Of Bears, Broken Bikes and Booty

On Sunday Ellie did the King of the Rockies race, the final race in the Epic Singletrack series up at Winter Park. We could have driven up on Sunday morning, but I wanted to go camping at least one more time before the cold weather set in.

It was a perfect night. The skies were clear and the stars glimmered happily in the indigo sky. The moon at half fun glowed brightly. It was a perfect temperature with out any bothersome wind.

While there was still sunlight, the kids explore the woods and waded in the quiet stream that ran near the road. Ellie's bike, which had been perfectly fine a few days before, was experiencing trouble as there was something wrong with the rear derailer and the wheel could not turn freely. If we had been around any of the biking dads, or if it had been earlier in the day, I would have asked someone else to fix it. However, there was no help available and I was not sure anyone would be available to help the next morning before the race. Being the resourceful and stubborn person that I am, I was not going to be stymied. We had bothered to go camping and paid the race fee, so I set about fixing the bike. Thankfully I was able to devine the fact that the shifters were in unusual positions and that it was the source of the problem. I cleaned the gears and fixed the gear issue. After a light lubing, it was good to go. I was proud of myself for figuring it out.

After getting set up we had a dinner of beef fajitas. We followed that with a camp fire, roasted marshmallows and s'mores.

I imagine that Ellie might have been a bit nervous as she was not feeling all that well. She became ill about a week and a half ago, and was not feeling better. Her arm felt a bit numb and weird from the go kart fiasco. However, she prevailed. Her team was counting on her to win points to help them maintain their placement at the top junior team in the series. So she pluck up her gumption and raced without complaint.

She got her usual good start, but it was not a very good race for her. At nearly 26 miles, it was a grueling race.

She won anyway, but was not at all happy with her performance. She also won her overall category, Beginning Women under 15. She won a nice stein, a special custom jersey and two more first place medals.

We had a new team member with us this weekend who was racing for the very first time. It was very exciting to see how well Seth did in his race, coming in third. I think many others would have waited for an easier race to jump in.

Green Mountain Composite won the overall best junior team. The kids received medals and special hoodies.

We capped of the fun of the weekend by stopping by a crazy little sweet shop in Empire where the malts are huge and the local hippies gleefully sing their tunes and strum their guitars.