So Long, Cross Crusades, and Thanks For All The Fish.

And the cowshit. And the bullshit. And the bruises. And the new bike parts. And the mileage. And the memories. And the laughs. And the hangovers. Sadly, another Crusade is in the books. Just a few more races laying about, and then it’s time to break, then start the base miles for the assault on the 2009 road season.

Alpenrose seems like it was two years ago in one sense, and only yesterday in another. Many thanks to all the folks who made it happen for the us, the unwashed masses. It was a good one! And of course we have a gazillion pictures of the affair for you to look at HERE.

This morning finds Ironclad HQ in a bit of a daze. No one turned the phones on so all calls are going straight to voicemail. The fax machine is just covered with inbounds. The coffee pot is on, with nothing in it, and someone left the fridge open all night, so everyone’s lunches are ruined. Typical post Crusade behavior and results. But there was cause for celebration! Check it:

Vanessa takes the silver on the day, and wins the overall!

We trundled through the bullshit with 1000 other folks yesterday, and turned in some excellence, that now must be recognized. Anna Clark took a sweet 8th place in the women’s B’s. Erin Willig captured 15th – also quite rad. In the Women’s Beginner Vanessa Cass took 2nd place but the bigger story is she wrapped up the overall win for the entire Crusade, congrats Vanessa! We also had Ginny, Eva (13th in beg. women – nice!), Mk47, and Lana racing, with Beth on hand for support. Stephanie Chase also raced, with yesterday being her last race for Ironclad. She’s moved across over the winter transfer season and will begin anew with the vaunted Veloforma team next year. We wish her the very best, and we thank her for her service for the past two years.

Everyone raced hard and some even brought home mementos of this last go-round of the Crusades…..and we enjoyed some Russian Imperial Stout, courtesy of Matt D’Elia – thanks Matt!

Lana decides to leave DNA evidence at the scene, incriminating us all

For the menfolk it was the usual suspects: Crawfy, Brody, Colonel, Voytilla, Gerow, Josh A., Ryan, Joe, Barker, Willis, Hudson, and Dave. Everyone turned in sterling performances, and some wowed the crowd with pastry Kung Fu:

Cake primes rule, in case you didn’t know

Others saw fit to simply run back and forth over the same puddle of liquid poop.

Barker hops through the goop

And so we let another set of 8 Sundays Of Lunacy fade to black. There is of course the always fun Kruger’s Race this coming Sunday and then the not-as-fun USGP races shortly thereafter at PIR to help ease the pain of the withdrawls, but the grandpappy – the crusades – are done. Chapeau!