by Eugène Christophe:

"Participate in cyclocross; encourage your friends to participate; popularize it around you."

Read the whole thing here.

eating cheese here.

The little man is loving himself some food, he's getting a bit more expressive about it. He's been experimenting with winding his eyes tightly shut every bite, and then laughing and giggling and showing me his food as he finishes it off. Well, I don't know if he's trying to show it to me but when he laughs it's kinda hard to not notice.

man, doesn't it look like he's having fun, though? too bad he won't eat anything else, especially if it's green or vegetablelike: it comes right back out unsullied, maybe a bit warm.

we've been with the Schneider family in WI this whole week, Sam Dave Sean Sklyer and connie have been great putting us up (putting up with us?) and it's been great fun. we've seen the kids BMX, talked at length about how to make the TT bike faster, and done some good rides through the countryside south and west of Millwukee. we're leaving this morning to go back to Chicago and i wanted to take the opportunity to say thanks and we'll be seeing you soon. no seriously, we're coming back asap, i took what you said about "come back whenever you want" literally.

now it's time to avoid some crashes this afternoon at the Downers Grove Pro-Am, whle still opening it up for the USPRO race sunday.

we did the elk grove events this last week, i did a bunch of work both days to help the team and kept it upright, which was pretty hard to do evidently. didn't make much money, and the races themselves were pretty bad.

Monday morning we got up early to battle Chicago traffic and make it down to the SRAM building for a morning of meetings and brainstorming. well, the traffic never materialized, making us wonder if we were going the right way, and we were super early. then it turned into a morning of meetings with a bike ride/lunch stop and then an afternoon of meetings, so we didn't get out of there until 6 pm. this is another great time to be driving in Chicago, but no smiles from the traffic gods this time, we used up all out mojo in the morning and so chilled out for an hour and left for milli-walk-kee about half a day behind schedule.

so now we're in that great beer city by the lake, i thought i was done here when i left superweek but now i'm back. the training is better then the urban assault that would be riding in Chicago for the week, plus we're right on the edge of town so you're out in the fields in no time. i gotta hook up some motorpacing...

Chase's first steps

oh no, now it's all downhill from here. i think i'm going to have to get a leash for him, cuz it's going to be running by the time i get home next week.

this is the Elk Grove course. two u-turns, and about 2 miles of passing room. this is going to be a waiting kinda course.

i went better then ever at the Swanton TT last thursday, Merckx'ed it both with the bike and the lack of aero equipment. i think i'm going to try it with full gear next month and see if i can go under 25 minutes...

I can't put either of my elbows down right now to type.

On the positive side, my table manners have gone through the roof.

You know what's the worst about crashes? The morning after. It's ten times worse then when it happens, there's no adrenalin rush or endorphins to mitigate the pain, just a lot of bruises and stiff muscles. And a killer headache.



My mom was to pick me up from the airport and we were going to hang out,
maybe go to the beach in SC. She took one look at me and threw those plans
out the window. I probably shouldn't have complained about 2 hours of sleep
either cuz my sudden sole purpose to her was to sleep the entire day, which
I did. Probably needed it, actually.

I went down south to Charlotte, did a BIG money Crit to the tune of
100,000.00 dollars. Nothing like having a bank sponsor the race. Oh yeah,
that was without primes, the smallest of which were 500 bucks.

I went active early and spent a few laps off the front countering a move by
Jackson, picked up one prime then settled into a pace to see if anything was
going to come across, but then they rang a 1000 dollar prime so I dialed it
back up and got that too. Not bad for 5 minutes of hard work. Jesse
countered my move, then Scotty countered that, man were we active, luckily
there were so many primes out there that it was all worthwhile.

So finally Jackson gets a move that looks to be more of the same, kind of
hanging out in front, not too much pressure, about to be ridden back. They
ring a 1000 dollar prime, and a Nav jumps out and across ostensibly for the
cash but 300 meters later there's a big pileup with JJ surfing the asphalt
right in front of me and guys bouncing off my rear and hitting the deck as
well. I pulled that one out and chased back on to a creeping pack and
Jackson's already 40 seconds up the road. There were 5 Navs across the road
and three more of us and it was so narrow that there was absolutely no room
to move up, and those guys were gooooonnnee.

I was a bit surprised to see how willing Toyota and Healthnet were to let
the gap get so big, it's unprecedented in this race where most moves last
1/4 lap at the most. Plus the weather was threatening and sure enough the
drizzle came down with 10 laps to go, turning to heavy rain a bit later.

I was in the middle of thinking how there's no way a chase can get these
guys back without taking some big risks in the corners when the entire
Healthnet train on the front throws themselves to the ground and gets run
over by 100 hard charging pros. There was a little metal strip coming out
of turn one that turned to ice once wet and I guess a few of the guys were
all charged up and thought the laws of physics didn't apply to them. They
paid for their insolence.

But I paid for it too. I had no where to go except for head first into a
pile of bikes. Once down I was sure I had broken my shoulder, but it was
only dislocated and I got it back in quickly myself. After that, I was just
dazed and was almost thinking about taking a free lap when a spectator said
"hey someone's bleeding a lot" and I look down and sure enough it's me
oozing from the elbow pretty bad. Then I thought to look myself over a bit
better and found a huge haemotoma on my other elbow and some pretty sore
Charlie-horse type impacts on my legs. So I limped over to the EMTs and had
them check me out. They were all amped up to have some business, I guess
they were bored, or else really wanted to get out of there cuz they really
wanted me to take a ride to the hospital (head injury, possible broken
elbows...both of them, stitches, possible broken hip). They kept on coming
up with another reason why it was imperative for me to go get checked out
RIGHT NOW, but I waved it all off, signed the refusal of treatment, and rode
back to the hotel.

Jackson was second as the crash seriously disrupted the chase and they were
never caught, plus we but the rest of the guys in the race in the money, so
the payday this race offers seems to have come through for us, I wouldn't
mind something to take my mind off my incredibly sore and battered body.

I haven't even looked at my bike yet, I hope it works.

I've been doing all kinds of riding and training up for these last few big
events. It's hard to be racing 100k crits as prep for a 200k road race, so
I've been doing extra time in the hills and just hope I can make the crits
work.

Lots of time behind the motor for me, a big thanks to Chris Hipp for getting
me out there and making me suffer. I think/hope it's going to pay off. We
did 75 minutes before the group ride yesterday and I already thought my legs
were going to fall off, then we got in a few sprints and hills. Ouch.

I also did a crazy 215 K day with my brother and D'alusio last weekend, just
about every hill in Santa Cruz County was conquered plus some san Benito and
Santa Clara county ventures too. That's my new standard now, I think it's
not a real ride if it's not a "tri-county" ride.

Then Sunday we went to the SJ grand Prix, fast car racing downtown and much
better racing by the looks of it. LOUD. Man that was cool, and Andy and I
still got in 3 hours coming over from SC.