleeping, it’s got it all for this kid. Unfortunately, I still get bored once a week or so, not bored enough to embark on a proper road-trip in the precious off-season, just enough to want to get out of town for about ten hours. Usually this ten hours is split between driving, some type of outdoor activity (kayaking, skiing, singletrack), eating, logistics, etc… The business model for the one-day requires at least a 1/1 ratio of driving to activating. Preferable is a 2/1 or better ratio. Neither of these ratios are especially carbon neutral though… I try to offset this by using the driving time to hone my line selection and visualization skills by traveling at an aggressive rate of speed through any remotely interesting stretch of road along the route. Fortunately, there are lots of interesting roads in the Pacific Northwest. Gravel or tarmac, the combination of rivers, mountains and logging interest have created hundreds of miles of epic driving. Fortunately, my Subaru WRX wagon was already totaled once when I purchased and dodgily repaired it, so I feel pretty good about flogging it within inches of it’s life, and the good line, on a regular basis. Good thing Michelin keeps me in sticky tires (both summer and winter) so I don’t hit anything… the only problem with this approach to the hallowed carbon neutrality is that I’m always the obvious volunteer to drive. Dang it. Carting your sleeping, hungover, drooling friends on an adventure every single time gets old, and hilarious after a while…

On that note, let’s get to the story of the day. We’ll start with a place name and a person’s name, both of which are very important in the cacophony of the universe as we all (should) know it. Timmy Evans. Oakridge, Oregon. Combine these two and you’ll have a great day, guaranteed. If you’re fortunate enough to toss in the rest of the neighborhood MTB crew compiled of a writer, a surgeon, an IT guy, a Canadian and everyone’s retirement hero, there’s no way you can go wrong. Ok, you probably still will go wrong, and it will probably be Timmy’s fault, or at least a result of his presence…

With seven folks and no cargo van, we were even less carbon neutral, but got to set up a fun hare n’ hound scenario for the hour and a half drive from Chardonnay Lane in Bend to the Trail Head Café in Oakridge. You see; the doctor-racer (Jon Finnoff) and the IT-racer (Ben Thompson) were able to conspire to rally the perpetually late Canadian (Chris Sheppard) to an on-time departure of 9am. The writer-racer (James Williams) and I were counting on at least fifteen extra minutes of bike loading/sandwich making/bathroom time on account of the Canadian’s reliable tardiness. No such luck. When a cowardly text from the (surprisingly punctual) Timmy came through with “still drunk, I’m not a rock star, no ride for me”, the hare ‘n hound plan was proposed. Canadian-Doctor-IT car would leave stat. Retired, Racer-Writer car would finish up in the bathroom, loading and sandwich construction departments, blaze across town to kick Timmy out of bed, roll him into the car, get gas, then catch the lead group before they finished their first (glorious) muffin at the Trailhead Café in Oakridge.

Two hours and a bunch of snacks, coffee (gross), storytelling, laughing, sleeping, drooling and good music found us in Oakridge just as the Canadian took his first muffin bite. Perfect. Oh, and it was a beautiful day, even more perfect. Leaving perpetually sunny and dry Bend to drive west over the Cascade crest and into the rain forest in march is risky to say the least. We hit the nail on the head, overnight rain had hopefully melted a bit more snow up high and tacked up the already perfect dirt in the valleys. Those of us who’d ridden in Oakridge before knew it was going to be mint and the two virgins could tell from our smiles that their cherries were about to be popped. There wasn’t even really a question of where to go for the first timers. River Trail to Alpine Trail. Just enough downhill, then uphill singletrack to whet your appetite before spending the next hour and a half climbing perfect grade fireroad to earn the Alpine reward.

A couple muffins later and we were on our way down the Willamette River under warm sun and on moist dirt. The boys fell into the first singletrack and things progressed from there. After half an hour of pumping short downhills and root slide-hopping the climbs along the North Fork Middle Fork Trail we were sufficiently warmed up for the next road slog. The racer boys immediately fell into their prescribed workouts for the day while I cruised with Johnny and talked about 29ers, privately scolding the boys up the road for integrating heart-rate monitors and stopwatches into our Sunday adventure. I lasted about ten minutes on my high horse before realizing I’d better do some fast riding of my own (which I wanted to do on the perfect big-ring logging road anyway), so I could catch up and make sure they didn’t miss any turns… Wouldn’t want them going too high and getting into north-facing snow banks after all… (turns out we decided to go high anyway, and go snowed out). After making the catch and purveying some information in the form of scratched-dirt directions, I turned around to cruise back down and finish the climb with the Candian-Doctor-Retired group. My timing couldn’t have been more perfect, just as I almost plowed into the Canadian, who was rounding a blind corner which I happened to be flattracking around, a bit out of control, he projectile vomited, almost right on me. Awesome. Semi-functional stomach viruses are great entertainment for casual onlookers. More puking commenced just after we got shut down by a couple feet of snow and were coasting back to a cutoff road. This time Timmy was fortunate enough to be within view, he was very impressed that someone else was vomiting all over the pure white snow with one foot unclipped at about 25mph…

Now, to the good part. You see, I really look forward to riding fast on unfamiliar trail with a couple guys who are also down for reckless pinning it. Chris and Timmy are the perfect partners in crime, and we had about 4,000 vertical feet of perfect Alpine Trail singletrack below us (after some chocolate eating and wilderness latrine techniques).

About one minute in we were already riding like dicks, laughing and hanging it out as we blasted through a winter’s worth of fallen twigs, branches and pinecones covering the velvety trail when I heard the telltale metallic grinding of someone getting the proverbial stick in the spokes. Not surprisingly, it was Timmy, and, in the interest of fun and aggression, instead of stopping pedaling, he went ahead and tore his rear derailleur off. Sweet. Great, now our favorite loose downhillin’ companion was riding a chainless coaster bike. But wait, he still could keep up, since the trail didn’t really require any pedaling anyway. We continued to rip it like there was no tomorrow, pausing only once to take in the (pretty spectacular) scenery and let Timmy push his bike up a short climb.

At the end of the trail, back on the valley floor, adrenalin subsiding, the reality of how were were going to get Timmy the four flat miles to the Trailhead occurred to us. How were we going to do that? First idea was to send racer guys back to get the car. As they rolled off in that direction, the Canadian and I decided we could just push Timmy home. Great idea, partner with the puker to push the hungover guy home. I ended up pushing the whole way, which is about as hard as it looks, that being pretty hard…

Back at the café, our ride time was only at 3.5 hours, factoring in the driving around time we needed at least another half hour, preferable an hour, of riding to make our trip responsible… Timmy and the Puker sat out for obvious reasons and the rest of us set out on the quintessential Oakridge quickie, Salmon Creek Trail. A half hour of cruisy singletrack up and a half hour of rooty, rocky slickness on the way back down the other side of the creek left us feeling like we had a solidly worthwhile day.

Back at the café once again, we had some more muffins, peeled off muddy clothes, recounted the day’s events, loaded up, high-fived and were home in time for a cruiser bike ride downtown to get Margaritas and Enchiladas at our favorite Sunday night watering hole and catch up with all the other Sunday one-day’ers in town. Not too bad.

Whistler, BC

The weather in the Northwest is no joke. The sideways, driving rain leaves you feeling soaked for days. But even the worst case of seasonal affective disorder can’t compete with Whistler in late summer.

After driving up through Vancouver along the Sea to Sky Highway, we dropped our bags at the Delta Hotel in Whistler, all along the way sampling plenty of the region’s specialty: pouring rain. The next morning, though, the rain had quit and Whistler showed its true colors. Craig and the team at Epic Ride showed us just about everything that makes this place so incredible. After riding CreamPuff and Pemberton (using Blackcomb helicopters as our personal chauffeurs), we checked out the awesome Alta Lake. Afterward we made a pit stop at the Howe Sound Brewpub in Squamish for a few pints of their Devil’s Elbow IPA. There are few better ways to cap a perfect day.

About with some nasty weather is part of any road trip. Sure, it put a bit of a damper on our Northwest excursion, but the road is all about the unexpected. And while being carted around in a helicopter is pretty great, nothing beats the road.

Tour de Thule

Thule's 2nd Annual Tour De Thule took place on Tuesday, October 10th, 2006, and included heroic performances, personal triumph and a near photo finish. Signaling a good-bye to warmer summer lunch rides and hello to harsh winter sessions on the indoor trainer, the Tour de Thule provides a yardstick for Thule's Seymour CT riders to train harder over the winter or relish in others misery. At any rate, the racers left the flagpole at US headquarters before noon, the first rider out being a new member of the Thule Wheelman's Club.

Denise started with 20.00 minutes on the field and fought off the peloton until the very end. Waves of cyclists left the building in intervals based a secret time formula planned to get all riders on the final hill together.


After a 13.3 mile course through rolling hills, past Clark Library, and back home, Thule's number crunchers had it right, as the last hill had over 10 riders climbing for top position.


First place finisher Peter Pell had the following to
say about his victory, "Clearly I have been
sandbagging to get a better start time, and my cleaver
rues has again paid off in a big event".
Pell also credited a pre-ride stretch and
expert mechanical work of product manager Darren Synder.


In total, 17 riders took the challenge of Tour De Thule 2006 - all who participated or cheered from the sidelines had a great time and are already in training for 2007.

World Kayak Tour makes a stop

The World Kayak Tour Blog Site is sponsored by Camp Arrowhead, Jackson Kayak and Entropy Gear. Krazy Kayakers are a group of three paddlers travelling around, having fun, and searhing for the meaning of life. The group includes; Matt Rideout (Tennessee) Jez Blanchard (Australia) D-Mac (North Carolina).



We'll be following the World Kayak Tour and Krazy Kayakers Jez, Matt and D-Mac on our Roadtrip blog - stop over at http://www.worldkayaktour.blogspot.com// and drop them a hello - They love feedback and are always wired -

Thursday, August 24, 2006
We spent the night driving from Washington DC to Seymour, CT. This was quite an epic drive to say the least. We pulled out of DC around 11:00 pm and drove our way through Baltimore, and then onto New York City. Somewhere in Delaware we stopped for a midnight snack at McDonald’s. This was the beginning of an interesting conversation. Jez and I were standing at the drive thru, because the bus was too tall to fit through, and a guy sticks his head outside the window of his big black Excursion piloted by his driver wearing tuxedo and begins to speak. He asks,”Are you guys just standing there or what?” I replied by saying,”Yes we are waiting for our food, sorry mate.” A few moments later we walked away with our sacks full of food and Jez turns to me and asks if the guy looked like a member of the band Hanson. I answered,”I think your right.” I walked back up to the excursion and said, “You asked me a stupid question, so now it’s my turn… are you guys Hanson?” To make a long story short, it was most definitely the band Hanson ordering French fries at 1:00 am in the morning in the middle of nowhere Delaware… Random.We passed through the New York City around 4:30 am, and there were already massive amounts of traffic. I was amazed to be driving on an interstate that had 6 lanes of traffic in both directions, that’s right 12 lanes of mass chaos! The lanes are very narrow, and the tractor trailers were passing us as if we were setting still. Jez drove through the heart of the city; I feel that he deserves an award for driving the bus right through the middle of Brooklyn! After we traveled out of New York City I fell fast asleep as Jez drove us on into Connecticut.


We arrived at Thule U.S. Headquarters around lunch today and met with Steve Doviak, their marketing director. Steve checked out our remarkable new bus (which still does not have an official name) and then treated us to lunch. After lunch, we picked up our new gear and began to assemble the massive, massive new rack. The two of us spent the next 3 hours putting the rack together in THULE’s parking lot. The bus now has 4 sets of 89” bars ( largest allowed by law, built for a Hummer!), 2 Ferrari red twenty one cubic feet cargo boxes, 2 sets of Hull-A-Ports, 2 kayak stackers, 12 straps, 2 t-shirts, 2 work shirts, 2 hats, and a bunch of logos to put on the bus. The people at THULE are some of the best people we have met on the road. There is no question that the two of us will always be THULE customers. Check out the bus pictures, this thing is awesome & really tall. We are only 6 inches shorter than the average tractor trailer.Jez is back at the wheel again, and I have resumed my roll as computer nerd and we are headed for Watertown, NY. The next update will be from the Black River Festival.Good night from interstate 84,Rideout

Summer in Bend, OR

The photo is from an intensity session early this morning. I’m entering my final month of training here in Bend, am looking ahead towards heading back East. This summer has been a good mix of working and training, while enjoying the west. I just returned from conducting a biathlon camp with some young junior biathletes in the Methow Valley in the north Cascades of Washington. By far one the coolest place I have been to in the US!

Haley Johnson -

Green River Narrow

The Green River Narrows that runs between Hendersonville, NC and Saluda, NC is one of the premier class V stretches of whitewater in the world. That is a pretty big statement but when you consider these three criteria, than I think you will agree; 1.) damn controlled year round, so it runs at a good level more than most any other river in the country, 2.) warm water for 8 months of the year and just chilly, for you westerners, the other four months, and lastly but definately not least, 3.) Class V action with these two world famous rapids, shown in these pics Gorilla and Sunshine. If you have never been on the Green and you are a solid boater, than I am sure it is on your list.

Here is the pic of Sunshine.

