The Congested Carnival (or 93s and 80 degrees)

Despite the fact that I was coming down (or came down) with a nasty little cold and despite the fact that rest is the common sickness remedy, I decided to try track racing as an alternative means of recovery. What can I say, everyone else was going and yeah, like I'm going to miss a chance to rebuild my ego after I was pummeled blue through most of January...

So into the car and out to Fielding we went to race on the flattest track I have ever seen. This track is what would happen if Marymoor lost its foundation and the rail sunk 20 feet. I'd wager the bank is somewhere around the 6 degree mark. Awesome.

In typical Rubicon fashion I decided "warmups are for loosers" and messed around with my gears for a good hour instead of rolling around like everyone else. After all, it's a miss'n'out, we'll have a neutral lap right? So tinker I did and warmup I didn't, untill the whistle blew and we were called to the line with just enough time to put my shoes on. Captain Indecision was our promoter, and the instructions went something like this:

"Okay guys, this is an elimination race, so we'll be pulling riders I think every lap or so, but first we'll have a neutral lap and I'll probably fire the gun and you'll be racing. Then we'll pull riders untill there are six or so left, and we might have 2 laps left untill the sprint. Either way, I'll ring the bell. Okay any questions?"

"Uh, yeah how many are you going to pull to?"

"Six or so"

Every race.

The miss'n'out actually went surprisingly well, despite the geniuses that tried to lap the field, didn't make it and ended up winning. I was third behind the geniuses after about a half an hour of sweet manuevers from the back to pick of dork after dork. Chauncey would be proud.
Because of the slightly dissapointing finish in the elimination I decided through sniffles and sneezes that for the 1500 Wheelrace Final, it was time to throw down. And throw down I did. I drew a sweet mark for the handicap, blasted off the line, found a good group and settled in for a few laps. Powered by Catherine Sells, the previously mentioned NZ world cup rider, our group swallowed up front-mark riders like a shop vac and when the time was right I blew the field a kiss goodbye and laid waste to all in my path.
That made me feel better.
NEXT UP... Scratch race. 16 laps on this track is like 40 on Alpenrose, so this would be a decent effort for the combined A and B group riders. The B group dudes started a good 30 meters behind us, so we had to lap them before the fun could really begin. So BANG the gun goes and so do we. Six laps later, as we catch them the wee little dude in front of me drops the hammer and attacks the field on the apron so off the front I go with a group of four. We roll pretty well, stay off the front and things are looking up with a lap to go so I pull the old "I'm not sprinting yet" sprint with about 300 to go, but the wee dude is too smart and waits until the very moment that I completely die to squirt around me and steal the win. Later I find that this guy probably learned that tricky maneuver at Manchester or any of the other world cups that he's ridden, so I don't feel too bad about getting beat, I just sneeze a good one at him to seal the deal.

Not a bad day of racing and shockingly enough I'm feeling better today. Damn good thing too because I'll be spending all day in a car headed back to Auckland with three guys who probably don't want to hear "SNIFF.... pause.... SNIFF.... pause.... SNIFF... pause... SNEEZE.... pause..." DT

Tissues and Terrorducks

Man, I woke up at negative-o-clock this morning... sick as a dog. Nose feels like it's full of peanut butter. Sinuses are at 200psi. I'm pretty sure I've sneezed more times than I've taken a breath this morning. What timing, how super. Just as I'm getting over a nasty little knee problem BAM some stupid bug jumps down my throat and sets up shop. With a track carnival tonight and a 7-hour drive back to Auckland tommorow, things are looking lame.

Quote of the day by Adam Felber (Fanatical Apathy, to your right): "Are vicious, freedom-hating terrorducks going to wait around while you drop flowers on your fancypants monuments before they shred your snobby overcoats with thier deadly beaks of fury? I think not."

The Real Life and Times of Hubert Ice

Some of your may wonder what I do all day. Some of you may wonder what I do all night. The second group I can't help too much, but if you want a rough schedule of the average weekday of a finely tuned international athlete, then here it is.

7:00am Wake up a little, think about waking up completely, then go back to sleep.

8:00am Dogs barking, bed too hot, time to get up.

8:07am Inspect how much of my cereal Brei's brother Saul has eaten. Eat the rest of the box, read the paper.

8:30am Emails, blogging, etc.

9:30am Saul crawls in, showers, checks if any of my cereal is left, then we discuss a plan for the rest of the day. Should we ride early? Should we surf first? Should we lay on the beach for a couple of hours, then surf, then ride? Should we go into town an laugh at people? So many choices.

9:40am Watch soccer or cricket or whatever happens to be on the sports channel.

10:30am Surf, beach, swim, bum around town etc.

11:30am Brei calls to finalize lunch plans. Cafe? Home sandwich? Kebab? Deciding factor is how thick the wallet is, so usually we either stay in, or go out and have nothing but coffee madness.

1:00 pm Shimmy into a chamois and head out into the forests, hills and empty roads around Wanganui. Spend some good hours hurting myself.

4 to 6:00pm Roll home, have a feed and contemplate the evening. If it's Wednesday we follow much the same procedure as the lunch discussion with the same parameters. If the wallet isn't bulging (which is most of the time), it's a night of more cricket, a bad movie and emails. Otherwise we are children of the night.

Weekends are a different story. Weekends are for racing. Every single week there's something going on somewhere on the island. Somewhere to sink some more money into gas and entry fees and stage race food. This weekend will be my first weekend off in a long time, and I'll still be racing, just not out of a hotel room. Maybe someday I could write a weekend schedule but for now they're too chaotic and unbalanced. Everyone knows road trips have to logic, you just have to go with the flow. Go with the flow. Not a bad mantra at all. (Unless the flow = The Man, of course). DT

Kill Your Radio

One thing I wanted to do when I came here was listen to as many Kiwi bands as possible, check out the local scenes, all that bohemian uber-cool crap. To my surprise, this didn't turn out so great. It's not like I didn't try, I did everything I could without spending gobs of money on concert tickets every night or hiring a proffesional investigator. I combed painstakingly through the biggest record shop in NZ (Real Groovey... a prety sweet store actually), I listened to each radio station on the dial (FM and AM), I read as many local-ish music mags as I could find in chic coffee shops (I found two... one of them was from Australia..), I even browsed through friends' music piles ("Yeah I got that one in the States, that too, and that, and that, yeah that too...") and talked to record shop employees ("Uh, yeah, I don't really listen to alot of music, I just work here"). Things were not looking up. It seems NZ's local music scene is entirely geared toward shipping bands overseas to get popular in the States, so they don't do alot while they're here.

It's the curse of a relatively lightly populated country, and it goes like this: A vast majority of the tunes in NZ come from the US. US labels look at NZ and say "This is a country of 4 million people. That means only 2 million or so are in our target audiences. There's not a lot of potential to make money here, since we can sell 2 million Eminem records in the LA suburbs alone. Therefore we will only release our records that are guaranteed to sell."
Hence... You have radio stations that are 20 times worse than any American Top 40 station. These guys don't even have the whole top forty, they only get about the top 15, so they just repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, the same Eminem, Destiny's Child, Jay Z, Linkin Park, J-Lo, and Blink 182 songs over and over... Normally you can look to student-run college stations in the US to find better music, stuff more off the beaten path... Not here. I found the Auckland student station and they were being original and adventurous by playing old Eminem and old Linkin Park. And the problem is not just that the radio stations suck. Let's be real, most radio stations in the US aren't much better, the problem is that there is so much music out there that just isn't available. So much stuff isn't shipped over because the bean counters at Capital or Universal don't think the profit will be large enough. This means Kiwi kids who try to start bands in high school all end up sounding like crappy versions of Blink 182 or Linkin Park because they never get exposed to the music that gave birth to those crappy bands, then they never get anywhere because "why would you listen to a crappy version of Blink 182 when you can just listen to the real thing?"

Don't get me wrong here, NZ has it's own music and it's noteworthy bands, but they don't get much airtime or credit. I heard alot of noise about NZ's "biggest band" Shihad because they changed thier name from Pacifier, but I never once heard them on the radio on any station, never saw them on a record-store listening station. I only heard one Shihad song and it hidden on a mix CD of crappy US pop-rock. It was good. I liked it, but I never heard it again. Other good groups like Pluto or Scribe get 15 seconds of fame on C4, NZ's answer to MTV, but like with the previously mentioned US tv station, good bands are few and far between the J Lo's and 50 cents.

Enter today's bullet list: Top 11 albums I'd like to donate to NZ radio in no particular order...

• Stephen Malkmus and The Jiks "Pig Lib"
• Thursday "Full Collapse"
• Interpol "Turn On the Bright Lights"
• The Dandy Warhols "Dandy's Rule, OK?"
• Modest Mouse "The Moon and Antarctica"
• Elliot Smith "Figure 8"
• Ambulance Ltd. "Ambulance Ltd."
• Built To Spill "Keep It Like a Secret"
• At The Drive-In "Relationship of Command"
• The Smiths "Singles"
• Pavement "Terror Twilight"

Westpac Velodrome (or how not to quit when you're ahead)

Not sure why it's the Westpac velodrome of CHAMPIONS but I'll get back as soon as I figure it out. Anyway, weekly track racing was last night, fun was had by all and it was the end of a fairly long day. Went for 3 hours of climbing earlier in the day, so the legs felt bruised just cruising around on the warmup. No worries though, racing here's not quite like the track pummelfests in Invercargill, more like an average night at Alpenrose (without Curry and the Kiwi crew). Before I continue, let me introduce Johnno. Johnno's real big. He's a big maori sprinter guy, used to be on the national team, rode worlds and all that cool stuff but tested positive and fell mysteriously out of favor with the coaches, the management and just about everybody from BikeNZ. Nowadays he drinks beer and eats too many pies so the usual sprinter's bootage is now much more significant. Either way, the dude can still go blazing fast and he's got wicked skills to match. OTHER PLAYAS: Catherine Sells: NZ World Cup endurance racer, fastest chick on the block. She hurt me in the warmup. JDD: It think this kid's name is Jamie, he's 15, goes faster than a scalded deer and he's not too smart. Seems like he does fine for most of the time untill his ADD kicks in and he does something wierd, hence JDD. WESTPAC VELODROME: Sweet track if it wasn't built on top of a hill, therefore prone to galeforce headwinds on the front straight ALL NIGHT. All board 250 outdoor.. not bad... It's not even Burnaby Glo-Worm "half board-half plywood" either. It's all one kind of wood, the good kind.
SO.
First we rode a handicap-ey scratch race-ey thing. It wasn't one or the other, just two groups starting at opposite ends of the track a la team pursuit style. 10 laps, GO! And we went, then I sprinted and won. Sweet. Next up, Miss n out, one of my least favorite events. Anyway, Cath sets a wicked pace at the front the whole time, so I'm chillin like a villain the whole race at the back popping people one at a time untill I get to one elimination left and it's either Johnno or JDD. I come up next to Big J on the back straight and he gives a little nudge to let me know he could flatten me if he wanted to, but alas, he's out, then I outsprint LDD and win. NEXT UP, handicap. My other least fav. event. I'm all by my lonesome on scratch with the front-marker 3/4 of a lap up and I've got four laps to work some magic. Meanwhile ahead of me the Two J's are both on 40m and Johnno tells the squirt "lead me out or I'll crush you" or something like that, so they start wicked hard, it takes me a lap and a half to catch and JDD commences the leadout. It's JDD, Johnno then me coming around getting the bell and this is chaos, there are riders everywhere and everyone is at different speeds. We're passing under people, over people, prectically right over the top of other people and in the middle of this, JDD's starting to blow so in the middle of the corner at about 40k an hour, while going under some guy, he takes his right hand off the bar to wave Big J through.... Boy are you for real? Johnno's obviously feeling a bit more comfortable with me now, because as soon as we get around everybody and I start to come around, he rides me to the rail, back to the apron, to the other side of town and back, then wins because I had to ride about 10k more than he did. This guy's got some skills. Good show.

