Porsche Museum

Today Dusty dragged us over to Stuttgart to see the freshly built Porsche museum. it was totally awesome. There were cars from every era of Porsches history, race cars, prototypes and the progression from 356 Speedsters all the way through the 911 Carerra road cars and everything in between. The one that I really wanted though was the 1976 914/8 of which only two were made and is just a regular 914 (which is basically like a super awesome beetle) but with a 300hp V8 in it. Kick Ass! Anyways, after all that madness we drove back through traffic to our hotel and went for a bike ride. Tomorrow we depart for Belgium for the next world cup and then finally head back home for some training before the next rounds of the US Cup.

If anyone has any spare Porsches laying around, let me know and I will be glad to take them off your hands.

Nasty

Offenburg WC

At least my legs felt good yesterday. Starting a World Cup MTB race with good sensations in the legs is awesome. Starting said race in 112th place is not. My plan for the day was to get on the gas early and try to get past at least 50 people and get my self up in to the top 60, thus slowly easing my way up the start grid to a more respectable and manageable staring position, Things seemed to be going well. After the first lab chaos things settled down and every time the course opened up I would hit the gas and go rocketing past about 10 people. I counted off the people went by and by the end of the third lab had gotten around about 30 dudes. Then I made the fatal mistake of looking at the timing board coming across the line staring my 4th lab and saw I was still in 120th! I guess that bad start really did kill me in the end. By the time I rode the next two laps I had moved up to 108th, but was then pulled as the leaders were rapidly closing in from behind. In the end I has passed my quota of riders, but some how at the start enough had slipped passed my that by the end of lap one I had fallen back to 152nd. That makes for as pretty tall task when trying to get into the top 60. I guess I can take away the positives of having good form at a World Cup even though it was imposable to know from my result that that was the case. I can hardly wait for next week in Houffalize, Belgium. There will be 300 of my best friends lined up at that one and I bet I can pass a lot of them over the course of the race. Lets just hope I don’t get gang raped at the start like I did this week.

Nasty

Hitting the fan

That's what is about to start happening in approx 24 hrs. We went out to the course again today and it was jam packed with Euros riding by in the big ring trying to look like they weren't trying hard and stacks of people lined up at the three infamous "drops" on the course that take all of 3 seconds to navigate so finding the perfect line on them is obviously way more crucial than just skidding down the the fuckers in some semblance of control and then mashing the gas for the next 10 minutes up the climb so you dont get passed by the 130 people that started behind you, or the 50 or so guys you hopfully passed in the first lap to make your way into 60th place. Then after all that we went and ate some pastries and drank another cappuccinno and came home for a nap, some PB and J sandwiches and bike maintenence. Life is good.

Lets hope it stays that way tomorrow.


Nasty

still here

Today we headed over to the race course near Offenburg to check out the conditions. It is very dry, fast and marbley out there. I think the laps will be extremely fast, so it will be important to get as far up as possible as soon as possible. Dusty is feeling much better now, and even got out of the hotel for almost the entire day. he usual suspects are beginning to show up now too. Saw the Specilized crew out riding the course today, and even got a tiny "hello" from Souaser as he rode by. This is pretty big soming form a euro. Most of these dudes wont even acknowlege your presance. Saw teh Maxxis boys as well. My friend Bassman form Japan is working for them this year and it was good to see him. he even brought me my fovorite energy drink from Japan, Pocari Sweat! It sounds aweful but is delicious. Other than that we have just been riding bikes, laying around lazily and being internet fiends. i found a photo lab to process some of my film from South Africa so maybe next week I will have some new photos up to peruse.

On the car vs moto front, The cars are forging an unreachable lead, so I am going to go ahead and call this one for the cars, although I think rocket propelled roller skates sound exciting, if maybe not much faster.

Nasty

Maybe

I think I might be about to open up a can of worms with this one, but the dinner debate tonight went something like this. Dusty contends that a motorcycle is the faster vehicle all around when compared to a car, and I am of the opposite opinion. So, here is the question. If a road going car (insert your favorite one here), and a road going moto (ditto) were to race up a circuitous mountain pass, which one would get to the top first. Obviously the operators of said vehicles would come into account, so say they are being piloted by equivilent drivers. What say you oh wise world of the blogosphere?

Other than that sort of simulating debate things are pretty routine here. Spending lots of time reading and internetting and basically wondering how much more euro hotel time I can take before I go completly crazy. Yesterday Kris and I went on what was supposed to be a nice 4 hr training ride, but at some point deep in the forest we ran out of signage, go lost, madde many wrong turns, and eventuall found our way back to the hotel after 7 hrs on the bike. It was awesome.

