Sea Otter Classic in the record books

Well, the Sea Otter 2008 is over... has been for a while, I've just been travelling and recovering and too lazy to update my last week in cali. Sorry. The race was really fun, and really stressful, and really cold, and really hot all at the same time. Thursday was hot.. and muggy, and we had 3 hours of downhill practice. It was good, we got our new race clothing halfway through and by the end of practice we had racers and fans yelling AMERICA!!!! it was really neat to see how stoked everyone is on the team and the support of american racers. I crashed in a fast berm and got my only jersey dirty and for the rest of the weekend people were asking "did you crash"... nope i jusst decided to roll in the dirt and grass in my brand new beautiful kit... yes i crashed...Friday was more dh, and i was riding my medium travel dh bike. it was feeling retty good but on the hurt wrist it was getting a little rough. after friday downhill practice we would only see the track for a little while sunday morning before the race. saturday was the famous sea otter slalom. it was the windiest day i have seen there. people were wearing goggles in the pits because of the dust in the air!! needless to say it made the slalom interesting. It was like riding into a wall in some of the corners. I qualified bad becuase I screwed up i qualis, so i raced the number 5 qualifier Mike Haderer. I threw down a good run in the first run (in slalom you run both courses once) and was putting pressure on Mike and he ended up crashing, giving me the full 1.5 second advantage on the first run. second run i rode cautious and made sure i didn't crash, and I advanced. i was stoked for sure. next round was the legendary Kirt Vories. he was riding well all day and I was pupmed for a good round. first run he beat me by .8 of a second. second run I rode the best slalom run of my life and beat him by... .7 of a second.. so the overall went to Kirt and he advanced to the round of 8. I was bummed to be out, but to give him that good of a run and be that close was a geed feeling. Sunday morning I made a big decision to switch to my downhill bike. i had never ridden it in my life and in a couple hours would be racing it. Not smart in racing eyes, but i knew it was the way to go. on my fourth run on my bike, it was the race run, and i had mt best sea otter dh finish ever...24th place. not bad considering the circumstances. I was really impressed with my good friend matt fisher for his ride to a 21st place, and AAron Gwin, with his 10th place.
Thanks to all the guys on the team and Nate for all the hard work, and brandon sloan for housing us for so long!!! i'm home in colorado now training for Maribor. i leave on my 6th. i'll update while I'm there.. should be sick!! later!