New SoCal High School Mountian Bike League needs your help!

Hope it goes well! So cool wish this stuff was around when I was in highschool racing XC....

 

Hey folks --

A few of us attended the first (annual, hopefully) Cycle Fest Benefit Dinner for the league in Toluca Lake, CA. Festivities were held at the fine Ca Del sole dining establishment.

Here's some pics of the event...

Gary Fisher raffling off a few items during dinner (hes the honorary MC for the event):



League prexy Quintin Easton introducing the evening, and explaining how he hurt himself putting his bike on top of his car earlier that day after riding 15 miles (and crashing 4 times with no apparent injuries):



The Easton's table (Quintin's mom and dad were in attendance, along with his wife, Lynn). This is the Easton Sports Development Foundation II right here!



Three pics of guest speaker, current BMC racer Tony Cruz (Tony's current official gig is as the Long Beach Cycling Ambassador -- a job he is leveraging to build four velodromes in the city of Long Beach soon -- and so this new league is an important link for him to be involved with):







Gary and Tony:



Head of the NorCal league, Matt Fritzinger giving his speech on how the NorCal league has inspired kids and changed lives. Moving stuff:



IMBA prexy Jim Hasenauer and a few other folks (help me out if you know who they are please...), along with Matt from the League:



Pua Sawicki meeting Gary:



Pua and my boy, Willie (he races for her kids' team):



Willie getting a pic with Gary:



Our sdyeti-Steph getting a pic with Gary:



League coaches Jon and Scott (from Rim of the World High School up near Lake Arrowhead -- they have a full-fledged team up and running already!) with Gary:



And finally, a nice pic of Jason and Heather Ranoa. The Ranoas will be hosting the first ever SoCal league race in March down at Vail Lake (where his 12 Hours of Temecula races occur):



Enjoy!!

- shud

 

^^Thank you so much for the wonderful pictures! I had a great time recounting my story of my first race bike (a GF) with the man himself.

We had a great evening and Dan & I won a few of the silent auction items...Dan picked up a set of Spinergy Xcyclone rims and ski goggles. I picked up a full solo race entry (complete with camping, primo pit area and other extras) courtesy of donor Jason Ranoa.

The food was FANTASTIC and the company was wonderful. We got to sit at the table with Tony Cruz, his son Aidan, and his dad Carlos...really nice folks.

 

^^ I thought "GF" meant girlfriend! Whatever. :?:

Steph --> you have PM

- shud

 

Thanks for sharing those pics Shudder. :beer: I wish I could have been there to meet the man whose name is on my hardtail.

 

My son and I sat at Gary's table, along with his daughter Rachel whom I sat right next to, so we got to talk to them a lot. She was a very pleasant young lady who'd accompanied her dad to the event, just to be there with him. I liked talking with her over dinner.

Gary mentioned he has been racing since 1962 (*ahem!*), when there were maybe (maybe) 1,000 road racers in the country, total. Lots has changed since then.

I had always heard Gary was somehow involved with the Grateful Dead (calling epicriderat and TrojanInsomniac to a white courtesy telephone!!). I asked him about this since I could find absolutely no corroborating information on the interweb about it. He smiled at the question, but answered yes, in fact he did run a light show in the bay area in the mid- to late- sixties, and he would sometimes do them for the Dead, but also for many other bands playing around at the time.

He and his cohorts would be hired by the venues, not the bands, so they did their laser thingy in front of innumberable acts, until it became clear that some of his competitors charged nearly nothing to perform the same sort of shows. All they wanted was backstage passes to meet the bands (The Stones, etc.). So, he got outta the biz. He also mentioned that it did real damage to his racing since he found himself up at all hours of the night constantly, and so was too tired to ride alla the time.

- shud

 

Is there a race schedule yet?

I want to make it to the races and support the riders.

I remember when I was running Cross country in High School how some of the parents would always be at the races and even though they were from other schools they were supporting everybody, sometimes running along side us and yelling encouragement.

 

SoCal Interscholastic MTB League Website

"We are excited to announce the date for the 2009 opener! The first race of the series will be March 8th at Vail Lake (Temecula). We encourage you to mark your calendar and spread the word!"

- shud

 

Yo folks -- Really wet wet wet out there today. We soitanly dodged a bullet yesterday at Bonelli (and Saturday at Aliso as well!). It coulda been horrible out there like it is today, but we lucked out -- yesterday was a perfect day in Bonelli.

