It’s 1991. Mammoth Kamikaze again. The kook has learned, but not a lot. Yeti FRO, with a Mountain Cycles Suspender fork. No more Brooks saddle. Sidi Cyclocross shoes with doubled up Alfredo Binda Extra toestraps clamping my feet inextricably into the pedals. A Panaracer Headwall front tire. Jesus, man, get a grip. Literally. The Panaracer Smoke was out by then, everybody was running them at Mammoth that year, and the Headwall was an absolutely horrible tire – some sort of urban/dirt compromise that has been conveniently forgotten on the scrap heap of history. But at least I had some full length pants, had been conveniently gifted a pro number by Paul Chetwynd for reasons that completely elude my memory now, and had decided to leave the butt-pack of spare parts and pump at home.
The crow banquet got served up somewhere in the final mile, at the end of a long fast straight downhill from where the radar gun was usually placed. There was a sweeping left hander with a little compression on the inside apex, and a hillside full of spectators up the huge embankment to the right. Going faster than I maybe ever have on dirt – almost everyone was hitting above 50mph in the speed trap that year – I took the inside line into the compression and felt the front tire just let go completely, drifting across the fire road, sending me up the embankment, where I exploded someone’s Styrofoam cooler before slowing almost to a stop in the super loose duff and arcing gradually and pitifully back down onto the fire road. In my memory, it all plays out in slow motion. In reality, it probably DID play out in slow motion. My time at the finish was abysmal, from that one detour. Which, come to think of it, was probably a DQ anyway.
I can still taste that crow. It tastes like Panaracer Headwall, fork elastomer, and the misguided hubris that made me think I could hang with the big dogs. Ironically, the XC race two days before was also my very last race as a Sport class kook, before moving up to Expert, where I would spend the next year getting so thoroughly spat out the back of the pack that it felt like I was choking down shiny black feathers every weekend.
