That time we went to Spain, Part 1

I'm flipping through pictures from about 25 years (is that enough exaggeration? Go with eons? Ok, eons it is) ahem, 25 eons ago to try and remember the insanity that was going to Spain the day after Redlands for a 3 day stage race called Castilla y Leon (or at least I think thats the name of it, I had no idea what was happening). One thing is for sure, I had no idea what was happening..

Lets start with the first team ride of the trip, for which I slept 1 hour on the plane and woke up at 8:30... in the morning.... again. So, 1 hours of sleep = 2.5 hours of riding and feeling like I would be lost forever at any moment thanks to this kind of thing:

Nope, no idea.

Causing this kind of confusion:

Someone learned how to edit photos!! 

Ending up in us just taking pictures of each other because all the scenery was in Spanish.

Ok, so for the rest of the time, just assume that I have no idea where I am, what anyone is saying, or what time it is. This way I can get going on the rest of the story.

One thing that I found myself doing was looking around and trying to figure out if things were supposed to be important or notable in any way. In America we typically have signs on things that tell you that they are important, and there is a hot dog stand nearby with a guy selling those foam fingers with whatever the special thing is printed on them. I think this shows my traveling naivety, because you are riding along and...

So does this castle sell snickers bars or what?

Speaking of traveling naivety, no matter how slow you speak, or how flamboyant the hand gesture, if a person does not understand English then you are GETTING NOWHERE. Its like this shower stall from our first hotel: 

So this glass door just... ends? Why does it even open?

It doesn't matter how hard you think about it, you will never understand.

One thing that I do understand is food. If someone holds a platter of food to me I just shake my head up and down and they put that food in front of me in scoops until I shake my head left and right. Thankfully Paco gave us a Spanish lesson on the first ride stating "For lunch, pollo y pasta, for dinner, pasta y pollo." This I can handle. It was at the very end of the trip that I received something that I wholly could not have expected:

Jamon! or, Leg of Jamon!

But that was at the end of the trip, details of which will be in part 2, or 3 at the rate this is going.

So with my sleep schedule out of whack, my language not working, and everyone drinking cafe con leche like it is THE ONLY DELICIOUS WAY TO ENJOY COFFEE (incorrect), I would have to say I was having a difficult time integrating into the culture. One positive from this was my unbelievable desire to go to sleep at every second, and I could not tell you what the ceiling of any hotel in Spain looks like because I normally fell asleep on my way to the pillow. That's too bad, because you figure that in other countries they probably have those magic ceilings like in Harry Potter or no ceiling at all. 

Have you ever put red sauce on your rice in the morning? Because I have. Moving on.

So we all got to Spain. We (I) fumbled around a lot. We rode bikes. While riding bikes I noticed something particularly Un-American (because drawing comparisons is the only way I can deal with, well, anything) about Spain, and it was this grassy field:

Its not to say that we don't have some grass, I mean, some people spend more time pampering their lawns than cooking themselves dinner. But what we don't have is unused space. At the very least in America we would have cattle eating that grass so that we could eventually eat them. Optimize! Improve! Better Better BETTER! Efficiency!!!! MAKE THE MONIES! Its particularly American to attempt to take everything up a notch, to capitalize on an opportunity, or somehow take whatever it is and make it better. I noticed that this is particularly not the case in Spain. There is some relaxation taking place. You cant find food before 8:30pm and if you go then, the cook will be angry that he has to start things early. In America there would be a restaurant that was called "you can eat here at 5pm!" There is this grassy field here that just seems to be doing that, being grassy. There is no sign that reads "here lies a grassy field, protected under the grassy field act of 1974." And depending upon which section of the grassy field act this particular grassy field falls, it is either for looking, playing, or AVERT YOUR EYES ITS SECRET. I just thought that was interesting.

That pretty much sums up my time in Spain before the race. As for the race, that will be another blog, but if you want a hint as to how it went:

Computer Homicide, Beauce, and getting our butts kicked.

So I get this great idea to write a blog, and I do, 2 posts in one day even! It may have been my Canada sized boredom, one rainy day too many, or just genuine desire to write that brought me there, but there I was, writing! The next morning Paco ran my computer over with a car, stranding me in Canada with no way to connect to the world and french TV (I did not capitalize french on purpose, because we were in Canada).

Is it a sign? I don't do signs. So no, it was not a sign, it was just a major bummer. BUT, HARK, TECHNOLOGY REIGNS SUPREME ONCE AGAIN IN MY interesting LITTLE LIFE!!

Well, its about time for a picture, and a segue, lets get two birds here:

I had some real interesting conversations with Annie about the existence of podium girls, and I would like to draw your attention to my awkward right hand. Do you know what I do every day? Certainly not get on podiums and practice getting awkwardly kissed for longer than necessary so the photographers get their shot. Case and point, on the first day that I was in the KOM jersey I punched this girl in the face:

So hilarious!!

....annnd awkward left hand this time:

What do I do with my hands?

So you now know two things about me, I don't do signs and I don't do podiums. Moving on to the actual race.

Computer-less, TV-less, and general entertainment-less-ness led me to sneak into the first break of the Tour of Beauce, win the KOM points, and get in the jersey. Its no mystery that this year I have been somewhat abused by Bissell for the KOM competitions, which is fine, and I even told Carter Jones the day before the race that I was done with the damn things. I swear, sometimes I think the only things that ever DO happen are the things I explicitly say WILL NOT happen.

