Great ride, great weekend.

As I mentioned last week, I participated in the first version of the newest PNT cycling event this weekend. The official name was iCABRA which is spanish for “The Goat” but also stands for “Canyon And Back Race Adventure”.

The concept was initially that you were to load up your camping gear on the bike, group ride out to the south rim, camp and be merry saturday night (3 kegs and a lot of BBQ worth of merry), and then race back on sunday.

As I am new to bikepacking, I started brainstorming some plans for light and fast packing, and was planning on doing something similar to chad in that I had a compression stuffsack strapped under the seat, and had the rest of the gear in a backpack. I attached the gear to the bike friday morning before work, and utilized the dirt commute to test it out. Unfortunately, the stuffsack kept hitting my legs and swinging out of control. Immediately, the merits of something like an Epic Designs or Carosel underseat bag became apparant.

Fortunately (or unfortunately) one of my favorite things to do, as many of you know, is to go whole-hog and put something together myself to accomplish the same mission. So, I pulled out the sewing machine, carved out a foam spacer, bent a small aluminum stay, and put in a couple hours of designing and sewing what would soon become a ’stuff sack condom’.

It actually worked out really well. It was super-solid under the seat, didn’t hit my legs, and only had one somewhat catastrophic malfunction where I lost the sleeping bag for a few moments on an incredibly rocky downhill at high speeds.

So, I packed up my gear saturday morning and headed down to pay n take to meet the other 20-some crazy folks for the neutral roll-out.

We rolled out, went through the Ft. Valley Trails, up 164B and up snowbowl to the aspen corner to catch the arizona trail. All the usual suspects were there, including the Dirty Sanchez with a cross bike. He was quick to point out that even though it was a cross bike, it did have a 1-inch suspension fork on it. I heard something later that day about numb hands, and it doesn’t suprise me at all.

We had a great time out to the aid station at mile 45 where we were greeted by Mr. Bednar and a heaping helping of Fajitas. Now that’s what I call an aid station. Fajitas and beer.

The second half of the ride was pretty exclusively forest roads, and the miles ticked by with a nice steady pace. Being the only singlespeeder, I got dropped about 10 miles into this section, pulled out the headphones and got lost in my own head for a while. It was nice to just cruise without too much regard for pushing hard or going super-fast. I even had time to snap a couple pics. The last one is for Chad, because I know how much he loves self-portraits on the bike.

I actually ended up catching back up to the group for a bit after they took a little break, got dropped again, and rolled in right around 8hrs and 45 min for a 90 mile ride. The grand total on climbing was about 5200 feet.

As people trickled in to the 10-X campground group site, the beer started flowing, and the grill was cranking. There was plenty of food, plenty of beer, and a nice big bonfire. I, unfortunately, didn’t get too many pics of the evening, as I was too busy indulging, but I’m sure you can paint a nice picture in your head.

The next morning burritos and coffee got everyone moving, and we started packing up camp. Like I said before, the plan was to race back on sunday, but the general motivation was low for another 90 miles on the bike in what was now sure to be hellish headwinds and brutal sun.

As everyone trickled back towards flagstaff, Timmy started bending my ear about the moto trails on the Hochderffer hills. As we weren’t up for another long day of spinning in the saddle, we jumped on Drew’s modded schoolbus and got dropped off at the north end of 151, about 20 miles up 180 from flagstaff. We recruited Corey the Angry Hippie, J-money Millionaire, and Aaron the Delivery Boy, and the 5 of us rolled out for an awesome ride on some killer singletrack.

It was a nice mellow ride with lots of stops, lots of hanging out, and lots of fun trails. We made our way back up towards the stage coach trail back to baderville and started discussing who was going to get the trophy that Scott had gotten for the event.

I made what seemed like the only appropriate suggestion for deciding a winner and it was immediately agreed upon by the group:
The sunday race was a 26 mile neutral start to Pay N Take, and the race winner would be decided by the first one to the bottom of a glass of beer at the bar.

With the motivation of pizza and beer at Pay N Take urging us onward, we jumped on 180, and set up a nice little paceline on the way back.

We rolled into downtown flag after 26 miles, 3000 feet of climbing, and 3.5 hours of good times on the bike to a group of folks waiting to see who won. We relayed the plan, Anthony poured up 5 glasses of Sunshine Wheat, and we bellyed up to the bar.

From the moment I had suggested the chugging contest, I knew I had given away the prize. In fact, I knew at that point that I had set myself securely in DFL running, as I am one of the most pathetic beer chuggers on the planet. However, that knowledge did allow me to simply drink a beer and watch the amazement that is Corey the Angry Hippie and his amazing talent of consumption.

Note that in this picture, he had time to chug the beer, set it on the counter, and put his arms up before another beer was down. Timmy and Aaron battled it out for second, but the moment Corey stepped into the bar with that group, the fate of the trophy was sealed.

He is a man among men.

Unfortunately, I never got an actual picture of the trophy, which was a beautiful piece of custom glasswork, so if anyone has a nice pic, please shoot it my way, and I’ll get it up on the site.

Thanks to Scott for getting this together, and for all the other folks for pitching in for the support, the food, and the good times. It was a great event, and I couldn’t ask for much more out of a weekend.

Although I pulled several pics on this post, I have even more that I dumped in a gallery, so check the rest of the pics out here.