This is where he packs up his stuff and leaves because "I want to quit while I'm still ahead."
Ahead? What? It's 2 to 1, you ain't ahead!

Oh well, needless to say the Kierin and the scratch aren't as much fun because I don't get to exact any revenge and no elbow madness is about to happen with this group. I won the scratch and here's the best part about the kierin: JDD rides the whole first 6 laps next to second wheel, completely in the wind, no draft at all, giving me a sweet place to hide then with 2 to go makes a hard right. Alright, that's cool daddio, so I wind it up from 2 laps out and show him why (as that carney guy says) "when in doubt, lead it out." I had time to sit up and chill on the home straight despite Little J charging hard out of the corner.
Afterwards he said "looks like you were getting pretty tired, I almost got you on that last one." Ha. Right. I didn't have the heart to tell the poor kid "no son, I just sat up."
This weekend is a four-stage two-day road race with (you guessed it) lots of climbing. Yee freaking haw. There is a crit however, so I'll have one chance to ride like a pirate and steal a little coin before the double whammy big last day. Oh. Also. Check out the links at the bottom of the little sidebar thingy to your right. I reccommend, well, all of them actually, but the Diary of a Wherewolf one is pretty funny stuff... DT

Picture of The Day

Ever wonder why us geeky dudes get into cycling? This guy can show you why.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/photos/2005/jan05/tdu05/index.php?id=stage2/IMG_7203

Tough Days in Tauranga

It's right smack in the middle of January but there's no umbrellas or jackets in sight, just sand, waves and the sun 5 feet above my head. Racing's done for the week, back into it in 5 days, but for now it's boardshorts, not lycra. I think my inner-calendar's getting a little wacked-out running around in mid-80's sunshine this time of year, but I'm not complaining. Sometimes the phrase "not a cloud in the sky" is a bit of an exaggeration, but this is not one of those times. Some Scottish guy my age who's touring around the country has joined Logan and Brei and I for the day. I'm not sure where he came from or who he is, but it hardly matters. He's quite the character, doesn't seem to fit with the three reasonably tanned, thin bike racers, with his typically Scottish stovepipe features, casper-white skin and thick, indeciferable accent. He's visibly excited to be on the beach in such weather, and he lets fly with bursts of words allegedly in English but no one can translate, so we smile, laugh a little and nod.
Then it's in the water to fail time and time again at swimming into the shorebreak waves, but nobody cares because everyone's high on sunburns and salt-water. Thrashing around in warm waves like this turns everyone into children regardless of supposed "age" or "maturity," proof positive when Logan's dad swims out to join us. This man's in his 50's, a farmer and a tractor-driver, but today he's nine, giggling between mouthfulls of seawater, flailing around somewhere North of Tauranga in the Pacific Ocean.
After the arms can't take it anymore and the waves loose a little magic it's back to the beachtowels and sunglasses for a stretch and some sand. I'm lulled by sun and a slight on-shore breeze into sleep, just long enough to recharge and run back to the water when the sun gets just too damn hot... We'll race another day, we'll train another day but for now it's some recovery, some mental rest. Quite the change of scenery from the sub-arctic plains at the bottom of the south Island only three days ago. I can dig it... DT

And In Other News...

I admit, the whole carnival coverage was pretty weak, but it was late, I was tired, boo hoo. Anyway. I'm settled in Wanganui at the Casa de Brei, and I have internet access in the house once again (the past three entries have been typed at furious speeds on 'pay per minute' internet cafe places, hence the grammar), so I can finally check out the rest of the world's biz again. First off, let me say that Portland rules. Two of the US's World Championship cyclocross squad are Portland guys. Word up to Barry "The Hair" Wicks and Erik Tonkin, who I have no clever knickname for, but we could call him "The Tonkinator." Could be three if you count Ryan "Tree Farm" Trebon, who doesn't live here full time, but I saw him in P-town an awful lot this year at races and Starbucks and such (hard to miss a guy who's about 80 feet tall).

HOWEVER
While Portland rules, the new Discovery Cycling Team uniforms do not. That's Discovery, formerly USPostalService for all you non rider-guys. The guys who at least used to look slightly different from the gaggle of other teams who wear nothing but white and blue.USPS at least had some red in there somewhere. Team Disco Fever? Just white and blue. Boring.