- I will never eat mustard (its all i eat now)

- I will never wear spandex

- I will never shave my legs

- I will never go for another KOM point again

- I will not go get more cake.

So, with the help of my team, I go for the KOM points on the side of doing my job, which is kind of a double duty, but I don't have a computer anymore so what else am i going to do? Everything was going great, I was scoring in every KOM sprint, but like clockwork Pat McCarty of Bissell gets in a break, gets a bunch of points, and I've got yet another Bissell vs. Jim on my hands. I swear man, even when I train on climbs right before I get to the top Chris Baldwin comes from nowhere and pips me at the line. He doesn't even live in Wyoming!  So I decided to live it up while it lasted, and my favorite picture of the year happened:

The local "yout" takes a minute from blowing their whistles to have us write our name on paper.

This day I believe Paco went ahead and got himself in Yellow, after what was I think the most agressive stage of the year, by winning on Mount Megantic. If you didn't know, yellow is more important than dots, so we now fully race for Paco after he holds off the field in the TT. 2 Stages to go! The first one went great, the team rode amazingly, and everyone was smiling afterwards.

The team, riding GREAT

The last stage went, hmm, as I said to the entire Bontrager team including overall race winner Nathan Brown (who is a great guy, but im a great guy too, and I didn't get to win Beauce, so he must be doing something else) "Well, we left it all out there, all the jerseys, all our riders, everything, its all still out there."

Pat McCarty did a great job to get in an early break that we decided to let go and sacrifice the dots in strategic interest of winning the whole race. Which we didn't do. It was a tough day, nobody was smiling, and so began my mid-season break. Its a sour taste that I think we all have in our mouths while we get back to training this week. I've been walking around with a toothbrush for when it gets especially bad. The other teams did a great job of taking our team down to 3 guys to defend Paco from a powerful field on a difficult circuit, and we came up short despite all of our best efforts.

That was Beauce. Yuck.

Im back in Jackson now, and I hope to get to a few good stories from my 3 months racing on the road. For now I leave you with this, which I like to call my answer to why I like living in Jackson:

As I said in the previous post, we've been on the road for a while. We dont get many opportunities to do what we love, which is hang out with people we love or go for training rides, so sometimes you have to pretend that you are having fun being a lobster:

Clearly a fake picture, everyone knows Nate is stronger than me.

Who knew a restaurant with a picture of two dancing lobsters with their faces cut out would manage to charge $20 for a dinner salad. After that, I went to the store, bought, and ate a box of cereal out of a cup. Speaking of eating cereal out of a cup, being on the road inevitably requires you to get creative whilst feeding yourself. Here is my kitchen:

Pretty sure the translation on the box of cereal is "Jim Stemper's Dinner"

We've got plastic silverware, cereal, fruit, a bag of carrots which i will eat continuously until gone and turn orange, a lone can of V8, hotel room coffee which tastes like you'd think it would, and almond milk.  Any combination of these things can fit in a cup, and be eaten on a bed. Hand towels make great place mats to avoid ruining your bed for the night.

At the beginning of the season you have all this energy to apply to other things. Here is how I kept my things at team camp in February:

Ahhhhh yes, organization.

Here they are now:

See what I did there?

Today is the day before the day before the Tour de Beauce. Its raining. Bobby and I are sharing a hotel room, but since hes married i guess we cant share the only bed, sigh. 

My office, kitchen table, couch, bed, closet, foyer, living room, and theater.

I figured that, with the rain and all, I'd take advantage of my versatile hotel room and get my easy ride out of the way:

WHEW! Good one! Aside from all that cooking and riding, Bobby and I have a big day planned. He is eventually going to eat an orange that he took from breakfast this morning, but he's going to wait a while because he just had a banana.

BIG DAY PLANNED TODAY!!!

Truly living the dream.

Being a person who loves to be outside, these days are tough, but you have to think about the 6 day stage race on the horizon and how half way through you could be tired because you got greedy and went for a long ride. Tonight the goal is to not spend $20 on a salad. I might spend $20 on a tiny block of cheese instead and make my teammates feel bad when they eat more than me.

Stemper Nation Unite!

You would not believe how many pictures of roads I have. Look! A road!!

Another road!!

You can hardly tell that those two roads speak completely different languages. Its so hard for me to tell, but I've found that as I travel around, people seem to be able to pick me from a crowd as a non speaker to their native tongue. Since I'm usually trying to buy something, the person working at the checkout counter views me more as a bummer than a customer. If only we could all be a little more like roads.

I've been on the road for.... a while now, and currently sit in a Comfort Inn in Quebec, where its raining, so naturally its time to revisit the blog-o-sphere. I realize that I have a lot of people close to me (ahem, mother) that do their best to find out what I'm up too, and I do a pretty terrible job of making time to say hello, I'm alive, and I didn't win, again.  I have no excuse for that besides I am always tired, never in the same place for long, and kill my phone battery in record time.

For you folks of the self proclaimed Stemper Nation, I give you this blog! Which is likely to include:
- Pictures of roads!
- Complaining about air mattresses and pets that shed!
- Stories of Bobby Sweeting laughing at literally everything I say!!!
- LISTS
- Jibberish
- Hotel cooking, which is like home cooking, but nothing like home cooking
- Rants about things related to Fox News reports
- Essays related to whatever daily life passion I temporarily adopt
- My life, the way I see it.

You have no idea how much I appreciate you all, and I hope I can give a small fraction of the love I get back.