Monday, June 27


24 hours of Rapalje (recap)

12 comments:

Chaybo said...

Well...monday morning and i'm actually more mentally exhausted than physically. Another damn good time riding bikes and hanging out with buddies.

This year two evenly matched teams from Hamilton made the trip over to Rapalje, which sits just outside of Billings.

Mike made the trip and also got to meet the local crew.

Out of the 11, five man teams it came out as a closely contested race completely filled with all ofthe 24 hour race dramatics...Mike got lost once, lots of rain and wind, broken bike parts and flat tires from the abundance of cactus. With all of these unknown occurances it still came down to a last lap battle between the two teams from Hamilton.....Our guy Joe went out with a 1 minute lead over Bret who was consistantly posting laps 3 minutes faster than Joes.....so to our eyes it was obvious that barring a mechanical or flat that Bret was gonna catch and pass Joe. Well he did, but not until towards the end of the 14mile lap. bret wasted zero time and passed Joe, who dug deep and stuck to Bret's wheel....YEP, it came down to a friggin sprint finish !!!


even though i was on the recieving end of a loss it was still beautiful to see a 24 hour race decided by 2 seconds...friggin amazing thing.


Mike johnson came home with a win and he did his best to make the 6 hour drive back home a torture for me.


congrats team B !! (or should that now be team A ?)


the picture is of both five man teams holding up Jay (Bruyneel), who did a damn fine job of keeping things together for both teams mechanically.

debaser said...

Damn, that sounds super duper fun. Count me as jealous!

mw said...

nice story. so mike was on the winning team?

mw said...

WTF is a Rapalje?

J.R.A. said...

Sounds fun! Pretty amazing finish.

By the way I just got the new Dirt Rag today. And in the picture section (Rider's Eye), there is a pic of John Parker in Three Forks Montana. Purty sweet!!

SH

redstone said...

Nice write up Chaybo. Good job - sprint finish, that's amazing.

Looks like Rapalje is a thriving metropolis from the looks of that pic.

Chaybo said...

Wills...yep that sucka moves up here and immediately starts kickin my ass...funny story:

On the way back home i let mike drive first shift and i just happened to wake up when he was on the interstate...it felt like the Toyota was cruising along purdy fast so i looked at the speedometer and the bastard had my little four banger up to damn near 90mph ! I told ol' lead foot to back of to give the hamsters a slight break. A little while later he wakes me up and asks me if the truck ever over heats !!!! Yep he managed to cracked the radiator (he was an easy blame)...so we're driving down the interstate doin 60, windows down, sun burned arms out. It looked perfect...truck full of fold-up chairs and camping equipment and two hicks in the front seat with the heater a blastin to help with the overheat.

and so on.....i finally pull over in Butte and i'm tending to the truck with some help from my buddy Tim and i finally get back into the truck to go and that little fucker Mike had perfectly positioned his nice shiney 1st place trophy right in front of the speedometer !!!

thanks mike

bdiddy said...

Yo magic!

Don't let him pin that shit on you dude! Chaybo had good ol Bdiddy in a similar sitiation once back in '92. Tre lent us the Yugo! Yup the Yugo! so we could drive up to L & C to do some riding. I had to drive because i had the license. Fired up the Yugo and my foot slipped of clutch bam the clutch pedal sprang right back into my shin. Damn that hurt! Unfortunatley we had to stay home and ride wilderness because the clutch on the Yugo failed at the exact moment it dented my shin! Just feel lucky that you were not injured while driving the toyota.

The cars in that family only like to be driven by their owners!

P.S.

Nice touch with the Medal over the Speedo!

mw said...

that's another good story...

Chaybo said...

shawn, thanks for the heads up on the dirt rag scoop, i'll have to go check it out.


i hear you're heading out west for a little vacationing ?


have fun

Anonymous said...

Congrats to all you hamiltonians. I'd like to have made it out there, but, you know. . . I had to work

community.webshots.com/user/jparker2005

Anonymous said...

sorry about the double link, I haven't been following the blog enough lately.

john