This past weekend was like a weekend at the movies...filled with drama, horror, action, & suspense....it goes something like this.......
Superior Bike Fest the SAGA
Starring
Brian "Mullett Man" Matter
Andrea "Nurse Mom" Matter
Co-Starring
Tim "The Ultimate Warrior" Drankus & Elicia "Emergency Room" Hildebrand
Bill Street "Player"
Josh "Euro Trash" Nagode
So Friday morning we loaded up the Hyundai w/ 10 bikes and headed to the land of the Uuuuuppers.
It was a pretty relaxing drive with the normal Subway stop and bathroom breaks. After the 1 hour time change we arrived in beautiful Marquette, MI and checked into the
Nordic Bay Lodge....a really sweet hotel.
Then it was off to the
Superior Bike Fest for stage one the
Twilight Crit. The night started pretty sweet with the mtb street races and Phil absolutely rockin' the white short jean shorts.
Street Player looks to be swinging the wrong way.
The night quickly turned bad as Elicia ER Hildebrand earned her co-starlet name on corner 3 of lap 2 after blazing the manhole cover and managing to high side on a road bike. There was some blood and some visible bone...from what I heard it was pretty Spectacular.
Not really knowing what was happening it was to the start line for my race...
Some bad team tactics and 40 or so efforts later I rolled across the line in 6th. It's a bummer when you finish a race at 10:30pm at HR 191 then you are unable to find food and can't fall asleep beacause you are still pumped.
Saturday Morning the alarm blazes bright and early after about 4 hours of 'rest' and it's off to breakfast at the Nordic Bay and then another 100 miles on the road.
The
race was better than the previous night. After rolling up the first big climb the attacks started coming. PCW was playing it smart and was represented in every move. Finally a solid one stuck but no PCW....I was ready to launch across and was going fast to the front, but noticed Priority Health was watching me...so I rolled to the front and launched Rob White off. The move was solid and the gap grew fast. The situation was even more ideal when Josh Nagode went in the chase group, yet none of the top 3 in the points were there. With the main field traveling really slow I decided it was best to not finish and save some for the mtb race and the circuit race in Sunday.
At that time I went back to the Hyundai to see Tim "The Ultimate Warrior" Drankus looking like he just got caught in the back alley of a rough neighborhood. I guess he went down pretty good and then got ran over by a few people....Nurse Mom was there to help him out and I think he will recover. Then we rallied the Hyundai and found Rob out on course...In about 10 minutes we threw at him all the water and gels he could handle. Andrea was driving like a pro in the Tour...I was feeding Rob every chance I had out the window. He looked solid and took home the victory. We almost took down the start/finish banner with bikes on top as we drove through the finish following him all the way home for the win.
PCW was looking solid holding the overall points after the road race...all we had to do was hang on Sunday for the win. No problem right?
First of all there was a sweet
mountain bike race to do. Again Marquette, MI has some really sweet trails. Key word being 'flow' You can just rip the downhills and not be worried about anything too crazy because the trails just flow.
The climbs are hard and long. Miles and Miles of trails that need to be ridden. I was killing it in the race...big dogging the climbs and ripping the descents. I won. Within seconds of finishing my mtb was loaded into the Hyundai and it was 15 minutes until the start of the circuit race. I drove fast, switched shoes, switched bikes and rolled to the start of the circuit race with mud on my legs. I was spent, but PCW had the leaders jersey.
Meanwhile back at the mountain, Nurse Mom was killing it on here way to a 2nd place finish in the womens race. She was a little blown out from being Nurse Mom all weekend, but used her old school Norba skills to kill the descents and finish with the silver.
Sarah Lukas of PCW stole the last podium spot finish 5th.
Back to the
circuit race and its off....
The lap is about 2 miles and has a pretty tough climb. Lap 1 I had to roll across the line first to get some props from the announcer and some team exposure. Lap 2 after the climb I was feeling good so Josh set me up for an attack and I was gone...perfect now my teammates can just sit and cover moves. Two priority guys bridge to me and I sit in and enjoy the free ride while defending the jersey. Now it's really set....2 guys pulling me and the rest of PCW has a free ride in the field. I'm not sure what happened next, but #2 in the points another Priority Ride, my buddy Derek Prechtl, and another strong dude bridge the gap. Where was PCW, what happened? I'll never know, but they missed it and the only thing I could do was sit and hope they made it...it never happened and I ended sprinting to get 4th. At least I beat Derek after doing a mtb race earlier!
Needless to say after the second race I was spent, Nurse Mom was still in chamois, Josh Euro Trash was blown, Bill Street Player was still pumped for some reason, and the Ultimate Warrior added to his pain by getting sunburned on the road rash.....it was a classic race weekend for the
Record Books.
On the drive home Elicia ER Hildebrand almost put a few cars into the ditch...maybe we shouldn't have let her drive with only 1 arm, 4 shots in the ass, and some prescription pain killers....by the end we all made it home and will be ready to do it again soon.
The End
Closing Credits
Thanks to all our sponsors, PCW, TREK, Hyundai, Oakley, Crank Bros... Thanks to the Superior Bike Fest race promoters, and Thanks to Lorin and Trish for the photos.
.JPG)
