Sea Otter ST.

For once it was actually a DRY Sea Otter, and the Short Track course was dry and fast, although it was rough enough for most of the course that I was wishing I had a full suspension rig between my legs!
Sam Schultz actually WON his ST shortly after I placed 10 in mine.
I had a nice warmup that included stopping to share a bit of John McKeen's beer. This was possibly the highlight of my Sea Otter Short Track experience.
But I digress...

The race started. I went fast up the inside. Jason Lowetz was there, and he went fast too. Note the Team Bearclaw custom paintjob?

Right off the line the course headed uphill and then took a sharp right and went back down.
Jason and I were in pretty ok positions and for the first half of the first lap it looked like we might win the race.

^^^^^This is a picture of me, being chased by a lot of people on bikes.
Unfortunately, as we headed into the second half of the first lap things unraveled.
It started with the guy in front of Jason bobbling on a tiny, off-camber hill section and due to an unforseeable chain of events, ended with Jason suffering from possible multiple STD's and almost getting pulled.

When the hill-bobble occurred I was behind Jason and had time to slow up for a sec, change direction slightly and take a line to the inside left of the clusterf*ck exploding in front of me, but exploding DIRECTLY in front of Jason.
Podium: Matt Googe had a good ride and got to stand on the wood.

After that, the group splintered until there were about 3 guys off the front, then a chase group, then another small group and then me, towing a teammate from Utah and being chased by a whole bunch of bike racers.

It stayed like that for a bit and then I dropped Utah, tried (unsuccessfully) to catch the group ahead of me, tried (successfully) not to get passed and finished the race in 10th place.
Fin.