Brian Crosby: unlucky streak ends!

I really dropped the ball on the race updates from Dortmund, but not entirely without reason. The primary factor was momentum, but what set that process into motion was what can only be described as an “implosion” during the second night’s Madison. Things were over for us before they even started, as I awoke in the wee hours of the morning to hear Brian’s two-Euro mystery-meat sandwich clawing its way back out. In the race we both lacked any semblance of “spark” or “jump,” and spent pretty much the whole time tail gunning while the Aussies literally ran laps around the field. Somehow my head was just not in it and I came under probably ten exchanges in the first half of the night. My strategy when now is just to start yelling when I see it about to happen and hope I don’t take someone out… kind of like and old man running a red light while laying on the horn.

The final day was much better for us, though still nothing too spectacular. We had much better exchanges and rode smarter, but it’s still difficult to pull yourself back up after a bad night with lots of gap closing and chasing. One perk of tail gunning though is that I was able to see all the spectacular crashes on the final day, including one member of our arch-nemesis purple and gold team who managed to ride a nose-wheelie the entire finishing straight before endoing into turn one. That would be the final time they gapped us off… One final note about the race, Dortmund is by far the bumpiest track I have ever ridden, as it’s assembled only for the event and for some reason they placed the connecting joints in the middle of the turns. The gaps are about the equivalent of riding over a pair of recessed train tracks, but with the compression at race speed the overall affect is like getting kicked in the ass eight times per lap. Nonetheless, all of our 40km races finished in between 46 and 47.5 minutes, which equates to an average speed of around 53kmh. I blame the Aussies.

We returned to our hotel Sunday night with a nice surprise from the organizers—the option to either check out immediately or pay 170 Euros for our room for another night. Sweet. Brian and I had already arranged a home stay for the days between Dortmund and Munich via www.couchsurfing.com, and were lucky enough to start a day earlier. Tom Murray, our British sidekick, and his Belgian partner Tim Mertens, both had to go home that night so we parted ways and have been staying in a suburb of Dortmund since. It’s been really great, our host is a 26 year old business student named Violeta. She spent a year living in Montpellier, Idaho during high school and has been a stellar host. The beautiful thing about homestays is that not only do you get a free place to live, you also get to cook, do laundry, and use the internet for free, and have some immediate best-friends. We’ve spent the last two nights running amuck through Dortmund with Vio and her buddies, eating two-Euro Döners and visiting such cultural hotspots as “The Spirit,” a trashy underground nightclub with a 65 year-old DJ playing teenage-angst songs from the 90s. Maybe if they weren’t also serving 50 cent beer (yeah, no joke) people would have realized what they were listening to? Of course there are many, many other stories but as we all know, what happens in Dortmund stays in Dortmund.