Richard is off in Vegas, and I’m tending full-time to the PEZ site right now. It makes for some busy, entertaining days. I like it.

Ashley and I have spent the last week relaxing for the most part. Well, relaxing when it comes to bike riding. We both ended up pretty sick at the end of last week, coupled with Noah’s Flood here in Georgia, so we took some well-advised rest.

I’m ready to get going again though!

I’ve spent most of the last week setting up what I hope will be my educational endeavour for the next year and beyond: photography. I really want to make a big push to learn as much as possible, practice, and make myself into a solid photographer. When Ashley and I head back to Europe, I don’t want to return as an amateur. I want to be confident in my abilities, have a good idea about what I’m doing, and know that I can take good pictures. So that’s my new goal…along with bike riding. I’m spending a ton of time watching tutorials, reading books, and taking lots of pictures. I should have some new ones up soon on Flickr. They’re nothing spectacular, but I’m practicing some different elements that I’ve never done before.

Anyhow, lots more work. Ashley pulled an all-nighter last night, but it seems to have gone well for her. At the bare minimum, she got all seven bonus questions right. That has to be a good indicator for the rest of the test.

More soon!

The Greenville Cycling Classic has been cancelled for 2009. Pat just told me. I’m kind of sad about that. It was a great race, and I had big plans to ride amazing-ish or something. Oh well. Guess that means the bike racing ends even sooner now. Yikes. Only two more weekends, and then I’m back to just plain bike practice for a long, long while. Sounds good. Ok, back to work.

Getting around Athens, Georgia during the school year is an outright mess. Daily, I am amazed by the absolute insanity of thousands of students making their way to and from home to class.

Just today, I saw:

A girl cross the street on a crosswalk through a stopped one lane of traffic – that’s fine – but continued forward WITHOUT looking AT ALL in the opposite direction for oncoming traffic. Of course there was lots of oncoming traffic, and she very nearly met her maker this morning courtesy of a Ford F150. Then, she had the audacity to get angry at the driver, who was merely driving along, happy to assume that some crazy student wasn’t going to jump out of nowhere.

Speaking of trucks, as I was heading home on some back neighborhood roads, I got stuck behind a Dodge Ram XXXXXXL sized truck. It could barely fit through the neighborhood. There was one section where cars were parked on both sides of the road – he had to pull his mirrors in to get by.

It was disgusting watching someone driving around a 9-foot tall, 12-foot wide monster truck. I drove a giant truck this weekend for a little while, but it had a purpose – it was for hauling large trailers. The purpose of this monster truck today? Some awful attempt at being cool…I guess.

Moving on towards the welcoming confines of our driveway, I saw a poor bike rider riding home from school riding in the gutter. She wouldn’t ride in the road. Refused to. Bikers in this town are pretty much as dumb as the drivers. If you’re going to ride a bike, do use the road, and if you’re going to ride a bike, do take advantage of the fact that you’re on a bike and not in a car. I’ve seen bike riders wait through multiple lights with traffic when they have every right to roll up on the shoulder and pass through the intersection. I’m not advocating my typical aggressive bike riding, but come on, there have to be some actual benefits to riding a bike, and if you find yourself waiting through multiple lights to get through an intersection…something is very wrong.

I have so many more tales of woe in the Athens transportation melee. I just had to get a few off of my chest. I guess I’m glad people aren’t hurt daily. That’s a good thing.

More soon…and on a completely different note.

I’m finally getting around to responding to the many emails I got following the two articles I wrote for PEZ on my USPRO adventure. I’ve been smiling the biggest smile writing back to each and every email. I didn’t realize it for awhile, but it really makes me happy to know that someone enjoyed my ridiculous little story of ’success.’ It’s special to me when people write and say that it was motivating or that it made them want to get out and ride or that they could relate because they had done x to y on z ride. I just think that’s the absolute best. Bike riding is such an amazing activity. 

I feel like everyone can relate to my little drop in the bucket story. Every ride can end up with a big triumphant smile on one’s face. It doesn’t have to be a solo effort at a big race, a race win, or domination on a group ride. I do my best to make sure I do something every time I get on my bike to get that happy feeling. I just love riding my bike. I love riding hard, easy, long, short. I love the feeling of getting fit, of riding outside, exploring my area. It’s just the best thing in the world. 

For everyone that wrote to me about those articles: thanks. You’ve all inspired me to not ever forget to love riding my bike.

