Hello Again!

The schedule just started getting CRAZY. Everyone is flying in and out. It is starting to feel like the season really is underway. Jaymie Mart caught a train down here to Shropshire to hook up with me and do a bit of riding before the World Cups start. We had to take Jill down to London to catch her plane back to Canada for the summer. She won't be travelling with us this year. Neither will Jules Coventry so we took off to surprise Jules and do some riding with her at the uplifts today. Katrina Miller flies in tomorrow morning from Australia and then from there we are packing and getting ready for Vigo!
Fee

Dragon DH 3 & 4

Just pulled in from the Dragon DH this weekend in Abercarn, Wales. Thankfully the weather held out for us all weekend and the camping was great. The track was a lot of fun, really flowy and fast but still rough in places. It was great to be racing again on British soil! Saw lots of people I haven't seen in years.
Saturday I had time to get a few practice runs in before racing started. We started racing by 11am. The 1st race run was pretty smooth with a couple of stops. I ended up with a time of 2:07. The format at Welsh races is best of two so my 2nd run I tried to go faster. I was aiming for the 2:00 barrier but I took off from the start trying too hard and got a little loose in a few turns and scrubbed a bit more speed than I wanted. I did improve my time but only by 1 second. This was still enough to give me the win in the Elite Women's class.
Sunday: A little bit of rain over night left the track quite greasy. It managed to dry out by racing time though. My 1st run was going well but I got off line in one right hand turn and ended up over the bars in the next left, due to a misplaced tree-stump (or wheel). The 2nd run was a lot better and I came through at 2:07 again, enough to give me my 2nd win of the weekend.

I'm definitely looking forward to doing a few more UK races over the summer.
Fee

Mum and Dad

We made it safely to the UK! We flew in on Sunday morning to an excited mum and dad waiting at the airport. Good thing too cause both Jill and I were exhausted after the 15 hours of travel. I had a very "restless" woman beside me for my flight which made it next to impossible to sleep.
On the way back up from London we stopped by Rich's (RichArtConcepts.com) house to drop off my new lid for it's 2006 custom paint job. We have been throwing around ideas for a while now but I will have to wait and see what the mastermind has in store for me this year. I left most of the design up to him. Hopefully I will have it in time for the 1st World Cup.
Just getting ready now for this weekend's race in Wales. The local Dragon DH Series should be a bit of a muddy mess. My mum is doing her first race as a commissaire and I think she is pretty excited about it. We are going back to the old family tradition of racing the weekend out of the Camper Van, getting it cleaned and packed and ready for some action. The biggest differnce with this race is that my daddy is not going to be there as my mechanic. He is taking off to Imola, Italy to watch the Formula 1 Grand Prix. He has always wanted to go so I am pretty excited for him.
Fee

Heading to England

After three seriously busy days of saying goodbye and packing the house we are off to the UK to see my parents for Easter and get ready for some World Cup racing! Jill booked a flight to travel with me last minute so it got even busier trying to pack up the whole house and put it into storage. It is all done now though and we are flying to England with 3 bike boxes, 2 HUGE bags and all our carry on luggage. I am sure that Air Canada won't even know what hit them!
Anyway HAPPY EASTER
Fee :)

Sea Otter Results

Hello everyone. I will put a full story from the weekend up here as soon as I have a chance to write it, but for now here are the results:
DH: 6th
DS: 7th
4X: 10th I think??
Overall: 6th

The best parts of the weekend were qualifying with the fastest women's run on the blue course in the Dual Slalom and puking in my helmet in my DH race run! GROSS. Can't wait for the start of the World Cup season now

Sea Otter 06

We made it here safely after the 20 hour drive from Vancouver with the guys. The trip was rather uneventful and we arrived to a bit of unexpected California sun. We had been listening to weather reports the whole way and all we heard was RAIN, so the sun was a welcome surprise. Wednesday we managed to walk the course, set up the pits and even build a little sand friend on the track before the rain started. Thursday was an even warmer day. I think that every single person on the Norco Factory Team managed to score a sun burn of some size/degree! Practice on the DH course was interesting. As many of you may have heard, the course is not super steep, so when it gets this muddy it becomes really difficult to keep momentum. With all the rain the previous days, the 4X practice was cancelled for the afternoon so I took advantage of some downtime and went out for a few drinks with Katrina Miller and Jill. Friday has been much the same: mud bogs, potholes and RUTS. 4X dried out a bit though, so we did a practice and qualifier. The track was crusty on top but still fairly wet underneath, kind of like riding on a sponge. I am not yet sure what my qualifying place/time was, but I will find out tomorrow when the real racing starts with the Dual Slalom.
Fee