Judging by the number of beer bottles I saw at the tables when the riders returned to the marina i'd say both are highly likely .foo on patrol wrote:Smashed as in stuffed or smashed as in plastered?
Foo
What Scott said, an amazing day, many thanks to Andy and Chris for making it happen. I counted 67 riders as we made our way to Tinbeerwah , we had so many the bunch stretched for a couple of k! By the time we reached Tinbeerwah only 6-7k in the group had already split up into fast and slow fields, and we had our first mechanical with Andy on the Holstar suffering a loose crank arm. He was able to limp to Cooroy, tighten the crank at a servo and carry on to complete the short course.
This year unfortunately was another year for flats, there were dozens! (Though as is my wont I must point out that my brother and I riding 27" wheels had no such troubles ). I've heard someone copped a flat front tyre and ended up in a ditch on Cooroy Mountain Rd, can anyone confirm? Other than that I believe the event remains injury free, not bad for 3 years! .
The new course generated almost universal praise, the scenery around Black Mountain is superb and returning over the Kin Kin Range is a huge improvement over McKinnon Drive. My brother and I were pretty tired by the time we reached Cooroy so cheated a bit by taking the sealed Cooroy-Tewantin Rd rather than the last gravel sector past Cooroy Mountain.
One of my highlights was being able to help Ash on the beautiful Tommasini when he had his 3rd (or 4th?) puncture on his tubular tyres and had no more spares. As this was at Cedar Pocket, not far from my parent's farm in Kin Kin (home of LDR's shed of parts ) I did a time trial to the farm, grabbed a replacement 700C wheel and drove my dad's ute back to meet him (AFTER he had descended the much feared Gentle Annie with a flat front tyre ). A bloke on a Beretto lost some chainring bolts which I also grabbed from the farm, but unfortunately I didn't see him again until the marina.
I took a heap of photos which i'm uploading now (9 emails worth!) I've got a really nice one of you climbing Hansen's Gap scott.
And I got the KOM for Shadbolt Rd too, woohoo!