Chris Roberts - Eastern Technical Representative

Day Eleven 4-4-05

Today was a catch up with work day. We found a coffee shop in downtown Monterey that had free wireless access so Darren, Eric, and myself were finally able to get a decent internet connection. This has proven to be an issue during our travels and in our lovely hotel here in Monterey which at its price you would think would have free internet access, but no, $10.99 for 24 hours. Even the $49.99 a night motel down the road has free internet, thanks Hyatt!

Day Ten 4-3-2006

Rain! I thought this was beautiful sunny California? Today we put our buddy Johnny on a flight back to the east coast and said our final farewell to our RV. I think we were all ready to sleep in a real bed after spending 9 nights sleeping in an RV. No ride today because of the rain and it looks like no ride tomorrow since the forecast is 100% chance of rain.
We met up with Eric Wallace today, the true end user of the trailer that started this whole excursion. Eric is Thule's Western Tech Rep or the official title of "Thule Envoy". He has already outfitted his new truck with racks, decals, and plenty of schwag, this rig definitely is a great match to the trailer he will be towing. If it ever stops raining we'll try to get some pictures of this match made in metal.
Dinner was at El Torito on Cannery Row in Monterey, a superb mexican restaurant located right on Monterey Bay. We recommend the Cadillac Margaritas!

Day Nine 4-2-06

After a very long week of traversing the country we finally arrived in sunny Monterey, CA late last night thanks to Captain Snyder's Red Bull binge. Upon waking we decided to at least see if the hotel would allow us to drop the trailer for the day instead of continuing to haul it around. To our surprise they allowed us to check in at 10am. To celebrate this miraculous accomplishment and for cooking breakfast for our selves the previous 7 mornings we decided to treat ourselves to breakfast at Denny's, a fine establishment. After breakfast we headed back to the hotel for what we considered our first real showers of the trip, not that we didn't shower but we didn't have to hike across a campsite to some sort of make shift shower stall. After a shower and shave we headed to Santa Cruz for some touristy type stuff. Let's just say that Santa Cruz is an interesting town, possesing a very eclectic group of individuals. We then headed off to San Jose to meet up with my sisters for dinner and to unload our extra food on them. No pictures today, sorry.

Day Eight 4-1-06 Red Rocks

Climbing at Red Rocks in Vegas, specifically Black Corridor. If you're a climber you will understand that we jammed on some 5.10a & bs. Enjoy.

Day Seven 3-31-06

We made it to Vegas and did a little ride, nothing exciting in Vegas really but when I get better connection I will write more. Tomorrow we are going to climb at Red Rocks so there should be some good pics from that.

So, one interesting thing on the ride was all the burnt cactus and other desert vegetation that was on one side of the trail and not on the others. Very strange? There were other places around Vegas that also had this strange phenomenon. Apparently the lightning strikes and causes fires, but it still didn't explain that it was burnt on one side of the trail and not the other.

Day Six 3-30-06 The Epic

Today, Captain Darren decided he wanted his subordinates to partake in an "EPIC" 35 mile "mountain" bike ride. I put "mountain" in quotations because 16.2 miles of this "EPIC" ride was on the road. Darren would like to say in his defense that 7 miles of the road portion was on dirt, albeit all up hill!!! Needless to say Johnny and I were/are not very happy with Darren. They call them "mountain" bikes for a reason!! So, basically the ride started with an 11 mile climb up to the trailhead. If you didn't catch that it was an 11 MILE uphill road ride on mountain bikes, did I mention it was all uphill. Normally I wouldn't complain about this but it is March and we are from New England where riding outside during the winter months that precede March is not all that feasible. In other words we're too out of shape to start a ride with an 11 mile uphill climb to start our ride at a parking lot where everyone else parked to start our ride. So, basically we were bonking by the beginning of our trail section of the ride which made it very hard to enjoy the surrounding landscape. The descent was unbelievable but would have been more fun if we had some energy to descend with. The picture below is actually about the time Johnny and I were planning our mutiny, which didn't happen but should have. Exhausted and sunburnt we packed up and headed towards Vegas, hopefully we'll be able to ride. Did I mention I slept from 6pm to 7am after this ride, not exactly the fun filled night I would have liked to have had, thanks Darren!!!

Day Six 3-30-06

Your morning photos.


Last night we had dinner at Miguel's Baja Grill, excellent authentic Mexican food right on Main Street in Moab. The food was excellent, the Margaritas were superb and the atmosphere can't be beat. If you're ever in Moab definitely visit Miguel's for dinner, you won't be dissappointed.

Today the plan is an epic ride here in Moab with lots of photos and lots of riding.