cheq 40 fun?

Update... as most may know by now, the Andre tandem didn’t fair to well, during the roll out some d!ck tried to whip around us and in the process tangled bar ends at 35+ mph on the way to the highway turn... what followed was lots of blood, torn jerseys, and taco'd wheels of a reported 10+ bikes. The crash was so bad that is shaped the outcome of the overall placement of the women’s and affected numerous top riders overall (see http://cheqfattire.com/pages/2008/press_release_2008.html )

After cleaning our serious asphalt road rash (down to the meat on a couple of spots), spending just about exactly 55 minutes truing our rear wheel and disk rotor enough that major damaged wouldn't be done by the rubbing tire and disk, bending the rear derailleur so that a couple gears would work, we rolled out of Hayward.

We passed the trail cleanup crew, about 10 miles in, the stone saddle rider about 3 miles from OO. Can you believe that? Riding at about 19 mph we didn’t see a soul until 6 miles from OO!?!

We had a nice clean ride from Hayward (in the rain the entire way), only putting our feet down once on a muddy rut, we cleaned all of Firetower (which was pretty impressive given that 1400 riders had crewed and loosened it up pretty good and we only had 3 gears (middle ring only). We finished at 1276 overall passing about 450 racers (from OO to the finish), subtracting our 0:55 delayed start, we might have been around 300 overall - 10 minutes and 2 places from a podium finish (although we rode numerous parts much much slower because of our broken bike & spirits)... before the race I was planning on a 2:24 finishing time...

Not sure where it happened (because I was on the lookout), but we did pass one other tandem (we didn’t get last place, and we did finish unlike 4 years ago with our disastrous attempt to ride a cycle cross tandem [9 flats by OO]).
I guess a bad day on a bike is still a good day... right??? Because it was a bad day on the bike…

Anybody looking for a slightly used mountain tandem??? ;-p