Bike Racing > Parking

Lets all agree, without going into much detail, that human beings are not meant to be sitting in traffic or doing laps around the blocks near their home looking for a parking space on Tuesdays from 1-4pm because your road has no parking due to "street sweeping". I don't think San Jose owns a broom, let alone a 5 ton automatic broom that drives with a swiffer wet-jet bolted to the front of it. So, I parked there, tried to give myself a ticket (pictured: a note card with my grocery list on it), and they still got me:

I thought I was sooooo smart.

According to the structure of the law, I deserved that. According to things reasonable, I DO NOT DESERVE THAT. Sigh. Being passionate about justice but doing nothing about it is exhausting. If supporting NPR only costs $15/month, I cant wait to see what San Jose does with that $50 I gave them for not sweeping the streets.

What. A. Racket.

Back to things that are right and good. You know what I love about driving past all the farm land in California? Its the symmetry of all the trees and vines and plants as you drive by that look like an array of space between trees that forms an infinite number of lines going back into the field, like this:

I also like the color green... bodes well...

I took that while riding before racing the Chico Stage Race this past weekend. So, Chico is a really sweet town! Why didn't you tell me?! Donny came up for the weekend to enjoy my restful lifestyle in the hotel after the races, and we both got to watch our first full length NCAA game of the year, and Wisconsin won! The race itself was awesome, we did a circuit on this track:

I think they went a bit faster than us. The circuit itself was cool and fun, but its nature was against the 3 rules of attacking, which are: Don't Attack When:

1. You are already in the 11
2. You are doing 500 watts in the peloton
3. You are doing 35mph

So for me, it was pretty uneventful. The next day at the 90 mile Pakenta Road Race, however, was my jam! A crosswind start quickly sorted the field into tiny groups all doing a team time trial chasing each other. My group had 3 Optum riders in it, and was the front group, so my group won! Unfortunately for me I did not win. A combination of a well timed attack by Optum and a flat tire on the gravel 5 miles from the finish set me back quite a bit. Thankfully, however, it was a super good day of training, and you cant take that away from me!

The last day had a morning TT, which I couldn't take seriously without a TT bike (I did take my saddle bag and frame pump off, for some reason), and an afternoon Crit, in which I got 7th by actually trying to do the field sprint. How'd that go? You ask? I came out of the final corner 3rd.... so... that's pretty depressing. Nothing can beat the fact that the race director proposed to his girlfriend before the crit.

YEAAAAAAA!!!

Can we always have proposals before bike races?! That was teh coolest! It was a great weekend, a great race, and I had a great friend hanging out, so we decided to make a great choice and visit the Sierra Nevada Brewery which is in Chico.

Perfectly sized beers for a guy who's last beer was in February

This was just awesome.

This was in the parking lot, WHAT?!

That last picture is great, how cool is that guy? "Oh, I just drive my crazy car down to one of the first craft breweries and have me a pint and a massive appetizer and then give myself a high five. It'll be a nice little Sunday."

The last bit of my week was having to deal with my own mental shortcomings that I am experiencing with the season being neigh and wanting to win every race. That is the thing, I want to win, and its stressful, because I have worked hard for a very long time and I think its time to win. My coach Frank talked me down a bit from my craziness and now that I am sitting in bed the night before the first real race of the year I am confident and excited about the season. I also started my winning ways last night by beating that stupid 2048 game that my sister introduced me to on Monday night, PROOF:

VICTORY

So with that, I leave you for San Dimas. Its going to be a great season, and I hope to come back on here and tell you about how it feels to win.

Fog of War and the Annexation of an Orange Slice: My Latest Race Vacation

Did you ever play World of Warcraft or any other civilization-take-over-style game? No? Ok, fine, well in those games there is a map covered in fog that can only be cleared away by traveling into the fog revealing the map beneath. It looks like this:

Dude. You gotta move around.

This is how I think of the world; clearing the fog of war bit by bit as I travel around. Well, March is in full swing and I am super excited that I get to clear some fog from my map with a slew of local races. How excited did I get for a weekend fog-of-war-clearing racing vacation? Well, here is a folder that is on my computer called "March Racing":

Excessive.

