I think my car
is dying. I drove home from Winston on Thursday and somewhere along the way
5th gear disappeared, and now there is some kind of horrible noise coming from
the innards of my auto. I took the car in today to see what the damage might
be…I’m not terribly eager to find out what might be wrong. A new car or a
large repair fee does not quite fit in with my budget of little. ha.

Bikin is going
pretty alright at the moment. The weather has been crappy at best, but since
my Colorado baptism a few weeks ago, I’m still pretty content. 35 degrees, cloudy,
and thinking about raining? Great! It’s still better than 12. Still, I wouldn’t
mind a little 60 or so to come knocking on my window one of these mornings.

The most important
race of the season is coming up this weekend: the dirt road race on Sunday!
Jacob planned out a bad ass route for this weekend and I can’t wait for it.
I rode the course Tuesday. It was hard.

Distance: 85k
Dirt Distance: 37k of which 24ish will be in the last hour.
Dirt Sections: 8
Longest dirt section: 7.1k
Shortest dirt section: 980m
Shortest gap b/w dirt sections: literally 10 seconds at the most
Longest gap: 10k

There is tons more
info on thebikegame so check that out. It should be a good time.

I worked out at
the gym yesterday after my ride. Jacob convinced me to come into the gym and
work out with another trainer there, Miranda, as well. That was tons of fun.
I went in like a zombie – I was so tired after bike practice, but the workout
there was so much fun (and tough!)…when I left I felt a hundred times better.
I’m still pretty psyched about it. I hope I can do that more in the future.
It just shows for the millionth time – everything is more fun with a group of
fun people…well, in this case it was two people, but still. Brilliant.

I’m going out for
a big long bike ride today with Myerson. I’m just going to ride and enjoy the
good weather and hopefully enjoy it for a long while today. I’ve got big plans
for the loop today…

Ok, that’s all,
bye.

I’m hanging out
in Winston for the moment debating on whether to drive back down to Athens tonight.
We’re supposed to get some kind of narsty winter mix tomorrow and it would probably
be better to leave quick like, but I’m tired, so I dunno.

I also have to
figure out how to fit four bikes in my car, plus my own.

Last night we had
a bike building jamboree at Ken’s Bike Shop. Matt Canter, Mark Hekman, and Jon
Hamblen built the bikes, while I served as fluffer and made sure they had everything
they needed to build the bikes. It was pretty cool, because after three hours
all of the bikes were built, and now I get to play Santa for four people when
I head back down to Athens.

I’ve been riding
with Marky a lot. We had a grand ol time this weekend. We did something like
eleven hours this weekend, but Sunday’s ride was the best. We rode hard from
the first minute till we cracked about five hours later. Along with the fact
that it was one of the coolest routes I’ve ever stumbled on, it was a damn fine
day.

I like riding bikes.
I realized that again this weekend. It’s fun. I get the feeling that for some,
the training is a means to an end – racing. You have to do the work to do well
in the races. That’s all well and good, but I feel like I’m the opposite – racing
allows me to do what I really love: ride my bike. I love riding. Sure, I like
racing, it’s fun, it’s hard, new limits are often explored, bla bla bla, but
nothing, I mean absolutely nothing (for me at least), rivals that moment in
a ‘training’ ride when I look around and realize that there’s nothing I’d rather
be doing. I get that feeling every time I ride the dirt roads, every time I
ride in the mountains in Colorado (Georgia, North Carolina, whatever), every
time I ride north of Winston towards Virginia, every time I ride in Germany.

I guess this is
a pretty good set up.

I rode with Marky
this morning (I guess that’s yesterday now since it’s Thursday today) and that
was a slightly different story. He had to ride by 8 to get in a four hour ride
so he could be to work by 1. It was 25 when we left…at 820. I’m not so good
with punctuality that early in the morning…especially when it’s frigid…and
even more especially because I left all my true winter clothes in Athens for
this trip to Winston (I always forget SOMETHING on these trips). I had many
numerous lots of layers to keep my body happy, and it even worked out ok in
the end. We got in another great ride and Mark left his house to go to work
right when he was supposed to be there. Perfect. Almost.

I actually feel
like a bike rider for the moment.

The ProTour teams are doin’ the team camp thing and the first ProTour race of the season stands near. Enjoy this last bit of rest because the racin’ season is on the stoop about to knock on your door. This rockin’ mid-January mornin’ we’ve got: Spain, Cross, Floyd, Sixes, and lots MORE! (more…)

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

The other day on
my bike was a true Comedy of Malfunctions. This was the road spray day.

