The Lyons Outdoor games went off over the weekend in Lyons, Colorado. The usual spree of events took place, a creek race, freestyle event, boater cross relay and even some trials biking demonstrations. After breaking my two front teeth and putting a hole under my bottom lip I was a little tentative to get back into my boat after less than a weeks recovery but went for it anyway and things worked out fine.

Mid race on the South Saint Vrain

The Creek Race was held on South Saint Vrain creek just outside the town of Lyons. Everyone was talking about how it was more difficult and more dangerous than Homestake creek (where I knocked out my teeth). As you can imagine I was really excited to hit it up. The race was longer than Homestake, and a similar style but there was less of a random factor and everything went cleanly. My goal wasn’t to win this one but just to have clean lines and stay smooth throughout the course, which is what I did. I didn’t paddle very hard and ended up pretty far back in the field but wasn’t bothered by that because at the end I had all of my teeth! The race results looked like this:

1. Andrew Holcome
2. Eric Jackson
3. Todd Baker
4. Bryan Kirk

Trials dude on the six foot box

In between the race and freestyle there were some trials biking demos going on. These guys have mad skills, I’ve been trying to do some of the stuff they were doing for years and have yet to come close to doing a tenth of it. An example of the something they can pull off is crushing a pop can with their back tire that’s in-between a guys legs jumping from a box six feet above him!(yeah that’s a long sentence but I figured you could handle it

Bryan Kirk with a big ol’ Blowfish

Next up was freestyle in the afternoon. It seems that the more hole events I go to this year the flushier the hole gets and this was no exception. Sticking simple moves was a challenge and I didn’t end up sticking a loop until my competition rides…good timing! Freestyle results were as follows:

1. Nick Troutman
2. Bryan Kirk
3. Dane Jackson (beating his dad for the first time)
4. Eric Jackson
5. Ed Smith