Holy moly. I’ve been working on a tiny 10 inch netbook for months, and before that I was on a crappy screened laptop. I’ve honestly never been able to work on a real deal nice computer monitor…that is until a few days ago. Ashley’s parents brought her old computer when they passed through, but as I mentioned earlier, her old monitor had moved on to a happier monitor place. So, we headed over to Best Buy, shelled out a few too many dollars, came home, set it up, and WOW, 23 inches of flat screen beauty. I saw my pictures for the first time in all of their beauty. I never knew that they looked that good…or that big! The pictures look huge on this screen. I don’t mean all of this in a, oh my, my pictures are the best kind of way, but in the, oh my, that camera sure does take nice pictures kind of way.

I haven’t ridden as much as I had hoped this week, but I still got in some good rides. I’m racing tomorrow at the US100k in Atlanta – it starts at 7 in the morning. Ouch. I think Ashley will be able to race too. I hope so. It’ll be a lot of fun for her I think.

This week, I hope to get back to doing some dirt road biking and then come Friday we’re heading back to Winston-Salem for the Carolina Cup. I’m looking forward to that. Ashley is excited too, because she should pick up some new old clothes from the Hamblens. She only has a few sets of clothes that actually fit her properly…scratch that, more like a few pieces of bike clothing that fit her well.

Ok, I need to do some biking before we head to Atlanta.

Yes, I became a father this morning, a father to a toddler boy with wings. Ashley’s parents drove through Athens en route to to Tennessee. They’re driving to see the baptism of their grandson, Avery, and to see their newest grandson (Ashley’s newest nephew). Anyhow, it was about time Ashley and I took over parenting responsibilities for her little one, so Mrs. Debbie and Dr. Steve were only too happy to drive a little out of the way to bring Narcissus, the cockatoo, to us. I like him a lot. He’s on my shoulder right now as I type this. They got in late last night and stayed the night before leaving this morning…only after an awesome breakfast at Big City Bread though.

I took him to the bank earlier. I thought he might sit next to me in the car. Negative. He prefers the crow’s nest (er, cockatoo’s nest?) perch of my shoulder, or even better, my right arm, which is attached to the steering wheel. I think I’m going to have my hands full giving Ashley and Narcissus enough attention.

They also brought Ashley’s old desktop. I was and still am so excited about having a steady computer with lots of power and a big, awesome screen. Unfortunately, when we turned the monitor on, it didn’t work. I’m still a little deflated. We’ll fix that later though: Best Buy here we come.

And yes, I also mowed the lawn yesterday. Jacob can stop harrassing me about it now. Ha.

Bike practice is going great this week. I’ve put in two hard rides over the past two days, and I’m looking to get in another good day today. Ok, back to work.

I don’t even know where to begin with the long tale that is yesterday. It was pretty much perfect.

I woke up early with Ashley, I got to hang out with my good friends Andy and Daniel and my new friend Toby. Ashley made me some awesome eggs and toast, and at this point, I was already having a good time.

We drove over to my team’s hotel, and I had one of those scary pro moments. Jonathan Kane, the team manager, took my bike away, fixed it up all nice, cleaned it, etc etc. I felt bad. I always get really self-conscious when that happens. It’s hard to feel like I deserve that kind of treatment.

After that, I went upstairs, pinned my number, put on my team kit for the first time, looked at in the mirror – here we go. I walked back downstairs and got on my bike for the first time – that was kinda funny. Tim and I rode our bikes the 30 minutes or so over to the race. It was a nice warm-up, a nice way to start the day. I was a bit giddy and most likely talked Tim’s ear off, but I come with a warning label – and that’s on the label.

When we got to the start area, we went to sign in, but Dave Towle (the voice of American bike racing) called me over and talked to me! It was really cool. He said he read my article, told everyone about how this was my first race back in a year. I was about ready to fall over at this point already – I had always thought about how cool it would be to talk to Dave Towle on stage at a bike race. Previously, one of my favorite moments, ever, in bike racing was when I got called up to the line by Dave Towle before the Stillwater Crit at the Nature Valley GP, so actually having a conversation on stage? That topped everything.

After that, I rolled back to the car telling everyone I saw that I had just talked to Dave Towle on stage. I don’t think anyone really cared, but I made sure to tell everyone.

I ended up back at the starting area soon after that. I saw a whole bunch of people I hadn’t seen in a long while, said hi, smiled a bunch, found Ashley, smiled even more. All the while, Darrell Parks, a great photographer who sometimes does work for PEZ, was taking pictures. I’d later come home to those pictures. So, so cool.

