For those that didn't know him, this is Brett. Brett was a great friend to not just me, but everyone he had ever met. He riding his bike south on Interstate around 12:30 yesterday when a garbage truck drove past, and turned in front of him. He was headed downhill at the time, carrying alot of speed. He had no room to stop when the truck turned in front of him and took the corner. Brett was killed.

Brett was unconditionally nice. Seeing him with anything other than that goofy smile on his face was rare. Brett worked sales next to me at the Gallery. He did well selling bikes not because he could rattle of specs and weights and material names and suspension designs and all that. He was good at what he did because people knew that he was truly happy to be helping them with a bike. Customers knew that Brett was not a "salesman," he just wanted people to be happy.

He was a great racer. Not in the sense that he had an impressive list of victories or a signature "move" or something. He was great because he pushed himself and had a great time doing it. I watched him achieve his finest result on Sunday, 3rd in the singlespeeds at the Cross Crusade at Rainier HS. I saw every lap, and could tell that he had finally found his limit. He was riding right there, right up next to it. No reserves, holding nothing back. He fucking went for it. After it was all over he knew he had given everything, and was so happy he looked like he would burst at any moment. He could have finished 300th instead of 3rd and I think he would have looked the same, knowing he had ridden to his true maximum physical capacity. He didn't take off to shower and recover after he finished. He stayed to cheer on his friends who had yet to race, and to be with his friends that already had.

A world that allows a perfectly good person like Brett to die before his time doesn't make any sense. My heart goes out to Sarah.

I'll miss you buddy. We all will.

DT

man i'm hungry

there is no better way to kick back after a hard cross race than with...

And now a bear stuck in a bridge.







all of todays entertainment stolen from How To Avoid The Bummerlife.

not much more than meets the eye

Yeah, I finally saw Transformers. Guess what? It rules.
Optimus Prime kicks ass, just like he did when I was a kid. The human dialogue and backstory wasn't just bad, it was painfull. It was awefull. It was excruciating. The auto-bot and Deceptacon dialogue was obviously bad, but it was bad in the same way it was in the show, cause you know, robots are not so good with the syntax, remember? So it's not really bad, it's gloriously silly.

Anyway. The movie is 2 hours and 15 minutes long. At least 45 minutes of that could be cut out and left in Hollywood. Pretty much all the non-transforming bits of people going bla bla bla, i'm an acqward high school kid, bla bla bla unrequited love, bla bla bla, i knew you really loved me bla bla bla bla bla. As much as I cringed and heckled through these parts, I was smiling ear to ear during the bad-ass transformer battle sequences. They are massive, sprawling triumphs of modern special effects, they are rediculous and totally perfect. As we left the Mission theater, the 4 people I was with all agreed that it was retarded, but my inner 8 year old was screaming "I WANNA GO AGAIN!"

DT

wrapped up like an dead fish

Nationals and 2007 are finito. Complete. Done. Over with. The cycling end is done. Had a slightly better showing in the kierin, but still couldn't escape the reps and the minor finals. Attended a small end of season party at a super-posh condo by Redondo beach. We drank too much Pacifico, toasted with Veuve Clicquote and watched Ricky Bobby twice.

Now it's back to the gym, back to the fridge and out to the cross races for some spectating, wound scrubbing and broken bone stabilizing. I'm taking the day of the singlespeed CX world's off, as I need at least one race to be that beer-soaked shirtless guy jumping around screaming at my racing friends and throwing Cozy Shack at people. Looking forward to it.

DT

200m

Everything I could've done wrong, I did. 12.01 on an indoor board track and qualified 23rd. Only top 12 went to the rounds, so it was a short day. 3 months after I did a 10.6 outdoors. I'm out of the team sprint.
Not many funny jokes i can make about that one.

crappy luck and robot wisdom

Quite the morning in LA. The sun's strugling to get through the brown sky, but still managing to get everything up to a nice 85 degrees. Huge cannonball run Sunday night at top speed to get to LA before the sun rises and the track opens. Saw nothing but torrential rains and white lines until we rolled through Sacramento. Finally arrived in LA around 4:30am. Driving in Los Angeles is like running the Indy 500 in a Toyota van. Same amount of cars as Portland rush hour, but spread across 6 lanes, everybody doing at least 90mph, and everyone using at least 3 lanes at a time.

stupid gates...

