Lets catch up, shall we?

Well, its been a while, aside for of course the post I just published about the season not getting here soon enough. I actually wrote that when i got back from Jackson Hole where I was lucky to visit Annie for 4 excellent days. I figured that I would post a picture-heavy blog that goes from the day i got back from Jackson to today! Annnd go.

So, camp was great but did not really put an emphasis on "hard training" and I did zero riding in Jackson (although we did climb, walk, cross-country ski for the first time in my life, and avoided skiing down hills mainly because im a fancy-pants afraid of injury). The word "injury" is actually a great transition to what I did find waiting for me back in AZ: trying to get the new shoes and pedals on the same terms as the old shoes and pedals:

If you think that looks like a mess, you are correct. I rode my left knee into a place of darkness that i hope to never revisit. Key lesson here is to ease into training after off time, especially if you replace every piece of equipment there is to have in biking. 2 hard long rides is all it took to put me out for 2 days bored as hell and forced to do things like this:

Crepe day!!! Theres not much to do here if your not biking, or tired from biking, so i channeled that energy into something somewhat awesome: peanut butter, jelly, cinnamon, and brown sugar crepes. I liked to keep mine modest, brian on the other hand....

Were just going to let you all make up your own comments and jokes for that picture. Moving on, my boredom seemed to infect Sal and Brian which led to the thought "i wonder if you can eat a cactus" well, heres a cactus paddle we found outside:

And here is what the three of us, some salt, olive oil, and 10 slivers later, came up with:

Not so impressive considering where we started, but by the time we came up with that small peice, the taste of it was not good enough to warrant another bout with the prickers of yet another cactus paddle. But, it was good! Thing is, you could put olive oil and salt on a rock and id probably consider eating it.

Lets see, what else happened? Ahhh St. Patricks day Tucson Style:

Dad send his son (me) a nice card and some money to get some beers on St. Pats day, and thats what we did. Tucson aint such a bad place to drink on a porch at night. With St. Pats day over and my knee healing up with max levels of ibuprofen and iceing, I got back to it with really one mindset: smash myself to the best of my abilities. I dont have much time left here so i figured take this time and weather to make it almost a good idea to sit in a car for 2 days with the bike banished to the roof. While thats going on, a few old great friends came to visit me in Tucson, so I found a way to thrash myself AND help them enjoy Mt. Lemmon: Meet me at the cookie cabin.

Pure joy. After the cookie cabin it was on to the hiking portion of the day, having already ridden to the top of a mountain i was looking forward less to this part of the day than the cookie cabin part of the day. Alas, jim earned a gold star for fitness, and also got some great pictures for the effort. Looking down on Mt. Lemmon Hwy (about mile 8 to 9):

Once the tourism portion of the hiking was over, it was time for the "where do you think that trail goes" portion of the day. This trail goes up, no sh%#

There was quite a bit of PA-ing taking place on this trip, since catherine and heidi are both here for a PA conference (who knows what thats going to be like). Needless to say, pulses were checked, and PA's were in action:

While showing people around this mountain that I have spent so much time with this year, I started to get a little nostalgic about leaving this place that has been such a part of my life the past 3 months. So this picture has maybe more meaning to me, as it is Mt. Lemmon Hwy going up, and then again at the top of the picture you can see it way up.
We celebrated a full day of Lemmon with trader joes snacks and pizza, and 2 buck chuck... not really going to say today was full of good feelings in the morning, but i did punish myself during the ride so i am feeling a bit better.

I leave here in 5 days, going to stop off in Jackson since its "on the way" home. Then I will be back home for the summer, getting ready for The Gila and Joe Martin from the comforts of my parents own home :) I cant wait to race, as you can see from the previous post. I will miss it here but there are some great things to come, for example, the Kenda boys ended up with a 2nd overall at Tour of Taiwan this week, great work. I think its a symbol of things to come this year, so im looking forward to it.

The season better get its butt here already

ALRIGHT, THATS ENOUGH ALREADY SEASON, YOUVE HAD YOUR REST, LETS DO THIS. I think needless to say, I am just about ready for some racing. I remember after the TT at valley of the sun, we were each able to somehow talk about the individual 30 minute effort that was the TT for about, mmmmm, 6 hours. As if living it in person was bad enough, theres only so many ways you can say "it hurt, i could have gone harder tho" and "remember that slight rise? did not expect that" and especially "that 1-k to go sign had to be wrong." This would be the effect of a long off-season, you actually look forward to something that looks similar to this:

I mean seriously season, this is getting ridiculous, i keep calling you, trying to make you feel guilty, and what to i get back?! NOTHING. HArumph. Bah humbug. Guu. Silly noises aside, probably the main reason I feel this way right now can be described here:

Are you getting this, season? Are you picking up what im putting down? If you dont understand, let me put it simply for you. If i cant be with my girlfriend in jackson hole, then there better be a race that i am going to so i can take out said frustrations on a big group of skinny shaved legged bike enthusiasts. Simple enough, i feel. Salright?

Next blog post.

Some was had.

I'm sitting in my hotel room here in Salt Lake City after a day of travel attempting to remember all those things I wanted to remember for my blog. I am currently unwilling to turn off the TV so i can hear myself, so this is tough. Eh, here it goes.

