Life sure has it’s ups and downs. I came home from Fresno so stoked about racing. The weekend that will be now known as the 2007 CVC Classic was epic in every way. The winners like Ben Jaques-Maynes, Henk Vogels (his first since the crash at Fitchberg, even though he’d been close a few times) Tina Pic, and Christine Thorburn gave the event a huge amount of prestige. The womens racing was off the charts exciting and aggressive. For those lucky enough to have stayed around, what Michael Hernandez did in the Masters race (which is as competitive as any out there) was something I’ll never forget. He attacked with “old school fury” while down 69 seconds on GC. He ended up nearly lapping the field, and winning the GC battle. It was amazing. Larry Nolan won the stage, and he did what he could for his team, but at the end of the day, it was the courage that Mike showed that awed me.

So, after the best weekend of NRC racing I’ve been at in a long time, I flew home with no problems. Tina Pic was on my flight, we had, as usual, a great conversation.

So then I check my local racing forum this morning.

Rob Hicken is dead….He was such a nice guy, loved racing and bikes, and ran a website devoted to his passion, bicycle video’s. I heard what happened, but don’t feel it’s my place to post that. The Daily Camera reported that he died in Colorado Springs, on the 6th. I sure wish I’d gotten to know him better, and will miss his smiling face. That guy was always smiling when I saw him, and that was so cool. To Robs family, I’m so sorry, Rob was a sweet man.

The Fresno race doesn’t seem so great anymore.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 13th, 2007 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Daves Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.