Containing PDF files that I created all by my lonesome with pictures like this:

The past weekend's travel map. Totally pointless.

Lets take a second here to note the total irrelevancy and uselessness of this picture to my general well-being. When I got in my car, I did not load up the PDF document with itemized directions, no sir, I took out my phone and searched "Sonora, CA" on Google Maps, pressed navigate, and listened to podcasts for 3 hours with frequent interruptions like "In 1000 feet, keep straight on yada yada yada back to your podcast that you are kind of paying attention to." This unnecessary preparation can be likened to making a hand drawn map of the grocery store with all the items' locations, which you would ignore instantly because its just getting groceries and the isles are labeled and its not that big of a deal. You would think I have never driven a car somewhere new before. Anyways, I love bike vacations, got it?!

I call bike races vacations because that's what they are. Training is a lot of work, racing is a lot of fun, and going somewhere new is THE BEST THING EVER, so race weekends make me really happy. Probably the biggest bonus is that, unlike other vacations, there is no real work in planning involved (just fake work that I make up for myself, like making dumb maps and "weekend at-a-glance" note cards). You drive out a day early, pre-ride the beautiful course, and then Yelp a dinner spot. Suddenly, you have all these pictures!

Its not just the green landscape, its the smell and the calm warm weather that make these rides so good. The pace of an easy ride is perfect for short attention span outdoor lovers.

Out to dinner with my shoes. Cheapest date ever! Not great conversationalists, however...

I do not want to be a cow, but, if I had to be, I could get used to it.

I also raced, which is kind of my whole deal, but I find training races uninteresting to talk about when the primary focus is to ride as hard as I can and probably lose. Its not that I lose on purpose, its just that the nature of the "training race" is one of little strategy, and great amounts of self destruction. I was 5th at Ward's Ferry and 4th at Fort Ord, for the record, but I don't really think about these races that way. What I look at is how hard I was able to make the race for myself, and I made them really hard, so that is a success. Its actually a very nice difference from the upcoming season, where the focus is 100% about winning. These races are 100% about training, which makes them easy on the mind (hard on the legs).

Well, do you have a flag?

Since I foot the entire bill for these training race weekend vacations, I have to figure out a way to keep them under budget. My budget is essentially this: "You have no money, ever, why do you even look at your bank account?" I can only go out to dinner occasionally. Going out to dinner is getting strange, this weekend I got a plate of food with an orange that had apparently been claimed by another country already.



I ate the orange anyway, despite my lack of flag. I know military takeovers are kind of taboo these days, but I really like oranges, and I didn't think anyone would notice. I think I'm in the clear, apparently someone else in the world is trying to take over a lot more than an orange slice, sounds like a jerk move to me. Anyways.....

Not being able to go out to dinner is fine by me, I have actually gotten quite good at eating in my hotel room. These days I chop up a ton of veggies, make a giant bag of rice, buy a rotisserie chicken, and make some salad dressing. I proceed to carry that all around and eat it all weekend.

Mobile nutrition at its finest!

Food blogger I am not, so deal with that picture being merely normal, lacking some fancy wooden bowl from some ancient tribe on a bed of flowers and some strange garnish which has the same effect as wearing a fancy hat in public (you cant eat it, and it seems to have no other purpose, so why is it there? This is my philosophy for many, many things). 

Beautiful places, new places, chopped up food in a Rubbermaid, breakfast lunch and dinner in bed, spotty internet, racing your face off, and semi-listening to podcasts for hours retaining .01% of the information are all reasons I love race weekends. Luckily my military takeover of the orange slice stayed under the radar for the most part, and I was able to clear a lot of the fog off of my World of Warcraft map. I still have a lot to go, which I am thankful for, could you imagine if you didn't have new places to check out? You would feel like a hamster (the word hamster has no "p" in it?! WHAT WAS I BEING TAUGHT IN SCHOOL ALL THOSE YEARS?!) and probably understand a lot more about that running wheel they seem to love so much.

