18 hours of Fruita, plus rain

Posted by: rstokes | May 11, 2009

18 hours of Fruita, plus rain

Team U.C.C Radelschlaffen survived the first race of the season. One half of the duo trained the other half managed to sneak out of the training thing and they ended up in fifth place. Not a bad deal. Dave did a great job with the tent setup. The big Yeti canopies were really important this year. It rained, no it dumped on Saturday afternoon. It was a lucky thing that the night was dry or this might have been the worse race of the season. Grown men were crying, well almost. The four man Ute City Cycles team camped next to us and they made lots of weird noises.

The rain really didn’t start until about 2pm, then the course turned to the stickiest clay — bike clogging clay. Nic was out on a lap when the dump hit and he ended up in a line of 12 cyclists all pushing their bikes because the wheels had locked up. Then the sun came out and dried the course, then it dumped at about 3:30 and Nic decided to sit the lap out and wait for the course to be rideable. They ended up rerouting the course onto the frontage road and it was dry enough to finish the race. Though everyone who road during the mud laps will need full overhauls on their bikes. Take them to Nic, I guess.

One of the most interesting moments of the event was during the taco feed. We stood in line for about 15 minutes drinking Mighty Arrow and watching a purple lighting storm cell float along the Bookcliffs. Surely it wouldn’t change directions and hit the KOA. When I reached the taco feed table the wind was blowing paper plates around. I got my meat and it started to rain. I quickly added cilantro and onions watching hail hit the vat of green salsa. Then I ran with tacos and beer across the campground. I made it to our tents and the hail became marble size and sheets of water began pouring down. Other people were fleeing the taco line and took refuge in our canopies — for twenty minutes as the little storm cell dumped and dumped. It was a damp evening and the course was not dry by the morning. So we rode Loma.