This last Saturday Sandy, Oregon saw the second annual Corn Cross go down, and what a great time it was. Our gracious hosts out at Liepold Farms made their land available for a stellar course, and the City of Sandy as well as Oregon’s Mt. Hood Territory helped make it, and the ginormous flyover, a reality. The weather even held out perfectly! The days leading up had just enough rain to make things interesting, but we only had a few drops the day of.

Roughly 200 racers showed up to see what the oft-twisted mind of our own Erik Tonkin had laid out for them: the race course was a nice blend of muddy straightaways, off-camber curves, and technical weaving through a corn maze.

There was some concern over the corn having been blown down in the previous week’s wind storm, but it played out well and allowed competitors to keep tabs on each other’s position while they played catch up.

And then there was the flyover…
Holy crap was there a flyover.

With a 16-stair run up the back and a drop-in steep enough to stop more than a few folks in their tracks it was just our kind of fun! As Erik put it, “there are three ways to go over the flyover: The fast way, the slow way, and the REALLY slow way. The fast way is to run up the steps and ride down the other side. The slow way is to dismount and run over the three barricades underneath the flyover. The really slow way is to get to the top of the flyover, chicken out, and go back down the stairs!” As intimidating as the flyover was we saw most folks going up and over the top by the end of the day. The Men’s A category did not get the option and everyone had to go over the top.

The Lumberyard came out and put together what may be one of the most adorable Kiddie Cross courses EVER. Pumpkins and barnyard animals?! Seriously, so good.

In what was likely one of the more entertaining stories of the day everyone watched Erik Tonkin battle it out against two other Team S + M riders for first place in the Men’s A category. Patrick Means, Sean Babcock and Erik played leapfrog for the first several laps before a mechanical set Patrick back. With two laps to go Erik finally widened the gap between himself and Sean, but in a smile-infused feat of strength Sean caught up and pulled ahead in the final lap to take the top of the podium.

Apparently stoke CAN make you faster! Just ask Anna Grace from Team HiFi. Her perma-smile made her so fast that every photo we tried to catch of her came out blurry. Faster than our camera’s shutter speed, and on a single speed!

Thanks again to all the race sponsors who helped make this race a huge success, and to all that made the short trip to Sandy and threw down. See you all next year! You know Erik’s already working on making the next course layout even more evil.

More of the photos we took at the race are below. There are additional photos that can be found on Michael Boyd Photography‘s Facebook
And in this gallery!