The Fontucky Expedition

Training season has been going hard for a few months now and with the rst of Mad Haderer Racings new bikes arriving this past week, it was time to put that training to the test and head south to race the Fontana ProGRT race with Matt Condrashoff and Steve. We loaded up the Sprinter after a grueling 18hour work day at nearly 4am on Wednesday morning and set out on the infamous I-5 South with a meeting in Long Beach scheduled for 12 noon. After a little power nap in the back and a quick wheel building session at 75mph we arrived in time to grab lunch with the guy at Marzocchi USA and pick up some fresh new goodies to bolt on the new Zerode G-2. The meeting went really well and hopefully lead to some great new opportunities but that is another story. Next it was off to Shimano to visit Joe and pick up some more fresh ZEE components to hang on the rig. After a quick stop over at Shimano it was time for us to catch the traditional Wednesday Night Ride with the Laguna Rads. These guys are nuts! We started the ride with about 45 guys and 2 minutes in we were hike-abiking up 1200 vertical feet of a pirate DH track. I ended up getting a at halfway through the ride and Matt and I ended up getting lost for another hour and a half trying to nd our way out but what an awesome group of guys and rad trails. Denitely gonna have to come back (and park someplace different, Blick) and try to hang for the whole ride.

Thursday ended up turning into a beach and build day and special thanks goes out to Joe at The Bike Company, for the help with tuning and setting up the new suspension on the DH rig. We also went out on the town in Newport with out old friend Casey and Matt ended up playing bouncer at a bar while cutting a rug out on the dance oor. Kind of a strange night really. Woke up bright and early to start making our way off the beach and out to the desert to visit the boys over at HT and Novatec. After a quick meeting with they guys we were able to work out a great deal and get a whole mess of awesome wheels for all the bikes. Super stoked on the products and the guys are top notch. We nished up the day with a quick drive up to the Fontana City National Track and after a long wait in registration and a long wait in the shuttle line we were able to head up for a few quick runs and a course walk right before sunset. Steve even showed me some sneaky lines.

Saturday morning it was bright and early practice for Pro/Experts and it took me no time at all to get used to the new rig. It was actually uncanny how at home I felt even on the rst practice run. Matt

and I smashed out about 4 runs and had a quick bite to eat before the waiting game of downtime between practice and seeding. After putting in a solid top section with only a few hard pedal strokes I was happy with

my run and came down with a solid 15th place on the DH bike with uncut DH tires. With only needing to take out a few seconds from my run to make it into the top 5 I knew I was on pace for a good result and that my training was going in the right direction. We decided to reward ourselves with a good BBQ dinner with the Furbee brothers and camped out on the track to be ready for another 8am practice session on Sunday.

Race Day rolled up on us very quickly and after a long bit of thinking I decided I wanted to try a few runs out on my 650b Trail bike. With the track only have one really steep and technical section I gure that I could make up a few extra seconds on the infamous Fontana Wall with the lighter and bigger wheels. My rst run of the day went pretty well and I felt like it was time to make a push and ride my last practice run, one at race pace. That is were things ended up going wrong. I came into the long steep section with just a bit too much speed and with the shorter travel bike it just was too much speed to scrub off and when I the turn in the bottom of the section

my front end knifed in and I folded over into a stack of huge boulder while my bike ew over both sets of catch netting and rolled pretty far down the hill. After visiting the medic and a lot of sitting down I realized that I was not going to be in the cards to race and I was actually very lucky not to have broken my pelvis and that I wasnt going to be able to race nals.

It was a bitter sweet ending to the trip but with a long drive back to Nor*Cal and with the way I was feeling there was no way I would be able to roll down the hill with any sort of speed. We loaded up the car after Matts race run and started the long drive back home. All and all it was an awesome little road trip that means a great start to the rest of the season. Thanks again to Casey, Hector, Henry, Joe, Steve, Joe L, Ian, Braedon, Donnie, The Furbees, and everyone down at Southridge. See you all at Sea Otter! www.Zerodebikes.com www.shimanousa.com www.schwalbetires.com www.ijwphotography.com www.thebikecompany.com www.novatec.com www.marzocchi.com