The Trails At The Angel Fire Bike Park Are EPIC! Renting Their Transition TR450… Not As EPIC!!!

We started off by doing some of the Green runs up on the mountain. The trails are incredibly fun and well built. Hogan Koesis is definitely doing a great job on this aspect Angel Fire’s Bike Park.

When I first rode the trails at Angle Fire over ten years ago, I couldn’t have dreamed up what they have going on up there today. The downhill scene has matured and so have the trails that we have access to ride on up there. Just in the last couple of years the amount of terrain has virtually doubled. It’s great to just be able to roll up, park, and ride the chair up to some of the nicest trails in the state, and the only place with well constructed bridges and jumps that you can really test your skills on. If you want a break from your local trails with the loose dogs, their trekking-pole-wielding owners and their dirty looks: there is none of that here. I just LOVE the mountain biking up here now, the terrain is top notch. Angel Fire is definitely becoming more of a summer destination, the trails are steep and exciting for biking, but this place is nothing to write home about by winter standards unless you’re a skittle-thug that loves to hit the terrain parks of which they have up to 4: most of the mountain is relatively flat and full of gapers most days, a perfect place to perfect your “Texas Tuck.”

The Transition TR450 that I rented from Angel Fire was WORKED! It rode like shit because it sounded like shit… I really wanted to LOVE this bike, but could not bring myself to.

I called to reserve the Transition TR450 the day before I went and was stoked. I entered the rental shop and was instantly greeted by the “fuck you very much” kind of attitude. “Hi, I reserved a TR450 yesterday” I said. “No you didn’t: I’m holding it for you.” I love starting off a day of riding by talking to a sarcastic prick. I should have looked at the bike I was renting before I paid because I would have not gone for it, but the way this place is set up is: “you’ve signed, you’ve paid, you’re screwed.” I went and pedaled this heap around and promptly brought it back to the “mechanic” who happened to still be wet behind the ears and asked him to note the awful state of disrepair this machine was in before I took it, because, of course, with the form I signed: I was responsible. I asked if I could trade in this creaky mess for one of their other bikes and was told that the one I had was the best one and not as “fucked up” as the others. Way to sell me on your services, guy! I guess it must be really hard to care at this altitude. I took the bike and got on the lift: I just have to say this: Don’t rent a bike from these guys, rent it from someone you know and trust because once you get up here: you’re stuck with Tweetle-Dum and his lack of skill and accountablility. This kid should be setting pins in a bowling alley, not “working on” $5000 plus demo bikes. To Transition, Specialized, Santa Cruz, DeVinci, and GT: letting these guys represent your product is definitely not the best move.

Holy berms! There are so many high-speed berms sculpted into the trails to test your cornering mettle.

The Transition TR450 I rented had a Specialized saddle and pedals on it. Isn’t this a demo?!? Am I supposed to try a bike that isn’t complete? I’m guessing the Transition Pedals and waffle seat are on the pin-setter’s personal bike. This is a small thing, but not if you’re going to present yourself be a demo center, it looks half-assed as hell. It shows a sense of apathy and that no one is doing quality control. For $60 for a half-day and $100 for a full-day plus lift ticket these guys should have offered to help set up the bike for me, but instead he explained how trashed the rest of their fleet is. I still had a great time on the trails, but renting this bike left a bad taste.

The MatchMaker system from SRAM SUCKS! You can’t get the shifter and brake lever right where you want them, at least I couldn’t. There is not enough flexibility or adjustability in this system, obviously not the best choice for a rental bike that many different people will be using. The bars were STUPID-WIDE too, what is up with 34″ bars?!? If you can’t control a mountain bike with less than a 30″ bar… just give it up, there is no sane reason for this width.

The setup was whatever it was for the last guy. The Rock Shox Boxxer up front was set well for me. The fork made the bike roll confidently over everything I threw at it until you would hear the back end suffer and crunch over the same bump. The shifter was unreachable in any normal situation. On the second run: I realized that the shift/brake lever was loose and spinning on the handlebar, as well as the lock-on grips. Wake up guys!

The new Skills Park is a great place to get started riding on planks and catching a little air, very well-designed!

Paying a hundred dollars to rent a bike that sounds like a bag of broken glass and looks like my neighbor’s shed: It’s what I live for. Don’t make the same mistake, rent a bike from someone who knows and cares, these guys were neither the former or the latter.

I decided to get a Transition Bike for myself, no thanks to these jokers. The guys at Transition are what is right with the bike industry these days. I will review that bike for you in a future post. Transition makes good bikes, I think they just need to watch who they let represent them. The apathetic joker can become the face of the company/industry to an unsuspecting newbie and if we want new people in this sport and support this lifestyle we have to watch what we show the public. The truth stings sometimes. Follow the links in the sidebar for more info. ->

Natural terrain abounds… big rock drops, rooty singletrack, narrow wooded runs…. It’s all here for you to shred.

Head up to Angel Fire and rip the trails up! Your bike handling will get better and you’ll be more comfortable with speed and air.

Regret On Two Wheels: An Essay by Joel Lipovetsky

The Ghost of Bicycle Past: I really should have held on to this Spooky Bandwagon too!!!

There was that cold-war-military-green-folding-bike with its chrome ape hangers and white-vinyl-textured-saddle-with-green-piping. She traveled with us to Rome, where we would defect, and then across the Atlantic to Pittsburgh. Acquired for the exorbitant price of 600 rubles in my mother’s home town of Korosten, my grandfather, a big cog in the town’s deal-making-machinery had prearranged the purchase for us. My mom would proudly show me how she could stand on her Korostensky-single-tubed-frame right above where she folded while rolling down McCabe St. This was the bike on which she taught me to ride, in between our games of badminton in the backyard we took long cruises through Stanton Heights and East Liberty. They gave her away to my uncle’s family when they emigrated from Kiev in ’88. A few years later they, callously, left her in a basement storage locker in a grey cinder block tenement on the wrong side of the tracks in Northeast Philth-adelphia. You see, they soon graduated to a cookie cutter row-house that was way closer to the tracks, but my green, folding friend was a casualty of their success. I still remember her today… she was, after all, my first. She  may still be down there, resigned to her loneliness or possibly anticipating being discovered by the obliviously lucky hipster who accepts the key to the storage locker along with all of the other keys that the sketchy landlord gives him. He knows not that once he looks past the trash bags full of tacky clothing, deep in that mold-must-and-dust-gazuntite-ridden-chain-link-cage, he shall become, not only, the envy of all of his skinny-V-neck-tattooed-Ray-Ban-sporting buddies, but of me too…

There was the saturated-late-eighties-sky-blue-clad General Hustler Pro Flatland Model. She had this weird-sexually-ribbed-seatpost-sleeve-with-a-very-prostate-unfriendly-plastic-saddle and white-disc-wheels, we only had that one summer to get to know one another. She was my only solace upon the move to Philadelphia, at least I had gotten a new bike out of the parents in that deal. She took me far away from the boring and overcrowded Northeast quadrant, my protective parentals, as well as the awkwardness and stress of adolescence, when I was with her; I was good at something. She was liberated from behind my middle school the first time I took her with me to to show her off… Losing her that way was certainly a stark hard-knocks-thir-tween-olescent-lesson. I’ve seen her twin at the shop last year… in for repairs, we had a moment… I felt the twenty-plus-year-old longing.

I once actually had a shit-orange-and-brown-ten-coat-of-paint-and-chrome 3Rensho Pista Modulo Keirin track bike. It took me several arduous weeks of buying the beers, rolling the joints and brow-beating my co-courier, Asgede, over him not taking her out to persuade him to pass her on. I snookered myself into selling her before I moved to Santa Fe, citing her impracticality in this high desert as the justification, and I am now so indescribably sorry. She would have been repainted by now and certainly adorned with Suzue and Sugino, I assure you. I know this misstep effects my bike-Karma in this life and many more…  It would certainly be just for me to be reincarnated as a talcum-covered-purple-French-latex-race-weight-inner-tube based on this transgression alone. If I had one “redo” to do, just one bike move I could unmake… this would be the one. She had steep angles, even severe… totally impractical, but once mastered her handling became simply… telepathic. She had an invincibility factor and negotiated intersections with Katana-like precision; charging headlong through the narrow canyons left behind by the buses and the thousands of cubicle-dwellers in transit with such reckless abandon that I had to tuck in my elbows and head to avoid hitting a rear-view-mirror and ending up as a red stain on K Street. Her status as an artifact  of Smithsonian proportions in Washington-D.C.-Courier-dom should have kept her in my permanent stable and OCD-chain-cleaning-and-chrome-over-polishing-guardianship until a ripe and burned-out old age. She was brazed together by Koichi Yamaguchi, the Yo-Yo Ma of lugged-steel-frame-builders. Designed for Keirin Racing, where Japanese businessmen gather around a velodrome smoke Cuban cigars, sipping Sapporo and sake, but most importantly, betting on the outcome of mass-start-paced-sprint-races, she was pure romance. Her appeal was in her subtlety. The brass-brazing: pure poetry, the chrome-work: mellifluous, the Henry James’ lugs that held her slender-double-butted-limbs together: pure sculpture. I’ll probably never encounter another like her again.

