The Friday night show was a big success. The fairly large space was packed for most of the evening. One wall was decorated with gorgeous black and white portraits from past cyclocross events. Intricate glops of mud, frozen in mid-air as they came flying off of a knobby tire; a racer in a”Fuel” Jersey slamming a Miller High-Life, eyes shut tight as the can is tipped for the final slug; jubilant smiles of mud-faced triumph, and the grim face of perseverance after a sudden and sloppy trip, head over heels, into the soggy bank. The photos, taken by a collective of four Portland based photographers, were very effective in getting me excited about the next day’s races!

The opposite wall was a long row of custom bikes, cyclocross and others, by builders from Bend, Portland, Seattle, and as far south as San Francisco. I especially liked the Vulture’s full suspension mountain bike and a curvy tubed Some of the bikes were still caked with mud from races earlier in the day.