I’ve been so inspired by Brett Favre’s comeback battle to the NFL that I have decided to make a comeback to my blog. 

It hasn’t been easy, but I don’t think its been as hard as the NFL drama.  I once read in a blog by Sabine Dukes, founder of Velo Bella, something very clever.  It went like this, “It’s not that haven’t I been blogging, its just that its all written in my head.”  Never, in a million years, could I have said it better.  And I just saw that Sabine announced today that her VeloBellaBabble site is moving somewhere with more bling and less babble.

So in between then and now, I have been at the Cascade Cycling Classic in Bend, Oregon.  Ah, Oregon . . . I am so proud to be a Native Oregonian and I desperately pine for the day that I can move back to the land of greenness, soft clouds, bikes, nice people, and delicious ice cream.  If you have never been to Cascade, let me tell you that you are missing something.  Sure, its a hard race.  But the Down Town Twilight Crit with thousands of specators and the cool dips in the Deschutes River make up for every foot of climbing in that race bible. 

Thats me in blue.  Looks like a downhill part of the race.

The race was great, I had a few places in the top ten but unfortunately no podiums for the week of racing.  And now I am back home and plugging away with a few more big race trips left on my schedule for the year, including the Nationals TT and Road Race, which I am eagerly anticipating to see the course.  Profile has been out for sometime, but its very different to see the hills in person.  So I guess I will wait and see.  And ride.

Today on the airplane I was fortunate enough to sit next to an old guy who was very curious about the sport of cycling.  He seemed to know a thing or two about the European Tours and whatnot, but he really seemed to know a some stuff about this thing called a “pelotron”.

Of course, I knew he was referring to the peloton and I took a quick sec to correct him once or twice.  But he continued on with this pelotron business and dammit the name has stuck in my head. 

And, I can see why.  A pelotron is obviously so much faster, so much more aerodynamic, than a regular old peloton.  One might even say its chic. It’s very high-tech, like something you might propel through a partical accellerator or some sort of mass spectrometer gettup (for the life of me, I cannot remember what one of those thingies is for or even looks like, but I do know that we talked alot about it in Organic Chemistry which was a class that I seemed to glaze over in a cloudy mind state due to cycling.  To be honest, it was a class I seemed to glaze over several times in college). 

So you may race in a peloton, but I will be racing in a peletron from now on. 

While we were in Philly last week, we discovered something very cool.  I do not mean the “royal we” here, I mean Chrissy, Lara K, and me.  Just a block away from our very centrally located host house, we found this strange bicycle art project on South Street in Central City Philly. 

It started as one man’s project on an abandoned lot in 1967.  And it grew to take over almost an entire city block, now known as the Magic Garden (I don’t really like the name either).  Glass bottles, broken mirrors, your grandma’s dishes, and bike wheels all smashed together to make a space from another world. 

I read one little piece inside this crazy place where the artist explains why he likes to use bike wheels.  It went something like this: the bicycle wheel is amazing because you can see straight through it, yet provides so much structural integrity.  Obviously not referring to any disks. 

Sure, Philly and DC have their monuments n stuff, but this kind of stuff is way better.  Way more real than any marble-pillared big old building dedicated to dead presidents.  I feel lucky that we found this gem in the city. 

So Philly race came and went without air-conditioning, an Irish pub was packed and gross with racers, and now me and some Blue Diamontes are in Minnesota for the Nature Valley Grand Prix.  Tough race this one, looks like a 140 starters and chances of flash floods for the first crit on Wednesday. 

I don’t think I have ever mentioned this, but as of Wednesday, flash floods are actually my favorite riding conditions. 

Or something.   

Sometimes I ask myself: what oh what could I have done to deserve a race like Sea Otter every year?  Last year we had some sort of instantaneous flood thingy, this year we had arctic winds n stuff.  It was so cold Hannah and Lara decided to race in their ValueAct BLUE FLUFFY super hot casual wear. 

