The Barton Monster Goes Hungry!

As initial reports flood into Ironclad HQ, we’re learning that the Barton Park Monster, known to eat collarbones as if served on a buffet, went hungry yesterday in the final Cross Crusade race of 2009. Most of the forward bombers have come back to the airfield, albeit with a few bullet bites and usual wear-and-tear to the machines, we’re happy to report. Guess it’s off to the soup line with you, Barton Monster!

despite death defying descents, dude dives direct!

A fairly healthy number of the pukeorange went on down to the gravel pit to bid our fond farewell to the Crusades. Mud, gravel and a few tumbles were on tap for the day, but as stated earlier, we survived the usual conundrums we’ve learned to expect. We hear even Kenji survived. We have photographic evidence right HERE.

Voytilla channels Evel

Given the extent of the danger, Flyin’ Voytilla channeled Evel Kinevel to ensure that if he were to be daring, he would be so in style. Nice helmet, Bryan. Glad it kept all the gray matter where it’s supposed to be kept.

Josh Hunt, Bryan Voytilla, Marylynn King, Brody Boeger, Brian Gerow, Trevor Spahr, Atlin Sestrich, and Jeff Harwood rounded out your team for the day, while the rest of us sat around and watched football after two consecutive weekends entailing activities that should have landed half of us in rehab.

MK, elegant in the traditional black robes

So it’s ’so long’ to the Cross Crusades for 2009. Good riddance! We as a team had it like most teams – some ups and some downs. We put our first 2 bonafide A’s in the mix, and we also got our first ever Cross Crusade victories in our team’s short 3 year history. We kept in line with our team tradition and brought some brand new riders into the sport, and much to our collective happiness the top headline is we suffered no major injuries over the 8 weeks. Well, unless you count hangovers as injuries, then we sustained a few. We had orange vs. black. We found some good parking spots, had a great rental house in Astoria, had some laugh-til-it-hurts moments, and all around just had a great Crusade as a team.

We got Kruger’s coming up, and some of the more cross-oriented sorts are in for USGP and Natz, but for about half of us, it’s time to hang up the knobbies and get to thinking about Road 2010. Most of us are happy because this means no more orange, as we’ll be Back in Black, like we should. We’ve made a few changes to the interior or 2010, and we’re excited to bring our new charges to the fore. Stay tuned, and as Vasquez says, stay frosty.

For Haywood, and everyone else, the last hills of the Crusade have been climbed