North Dakota!

I grew up in Bismarck North Dakota. All I wanted to do my entire life was leave that state. Now that I've done it, I can't wait to go back home. I haven't been home for 3 years, so when the opportunity came for Ruth and I to head home for the 4th of July, we jumped on it!

Looking out the van window on the drive home. Flat fields and lots of bugs!

I spent most of the week at Ruth's lake cabin soaking up the sun and the water with a beer in my hand. There is no cell service and it's AMAZING! I had such a great time!

I managed to sneak away for one afternoon and head to Bismarck to hang out with my best friend Tyler Fode. I got to town while he was still working, so I headed over to my old local XC trail, Pioneer Park. I just did one lap, but was laughing at how much fun it was. The last time I rode that trail was 8 years ago. I've improved a little on a bike since then. I had a great time smashing corners and just ripping the old trail!

The view from the top of Pioneer Park looking south

and looking north.

 The views of the Missouri are beautiful and the weather was perfect. I grabbed dinner and a few beers with Tyler before heading back to the lake for the rest of the week.

On the way back west, we decided to stop in Medora North Dakota and meet up with the bike shop I used to work at, Dakota Cyclery. It's always a pleasure to see Jennifer and Loren, who are like a second family to me. We were able to get Jen and Loren away from the shop for a few minutes to grab some food. It was great to catch up with old friends and hopefully it won't be long until we can get back there!

We had a great time!

Full XC mode!

Ruthie sweltering in the heat! Surprisingly, a desert in July is hot!

It's open range here and we had to share the trail.

 Ruth and I rode a new section of the Maah Daah Hey trail. The MDH is a 100 mile singletrack trail connecting the north and south units of Theodore Roosevelt National Park in the Badlands of North Dakota. Most of the state is prairie fields, but there is this amazing area in the western part with beautiful sandstone butte formations formed by the Little Missouri river. They just opened a new trail segment south of the south unit that extends the trail even further and we were told we had to check it out.

Map of the MDH. The section we rode, starts at Sully Creek and heads south.

Loren shuttled us to the south end and we rode back to town. It was a great ride! The trail was fun and flowy with lots of neat exposure sections. Nothing technical, but just a great ride! If you are ever in the area, make time to ride there and check out www.DakotaCyclery.com for more info and guided and supported tours!

Most people wouldn't believe this is North Dakota, but it is!

 
-KT

All Gravity Series # 2 - Silver Mt

After injuring my shoulder at Mt Hood, I didn't think I was going to be able to go to Silver. I had my doctors appointment though, and he said I'll have to have surgery in the winter, and that I should just take some Ibuprofen and try racing. Luckily, Silver is a mellow course, so last minute we decided to load up the rig and head east to Idaho!

The shoulder seemed to hold up! Modern medicine is amazing!

We ended up arriving at Silver Mt on Friday evening. I've never shown up that early and was blown away by how empty the parking lot appeared! I've always rolled in Saturday morning to this race, so this was a little shocking. Slowly though, the lot started filling up as all of the RV's and trucks pulled in.

Before everyone else arrived. Anf took this photo while the van was blasting Hannah Montana. True story.

We grabbed the best spot in the house and set up camp. Charlie and I had some work to do. We just received our new Gravity Ice Grey components and were excited to put them on our bikes.

New Ice Grey Gravity parts back from their maiden voyage. They look and work great!

Thumbs up on the new parts!

Silver is REALLY long. It's 15+ minutes top to bottom. There are races on both Saturday and Sunday. You get 2 practice runs and then have to race Saturday's course. After the race you can get a run or two on Sunday's course. Luckily, this year, the courses were on the same route, with Saturday being the upper part of the mountain, and Sunday being the lower part. This allowed you to get more practice with every run, which was great!

Coming down the last few jumps.

After our two practice runs on Saturday, we headed up for the race run. I wasn't expecting much and had a mediocre run. I felt like I wasn't carrying good speed or pedaling where I needed to be, but I still managed to edge out Charlie for the win. I couldn't complain at that point. Having Diamondback go 1&2 is always a great thing!

