Looking Backwards; Looking Forwards

Here's to another year of riding bikes far places. Here are some of my favorite photos from the year gone by.

My first trip of the year was up to Washington with a close friend. I rode through Capitol Forest solo. I love the greenery, I was just getting used to my new camera and really had fun with it.

I got more involved with the San Francisco Randonneurs last year

In May I won the Medusa's Revenge Alleycat, the first big race I ever won.

Before I left for Trans Am I got one last Manny ride in. Haven't been on one since, which sucks since Manny rides are never a bad time.

Then of course, the highlight of the year, finishing tenth in the Trans Am in 22 days. I could have just posted all photos of this, thanks to everyone who supported me on this ride, seriously, to know that my friends and family had my back was awesome.

Then I went on bike tour, breaking my camera and losing my photos from my replacement camera. I finally got out to the Adirondacks, a place I feel I took for granted growing up in NY.

Once I got back to the Bay I raced in the first Trans Northern California, I raced the wrong bike and pushed hard.

This was my first year racing cyclocross. I'm already looking forward to focusing more on CX next year.

2014 was a great year, now I'm going into 2015 with a slew of adventure races coming up, here's the rough breakdown of what I have coming up;

• April 3rd: Stagecoach 400 (date may change)
• April 10th: Tour de los Padres
• May 22: Oregon Outback 360 (I may skip this one)
• June 15th: Tour Divide
• September 10th: Fire and Ice

Before that I have some late season CX racing, early season MTB racing, and the Grasshopper Series coming up, plus maybe some Gravel Gauntlet rides in the South Bay. Should be a good one, hope to see you out there.

Cadence Dope League Race

Yesterday, Cadence put together another race in the hills of Oakland, this time throwing in a little dirt to mix things up. The rain held off, but the previous week's rain definitely caused a damper on some people's caliper brakes, but the addition of cantilevers were not enough for road bikes to take the top 5 spots of the race. Thanks to stupidity a few weeks ago I didn't get to race again, so I decided to take some photos and hang out. There were real photographers there, but this is the best I got. Cast comes off tomorrow and I'll be back out there, just in time to brave the NY winter for some road riding.

Dan showing up fashionably late, yet still snagging bib number 420.

Rule #80.

Here's why I didn't race; because I was too busy playing with my phone (the cast may have something to do with it too).

Get in that holiday spirit.

This little guy led the pack! (Click for higher res on Flickr).

Nat leading the way.

Eventual race winner, Riley.

Dan was truly suffering.

 

 

Surf City Finale

This past weekend was the finale for the Surf City CX series at the Santa Cruz Fairgrounds. It had been raining a whole bunch the week before and sure enough the day of, we saw some rain. It rained quite heavy during the Men's B's, so I didn't get many shots of them (and oh, yeah, I'm not racing, did I mention I broke my wrist riding with no hands like an idiot? Yeah...), but for the rest of the day I tried to get some good shots and try to capture how truly sloppy it was.

Look at how clean those kits are at the holeshot; not for long.

For once in a Bay Area CX race there was a lot of this.

No seriously, a lot of this.

Best bike for the mud, Carbon Gates Drove SS, yessir.

Belt drive closeup. I really need to try to get some more bike shots, since the Santa Cruz races are chock full of glorious frame builders like this Rock Lobster, Castelli, and Hunter.

Mr. Red Jacket was heckling hella hard. Don't expect to run this without some fierce tonguelash from this guy.

Through the swine farm!

At least they added a nice dry section for the race (wish I knew about this during the B's to shoot all my friends, oh well).

Even places where crowds weren't watching for wipeouts there was a lot of mud.

Obligatory tape shot. It was hard to capture the beauty of the clouds rolling in over the SC Mountains, so this is the best you get.

This bike started out white.

Watchout! Tree! This wasn't far from the holeshot and really caused a bottleneck in the bigger races.

Leah CRUSHED the Women's B's. Jortz! Jortz! Jortz!

The runup before this had people really reaching for breath.

The technical downhill and this courses Heckle Hill.

A lot of people didn't come out clean.

But mud is fun right?

The butt cowbell; yes!

More shouldering.

Enter the pig farm.

All in all, I had a lot of fun, despite not racing. The course looked like a whole lot of fun, maybe next year. Unfortunately for me, there's only a few races left and I'll miss most of them. Oh well, next year I'll try to make more of a commitment to the season.