You know what's not boring? Mooning people. Randy Moss of the Minnesota Vikings agrees with me on this one, but Randy's a pro athlete, he's got some common sense, he knows that whole "right and wrong" thing, so he wouldn't really moon people on the field even though it would probably be hilarious. So in celebration at a touchdown and responding to the boos and flying trash that the Green Bay Packers fans were flinging at him, Moss "pretended" to moon them. Ohh SNAP. Laughs were had all around, even a few Green Bay fans were quoted in thier local papers as saying "it was pretty funny" after Moss mimed a vicious mooning. WAIT. STOP THE PRESSES, says the NFL. In this time of extreme censorship and fear of conservative backlash a la "The Great Janet Jackson Superbowl Booby Fiasco," Moss is being fined $10,000 for his hideous act. Ten grand. Granted Moss has a history of doing wierd crap because he has ADD or something, but I think this shows some restraint on his part, and he gets the size 9 penny-loafer of The Man straight up his butt for it. Damn The Man. He's just trying to get you down. I'm with you Randy. Don't let him get you down.

Speaking of drug-addled freaks, Ben Berden, a Belgian cyclocrosser, admitted use of EPO a few days ago. Why did he use EPO you ask? Because he was "tired." That's easilly the best reason yet. Millar's reasoning of 'team pressure' was my other favorite, no scratch that, previous favorite was when some Lampre guy said "it's for my dog," but this takes the cake. Congradulations Berden, you've thrown down a new standard for excuses, it's going to be hard to top this one. DT

Not All Carnivals Are Cotton Candy and Ferris Wheels...

Especially not this one. This one is 6 days long, includes track racing, a handicapped road race and a crit. It also includes THE AMAZING WORLD CHAMPION GREEEEEGGGG HENDERSONNN!!!!! The announcers reminded us of this fact often. Hendi himself also reminded us of his status and superiority by smashing the field to pieces in every single race without even breaking a sweat. Scotty was the only one without an expression of anguish on his face, since "Big Rig" never really shows any expression at all. My performance wasn't anything to write home about (so I won't) but Scott managed to hang on to Hendi in a couple races for second place finishes. Ho dang. Hard racing. Crappy town. Nice people. Crappy town. World Champ. Wow... On to Wanganui....

Nelson, More Climbing and Crap Racing in the Armpit of The World

Long time no talk to party people, it's been a while since I've had any internet, so this is going to be a long, possibly quite boring entry.

I set down in Nelson on New Year's Eve. After the daunting task of unpacking, inspecting and rebuilding the bike (after watching some slacker asshole fling it into the plane from halfway across the tarmac), Scotty, Aaron Tuckerman and I went for a quick ride and settled in for a slow New Year's Eve.
THE PLAN: Although it is New Year's Eve, the number one night for party and celebration, the night when all people my age are supposed to cut loose and freak out, WE are elite bike racers, highly tuned machines who are expected to perform tommorow. SO. We will eat some pasta, watch the TV edit of Coyote Ugly and get some sleep. One bowl of pasta and half a Coyote later Scott's phone goes RING RING. It's Brei and a bunch of other bike racers, they are going out on the town. They apply what your high school counselor reffered to as "peer pressure."
This is where the 19 year-old guys look at each other, the TV, the phone, the lone semi-nice shirt crumpled in the corner, back to the TV, and after several seconds of this everyone simultaneously jumps up and says "I'm in."
Race? What race? It's NEW YEAR'S EVE!
New year's in Nelson is quite the sight. Downtown is shut down to cars so thousands of people can roam freely from bar to bar, all gathering in the street for one massive countdown led my some unseen DJ. Things progress, the night lurches ahead unchecked, in some sweaty overpacked club AC/DC's "Thunderstruck" blares away into everyone's clouded heads until we spill out into the street, shouting it at the top of our lungs. Things end up predictably out of control and by 3am thoughts of racing are very distant on the horizon. Maybe Scotty and I got kicked out of McDonald's for excessive dancing and wicked moves, maybe not. Maybe Logan went running down the street naked as a new born, maybe not. Either way, the first race of the tour was 5 hours away.

The first 20k of the next day's road race blur into breathless vertigo. 14 laps of a 6k circuit complete with corners split by concrete center dividers (which split the field at the last possible moment every single time) and one little digger of a hill. The presence of several NZ Olympians kept the speeds pinned at 60k/hr on the straights and made for a few panicked chases and failed breakaways. When the break finally did stick it was 8 men strong, and neither Scott, Aaron or I was in it.
No worries, says I, still a 9th place field sprint to go and by this point things are looking up. Scott offers up the leadout and gets absolutely STUFFED with 400m to go, trapped on all sides but a tiny gap opens up to my right and before you can say BAM I'm through it and halfway into orbit. As I am in terrible shap and a bit under the weather I start to blow with 10m to go an the only guy that gets up next to me happens to be enormous, dressed in orange, and named Scotty Allen. Not sure who got it in the end because the officials couldn't be bothered with posting the actual order of the finishers, instead listing the field in alphabetical order. So instead of 9th or 10th, I was 60th or so. Awesome.

Stage 2 wasn't epic or great, but there was a 6k climb halfway through the race that I completely detonated on, sentencing me to ride the last 60k with a few other stragglers who didn't feel like working. Meanwhile ahead of me, Scott attacked early and had to ride the whole climb alone with the group breathing down his neck. Afterwards he said "I lost almost all my senses on that climb. I was down to three: sight, swearing and lactating."
Apparently he still had the sense of spewing left at the top of the climb, it took him almost half an hour to clean his bike off back at the room.

