We're Not in Kansas Anymore

I'd call the trip to Lawrence remotely successful. Everybody had a good time, there was lots of relaxing in our free time, and the racing was decent. When we finally got around to racing, the crit was a fairly standard, eight corner crit but the wind was picking up making the backside a little tougher. The midwestern style of racing is a bit peculiar, the pace was much easier than the majority of our local crits, but the amount of negative racing was unreal. There was actually a guy in one of the little moves I was in, "blocking" for his teammate who was only five meters off the front of our group of six. Had he stayed out of the way, since we were going to catch his teammate anyways, we might have actually made some ground on the field.


I put in some good efforts, got in the mix, spent a couple laps off the front solo, hoping that guys would come across in small numbers instead of dragging the entire field with them, but no luck. Eventually two guys got off the front and nobody wanted to chase in any sort of organized fashion. The two stayed clear, Zac got 10th, but got hosed when it turned out that the finish camera didn't have enough light and the finish photo was too blurry for them to handle any protests anyways.

Having pre-ridden the circuit for Sunday's race, we knew it was going to be a tough one. The course took full advantage of the topography offered up by the KU campus. There were two climbs on the profile and the one prior to the finish was steep and twisty enough to take away all momentum. My goal was to hang on as long as possible and keep an eye out for Zac who is riding really well right now. In the first few laps some moves got up the road, but came back. A couple times, I got to the front to keep the pace up and to close things down. Eventually, as expected, everything came apart leaving multiple groups on the road, dangling behind the leaders. On lap whatever it was, I'd lost count by then, I was feeling decent and others didn't look so happy, so I collected Zac and drilled it. I pulled him as far as I could and told him to go if he could. By the time I recovered a little and reattached myself to the back of that group, Zac was long gone, off and hammering his way into the lead group. That was about it for me in the circuit race. I yo-yo-ed off the back of that group a couple times and then called it quits. The last time I went up the climb to the feed zone, I was creeping. Zac finished 6th out of the group of 9 off the front. I think he'll do just fine at the Super Week races in the coming days.


We got the van packed back up and ready to go for the long drive home. Zak and Melissa were ready for some prime movie watching on the DVD system in the Grand Caravan, Chuck was ready for the comforts of the Pinkerton mobile, and Zac had his shirt off, ready for the drive through the land of humidity sans A/C. Given what we saw on the way home, I wouldn't want to drive with the windows down in this part of the country. Not only did we have a plethora of smashed bugs on the windshield, side windows, side of the van, but we also came across this guy at a gas station.


I am 99% sure that is the image of Jesus on the back of the moth. I should have collected him in a jar for later analysis, but frankly I was scared. Chuck offered up $20 if I ate the moth, but as you can see in the next shot, he was a big one.


The squeegee was the only thing we could find that would give it decent reference without having to get too close. The only other excitement on the drive was . . . well, there was none, it was Kansas and eastern Colorado at night.