And to the all-chrome S&M Widowmaker that made me feel so incredibly old. She came to me from a twitchy-mulleted-diesel-mechanic for a well-haggled price, her mere presence would set in flight the same pre-teen-gastro-butterflies of an earlier score. A hasty trade for a course of acupuncture treatments took her away. Dr. Handwerk had to repair some acute lower back issues as a result of my riding this “classic.” Her name was the “White Trash.” And she certainly was… came with the decals to prove it. She made any man who saw her want to cut his hair into a rat-tail and sport checkered-red-and-white-slip-on-Vans. I still may get her back… The Dr. hints that he might have to let her go soon. Let her go? “Yeah… you should probably let her go, but I have the right of first refusal… OK?” She has these uncommon center-welded-double-rear-dropouts because fat dropouts didn’t exist back then… and the capper? She’s stamped with serial number 0004… in early 90s-BMX-collector-speak that low number transforms this tig-welded-and-chromed thing of beauty into a collector’s relic. I really hope he hasn’t kept her outside too much, she’s going to need work, but I can’t act too concerned…

Ring Of Fire Eclipse? Mountain Biking La Tierra With My Bros? High Powered New Lights To Test? YES, PLEASE!

Owen, Clint and I had the common inspiration to watch the eclipse and take a night ride.

Clint, our Science Officer, furnished us with these viewing filters so that we wouldn’t go blind. There is that “Ring of Fire.” An annular eclipse is when the diameter of the Moon is smaller than the Sun around it.

The eclipse was over extremely quickly and we pretty much had a perfect view of the entire cosmic affair.

The ambient light was changing color during the eclipse.

The view from our little plateau was beautiful. We were very lucky in choosing a spot. It turns out that this was one of the best places in the world to see it.

… and now its time to pedal!

We went and hit the “Toilet Bowl” first and did about ten trippy miles all together.

The trail goes a little ‘Van Gogh’ at times. A sunset ride is a perfect close to any day in the Fe.

Overlooking Santa Fe, we happened upon another group of riders and shined our lights around and complemented each other on our common genius of the Eclipse/Ride Night.

I can’t think of a better way to have spent the evening.

My lighting system for night-riding consists of the Lupine Lighting Systems Piko 3 mounted to my helmet and a Serfas TSL-500 True 500 Headlight mounted to my handlebars.

The Lupine Lighting Systems Piko 3 is extremely lightweight: under 6 oz. with the battery. I can’t feel its weight at all when riding.

My Lupine rep, Fred Gannon, flowed me an integrated mount to install on my Giro Hex. I poked 4 holes with a tiny screwdriver, popped the rivets in and it is just rock solid. It has taken many wacks already from branches and due to my general clutziness and lack of coordination.

I needed a night like this. The eclipse was epic and it was good to watch it with some old school bros and pedal afterwards. We live in some amazing surroundings and must take full advantage of the unique opportunities we have… to play! Night-riding opens up more of that valuable leisure time that I know you need and I can assure you that most of the time you and your buddies are the only ones out there!

I have been testing the Lupine Lighting Systems Piko 3 and Serfas TSL-500 for several months now, both for commuting and night-time mountain biking. The lights do complement one another, but I could probably ‘get by’ with one or the other… Who wants to just get by? I want to be able to go as fast as when it is light out; the combination allows that to happen.

