Just a quick post here . . . so proud of my teammies in Gila!  Leah Goldstein won stage one and the team successfully defended her jersey yesterday!

Yesterday was the travel day from hell for me.  Took 15 hrs to get from SF to Atlanta and I still haven’t made it to Alabama yet.  Spent the night at a motel near the airport by my lonesom, the other girls are coming to get me as I write.  Yippee for teammates!  Interesting to note is the housecleaner must be a Shania Twaine fan as she has been singing her “Looks Like We Made It/Still Together” or whatever its called at the top of her lungs all morning.  Between you and me here, I don’t think she has a career in vocals. 

I am starved from all this travel on a diet of Powerbars and I hope hope hope that the girls are willing to make a quick stop at the Waffle House down the street for me!  I need to refuel and get energized for these crits this weekend, I am feeling like I got run over by a semi-truck this morning.

It all started today with a trip to the Oakland “Big” Long’s Drugstore.  It’s just like a regular Long’s, except it is ghetto super-sized and has a hotdog stand in it too (and a clothing department, an autosection, groceries, and an extensive selection of hoop earrings).  I’m in a rush, so I park my car and start hustling through the parking lot when a 14 year old kid stops me and informs me that he can pull the dent out of the rear side panel of my Volvo wagon for $80 bucks - all while I shop.

I thought about this for a minute.  And it wasn’t the price that got me.  It was the convenience.  It was the spontaneity of the situation that reeled me in, hook line and sinker.  The real beauty of the situation was that I didn’t even have to look for a new parking spot, he and what looked like his cousins could do the work right then and there.

Admittedly, I was hesistant but with not much to lose, Roman and I headed into Long’s drugs and gave the ok for go-ahead on the auto-body work. 

And when we came out, things looked beautiful as promised.  And it also looked like the Soccer-Mom minivan neighboring my wagon had recieved some improvements as well - these guys musts work fast.  So we happily forked over the cash, enthused with our easy-bake car repair experience.  I immediately felt a bond with these parking-lot handy-men and had to re-cap for them how my Volvo recieved every little dent and knick in it’s body. I was so enthused by the experience, in fact, that I insisted that we then go and get a car wash as well. 

And after that I insisted that we must find a hub-cap replacement - tonight.  So we went to Kragen Autoparts where I decided that $44.99 is way out of my price range for new hub caps, especially since I am actually saving my money to buy tires for some new rims I found on craigslist.org last year - lets face it, hub caps are for suckers.  But what was in my price-range was some blue auto-body spray paint.  Which Roman suggested might be a great project for tomorrow.  During the day, when its light and we can actually see that the color matches and whatnot. 

But I have no patience.  And my front bumper looked awful.  And a little spray paint can’t hurt anything - unless you eat it. 

As far as I can tell, my improvements look really really good - especially from a distance and in the dark.

Our Redlands host fam, the Pompa’s, live in a solar-powered house.  It’s cool, the roof of their house is lined with solar panels that powers their electricity, heats hot water, and runs all the pool and hot tub stuff.  I also live in a solar-powered 1920’s apartment building, which is awesome because its nice to the planet and basically eliminates my PG&E bill and still has some charm. 

Well that Taitt Sato is smart and took everything a step further by researching very cute n hip solar powered earth conscious manufactured homes.  And when I saw this stuff on her computer screen last week while sneak-reading over her shoulder, I was very impressed.  It’s nice to have smart friends because they always introduce you to something new even when they don’t know they are doing it. 

And I have also been reading a very excellent and earth-concsious book: The Omnivore’s Dilemma by SF East Bay homeslice Michael Pollan.

Which is a very good read and extrememly informative regarding what and where most people eat their everyday foods. I highly recommend it, especially for an athlete because we consume more food than most people* (well atleast I do, I can’t really speak for the rest of you skinny people).

*as a side note, I know of one wildly successfull cyclists who, as far as I can tell, really only eats micro-waved cheesey quesadillas and drinks margaritas to wash it down.  This person will remain anonymous for the purposes of this post.

And somehow Pollan and his Berkeley smarty pants friends come up to the conclusion that his three-person family’s meal at McDonalds actually required 1.3 gallons of petroleum oil to produce, transport, package, and serve hot under the Golden Arches.

And so under the influence of the Pompa’s, Taitt Sato, and author Michael Pollan I have decided that it would be just so fantastically green and dreamy to live in a solar-powered, green-constructed, manufactured small little home surrounded by my own sustainably-growing produce and sweet farm animals (that I would have to eat because I am an omnivore).

And of course I would still have plenty of time to ride and since I would be living in a trailer thingy, I guess I would need the pink flamingos too.

It happens all the time.  I get sick of blogging . . . then I take a break for a few weeks. 

So somewhere between falling in love with my new puppy, Redlands, more crashes, and everyday life, I just didn’t have what it takes to be a good Missing Saddle Blogger.

Oh well.

And I failed.  I have big plans for top-secret fun stuff over here, but I need these racey pictures (and by racey I mean bike race-oriented, not hot n steamy . . . I just thought it might be cool to play on words) and I left the trusty 2003-era digital Kodak at home. 

But Redlands was very fun and we had a few mishaps on the first day that ended up costing us some GC standings, but over-all the Blue Diamontes (code language for the ladies of ValueAct) were gems in the peloton.  Leslie, Joe, Caty, and Caroline were the best host fam a girl could ask for.

And so even though there were no podium kisses for me at Redlands, I’d just like to say that it’s fun to be a bike racer.

Head over heals for this little one.