Cinco De Mayo

On the weekend of May 5th, I went to Chelan to see my brother compete in a Mountain bike race. While he didn’t do so well, he finished, which was more than we gave him credit for. I showed up about 9 AM Saturday morning, after leaving Pullman before 5. The total trip was just over 515 miles in 2 days.

I finally dug the camera out about noon, when Corey was playing a very cool toy that turns your mountain bike into an exercise bike. We all want one of these so we can ride while watching TV.

Unfortunately, the mountain is set up so we couldn’t (or rather wouldn’t) get to the downhill side. This is the view from our first perch back towards the start of the race.

The guy in Purple (obviously not a true Coug there) is Corey, this was his first lap.

After sitting a while, we moved downhill towards the start for the second lap. The hill was a bit steeper here, so we thought it would be more fun to torture the poor riders.

I wasn’t kidding, this hill is nasty.

These shots are closer to the finish line, where the course designers created a particularly nasty sandbed. Racers would come off the road in top gear and bog down to the point of stopping by the time they got to us.

Here is Corey in the same sand at the first lap.

And here he is again when he finally finished an hour later! What a smile :)

I am not sure what was going on with Jesse here, but i found the picture to be somewhat amusing, so I posted it anyway.

Since it was still early May, things cooled off quite a bit during the night We needed firewood, Jesse started with a large stick, and we eventually took down a tree that took three people to bring it back. Mind you, they pushed this tree down without an axe or anything of the sort.