How to win at podiums!

Fastest family in the NW!

 We partied in the water park on Saturday and celebrated with some big margaritas! I wasn't feeling the greatest on Sunday, but still managed to get to the top of the hill in time for my race run. I had a bunch of mistakes and nearly lost it in the high speed section, but managed to hang on. This time Charlie edged me out and took the win. We couldn't have planned it better. 1&2 both days!

Big thanks to Josh Tofsrud for running this whole show.

Sunday's podium.

Champagne is fun.

It is also important to note, Ruth did the best out of any of us for the weekend, she won her class both days! She's starting to get really fast. She blew a bunch of spokes in her rear wheel on Sunday, but still made it down with a win! I'm curious to see how the overall points are looking!

Ruthie winning her class!

Double medals doing her best impression of me.

 Silver was great, but Ruth and I were both looking forward to heading home to North Dakota for the 4th of July!

-KT

NW Cup #4 - Mt Hood

Great shot from ReilShiftMedia up on the Ridge Trail.

When I'm on a bike I'm usually really comfortable. I know exactly what my limits are and I usually play things pretty safe. I've paid my dues, so to speak, and I am very confident in what I can and can not do. Not many things that I do on a bike, scare me. Sure, some things will cause the adrenaline to flow and the heart to race, but they're not truly scary.  One of the few things that scares me is Mt Hood. For some reason, I've built that track up in my head. Actually, I haven't built up anything in my head. Hood really is gnarly. It is crazy fast, has big rocks, it's long, and has lots of places to make big mistakes. I've had mediocre results there over the years and it always is on my mind until it's over.

This year before Mt Hood I was especially nervous. I hadn't had a really good result all season and need to make something happen. I arrived on Saturday afternoon and managed to get a few practice runs down the hill. I swapped tires a few times before settling on a Kenda Nexcavator 2.5 RSR front and a 2.35 RSR rear.

Charlie and I at the bottom.

The most helpful thing I did all day was follow Charlie down the course. Charlie usually smokes me at Mt Hood. It's his home course and he is really fast there. I was amazed at the speed he carried down Cannonball. I realized I was on my brakes and once I saw how fast he was going, I was forced to let go of the brakes and let 'er rip. 

Support Greg Tubbs and buy his photos!

The other thing I did that really helped was after practice ended, Charlie and I hiked up to the last woods section with Paris Gore to shoot a few photos. The photos gave us an excuse to practice the last log double and the awkward corner after it. I've always struggled to maintain good speed through this section. It's at the end of the run and you are usually really tired. Combine that with the natural spring that runs through the area and it is always slick and the corner has a double apex.

Charlie and I looked at a few different ways to hit the section and dialed in a way to straigten the corner out and carry great speed through the last segment.

The log double at the end of the course.

Sunday morning started with one practice run. I came down cannonball nice and fast until the first right hand corner. I was carrying great speed until I lost the front end. I slammed the ground but seemed to be alright. I felt better once I saw the next rider after me crash in the same place and heard multiple others went down there as well.

You can see the dirt on my right arm from crashing. Nothing major!

Riding the lift for my qualifier, I was just thinking about the few things I had to do to have a good run. I dropped out of the start gate and hit the upper ridge trail perfectly. I carried great speed onto cannonball, but then just sat down and coasted across the ski run to save energy for the finals. I came into the rock traverse and was doing well until the waterfall. Right before the waterfall I hit a rock and it bounced me off my line to the right. I ended up monster truck-ing over boulders, stumps, and logs just holding on for dear life. Somehow I ended up being pointed at the bottom corner of the waterfall. I dropped back into the trail and hit the corner with a ton of force. As soon as I was in mid apex, I heard and felt a big  "POP" I grabbed the brakes immediatly and stopped on the sundeck. My shoulder was in tremendous pain. I grabbed it instinctivly as hard as I could and heard and felt another "pop."

