Oopita Doopita

This past Sunday was a long race (77 + miles) with a funny name. I'm still not sure what Oopita Doopita is, maybe I just wasn't paying attention, but I do know it was free. The start was at Cold Water Spring near Minnehaha Falls and headed west to the far end of Bloomington via the river bottoms trail. After that it continued on to Chaska and Victoria to the turn around point.  From there the course followed roads and  bike paths back into Minneapolis to end at Sunrise Cyclery.  

fifteen minutes to start

The man giving directions

Stopped here for a few seconds to piss. The lead group is long gone and haulin' ass

 I decided before the start that I would turn around at the Bloomington Ferry Bridge and head back to my van near the start. Although I didn't finish, I feel I rode the best portion of the race and still ended up with almost 50 miles for the day.  At the ferry bridge beer-stop I bid farewell to my friends who were continuing on to the open roads. All I could think about was the nasty wind those poor bastards were going to battle while I was cruising the sheltered trails of the river bottoms.

After dropping back for a while, somehow I caught  up to the lead group just before we dropped back into the bottoms

lead group

My homies  hydrating for the rest of the ride,  Chuker and G-$