Historically, Sea Otter has not been the best race for me.  Something about 80some times up this really steep hill puts a damper on the situation, but whatever. . . getting vertigo on the downhill corkscrew totally really makes up in entertainment for the suffering on the uphill.  Right?

Well I guess it’s time to play NAME THAT BOOTY for the week.  I will be at Anniston and Roswell GA so the winner can claim their prize there, or at a later date.  Oh yeah, the last winner was none other than Mr. Race-Announcer-Extraordinaire, David Towle.  The man’s got it going on . . . the voice, the brains, the charm, and the uncanny ability to recognize Dave McCook’s booty from an obscure photograph.

And I guess what I’ve learned from this photograph is that helmets really do make dents in your forehead, but they are still really important for protecting your brain cuz the pavement does not play nice.  And since RK is at Gila, what do I care anyway? I’ve got some wild nights of blogging and bad t.v. ahead of me this week!

The end.

ValueAct teammies HB Banks and Hot Sato say warming up is fun.  I prefer to just take pictures. 

Devon Vigus from Strawberry Giant will not leave his clothes on.  I don’t get it, but atleast he leaves them on during races (usually).

Whoever can guess who’s booty this is gets a big huge Yellow Bug prize.  I’ll give you one hint: it’s not mine;)

On the women’s side, international power house Ina Tuetenberg launched attack after attack after attack.  High Road’s also got some women that look an awful lot like Ina on a bike these days, so it was a little tricky for me to tell them apart.  Cover cover cover, finally one stuck and I could see Blue Diamonte Sato up there pedaling away - phew! So we all chilled out in the pack, Colavita road some tempo stuff and I tried a couple attacks towards the end to try out some tricks.  Finally Colavita and Tibco set up some powerhouse trains for the lead out and I managed to pop around most of them for second in the field sprint and 8th over all with the Sato finishing third behind Ina and Brooke M!  So we had Sato on the podium, prize money, burritos and some rootbeer to round out the afternoon. 

And of course there was the cycling tragedy yesterday with Kristy and Matt, making it so all this was just nothing when your friends are . . . are what . . . are gone.   This event is so tragic, it hurts me, it scares me, and it just makes me plain old sad. 

I just got off the phone with my friend and off-road monster cyclist Dan K Harris and when we said good bye he said something that made sense:

“We got this life to live, you gotta keep living it.”

And so that’s what I’ll do. 

Can’t quite fall asleep so I thought I’d banter on here about the start of the season.  Last season was a handful.  I felt alot of responsibility to help the ValueAct team expand for 2008 and, alot of pressure to perform, and hectic schedule - it was alot to recover from. 

In preparation for a very full NRC schedule this year, I have taken my time getting ramped up for this season.  Have only raced once so far (Santa Rosa) and I am just recently getting going with some hot intervals.  Next big team race is Sequoia.  Today I started my workout with enthusiasm to crush it on the bike.  It made me feel happy, weather was good, 2 cups of coffee, no leg warmers - I was living large.  By the end of my workout I had inflicted enough suffering on myself that my mood changed (or maybe my caffeine high was wearing thin?) and I was feeling a little negative. 

Some people like Hernando have such sickening and endless enthusiasm for suffering on the bike - I envy him. 

I am, however, not one of those people.  Love the ride, but easy like Sunday morning is more my style than a lunch time hammer fest.  Intervals are a love-hate relationship for me, I love the feeling of accomplishment I get but I don’t actually like to do them.  Still, they always get done. 

So finally I feel the need to pay my dues in the Central Valley (another love-hate relationship, more emphasis on the love than the hate) and race at CVC this weekend.  Cool course downtown in the Tower District of Fresno and it looks like the women’s field is super star with High Roads, Colavita, and then all the West Coast teams. 

I was also terribly entertained today that cyclingnews.com used “Nobody puts baby in the corner” as a subheading in their news report for women’s cycling in North America.  80’s movies are a constant source of inspiration.

And now I gotta go to bed.