The infamous waterfall. This was my race run, in qualifying, I was on the far left of this photo somewhere.

A lot of the pain went away with the second pop and I hopped on the bike and kept going. I played it safe through the rest of the course and sprinted to the finish. As I was walking back to the pit with my shoulder in pain, I was convinced I wasn't racing later in the day. But then, I turned and looked at the qualifying times. Even with stopping and my shoulder injury, I had qualified 3rd! I decided I had to try and do my race run. I went back to the pits and ate a bunch of Ibuprofen and had the medics tie a back of ice to my shoulder.

Thanks Greg!

The Ibuprofen made me feel a lot better and I took the ice off right before my race run. I couldn't lift my arm, but decided to race anyways. I dropped out of the gate and as soon as I hit the first corner, my adrenelin was racing and most of the pain went away. I hit both the Ridge trail and Cannonball really well. I took it easy though the rocks and a few big g-outs in the tree, knowing I wasn't at full strength, but pushed it where I could. I came out of the last tree section and got on the gas as hard as I could. The organizer had a radar gun and there was $100 up for grabs for the fastest speed into the finish. I gave it everything I had and came across the line and ended up in the hot seat! I bested the fasted qualifying time, but it wasn't quite enough. I ended up 3rd, but managed to have the fastest time in the speed trap sprint!

Podium shot. Shoulder doesn't look very comfortable!

I was excited to finally be on a podium again. In fact, that was the fastest time I've ever had at Mt Hood! I wish I could have gone a little faster, but I put nearly 6 seconds into 4th place's time, which was really cool.

My shoulder was starting to feel better a few days after the race. It popped again taking my shift off and that gave me a much bigger range of motion, but it was still sore. Ruth made an appointment for me to see the doc. He said I tore my labrum cartilage and to see how it felt for the rest of the season. It still hurts, but a few Ibuprofen before riding and I seem to be fine. I'll probably have to have surgery to repair it this fall/winter once the race season is over, but until then, I'm going to try to continue to land on the podiums and move even higher! 

-KT

Angelfire Adventure

All we wanted to do was get here. It seemed simple enough...

In 2009 I purchased my beloved van. It's the best vehicle I've ever owned and it's taken me all over the country. In the 3 years I've had it I've logged 100,000 miles driving to more races than I can remember. I purchased the van in Spokane Washington on a Tuesday in May of 2009. The next day I took it on her maiden voyage. I figured something short would be great to test it out. In order to do that, I loaded two lay-z-boy recliners in the back and headed out with 3 other friends to Angelfire New Mexico! The van made the trip without incident, and other than a few sharpie drawings on the walls and some scratches on the chairs, that trip is nothing more than a distant memory.

Mitch Angus drew this portrait during the vans first road trip. It's starting to fade, but it's still there.

During the first trip, this was our map. it's still on the side wall. We took a different route on the trip.

Fast forward 3 years. The van is now a solid partner in my race program and with the 2013 & 2014 National Championships being announced for Angelfire, Charlie and I decided it was time to head back.

Ruth and I loaded the van and headed south to Portland to pick up Charlie. After some fast food and a few energy drinks, we headed west through the boring slow part of Oregon. A quick note about me, I like to drive my own car. I don't like to be a passenger. If I'm not driving, I'm not able to sleep. If I'm not sleeping, I want to be driving. This creates quite a conundrum for long trips and usually results with me driving most of the way for hours on end. For some reason, it doesn't seem to bother me and most of my passengers like to sprawl out on the bed in the van and arrive at our destination rested and relaxed.

Eastern Oregon sunrise.

 The trip was supposed to be about 28 hours including stops for food and gas. However, the trip gods decided to extend that length. A short while after the sun rose on Thursday morning we were nearing the eastern end of Oregon. I had just passed through Pendelton and was heading up Dead Man's Pass. I rounded a left hand corner and out of nowhere a deer jumped out right in front of the van! There was nothing I could do as we slammed into him. I pulled the van to the side of the road to assess the damage. We hit the deer with the front right corner and the van looked surprisingly good! The bumper was bent and and a lot of broken bits of plastic were laying around. I noticed that the bumper was bent into the tire and was hitting the tire if it turned at all. We didn't have much of an option, we had to bend the bumper back straight.

