C&K: Bikes and Bunnies Crit and A New Bike.....WOW

This past weekend was crazy awesome. First I GOT A NEW BIKE. I love the Cannondale that I bought from Maurice, but due to its vintage status I was having a hard time finding replacement parts. It really came down to a new wheel set and the fact that I could not get a new one because the space between the wheel drop outs on the Cannondale are 126mm and all of the new stuff is 130mm. It just so happened that same day I was doing my normal browsing on Craig's list and found this...........

A Lemond Versailles. It is an all carbon frame with a shimano ultegra drive train and about 500 miles on it, which is pretty much brand new. They guy I bought it from is buying some land in Peru to retire on and become an organic farmer. If you really what to know more about it go here http://www.lemondbikes.com/bike_archive/2007/road_racing/triomphe_carbon/versailles.php.

The Criterium (Crit)

Crit racing is like racing cars on a tight road course. Lots of bumping, grinding and crashing. The field was 75 riders deep and included category 3, 4 and 5 guys all racing together. Being my first race I was in the beginner category (5). The course was 1Km long with a couple of sweeping turns and just a little bit of a up hill after the start/finish line. The 1st couple of laps were very fast hitting speeds of 35+mph, I think. I was so focused on what I was doing that I only had a chance to look at my speedometer twice and my watch once. Just after we crossed the start/finish line on our 2nd or 3rd lap somebody crashed somewhere ahead so everybody slammed on their brakes. It was the first time I had locked up my rear wheel on a road bike. All of those power slides when I was a kid really paid off. So many people were locking up their brakes you could smell burning rubber. Another couple of laps went by when in just about the same spot I heard some commotion behind me and just out of the corner of my eye I saw a guy hit the curb and get launched into the air with his bike still attached to his feet. The rest of the race was pretty uneventful until the last lap. With about half a lap left everybody was hammering it and a guy was passing on the inside and clipped his handle bar on a bush and went down hard. After the race we took a cool down lap and he was still on the ground not moving. Hopefully he was ok. My first crit was pretty amazing. It took me a good 24 hours to process the 45mins worth of information. Here are some pics.

Here is the mass start, you can not really see me but I am just left of the satellite dish with a light grey helmet, sunglasses and a light blue jersey.