Ironclad Cycling

Some of us are spending the weekend healing after a particularly vicious Wolfpack ride. Some of us are watching some quality TV from the Great White North. Here’s the best 21 seconds of your life, besides that little backseat incident back in high school.

A compatriot from PEZ is actually chasing down Dave Zabriskie right now, no joke. Give ‘em hell, Jered!

And a bunch of us are deep in preparations for the upcoming Rapha Gentlemen’s Ride. We’re putting up A teams on both sides of the gender fence, and, taking a queue from Mr 60% himself, we’ve incorporated some bizarre adventure training complete with scorpions in your britches, rope climbing, and varying degrees of elemental exposure. Behold:

last one to the crane has to catch, kill, and prepare the trout…

Now, we don’t have any illusions of winning this thing, but we won’t be last by a damn stretch. And all those not attending the Rapha action will be stapling their own sacks to their foreheads tackling the mighty run up at Pain on the Peak. Awwww yeah!

And some of us are doing lazy rides before the last old-timer’s PIR tomorrow night. Road season ends tomorrow!

Wolfpack

Yup

12 people

One crash

Awesome night

No pictures

Going out in style is always nice.

The boys withstood a barrage of attacks on the last Tuesday PIR to take the final win of the series, winning the night and the month’s standings.

In the early going it was a rough go, as repeated superior sprints from the Ciclisme – RCB/Word team and Liberty Cycles kept the black and yellow up against the ropes. But some cagey veteran riding from Dave, Gerow, Willis, Ryan, and Q kept the kid Trevor Spahr within striking distance, and after forcing the hands of other teams early on the bell lap were able to put Spahr in the right spot for the sprint win.

all hands on the bad one….

Thanks to everyone involved in keeping PIR going. And thanks to all the teams that made the season a blast. We took more whippings than we dealt out, and that’s what it’s all about. OBRA has the best teams in the country, regardless of category or discipline. We’re proud to be a part of it.

Join me in visiting the return of one of the greats. Just bookmark this, go every day, and I will guarantee you you life will be better for it.

What are you still doing here?

It  is said that a track race thrown by a team named Beer that ends with wieners is a good thing. We don’t know who said that, or when, in fact maybe we just made this up, but any way you slice it the statement rings of truth.

The Team Beer Track Race was a smashing success for everyone involved; great weather, good turnout, good racing. Who could ask for more? Oh wait, we forgot the hot dogs….but we’ll get to those in a bit.

Despite having no one contesting the Sugar Short race, we did put Harwood (still not allowed to upgrade due to lack of points) winning the Cat 5 omnium on the day!

Harwood blasting to victory in the win-and-out

After the racing came to an end, it was kicking it with some of the late-leavers of the group, most notably Ironclad, Beer, and Cthuthlu.

Ol’ Man Johnson then whipped out a hefty bag of meat tubes and boiled them on the spot. They were a hit, and they were quickly devoured.

Everyone likes hot dogs

Seeing no other alternative, we then all realized it was time to bask in the pure awesomeness of Dave Roth’s new facial hair configuration, most notably the Magnum P.I. mustache. We have two words for this fine hairy face carp:

Holy Shit

All the rest of the photos are right here for you to see.

We had ol’ Haywood, Smith, Spahr, and Conant in the 3/4 on Tuesday night, with Haywood clocking in a fine 2nd place, with Spahr in the top ten in 7th.  It was so cool, we had to take a picture of the guys and their rides afterward:

yep, that’s right

We have nothing more to add, so please, pull your pants down and just sit there for a while.

Jeff Harwood posted the team’s first ever win in the Masters 1/2/3 race last night at PIR. A milestone indeed! And he did it without the team behind him as well, so congrats Haywood! No doubt his post criterium activities on Saturday got him in peak form for the race.

In the 4/5 we had Brian Barker and new signing Shaun Conley getting themselves both in the top ten. Pretty good work!

Ok, that title doesn’t make any  sense.

We fielded a mere 3 riders in the goodness of the OBRA hillclimb championships yesterday, with some fine results brought home. Robbie Carver and Trevor Spahr raced the 3′s, and slotted in 7th and 8th respectively.

In the women’s 4 we unleashed Vannessa Cass who tallied up a fine 4th place.

We’ve got a load of pictures from the Hillclimb right here!

Is This Bike Racing, Or Ice Hockey?

The OBRA crit championships were yesterday in Albany, Oregon. This was the 2nd crit there and the 1st time Albany has hosted the championship race, and the course is superb and heavily favored over the old Gresham course, despite the longer drive time. Albany is a lovely little nook, full of interesting Albanites.

For the racing part it was pretty much all bad luck in tough fields for your humble black and yellow team. But we all escaped unscathed, so that’s a win in and of itself!

We had Lana and Deann in the W4′s, duking it out in a stacked field. Seems a certain rider has taken “duking it out” to Bob Probert type levels, and after throwing elbows and body slams around, ended up with no less than 4 or 5 written complaints. Physical riding is one thing, physical endangerment – especially in a Cat 4 women’s race – is another matter entirely. In the end our girls finished out of the money but they gave their best.

The Sugahara’s know to wear good gloves in crits…

In the men 4′s it was Dave by himself. Rode an almost perfect race until the end, and had to settle for 9th. Not bad, not great.

someone’s gotta be the asshole, may as well be this guy

In the 3′s we played the attacking game again and sent Travis Bickle off the front for the break of the race, positioning Harwood right where he needed to be in the final laps. Sadly, an ass-over-teakettle crash by another rider in the last turn with one to go took our Harwood out of his sweet spot and all was lost. Dezellum and Voytilla joined the aforementioned pair and lent a hand. Again, a stacked field with all the who’s who crit riders in the 3′s.

Bickle makes the move of the race

Congrats to all the winners.

Afterward, it was a quick scramble up I-5, then a pit stop at the lovely Acropolis, where the lads took in the sights, sounds, and smells. Ass slaps and heel clicks all around, me buckos. Then, forced by epic hunger, and having missed out on the $5 Steak Special, we adjourned to Taco Bell. All of our intestinal tracts have filed formal protests with us, and the rest of the human race is ordered to stay back 300 feet.

Where’s my wallet? Ah, nevermind. There is some photographic representation of the day right here, check it out.