30/30/30:
April of 2011 marks our thirtieth (30th!) year in business.
All month we'll be posting new stories, old stories and images on our website, as often as we can, time permitting. The latest story is below and there's an index to the left. We hope you enjoy!
23: Racing
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Cross Country racing was popular in the mid 90's and like most other companies of the era, we had a race team. Little guys like Ibis couldn't afford to hire the best racers, we mainly found them (or they found us) and once they had some results the bigger companies hired them away from us by offering them more money. Well, in reality, more money for our racers actually meant some money. It's easy to see why racers made the jump, heck we'd do the same thing.
For a while we had a team that went around to all the NORBA National races, and to a lot of the bigger regional races. We also ran a number of small grass-roots efforts with local shops. Here's a cheeseball picture from back in the day of our Gianni team, based out of Occidental California, a tiny burg in the coastal range of western Sonoma County.
In addition to this local Gianni team we ran out of Sebastopol (our HQ at the time), two other teams were very influential: Mountain Pedaler of Vail and West End (of Houston).
We had a great local team presence in Houston run out of the legendary and still thriving and still cool without trying to be cool West End Bikes in Houston. Will Black, arguably the best Texas racer (and definitely the nicest) in the mid 90's was the anchor of the team (3rd from the left with the rest of the West End crew above).
Every February, the crew from West End always made the 700 mile schlep across the state of Texas to the Chihuahuan Desert Challenge in Lajitas (Texas), located on the Rio Grande River, smack dab in the middle of Big Bend National Park. The crew from Ibis HQ joined them on a few occasions.
We were getting a little fuzzy on the details, so we enlisted Kevin "KV" Vincent of Houston to dredge up a bunch of pictures and help us recall some of the things that happend. Kevin got a nice little event history out of Mike Long, which we'll reprint below. Here's what Kevin had to say about those good old days.
lajitas
The most important date circled on every Texas mountain bike racer and enthusiast’s calendar back in the ‘90’s was the middle weekend in February, and written on it was the word “Lajitas”. More correctly, Lajitas was actually a race called the Chihuahuan Desert Classic, located in the Big Bend region of the state - along a shallow ford of the Rio Grande River. Lajitas is situated about halfway between Houston and Los Angeles as the crow flies and 5-hours from the nearest commercial airport. In other words, if you get to the middle of nowhere, drive another hundred miles then turn left.
You had to try awful hard not to have a good time in Lajitas – after all, the folks there elected a goat with a drinking problem as Mayor. The town of Lajitas looks like something from the old west. It featured an old boardwalk with a hotel, general store, bakery and pharmacy. Nearby was the Lajitas Trading Post/ “City Hall” where the mayor, Clay Henry III, presided. All races started and finished along its dirt road. Here's Clay Henry having enjoying his breakfast of champions.
"Lajitas" was also La Primavera for some of mountain bike racing’s earliest stars who were looking to jump start their training or as an excuse to shake off the shack-nasties.
Throughout the ‘90’s the event grew from just over a hundred racers to nearly a thousand. Mike Long and the folks from Desert Sports added other events throughout the weekend including fun rides, log pulls and bicycle limbo contests thus turning the entire weekend into a festival that attracted nearly 3000 folks.
Here's KV, enjoying Spring in the desert.
And now a few memories from Mike Long who ran the race for many years. His recounting of the various years of the race gives us a good look at the who's who of mountain biking in the 90's.
“Mountain bike racing has had a long and sordid history here in the Big Bend. A guy named Mark Mills, the original founder of Desert Sports, teamed up with Rob Dean (then GM at Lajitas Resort) to create the first sanctioned race in Lajitas. The year was 1988 and the event was called the Big Bend Chihuahuan Desert Challenge. The race consisted of a Criterium and Cross Country with a Trials competition on the side. There were 98 registered racers. the men's XC PRO-AM race was won by Casey Kunselman (Diamond Back) and the women's winner was Lisa Muhich (Specialized). Kevin Norton (Haro) won the Modified Trials and Greg Herbold (Miyata) won the MTB Trials. Other notable attendees were David Turner, Joe Murray, Hill Abell and Doug and Celia Johnston.
In 1989 Mark and Rob teamed up with David Turner as their Technical Adviser for the race. This was the year that Tinker Juarez, David Weins, John Weissenreider, Julia Ingersoll showed up in the roster. Kevin Norton and Hans Rey duked it out in the Trials pit and Herbold took the Stock MTB Trials competition. Overall (GC) winners were Russell Worley (Yeti) and Martha Kennedy (Salsa SDS). There were 145 registered racers.
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In 1990 Mark Mills moved from the area and there was no event that year.
In 1991 Gay Kemph bought Desert Sports and re-opened the shop. She teamed up with Bill Green as race director. The name of the event was shortened to the Chihuahuan Desert Challenge, soon to become known as the Lajitas Race to most Texas racers. Rishi Grewal won the men's Overall and Susan DeMattei won the women's. Jacquie Phelan made her first appearance at the event with pink polka dots and drop bars. 230 racers started the XC event this time out.
Jacquie
Greg Herbold and Rishi Grewal
In 1992 the CDC was again organized by Gay with Mike Long as Race Director. We brought in Dean Crandall as our Chief Official and he did our first computerized results. Tom Hillard of Specialized and Bob Hadley of GT both helped out with Technical Assistance as well as Neutral Support. Rishi Grewal took the men's Overall, 2nd place by David Wiens, 3rd was John Weissenrider, 4th was Lance Armstrong (Motorola), 5th was James Huggins, 6th was Herbold, and Bob Roll came in 7th. The women's Overall was won by Laura Peycke out of Tyler followed by Susan DeMattei and Tammy Jaques. Gregg Morin from Gunnison, CO came down to run the Observed Trials and we think this was the first year that Tim Cookingham and Tom Delaney started doing our Festival Events. Including the OT guys, we had just under 300 registered riders.
