Today was a good day. After months of planning and never knowing if we were getting anything accomplished, we seemed to have got through it. The Tour D' Organics Portland ride is history, for 2008. It is still to be determined on whether it was good or not so. As a chapter and a team it was a huge success. We came together and got the job done and made our chapter a closer knit group. This may not be visible to anyone but me, so I want to let everyone know; You All did a tremendous job and I thank you for helping me make this ride and chapter work.

On 6/1 Casey and I went to the Falls City Firecracker mtb race. We meant to leave early and get there in time to do a proper warm up and have a good start. Well we did not get there to get the warm up in and I could have used in this race. It started of with around three miles of climbing. I started way to fast trying to stay with the leaders. I looked down at my heart rate and was closing in on my max so I had to back off and suffer the last two miles of the climb. On the way up there were several sections that could not be ridden.

Bear Springs Trap is a wonderful place on the east side of the slopes of Mt Hood. The race was slow to get started as is common with most mtb races. It was a warm morning in the sun, so I was standing in a snow bank trying to keep cool before the race. We are finally lined up, and off we go. I am riding hard passing others as we head up a paved forest service road. The Start can be critcal in a mtb race, so I was trying to pass as many racers as I could. The pavement ends and we head up a dirt road and the leaders take a wrong turn and I find myself on the front of the race. Damn!

Like most racers in the Portland area, I spent much of Febuary and March sick. First it started of with a stomach virus of some kind. I was down and out for a week at the beginning of Febuary. That lingered on until training camp, the third week of Febuary. I strained my left knee the second day of training camp. That left me with a whole lot more room time than I like. On top of that I got that awful cold that everyone had at traing camp. The cold was in my chest, it hurt to breathe, it was killer to cough. That kept me down for most of March.