The Piko pumps out a supernova-esque 750 lumens and comes with a vented-helmet style mount included. There is an extension cord in case you would like to run the battery to a pocket, but a lightweight as this whole setup is, there is no reason (under 6 oz. total). The light and the battery are strapped down by these slick stretchy velcro straps and there is no movement at all. There is a mount that can be integrated to almost any helmet available too. I opted for the latter because I have several helmets that I use and could dedicate one to this purpose. It will run for almost 2 hrs. at full power (750 lumens) and 5.5 hrs. at 300 lumens which is certainly sufficient lighting for commuting and some trail riding. The charger is fast and when you plug the battery into the light-head it tells you how much power you have by flashing the power button a number of times, very slick. The light is machined aluminum, is micro adjustable while riding and will take much abuse. I am planning to use this for night-time snowboarding too which Fred Gannon, of Lupine North America, assures me is just fine. The light goes for about $330. and is worth every penny, in fact: initially when I spoke to Fred, he wanted to send me a light to demo and review and while he told me about the specs and how the lights are made, I was online checking out what people I trusted had said about them and promptly said “You know what Fred? You better just go ahead and sell me one.”

The Serfas TSL-500 True 500 Headlight is my go to light for commuting because it is so compact. There is no cord or battery and it pumps out a little over than 500 lumens in Overdrive mode. I always throw it in my pack and go… just in case. The helmet mount is a pretty standard velcro deal. The quick release handlebar mount is stable enough to hold it steady while bouncing around rock gardens in the dark, but the adjustment of the band is achieved with a pin that could be a little more user-friendly. You cannot beat the price of $150. for its overall performance. The slickest thing is that it comes with a standard and USB charger which lets you charge it anywhere, the battery is also replaceable which makes the system relatively very green. Serfas lights are RoHS compliant as well which means that they are compliant in the reduction of the use of hazardous materials in their products which, FYI, is not mandatory in the United States.

Follow the links in the sidebar to find out more about these two awesome lights. ->

Get out and ride… at night!

We Skated The New Santa Fe River Trail From Bicentennial Park to Frenchy’s… Thanks for The Buttery Concrete Infrastructure, Santa Fe!

Tom and I both really needed a study-break on this day so we decided to do a couple of laps on the new ribbon of concrete.

Surf the Santa Fe River… Tom pushes past someone’s winter stash.

The new path has some great curves, could be just a bit wider though.

The next day I hit it with Andy. He checked out the Predator Shiznit Helmet and Earthwing Supercharger from my personal demo fleet.

Andy gets his hippy jumps dialed in.

We walked back through the river bed while it happened to be flowing. Its rare to have a beach in the Fe.

It feels great on the feet after a long push or two.

This is site specific graffiti. Graffiti creates jobs, know that!

I love and hate the new bike path from Bicentennial Park to Frenchy’s Field. Aesthetically, it is simply incredible. I have used it extensively on my bike since it was finished several weeks ago. Ironically, it has caused me to just ride the streets to work more often than not. This path encourages many Santa Feans from along it’s route to do what they do best; check out. I have had words with several people who feel that it is an extended version of the dog park. I have recently stopped wearing headphones while riding, but have still had several dangerous encounters with people who stop where they shouldn’t, insist on having their dog off leash and/or jog with their music. There was a particularly entertaining armada of 8 huge women with a yappy Shih-Tzu running around and through them all.

Why is an “on your left” or “how’s it going?” insufficient to create a safe passage? I have never had issues on any of the other paths in town; maybe its just me…

Probably so.

Gracias Anna! I Can’t Wait To Get Myself Back To The Highline Ridge @ Taos Ski Valley!

Anna McMillian slashes the "NO NAME" Chute off of the Highline Ridge in Taos. It was well worth the hike! What a view! These were some of the best turns of our lives!

My close friend Anna gave me such a beautiful gift, the gift of ass-deep powder. She took me to Taos Ski Valley for such an epic day. The snow report said 14″ in 24 hours, but as you can see, we managed to find a few deeper spots. My first hike on the Highline Ridge was so beautiful and awe-inspiring. You can see the beautiful backcountry that borders the resort, the light was just sick that day! I can’t believe it took me so long to get my ass up there! I am so stoked to have shared the experience with Anna, who I have been riding with since neither of us could make a pretty turn; things certainly have changed. Now we can charge together! I might have to save enough money for two passes this next season…

Virgin Spring Powder and a Touch of Crust… starring the Gnu Dirty Pillow and the usual suspects!

