Mud and cowbells! Mud and cowries!

Photo credit to *Denise* on Flickr.

I resurrected the old Stumpjumper for a ride at the Reservoir last night. The surprisingly warm mid-December temperatures definitely invited it. Even the drizzle/mist for the first half of the ride wasn't too bad (though it made my pants kind of heavy (I don't know why I decided to wear pants)), and, unlike usual humid rides, the top of mountain wasn't in a cloud. The falling mist and the unfrozen ground made for a greasy ride, but no crashes. Someday, I hope someone joins me on one of these. It's like that ride we took on Saturday, but triply exciting.

Photo credit to Johanna, who's the best girlfriend in the world for accompanying me to Dayville for this race and taking pictures of me.
There are some other reasons, too.

I think the Danielson Adventure Sports' Beer Cross thing was great. I did two of the three races. Since I'm not very fast, I never did that well, but had a great time. They're very low key, but have a nice course and everyone is friendly. They also don't have horrible music blasting the entire time like most races.

At this last race, I think I did ok. I started slightly better than usual and was just off the leaders. However, since they're the leaders and are fast, I never saw them again except off in the distance when the course opened up. Like in most races, I found myself in no man's land. Significantly behind the leaders, but also significantly ahead of some other group. At point, some really fast guy caught up to me and passed me at a great rate of speed. It was impressive. Later, with two laps to go, this other guy caught up to me after I had made silly mistakes. It was pretty exciting, we exchanged positions a few times. I finally passed him with about a half lap to go and was holding him off pretty well. My brakes weren't going to have any of that success though, and with about 500 yards left, they quit at the bottom of a hill and I crashed into a bunch trees. The guy, who's actually pictured above, passed me and I never caught back up.

Also, pictured up there is the horrible labyrinth they decided the course needed. Over all it was a quick course and then all of a sudden there was this terrible and muddy thing that I could never get through with any amount of speed. Ugh! It was totally unnecessary.

Now that the 'cross season is over, I must say, it's way more fun than mountain bike racing. Maybe it's the bigger field, maybe it's the more laps, maybe it's the barriers; but I feel like there's a lot more happening. However, riding a 'cross bike is a lot less fun than mountain biking. Maybe I should