Myles, your analogy does not address Colin points in any way. 

The new Velonews has great articles in it...finally.

So that's why its so cold

#hellhadfrozenover





No Eloy, i'm just making it aware that thats what USAC was dealing with on that end. Its not even like they got called the night or morning before. They found out when people started getting detained and almost arrested by the cops.

That definitely should have run better. I didn't see that event as I was still in promoter meeting, but it reminded me of the CRCA clusterfuvk that used to be bear mtn

Myles said:

but it reminded me of the CRCA clusterfuvk that used to be bear mtn

Bear Mountain, more like "Sometime Mountain."

Bear Mountain, more like "Sometime Mountain."

Myles said:

No Eloy, i'm just making it aware that thats what USAC was dealing with on that end. Its not even like they got called the night or morning before. They found out when people started getting detained and almost arrested by the cops. 

Got it. 

I'm referring specifically to their stupidity of letting the masters go 1
minutes behind the pros despite a lsp being 35 minutes long
On Jan 14, 2015 5:00 PM, "Marc Bertucco" <

eloy said:
A truly functioning National level sports federation (what USAC is) could have prevented the events of that morning.
...
The reply that I am seeing from USAC is "oh well someone called the police; ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ shit happens, oops"
As a member of USAC I can bluntly say that statement is unacceptable and irresponsibility defined. I will not allow it. 
I strongly agree. Unexpected obstacles always happen. That's why people test things, to avoid the things that  "unexpected" purely because they've never been tried before. Putting the single most important event on in a new venue without ever having run a similar event beforehand and then throwing your hands up when something unexpected but perfectly avoidable with a test event happens is irresponsible at best.

He copped to it all being his fault at the meeting. Didn't know what he
could have done differently. Jules did have some ideas. Test event meh.
Look at Supercross. There is no damage of the type that is in question.
However if that event was four times as large the place would have been
trashed. If it rains the place would be extra trashed. So if the test
event was less populated (highly possible), and dry, (also possible),
everything would have been hunky dory until when the exact same scenario we
could occur.

Let's be clear here, on Saturday night dinner time a group of the
wealthiest,loudest, and middle aged residents of a city largely composed
of stoner musicians decided to make it their top priority to have this
event cancelled overnight. Mission accomplished. The only possible way to
have headed that off at the pass, would have been a phone call from either
this group or the Parks Department. The group isn't likely to call and the
Parks Department didn't. The first we heard of this was when officials and
staff were detained by the police trying to enter the park near 7 am. On a
Sunday. In Texas.

You ever try reaching an elected official under those circumstances?

Let's also be clear everyone knows I'm a huge fan of USA Cycling. But I
been in this situation before. Armchair quarterbacking with 20 20
hindsight 3500 miles away is always fun.

The metric for success here is being allowed to race on bicycles the
following day.

As for junior girls. As I said to Colin, in my opinion the junior girls
should have gone first. 17 year old boys being the fastest Groupon course
should have gone second when lead junior girl was one minute and 30 seconds
away from completing her first 14 minute lap.

The remaining field should have gone for 1 minute behind them.

That way the fastest field has an 11 or 12 minutes deficit to make up,
which even at 3 minutes per lap won't happen because so slow girls are only
racing 2 laps. The last field isn't fast enough to catch anybody so we
don't care about them.

I'm not sure why the f*** I have to think of this, maybe because I'm
Canadian.
On Jan 15, 2015 9:56 PM, "Jules"

Also for the record.

I don't think we have a truly functioning national governing body and told
the CFO of USAC that, and that the opinion of them was of total disarray
and utter incompetence. I showed him my Facebook post and he was aghast
at the thought that the membership body of usa cycling found them sub par.

#outoftouch

He did seem genuinely concerned and wanting to make change. We will see.

While we are on the subject I thought the Nationals course was shite. I
didn't see any actual racing all day. In each field I saw one person do
something that the next person didn't do as fast or at all.

Game over.

With the exception of Jonathan pages last lap and a half where he threw
everything including the kitchen sink out there to ty and reel back Jeremy
the racing was as boring as f***.

The crappy high school we don't really know what we're doing but we're
going to try anyways f***.

Layers

Myles said:

 While we are on the subject I thought the Nationals course was shite. I didn't see any actual racing all day. In each field I saw one person do something that the next person didn't do as fast or at all. Game over.

Ruh-oh, and I got a response from Pete Webber saying that he was going to lend an eye to the Asheville course.

The racers, if you believe the twitter, seemed to like the course well enough though.

I don't know who is going to design the Connecticut course for 2017, but if they don't call in Myles as a consulting "eye," I think they might be making a mistake.

Sorry not buying it. What is this "test event meh" bullshit you speak of?

The alternate venue was 3 miles away.
The director of Parks and Recreation did a course walk with USA Cycling at
the conclusion of each days racing.

Look I think they are as incompetent as you do. But I really don't know why
you can't grasp the concept of a few crackpots mobilizing well and shutting
s*** down.

There is no plan for that. Unless you think a completely fully made course
sitting vacant 3 miles away fully prepared for the eventuality that some
crack pot or an act of God shuts down your a venue at a cost of probably
$100,000 is acceptable. But thats crazy

The best solution here would have been for nothing to have happened and
business to have gone on as usual.

Clearly that didn't happen.