Charlie trying to move the deer off the road. He thought this was funnier than I did.

The damage wasn't that bad! 1-ton vans are big solid vehicles. I was glad I wasn't driving the rabbit...

I found a cable lock in the back of the van and locked it around the bumper and to the guardrail. It snapped as soon as we tried to drive the van backwards. The next option was to remove the seatbelts from the rear seat and try using those. They broke as well. Our last option was to use my hacksaw I luckily had to cut the corner of the bumper off. After 15 minutes of taking turns cutting, we managed to remove the bumper. We were back on the road!

Hacksawing a bumper at 6am will wake you up quickly.

Bending the last part off. (The brown stuff on the fender is deer poo)

Mission accomplished!

The next few states went by without much incident. We had lost maybe an hour or so hitting the deer. I managed to relinquish the drivers seat for a couple of hours through southern Colorado and sleep for a little bit. I awoke and took my turn spot at the helm in Raton NM.  Raton is where you leave the interstate and start heading towards the ski resort on highway 64.

It was about 3 am and around a big left turn before Cimarron NM, A big elk jumped out into the road. It saw the van and turned off the road and right as we drove past, it darted out attempting to cross the road again. BAM! We hit the animal dead center in the front of the van. I slammed on the brakes and brought the van to a stop and jumped out as fast as I could while choking on the airbag dust. No one was injured, and the only blood was from my arm getting cut when the airbag went off. The front of the van was a different story. The grill was gone, the hood was cracked, the bumper was mangled, and the radiator was spewing coolant all over the road.

The damage.

The deceased. It took both Charlie and I to pull her off the road.

 

Scene of the accident.

I dialed 911 and waited for the sheriff to arrive. The sheriff arrived and was really nice and friendly and waited until the tow truck showed up. We had to be towed all the way back to Trinidad Colorado, to the nearest repair shop. The shop opened up an hour after we were dropped off. Bob, the owner, came over and talked to us. He used to race bikes and knew how important it was to get to the race. He said he would help us get there before the end of the day. He tracked down a new radiator in the next town and drove 60 miles to get it! In order to get the old radiator out, her went home and grabbed his recovery truck. It was an early 80's suburban with a bored out 454 and a huge winch on the front. He just hooked it to everything he could find in the front end and started pulling things straight! We waited all day while Bob and his crew worked on the van. About mid afternoon I was able to fire it up and we were on our way! It was ghetto fabulous at this point, but we finally made it to NM.

One of these days I'll have to count how many photos I have of this van being towed.

I had to jump on the hood to get the latch to work. Thanks 5.10!

Fixing body damage the American way!

We missed all Friday practice because of the accident and got our bikes ready for Saturday. Charlie and I each got 3 runs in before the short practice was over. I had a mediocre qualifying run and managed to put together a decent run for the race. I felt like I rode the technical sections really well, but just didn't have the energy to sprint the huge pedal section in the middle of the track. 4 runs down a 6 minute track at a national level race doesn't really let you end up with a great result. I was still happy with the top 20, but it obviously wasn't what I really wanted.

Not a bad result considering everything that happened, but it will be higher next year for National Champs.

Looking up the mountain. We'll be back next year!

You can train hard, your bike can be prepped and running perfectly, but 2 days of crazy stress, no sleep, and no practice do not make for a winning combination. Looking back though, I've been racing for a long time and as many of these trips as I've been on, this is the first one where I've had a big issue getting to the race. That's a pretty good percentage and statistically, something was going to happen eventually.

I'll be back to Angelfire in 2013 for National Championships. I'm hungry to do well there and I'll have a Mad Max bumper on the front of the van for that trip!

It's the Death Wagon for now. Death Wagon -  2, Mother Nature - 0

-KT