Here is a video of my dog playing in the sand box

Thats what I'm talking about

Racing

Had a pretty good time down in Fontana. I have a hard time believing we have raced there 5 times now, but I guess we have. I guess its true when what they say about time flying when you are having fun.

Another impressive stat down in Fontana was the number of Canadians in attendance. there were like three rows of them lined up at the front of the race, then the rest of us. I guess it pays to have all your races be UCI ranked, because those guys sure had a lot of points.

I am back in Illinois for the next few weeks preparing for Sea otter, then am planning on heading up to Oregon to do a little local MTB action and some other exciting stuff.

for all your cycle race coverage needs, check out cyclingdirt. Colt does a good job,a nd even lets us play with the cameras some times if we are lucky.

Thats all i got right now. Time to go ride in the sunshine. I hope it doesn't snow tomorrow.

Nasty

Hmmmm....

Getting ready to head back to California for the next MTB race of the season. It seems like the races are always a long way off, then suddenly there are upon me and passed before I realize it. Thats actually pretty nice.

The puppy got a hair cut yesterday. Now she looks like Falcor from "The Never Ending Story"

Ok, maybe not exactly, but pretty close.

I can harldy wait to escape the on again, off again snow storms of Illinois and go play in the Inland Empire with Mr. Labarr, Sneddon and Trebon.

Nap time!

Nasty

I had a dream

Ryan was like, hey dude, you want some ice cream? and I was like, heck yes! and he was all, what kind do you want, and I was like vanilla or chocolate, and he was like, yeah chocolate! and then he looked in the freezer and was like, uhh, dude we don't have any ice cream, and I was all, Crap! but then he was like, I think maybe there are some cookies in the pantry, and I was like, thats sounds OK, what kind is in there?, and he was like, well I think there are some of those sandwichy peanut butter type ones and maybe some thin mint girl scout ones, and I was like, yes! i love those ones (but really I like the samoa ones better because of the coconut) and then he was like, oh yeah, I just remembered I ate all the cookies yesterday after I got back from riding and I was like, Crap! again but really I just wanted some ice cream anyways.

I'm on Twitter

Check me out on Twitter now for whats up on the race circuit.

California

Check out my Flickr for photographic updates from my current trip to California. Twitter has nothing on Flickr!

Snow has started snowing once again

The weather here in Illinois is kind of unpredictable. Unpredictable in the sense that whatever one predicts the weather will be, it is mostly likely going to be something totally different. That is why I have established my own weather prediction software for Illinois and so far it has been fool proof. The weather for the next two weeks will be a temperature range between 15 and 34 degrees f, some sunshine, some clouds and some snow. There will definatly be days when riding is a good idea, and other days when it is not, and other days when the amount of time it takes to bundle up to cross the street and go to the gym takes as much planning as the actual workout.

Luckily for me, the Wright Brother developed a means by which to transport ones self through space and time to another place, most likely California.

Having spent a large amount of my time in Illinois riding up and down elevators, I am formulating a new type of elevator that will not only transport you between differing layers of a building, but to far away and exotic locals as well. As soon as I have the elevator at my disposal, I will use it all the time and keep it to myself so as to not have its massive power corrupted by others.

I have recently acquired a new camera, and although many who would lay eyes on it would dub it ordinary or not possessing much coolness, I see it in a different light totally, and hope to make use of it to capture secret things and later reveal them to anyone who wishes to see them. All for free!

Here is the first secret:

Actually it is just a poorly framed, blurry photo of my dog, her frog shaped squeaky chew toy and her food bowls.

Another new development for me is that I have taken to drinking water out of wine bottles. They hold pretty much the perfect amount of water to quench my nearly unquenchable thirst, and are reusable.

Here is a video of Ben Popper riding on a snow covered bike path.

It was pretty funny.

California awaits. Are you ready?

waiting for summer

A little bit of this, a lot of that

This

is hard to get into, after 5 days of this:
But such is life. Headed back to the sunshine in another few weeks, but for now the XC skis, cross bike and charging the snow are the order of the day.

Sunshine burns off the clouds by 11am as cleats click into pedals and begin to turn magical circles. I love my bike

JRA

So I thought I found this sweet new bike path to ride on today, but then this happened:

That one stung a little bit but I will survive.

Off to California tomorrow for 5 days of 60 degree rain.

I cant wait.

Nasty

Training in Hawaii....

is for "woosies"

Riding Again

So I rode my bike a couple of times in the last few days. It feels nice to pedal, even if it is 30 degrees outside. I get bonky pretty fast since my body is not used to riding very much anymore, but it has been good fun. I am getting pretty tough. It is amazing how fast I went from "shit, it is flippin freezing here!" to "well, its pretty nice out today since it is 35 and not snowing". I guess it is all relative. At least it isn't raining on me right now like it is in Santa Cruz.

Saturday Sarah proposed a ride up to the Illinois State Beach park. It looked pretty straight forward on the map so I hopped on the bike and headed out. It was smooth sailing until I got to North Chicago, where the nice plowed bike path I had been rolling along ended abruptly in a 20 foot high ice/snow bank. Apparently that was as far as they decided to plow. I took to the side roads, got chased by a pit bull, road on 4 lane divided highways, tried multiple detours and finally made it to the park. Sarah was already there walking Eva around in the ice so I did a quick clothing change and we headed back south to grab some Deep Dish Pizza.

Everyone says that in Chicago deep dish is the way to go, and we weren't disappointed. The thing weighed about 7 lbs and smelled awesome. We hightailed it home and dug in. About 20 minutes later I was in a massive food coma on the couch where I remained until Sunday afternoon when we joined all the young families at Ikea looking for functional home furnishings at reasonable prices.

Finding none of these, we went back home, made an apple pie and played with the puppy.

I am going to spend one more week here in Evanston, then i am taking a quick training trip to Santa Rosa to try and whip my self into some shape.

I hope it doesn't rain on me to much.

Big time:

Gratuitous shot of the ladies:

Over and Out.


Nasty

Mancation

So my buddy John is about to have a kid, and we decided to take one last big Mancation with him before diapers and 2am wake up calls became the order of the day. Johns friend Dale lives in Minturn so we packed up the bags, hopped a plane and headed up to 10,000ft for bottomless powder and blue skies.

We got the blue skies, but due to a combination of factors, mostly related to atmospheric conditions and global warming, there was no bottomless powder. In fact, there was barely any snow at all, and if Vail didn't maintain golf course like standards on their runs during the summer months we could not have even skied. Luckily they do, so we were able to burn close to 35 runs over the weekend on high speed groomers. Fun times.

Copious amounts of bacon, beer, pizza and fire were involved, and in the end we all made it out alive.

Here are some photos from the trip.

Here John and Jesse hang out in the snow cat after we hiked to a place we weren't supposed to be.


This is the best way to start a day on the slopes, I think.


And this is the best way to end one.
And then we lit a fire. This is only the beginning...

This is the view from the top of Vail. Not too shabby

Aussie red-head Dale and I get Rad with our Giro gear.Not a lot of snow out there.


I went for a bike ride the other day in Evanston, I think I should have been rolling the CX bike.
Now that the interweb is up and running in my apartment, I will attempt to keep up with the blogging. The Puppy Eva is doing well, and basically runs around the house following me everywhere, peeing on everything.

I am an excellent clean up technician.

Nasty

Thanks: http://m.flickr.com/photos/35852712@N08/4271892547/

Eva can be seen here http://m.flickr.com/photos/35852712@N08/4267296273/sizes/m/

Tiny white shaggy dog is napping near my foot, does she think I am a giant?

There is a dog in my near future. Outside my window is the emergency alert siren for the whole town. It sucks

Illinois

So I finally have actual internet and can do some real updates.

We made the drive from Portland to Evanston in two and a half days.

Some of the drive looked like this.

Other parts looked like this.

A lot of it looked like this.

Evanston looks like this.

Our new apartment is pretty sweet, big, warm and close to everything. Actually it is too warm and we have to leave the windows open even when it is 11 out so that we dont suffer heat exhaustion.

Thats about it.

Sarah is working hard, getting stuff done. I have been doing the fitness path walk everyday and working on my push ups and pull ups. I might even start swimming soon.

Winter is tough.

Nasty

So now I am in champaign and the weather god says tonight it will snow and we will be stuck here for days. Oh joy. My arms hurt from doing pushups