Happy 4th to all of you. I hope you all had as much drunken fun as the rest of us cyclists here in flag did on this fourth.

Another Cruiser Nation is in the books. It was the first time I’ve done the race, and I had a blast. The short story is that Timmy won it on a cruiser with a coaster brake, I ended up top 5, jeremy and MJ rode it on a couple of little kids bikes (and got lost) and there was a lot of bikes, beer, burgers, and bashed up people.

We all rolled into the bottom of lower moto between 10 and 11:30, and everyone drank some beer and headed up to the top. I think the climb was the hardest part for most people out there. Even though cruisers are fun coming downhill, 50 lb, fully rigid, singlespeed bikes are not meant for climbing. Once at the top, everyone lined up the bikes and somebody blew an air horn to start the race.

If you weren’t aware, there are few rules for the race, but one is that the lemans start has to be done walking. If you run, everyone throws rocks at you, and I don’t mean tosses, I mean handfulls of large rocks get hurled, full-force at you. Needless to say, there had to be a couple heros who tried to run. They got pegged.

The race started, and I got a decent position off the line, until I hit a rock about 200 feet into the trail, went off the side, and noted that my handlebars were twisted to one side. I got off, twisted them back, and rocketed on down. I probably passed 10 people on the way down, and about 5 more coming into the flat/uphill section leading to the finish. I think I ended in 4th overall.

Timmy won the thing on a Kona Humuhumu-Nukunuku-apua’a, which he took the brakes off of, swapped out a bunch of stuff, and ended up with just a coaster brake on it. There is a video out there somewhere of him blasting down the trail, and Juan coming down right after him, and then promptly dismounting superman-style. In case you were worried, he got back up and kept racing with blood shooting out of his upper lip. What a trooper. I’m trying to track down a copy of that video to post up here, it’s a gnarly crash.

Other highlights include Dan riding the course wearing shinguards, shorts, a shop apron, and a full-face helmet. MJ and jeremy rode the course on some salvation-army special 20” kiddie bikes, and promptly got lost on the way down as well. Finally, the other highlight was the yearly tradition of the bike pile.

I have a few pictures I took of the event up here, but if anyone has any more pictures, let me know, and I’ll throw them up on the site, or throw down some links.

I’m pretty much done for, so I’m off to bed. I hope everyone had a good holiday out there. Peace out.