Originally Posted by calamarichris

Can't speak for the rest of the state, but personally:

~Cyclocross seems idiotic to me. (No offense to those of you who enjoy it.) "Cyclocross: a bike race made as stupid as possible, yet people still do it!" And yes, I've tried it.
~Thanks to crashes & marathons, my left knee is on its last legs. Crashes are common in races, and I'm not willing to risk my riding future on someone else's judgment or desperation.
~There's too much other fun stuff to do here in SoCal (hiking, mountains, skiing, surfing, kayaking, women, etc.), and it takes a lot of time and focus to train for racing. Missoula is boring as hell by comparison (no judgment or offense intended), so it's much easier to focus on one thing, like training, on your studies/reading, or more commonly IMO, watching football/hockey/drinking awful 3.2 beer.