USAC rules! or USAC rules?

SATURDAY: Wow what a change from last year! At this race last year the turnout was less than half what we had this past weekend. I think it's due to the fact that we promoted it so well. We had almost 100 riders, give or take a few! There was definitely some boyz there with some serious skillz no doubt. Some dude jumped a 20" BMX bike across the 30ft step down and the crowd went crazy! It was sweet to see some of the riders show-off their abilities!

Downhill started about 30 minutes late due to the huge freakin' line we had at registration, it wrapped around the whole upper parking lot at one time. I started signing people up early too, at one time I looked at my watch and thought.... O~M~G! After getting everyone legal and legit Thomas had the riders meeting then I swaggered up to the DH start. It's the first time I had been right at the DH start in a while. When I got up there, holy giant redwood Batman, there was this huge tree that had fell within 6 inches of the start deck for DH. It was laying on the ground beside of the deck the club built for a starting ramp and was ever bit 4ft high laying on it's side, yes laying on it's side. 2 hours later, DH in the books all official like, many riders were now qualified for DownHill at the USAC Nationals !

photo credits: David & Tracy Tankersly

Yep that's your truly in the light blue USAC officials shirt officiating my first ever race, I have to say I was a tad bit intimidated. Nothing to do different really just legit now! We managed to get about 2/3rds through slalom then lightning and alot of it! I made my first "official" decision to postpone the race for 30 min to see if it would blow over, well it did, it blew over the Veterans Administration Hospital close by in the form of an F-1 tornado! Yes an F-1 tornado! Needless to say I called the race & took the results of qualifying as the finals score then refunded every one's 4X entry fees back. In 30 minutes the weather made a total mess of the slalom/4X course.

SUNDAY: I figured that the XC course would be somewhat messy Sunday morning and it was in some places. If I had to do it all over again I would have showed up an hour earlier and walked all the course first. Coming up the 4X course was messy and sticky with red clay, it made the riders work harder for sure! We had a couple of local boys and then the rest were from Kentucky, Virginia and North Carolina so I don't think it was because of lack of promotion just lack of interest. The NC guys said that there was a bunch going to attend but the rain the night before made them change their mind (I can relate), well at least we got the word out over the mountain and almost pulled riders for XC in, dadgum rain. All in all there were about 25 riders total, including two pros! After the Cat 2 & 3's finished I ran down to the 4X course and rerouted them around the mudfest climb out of the bottom and put them through the old pump track over to the backside of the XC, it worked out well!

Saturday was a huge, I say a HUGE success and Sunday??? Sunday was a flop. Special thanks go out to everyone that attended and either helped or participated, thank you very much! Special props go out to the King of Cross (Dwayne Letterman) and the TCRC for supplying materials for the course, thanks for helping! Next years XC race as of right now probably won't happen. There's a ton of work that goes into putting a legit USAC event on like that and when all those kids put in all those hours cleaning up the XC course then no one shows, well it's pretty disheartening for them, they weren't happy. I think Brooks & Dunn can sum it up best...Insert sad face here.

LAter G...........................