Barbour de Tour and Bust

Louisville came and went, so it's back on the road for an all night journey to Philippi, WV for the world famous July 4th Barbour de Tour RR (our last prep before France).
We left Louisville around 9pm, uugh, it was going to be a long night and morning. Gunnar and I switched control of the bus as July 3rd turned into July 4th and we still had 3 or more hours of driving ahead of us.

Jackie and Abe were the first to succomb to the numbing drive-

The Team had some 2am Curly fries and milk shakes somewhere just west of Charleston, and then after some more painful driving whilst listening to the Cure we finally arrived in Philippi a bit after 4am.
Ahh, but the race starts at 10am what will we ever do? Well, fan you know we are a hardy and resourceful bunch so we first drove around the town rather aimlessly for about 45 retarded minutes then finally settled down and parked the bus in the back of a Farm Fresh grocery store, hit recline on the seats and bedded down for the morning.
Reminded me of the good old days as a junior racer, all care free and dumb with no plan other then racn’ our bikes whenever and where ever.
Only none of us are young...
A few hours of shut eye would be better then nothing so off to dream land we went, Betsy, Jackie, Gunnar and I all stuffed in the front of the bus sleeping. It must have been quite the sight for the truck driver as he made the morning delivery.
Oh, I forgot to mention that there was quite the torrent of rain pounding the roof of the bus during this amazing slumber.

THE RACE, the day...
8am
The Team rose all well rested from our 2 hour morning of sleep and the spirits were high, kind of, ok not at all.


Betsy got the pleasure of having Jackie sleeping on her belly-

Yeah, no one takes pictures of me...

Betsy and I tried to stage a team revolt against racing in the rain and under such poor preparation and rest but the old wise Director calmed our mutiny with some greasy egg-Mcmuffins minus the bacon and we began getting our race faces on, gearing up, brushing our teeth at the starting line and…
10am
Off we went. We climbed out of Philippi at a rather uncomfortable pace, ouch, damn that Adam.
It was this early effort that dwindled an already small starting group down to a select few of “studs”. The Pittsburgh boys were launching attacks and riding strong. Gunnar and I were holding our own but we were both feeling a bit exhausted from all the travel and racing we had been up to.
Finally, Joe R. put in another very aggressive move which split an already small group turning it into a “stud” group and a “super-stud” group. Gunnar made the cut and then only got beat by Joe, coming in 2nd (good work sir) and also having to deal w/ some jerk that decided part way into the second lap that it would be fine for him to sit and attack the honestly working group before the fairgrounds (they later disposed of him on the final climb into town, the jerk got 4th but didn't stick around for the awards...), I did not make the “super-stud” cut coming in 8th. I was pretty happy as I have been pretty sick and rode like a complete whussy at Natz.

About three or four times he swears that he couldn't see straight-


Betsy won the women’s race, YAY!!! ( No details at the time of press for this event)

4:20pm
Back home, not many things in from the Bus, and everyone is taking naps.
Team Bi-atch hearts naps!





7pm
Off to Uncle Rob’s for some 4th celebrations.
And then some more napping!

Lil Moe’s MTB race on July 5th…stay tuned