My friend drew made this cool little vid. I was kind of surprised when he sent it to me because had no idea he made it and I've enjoyed watching it since.
sara's favorite part is the end, which I think is from a few years back at the white knuckle or frost bite at pacific raceways and I had a few more pounds on me then :-)
I got a call from my buddy nate who lives in cashmere and wanted to hook up with us for a ride saturday. we also hooked up with sara's friends sarah and dave.
we took off from sand creek with it lightly raining. initially conditions were a bit slick but then the rain cleared and the dirt was perfect. rode to the top of devil's gulch and then took mission ridge down... that is where things got a bit hairy.
riding down mission ridge we knew there would be some wind fall but didn't know we were committing to a log crossing adventure. the wind fall was horrible and about 3 hours later we had crossed countless logs.
that evening we had an excellent bbq dinner and drinks. spent most our time bs'ing around the camp fire.
next morning we took sara's dad for his first true offroad ride on the nason ridge trail. I told him the evening before that if he didn't break something on his bike he was a pussy, but sure enough there was some breakage before the ride was over. we then had brunch and relaxed the rest of the day.
drive down was pretty straight forward. we took a slightly different route than what I have traveled in the past and took hwy 243 past mattawa to hwy 24 and then 240 to richland. this was about the same mileage but I think was slightly faster and less hills to pull.
we arrived in boise fairly late so went immediately to bed as soon as we hit the hotel.
friday morning we went into downtown boise for breakfast at some breakfast bistro, I think it was called goldy's. I had "trav's famous breakfast burrito" and sara had some delicious blue berry pancakes. I liked her pankcakes better than my dish :-) I also had a cappuccino but wasn't too impressed (my cappuccino at home is better).
then we were off to idaho city to do some jetting on sara's bike, register, and impound the bike. jetting went well, leaned it out about 2 size on the main and I think 3 sizes on the pilot, left the needle where it was at. bike felt awesome on the mid and top end, probably better than it did at home elevation, and bottom felt about same as it did at home elevation. registration and impounding went easy, although the soundtest guy said sara's bike tested at 97db and all previous races it tested at 91db. still he let it pass.
saturday we had mchandler's and left the hotel about 7am for idaho city. we figured out sara's route time and deposited her gas cans with the gas trucks. she pulled her bike out on time and got to the start no problem. turned out her, sara neff, and the other LOI girl were all on the same minute together.
as LOI gals minute came up they all seemed to have issues with their bikes running crappy off the start. I wasn't sure what to make of it because when we jetted the bike the tempature was about the same and the bike was starting and running awesome. I could see it started hard and did not want to run smoother, the other 2 girl's bike seemed to fair the same. however, they all rode off in time.
I had left my camera at the hotel so jumped in the truck to head back to boise to retrieve it. on the way back I made several stops snapping some pics. I also stopped at the "rock's lodge" for a delicious mirror pond pale ale (yummy!).
driving up to idaho city I saw the temp reached 95 degrees. then just about as soon as I got into idaho city there was a gray Chrysler wagon flashing it's lights at me. it turned around and followed me to dave's trailer where I pulled over. out of it came sara, kerry konkler, and rob riley. I was like "what happened", and sara explained she suffered heat exhaustion and quit at 2nd gas. rob said the conditions absolutely sucked and he was not having any fun along with his previous injuries giving him trouble. scott's bike was also back with no scott, turned out he tangled with something and cracked his radiator.
we headed over to one of the local bars for a beer where we ran into troy swetman, who had pretty much the same story as rob. we had a few beers and lunch and called it a day.
sara had no intention of doing the 2nd day with the temps predicted to be even higher, so we leisurely left boise and took the scenic route home. it was a cool drive but after driving and stoping to take pics here and there we only managed to reach Othello after about 10 hours of driving and decided to stay the night there. we then left monday morning with about another 4 hours to go. wanting to get home we still managed to make a stop at snoqualmie falls.
so it wasn't the best take at the idaho city qualifier. luck just didn't seem to fair with either sara or myself. but that's how it goes. I have a feeling next year both her and I will hit the qualifiers hard and be our main focus, should be fun!
