Mountain Mayhem 2011 - Official Aftermath Thread

Another great weekend. The RB camp spirit keeping it all going and making it all worthwhile after such an amount of grim sticky mud laps...

Highlights for me included...

*Hecklemaphone thing - obviously.

*The Venga Boys good neighbourly spirit. And taping their mate to a chair and sticking him in the track blindfolded.

*stopping with Tad and chatting to a chap at the top of the course at midnight and Edwards bumbling past like a great oaf on a gate and just saying a terse, "you're filth" without stopping. Then the chap saying, "Did a bear just ride past on a Cannondale and call you both Filth? "

*Gravy Monster popping by in the morn saying "newspapers are in" and delivering fresh retro mags for perusal.

*Fridcake.

*Tad being such a good fellow 'core' soloist.

*The Guv'nor's BBQ

*Cigar Edwards in his slacks and liberal's attempt at a smart shirt and tie.

*Vinia being vinia and just being lovely. How does she put up with that pervert husband?!

*being woken up by Gravy Monster pretending to be a seagul on top of my van!

*Pervert Edwards flashing his banger at me in open air in broad daylight!

*LetMeTalkToMark's dachshunds.

*Personalised heckle grief from heathy right up to the top of the kenda climb.





All so great.

Mountain Mayhem 2011:
I'm sure it will take a couple of days to catch up on the lack of sleep thanks to a combination of the late night heckling on both Friday and Saturday nights, and Sinnett's epic snoring a couple of tents over on Friday. Oh and the small matter of a 24 hour Mountain Bike event.

All in all it turned out to be another classic weekend that was full of memories, fun, pain and laughter.

Captaining a team of three men and one metro-sexual turned out to be fairly straight forward especially when compared to the rib-cracking train-wreck of mis-management displayed by Sinnett and his team of half-lap bike swapping bears.

Well done though and thanks for the sweaty helmet.

Friday started out somewhat optimistically due to the near constant light rain rather than the constant heavy rain storms forecast by weatherpessimist.co.uk.
As soon as the enormous 'NWA: Release the Inner Chimp' team HQ had been erected, inflatable beds inflated and team pin badges handed out (thanks Neil) we were all set for a good old fashioned wet weekend.


The all important recce lap:
The recce lap on Friday afternoon revealed the course to be an endless sticky granny ring climb rewarded with short but lethal descents and mud slides. The final descent was clearly designed to loosen headsets and deter Retrobikers from ever coming back. (thanks Pat)
The lap also measured up as longer than previous year's at just over 10 slippery miles.

Returning to RB base camp with a few blood injuries we were all set for the concours event. I scraped a few handfuls of grass and mud off my Univega and submitted it in full race spec.


Concours d'Elegance:
Beer in hand and cigar blazing, I was brought into the judging team to due to my knowledge of 300LX and below. Judging was harsh but probably fair, with Edwards proclaiming most as 'an awful, awful lash up of a bike', ' or 'he's clearly trying too hard which in my eyes is an instant disqualification'.
Retiring briefly to Mr K's fun bus, we compared notes and gradually whittled down to a short list. Edwards would have discounted them all, but OrangeEd stayed resolute in the fact that quality prizes were there for the taking.

Overall Winner: Gravy Monster's 1988 Saracen Trekker.

Runner's Up: Mr Ship's Mountain Goat, Andy B's KHS Montana Pro, HarryCrumb's 1988 Marin Pallisades.

Junior Award: Heathy's daughter's Specialized scoot along bike.

Special mention/spirit of the event: Gravy Monster's Saracen 2me2u.

Well done to everyone though as there were some absolutely stunning bikes on display.


Meet the teams:
With everyone gathered together and Heathy as the mildly abusive MC, the team captains were summoned forward to introduce their team members. This was an opportunity to eye up close rivals and deploy complex psychological mind games to gain critical margins over fierce competitors. It was also an opportunity to reveal specially printed team t-shirts and flags and to take the piss out of Sidewinder. (Sorry Dave)


The main event:
With darkness falling, beer and BBQ well underway and the rain really setting in, it was time to construct a mighty tower of wooden blocks for the giant Jenga show down.
Mr K explained the International Olympic tag team rules, and then we were off. With guest appearances by Mick Dundee (that's not a Knife...), Leo Swayer/Boss Hogg and The Swedish Log Chopper/Ice Road Trucker amongst others. The close quarters heckling with a megaphone at high pressure moments was especially good.
At 11:15pm the alarm was sounded to announce the restricted use of megaphone curfew. This was of course repeated five minutes later for extra comedy value.
Eventually I'm sure most people went to bed.

To be continued...

Great effort from Superstrong once more.

RetroBIKE SouthEast 22nd out of 162!!! Wooo!

Outstanding laps by Smokes and JR meant that we could send ruttegercaruthers out for another sneaky lap at the end. I did have to take some liberties on the course though to make sure I crossed the line under the 24 hour mark (23.58!!) so apologies if I barged anyone on the way past

Thanks to all for a great weekend.

SP

Fab weekend. thank you to the brilliant support from the flatlanders team. So glad I took part this year it has taught me so much....that 'pit bitch' is my rightful place. I think I'll get the award for slowest lap and most distance walked ;-) but loved it all the same. Maybe with training I will ride again.

Great Jenga, awesome heckling, megaphone delights...
...the highlight being snoozing in my tent and hearing

'careful of the bear, he can be a bit frisky' and then seeing the bear looking like road kill beside the track the following morning!

Well done to all for making it so memorable!

How many bottles of shower Gel did you scab?

Here's Frid's haul.

Results now up > http://www.osmountainmayhem.co.uk/

Despite being a lowly spectator, and what's worse one that turned down the offer of a lap (of the race variety)....soooo ashamed...., and only being there for part of Saturday, I still have 'highlights' and demand to have them noted:
1 The fantastic quality of the machinery both on display and ridden.
2 The size and organisation of MM as a whole.
3 Retrobike...... everything about it
4 Etto helmets
5 The super-slick honed (illegal?!) change-over infront of Retrobike HQ when Pete took over from Ed (timed at 3 minutes).
6 The super-slick honed non-changeover at the end of Pete's lap.....so he carried on for another 10 miles.
7 The warmth and sympathy shown to Sinnett177 by the heckling tent as he stood blood splattered and with a broken rib in the pouring rain.
8 Superstong running in third place along the valley bottom
9 The wit (and other qualities) of the heckling
10 THE AUDACITY TO HECKLE THE MILITARY

Book me down for next year please.

Results; apologies if I missed any teams I only searched for the team names posted in the original MM thread.

Solo Men (169 riders started)

117th I believe in fixies
142nd Wu-Tangled

4 man open (162 teams started):

22nd RetroBIKE Southeast
75th RetroBIKE NWA-Unleash The Inner Chimp
109th RetroBIKE - Bear Necessities
117th RetroBIKE - Flatlanders

4 man sport (188 teams started)

131st RetroBIKE Original Midlands

4 mixed sport (116 teams started)

101th RetroBIKE Flatliners 5

10 man teams (49 teams started)

27th RetroBIKE SW10 Climbing on Cheese
44th RetroBIKE Rim Tape Specials

Jealous for not being in UK this weekend and appreciate something like this, its should been great for sure.

Never heard anything like this outside UK or in Europe or I´m I wrong?

Any way loved to see the Pics and keep going same way Retrobike