Tom rallied us up to the mountain in time to hike up to the triple and get first civilian chair... ten minutes before anyone else was even on the quad. These things count on a powder day, if you want that virgin snow. The temp was in the low single digits and the wind speed was between 30-40 mph at the top, you had to WANT it!

I have definitely been curious about Gnu’s Dirty Pillow for a couple of seasons now. This season they decided to make a 156cm length which sealed the deal for me because until now they only offered a 159cm and 162cm which are both too long for most of the riding I do. I was replacing a 152cm Lib-Tech Skate Banana that served me very well for the last two and a half seasons as my go-to board, even in some powder. I wanted something a little more stable and floaty that I could ride everyday, for smaller storms, handle groomers, some park riding, catwalk airs: basically a “quiver-killer.” This board has Banana Rocker Technology: it is only rockered between your feet and flat/mellow camber out to the tip and tail from there. This is a much “mellower” ride than the C2 Power Banana/Camber combination that my Lib-Tech Phoenix Lando is built with, it is rockered too, but has aggressive camber out to the tip and tail. The Pillow is a true twin as well, very stable riding switch, even with the 18 and -6 angles I have my bindings set to. The Magne-Traction on this board is not as deep as what you find on most other boards from Mervin, they call it 0.75 Shred. The added waist width/less sidecut made the board a “speed demon” on the groomers. The Pillow is a little stiffer than the Skate Banana, which was a welcomed change. On my third and final day of testing the snow was shitty and super-fast. The GDP handled it pretty well, the only place it was really a liability was on icy bumps… I’m ok with that. I need to stay away from those things anyway!

I would definitely recommend this as an all-around board, but at a 6 flex (156cm) and 6.5 (in the larger sizes) I would say that the Pillow is not for a beginner/intermediate rider. It would make an awesome powder-only board in the longer lengths, but at that point I would like a little bit of set-back. My Lando is a 157w, 7 flex and is set back just a little bit, it is “the weapon” for the really deep days.

The Gnu Dirty Pillow rode well and did what I needed it to. The terrain and snow pack where I ride can vary so much in 2000′ of vert that a board like this is just the ticket for me. It definitely impressed me in the piste, the off-piste and groomers. I got mine from Evo in Seattle, they have excellent prices and service. My local shops are pretty mediocre and I wouldn’t trust most of their employees to set pins in a bowling alley so I do most of my own tuning and waxing at home. My buddy, a former racer, does my edges by hand and stone grinds my board for a bottle of Jameson and a bag of green chili jerky when I need it, which is rare. If you have/get a nice board, make a good friend at your local shop, just make sure its the right one!

If you want tips on waxing/tuning, refer to this classic post: http://lipovetskyphoto.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/skis-or-board-not-fast-enough-you-must-have-had-them-tuned-at-a-shop/

First run on the Gnu Dirty Pillow was South Burn, we had to go where our tracks would be seen by the slackers on the quad. Tom and I were greeted by a foot of fresh, windlips of all shapes and sizes and an epic run-out through tight trees. The Pillow slayed all of it!

I believe they call this "The White Room." I spent a lot of time there on this day...

The fruits of waking up early...

I chased Tom through some of our favorite stashes... seems like the temperature kept A LOT of people off of the mountain!

We worked our way over to Easter Bowl, the snow was just OK there.

In the afternoon we hooked up with Lili and checked out the side/backcountry because we wanted to ride even deeper snow and I really wanted to see how the Dirty Pillow would do in the "real world" outside the rope.

Walking past this rope is one of the best feelings in the world.

We hiked past the radio towers and all of the sick terrain below them to get to "the goods."

We traversed Southwest from the towers to get to the far drainage. The top of Big Tesuque was simply incredible, slashing through the pines. The snow only got deeper as we descended, it all blew in there during the windy night.

The meadow up above Tom is where we came down. If you look up at the mountain from town, it is the far right open area. There are only a handful of safe days to ride it every season and we managed to catch a GREAT one!

This lovely set of aspens led me to within a hundred yards of the truck. I flew past a set of Tele-skiers that were like "Guess the secret's out..." There are a few nice wide gullies and tree-cuts where I would have never thought to look! Thanks again, Lili!

By the time Lili drove us back up to the ski area and parked her truck, it was too late to catch a lift to the top. We parked at the base of "Gnar-nia", a sidecountry run that comes off of the quad/Desafio area. The run consists of deep snow and tight trees that funnel you to a drainage that lets out about a hundred yards from the parking lot. As you can see, it was kinda deep!

