Shovels, Dirt, Alleycat Racin, and a Sunday Session

Sunday Session


Crashes...Check it out!

Whew, what a long weekend. I got down to Ames on Friday night and did the usual Friday night things. I met up with Dave my old roomie who just separated his shoulder last Wednesday dirt jumping. He is rockin a sling and popin pain killers like crazy. So, he'll be on the injured list for awhile.

Saturday morning I met up with my brother and we started work on a crazy idea we had for an addition to the south 16th street dirt jumps.....a huge quarter pipe at the end of the main run with a hip and maybe even a wall for tire taps in the future. We threw the first shovel full of dirt at about 10 AM and we were there until 7 PM. After all the dirt moving and tamping and watering and dirt moving....did I mention the dirt moving one shovel full at a time?? Anyway, by dark we had created a monster, a 6 foot tall quarter pipe with a telephone pole as a coping and a wooden platform on the top. The main face was about 6 feet across with a hip to the left as well. We then went to the Golden Wok buffet and ate everything they had. Swinging a shovel all day will make a man HUNGRY!!

Sunday morning my shoulders were sore from swinging a shovel like I was on a chain gang. However, first on the agenda was an alley cat race that the ISU cycling club was hosting. Big props to Bryan and the others who put it together. Here is how it went down, You get a bingo card and they say go. You race around campus looking for numbers on your card, first one with a bingo wins. I liked the idea and it was a super fun race. Most people were rockin fixie's of some sort however I rolled with my DMR dirt jump bike. My legs were spinning the crap out of my 32x16 gearing. At the end just as I got bingo I started to haul ass back to the start when my seat fell of....no biggie, I don't really use it on a DJ bike, so I put it in my hand and continued to spin at about 200 rpm. I was about 1/4 mile away from the start when Greg spun past me with the greatest of ease (larger gearing). I knew he was in the single speed category as well so I tried to keep pace, but my legs were already moving at full tilt. So I lost to him by about 100 meters and got 2nd in single speed and 4th overall out of about 20 people total. I wish I would of finished one spot up, because Greg walked away with a Singulator and a Surly flask...Nice work!! I had the most fun jumping everything in sight and making up sweet lines between checkpoints. I think I rode on more grass/random things than actual pavement. I even bunny hopped a chain fence up by the chemistry building to shave off a good 15 feet....style points!!

So, now on to Sunday afternoon.....After a quick lunch of peanuts and cheese my brother, myself, Scott, and Dave all went back to south 16th to check out how our 1/4 was drying and do some riding since the weather was perfect. Just as we suspected, all the watering and tamping we did the night before paid off. We were looking at a sweet 1/4 that was begging to be ridden. We rode all afternoon and into the night with the aid of some car headlights. Mark came out mid-afternoon and rocked it out until way after dark. We all had some crashes, but the gold medal goes to Stephen who cased the last jump at top speed and rolled/skidded a good 25 feet with his bike flipping on top of him. He bled a bit...but it's all good.....after all, he was wearing his helmet!! Well, I'm getting sick of typing so, take a look at the videos I threw together and get out and ride!!! (The video quality went to crap when I uploaded them, but you'll get the idea!)