Muddddy Mayhem (the double-dose of d's is for double the mud)

Finally real 'cross conditions have arrived, and we survived.... And we had the most fun of the season! Bicycle Heaven created a super-tough course in St. Charles, complete with mud, $20 handups, more mud, rock gardens, several off-camber ascents/descents, Halloween costumes, and then three rivers of more mud - two you crossed over, one you went upstream.

To start the day off, Alex very narrowly missed scoring our team some points in the Masters 30+ category - not an easy feat!! Next week he surely will, and those points should count double (Jim: write a letter to USAC; make that happen). In the 4A's, we had two point-scoring top-30's, including Gregor's 14th (a 4A personal record, I believe)! I noticed in doing he passed last week's 4B's winner, Spidermonkey Jake Teitelbaum. So if I'm doing my math right, that makes you better than all the B's!

With no clouds in the sky, the sun starting to set and the course at its nastiest, the "main event" 4B's began. Unfortunately this group had the most costumed riders (and for some reason a few women racing in the men's category), so Moshe, Matt and Jim got screwed at the start line as these folks got called up in front of them. Waiting for a good start position didn't really pay off this time. But by the time four laps and 30+ minutes had transpired, all five RVBRers had passed plenty, securing 90 points for the team and popping the cherry on Jim's one-day-old Supernova.

(Thanks to Chris for the pictures. I know we had at least 3 or 4 cameras out there, so everyone else please share when you get yours up. (That's what she said.))