National Champs

All Smiles during dual slalom practice!

I knew September was going to be a crazy month and it didn't disappoint! Two days after arriving back home from Interbike, I was sitting on a flight heading to the land of NASCAR, Charlotte North Carolina. The plan was to meet up with Eric Hatch, my roomate and good friend from college, and drive to Beech Mountain for the 2011 US National Gravity Championships. I landed and picked up my rental car. I ended up renting a Dodge Grand Caravan. This thing was a little more high tech than my cargo van. Pressing a button on the key fob made all of the doors open. It reminded me of a Transformer. It immediately got nicknamed Optimus Prime.

The rally squad. Rental cars are fun!

We met up and drove through the night to Boone, where we grabbed a hotel for a few hours of needed rest. We awoke to a beautiful day on Thursday and drove to the mountain and started building bikes. A few years ago I met a guy named Daniel Sapp when he was living up in Bellingham Washington. He was from North Carolina and after talking with him recently, he said we could stay with him when we got down there. Daniel ended up having to work, but pointed us in the direction of one of the local shops, Cycletherapy. Mike Cobler and the rest of his crew welcomed us with open arms. They allowed Eric, Myself, Lear Miller and Mikey Haderer to use their pit space for the weekend and let Eric and I stay with them. We were blown away by the hospitality and couldn't thank them enough. If you are ever in NC and need a shop, swing by and support those guys.

#3 on the track but #1 in the hearts of the locals. I saw three different posters of "Dale" between my gate and the bathroom at the Charlotte Airport.

I grabbed my number plate and headed up the hill for a course walk. I had never been to Beech Mountain, and neither had anyone else I talked to, so the first thing we did was Google the mountain stats. I was disapointed to learn that it was a small hill ~700" elevation. However, we quickly learned that former US national dual slalom champion, Chris Herndon was the course builder. That calmed some nerves. I will say it here, BEECH MOUNTAIN WAS AWESOME! The course was laid out really well, it had some flat grass turns, tight berms in the trees, a huge rock garden, and a few jumps. I was so excited to ride the course. I went back and immediatly put my mud spikes on. The course rode as well as it looked. Lear, Mikey and I rode a few laps before grabbing our slalom bikes and heading over to the slalom course for practice.

Chris Herndon built an amazing venue. Big thanks to him and his crew. I can't wait to come back next year.

The slalom course was really fun too. The upper part was really fun with a few hard gaps, but the bottom had a strange dirt jump line that was giving people a lot of trouble. You could go around it and it seemed just as fast, so that's what I decided to do. We practiced until the course was closed and went out to dinner.

Lear and I during dual slalom qualifying.

For dinner, we decided to try a new local restauraunt. It was a hot dog restauraunt that opened that night. Mikey and I went on an eating binge. They hot dogs were delicious, but we all knew they would be a bad choice the next day!

This was amazing. I don't know what was on it, and probably don't want to.

Friday started with some DH practice and then ended with Slalom qualifiers. I don't normally do gated racing, but since they we racing dual slalom instead of 4X, I decided to give it a shot. I put together two mediocre runs and qualified 10th. Mikey ended up 7th and he and I would end up facing each other in the first round. Mitch Ropelato and Jill Kintner won the qualifiers.

A local artist made this. The metal work was really good. The wheels are the drive gears of an old bulldozer. It was for sale, $5000. One day I'll have something similar in my front yard.

The night ended with Eric and I heading to Fred's mercantile, the local general store. This place was a real general store. It literally had everything. Eric and I grabbed food for spaghetti. Once we had paid for our food, we headed to the parking lot. After the days practice, Eric and I loaded our bikes into the CycleTherapy trailer. Lear and Mikey didn't get done riding in time and were locked out. They had to load 4 bikes and gear into their Chevy HHR. It was packed so full that the rear hatch couldn't close. We saw their car at the parking lot of Freds and without hesitation, we proceeded to unpack their entire car! As soon as we were done, Lear and Mikey walked outside. We quickly sped off in Optimus Prime laughing all the way home for the night knowing we had just started a prank war.

Verg from Shimano (and Eddy Merkin) making some custom bump stops for my frame.  

Sharpie Anodizing.

Saturday morning rolled around and started with DH practice. I took a cruiser lap and prepared for qualifiers later in the morning. My qualifiing run was nothing special. I made a big mistake in the rock garden that caused me to come to a stop and nearly crashed on the first rock hump on the course. I kept it upright however and pedaled to the end. I ended up qualifying in 7th! I was less than 4 seconds off of second place with 2 big mistakes. I felt great! Gwin ended up qualifing first by 11 seconds, but we're not going to talk about that!

Results were:
1. Gwin
2. Riffle
3. Keene
4. Bingelli
5. Memmellar
6. Ropelato
7. Me!

I was feeling on top of the world and got ready and headed over to Dual Slalom finals. I ended up with Mikey in the first round. I held my own, but Mikey ended up beating me. Ropelato ended up matching his qualifying and won the finals beating Neko Mullally.  Jill was unstoppable and dominated the womens category all night long. I was excited to have a top 10 finish to add to the race resume.

This was in the parking lot at Lowes in Boone. It says Tow Mater in the back window. 

Eric, Mikey, Lear, and I went out to grab some food. During dinner, the skies opened up and it dumped rain down. I was praying for rain and my prayers were answered. I fell asleep with a big smile on my face.

We awoke on race day to blue skies. Everything was soaked from the torrential rain the night before. I went up for a practice run and was blown away by how muddy the course was. We were litterally riding through a swamp in sections. It was AWESOME! I was having so much fun sliding around down the course. I got done with practice and walked up the course to watch Eric's race run. Eric put in a good run in the muck and ended up second in Cat 1 (expert) by .03 seconds! He was the happiest most bummed out person I've ever seen. In an update since the race, Eric petitioned and got his pro upgrade for next year. Congrats dude!

Mud bog corner into the woods

I watched the junior race and the womens race before heading up for my run. Congratulations to Jamie Rees for her third place in the Pro Womens category and of course, Jill Kintner for winning the class again. I went up for my run and hung out at the top waiting for my run. It was the weirdest national champs I've ever been at. It was really relaxed and everyone was just joking around. I dropped into my race run with the intent on ending up on the podium. I came through the big mud bog before the woods and felt great. I had a good upper woods section before dropping into the big rock garden. I pinned it into the left line and did it cleaner than I ever had. I carried a ton of speed through the line and jumped too far off the log at the end. I ended up T-boning the corner and killing all of my speed. Due to the lack of speed, I crashed on the next little jump onto the skatepark rock. I quickly grabbed my bike and hopped on again. I was pissed. I figured I had lost 5 seconds or so, but I was still on a good run. I knew I could still easily get a top 10 and get the UCI points I needed to race the world cups in 2012. I sprinted out of the woods peddaling as hard as I could to make up time. I trippled the step down into the big hip and launched the hip way bigger than I had in practice and blew up on the landing. I hit the ground and ripped my lock on grip in half and bent my bar. I got back up and pushed to the finish knowing my run was over. The worst part was that I came through the line and finished 15th. I was 15th last year with a good run. This year I crashed twice and ended up 15th. I was really dissapointed in myself, but that's racing.

Riding the bog in my race run. Bonus points for keeping my feet on the pedals!

I had a great time in North Carolina. The track was really fun and everyone I met was really friendly. I can't wait to go back next year and get some redemption on that course.

Flying with bikes is never fun. I knocked over some guys coffee pushing this this.

I know it has been 3 weeks since my last post. This month has been hectic. More riding and filming projects to come. I'll have the updates in a few days.

-KT