Keyesville, 2 Bananas & Stretchy Pants?

Hello everyone,

Well, we had a great road trip up past Bakersfield to the 20th annual Keyesville Classic. We had a group of 7 Chicken Ranchers including Dave Lettieri making his first road trip appearance.

We left at 8:00pm Saturday night and stayed at the beautiful Motel 6 in Bakersfield before driving the rest of the way early Sunday morning. The drive up was relatively uneventful, although we did get a good laugh when we snooped through Brad Brown's cooler looking for snacks and we discovered that all he'd packed for the weekend was a bottle of wine and two bananas.......so we ate the bananas.



When we arrived Sunday morning it was clear and cold. In the high 30's or low 40's. The Sport Class raced first which included Dave, Brad Jellison, Robert, Bill, and Gabe. Dave rode well after sleeping all night and driving all day in his brand new compression tights, or as we like to call them......"stretchy pants". He got 2nd. Robert was apparently day dreaming about male triathletes and went off course.....but still managed to finish 5th. Bill and Jelly had an epic battle the whole race with Jelly nipping him at the line to finish 8th with Bill close behind in 9th. Gabriel had an interesting race. After only 2 or 3 miles he had a huge lead on the rest of his field and appeared poised to cruise to an easy victory. But, caught up in the excitement of the moment, he too went off course and ended up having to DQ himself after skipping 3 or 4 miles from the first lap. He was devastated. So we consoled him by making fun of him and cracking jokes at his expense all weekend.........I think he's better now. Brad Brown rode to a "best ever" 4th place in the Beginner Class. Apparently wine works better than I thought it would as a pre-race hydration beverage............or maybe it was not being able to find his bananas that made him faster? Who knows? I continued my unrivaled streak of 2nd place finishes. But I had to earn it by duking it out with Ron Tekada and Bob Nisbet from the Platinum Team. The three of us were never seperated by more than 30 seconds the entire race. I'm not sure if the fact that I like both of those guys made it more fun or more stressful? Actually, just being near Ron made me feel better about myself 'cause last weekend at Bonelli he beat my time by more than 3 minutes!

After the racing was over we were hoping for a quick awards presentation so we could get on the road and get home A.S.A.P. But then we remembered that this was a Mountain Bike Race and there is no such thing as a quick awards presentation. One of the things I've always liked about MTB races is you don't have to pin a number on your jersey, you only put a number plate on your bike. But they changed that this year at the Keyesville Classic. Not only did we have numbers on our jerseys and our bikes....we also had timing chips on our shoes!.........and the results were still all screwed-up. All the technology in the world can't beat the Red-neck system they use at the NORCAL MTB races. They pin a piece of scratch paper to your shoulder with your name and your class on it, and when you come across the line they pull it off and stick-it on the results board in the order you came in.........simple and brilliant. Works every time. Anyways, we decided not to wait for the awards, but since Dave and I were all cleaned up and looking our best in anticipation of getting on the podium. We decided to have our own awards ceremony on a couple of boulders near the car. The guys gave us official "rocks" from the actual Keyesville Classic course and we stood on the boulders side by side with our arms raised in "almost" victory!

On the drive home we were getting desperate for a place to eat and we almost made things worse by stopping at PIZZAVILLE USA which looked like a converted Turkish prison but Bill Cuttler saved us by yelling "Don't make a panic decision!" and he spotted La Mina Mexican restaurant which wasn't bad.......as long as you're not in a hurry.......which we were.

All things considered we had a great time and got home safe. Is it a coincidence that the two highest place finishers on our team were both wearing compression tights the night before the race? I don't know. But I'm not taking any chances. I'm heading down to Fastrack today to get another pair of "stretchy pants" on sale..........and then I'm gonna stop by the liquor store and get a bottle of cheap wine.......and two bananas.


Matt