Chris Butler: 24hours of Moab

Another one in the books! 24Hrs of Moab was this past weekend, and compared to last years 8hrs of Rainy Moab, it Rocked!!!! We had a just for fun team going, and that's exactly what it was, a lot of fun!!! I rolled into the desert on Thursday to rope off a camp area for us. I thought there was only going to be about 4 teams camping with us, but in the end we had.......

39 people
8 RVs
4 Tents
2 Fire Pits
4 dogs
60 + bikes
1 Awesome Pit
10 Coolers full of Cerveza!!!

Here are some pics... Of the camp, not the beer!

Here is the Team Trailer/Pit Area. We (I should say Strouse/Taylor) were wrenching on bikes all night long. The Moab dust does a number to the components.

Here is a shot of some of the camps set up behind us. If it looks like chaos, it is, trust me!!!

For those of you that don't know anything about 24hrs of Moab, has over 400 teams/Solo riders in it, and is started by a neutral lemans style start. So picture this 500 people all lined up to sprint/walk 400yards around some random tree in the middle of the desert, with Moab dust flying everywhere. Give Up, here you go. Too Funny.

Some people take it way to serious others, know how to have some fun with it. Like the 2 really fat guys that started walking from the get go, and were doing the parade wave to the crowd! I Hope to hell we beat their team!!!

Race Start at 12:00pm on Sat and Finishes 24 hrs later. So that makes for some very inopportune lap start times. Here was my schedule as rider #2 on our team.

Lap 1 : 1:35pm Start

Lap 2: 7:44pm Start (Night Lap)

Lap 3: 2:44 am Start (Sucks to get motivated @ 2:30 am)

Lap4: 9:37 am Start

Here is the Link to check out our results and all our lap times.

http://www.grannygear.com/realtime/public/team.php?team_id=241&action=display

Don't I look happy to be going out riding my bike at 2:30am????

Getting everything set for the next lap. Thank god for generators, it would really suck in the dark!After you finished your lap, ate something, got your bike set for the next lap, and hit the hay, you were lucky to get an hour of shitty sleep, to just do it all over again!

Here is Chris Taylor & Dave Strouse who graciously drove the team trailer 7hrs over from Denver to support us. They were awesome. They wrenched on bikes, stayed awake to greet us when we finished, cooked, kept the fire going, and helped lighten the coolers!!! We really appreciated them more than they know. Thanks guys!!!!!

Here we are Sunday morning, trying to stay warm. Temps dipped into the upper 40's at night, and upper 60's during the day. Were Nick, Dave, and I are still smiling, Ryan is out on his 4th lap, so I guarantee he's not smiling at that point!!!

Here is the other part of our support crew. Kara, Kathy, and Joanna. They made some great Spaghetti for dinner, and some awesome breakfast burritos in camp! Thanks girls!!!

Now Ryan is smiling after his lap lap is finished! But now I'm on course, so I'm sure I wasn't smiling anymore. Actually, I had a great race, felt good, felt strong, so I was loving my laps. I just didn't like getting up in the middle of the night to do them!!!!!!!!Another great weekend on the bike with great friends! Thanks to all that came out to race, and support. We couldn't have done it without all you guys!!! One more race to go for the season. The Iceman Cometh Challenge in Traverse City, MI, Nov. 10th. I'm praying there is no snow. I know there won't be any sun, that's a given in MI in the Fall and Winter season.