We rode about an
hour and then Jacob realizes his cranks are coming loose. That’s not so good,
especially since we don’t have an allan wrench big enough to accomodate a re-tightening.
That was the first malfunction. Not much of a malfunction for me, but definitely
one for Jacob’s achilles, which didn’t enjoy the extra crank movement.

A little while
later, Shawn’s tube goes psssssssss, and he’s got a flat. So that was malfunction
number two. That’s not too spectacular though…it gets better from here.

About 5 minutes
after that, as we’re going down a fun dirt downhill, I take this inside line
and out of nowhere I’m skidding and going fast and I’m trying to look down to
see what’s going on with my bike and look up at the same time to see what’s
REALLY going on on the road in front of me, and it just all happened so fast.
I saw rocks and ruts and mud ahead of me, and somewhere in my rear wheel there
was some kind of black thing all knotted up in there.

I eventually came
to a hault, and Jacob and Shawn breathed a sigh of relief that I hadn’t fallen
down and taken them both out, and then I realized that my spare tube had somehow
unzipped my saddle bag, fallen out, and looped itself through my brakes, cassette,
and rear wheel, to form one giant this-wheel-ain’t-turnin-one-bit stopper. It
was a foreign looking array of tube. BUT, I didn’t fall down, the tube still
might be ok, and it was a typical me situation = odd but no harm done.

About 20 minutes
after THAT, we’re coming off the dirt roads and about to hit some kind of wall-like
road that makes me think of sherpas and rock climbing and I really hate this
damn hill. Of course, I’m trying to shift into an easier gear as quickly as
possible and then POW something hits me in the head and it hurts. What the shit?
I look down, feel around by my shifter, well I’ll be hogtied if my shifter just
didn’t SNAP right off and hit me in the head!

So I wasn’t going
to be shifting into an easier gear anymore on this day. It was ok though, I
actually was in a nice spot gearing-wise, just as long as I didn’t shift to
a harder gear (because of course, I had lost the lever allowing me to shift
back to EASIER gears). So we keep on ridin ridin ridin and we come up on another
big hill, but no biggie, I’m still in a good gear, and then I look down and
realize that shit I had shifted somewhere back along the way and hadn’t even
noticed it. So now I’m stuck in my hardest gear.

It was another
dumb moment for me. It wasn’t so bad though, just a string of malfunctions.
I was in a good mood and the day was young and it was warm and it was all something
to laugh about. Right?

I’m back in Winston
again. It doesn’t feel like I’ve been gone for more than a few days. The only
sure way to know I’ve been gone a significant spell is to check out the progress
on Jamie’s house, and quite a bit has been done since I left somewhere around
the beginning of December.

I had an awesome
four day block of bikin in Athens before coming up here. I’m about to embark
on another good block starting tomorrow, but I wouldn’t mind thinking back to
my mini camp in Athens…if that’s ok with you. The last day stands out in my
mind, because a funny thing happened: I finally realized that Jacob was making
fun of me, or at least making a joke: from over two years ago.

So it’s like this:
Sometime back in the winter of 2005/2006, it was raining. I wanted to ride,
Jacob wasn’t so keen, because there’s a rule: in Athens, you’re never more than
a day away from good weather. Why struggle and suffer through a day of rain
when you can just wait a day or just a half day till it’s nice again. I wasn’t
very keen on the idea and still wanted to go.

At one point, he
said: you should go ride the dirt roads, there’s no road spray there (as in
the water coming off your tires and spraying your face, shins, and ass). I thought,
well, that’s a great idea! I didn’t go ride that day though, it started to really
pour after that, but ever since then, I’ve always thought – well, if it rains,
I should just go and ride the dirt roads, because there’s no spray there.

Fast forward to
2008 and it’s a pretty wet morning and we’re riding along and I’m getting sprayed
all over my face and ass and I look over to Jacob and say, shouldn’t we just
ride the dirt roads? He looks at me kinda funny, and says, sure, whatever dude.
So we head on over to the dirt roads and I take to them like a little child
in a McDonald’s play area, and all is well for about 30 seconds and then I take
some sand spray to the eyeball and then it hits me:

Jacob was kidding/making
fun of me all those years ago. Sure there’s not much WATER spray, it’s more
like a DIRT spray that gets lifted up and strewn across your body, and in my
case: my eyeballs.

When I realized
this, I started laughing. I could barely see out of my right eye from the awful
pain caused by tiny sand grains against my eyeball, but it was all just so funny
to me. It was a joke two years in the making.

