having fun with Chase.

Redlands finished up okay, I went third in the final stage and ended up 4th

overall.

the redlands crit is historically a super fast and technical crit, and this year did nothing to disappoint.  adding to the pressure was this year's racing has only been 10 minutes, 15 if you went really slow.  everyone was fresh and there were 170 guys, a big pack to try and squeeze through some of those corners.  

starting on the front lined really helped.

i won the first sprint prize, and with it 3 seconds that moved me up a spot.  top five?  we'll see how sunset loop goes tomorrow.  the legs are good, i hope my team can help set me up to hold or possibly improve.  Jonas has some crazy plan, i'm sure.  

in the finale of the crit, i went to the front to keep my teammates safe, but something got lost in translation so i ended up just stringing things out.  Dan freelanced in for 4th, dodging crazy crashes in the last few corners.

i'm checking out.

nothing's going on right now.

did the uphill TT, there's a ton of pollen rolling around and it's maiking life hard.  i went okay, but i was hurting hard by the end and knew i didn't go as well as i should have.  right on the steepest part i knew i should have been really nailing it and i was holding back for fear of puking.  it was hot still air and i just couldn't do it, which is disappointing.  i still went 6th, so at least i got some money out of it.

i'm headed down south tomorrow for the truncated version of the Redlands Bicycle Classic. this race used to be so huge, it was the march world championships, UCI sanctioned, you had to be damn cool to do well at redlands. now it's a glorified circuit race (albeit with a bunch of cash). i was almost thinking of skipping it this year, but it fits well into my schedule so i'm back in. but i've trained hard all week so i think i'm going to be tired, and i'll be using the race as prep for Sea Otter, which is prep for Georgia, which i just got confirmation that i am for sure doing.

Dave is the race announcer at just about every big race in the country this year, and he also does a podcast called the Towle Files. He interviewed me at the beginning of the ToC, here it is.

I just went to the dentist. Not exactly a walk in the park but it could be
worse.

Just did the Fresno TT, it got changed this morning to a flat course as it's
snowing up at the old finish line. I got the text from a teammate just as I
was leaving home, so I ran back in and got the TT bike, and the disc wheel.
A good bet, I got second by 2 seconds. There were several guys "Merckx-ing"
it into a strong cross-head wind, I really felt for them as I cruised past.
I know I would not want to be caught in such a predicament.

So we've been calling up SBC to get our phone service changed, it's been a
process as we need our old roommate, whose name the service is in, in order
to get anything done. It turns into me calling her, she calls SBC to say
it's okay for me to do something and the I call SBC to get whatever done.
We've been at trying to get the name on the bill changed, duh that would
bake life so much simpler, but no for some reason every time I call they
have no record of getting permission. It's been three times, so we all get
together to just get 'er done and be through with the process.

Tangent: SBC probably wants it this way as it's ironically tripling their
business. Funny how the most phone calls I make all month on my home line
is to the damn phone company.

Anyway, we get customer service on the line and it's Brad. I think brad was
having a bad day or I'm interrupting his web porn session or something
because he does his best impersonation of Dave Spade in those Capital One
Commercials. Which is a caricature of someone doing Brad's job, badly I
might add. What a "NO" man! Brad would not answer any questions, could not
look up records, flat out lied to us on several occasions, and absolutely
would not transfer us to anyone else as he was evidently the only one in the
building. Oh, and he must have owned the damn company cuz there was no one
in a senior position that I could speak to. Period, they didn't exist.

When I first started and he started saying I had a contract (for local phone
service?) I was a bit angry that he could not explain things, but after a
few minutes and a few absurdities we started having fun and soon we were all
laughing at this guy as soon as he would say anything. We started repeating
ourselves, saying the same thing 20 or so times, go silent for a few
minutes, we put the baby on the line, it turned into a grand old time.
After about an hour we flat out asked him if his solution was to hang up on
him and while we didn't get a verbal "yes" there was a definite "mmmhummm."

So we got of the phone with Brad, called back immediately, spoke with
someone else and got everything squared away in under ten minutes.

And Brad now has a reprimand in his file.

please e-mail me at if you know what's happening. if you don't know, e-mail me anyway and i'll see if i like you enough to tell you.

whatever the case, clear your calendar for this thursday at 6 pm.

My brother was out there today driving the team car for Giant Strawberry, but we found out about his OTHER side project, running a hunnypot operation out of his small condo.

We did the races in good old Merced, the McLane Pacific GP crit and RR. Things went smoothly, we raced quite well as a team and were always active. We only had 6 guys but ended up in every move both days, with Jackson making the break in the crit and riding well when things broke up to get 2nd place. Nice one.

Sunday had a wind advisory which if you have done any of the racing out there means it's going to be a slog. Each time we turned into a crosswind section it would be instantly in the gutter and by the last lap it seemed like there was not a part out of the gutter. Fortunately, there were only 12 guys left by then so there wasn't too much of a fight for wheels to follow. The attacks came thick in the last 5k, and Roulston from HNPBM got the small gap, and that was the race. I ended up 5th in the sprint.

Now Chase has sweet kicks like daddy.

A tough day of errands and chores.  got Coffee, movies, ipod accessories, phone info, some cute adidas for chase, prescriptions, printer software, whew! 

time for bike ride #2 as Chase is finally asleep. it's a nice day out, looks like the rain is holding back.  how nice.