This is Taitt’s leg. Wow, lots of muscle!

MP: I’ve heard that sort of injury only happens to highly attractive and intelligent women, like you. And John Hunt (I’m referring to the broken tibial plateau, not the highly attractive and intelligent women part).

T Hot S: The real problem is that tibia is the main weight bearing bone in your body. You can crack it like a grain of wood if you have a fracture, so I have to be really careful. It’s so hard to be good, because it actually doesn’t hurt too bad if I stand and walk carefully at this point.

MP: Is the fracture north to south or east to west?

MYB and T Hot S together in action

Today we won the Santa Rosa Criterium. What a cool race! Down town Santa Rosa, kind of technical course, nice prize list for women, and lots of people out cheering for us.

Of course, I really could not have won this race without Taitt’s help. She basically had the field in tears, with a strong wind and she was just attacking and driving breaks! By the time I finally attacked, luckily everybody was too tired after chasing Taitt to respond or they just didn’t want to stick their nose in the wind (which is understandable - it was really windy!) Plus I could afford to take risks because I knew if I was caught before the finish line, Taitt would be in the field ready to handle the sprint. It was a win-win situation. The minties did a great job being agressive and I hear that they had a full lead-out train going to the finish line. Laura Charameda, I think she is a previous Champion of the Universe or something similar, took the field sprint with Taitt crossing the line for 3rd.
Cat’s Hill was also a great team race with Taitt taking the ever-competitive Queen of the Mountain competition for the second year in a row! Courtenay Brown took 3rd place and I finished in 4th place! Not bad for a team with only three people in the race! Karen Brems won for about the 20th time. I think she started winning that race when she was still in elementary school or something! Anyway, she is one crafty bike racer and very difficult to beat on that course. Of course, big thanks to LGBRC for putting so much energy into making Cat’s Hill the race that it is, one of the gems of the NCNCA calendar.

Well, The Yellow Bug Times has had a tremendous response the question of “Why does Taitt only have on one shoe cover?”

I’d like to say that one of my genius readers got it right, but truth be told . . . I’m not really sure what happened to it. But I can re-tell the experience that gave us the picture we are referring to below.

We all know that we were at the Ojai Garrett Lemire Grand Prix. Warming up. And I said, hey guys, lets get a team pic real fast on my camera. For the bloggers, you know. And all the ValueAct girls were like, cool. And they straightened their helmets, rubbed in the sunscreen, zipped up the jerseys. The whole nine yards - we like to look good.

And then comes Taitt. She strolls up with just one shoe cover? And I say, Taitt, where is your other shoe cover? She didn’t want to put it on. Too much effort. And who am I to fight with her over this? So I let it roll. F#@*k, if Taitt wants to race with just one shoe even, I don’t mind, long as she can still pedal. I guess you’d say the real answer to the question was self-sabotage.

But then when the picture came out, she was surprised to see that it was a head-to-toe shot. Not the waste up thing she was thinking of. And I liked the pic, so I put it on my blog anyway. Despite Taitt’s missing shoe cover.

But Miss Tracie Nelson answered the question (three times actually) and was particularly brilliant. Of course. She said that Taitt did not have on sponsorship shoes and so she put on one shoe cover on the side of Dave Toule’s anouncer stand. I’ll add in this hypothetically correct answer that the reason she only wore one was so that she could be sponsor correct on the announcer side, but combat the warm temperatures by foregoing the other shoe cover so she wouldn’t over heat.

One last final thing:

This weekend was the Garrett Memorial Criterium in Ojai California. Now, not to offend anyone from Ojai, but I don’t think it is the prettiest sounding name for a town.

But it turns out that Ojai is in fact great! We couldn’t believe charming all the small bungalows are and they put on a great NRC race! Our team finished 9th (MP), 10th (TS), and 18th(HB), so three in the money.

Overall, phenomenal team work, positive attitudes, team PR, and nice sunshine.

Anybody who can correctly tell me why Taitt (2nd, right) is wearing only one Defeet shoe cover can win . . . (let me think about this here) . . . a free, clean, and brand new Cytomax waterbottle from my personal collections. And a Cyto gel. No shipping to Canada.

Last night one of our team Aussie’s, Hannah Banks, finally arrived in Oakland. She is too cute! We went out for a team dinner and then I got to take her grocery shopping at Safeway. It’s her first time grocery shopping in the US, and I was a little disappointed to take her to plain old Safeway - kind a sad showing of the American grocery store. Of course, the Berkeley Bowl would have been ideal with their huge acreage and selection of produce, bulk, deli, cheeses, and organic everythin’ but it was late I didn’t have the energy to fight the nuts and granola hippie moms of Berkeley.

But it was still a fun trip to the store. I asked Hannah what she wanted to buy and she responded in Aussie speak, “Just some biscuits and muesli bars.” Ok, well thats new. Of course I can translate into Martina speak that means crackers (maybe?) and granola bars. The bar selection is weak and expensive in Safeway, so I take her to the snack/granola bar/sugary cereal aisle for some ride food. After I taught her what the “S’mores” flavor was all about (I’ve never been more proud to be American as when I was explaining exactly what the word was derived from . . . little piglets we are), she picked up a box of chocolate chip granola bars and of course, one of S’mores.

After that I showed her around frat row in Berkeley (she was actually really interested in these and she wanted to know about the secret hand shakes? Must be from the movies!). Then we cruised around the UC Berkeley campus and a little bit of the hills before I got her all settled into her new host house at the Cal MTB house (Thanks guys!).

Today we are heading out for a ride and then later maybe I will teach her how to drive my scooter around town. If you see a cute little Aussie girl on the wrong side of the road, please get her going in the right direction!