Chuck-T's Race Report; DARTER WINS!

Yo Cap'n! As I can see from the Blog, news of my wheelings and dealings in Mammoth has already made the rounds. I guess I should first explain the whole wrist thing; Schwanke and some other friends and I all went out Saturday night after the racing was done, and headed straight for Roberto's for some great Mexican food and margaritas. Afterwards (probably due to the gigantic margaritas that were residing in all of us), Schwanke and I got into some sort of a slap fight on the way home. I tripped, fell, and scored a perfect hit on my wrist. I scraped myself off the ground and did a little "systems check" to make sure I was in one piece... and noticed my wrist no longer moved freely and was in a lot of pain.

The next day, things weren't much better. I still couldn't move my wrist much, and race time was fast approaching. I headed straight for the Kenda booth (because Jim Wannamaker ALWAYS knows what to do!), and pleaded for some advice. My pleas were answered by our very favorite trailer park resident (and potential nursing school student) Timari! So anyway, to cut it short; thank GOD for duct tape, heavy duty Kenda tubes, and Ibuprofen!

My Saturday Kamikaze race went really well, I pulled a time of 5:21, which was good enough to settle into 10th place for the day in the Pro class. I was a little bummed, because I got stuck with a 34 tooth front chain ring, which is NOT what you want to run on the worlds fastest dirt DH track! EC showed up with a 52 tooth front ring rigged onto his bike, and won. I was basically spinning 9th gear out of every corner and just tucked for most of the track. Pedaling was useless! Thanks in part to my wrist, I opted out of the Cal-State downhill and decided to focus on the slightly less painful Legends Kamikaze race that I was invited to participate in. Now here is the weird part... I opted to make a few changes to my bike for Sunday, one of which was swapping out my 2.4 Telonix in the rear for a 2.35 Short Tracker (still couldn't get a hold of a bigger front ring). Even being doped up on pain meds, and with duct tape holding my arm together that day, my Sunday race time was in the same second as my Saturday (pre-injury) time, a 5:21! I wound up in 9th place in "Legends" category, which if you are wondering, I made it into by a hair. My first race when I was about 11yrs old was early enough to qualify me to race with these guys!

On another note, lets all congratulate Darter on becoming the new CA State Champ for his category! He won his race by about a mile on Saturday, podium pictures should be coming soon! I smell an upgrade coming real soon and some domination in the Vet-Pro category next year!

-Taylor