l'Abitibi Time Trial

This was by far the craziest race I have ever done in my life. And it was a TT.
So we load up on the bus in the morning to head over to our start with all our stuff except our bike, which had been sent down the night before. It's nice and sunny out and the day is beautiful. We show up to this...cave, and that's the only way I can think to describe it. It's the entrence to the mine, where we have to sit on the rocks for about 15 min while the riders come out. Then they do a roll call and make sure we're all there. There are six guys they select to go first who have to put their shoes on and be prepaired to warm up. We all pile into this tractor and have to put on our TT helmets.
So, a rundown POS that qualifies as an automoble going down a hole in the ground, with 30 kids in tight colorful clothing with weird looking helmets all bunched together is what the scene looked like.We start down the tunnel, and again the only thing I can compair this to is a slow motion rollercoaster ride. It gets really dark and the road drops away into the abiss, while you have to keep your arms inside and have your head ducked because there are rocks and pipes and those stallag-tight-mights or whatever about 5 inches above you. It goes for probably 300 meters then you get to the bottom. It's just about pitch black in there and the lights they do have are like 15 watt bulbs and separated by probablly 50 feet.
I hit my head on a pipe or something at the bottom which scared the crap out of me, then we all had to stay crouched over while we got out of the truck. You walk for 40 meters and all your bikes are lined against a wall with 6 trainers there. The guys who were selected to get their shoes on got on the trainers for 10 miutes, while the rest of us walked another 2 dozen meters on little rubber strips they had set up so your shoes wouldn't get dirty up to a heated room with some food and another six trainers set up. These trainers were the ones you see in dusty basements that haven't been used in 10 years. The ones from the 80's. So I get called up and jump on the crappiest one for 5 minutes while they have a guy time you. They try to make it even with everyone getting the same amount of warm-up. I didn't know though that when you finish your warm-up in the room, that you put your shoes and helmet on and go straight to your bike which is now on the trainer. So, of course, I get off and start streching and talking to guys, when Scotty from Major Motion informs me of what I'm supposed to do. So I get ready, take my legs and long sleeved jersey off, put on my stuff and get a huge blanket put over me for the walk over to my bike.
You're supposed to only have 5 min per bike, so on my TT bike I only got about 2 and a half. When they told me to stop, I got ready for roll-out, and noticed that my front tire was at about 40 to 50 psi. I'm in a cave underground and my 1:00 man is 10 seconds away from going off. I looked around for a pump but didn't see any, so I figured I would just get a wheel change at the top.
I get clipped in and she counts me down from 30. I start and It's fairly good with the lighting not as bad as it seemed coming down, but then I start going up. The lights start getting farther and farther apart and the hill keeps getting steeper. It wouldn't have been so bad, except my front tire is bottoming out, and I'm getting rained on by the cave...stuff. Then the real crap happens.
The road starts turning to the right and there is a light up there, so I'm prepaired to go to the right. But I get up there and there are ropes blocking off the road. So I'm kinda like "Uh, where do I go?" I start to lose my speed when I see that the road turns left and there is a light about 100 feet up the 17% road ahead. Normally that's a good thing, but my tire was totally killing me and I COULD NOT SEE a thing! It was really scary and my disk was starting to slip out.
I finally got out to the top, and it was horrible. It went from super dark to blasting sun in your face, and 40 degrees to 75 all in the space of 3 seconds. After coming out it's maybe half a mile on a bike path then you come onto the road and you get your lead moto and your follow car. I went for a ways trying to decide where a good place to do a wheel change was. We were in a neighbrhood so going through the corners was pretty sketch with my low front.
On a long straight I looked back at Tim and Aaron in the car so they knew somwthing was up, then put my left hand in the air and hit the brakes. Before I came to a stop I loosend my front brake, then I took the wheel off. Aaron was there by then and he took care of the rest. I was on my way by then and tried to get back into a rhythm.
The course took me out of town and up a short hill then over and back into a neighborhood. I had caught and passed the rider in front of me before the houses, and at that point it got kind of technical. The crappy thing is though, when I passed the japan kid my moto didn't pass him, so I had no lead. I kept expecting to have a turn-around because all the riders were coming back the way I was going. The result was 5 to 6 corners where I lost seconds not being in the aero bars because I didn't know where the heck I was going. I should have road the course before, but we had another race later on that evening so I didn't really have time.
I finally got my motorcycle back in front of me and then I could go faster through the turns. Another lame thing was coming into a left hander my motorcyle almost came to a complete stop because the oncoming rider took the corner wide, and there was a car trying to come on the course so I had no where to go, nothing to do but hit the brakes and lose more time.
With about 2k to go There was another big...traffic jam I guess you could say at one of the last right turns. More people trying to drive on the road. So there went more time down the tubes. At 1k to go I really started to nail it which sucked because I should have started that way before that, but couldn't because the problems, but that's racing.
I came across the line and got some water from the cute girls giving them out, and Tim came and talked to me about the race. On the way back to the school we are staying I was asked for my autograph and picture taken, so that made me feel pretty good about myself.

Micah