The crown jewel of the Tour De Vinyards is a 140k bastard of a stage that includes 2 big climbs mid-course and a 18k mountain-top finish worth $1000. I assumed today would be another hard, lonely day and I was half right. 5k up the first 6k climb I was breathing through my eyeballs, watching the field roll away and thinking "well, shit."
At this point there are over 100k left to go.
I'm scared to be alone.
So over the top I go and run smack into a straight headwind descent. Not good conditions to catch a 70-strong field of impoverished bike racers chasing sweet moolah. At the bottom I'm joined by 5 other goons who don't see the point of working hard enough to catch the field, so it's all me launching the desperate chase. Let me remind you od one important factor: I hate individual time trials. Why? Because I suck at them. The time trials I tend to do well at are around 200m long. I use this rationale to justify going all-out in hopes I can catch the field in 15k or less. If I can, sweet. If I can't, I'll end up completely frying myself and probably abandoning the race when my legs refuse to go any further halfway up the next climb. Long story short, I haul back a minute and a half on the field in 14k and catch them just as my quads are about to fall out of my shorts. Sweet.
I don't remember much about the next climb aside from complete loss of motor functions (aside from turning my feet in labored circles) and the joy of realizing I was descending the other side with the field. The next 50k wasn't too bad with everyone saving up for the mad dash up Takaki.
Remember what I wrote about climbing Ruapehu? This was about the same, but the first 10k wasn't pleasant.
It was the opposite of pleasant.
Which is bad.
I was maxed out with my legs cramping hard for 2 hours, and every 5 feet some asshole was telling me "you're almost there." Every time I heard that I felt like saying "f@!k off, I've got 12k left!" and punching them in the throat, but I was too busy gasping for breath, pedalling and swearing to myself, not near enough energy to swear at someone else, let alone take a swing.
I reached the top 10 minutes behind the field I started the climb with.
Then (here's a great idea) we rode another 60k home. It was a 200k day (that's 120 miles, people) in under 6 hours. I slept for 15 hours. I was too tired to eat, too tired to stand, almost too tired to sleep. All that was left to do was pass out and swear at things in my sleep.

The final day of the tour wasn't destined to go well. In the past I never would have finished a stage like yesterday's let alone reach the last climb with the group then ride another 60k home. I never would because I never have. I've never climbed that well and I can count the number of 200k rides I've done on my left hand. I was completely smashed up after that stage and by day 4 I still hadn't found all the pieces. I probably made half of the hilly-ass Hill Street circui race before I turned off the course and rode (crawled) back to the house. For my efforts in the Sprint competition I was still out of the money and my 50th place on GC wasn't going to net me anything, so it wasn't worth me walking the rest of the course. I damn near had to walk my bike up the driveway. Breezy once again convinced me to get out of the house and attend the post-race "rider debriefing" session at the local pub, which once again ran late into the night, was capped my her sister out-drinking me handily, and early early in the morning I was on a plane to my next destination...

... INVERCARGILL.
What a hole. This place is what would happen if you took some podunk 40,000 person Texas backwater town and plunk it down 600k north of Antarctica. This is supposed to be a 6-day track carnival but the first day was rained out, and the infield is now a lake. This is gonna be a long week...

Raetihi, The Bach, and The Neverending Climb Of Mt. Ruapehu

Seems like just about everybody in this country has a holiday house somewhere. It's always some run-down little shack in the middle of a wilderness area, or on a lake, or on a beach, and it's not a holiday house. It's a bach. We drove down to the Starr's bach in Raetihi after christmas to spend a few days out of the big city. This is the perfect antidote for a brain fried by the Auckland metropolis. Tired of traffic? Tired of other people? Looking for some nature outside of a city park? Come to Raetihi, population 1,000. It's a 5 hour drive on two lane roads through some killer landscapes, so the time goes by reasonably fast. The landscape of the central North Island came about when God loaded a shotgun with volcanoes, grass and trees, took a few random shots, dusted the whole thing of with 50 million sheep and 30 million cows, then went off to finish the Grand canyon. It's quite a bumpy place.

Looking out the window of the bach in Raetihi, you can see what looks like the biggest, gnarliest mountain on the planet. This big bastard doesn't have a peak, it has three big glacier-covered crags, jutting up at the sun like enormous Leno-esque chins. In short, it's huge. I think as cyclists it's a natural reaction (even for those of us who aren't the best climbers) to say, "We should ride up that."
And we did.
It was one of the most miserable experiences of my life.
Correction. The first 10k was actually quite pleasant (as climbs go). The weather was beautiful, sunny and warm. It wasn't too steep, and it was what I would imagine a ride through the Amazon would be like. Green, intense forest. Lush canopy. Tropical plants. Thousand year-old trees. With 10k down and 10k to go it gets steeper. Much steeper. This is where I run out of gears and my heart rate strays above 200 and refuses to come down like a freaked-out cat in a tree.
And my brain starts to hate me.
I think, "I should really concentrate on track next year. There are no mountains on the track."
I think, "I sould finish college and get a real job."
I think, "I should take up lawn-bowling."
This goes on for half an hour.
At 5k to go every pedalstroke feels like squatting 500 pounds on the 30th rep. My speed is embarrassing, my heartrate is frightening. I will die on this mountain, I'm sure of it. We've climbed above the treeline, nothing grows at this altitude, just rocks and snow. Around every corner is a steeper pitch, more road and the next corner to shoot for. Tunnel vision sets in, my heartrate has now been at 220 (its limit) for 30 minutes, plus 45 minutes of 200+ before that. Things are looking desperate. My exertion and the lack of oxygen at this altitude (somewhere above 6,000ft.) turns my breathing into ragged, uncontrolled gasps. An hour has passed with my effort red-lining completely out of control. Eventually one corner becomes the last, and it's over. Finally.
When the spots and red patches dissapear from in front of my eyes I find an amazing sight. These mountains, these huge monstrosities bursting out of the grassy hills could put the Rockies to shame, could make Park City look like L.A. There are a total of 3 small clouds in the sky, and they do nothing to dampen the view. Then just like that, it's time to descend.
Large portions of this road we climbed at around 8k an hour, the same sections we descend at just under 90k/hr. It took us almost two hours to get to the top and maybe 15 minutes to hit the bottom.
Total ride time wasn't anything to write home about, maybe about 3 and a half hours, but at the house I eat and immediately collapse like I'd been out for a 7 hour death march. I was so twisted that I was still tired the next day after 12 hours of sleep. I blame genetics for making me into a sprinter... And my loathing for climbing, that probably doesn't help either. Nope, just genetics. Thanks Dad. DT

A Bunch of Boxing Day Bullets

It's December 26th, Boxing Day, and you know what that means. Boxes and wrapping paper are cleared away, turkey bits are washed off the walls, and it's time for a bullet list.