We got to try and kill each other! I remember that. We had a 5 hour ride, the last long ride of camp, and there was quite a bit of half wheeling taking place on the front (more than normal, at least more obvious this time) and quite a few fellas "marking their territory" or at least trying to via riding a bike at annoying pace. SO, after much playful conversation covering up the thought "whens this guy going to knock it off, this is annoying," the captains called an 8 mile throw down. Not rapper style, bike racer style (that's an 8-mile reference, its a movie, about rapping.... eminem?). So we stopped, at too many sandwiches, and got after it. No one knew where the finish line was, so it turned into a "who can attack more" competition that actually kind of turned into an alright team TT. I think jonny won the attack battle, but our ride leader (knowing where the finish line actually was) calmly rolled across the line on the front and won the day. Nice work christian.

Lets see, other stories... well before i forget theres this: Cycling News Article on team camp. Great write up. Have a look.

What else... picture time? Go:

Nemesis. Thats a picture of the jerk (dryer) that, knowing FULL WELL that it was busted, watched me silently as i put the majority of my laundry that would spend the next week in a box. When i threw the load into the dryer, and paid it for its services, AND pushed the button which started the dryer, i knew not that 45 minutes later i would return to a cold, wet, pile of laundry. Fool me once....

Naturally, I placed another dollar in the machine, pressed the button, came back 45 minutes later..... idiot. To keep the theme of dumb and dumber quotes from the week, "and you TOTALLY REDEEMED YOURSELF!" Behold, the hotel-sized dryer I found in frustration:

Boom. It was free too. This, among a few other key things, prevented me from making it to USPS to ship my bike and clothes back to Tucson. Let me tell you this. UPS Ground = more of a thief than that stupid dryer pictured above. Ew. OH well, times like this call for bottles like the following:
Apparently the oldest living brewery in America? Tastes good, test of time is normally pretty good at judging.

Camp was busy, so I am way behind on pretty much everything that isnt bike camp oriented. Our team is incredible. I cannot wait to race this year, we really are going to surprise people, and I cant wait to see what these guys are capable of with Frankie's leadership and Chad T's constant passion for this team. Its infectious and set a great air around camp all week. I am going to slack a bit here and call this edition off here, but no worries, there will be tons of updates and pictures all year. Its really going to be exciting to follow this team, and I will help you do it.

Thank you too all our sponsors that brought this team together!

ps, some was definitely got.

Dude, bike camp is awesome.

So its Monday of Kenda p/b Geargrinder bike camp, and its sweet. I don't really know how long I've been in Macon, which is a good sign considering I normally only count down days for two things; 1: when something takes a long time and normally can be described as having a lot of "suck" *cough* superweek *cough*, ahem, excuse me. and 2: days till i actually get to see my girlfriend or family (which is 5 days at this point, so at least i know how much longer i will be in Macon). So, since bike camp is neither a bunch of suck, my girlfriend, or my family, it must be something else... awesome comes to mind. Here's why:

1. The guys that I have met this week so far are awesome. We not only have had a great time but also seem to already be comfortable enough with each other to have a royal rumble in the McDonald's bathroom.... i tell you what, i give the guy in the stall credit for actually coming out of there in the midst of it, if it were me, i would have checked to make sure the door was locked, sat down, and picked up my feet so they wouldn't know i was in there. shows guts, charecter, and an extreme craving for a big mac.

2. We have new bikes, and got them fit, and carbon training wheels, and new kits, and a ton of incredible stuff to go along with the pretty new bikes that makes me happy.

3. (And currently causing my type speech to slur every other letter, this is taking forever to type) Post-ride leg rub-down by Janis. Today, after 6 hours on the bikes, I got my first ever pro-bike massage and it made the last 5 years of working hard TOTALLY WORTH IT. Unbelievable. I am pretty relaxed right now. I blame all grammatical and spelling errors on this, thats right Gaimon.

4. The area we are in has every imaginable fast-food joint on the face of the planet, including Five Guys and Firehouse Subs.... and starbucks *pulls collar while saying ehhhh*

5. The trip to Lifetime Fitness, where if your not careful, you might think your in a resort of some kind. The lockers were all wood and the benches were granite, and i am pretty sure it was the nicest shower i have ever seen. It all almost made this worth it:
That would be the torture device used to measure VO2 levels at threshold and at max effort. The guy said that of the 5 of us that were tested, our average VO2 max was 11 points higher than the average of Amore Vita's last year.... take that! Too bad there isn't prize money for lab tests, because i think we finished 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. not too shabby. (Rob bush smoked us all, 79? I though my 75.5 was good, but that's just ridiculous, now he has no excuses). Oh hi rob! Hey, whats your secret?!

That's a pretty incredible secret. Too bad i just foiled it.

6. We got to go on a 6 hour ride today that included a pretty stiff pace line, that turned into a very stiff pace line, that turned into an all out lead out up a hill for some reason. Clearly the highlight of my week so far was watching everyone go really fast. Funny thing is, you only have the camera out when the ride looks like this:

7. Without getting myself into an endless pit of shout-outs that i just don't have the focus to write correctly, we have great management, great sponsors, and a great group of guys. We have everything we need to win races, so we have confidence. Therefore, if you cannot already tell, we have some serious excitement for the year to come. None of us can wait to get to a race.

One thing that does NOT make my list is the fact that the average plate at olive garden is now $16, which is an obscenity equaled only by kicking puppies. Needless to say, I'm upset and disappointed in the Olive Garden.

We have 5 days left here to really solidify as a team, get all our little "oh poor baby" type requests made fun of and sorted out, destroy our hotel room (which will be tough because the housekeeping crew here is incredible), and try and tear each others legs off. Its going to be, like i said, awesome. With all that said, here's some links to follow all the twitter/facebook/whatever you want for pictures and probably videos from camp:

Team Website

Team Facebook

Team Twitter

And remember that I post all my pictures on my flickr account up there on the sidebar (that's the thing on the right side).