R.T.O. relay race 6/3-4/2010

Well, for the 2nd time, I participated in the Reno/Tahoe Odyssey relay race, around Lake Tahoe, starting in Reno. I hooked up with the same team as last year, all hashers, and this year we would be rocking the #69. haha

I drove up to Reno on Thursday and met the other hashers for dinner at Silverpeak. We figured we'd be meeting up at the start point in the morning, and then have breakfast. I would be in Van #2, which had 3 new legs for all of us. (last year, we were in Van #1).


My first leg would be #11 (5.5 mi), followed by #23 (6.2 mi) and #35 (7.5 mi) Some photos at the first van exchange. All the members are hashers, so it's pretty laid back. Ray (No Film) would go out first from this section.

A few hashers and the van painted up for identifiability. haha


Photo on the left was at a stop we made for Greg (Got Wood!?), on his running section.

Photo on the right is Joe (posterior), waiting for Mike to get in and tag off, so she could run the downhill of Geiger grade. This is during the final 6 stages of the race, and we all are running our final leg.


During my legs, I just told them to drive to the exchange point, and didn't need them to stop, except for the last leg, because it was near 90 degrees, and 7.5 miles. I had a hand water bottle, and it held me just fine the evening before, and that morning (around 3am).


The Reno Tahoe Odyssey Trail relay is a fun event that brought 153 relay teams together to run around the lake for a total of 178 miles. Our final time was 27 hr 47 min. an hour faster than the year before. My brother in law was kicking 6.5 min miles...hahaha he had the fastest times of our team.

This is one of the final photos at the ceremonial finish line, with the whole team. The final runner, fudgina, had just finished her leg. Included in the picture is Beaver Spit who broke her leg 2 weeks before the event, and needed an alternate to run for her (my brother in law). She was our team Captain.

Aluminum swing arm repaired

So a few weeks ago I put up some photos of my faithful steed. I've ridden across the U.S. on her, especially the west coast. So I'm a little bit attached to her. So it was my dismay when she was damaged due to my carelesness. I called a friend of mine in Reno who welds and I figured I'd just take the swingarm off and have him repair it. So right before going to Reno, I decided to remove the swingarm. hahahaha 5 hours later, I had the swingarm off (doh!, a little longer than I expected), and was enroute to Reno in traffic (exactly what I was trying to avoid) hahaha
Before: After:

I took the entire rear of the M900 apart.

...and cleaned the hell out of everything. hmmm, don't think I've seen that part of the engine be any other color, other than black (covered in oil) haha

and in the end, she's all back together. I had barely gotten a little over 100 miles of scrub in time on my new tires, so I was itching to go out and ride.

I called Dave Moss at Catalyst Suspension, and rode down so he could dial in the bikes front forks, and rear shock. He made some measurements, and he dialed it in. Holy crap, the bike handles so much better now...it doesn't wallow on hard acceleration, and it tracks perfectly through corners under heavy acceleration. So I promptly rode home and got my other bike and came back to get that one dialed in. :D