Durian Cup, Street sprints and other fun stuff

Mitch flying through the card collecting station

Yup that's me fixing a flat (which is becoming a rather unpleasant habit)

What a great time this is, in the cycling world. Grassroots racing happening every week at Hartland (Durian Cup), and underground sprint series on the streets of Victoria. People are on bikes everywhere, the weather is awesome, and to top it all off: The Tour De France!

Last Thursday Me and Mitch made it out for the Thursday nights Durian race. This time it was a poker run set up in a bit of a different way than usually. You collected cards for each lap you did around the short race track which included Little face, Emergency two, and Rolly Ridge. Then you could stop at the card playing stop and play your hand. Now this is where it got complicated for non-card players like myself. You could play everything from one card to five depending on what you felt like...I was not very good at this and that in conjunction with my new found fondness for flat tires resulted in a mediocre placing. Both Mitch and I had a blast however, even though we agreed that we would have liked to see the top half of Little face included in the race course, to add a little gnarlyness to the racecourse.
The day after we were both feeling the pain of the previous nights escapades. -Cross country racing is a painful sport. We did not have time to recover much though, because that night we had street sprints in Esquimalt. We had a good showing from the store with me, Mitch and Justin representing...The sprints were oodles of fun as always and Mitch took it upon himself to destroy everybody else, and thus retaining his title as the reigning sprint champ. I did not escape the humiliation of Mitch's speed and got crushed by him, not once, but twice. I did however, not manage to loose to anyone else so that placed me in second, after "The Destroyer".
Justin had some epic battles as well with a three series sprint race with Paul One of which was a spandex and no shirt affair on the part of Paul, and on his insistence Justin raced shirtless as well...This was strangely entertaining. But their first race was the best, as they switched the lead at least two times and crossed the line dead even. The first draw ever. In the end Justin sadly lost out to the aerodynamics of his spandex-clad competitor, something I'm sure he will try and avenge next time around.
Tonight we have a night ride at the dump, but since we have to attend a product knowledge seminar after work, this will be later than usually and we should be at the parking lot around 8:30-9. I'm going out anyway, and I'll see if I can drag anyone with me.
This will be a true night ride though, lights mandatory!