24 Hours of Moab recap

Heading out to Moab this year and not actually racing was a super laid back experience with "no worries" all weekend but to polish off a 24 pack of Stella and a bottle of Crown Royal (Thank you Telluride gang on solo row!) with the gang and watch some racing around "Behind the Rocks'. Let me start this blog post buy saying that Laird from Granny Gear productions, who is the race promoter and organizer proved once again that he is the TRUE Sandbagger of all promoters, as he collects exorbatant amounts of money from people then tries to evaluate who is sandbagging on "his meter" and procedes to screw over a bunch of people who support his event....such a shame.

Meanwhile back at the race, locals ripped it up. Mike Janelle (Tokyo's) and Nat Ross (Subu/Gary Fischer) were in the money for the overall as a DUO team but faded during the night hours. Janelle, the sick one pictured here. road the "Nose Dive" clean every lap (that's nine times folks)

"Nacho Janelle"

!XXX! AND THIS IS THE NOSE DIVE !XXX!

in Men's Vet, Mike Gibbs, Ronan, Bill Mac and Adam Plummer squeaked one out for second over Jono Ridler, Toph Leonard, Zach Bingham and Adam Palmer who drove out to Moab race morning to replace Steve White who came down sick the day prior...a HUGE effort from Palms to get the boys on the Podge (the podium). Nice work guys.

Killin it in Women's Vet, and almost beating every women's team out there was the team of Julie Morrow, Heather Sappenfield, Katie Brazelton, and Michelle Keane. This is where the SQUIRT crew set up camp as we'd rather have hung out with some of the fastest chikas during the race than a bunch of stinky dudes...Great work ladies! We had a blast crashing your camp!

Main highlight of the the weeee hours of night racing was hanging out with the Telluride support crew for Rob P. Lichtenwalner, friends of Dave Griebling from SQUIRT. We brought gifts (Crown Royal) to their tent which the support crew galdly HAMMERED DOWN in record time. We then spent the rest of the evening trying to burn every single goathead weed we could find within a mile of camp. It was a HUGE time as we screamed for everyrider on course and watched select riders jump the "Karma" fire pit where we promised "time primes" for succesful jumpers.the karma fire pit on solo row.

Rob P. Lichtenwalner finished third in men's solo...the dude was sick, he would come into the tent after the lap, eat a grape and go back on course, I'm not sure how the hell he pulled off a third but the guy was an incredibly tough SOB from South Africa

DEREK J. FISH BELOW, HIS FIRST LAP, HENCE THE SMILE

And one of the best freekin stories in the men's solo division was Derek Fish on his single speed, I caught this pic of him on lap one at "the move" on the first climb in the middle of 400 riders. When I finally went to sleep at 2 A.M. Fish was in 19th place in Solo....which I thought was a pretty amazin effort on the single speed. When I woke up and checked the standings that morning he had moved up to 6th. Sick, I stood on the last hill of the course to go scream at his ass and encourage him to do one more lap before cutoff. I waited for a long time, when he finally came buy me he was battered physically and broken mentally, it was 11:30, I jumped his ass with every bit of encouragement I could and he simply looked at me and said "I think I'm done". Just looking at him told me he was indeed done, but I shouted encouragement just the same, he gave it all he had as I put a hand on the small of his back to push him up and over the last climb to the tent on the road and felt the weight of a man who had just left every ounce in his body out on the course. He finished 8th overall in solo. What a warrior.

When you drink and don't race...this is the result. The ignorance of youth.