CycloCross at Coyote Point - CCCP

An update on the construction taking place on our old Start/Finish section of the course. They began earlier this year demolishing the bathrooms right next to the beacj and scoured the beach parking lot. Now they're in the reconstruction process - there will be new picnic areas on the site of the old abandoned restaurant (the Castaway). Then we'll see if the rebuild will allow sand to once more fill the beach and not be off-loaded by regular tidal actions.

Alec and I had frequent conversations with Rangers regarding future construction near the beach. They finally got funding to prepare plans to repair problems caused when they built new breakwater/paths for the board sailers who are big users of the beach. But when they built that it reconfigured the tidal patterns so that the beach sand started to get sucked and redeposited 1/2 mile west. You can see the sand bank at the corner underneath electrical towers.

To fix the issue they would need to dig out the parking lot and relocate the toilet facility. Since the levees along the bay are being raised to prepare for eventual higher tides they have started the project - which means several years of "No Beach".

The top picture is looking towards Hayward and Coyote Point forest - where the finish line was for much of CCCP's history. The bottom picture looks towards Burlingame from the forest.

After 2 years assembling data and photos we announce the 2 volume set of “The History of Pilarcitos Cyclesports”. Printed by Shutterfly each 11 x 14 book contains approx. 110 pages of photos, commentary, stories about the origins of Pilarcitos, BASP, and the hundreds of other cycling events and races from 2002-2016. Here’s a few pages to show you what it’s all about. Let me know if you would like a copy of your own - each volume is around $115.00 depending on the discounts offered by Shutterfly 3 or 4 times per year. Volume 1 is primarily concerned with BASP and ‘Cross and Volume 2 takes into account EVERY one of our various events - cycling events, running races - oodles of stuff.

All of the winner's jerseys handed out on the podium - from 2008-2015

A couple of photo additions to the page - some history of BASP caps, hats, podium awards, socks and other treasures that made BASP the events that cyclocross racers wanted to attend. Coming up later this spring will be an assortment of medals, bib numbers, podium jerseys, and an homage to our staff - all of them paid.

From way back (2003) when we started with Pilarcitos Stage Race to final BASP tall sock - here's the story

Examples of many of the BASP and Pilarcitos Cyclesports clothing - jerseys, hats, socks, staff jackets, etc.

We sold the bridge in spring 2016 to BikeMonkey/Carlos Perez and he got to use it a couple of times. September of 2016 he built it for Clif Bar at their Cykel scramble where we had added a down ramp and then in November for his 3-day weekend of 'cross in Santa Rosa.

Unfortunately the last photo in the set is present-day condition. Carlos sent us a photo of the remains of the bridge - when he got access to his former storage lot in northern Santa Rosa, October 13, 2017. The bridge is cooked - all that plywood, steps and risers and the trailer bed itself made a great bonfire. Carlos lost the contents of several other equipment trailers, too but he is otherwise OK.

All hail,"Suffer Bridge"

The bridge was an integral part of our productions, when we had adequate time and space to install it. It took our ops crew 6 hours to deliver, unload and build - that was a 6-man crew (OK, 5 if you don't count my capacity). And then it took about 2 hours to demo and reload onto the trailer sunday night after the race was over.

Awesome? We always thought so.

This was originally going to be the start of the history of Pilarcitos Cyclesports and specifically BASP - well, it's going to be history now.

Today we're going to talk about equipment - in particular one of the defining pieces of BASP, the "Bridge of Sighs" or, as Summit Bikes loved to call it - " The Suffer Bridge". This started off with our concept of a welded aluminum structure that we could assemble/disassemble with relative ease in 2010. We tried it out during the off-season and built it first at Coyote Point for a trial.

When we built it Alec and I rode to the top, looked down and determined we wouldn't be able to afford the insurance necessary for this beast - WAY too steep for the majority of our customers. We took it down, went back to the shop and reengineered for a much more comfortable descent.

When it was loaded onto our 3rd trailer, here's what it looked like. We used it from 2011 to our last event, our final Night Race at Sierra Point in November, 2015.

In this photo you can see the bridge structure, all aluminum, is stacked on top of the marine-grade plywood deck and the wood steps and risers.

We're warming up the "Way Back Machine" to re-run some Pilarcitos and BASP history - all the various medals, jerseys, staff clothing, banners, temporary tattoos - if it was related to any of our 100+ events we're going to photograph it and tell as many stories (even some that are true) as we can remember.

Results are now live for Sundays CCCP CycloCross @ Coyote Point.
http://pilarcitos.com/CCCP2016.htm

Pilarcitos CycleSports CCCP - CycleCross @ Coyote Point Since 2002 when our first event introduced competitors to the San Mateo County beach we have produced almost 20 CCCP (Cyclo Cross @ Coyote Point). This is a premium event with premium production qualities, just what you've been used to for the past 14 seasons. Did you know that there are showers in…