In 1993 and 1994 we had the same basic set-up for the event. Rishi Grewal continued his winning streak here in Big Bend. Tammy Jaques took the women's title in '93 and Karen Wilson from Boulder, CO won in '94. These seem to be the last couple of years that we had a bunch of out of state Pro Racers show up for our event. Sara Ballantyne made her one and only appearance here in 1994. We saw our Event grow from about 450 racers to around 650 racers with 2000 folks coming down for the festivities.
From 1995 through 2002 the CDC grew to it peak at around 850 racers with a crowd of 2000-3000 people coming down to ride and enjoy the festivities. Wile we still drew more out of state racers than most other events in the state, we were definitely seeing more Texas racers on the podium. Guys like Stew Stafford ,Will Black, Billy Kurtz and Nick Feid started showing up at the top of the Open Class. The women's Open Class started showing up with lots of Texas ladies at the top of the list; Kathy Duryea, Catherine Hall, Melanie Black (only to name a few).
Over the years we had quite a few folks join us for our Expo. Rock Shox, Specialized, Trek, Kona, Park Tool and lots of local Texas shops. Seems like I even remember the folks from Ibis giving away a frame at one of our events down here.
In the department of randomness department, we'd rent a house each year in Lajitas from the police chief of Berlin. We have no idea how he made the connection to Lajitas, but he did and we rented his house. It was a great place to hang out, and the weather was always spectacular for mid February. On the left is Ibis sales manager David Peoples, thinking about how he wishes he was back in the office answering phones.
That's the Rio Grande river right out there.
And a few steps across the water and you're in Mexico. Where they have (surprise!) Mexican restaurants.
KV smiling for the camera, looks like a Shiner Bock in the foreground.
Here's the view from the porch with a few dorks posing for the camera. That's Joe Buno, Melanie Black, Chuck Ibis in need of a haircut and Will Black.
Look at all those nice period piece Ibises in the background.
But the weekend was not all about hanging out. We were here to race! #59 is Brian Riepe, who now runs a great magazine called The Mountain Flyer (that you should subscribe to). Brian raced on our National team for a few years.
Here's Dave Weins leading Will Black.
And Chuck laughing at Melanie Black.
Numbah One Will Black looking good on the bike.
KV on the Ti Mojo.
Ibis, as usual pulled out all the stops with their huge entourage, filling forty semi trucks (bigger than a U2 tour).
You can see the evolution, this year we got a wooden bench.
Here's the quiet giant, Dan Murphy, owner of West End. We liked the look of the buildings there in West Texas.
Lajitas' thriving downtown.
At the finish line.
And when the racing is over, there's food to make, beer to drink and always a great sunset in the desert overlooking Mexico.
mountain pedaler of vail
Near Vail Colorado there's a tiny shop run by a not tiny man named Jim Popeck. People know him simply as the Pope. Everybody knows Pope. If you don't know the Pope then you're really not from Vail.
The Pope approached us back in the early 90's, he wanted to sell our bikes. He didn't have a shop. He did have a gift of the gab and after he bent our ear for a while he convinced us to give him a shot. We did, and before too long he had a shop and soon thereafter, he became the largest Ibis dealer (in more ways than one).
Here's the Pope in his shop, on the left, with Ibis racer Chance Cooke on the right.
Pope sold an incredible number of bikes out of his shop. He eventually became a 'Top 100 Dealer' accoring to one of the industry magazines. When they interviewed him for the article, he told them some of his secrets. Turns out the Pope had (has) a unique selling style that often involves tequila. Usually tequila did the trick, but in the case of a particularly difficult customer it might mean tequila, followed by locking the front door, followed by more tequila. We don't know a lot of other shops that have successfully employed this sales program, but it's been working for the Pope for almost 20 years now. He continues to be one of the top Ibis dealers anywhere in the world, consistently, year after year. Vail seems to have an endless thirst for new Ibises. Or maybe a really low tolerance for tequila.
After a while, Pope wanted us to do a regional race team with him. We agreed. Always one to have his priorities straight, he quickly arranged sponsorship with a new fledgling brewery in Colorado called New Belgium. They were just getting started (and now the rest is history). New Belgium is a big deal now, but when they were working with us, Kim or Jeff (the two founders) would drive kegs from Ft. Collins to Vail for our team gatherings. That's a little like having Bill Gates drive from Seattle to Portland to give you some software--and install it for you. Thanks for the support New Belgium and congrats on your fan success.
Here's the Pope again, sporting a beverage and a New Belgium shirt.
Here are a few of our team members from back then in training.
One year RockShox ran a cool ad that featured kid pictures of racers, including a few Ibis team members. Click on the image to bring up a big view.
And in a funny coincidence, Mark Howe, pictured on the upper left and who lives in Hawaii now, is coming by to ride with us today.
Here's Will and Brian in extreme close-up view.
And in another coincidence, Don Myrah the 4X Elite National CycloCross champion and 1989 World Mountain Bike Champion who didn't race for us then but does now it also on this ad. So we show you his pic too.
We're stoked to still be working with Pope and Dan Murphy and the crew at West End. Will Black is still racing on Ibis bikes now and again, and as we mentioned Brian Riepe is putting out a rad magazine (and still fit and fast). Those were good times, those were fast times.
There's more racing stories coming soon too.