Dumb and dumber Sea Otter II

The second day was a slight better at Sea Otter. The weather was sunny, calm winds, no broken fork, changed to the zippy 404zz for the Pro 12 RR all was looking good. We had to park in East Butt-F in a dirt parking lot which looks like fun for the MTB types, but its not the place for tires that cost 75 clams.
I asked my Reno team mate what time our race started, "12:30" he said with confidence! Cool, after we waited in line from 11:30-12:00 and finally got our numbers. The delay was due to one of the numbers filed in the women MTB and the other was under K..its amazing how Otters are so good at taking your old CC info and getting paid, but after that your on your own..
This is where the fun starts, I had a jug of vino for the guy at Ritchey to say thanks for the help that I had to deliver and needed a little adjusting on my rear wheel from Andy Stone from Shimano. No problem, that won't take long, I've got plenty of time....

Got a quick adj, dropped of the jug and casually headed over to the start..it was 12:15..

I see a field of women on the line, thats strange why would they start them before us, no offense. Then I look a bit further up the track and see a couple Pro team cars heading out on the course...shit! Something didn't feel right..then I see Kerri our team manager and she says I missed the start and they were "long gone" by a couple of minutes...

Head down, I'm going to get in my warm-up! I came up to the Pro cars and was hoping for a pace up...nope...then pass the womens field ...then drill it for another 15 minutes and finally see the group and caught on. As soon as I got on, I pulled up to my Team mate and said"what ever happened to 12:30?" Then I attacked and went up the road for most of the next lap solo.

I attacked a bunch several times over the next few laps, then finally bridged to Walker and a BPG youngen that was along for the ride. Walker is one of my favorite riders to be in a break with- just don't get to close to the snot that usually hangs off his schnozola. We were rolling along then the http://www.kgsncycling.com/index.html (Sierra train arrived) 3 of them, Healthnet, Jelly Belly, J Baker, and a couple of others. WE were all pulling thru pretty good then I got dropped with three laps to go, crawled back hoping to get over the last two laps with this group. No dice, I got dropped on the next lap and was riding solo for a while into the headwind when Kevin Klein and another rider caught me. I sat on and they pulled me along and didn't mind, I thanked them both, made it over the last climb and started to pitch in with some work in the flats..then we started to catch riders that got shelled. I figured I'd be one of them on the climb. I pulled up the final climb because we could see Walker and a few others about 30sec ahead and they were all over the road.
We caught the three and I attacked it helped launch Klein to the finsh. I came in next with Walker just behind for 11th. Good racin!