In Ilmenau they finally had the big, wooden steep face at the end of the last slope. That's why I was the first one there fro training. It was fantastic as always. (at least it was on Friday)

On Saturday I played some poker with my tires. The track was muddy and my mud tires were in the rider's camp. I had good grip on roots, but it was hard too brake before turns in the mud.

So, I went to change my tires after the 2nd descent.
Now everything was backwards, brakes were fine, but roots were not. A tree had to pay the price for that. I rammed it hard, twice (with my head "ouch").
After the announcement of the seeding run (seeding run = qualifying or ranking run ooooor racing down the hill at top speed and determining the starting order : )) times, we almost went to buy some lamps, because our turn was near evening. When we had almost arrived on dry land, we received notice that the times had been moved forward by 25min. That's when it began... a hurricane with extreme rain and hail combined with thunder and lightning. Nevertheless, the show went on and right before it was my turn, the rest of the runs were postponed to the next day.
Great, so I stood around up there for nothin'. During the ride down to the camp all I could think about was hanging my clothes out to dry and going to bed. When I got there, the only thing that was left standing was my car, no tent. Everything was flooded. It looked as though David had forgotten to turn off the bathtub water in the tent.

My tent looked like fricken pick-up-sticks.

Since everything was completely soaked, we decided to drive home.
This turned out too be a good strategy, because another storm arrived during the night and destroyed all the other tents.
But I was home by then.

Andreas