I got a chance to watch it yesterday. It is pretty well done and will provide me something watch when I need some CX motivation. There was one particular part that I found specially inspiring. But to explain why, we first need to........
Rewind back to the 2007 Interbike show......
Rich, Dash and I were wandering around looking at the latest toys. As we rolled through the SRAM booth, we saw they had a bike with the brand new (at that time) Red grouppo. I had heard about the upgrades to the front derailleur and was highly interested to see how much the shifting had changed from the Force components that I had been running all year. The bike was up on a stand and in a sultry bike voice said "Come play with me, big boy". I swear it did!!!! I started shifting the front derailleur back and forth checking to see what SRAM had changed in shifter throw distance and how they had put in a trim capability that all the Shimano and Campy converts wanted. Behind me I heard a guy say "Hey, it's $5 for every time you shift my bike." Figuring it was some SRAM guy being a smart ass, I promptly ignore him and kept on shifting the front derailleur. The guy starts counting out loud "$5, $10, $15, $20, $25". Finally, Rich firmly says to me "Hey Brian, I think he wants you to stop dicking around with his RACE BIKE!" I am like...."Huh? Race bike?" I finally stop focusing on the Red shifting and widen the aperture a bit to notice that the bike is a brand new, yellow and white, Cannondale TJX. The next thought through my grape was "Aw crap, it can't be." I turned around and sure enough, it was. There was Tim Johnson standing there patiently waiting for me to fork over $25. Luckily for me, TJ is as nice of a person is he is fast on a bike and let me off the hook. He was mainly trying to make sure this bike would be out at the CrossVegas course in a couple hours for him to use.
The TJX was set up with a Fizik Arionne saddle and for a fleeting moment my usual desire to be a smart ass tried to surface and ask him if he found that the pointy rear contour of the Arionne gave him big bruises on the inside of his thigh when he performed a Flying Bike Prang (A full description of an FBP can be found here.) I had been running that same saddle on my Kona and knew first hand that the size of bruises you can put in your thigh with that thing are pretty impressive. That thought was quickly replace by the realization that someone with the mad CX skilz of Tim Johnson would never miss a re-mount bad enough to perform an FBP.
Fast forward back to present day........
Oh, how wrong I was. There, in the Bonus section of the 9-Ball Diaries DVD, at 2008 World CX Championships no less, is video'ed documentation that Tim Johnson does indeed know how to perform an FBP. Granted he does not finish off the maneuver by grinding his leg on the rear tire, but most of the basic components are there. I gave it a 8.5. Congrats Tim!
With the CX season drawing to a close, my contributions to this site will drop. If I see something really stupid while doing Neutral Support for the ACA races here in Colorado over the summer (Jeez, what are the chances of that?!!) I will blog about it.
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