I just wanted to throw up a few more notes on the race this past weekend. First off, my apologies to Dan Bergland who also threw down on a singlespeed as well. There were several Voodoo Aizans there and I guess I missed the one with only one gear.

On that note, there were almost two singlespeed aizans there since Chris Latham actually showed up to the race with a bike lacking a drivetrain. I didn’t see it until he had built it up, but the story goes that he showed up at 8:30, asked bryce whether he should bring gears or not, and then proceeded to build up a frankenstein-esque 1×9 drivetrain on his bike. Nice work.

Finally, I also forgot one of the most exciting parts of the race, and it’s worth relaying. The story begins somewhere around 20-30 minutes after I rolled through the start/finish on my way out for the Wing mountain lap. One of the other riders rolled through, only to see the beginning of a forest fire at the next campsite up.

I’m not sure who it was who came through first, but they hoofed it back to the start/finish, and everyone who was there grabbed whatever water they could find, and rushed up to the fire. I guess there were some people up from Mesa who were taking a nap in their camper when the wind kicked up a spark from their fire ring and set the nearby wood pile on fire. The wood pile caught which led to the grass around it catching, which led a multitude of spandex-clad bikers (and a race organizer with a broken hand) rushing in to contain the fire. The forest service was called, and about 20 minutes after the blaze broke out a fire crew from town took over from the soot-covered bikers.

In the end there was a patch about 30′ x 30′ burned and nobody was hurt (other than a little smoke inhalation prior to restarting the ride). After the fire was contained, the fire crew stopped by, ate some food with us, and thanked Bryce and the rest of the crew for helping out.

The crew chief told us that he called it in as the “Bicycle Fire” in honor of the heroics. Bad-ass.

If anyone has any photos of the fire crew or the picture of Bryce wearing the giant Smokey Bear button he got from the crew chief, shoot me an email, I’d love to see them and pass them along.

Excitement, that’s what these races are all about.