lasted 3 minutes.
driving up the to the great Mennonite land of PA for the UCI Lion Cross and Charm Cross races, a wily group of four JV and former bloggers attempted to stake their fortunes in the first weekend of professional cyclocross racing in the US in 2009.



arriving at the race course on saturday 4.5 hours early to unleash Fawley on the unsuspecting 2/3/4 yankees, we anxiously awaited our start for the UCI race. Lining up with about 50 pros we got started

diesel engines a must
No wonder they called it the War of Northern Aggression. The start was a chaotic mess much akin to a Cat 4 Crit coming into the final corners of the race, people crashing, falling everywhere, looking like a bunch of idiots and throwing bows

scrappy
needless to say my inferior handling abilities and kind demeanor put me near the back and in a despartate bid to regain some placing before the train left the station I made a daring/silly move down the middle of the gnar root section

This is the actual root section- odd
notice everyone going left, i went right to get around the trash but ended up breaking a spoke and walking to the pits and dropping out.

ain't it the truth
Tim rolled his $200 tire and Flo held gamely only to be pulled with 2 laps to go.
To console ourselves we drove 3.5 hours back to Washington DC.
There we were greeted by our host and fan Bodge. Dispensing drinks, he took us on a trip through the night scene of bourgeois DC. Resplendent in our neon tank tops and skinny jeans, bathing suits and poor form we mingled with the rising stars of our nations capital. Flo embarrassed himself, par for the course.
The next we drove through the slums of Baltimore to get Fawley to his race with barely enough time to spare. He again crushed in the face of such adversity.
The UCI race started as fast if not faster, but everyone stayed upright and 60 minutes of riding a super sweet course and actually passing some people had me ending up 16th place overall, 2:33 down on the leaders. Not bad for being sick for a week and taking a 3 week sabatical from bike riding

and it pours
driving back was ultimatley a blast and we racked up 1300 miles of driving in 2.5 days. ProTour lifestyle.

I got back to find out that only one of my comp questions needed revising and i passed the other 2. it turns out i may actually indeed be a real grad student. Awesome