Dusty has been stomach sick all week and we think it is because he drank water out of a tap that was stuck into the side of the mountain on a dirt road. Went to the doctor this morning and he said that they dont have bad water in Germany and that Dusty just needed to drink pepermint tea. We will see how that one works out.

6 more days untill the next big race. I hope I can go fatser than the last one...


Nasty

Germania

We are hanging out here in Lockburg Germany, amongst damp dark black forest people and surrounded by some of the best riding imaginable. Yesterday we left the hotel, crossed the road and entered into an infinite maze of fire roads and single track, all signed and arrowed pointing the way through the wilderness. We set our sights on following the red route, which was marked with red trangle at all intersections and promissed food in 35km in Mummelsbach, but failed to mention we would be climbing 3000m over and over to reach that point. After 3 hours of riding through snow patches, muddy, rocky awesome single trail and rolling fireroad, we were chased off the mountain by rapidly approaching dark stormclouds. Rocketing down all that elevatiojn we had gained on a fire road was a bit dissapointing, until we blazed 12 km of river side single track back down into town for coffees and crepes. Dusty, being a mechanic and not prone to long pedaling stints, hightailed it back to home base, while Kris and I set off to conquer one more massive fire road ascent in hopes of spotting the parasiling launch point. Instead we discovered that the German loggers, much like their counterparts in the US and Canada, prefer Stihl chainsaws to Huskys. Apparently this has somthing to do with thier weight and ergonomics, but I stop paying attention to Kris after about 5 minutes of chainsaw tech talk so I cannot be fully sure. When we finally coasted back into town the rain drops had just begun falling, and now we are trapped indoors by the storm of the century. Luckily we bought a coffee maker yesterday at the Mini Mart so we can hole up for many days with out needing more supplies. Kris just set out on a 40 minute run, and despite his best efforts, I am still indoors drinking coffee. Dusty is feeling a bit under the weather after we beat him up so badly yesterday, and is still in bed. I hope I ride my bike today.

Nasty

Africa and Hotels in Germany

Made it down to SA and then back to Germany in the last 5 days. We stayed in the Golden Horse Casino Hotel lldown there, and it was like being in Vegas and Churchill downs at the same time. They had a Casino in the Lobby and we ate breakfast out onj the patio overlooking the horse racing track. We even had armed guards at the front gate, but they never seemed to notice that we were there. The race was pretty cool, really fun, non technical single track with a fair amount of climbing and fun descending per lap, but as such, also not so much passing oppertunity. That combined with a 76th starting position had me rolling the whole race in the 67-76 rage, which is about where I ended up. Doh! Gotta go for broke in Offenburg in 2 weeks to try and get that coveted top 60 WC finish so I dont get gang raped by a bunch of Crazy Euros come Houffalize. Kris and I are hanging out at the Sheraton hotel in the Frankfurt airport now, watintg for Dusty to fly to Geniva, get our Kona van and then come back and pick us up. We have seen some bikes chained up down in the parking garage so we think there might be a way to leave the airport via bicycle, so that may be our next objective after we have a nap and some more food. Those Lufthanse flights are pretty crap compared to the South African Air flight we took down. Full of sweaty germans and pretty much 2 inches of room between the rows. Suffice to say, I didnt get a lot of sleep on the way back up here. I did also see a Spa down in the loby so I might try to wrangle up a massage here if things go right.

After that it is off to the black forest for a week and a half to prepare for the next WC.

Oh yeah, I went on a Safari in SA and saw Zebras, wildabeast, Giraffe, wart hogs, gecko, and rhinos. Pretty amazing and we almost g0ot charged by the buffalo but i talked it down.

Nasty

Dropping some mad science on yous

Big news on the Wicknasty front is that we are moving to Illinois in September! Sarah got an amazing position at UI Urbana, so that is our next stop in this great adventure. Before you all go hating on it, the riding actually isnt all that bad. I will probably turn into a mad TT specialist that cant go around corners, but should be putting out like 1000 watts every second after riding through corn fields endlessly. The best part is, if you want to go somewhere, there are about 17 roads that go there, so you will never get bored! Also, I posted links to my Mix Tape since everyone (ok 5 people) have been clamoring for it, and also a link to Kabush's mix tape. Grab them and let me know what you think. I also posted some new photos on Flikr so check those too if you like. Now its time to go get my new MTB dialed in and get ready for Africa!!

Barry