That's all for this week, here are a few more pictures of my weekend:

Weakest attempt (has a "p" by the way, senseless language we speak) ever at a wave-explodes-on-rock picture.

Pebble Beach and the Fog of War

Browsing music just isn't the same any more. Side note: Sonora has 15 thrift shops. So there's that.

Madera Stage Race and Sympathy for my Teammates

Most of my teammates are down doing Vuelta de Mexico right now. I dont know what is actually happening but here is a quick synopsis of what I have heard about the goings on of that race so far:

• Chad Beyer was doing well until he started puking, and for all I know, he is still puking 4 days later.
• Gavin Manion may or may not have taken a chain-ring to the face. Probably as a part of a strange ritual related to Americans buying coffee in Mexico, because that would be tough to do in a bike race.
• Bobby said that the stages start and everyone just gets dropped right away. Sounds fun.
• I caught something about the whole race being neutralized due to a protest.
• There were 180 speed bumps on one stage.
• There are dogs with bib numbers acting like bludgers in quiddich from Harry Potter (no i will not check the spelling on EITHER of those two words).
• Someone glued half soccer balls made of steel to the road, everywhere.
• Christian was eaten by a 38 foot python, here he is with his new python sleeping bag! (unconfirmed)

Looks so warm!

 So, I am happy to say, I am in Madera, California with Sam Bassetti doing some road bike time trials, a crit, and a road race. I got 9th in the first TT which was cool because I think I was the first place dude on a road bike (meh, thats mainly meh), but then this happened:

At least the bees love it.

So, I feel terrible, and not 20 minutes goes by without either having some Zicam, taking benadryl, gargling antacid, drinking emergen-c, doing some crazy nasal rinse that makes me feel like im drowning, or COMPLAINING ABOUT THE POLLEN. How much pollen is in the air? Well, every field has 20 boxes of bees sitting next to the road, and I have 2 bee-stings to prove it. I'm sorry to report that I have solved the (tragic) sudden bee death problem: its cyclists' faces. That's right angry drivers, I finally found a legitimate reason for you to treat me so terribly. You're welcome, although I know you don't need to be thanked. 

Annnyways...

This is my first race with Sam (@swbassetti). Yesterday he came back from dinner with friends and, without saying anything to me, changed out of his jeans into shorts. Therefore he is an awesome person. Not having TT bikes to ride made the first two stages frustrating, but we kept our spirits high by riding to and from all the stages because I am too lazy to pack up the car every day. Frankie (@Fakiefrankie) has managed to still throw his two cents in via twitter, telling us we are worthless and road bikes in a TT are not an excuse, to which I say he should concentrate on keeping the rest of the team out of the belly of large snakes in Mexico.

Tomorrow we hit up the road race and hopefully America's Best Value Inn and Suites, which I am going to start calling hotel buzzword inn, lets us get back in the room to clean up for our long treks home. (I just sneezed all over this keyboard). Hopefully I get a picture of the wall hanging that depicts a HUGE tsunami wave engulfing the golden gate bridge in the lobby, its a gem.

As for you, reader, keep on coming back. I feel a blogging tailwind on the horizon, and I even put some fun links over there to the right in the sidebar. The goal this year is to win. The other goal is to tell you about it. My third goal is to keep the bee stings to a minimum tomorrow.

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:

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.

Soooooo gooooooooood.

I’ve been in Tucson since January 1, 2011. Training is going beautifully here and my legs are satisfied with all the attention they have been getting from my cardiovascular system during the past two weeks.  I could tell you about that, but instead I decided to go with the photo montage of how beautiful it is down here, and hopefully convey why being outdoors is good, food is delicious, and hammocks are the answer.

Trying out this new fangled windows live writer blog program

Hello there folks, its almost Tucson time so that also means free time with tired legs (FTTL) is near. I recently got a new netbook with all this cool software on it, and I am trying to learn to use it.  Today’s lesson: Windows Live Writer. 

Make some noise

Beware, of the silent urban comedian: