No, that's not the kind of winner we're picking, silly!

The “Win Rob’s Bike” contest has reached the end of it’s first phase, and we’ve drawn one lucky contestant. But before we get to that, huge thanks must go out to everyone who participated. The whole reason behind this was to draw attention to the Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship, and as a result of your participation, they ended up netting 47 new members (we think. These stats are from yesterday morning), and more than $4200 in donations. In the words of Forrest Arakawa, “Awesome!”

Anyway, here, captured in dramatic freeze frame action, is our fief lord and master, Rob Roskopp, drawing the winner’s name from Jon Forsberg’s lucky golf hat while at the same time attempting his best Rocky Balboa “bring it on” look from Rocky 3 just before Rocky beat down Clubber Lang:

Or maybe it's his best Clubber Lang impression...

And in case the janky handwriting of the marketing stooge is too small in that photo, the winner is this guy:

Random pick, but the coolest name in the whole hatful of names...

Who, in real life, is this guy:

No, not the kid. The big guy holding the kid.

Who, in a bizarre twist of irony works for these guys. Who, in an even more bizarre twist of irony, just so happen to have run a parody of one of Roskopp’s Jimbo Phillips drawn artworks from back before he (Roskopp, not Jimbo) got old:

Art imitates art imitates art imitates art imitates art imitates art imitates

So, here’s to Burl! See you in Downieville… Now, for the edification of the peanut gallery, here’s Roskopp’s bike as it appeared two days ago. Burl will ride something built exactly the same as this, aside from his choice of pedal. Everything else will be eggzack same:

See, dirt! He really has been riding...

Silly light wheels and tires

Kinda skinny. Probably a recipe for pinch flats.

Gold bits, such a pimp...

Rev 150 fork, Elixir CR brakes, which then add up to...

Pretty damn light for a 140mm travel bike. Might be too light...

It’ll all pan out when the dust settles. And there will be dust.

Meanwhile, in the world of real racers with big engines, our favorite dark horse/tile guy/former World Cup racer/husband of April Lawyer/etcetera, Chris Sheppard, along with partner Seamus McGrath, is still ripping legs off up in Canada at the BC Bike Race. He and Shamoe crushed everyone in stage 3, as relayed from this cryptic text message:

“Went with south africans on big climb – dropped them on descent – gapd kona boys 40sec and won stage – some more burly singletrack.”

Strangely the press release from the race read it a bit differently:

“Team Jamis/Santa Cruz’s Seamus McGrath and Chris Sheppard blasted through the trails of day three of racing at the BC Bike Race in a blistering 2:51:53, with rivals, Team Kona’s Kris Sneddon and Barry Wicks, literally on their heels at one second later. McGrath and Sheppard retained the coveted leader’s jersey for the GC but will have to work hard to keep it, with Team Kona only 1:13 behind in the overall.”

Now let me go on record and say that I love the Kona boys. I am, in fact, related to Dr Dew (brother from another mother), and think the world of Barry Wicks. They are good people. But with regard to this race, I sense a bit of local Kona sniffing and Shep snubbing going on. Might be my bias.

Anyway, stage 4 was yesterday, and our boys are still in the leader’s jersey, despite the following text:

“major dehydration 2day – dropd bottle had 2 share. large mushroom cloud spotd 15min from finish – kona got 30 sec in that time – still leadn – 2day difficult”

Ouch. For the BC spin on things:

“The big question at the finish line was what happened for Kona to gap out Seamus and Chris in the very last ten minutes of the race. Sneddon recappped the competition, “Well it was mostly just givin’er as fast as we could in the singletrack. There are also a couple of corners where if you don’t really know the course, then you are afraid to go too fast around. It’s just too scary. We just got a little bit of a gap, and I think they probably hit their brakes a little bit on stuff like that and we slowly spread it out a little bit. But trust me, we were going scary fast. It was sort of a chance we took and it would be pretty easy to go off the bike. We were full out, full throttle and you don’t want to be breaking the bike. We don’t really want to do it.”

Four days in, three to go, and it’s tighter than a nun’s fart up there. Hey, BC Bike Race, how about taking some damn pics of my boy, okay?