So, no, there’s
no way to escape the road spray when it rains…unless you’ve got fenders.

That’s all.

So I was riding
today in Athens and I was going kinda hard, and at some point I realized that
I was on the old UGA road race course, back from my first season of bikin. I
raced it as part of the SEC Championship C Race, and I remember it vividly to
this day. I always seem to remember obscene suffering.

What really stands
out in my mind though, and what really got me riding hard over the last part
of this three hour effort today was the ass hole rider from Florida. We all
sucked as C riders. It’s at best a Cat 5 race, and at worst a watered down Cat
5 race, but somehow this jack ass rider from Florida must have missed that important
fact. The final selection was made and he was just hammering us into the ground,
and whenever he’d pull off he’d mock me. Literally, he’d laugh at me.

That first year
of bikin, I don’t think I ever hurt as bad as I did that day, and the only reason
I didn’t get dropped: I hated that guy. I would rather fall over and lose both
legs than get dropped by this indomitable dick from the University of Florida.
I still don’t know his name, probably never will, but to this day, the mere
thought gets me fired up.

Kinda like that
East Point Crit back in 2005…Jacob, Tony Scott, and I were in a break. I had
finally made a break! I was stoked to make a break, and even happier to be in
a break with Jacob. Jacob was killing me though and I couldn’t pull through,
I was doing well just to not get dropped, and since I couldn’t pull through,
Tony wanted to be rid of me. So he continually tried to take me off the back,
while Jacob just did his own solo thing. He would take me off the back of the
group, attack me, bridge back up to Jacob, and I’d flounder and struggle and
suffer and groan, but just like that sunny April day in Athens, I wasn’t going
to get dropped. No goddamn way.

I know it wasn’t
personal, it’s just racing sometimes I guess, but at that moment, on that bumpy
rectangle of road, he might as well have been Stalin.

Jacob has gotten
the same response from me several times during the time we’ve trained together,
and my response and ensuing strength were impressive…well, for me at least.

Hate is a fantastic
motivator. One thing I never want to provide another racer in a bike race is
hate. I don’t like the idea of someone chasing me out of hate, because I know
how awful hard I can go in such situations. Pat is a big proponent of making
friends in bike races, and I think wiser ideas have rarely been spoken…at
least in a bike race. I thought about that a lot today, but not so much the
friend part, just the enemy part.

Well hell, look
at that, my name is in this article:

Ch-check
it out.

Or don’t.

Whew, at least
I didn’t get fired before the season starts. Oh wait, there’s still a couple
of months to go.

I’m headed back
home for Georgia tonight/tomorrow. I think I have the worst flight slot ever
– one that will ensure that I get no sleep tonight. I leave at midnight from
Denver. It’s only a three hour flight, but I gain two hours heading back east,
so I get in at 5 in the morning. Of course I’ll spend most of Saturday sleeping
probably, but I just realized that this shouldn’t be all that much fun. I’m
not complaining though. Don’t take this as a complaint. Just an observation
predicting future unpleasantness, that’s all.

Ok, maybe that
was complaining.

I’ve kind of eased
up on the biking over the past few days. I got really tired starting last Sunday,
and it hasn’t gotten all that much better since. I’m not sick or anything, just
plain tired. I did a couple of decent rides on Tuesday and Wednesday, but I
had nothin, so I figured it was time to pull the plug. I’ve never done this
much climbing in my life I don’t think. I’ve been doing loads of 2-3 hour rides
with over half of every ride being climbing. I hope that’s why I’m tired and
not something else.

It’s a good thing
I got tired, because the weather got perfect. It’s going to be 50 today. 50.
I rode on Wednesday and it was 30 something and I felt like I had moved to the
tropics. I was riding with only two or so layers on and not my entire cycling
wardrobe. I can’t imagine what 50 is going to feel like, which is why I’m about
to go ride.

I just checked
the weather and it’s supposed to be 70 in Athens next week. Holy moly. Good
thing I’m going back up to Winston. Ha.

I got my second
ever big deal massage yesterday (my first massage in August was two days before
I won the crit in Augusta, I have happy thoughts when I think of massages).
It was my parents Christmas present to me and it was a wonderful experience.
Apart from the awful pain, it was fantastic. I was so relaxed when I left there,
I could barely get up to do anything the rest of the day. I have to find a way
to make massages a part of my life on a regular basis.

I’m gonna go bikin
now I guess, then I’m taking my bike to the car wash, because as far as I can
figure, that’s about the only way the two week’s worth of road shit is coming
off, that or a pick axe.

k bye.