TransRockies day 7

Last night I lent my Turner to a Polish guy who broke his frame, and simultaneously received a new Lefty fork from the Sobe Cannondale team guy so I could ride the Scalpel.

It seemed today was the hardest start of all the stages, 300m vertical right off the bat up the Blairmore ski hill. Once we got to the top, it seemed the race selections had been made for the most part, and we were in pretty good position.

We rode out to the highway with the New Zealand team, then past checkpoint one I used up a lot of energy staying in that paceline of 4 with Craig pulling. We did some traverse around a mountain, with short technical climbs I could ride much better than yesterday with the Turner.

There was a long, gradual climb out to check point 2, we were caught by a bunch of the masters (Tamarack and che Czech Masters) at the check point, but left before them and they had zero chance of seeing us again on the downhill.

This year ended with a bunch of single track around Fernie, and one last hot steep climb to get in some more technical trail. Craig started jamming up the climb, and we saw the New Zealand guys ahead of us whom we hadn't seen for a couple hours since they last dropped us. We ramped up our climbing and stormed past them, not too see them again until the finish. Felt good.

As we wound through the single track, we saw Tim and Tracey cheering everyone on, then Tori at another corner, then Jerry, Trish and Linda, plus others who were cheering for the deadgoats but who I couldn't make out as we went by... the last part of town trail was pea gravel that was like ball bearings to ride on.

We finished consistent with the week, 11th or 12th I think, and it turns out we were 11th overall... same as last year. We were handed our finish line goodies, and a free beer, then hung out to see the others come in. Geoff and Pat looked good at the end, as did Linden and John. Unfortunately Tim dislocated his shoulder again, tough way to wind up a race. Dallas and Mical finished third and looked chipper at the finish. The Polish guy came in looking happy, said he'd never ridden a "finely tuned machine" like that before. I tried explaining tubeless tires to him last night, but he had them rock hard today, too bad he couldn't feel the benefit of low pressure too. He washed the bike up nice and got me a bottle of booze of some sort for the favour.

Craig and I stopped over at a place Charlie and Trev were staying at, then swam in the river on the way back to our place. It feels so good to be showered and in clean clothes with nothing to do but relax.

The after party kept going and going. Tim seemed "percocet-ed" at the end dinner, but was his usual positive self nevertheless. I'm hoping he can drop the hammer sometime this season still. Michelle seemed happy to have finished it all up, always good to see all smiles at the end. Maybe the glass of wine on an empty stomach in the dinner lineup helped. Geoff Clark "had a few beers" which led to him going home with "less boxer shorts than he arrived with" because many people thought "atomic wedgies are funny". Many of you probably haven't seen Geoff throw a folding chair 20 feet before... I'm guessing it was Pat's first time to observe that as well. He generally did McKee '07 real proud. Trish demonstrated her party energy once again. Tracy kept the whole mess well fueled by using her feminine charms to ensure each $20 got us 5 or 6 beers rather than 4. John enjoyed antagonizing Pat. Tim and I observed that in such a scenario, the odds are well in favour of the sober guy, namely Pat. We couldn't come to a betting arrangement as we both agreed on the most probable outcome. Linden seems to be hooked on riding, which is awesome. Crazy Larry was leading a bee making school with balloons, apparently some random drunk bitch didn't think much of Linda's bee. I wasn't impressed, and I suspect I wasn't the only one. Not really sure where she came from. Craig sweated more on the dance "floor" than he did all week riding. Gerry recorded a fair bit of the action on camera. We visited 7-11 at 2:30am for such staples as the latest issue of Mountain Bike action (Tori would be impressed that I didn't even look twice at the body painted supermodel Sports Illustrated issue once I saw the mountain bike magazine), microwavable mac n' cheese, a western omelete burrito and cookie dough ice cream.