• The hole in the Ozone layer down here becomes painfully apparent when a 3 hour cloudy ride yields deep red farmer-tan lines.
• Kiwis eat a lot of asparagus. (nasty)
• Aucklanders try to be very fashionable people (Italian envy maybe?), but instead of doing it by dressing well many do it by covering themselves in as many designer labels as they can get.
• They average pay in Auckland is lower than in the US.
• The designer clothes are (no joke) 3-4 times more expensive (a $20US Billabong shirt is $90NZ here, or about $70US). A pair of Diesel or similar jeans will run you $300+. I see a lot of Armani and Gucci... I'm afraid to even look at those prices...
• Coffee is on a different level here. An awesome level.
• NZ is far more secular than the US, making for more liberal laws and culture.
• Speaking of laws, recently a law passed to outlaw smoking in bars and clubs. Without ciggarette smoke, other equally less desirable smells become more apparent. Club owners are buying air freshener in huge quantities to mask the smell of body odor and stale, spilled beer.
• My next race is in 7 Days. It's a hilly race. It will hurt. DT

A Very Kiwi Christmas

It's Christmas morning in NZ, RoboSapien is waddling robotically around the house, new CD's are blaring from the stereo, the sun is shining away at 65 degrees, awesome food is already cooking and I've eaten enough chocolate this morning to choke a rottewieler. The Starrs have made me part of the family for Christmas morning (Santa even brought me a stocking!) which takes some of the sting out of being away from home, family and friends for the holidays. I just want to wish everybody a merry Christmas, happy holidays and all that jazz, I'm having an amazing time here and hopefully things are going well back in Portland, Texas, California and Washington. Talk to you all soon. DT

Wolves, Darkness, and Maori Holes

"Quick, come inside! The wolves are out there!"
This is just about the only thing Andy said for the first couple of hours we saw him yesterday afternoon.
"Hurry, the darkness is coming... Darkness all around..."
By one in the afternoon, at least he was awake. Apparently he had quite the Wednesday night. We started out as one big group, but after the first evening establishment (yes Mom and Dad, I'm talking about a BAR) was done and done it was all a question of where to go now. Long story short we get separated and Walker and I can't find Andy, Troy and whoever was driving everybody around. Bummer. Text messages are sent, the club we're in is really loud and the people are awful, phone calls are made ("what? WHAT? I CANT HEAR YOU!!") and before you know it it's 2 o clock in the morning. I'm still sick, Walker's not feeling top notch either, so it's time to call it a night. No car, not enough money for a cab and we're about an hour's walk from home, but we're athletes. We're endurance athletes. An hour is nothing.

Fast forward to 7:30 in the morning. I'm fast asleep. Comfy, warm, someone's cat curled up by my feet, and in burst Andy and Troy. "HEY MAN, WHERE'S YOUR PRODIGY CD? WE NEED IT NOOOOWW!!" I point and groan a little bit in the direction of my small pile of music. How can they be up this early? "YEAH MAN, SORRY WE GOT SPLIT UP, YOU SHOULD HAVE COME TO GLOBE, IT WAS AAAAWESOME!!" How can they look so fresh? Why are they still in last night's clothes? Simple really, they just never went home, never went to sleep. By the time the sun came up the auckland clubs must have finally emptied so they were forced to head back home and knock my door down at stupid o clock in the morning for a CD that Andy already owns.

Fast forward again about 5 more hours and I get my revenge. Andy's in a coma. Near dead. Twisted beyond belief. Walker and I are nicely rested by this point in the day and it's time to wake up the birthday boy. Eventually the sun pokes out from behind the clouds and we head up to Mt. Eden to sit in a Maori storage holes (old fortified shelter on the side of a large hill, now just a big hole covered in grass) and have our pictures taken by Asian tourists who are shipped to the top of Mt. Eden by the bussload to take as many pictures of the city skyline, the holes, the grass, each other and the local guys sitting in the holes as possible. These places used to be used as lookouts, storage and other important things, now we use them to chat about bike racing, people we don't like and last night. Eventually we'll drift off, find a kebab or a burger, i'll go ride somewhere and Andy will go back to sleep, but for now you can watch the clouds roll in over the Waitakere mountains and toward the city, and life is simple.
Then a bug bites you in the ass and it's time to get out of this stupid hole. DT

Aucklanders Need Driving Lessons

Apparently 31 people have died in auto accidents in this city since the beginning of December. Auckland police are urging people to "STOP DRIVING LIKE IDIOTS."

In other news, Kiwis think Donald Rumsfeld is a complete mang. In other words, the opposite of intelligent, rational, compassionate, funny and good-looking. The NZ Herald seems to think Iraq would be a much happier place if Rummy would have gone into a more suitable field, such as plumbing (maybe not, as the guy seems to have trouble fixing things). I'm glad we're on the same page here, this gives me a bit of confidence in the kiwis, despite thier atrocious driving skills. RUMMY QUOTE OF THE DAY: (after that nasty Abu Gharabalab prison thing) "Stuff happens in war sometimes." That's truth kids, write that down...

