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.

I don’t have time or energy to write a post but I found this pic and I liked it.  Wish I had time to write, or even atleast time to unpack one of my duffel bags from the last month. 

Racing bikes is the bomb, the rest of the stuff it takes to haul yourself around the country every week is not the bomb.  It sucks.  Airports stink.  I hate public restrooms. 

Congratulations Brooke M and Rahsaan B for big wins at Manhattan Beach.  As much as I would like to sit here and vent about what a DUMB course that is, I have to say that this year I found a small part of me, yes a very small part of me saying something along the lines of ‘oh this is kind of cool race’.  Well ok, I said that after my race, when I was chilling out with the Blue Diamontes, eating a burrito and picking my beach volleyball teammates.  And the volleyball game was so Bay Watch. 

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. 

I guess I should start at the very beginning: 

A while ago, my teammate Leah Goldstein, Storm Trooper Extraordinaire, fantastic teammate, and booty kicker, kicked some booty at Gila and won the GC.  This was while I was tromping around the state of Alabama, but OMGawsh when we won that race, when I saw her podium picture (I can’t get it to load) and smile, I don’t know if I have every been more proud.  And I wasn’t even there.  Good thing, because I might have just passed out in excitement.  It really meant alot, it really meant alot to be her teammate.

And so this moment carried us into Mt. Hood.  Which is a race that I love.  First of all, its in Oregon.  Second of all, it has some spectacular stages.  And it was the first NRC ValueAct won last year.  And it was a great race again this year, with Leah taking 3rd GC, and I got 12th in the prologue which really showed me that I can pedal pretty hard with the fast girls for about three minutes because TT’s n stuff are not my strong suit (sweat pants are actually my strongest suit).  And I was also road a two-girl break away for about 80K that was tough, but rewarding.  And I said damn it feels good to be a bike racer that day.

So Sunday, me, Lara Kroepsch, Hannah, and Chrissy showed up for the CSC Invitational in DC.  Actually, its in Arlington, but whatev.  And Lara is racing real hungry, she got herself in that break with Cath Cheatley and Andrea Dvorak from Colavita and they were out of site in no time.  Lara kicked it for 2nd place that day, while Chrissy really helped me out and we picked up 9th overall after the field sprint, with a full water bottle accidentally shoved in my eyeball with half a lap to go.  Note: you cannot get hydrated through your eyeballs but you could possibly get dehydrated through your eyeballs.

Which leads us to where we are today.  In host housing, Philadelphia with very little internet.  But the plus side is Whole Foods is just 2 blocks away.  And like I said, today was real fast and after a 4 women break got up the road I managed (with alot of help from my friends) to squeeze out third in the field sprint for 7th overall.  And we packed up, hopped on the turn pike or something, and headed back home. 

We got super lost on the way to the race today.  We spotted a car with some racing bikes and so we followed them for a while.  But just to make sure, I hopped out at a stop light and went and tapped on their window.  Imagine my surprise when it was none other than Mike Hernandez from www.norcalcyclingnews.com.  I am pretty sure I scared the daylights out of him but I just wanted to make sure he knew where he was going before we committed to following them around the beautiful state of Pennsylvania.  And believe me, it really is beautiful and I would know because I saw an awful lot of Pennsylvania today by accident.

And I guess that’s where we left off.