Option be probably would have been a person in actual authority telling
these people that's an iron-clad contract for repair to their satisfaction
with money held in escrow for repair was in place and that they shouldn't
worry, come back on Monday to supervise repair.

Clearly that didn't happen.

Option C would have likely been the groups being present at the start of
the day with a stop work order for the race in hand, some well thought
about words exchanged, 30 minutes of course revisions undertaken, racing
continues.

Clearly that too didn't happen.

Instead what did happen was City of Austin police fully armed some with
riot gear cordoned off the entire complex at 3 a.m. And threatened arrest
and god knows what to anyone so much as entering a public parking lot.

Think about that for a minute. Do you have any idea how many trucks and
trailers and tents and stuff is there? How the f*** did these people think
it was all going to go away? It's one thing to completely prevent people
from entering the grass area, but how are you going to get your Cannondale
18 wheel rig out? Or the Jumbotron. Or the other Jumbotron. That was the
one that blew my mind. You want us to stop racing fine but you want us to
stop, come back in 7 to 10 days to retrieve all the gear that's left on
asphalt because you think you're having some expert come into have a look
at a tree? FTS.

So the original answer was maybe you can race again will let you know in a
week. That got upgraded to 48 hours. And that got upgraded to 24. Which was
still pretty much bullshit because in 30 minutes they made changes that
moved the race away from the trees and made the knuckleheads happy.

I don't think you fully understand how tenuous any race you have ever done
in your life really is. We are literally seconds away constantly from
pissing off some absolute wing nut with a political connection because
someone stepped on a sacred plant, or pissed in his bushes, or dropped a
power bar wrapper, or was wearing too much Neon.

Am i all for test events? Sure. But again the possibility that the damage
these people were concerned about doesn't occur is very real. And thus
the test event goes on no problem and the scenario repeats.

Make no mistake. I think it was a very poor choice of venue. That park is
fucked up big time. And by and large it wasn't really raining. The turf is
all super duper soft sort of like that section by the barriers at
Supercross. It is completely decimated nearly 100 percent of the way around.

Of course the racers are happy with it, racers by and large are morons that
just want to go as hard as they can for as long as they can. Typically they
give no concern to how the race looks from the other side of the tape.

And that's really the most important thing.

Treallyhis is a show. its my job to make it interesting for people to
watch. I was in the pit the entire time for likely the best north American
cross racer of our generation and I was bored out of my mind. There were no
groups, there was no racing. there was the dude riding his bike 7 seconds
ahead of the other dude riding his bike 12 seconds ahead of a third dude
riding his bike. It's really not so exciting in my opinion.
On Jan 15, 2015 10:48 PM, "Jules" <

And this is the interesting part. In our meeting he repeatedly stated to us
that we had no idea these people existed. But in the report he clearly
indicates that they had prior contact.

?
On Jan 15, 2015 11:27 PM, "eloy"

Unfortunately it effectively absolves USAC of blame and drops it on PARD as
we were told. If USAC doesn't know they exist, how do they find them. It
is entirely reasonable for Austin to supervise races and ensure the proper
town codes are being followed, and its reasonable as well to expect the
park to know of a pertinent group of lobbyists.

It certainly is crack-potty. First, Cyclocross does not require mud. Mud
in 80% of all cases in america is a by product of heavy traffic. By and
large we don't want it 'cause its way more work to fix

Second wetting a course as they suggest is illegal. Third we don't pick
the date of nats, the UCI does. Fourth lots of Belgian races run through
treed areas. But also realize euroland doesn't really do heritage park
crap cause the whole damn place is heritage park crap .

(#stupidamericansndyour250yroldcoubtry)

Lastly every single one of you should be super worried, as this has the
potential to adversely impact every cross race you've ever done.

On Jan 16, 2015 10:41 AM, "eloy" <

Myles said:

 Second wetting a course as they suggest is illegal.

Ahem....I'm going to remind you of this the next time you decide to take a 5-gallon jug to day 2's run-up. LOL.

Someone was smoking back there. I needed to do my utmost to prevent forest
fires.

Plus that wasnt a UCI race
On Jan 16, 2015 12:48 PM, "Marc Bertucco" <

This months velonews is great. I loved the Horner article

Really?
I'm not a fan
Despite their best efforts at journalism.
Everyone knows its far to CO centric.
Rough editing of past years gone
Finally.
It is nice to see though
For years that thing was a rag
Then it got a bit better
Every year.
Even made the (back) cover!
Not this year though.

I am with Myles on Velonews.

Dude you ain't picking up what I'm putting down. Wtf is roazen? He gets this shit

Myles said:

Lastly every single one of you should be super worried, as this has the potential to adversely impact every cross race you've ever done. 

Not really worried, because there is a video of a CX national champ, riding a car on the course, ahem:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPTVGs9EYdE

JP? Bertucco? Yacks??

Yeah that
On Jan 16, 2015 7:46 PM, "eloy"

Seriously?

Yacks been drnkin the bourbon...lots and lots o bourbon twonight...feelin woooozzyyyy...stilll this months velonews is great.  It pretty much yanks Horner's bibs down to his ankles and posits root causes for why we punish ourselves on 4 hour rides in 20 degree weather.  Myles, when you are done sipping wine on your heated Prius seats, I recommend you go for a 4 hour ride in 20 degree weather...that'll slap the sag harbor right out o ya

You still ain't picking up what I'm putting down

Jules!!! Where's Stokes when you need him.

Le sigh