Henry Kramer of California's Cal-Giant CX squadra took the silver at the UCI Master's Worlds! What a great job on an incredibly sandy course in Mol. As said before, absolute inspiration. I'll be there next year.

I was told that the race officials each year do a completely random lottery line up (e.g. no call ups). But Henry said on his blog that the Belgian Ron who won, got 'tha call up'. Dunno what that means but if anyone cares to comment on how this is handled over there for teh UCI Master's Worlds, I'm all ears.

GREAT JOB HENRY!

Trialsn'.Unbelievable is the only way to describe this. The Hans Rey stuff was great and insane in the 80'sbut this is a new level or street trials.

Yup. It's been moved indoors folks. 'Crossing in your local coliseum sharing weekends with backflipping FMX and the Poison/Ratt/Whitesnake triple headliner concert you've been waiting for.

Le Mans start! Just like the DFL's in San Francisco.

Sven of course pulled out the overall which was composed of shorter 'heats' which led to a 'main event'....just like super cross. Lots of crashing I hear. Those foolios better mind their P's and Q's before the WK's!

More pics here.

So, every day I wake up and I say to myself: "You will be in Belgium in 2008. You will be in Belgium in 2008." No joke. I have this goal to go and mix it up and experience the scene. One year from now. My wife is so rad and reminds me of this too almost every day.

How this goal came to be is through stories I've heard from my buds in CA, namely Evan, of guys from Black Market Racing (long time partners of Paul and Rock Lobster) and Cal Giant going for a number of years now to mix it up in local and Master's Worlds races in Belgium. Living here in Boulder, more stories from new friends here having done the same and dialing me into who I need to contact, etc, are getting me even further exited.

So to add more color to this story, Henry Kramer, a well known masters animal from the left coast just pulled off his first masters win over there this weekend. So rad! I would love to see him lay wood on these guys this Saturday at the Master's Worlds. GO BIG HENRY!

Some vids my team-mate Chris V took on his fan-dangled device of the woods section at Xilinx. Super muddy that day so you had to tread gingerly through these sections even with spikes.

Vid 1:

Vid 2:

Vid 3:

"Niels, you complete me."

Is it me, or is Niels Albert Sven's mini-me? This kid is going to shred the elites in the coming years and the guy, err boy, is only 20 friggin years old! Boom will be the Wellens of teh Sven generation. None of the U-23's can come within a minute of this guy and Niels continues to lay wood in the Elites. Funny thing is though, this guy has yet to pull on a set of stripes. Kevin babyface Pauwels and The Fidea Czech kid have nipped good o' Niels the last few years. Niels has got to chill out if he wants to be like his Maxi-me Sven though. If you get the chance, watch the U-23 races that usually preface the Elite races on your DVD's. Study this kid. He is a cry baby extraordinarie. I can barely watch him because he's too dramatic with "come on help me work up here" please and constant pushes to guys to clean his line. I'm an aggressive rider but the shit he pulls is horse cocky. Sven is like a machine. No emotion, just getting teh job done. take a page out of that Niels.

Ha! This is hilarious. I borrowed this from sufferingcyclocross blog but a quick google image search unveiled this fantastic cartoonist. Check 'em out here.

This cartoon of Richard G is perfect. It show's Ree-chard's fairly common portrait of mud splatter and sagging bottom lip. Grooven-dahl's tell tale sign when he starts to suffer is his lip sagging, mouth open and this AWESOME trail of snot, saliva that drips onto his Rabo skin suit. Suffering. I love this guy: Behold exhibit A:

Pantani's is awesome too: