Priorities need adjusted

I haven't posted in a while, you all know this. For that, I apologize. Much has gone on in the world of Mexlerwerks. To avoid a War And Peace-like novel, I'll quickly summarize.
Day two of car suspension wiped me out; I finished the fronts around 2:30a. Took a little longer than expected. It took me about 4 days to recover from that. The end result was totally worth it - my car is tight. Like slot car tight. Really need to finish the hitch so I can really rail the corners and not slam bikes around in the trunk.
The late night wiped me out so much I was too tired to post about the mini training camp to Chattanooga. Damn, that was very much needed. Ride, eat, sleep, coffee, eat, ride, repeat. ~13 hours in 3 days and my riding belly was full. A few pics:
Turns out it IS available in stores!

Our rolling residence and support rig for 4 days. Ultra sweet.

We were antsy to ride so we park the RV in a Dollar General store parking lot and pointed wheels to the Cherahola Skyway. Many of you might remember this as a destination ride back in March when spring camp was based out of Fontana, NC. We didn’t ride it, and I left wanting. Lucky for me, it has two sides so we were conveniently afforded the opportunity to ride it from the TN side.
Early on at the start of the climb

Total climb time was about 1:20 h and the distance was just under 17 miles. I’d guess the first 3 or so miles were barely elevating, but still that was a damn long climb! I even took a quick video of me once I was riding solo (Don and Zach were not digging the heat so much) but it was quite Mud and Cowbells-esque and I didn’t want to blatantly copy so you don’t get to see it.
Days 2 and 3 found us in a Walmart parking lot since there were no camp sites available. Fortunately, said Walmart was at the base of Racoon Mountain XC trail. Even better, a 30 minute road climb (and descent when finished... more on that in a minute). Damn sweet trail. Gonna be a SERC race there later this year, to boot. May have to do that one.

Ok, so back to the descent. On the 2nd trip (we did a 2-a-day) down, I just clocked in at about 40 mph (yes, knobbie 2.3 tires at roughly 20psi. no, it wasn't scary. I ride better than that) when out of the corner of my eye I see a small blob, then hear a "ping!" Looking down, I saw blood on my knee and and some giblets on my fork.

I looked over at Don and said "I just hit a bird." Upon arrival at the RV, feathers on my rim confirmed I Ginsu-ed a bird. Sorry buddy. I felt bad as I was cleaning my fork ofthe guts.
The last day we hit the Chilhowee and Tnasi trails. We were all ready to head out so no stopping for blog pics. Chilhowee was pretty sweet - a 45 minute ascent with some gnar gnar single track, followed by the 45 minute descent in reverse. It only took us 7 minutes to get down. A bit slow on the way up, not slow on the way down.
Tnasi was neat, too. It started across the stream from the 96 Olympic venue for kayaking. Surprise, surprise... climb, single track, descent.

Upon arrival back in Columbus, I spent a day cleaning bikes, etc then headed for the airport for an 8p flight to Montana. Not super stoked to travel for work for a host of reasons, but it needed done so I did it. Got back Thursday night after a full day of travel. Three days of taking it easy helped with good recovery, which bode well for me for Sunday's XC race in my back yard.
I took 2nd into the woods and was feeling great. About 5 minutes into the race, my stupid low tire pressure conspired against me, and I rolled my tire. Watching the race go by in front of me I opted to just inflate rather than throw in a tube. 30 seconds past and I was chasing. For the next 90 minutes. With a slowly deflating tire. I really didn't have too much trouble with lap traffic but I could not bridge to the winning move. I ended up 6 minutes off the pace. dammit.

So that's it. I would liked to have gone into more details for each event, but I doubt many of you are still reading along. This post is quite epic.
As justification for those who are still with me, I'll leave you with a pic of my domination of the start sprint at the Morsches Park XC race where I disintegrated late in the race. Obviously, the start is not as important as the finish, but staying in front of crashes is a much better way to race.
about 2 hours before meltdown

So with that, I offer an half-empty promise to place a higher priority on posting more regularly. Actually, I'll be optimistic; the promise is half-full.

I'm out

-the ATM