Oh, What the North Wind Brings

In this case.... pain by the bucketful.

The north wind was a blowin' pretty steady this evening and the boys were playing nasty in the gutter. Long about the olive trees on the second sprint of our local sufferfest my lungs were screamin' hey we just had the flu and are operating at about half-speed, my legs were doing their best to be heard as well... hey, we've had one too many bucketfuls of the lactic juice and the pain-o-meter is tappin' well into the red zone. Did you know that the olive trees are nice and pretty this time of year? Especially when the eyes uncross and refocus after the shatterfest rides away from you. Haven't been off the back there for awhile now! Best part is that the DBCJRT boys were the dealers tonight... Garden, El Gigante, and AWfoSho handed out heapin' helpin's of the pain, made the lead group, and just shredded the sprint. Ahh to have the legs to be able to outkick all them onesies and twosies, even with the flusie... I still wonder where AWfoSho finds that magic.

Speaking of pain... read all about them old guys who can't seem to get enough pain from turning pedals and are now resorting to throwing left crosses in the middle of bike races... I'm glad none of the DBCJRT kiddos act near as childish as these so-called grown-ups...

Check it Out!

Shor 'nuf do wish I could've seen Laundry and his pops out there tearing it up at that pinhole of a TT. They musta looked as fast as they pedalled, on their matchy-matchin' TT rigs all done up with Zippy-Zip discs and what-not... Fast enough to be on the podium in the next league up near as I can tell! Them DBC'rs is fast!

Be sure you go and vsit Mike Nachtwey to see all of his pics from the BBC TTT!

Lots to Talk About

Where to start...

It's been a weekend for the old guys... Freire wins MSR at 31, his second victory in San Remo, and shows the speedsters that he's still got it...

Moninger is tops on Oak Glen at the Redlands Classic. He's somewhere north of 40 and has been winning since the early 90's... If the kidlets are still racing at his age they will have 25 plus years of competitive cycling in their legs.

All very cool... and I hope that one or more of the DBCJRT kiddos is still racing their bicycle long after I've traded in my two wheeled machine for a Lazy Boy and a cable subscription to VS... so long as they continue to show cycling in the ratio of 1:3... that's 1 minute of coverage to 3 minutes of commercials. Can't wait to watch MSR, recorded, so that I can fast forward thru the commercials. But, what I really wanted to talk about is word origins, well, because word origins are so cool...

FLECHA... as in Juan Antonio Flecha, one of my all time favorites because he dishes out heaping helpings of pain when he lays on one of his late race attacks... not to mention his one-of-a-kind, arrow-to-the-heavens victory salute after his TDF stage win! How cool was that? FLECHA, as in spanish for arrow, from which we get fletch (to add a feather to an arrow), fletching (the feathers on an arrow), etc...

I've been trying to get the Robinhood to race with us for a few years now... Mini Parker seems to have better things to do, but can you imagine the victory salute he could throw down after winning in a solo move on some county road in NorCal?

And finally, as testament to my credo, Either be Good or Look Good, AWfoSho begs the question of Chanlanalanadingdong, "Do I look good or What?"

By the way, PtotheArker got the ticker clicking over today in Santa Rosa, just missing the podium in the Santa Rosa Crit, but making a few new friends in the process...

Photo Credits: all photos are copyrighted, and my inclusion of them probably constitutes a criminal act, but, dang, those guys take good shots..

Oscar Freire by Sirotti

Scott Moninger by Larry Rosa

Elliot Childress by Jim Childress

Alex Wick by Jim Childress

Land Park Photos...

Mark Adkison has put up some shots to feast your eyes on... If you haven't already done so check 'em out at Hors Categorie Cycling Photography An excellent little photo essay on the Land Park Juniors.

Heard It Through the Grapevine

For those of you that may not have heard it first hand, Laundry was quickest in the elite 4 race at Bariani... assuming the grapevine doesn't distort, nice effort, Laundry!!!

Land Park...

So, the kiddos are out racing and the Goodyear Blimp floats overhead... folks were saying that the blimp was in town for some kind of basketball tournament or something, but I'm pert near sure that it made the flight to little old Sactown just to cover the racing...

No fewer than thirteen DBCJRT rocket ships took the start in the junior show: Davitamon, TK, the Staz, PtotheArker, AWfoSho, El Gigante, the Tapinator, Garden, Todd Stone, Ian McPherson, Karch Miller, Kieran Noble-Goodman, and our own queen bee, Alexis Braun... the comment was made that DBCJRT better win this race with those numbers... I say DBCJRT should win any race, with any numbers... and the kidlets didn't disappoint. After several attempts to put the Staz, Todd, and/or PtotheArker up the road, TK finally shook free. Seven laps up the road resulted in the win, but not before dropping AMD's Daniel Tisdell. After an impromtu, but effective, lead out from Davitamon, AWfoSho took the field sprint for the third spot.

The storyboard for the elite 3 race included as much off the bike action as on... On the bike, Garden spent several of the waining laps off the front, finally caught with two to go. El Gigante challenged the field sprint and ended up in a four way tie [sic] (that's fancy writer talk for: that is not a typo) for 8th in the 71 rider field, resulting in some off the bike shenanigans... seems the Leprechauns caused the camera to fail at the finish, so the riders were left to pick themselves, until home video footage clarified the first 7 places. Eighth thru eleventh was another story. All four riders were so close that the camera couldn't pick them as it was not an exact finish line shot... no problem, right? just split the prize for 8th and call it a day... unless you are Matt Theison of BPG... imagine a guy so wound up over his finish spot that he would threaten a kid ten years younger than him, and then, when things didn't go his way, storm off in a tantrum that would make a two-year-old proud... all for 1 upgrade point...

Turns out, that most riders, on the day, were safer in the 3's than in the prosie race anyway... those guys did a fantastic job of taking eachother out in a couple of bizarre wrecks. Fortunately our kiddos had their training wheels on and managed to stay upright. TK and AWfoSho ended up in front of a split following one of those wierd little wrecks. Unfortunately their group couldn't get organized and the race came back together. AWfoSho, marking Michael Hernandez' wheel, ended up off the front several more times before he ran out of gas and let Mr. Hernandez go... and I told Mike to take it easy on the kids before the race :) Well, Hernandez being Hernandez stuck the move that AWfoSho let go and won solo... not that AWfoSho would have been able to change that... the field sprint came down to Dean LaBerge, again... and I told Dean that he had to sprint in the 14 to make it fair for the kids... not that our kiddos could have done anything about it anyway!

SGW put on a great race again... seems they have a knack for doing that! Thanks to all those guys and gals working hard across The Causeway so our boys could have a little fun!

News Flash from CVC

TK crashed out of the Road Race yesterday at the Central Valley Classic while covering the front for DBC Elite 1/2 teammate Mitch Trux who was up the road. The DNF result cost TK a chance to test himself in today's Time Trial, but the good news is that Mitch won stage 1.

A Bit of History... and One of My Favorite Things

When Thor, although back then he was simply Blake, first began racing he spent many, many races 'off the back.' The same could be said about El Gigante, AWfoSho, Juge, and Davitamon. But, through persistance, all of the above eventually found themselves at the head of most races, including those on a National level.

One of the toughest parts about bringing new kids into this beloved little sport is that they usually get stomped in their first forays into racing. TK is one of the few exceptions to this rule, but the gods of all that is anerobic sent their minions on the day he was concieved to build a one-of-a-kind engine. Give a teenage kidlet a good stomping, and the first thing you are likely to hear is, "I'm never doing that again..." With that, I give you one of my favorite things... not watching kids get stomped, but watching kds get stomped time and time again until they no longer get stomped...

PtotheArker finished the latest version of Snelling with the lead group... a first in several attempts... He's taken his lumps without complaint, learned from them, grew inspite of them, never quit because of them, and now he is finding himself in "The End Game." All of the sudden, bike racing is a whole new game! Nothing is better than watching a kid have success thru perseverance. I am prouder of PtotheArker's result, along with Todd Stone's, than I am of the kiddos that won. Those two are becoming bike racers and learning a lot about life along the way...

To all those kids out there taking their lumps, keep pedalling... pretty soon you'll be the ones dishing the lumps out... and I will again get to see one of my favorite things!

Photo: AWfoSho, Juge, and Ryan Jones circa 2003 when they were still taking their lumps

Snelling, et al...

It's been awhile, and there is much to say...

Snelling, ah Snelling. This year the t-shirts were correct-Snelling instead of Senling. No collector's items, but we did get a few t-shirts... five to be exact. In the Junior 15/16 race the kidlets sent Garden up the road with Joel Shaffer of the AMD Junior Team. With AMD and DBCJRT in the break, the chase was left to Tieni Duro among others. A classic case of too little horse power and/or unorganized chases let the break stick, and Garden came out on top in the race to the line... first t-shirt! With fresh legs after the free ride in the group, Laundry easily won the field sprint and El Gigante battled his way to fourth in the mass gallop home. 1,3,6... not bad, three total t-shirts! Todd Stone and PtotheArker joined the march in the Junior 17/18 race with Todd just missing a t-shirt, finishing 7th. PtotheArker finished with the group. Dishes and the Tapinator also turned the pedals in anger... unofficial results have Dishes finishing 5th in the junior 13/14 race (t-shirt number 5) and the Tapinator finished shortly after the group in the 15/16's.

Davitamon, AWfoSho, and TK turned the pedals in the elite fields, Davitamon and AwfoSho in their last Elite 3 category race, TK mixed it up with the prosies in the Pro/1/2 race. The 3's saw Davitamon finish in the 2 spot after planting himself in a late break. AWfoSho frustrated the field with his blocking to help Davitamon stay away... end result, t-shirt number four and well timed Cat 2 upgrades for both AWfoSho and Davitamon. I'm sure the career three's will be happy to see the DBCJRT jocks upgraded... TK fought thru the gutter to finish with the main group in his own personal hell as the pros did 86 miles in 2 hours 50 minutes... if my math is correct, that is nearly 30 miles per hour on the average.

Fast forward one week, same general local... Merco, formerly McLane, weekend.

Bumps and bruises were the theme for the weekend... El Gigante hit the deck early in the junior race, calmly took his free lap, and finished second in the rush of the 15/16's to cross the line first. Garden finished just behind him to take the third spot. Meanwhile the 17/18 crowd took their proverbial bumps and bruises in their version of the same race. AWfoSho, Davitamon, TK and Todd Stone did their best to get somebody up the road, all the while knowing that a bunch finish did not bode well for them with Justin Williams in the race. Alas, none of their attacks would stick and the race came down to that dreaded field sprint... AWfoSho had William's wheel until the last corner while TK kept the pace high... but... as soon as TK pulled off, the pace dropped and the dreaded swamping took place... in the mayhem AWfoSho lost William's wheel and didn't even contest the sprint... probably the first time the kiddos haven't been in the top ten in a very long time.

Davitamon took the bumps for the boys in Sunday's Road Race, ending up on the bottom of a pile on the last lap of a 96 mile road race. A few miles later TK nearly did the same as he jockeyed for position in the charge to the line... fortunately, he only dropped his chain and din't actually touch pavement.

The good news coming out of the Merco weekend is that DBCJRT holds the top three spots in the 15/16 point series... El Gigante in first, Garden in second, and Laundry in third... can you say dominance?