2010 Dirt Crit - Number "2" (that's a poop reference)

Greetings Team Seagal Tifosi! There's something to these Dirt Crits that makes them super fantabulously awesome. Something about the CX-like atmosphere and intensity, the free beer, the free food, lots of cool, bad-ass people, all done on a mountain bike, that makes it some of the most fun you'll ever have on a week night. First week, there were over 160 racers. This week, it was almost 140, which is so amazingly awesome. If you haven't yet had a taste, yer missin' out on some serious business.

Team Seagal HQ deployed a healthy Strike Force of extremely motivated soldiers out to do battle on the front lines of Castlewood. Professer, Gino, and myself were out for blood in the A race, while Lawman was out breakin' hearts and crushing souls on the B race with his newly-completed hybrid. Sasha Petrosevich was in attendance, but unfortunately was sidelined due to a serious poison ivy rash that was... inconveniently located. Masson and T-tocs were unable to attend, on account of their superior dedication to track, which is held on the same night. Truly, the most awesome form of racing that can be classified as "road."

The weather was quite ominous leading up to the gun, and even had a few eyebrows raised since it did in fact rain a little bit before race time. Fortunately, it wasn't enough to postpone the festivities - just enough to make the pavement-like trail surface a little slick, and require some care when railing the corners. Otherwise, the speed was as high as Nico during the Phish concert on his birthday. As the races progressed, the good lines became more obvious and easy to navigate.

The A's started off in a man-train of TC Man proportions (guess who got the hole shot:)






Despite the carnage and hilarious sliding out from numerous racers, the race was a shitload of fun. Professor dropped a chain and had to DQ himself by getting a tool from his car to fix it. I felt surprisingly better than last week, and was able to keep some pressure on a number of strong people, all the while keeping ahead of the Big Shark A-Race Mantrain that was choo-chooing down my neck by the last lap. Gino has a less-than-ideal starting placement, and spent his race practicing his passing skills. After the race and a little bit of recovery, ready to watch the next races:

A couple of big out-of-town jerks showed up from Team Virtus - Borb Jenkems and Luke, and the much-ballyhooed CXmas spokecard, the significance of which explained here, was finally, FINALLY returned to its proper owner after a long, arduous journey. Many are the stories it can tell, and perfect is the alignment of the cosmos now that one more thing has been set right in the world.
On a side note, this brings to mind a great quote from The Simpsons:
Homer: You're...selling what, now?
Apu: I am selling only the concept of karmic realignment.
Homer: You can't sell that! Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos. [slams the door]
Apu: He's got me there.

Back to the races, the rest of the night was filled with lots of eyes-of-the-tiger, and even some tomfoolery, like when Luke missed the start of his race and had to scramble to join the pack, as seen here:
Lawman puttin' down the hurt, hybrid-style:
"Damn son, where'd you get the fine threadz?"





The suggestion has been brought up to change either the Dirt Crits or track night to a different night of the week, such as Wednesday, so as to allow the painful possibility of people being able to attend both, and not have to choose between one or the other. There isn't really any reason that we could avoid the conflicting schedule.

No offense to Ralph or any of the extremely prestigious celebrity guest announcers, but I think that we need to have this DJ announce the remainder of the series - and he needs to bring his... um... lady partner along with him:


-Casey F. Ryback
Regular Guy