At 1pm, the race started. I started on the front row…and I immediately lost 50 places before the first turn. I’m still a little balky in the field after such a long time away. No big deal. So within a couple of kilometers I was back to my traditional place in a bike race: last wheel. The opening circuits were really quick. I was ok: I wasn’t going to get dropped, but if any gaps opened in front of me, it could have gotten ugly.

I breathed one of those long sighs of relief when we left the opening circuits – step 1 in my day had been completed: don’t get dropped on the opening circuits.

The race instantly slowed down as we left town. I took a few moments during this time to talk to different people in the field. I introduced myself to Floyd Landis and Andy Bajadali, that was awesome. I wanted to talk to Danny Pate, but he kinda scared me. I went from wondering if I might get dropped to thinking, well, they’re going slow now, why not attack? I rode up to the front asking different people what was going on in the race, because I had no idea. I found out that Dave Zabriskie had a minute on the field. So I attacked.

I put my head down, afraid to look back. I didn’t know what would be worse – to find out the whole field was on my wheel or to find out that no one had followed. If the whole field had followed, then I was the jackass that ruined the easy moment. If no one had followed, then I was the jackass that got to ride all by his lonesome for as long as possible.

When I looked back – no one was there. In fact, I was making very good progress. It wasn’t long before the motorbike came up to me and told me I was one minute behind Zabriskie. I thought that was mildly humorous, I certainly wasn’t planning on riding across to the four time US National TT champion. I just wanted to know how big the gap was to the field…and most importantly: how far was it to Paris Mountain? I mean, I could see the large hump of the mountain in the very near distance, but I wasn’t sure if the course zigged away for awhile. That really scared me. The Mavic guys said they figured it was only about a mile away, but I didn’t believe them until I came to the hill that leads to the right hand turn on to the climb.

THEN I took a deep breath, smiled, and realized that I’d be able to enjoy a ride up Paris Mountain all by myself. I had almost 90 seconds in hand on the field.

At this point, I was really excited, a group of my friends including my fiancee, Ashley, were about 500m up the road for me. I couldn’t wait to see how surprised everyone would be to see me, I couldn’t wait for Ashley’s expression, her surprise, her big smile.

Cleve Blackwell lives on the mountain and was throwing a big party. Everyone was there waiting to see the race. Cleve had been making fun of me two days before – he told me I’d get dropped the first time up, so as I approached I yelled to him: WHO IS OFF THE FRONT NOW?!?! I gave him a high five, let out a big holler. I was so amped up, I was almost sprinting through there, yelling at the same time, so right after I passed, it hit me that I was pedaling hard and barely breathing – ouch.

I recovered a bit, got back to the business of pedaling…and waving at everyone.

The climb really started to wear on me towards the upper half, but I kept myself going without too much difficulty by noticing how each and every person there was cheering ME, just me. That blew me away. When I got to the final steep pitch, the field was bearing down on me, but still I was off the front, and still, everyone was cheering for me. I managed to hold off all of the fast people and crossed the line second the first time over the climb. There was no KOM competition for the day, but still, I felt like it was worth taking mental note of that.

I drifted back into the pack giggling as we started the descent. I could have stopped right then. I had hit peak happiness on a bike I think. The race didn’t really seem to care about my little triumph, but no big deal. I was kinda tired after all of that, but I was starting to feel better in the field. The circuit in-town was once again intense, but apart from the fact that I had some major difficulties getting back onto the field after going back for bottles – no problem. I guess that means there was a problem…whatever.

Heading out of town, it slowed down a little bit, then it got fast heading into the climb the second time. I caught the tired as we hit the climb the second time. I made it a little ways up the climb then called it a day. It was funny though – at one point it was Andy Baker, Chris Monteleone, and me – a real TIME Factory Development Team reunion. haha. At the top of Paris, I turned around, headed back down to Cleve’s party, a beer, a Sprite, some watermelon, lots of laughs, a couple brownies, a shower, some of Cleve’s clothes, and of course Ashley. It was awesome.

Ashley was with Andy’s girlfriend, Tori, so we got to hang out with her a fair bit. We like her. She gets two thumbs up. Good work, Andy.

This is getting really long and stuff…that’s the basic story. It was an incredible day – one that I’ll never forget. I may or may not ever get the chance to do that race again, but at least I know I maximized my one shot. I’ll be content and very happy with that when I look back.