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: