My kingdom for a camera!

Wow. Today was grand. If only I hadn't lost my camera so I could actually SHOW you what was grand.

The racing out here in Kansas was spectacular. Friday's races were muddy and sloppy, and the course was chewed up pretty bad by the day's races. By Friday night it was snowing and getting colder. This allowed for deep ruts, sometimes up to 4 inches deep, to be carved in the semi-frozen mud on Saturday. Later that night, the clouds cleared, the temperature dropped, and whole course froze solid, so by Sunday morning, there was just a mish-mash of rock hard, narrow little ruts that (if not hit absolutely dead on, and with perfect balance) would grab your tire and jerk it around all over the place. There were an average of six crashes per hour per person on the course, according to the announcers, and dang it looked hard to ride on.

The conditions were beautiful, cold and sunny. By the afternoon, by the time the elite men raced, the temperature had gone back above freezing and the race track had (for the most part) returned to mud. We got to see Ryan Trabon (the defending cyclocross national champion) crash head on with another racer who couldn't hold his line. We got to see Tim Johnson (an ex-pro tour rider, and former cyclocross national champ himself) give Johnathan Page (considered by many to be the nation's best cross racer, and the US's only European based professional) the shaft on the last lap of the race. We got to see many thousands of people yelling and screaming and honking horns and ringing cowbells and drinking beer, all in the name of cyclocross.

Now we have to go to Danny and Benny's, a local restaurant to catch some dinner, and enjoy the massive after party, but we can't go totally nuts because one of the Whitman racers is leaving at 8AM. My flight isn't until 4pm, so expect some serious blogging over the next twenty-four hours.