Friendly Fridley

I had a 3 week hiatus due to family weddings and family needs. But I'm back.

And my, how things have changed. Starting with, I'm now racing/riding/styling on a super sweet Curt Goodrich cross bike. I picked up the finished bike from Ben at OneOneOne Friday afternoon. I was hoping to ride when I got home from work but no go. FINALLY got my chance to ride the New Bike at 9:15 Friday night. 36°F and rain. But it was a great ride! Only saw two other souls. I rode around the lakes, nice & mellow, just enjoying the feel of the new bike.

Sunday - Fridley:
Got up there with plenty of time. Nice. Rode some warm up laps, chatted it up, showed off the New Bike. Lots of looks. And even better I was feeling pretty good. Couldn't wait to get out there and ride fast. I mean, no better way to see how a bike feels than thrash it for 60 minutes, right?

The race started on the cinder track and some guy was hanging his shoulder on me for about 15 seconds. Was that you, MikeyP? I thought it was ScottERob but I later found out he blew a pedal in the first 10 seconds. WTF? Lucky for him, though, somebody gave him a pedal and and he came roaring back later.

After the track we all hit the baseball gravel diamond death spiral. Pure silliness for about 2 minutes. Poor Jared (race director) went down right in the middle of his own death spiral and got heckled from all sides.

MikeyP busted it out of the Death Spiral and I had to gear down to catch him. We made some moves, passed a few and got passed by a few. I was riding well after about 3 laps when I slid out on a downhill off camber. I was twiddling with my new SRAM shifters when I should have been riding the off camber. I got up (facing backward) and damn near got run over by Smithers. "Doh!" I tried to stay with Smithers but then slid out again while twiddling with my shifters.

With about 3 laps to go, I realized I should ride more in the big ring and concentrate on cornering and not shifting. Things then got much better and I finished up with a couple of guys.

Observations:
The New Bike felt great!!! Handling was spot on! Very tight. The frame feels surprisingly stiff. And I mean this in a good way. And so much fun attacking out of the saddle! I found myself attacking in the last few laps just because the bike felt so good riding hard. I can't wait until the next time I get to ride fast with this bike!

I thought I was good on the run ups. Then I got trounced on the run up. Ouch!

Cross is so much fun!!!