Ron and Dorothy Strasser
Yeah!
Evan... Now that you are a resident of Baker ( I still call it that because they changed the name back to Baker City a few years back to get in touch with their heritage... while I was growing up in Nyssa it was Baker), you are getting a much better understanding of the great distances between population areas of the great Eastern part of our state. Don seems right about moving the championships around and your idea of same day events may work depending on what the promoter can pull off. In the meantime (now that you have all that extra time you used to spend stuck in various types of large population traffic jams here in the metro area...maybe you can figure out a way to stage a great mountain bike race over in the Baker "City" area (or John Day or LaGrande). About the same distance for riders to Ashland. There is plenty of area to find the venue. Now with that said, I do not want you to feel pressured to promote a race, but what I hope is this gets you riding a great deal around you new home "always looking for those options of singletrack, good areas to stage a start or finish and nice vistas to make a climb worth the sweat. It was great seeing you at Chainbreaker even though you were just a blur whizzing by.
See you later,
ron
----- Original Message -----
From: Don Leet
To: Evan MacKenzie ; obra@list.obra.org
Sent: Monday, May 14, 2007 8:25 AM
Subject: Re: [OBRA Chat] State Champ races
Actually last year state championship was Picketts charge not the Chainbreaker. One of the reasons the Chainbreaker may have had less participants (I am not sure they did) is they choose not to be part of the Rivercity Series. We at Picketts mulled it over and at the end decided to be part of the series. I think in fairness to the whole state the state championships need to move around with the Willamette Valley being the most commonly used area. World Championships use the same logic. Mainly in populated areas (Europe) and once in while someplace far away (New Zealand).
Don Leet
----- Original Message -----
From: Evan MacKenzie
To: obra@list.obra.org
Sent: Monday, May 14, 2007 8:20 AM
Subject: [OBRA Chat] State Champ races
This may have been addressed before or after the Spring Thaw, and I KNOW people were all over this list last year after the hillclimb champs at Mt Ashland, but I'm going to add to the fire one more time.
I'm not concerned so much about out-of-staters racing in our state champ races, but I am concerned about Oregonians even being able to make it to the race.
In the future, can we have State Championship races in a more central location? In fact, I would even recommend that we just have them all in the Bend area. It's about as central as you can get in this state.
Ashland is an 8 ½ hour drive from Baker City.not much less from La Grande and certainly not less from Ontario. That means racing in any race in Ashland is pretty much a three-day commitment and 17 hours in the car from out here on the east side. Uh, yeah, not going to happen.
Now I am not opposed to racing in Ashland. I did the Super D last year and loved it (of course, that was when I lived in Portland). And I am in no way suggesting the people down south reduce their local calendar. But.would it be really tough to combine the XC and DH into one day so people traveling from far away could do both? Or.move the Spring Thaw to a later date and then do the Super D that day in the afternoon or the next day? Now that would be worth driving for.
I also noticed that the crowd at the Chainbreaker last year was quite a bit larger when it was the State Champ race. That's too bad, because it was just as fun this year. Thanks to Web Cyclery for putting on a great race.
Just my .02 for this morning.
-Evan
Evan MacKenzie
Planning Director
City of Baker City
PO Box 650
1655 First Street
Baker City, OR 97814
541-524-2030
www.bakercity.com
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