Jeep King of the Mountain!!

Me and Anneke, the $5000 winner for the day!

I had two very lofty goals at the beginning of the season: 1.) Get invited to a Jeep KOM race and 2.) Make the World's team. It's been a good season. I accomplished both of them. :) Time to do version 2.0 on the goals for the rest of the season.

Last weekend I fly into LA to go to the Jeep race up in San Luis Obispo (SLO). Melissa made this all work out for me by picking me up at the airport, driving my discombobulated messed up toes self to San Luis, and then letting me take her rental care back to LA on Sunday. Thanks Buhly, especially for the driving shenanigans!! :)

Me and Jo Jo

Got to SLO mid afternoon and checked out the course. 2 things, it was pretty big/challenging, and boy was it windy!
The flags weren't wavering in the wind, they were pinned! :( We hung out and got ourselves situated in our rooms at the Madonna Inn (this place is a trip, every room has its own theme with the gaudier the better!), and then went to the Farmer's Market for the evening. Tons of good fresh food!

My room. Theme: Indian It had a rock wall that I could climb on, too! Sweet!

The next day we had practice at 1 and the wind showed up again. Bummer. I was really struggling with some of the features on the course, but was working my way up to the bigger stuff. This course wasn't "rollable". You had to step it up and hit a few things, including a sweet jump over a couple of shipping containers.

I finally decided to step it up and hit the pretty big double before the shipping container jump, and it didn't go so well, came up short and blew a hand off the handle bars. In doing so, I bent my cranks, so my day was done. One of the guys who was racing hand a spare set of cranks that he gave me to use, so I was set for the next day. Unfortunately, I pulled the same move on the double, only this time I decided to let the other side of my body play in the crashing games.
I called it on that note and decided not to do it. As a result I didn't have a great qualifier so I had to race Tara first round. That was the end of my racing for the weekend. Anneke killed it for the W, Melissa rode really well and got 2nd, and Fionn had an awesome weekend taking 3rd. (check out video of the boys racing, a little windy??)

The race, course, and general experience was so much fun (including going dancing afterwards!!). I was really lucky to be a part of a race series that totally caters to the athletes who are there!

Smiles All Around!

The dancing girls!