The Sand Diego crew were out at Aliso on Saturday. Seven riders came out for the day. Apparently is was cloudy and cold (I wasn't there). Yesterday at Bonelli, we had double that -- total of 13 up and comers! Skills and mech classes ran all day, then we went for a ride through and around Bonelli -- that was great fun!!

I was asked to bring my camera and shoot, so I did. I took 257 pics during the event (!!) and even shot off a bunch of vid and helmet cam footage for them. Hopefully the league will be able to cobble together some sort of camp promo video from what I shot off. We'll see.

Specialized has donated $60k to the league (!!) to get it all rolling, so I was asked to pop off a shot of all yesterdfay's crew, showing off the several Specs in the lineup.



I've only just looked through the rest of my pics as of this writing, but I did work up this one shot of Willie learning to lunge (thanks for holding the log, Quintin!).



- shud

 

Good job.

 

^^ Two things I'd like to offer in reply:

1. The league is self-funded. No one is spending tax dollars on the league. HS pay nothing (this is not a CIF sanctioned activity -- teams are actually 'clubs' within the California HS system).

2. Rim of the World HS up near Lake Arrowhead gets KHS bikes for $150 a pop, $350 less than the $500 BMX bikes you speak of.

Lighten up, dude. It's all good. I ride with my kid in races and really enjoy it. So does he. But, he cuts his own groove. This league offers him and other like-minded kids the opportunity to compete against one another in a different sport (you know, like sports that are not played as a team, but are teams in HS nonetheless -- y'know, like wrestling, tennis, swimming). I'll tell you this, there was NO ONE from my team with me on the mat when I went out for each wrestling match I participated in when I was in HS.

The kids yesterday learned a lot during their classes -- both on the bike as well as well as off -- and there was a lot of shared camaraderie. How is that a bad thing?

- shud

 

Are you serious?

If not, your attempt at satire was not very good.

If so, I'm not sure where you get your info from and there are several points I can rebut or point out as inacccurate, which I can address later.

 

What a bunch of wieners!

 

Retraction

Oh, come on some one has to play devil's advocate/cranky old man at the city council meeting. Next I'll be fighting to "keep those damn kids off my lawn".

This came up in discussion on Sunday, and no one had a clue what it is all about. As stated previously what folks do on their own time is none of my business, with that said this looks like fun.:clap:

 

I'll do what I can to help. We had a club at my high school that one of our english teachers helped out with. We even had Leigh Donovan and her husband Craig "Stickman" come ride with us.

I have some local bike shop connections and a small connection to Specialized and Crank Brothers. I'll pass the word on.

 

I wish we had a bike league in High school. I probably would of done that instead of wrestling. :lol:

 

Well, I like many here, agree that the Bike League is a good, no GREAT thing... There are many things that we should spend our money on, why should cycling or anything for the matter be counted out. Plain and simple, our educational system as a whole is underfunded. The extra-curricular activities, as unnecessary as they may be, do promote education in one way that many of us forget - it gets the kids excited about school and creates a sense of school-spirit that this generation is really missing. A sense of pride and a sheer willingness to compete will give our kids what they need to success in their future, just as well as any other team sport. Well, here I go rambling again...

Thank you to all of you who are getting the groundwork laid out for this. I'm sure it will be promising not only for our kids, but also for our sport (which should not be considered only as a recreational activity).

 

I think the big league is a great Idea, im sure like most school functions they must maintaining a certain gpa to be in the club. They are learning important things for there future, Team building. Every thing in the world is based on teams, I think every serious interview I have been to in the last couple years had questions based on teams.

Interviewer: We work in teams here, what kind of experience do you have workign as a team?

Me: I have worked as a team at my past jobs..... I also ride with a mountian biking group often where we work as a team, looking out for each other and helping with each others riding etc..

 

I think this is great and I wish they had something like it whan I was in HS. Our local schools have XC running which isn't much different as far as a team sport, at least it is getting the kids out to exercise.

To the guy that thinks this is a bad idea, you need to get your head out of your @ss. Kids these days are lazy and if we don't get them outside away from video games and the internet they will just become obese adults. It's pretty narrow minded to think exercise is bad for HS kids.

 

i met quintin easton today at fairview park in costa mesa today while riding. he is a really nice guy. he was out there scouting a course for the HS racing league. i wish them the best of luck with the races.