for the Nature Valley Grand Prix. The race starts tomorrow night with down town St. Paul criterium. Right now I am laying in bed listening to my ipod and messing around with my computer - so tired today. Hannah is sleeping on the air mattress near mine, in the corner. She has had the Philly SARS flu (stole that name from Mike Jones) all week and she is not doing so hot today.

We have three host kids. Two teenagers who are world class speedskaters and junior cyclists, then a little kid tame Artyom from Russia. They are cool and showed us around riding today, the mom is running the next Olympic Training Center from this house I think. The kids are also world class athletes in Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero and they like to play it in our bedroom. Somehow it appears that Hannah has slept through these performances today, which is a talent in its own right.

My camera is still out of batteries, so I don’t have any fantastic pictures for anyone. I could easily get new batteries, but I am too f*@#ing poor to cough up the money. But I do have photos these from Philly:

Joining the team for Nature Valley is Marni Hambleton from Canuckia and super start Jill McLoughlin from Touchstone. Both are rock star girls and I am excited to be racing with both of them, as well as the rest of the ValueAct girls.

traveling across the country today. Yesterday was the Philly race, which is the bomb, but not for me. Mmm, lots of things went wrong. I don’t want to talk about it.

Today’s travel started out a litle rough for Taitt, Hannah and I. We went out last night after the race and, even though we woke up at 10 am, the morning came just a little too quickly for all of us. On our way to the Philly airport, we hit a rough patch of traffic. And by “rough patch”, I mean stand-still, grid-lock, turn-off-the-renta-car, talk-to-the-trucker-next-to-you type of thing. Eventually, we made it to the airport, and even with time to spare. I have to admit that I secretly love traffic jams. Just like I love the Central Valley, California. Ok, a little different. But what I like is that we can’t do anything about it. I just have to sit there. I can’t clean anything, I can’t check my email, I can’t do anything at all except just wait it out patiently and relax. Listen up people, learn to the love what you can’t control. Just try it, ok.

First flight from Philly to Dallas/Fort Worth went well, and even got my bike on the airplane for FREE (thank you American). I am a little bothered by race yesterday and I feel bad for the kid next to me on the flight who looked like he was about 15 because I think I may have been talking to myself outloud. Oops. Get used to it, everybody is crazy deep down. I had the window seat and when I asked if he could let me out to use the bathroom, he just scooted back in his chair like I was supposed to crawl over him to get out of there. No thanks, teeny bopper, I definitely can’t do that sort of stuff . . . especially in my Lulu hot pants.

The Dallas/Fort Worth airport sports posters that boast its size matches that of Manhattan. Thats cool, except when you are lost and lugging a huge team backpack full of heavy stuff. Which is what I am doing because all my luggage is overweight and the airport employees don’t want to shuffle it around from plane to plane. Which means I have to shuffle it around myself. As I was passing Brookstone (this airport is a mall/airport in-one), I decided to get myself a massage for about an hour in the massage chairs and catch up on my daily banter with my mom. When the Brookstone people finally had their fill of me, I stopped in the bux to treat myself to a drink, which never came. I got tired of waiting, I snagged the venti iced soy chai latte that nobody had claimed and it really hit the spot. I suspect that it was more expensive than my original drink order, but my time has a value and I think me and Starbucks evened out somewhere in the exchange.

Now I will talk about the race. Started fast and I did a really good job of keeping our Katie-World-Champ-Mactier at the front, out of the wind, and safe of crashes. Really good job. Such a good job that I couldn’t quite make it up the hill with the rest of the girls. That’s cool, cuz I did my job like a rockstar and thats hard to do. It takes a lot put your nose in the wind at a big race. And to show, I had a few moments of not-so-famed-fame being on the big screen in downtown Philly as I led the pack through Logan Circle on lap 1. And Katie was up there for ValueAct in the sprint. And the rest of the Value girls did great, hanging in there for the field sprint, with little Hannah Banana in the prize money too.

I am still in Dallas. Why am I in Dallas? I don’t know why, but I like it here.

Men’s Fashion in Dallas Airport: Light colored jeans, collared shirt tucked in, and cowboy boots and a matching belt buckle.

Women’s Fashion in Dallas Airport: confused, very confused.

Ok, three hour lay-over is coming to an end.