BACK TO ME. I've been a bit sick lately so things have been slow. Got back into it today to much complaint from my achey legs and weak lungs. Andy's birthday was yesterday, so tonight we're heading out on the town. "What?" you may ask. "Why go out on a Wednesday?" Aucklanders were never quite satisfied with just one weekend, so they've created Friday Night 2 (otherwise known as Wednesday). Works continues on Thursday, but productivity must not be a big deal, one guy at a coffee shop calls it "New Zealand's answer to the Spanish Siesta." Sounds super duper to me, I'm sending a letter to my local congressman ("screw global warming, saving wales and all that deficit crap, I want another Friday"). DT

A Weekend Down The Tubes...

Someone in Portland is putting a curse on me. Someone is doing their cross-Pacific rain dance. As I stood in front of the giant kitchen window this morning with Walker's dad, watching the hail pound the palm trees and avocado trees out back, he said "I have nver seen weather like this here. It doesn't even get this bad in the middle of winter." Well gosh, glad I could be here to witness it. And ride in it...
The weekend actually started out peachy. Friday was great track weather, sun and65. Did an easy 50k then headed out to Manukau for the evening's racing. Track racing at Manukau velodrome is a touch different then back at home. When people were chatting about throwing on 94 inch gears I thought they were joking. 4 Laps into the scratch race I was breathing through my eyeballs going mach 10 with 25 laps to go thinking "this is a very mean joke..." I suffered like a dawg through everything only to find out that the guys sticking it to the field were all juniors fresh from the Oceania games. Punks.
The kierins were fun, kiwis are much more willing to put a shoulder into you in the interest of holding a spot than Portlanders, but a few fancy manuevers and 150 pounds of fury kept me chillin' like a villain. My fatal error was in the semi-final... Thought I was safe with 10 meters to go so I let off the gas and some stealthy bastard stole it on the line. Rode the point-a-lap and elimination to much the same result as the scratch, Walker came out with a few second places and a handful of cash, so all was not lost. From there we proceed directly to the all-night kebab stand, devour a mighty feast and sleep the sleep of the dead.
SATURDAY. Oh saturday. If there's anything that makes you nervous about racing a national championship crit, it's getting your lunch handed to you the night before by some punk junior. This crit wouldn't just be the punk juniors (although there would be some in the field for sure), this particular race had the best riders NZ has to offer. "Sure, whatever, I'll ride it anyway. Can't puss out now right?"
Then the hail storm hits. All day, Auckland gets soaked through by rain and hail, and all day I am looking out the window thinking... well... shit. The race doesn't even start untill 8pm, so I have plenty of time to think this. Anyway, in the interest of keeping my bike and skin intact another day, I save 30 bucks and Walker and I do some lawn-chair secret training on the sidelines. I feel sorry for those poor guys that weren't in the finishing group of about 8. Scratch that, I feel sorry for everybody who froze thier asses off only to get pummelled by a trackie who didn't even break a sweat. Long story short, the four guys capable of wining tear the field to bits in the first 5 minutes and nobody has any fun (except for scratch race world champ Greg Henderson, who won).
Post race parties are good, we start out at a barn (seriously) and later upgrade to a bling house on the beach in Takapuna. The previous has a boombox blaring eminem and 50cent, and the latter has a killer deck overlooking the water and people screaming Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers at full volume. Guess which one was more fun? No one sang Born In the USA for some reason, probably just forgot it... DT

Number 5 With a Bullet

Hey folks, long time no talk to, glad to see you again. The early day was spent on the bike in the driving rain so 100k later I deserved a major present. This means chumming around with Walker the Stalker sampling Auckland's finest coffee beverages and coincidentally (not really) an attenion span as short as a shi-tzu. HENCE: The Bullet List. This is my new favorite thing on the planet, and a great way to get accross information in a timely, somewhat organized fashion. Better yet, I can do it at blazing speeds, all the better to get on with more of heaven's bean and rasberry buns...

• The Asian population in Auckland is fairly significant, and from what I can tell, not too keen on learning English or watching out for bikes while driving around the city. Normally I dislike steriotypes, but it's a bit tough when you're nearly killed 37,000 times a day by one particular group of people.
• Rain in Auckland is warm and therefore superior to Portland rain (for riding at least). Very rarely in P-town do you show up for a rainy group ride and no one has jackets or legwarmers.
• The Simpson's is still the greatest show ever created (sorry Donny Trump). Every night, a full hour of Springfield hijinks on NZ's biggest network is reminding me of why I became such a sarcastic goon.
• No one wears shorts here when the sun is out.
• Cricket is seen as a cool and manly sport. Cricket. Seriously. Wickets and degrees of rotation and all that pompous crap. Ugh. I rank cricket somewhere between bowling and golf. Yeah you need skill to do it well, but who cares? At least rugby's big as well, that should make up for it. Maybe. DT