My GoPro camera really took a beating on this day. My leash system had already saved it twice before it whacked a big limb and came off completely on the Gnar-nia run, luckily the same limb took me down so I was near the impact zone and managed to find it by using my boom/pole to search in the powder. I was so stoked to find it because this would have been the second time I lost one! YEAH!!!

Day 1, What an awesome day to test my Gnu Dirty Pillow! I have epoxy on the tip from hitting some unseen piece of geology in the Big Tesuque and almost lost another GoPro camera. You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, I guess…

I rode with Karla and Tom on the second day of testing the Gnu Dirty Pillow. We rode Tequila Sunrise the first few runs of the day, 8-10" of fresh... It did not suck! Here, Karla flies through the lower section.

Day 2 had a little less pow, but was even more epic than the first. Riding the Millenium Chair with Karla was a little scary though, she took it upon herself to tell a young cigarette smoker on the lift to “STOP IT!” I feared for my dental work a little bit, those deprived-of-nicotine-heads can be highly aggressive. Next lap: she did it again.

Karla and I hiked past the towers and dropped into the bowl above Cornice a couple of times, it was pretty deep up there. I took this shot of her while we were carving down to the power lines. WOW!

The third day of testing was on crusty boiler-plate and some super slush. The Gnu Dirty Pillow ate all that crap and crud too! 44.2 mph on crust, not bad at all!

Day 3 was all corduroy, boiler-plate and deadly slow slush. I did get a decent top speed out of my first few runs. I slid some boxes in the park and hit some cat-walk airs. Verdict: the Dirty Pillow works on crust too! The graphics are done by Gnu’s Staff Photographer Tim Zimmerman, based in Portland, the city Portlandia is based on. It says “Photography Series” by the tail, every little bit helps…

 

The Duke City Bombers threw their DCB JRK Race … many skaters parted with some skin!

I don’t know what I love so much about an Outlaw Race. Is it the Illegality? Comradery? Danger? Probably all of the above, probably why DCB made me their official photographer. I think it is the fact that we skateboarders are Do-It-Yourself people, if no one throws the race we want to participate in… WE WILL! This race brought out a lot of groms and that always stokes me too. The Albuquerque scene continues to grow and I am so fortunate to have such a “Skateboarding Mecca” in my own backyard. The longboard crews/ clubs and the shops are at the forefront of the growth. I am so incredibly thankful for the friends who helped me get into longboarding several years back. Your view of the paved world changes drastically, I will never look at a driveway, sidewalk or ditch the same way. These all became “terrain” to me as soon as I stepped on that board.

"When are we gonna start this thing, boys?"

"OK, bros... time for the riders meeting!" - Chris Cade

Johnny "Tsunami" from Hawaii, by way of Colorado, shows us how to take the race course's first corner. This downhill left hander had many skaters picking out cactus needles and dusting themselves off.

Johnny "Tsunami's" helmet has an epic paint-job. It looks like somebody stayed up pretty late with some paint markers!

When David Price arrived and I saw the first few racers, I said to him "There will be blood." "El Diablo" nurses his wounds with some PBR.

Phil and Num-Num take the first corner. Nice steeze, bros!

Some of the heats got pretty heated, especially since so many were flying off of the course into the cactus.

This is what it looks like when things start to go wrong, see you in the dirt, fellas.

Chris Cade beat "The Curse of the Race Organizer" and got First Place!

Ross from Alaska added some "Pharaoh Power" to his helmet the night before the race. Cardboard is more aero than Carbon!

The Ph-Aero Helmet in it's full glory... I feel faster just looking at it!

Chris even beat "El Diablo."

The bottom right hander was no picnic either, you can't see the pile of baby-head rocks that I am standing in front of.

Andrew Archibeque shows us why goofy skaters had the advantage on this course, most of them could just grip the bottom turn and not put a hand down to slide it.

GO CADE!

The best part of being at this race was the carnage... and there was plenty of it!

Phil Ginn uses this "Diving Arrow" technique to break through the desert wind and beat Kyler Willoughby in one of the final heats.

Chris and Phil are flying out of the first turn in one of the final heats.

James West bests "The Sphinx."

We had a little freeride and launch ramp session at "The Bear" after the race. Cade catches a flight before the rains came and sent us home.