Rain, Rain, Go Away, You Too Donald Rumsfeld

Sydney's nearly underwater today and looks like Auckland's next on Nature's hit list. Rain and hail storms ripped through OZ yesterday and shut down airports, trains and sunbathers. The poor weather-lady looked like she was delivering a eulogy as she pointed out the driving fronts coming in from every direction on the map. We're surrounded. I blame myself. Looks like I brought a taste of puddle-town with me. Good thing I've spent so many hours on the bike in the last few days wandering aimlessly, it appears the next couple days will be a bit easy.
In other news, my favorite government hack Donny Rumsfeld just taped a "KICK ME" sign onto the collective baks of the world media. He's bringing back the much-protested "Office of Strategic Planning," otherwise known as the "Office of PSYCH!" This department was half-created then shut down three years ago and is a pentagon unit tasked with spreading fake information to domestic and international news agencies in order to "throw off the enemy." Recently they tested it out on CNN, who on October 14 reported that the US had begun operations in Fallujah (a full three weeks before they actually began).
Quote of the day from Lawrence de Rita (man or woman?) a senior Pentagon spokesman regarding the program, "In the battle of perception management where the enemy is clearly using the media to help management perceptions of the general public, our job is not perception management but to counter the enemy's perception management."
That takes a bit of the fun out of calling the government on thier lies doesn't it? It's like the ultimate legal fine print at the bottom of a commercial, "Some of what we're saying is mostly true, but maybe some of it partially isn't, or is it?"
I say media sources should now go on strike from the Pentagon. As long as they're pulling a bag over everyone's head and whispering useless crap into reporter's ears we might as well just not listen to anything they say. Let's bring back real journalism. Wierd concept for sure, but who knows, maybe finding facts for yourself instead of relying on the talking head might be rewarding, or at least a little higher on the journalistic integrity scale. Even better, that may give media sources somthing to do aside from trumpeting Martha Stewart's prison cell remodeling tips.
Anyway, now that's out of the way so it's time for a quick rainy ride and some killer fish and chips. Also much work to do yet on judging Mt. Eden's row of coffee shops. So much to do, so little time. DT

Why All Countries Should Drive On The Right Side Of The Road And Use The Metric System (plus a small ode to meat pies)

This whole riding on the left side of the road thing is driving me nuts. Granted it hasn't even been a week yet, but nevermind, it's still stupid. Being somewhere new doesn't help the situation much as I'll be riding along, checking things out, trying to remember (or figure out) where I am, take a turn and ride on the right side of the street for about fourteen feet until some kiwi comes driving up my side and I'm thinking "what's she doing on MY SIDE of the road?" Bust a quick manuever to keep for getting killed and usually I'll realize she's not such an idiot after all. What can I say. I'm a slow learner.
On the other side of the coin is the metric system. Cool in many ways. Much easier to understand than the... non metric system or whatever we have in the states. Everything's in increments of tens, hundreds and such. Awesome. Also nice for rides, makes you feel like you're actually doing a fair amount of distance ("yeah, I did a pretty easy hundred k today..").
I can understand why American's will never switch to metric ("I aint usin none o that sissy euro talk!") but why we don't have meat pies is beyond me. It's such an American thing, it surprises me that you'd find it anywhere else. It's a simple and brilliant concept. Take a crisp flaky pie crust like the kind you'd find on a apple pie, make it about fist sized, then fill it with steak or chicken or whatever, add sauce and BINGO. You've got a 2 dollar lunch made in heaven. Awesome post ride and probably pretty good for those with hangovers, but I wouldn't know. DT

Walker Starr: "Who Am I?"

If you don't know Walker Starr, all you need to know is that he's the man. Not like "The Man" who's always trying to get you down, but just lowercase "coolguy" the man. I'll get to why Walker the Stalker is the man in a jiffy, but first you should probably know that things at the Small household have plunged into complete chaos.
I found out a few weeks ago after all arrangements had been made that Andy's mom had run off with some dude and left the family for good. This puts my stay in Auckland a bit up in the air. Nevermind though, because Andy assures me that although this sucks the big one, it's all good and he could use the company. Fast forward a few weeks, here I am and everything seems allright. Everybody's moving on and outward appearances show that things could be worse. After the first 2 days seemed like nothing had ever happened. Life was moving forward, Andy goes to work, his little brother goes to school, his other little brother plays computer games, his dad goes to work, I do some riding and bum around town for the day bothering people with my stupid "American accent." This morning shit goes pear-shaped. Andy stays in a guest house out back that you can see from the computer room window. We've had breakfast, chatted and Andy's out in his villa getting ready for work (works at a bike shop, SURPRISE!). Anyway. I sit down to check my emails and notice what looks like wrestling going on in Andy's room. Poke my head out the door and Andy and his dad are engaged in a full all-out fistfight. Whoa. Run in, tell Nick (Andy's 15 yr old bro) and he laughs like I'm joking. Not joking. We both hear muffled swearing and he knows it no joke. By this point they're on the floor in Andy's room, Nick breaks it up, Andy calls the cops and I walk out the door with Nick. Time to dissapear. They were both at work by the time we got back. Enter Walker Starr.
Walker's a kiwi with dual citizenship who races in America (trying to get on the American track team), so of course he gets heaps of crap from both sides. He's a great guy but doesn't help his reputation by showing up at the crit last night in an Australia national team skinsuit, Rudy Project stars and stripes glasses and a kiwi bike. Identity crisis aside, Walker the Stalker is a unit on the bike and a cool guy off it. He walks in a few minutes after we get back and says he heard about Andy's troubles and offers me a room at his place. We'll sort everything out with Andy tonight, sounds like he might be staying with Walker for a while as well.
As far as racing goes, the weekly crit's a pretty cool deal. 10 bucks kiwi gets you a half hour of windy bayside racing with hot spot sprints every 5 minutes. Pretty hard on the legs if you're going for it, and money's good enough to make it fast. Andy finished 5th on points and pulled down 20 big ones. Mitchem could learn a few things about prize money from these guys. Cool course as well, couple hard corners, a big sweeper and a long finish straight. Couple of true wankers out trying to kill themselves in every corner and each other on every sprint, so its just like home. I stayed out of trouble and checked out who the hard units are for next week. With the ride beforehand, the ride to the course and the ride back it ended up as about a hundred km day in shorts and a jersey. Sweet. DT