Had a rough morning in the standing 250tt yesterday. Legs felt great, bike felt great, everything was going well until I sat down in front of the gate. This start is crucial. I have one lap to prove that I can start fast enough to ride second behind Blatchford in the team sprint. So the countdown begins, gets down to 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, GO and I'm sideways. Not sure if I jumped too fast and got ahead of the gates or if one of the gate arms didn't release completely, but either way, I avoided going down by a whisker and ended up aimed uptrack. Not so good. Got back on it and after that everything fired perfectly, but Des said I lost between 3 and 4 tenths because of the horrible start. Ended up with a 19.1, same time as last year. So had I not missed the start, maybe would have ended up around 18.7 or 18.8, good for third. Either way, fast enough to stay in the team sprint, so Saturday's the big day.

Seemed like a tough day for most of the NW contingent. Heather wasn't happy with her 500, Beardsley didn't like his kilo, The Mantis' team pursuit team fell to Rock and Republic for the silver after one of the four riders drops off only halfway in. Good thing this is only the first day. Plenty of events left to go.

Sprints are today. Gambling a bit on the gear, riding something relatively small, so we'll see how that one goes.

DT

This is my least favorite part of the season. At this point there is nothing I can do to get faster by next week, I can only maintain what I have right now. A horrible feeling for sure. I'm excited about nationals for sure, but at the same time I'd rather stay in bed with the covers up to my eyes and the blinds shut tight... So I'll keep my mind off of it. Walker The Stalker may be jetting over to the states for a little R&R from law school. Sounds like an idea and a half to me. Would be great to see the guy again.
Got some wedding pics finally. Awards will be forthcoming.
DT

the indoors are a load of hooey

Abiqua falls: somewhere outside of Silverton...


winding up for a big jump





tubin'


getting some altitude...


...and losing it quickly


And on to the beach. Camping in pirate country.








on the trail to Cape Falcon

churros are the new cupcakes

mostly moved

still a little scattered though...

bullet points:

- Just discovered a third National Team qualifier in mid-December. This is good. 3 weeks of weddings and moving equal 3 weeks of not training very much.

- This means I'm waiting till November/December to do the big pre-TT training camp. Looks like I'll be here for September after all.

-Downtown crit was Friday. I rode for a few minutes and learned that Mt. Dew is not so good for the brakes. Dried sticky goo on the brake pads makes your wheels lock up as soon as you touch them. Locking up the rear wheel in mid kamikaze corner dive with riders on all four sides is exciting, but tough to recover. After about 3 consecutive laps of "how'd i do that?" and "how'd I survive that?" I took the hint, realized my nine lives were up and rode back to the van.

-Tuckerman rode like a man at the Twilight, but got punted by lady luck when someone went down pretty spectacularly in front of him with 2 to go. That place was crash-central, so no big surprise there.

-I found out about the Nationals Qualifier about 12 hours before they started. Apparently Norrene assumes that I'm aware of my own schedule. Showed her.

- Muchas Gracias is too close. Cheap burritos on the way to everything. Dangerous.

- Word on the street is that a prominent velodrome architect is arriving in portland in early September to check out a couple of proposed sites for a new indoor board track.

- The Little League World Series has been all over ESPN the last couple of days. So no one will show Track Worlds, Road Worlds or anything other than the Tour, but we should watch a bunch of pre-pubescent winers play wiffle-ball? wtf?

DT

DT

hurricane me

So there's a Hurricane Dean hurling itself around the gulf of Mexico these days. It' not every day you get your own hurricane. The last reports placed me at about 115mph steady winds. Apparently I may be headed for the Mexican mainland and an upgrade to around 130mph.
Here's a bitchin video of me picking up speed.

Back in my other corner of the world, Jenny and I are moving to the Couve this week, so not much time to waste on writing stupid blog posts. Will let you know when my tears are dry and the boxes are gone...

DT

Oregon State Flipping Off Hummers World Championships

Can be won by submitting a photo here.

Sprint Champs were last night. It was cold. Actually it was only the last half of the rounds, as we had already completed more that half our rides a few weeks ago before the rain started. So I had one ride vs. Abers and if I survived that, one vs. the winner of a Battle of the Stephens (mclaghrey vs. beardsley). So the whistle blows and I roll out behind Brian. Now first off, I have a hard time looking menacing while I'm sprinting. Something about being skinnier that most other guys and looking generally a little odd keep me from being "scary" during the first couple of laps. I compensate by talking alot, smiling like an idiot and cracking jokes while the other guy is trying to concentrate. It's like the Mike Creed aproach, but fewer "your mom" comments. Anyway, I'm doing all this while trying to be somewhere that Brian is not looking, picking up speed and Abers goes for the old-school "im gonna do a trackstand" thing. Fine. I roll underneath, pin him on the rail and before you know it we're getting the bell. Coming into the first corner I give brian a little flick, which I guess turned out to be not so little, because when I looked up he was off the ground nearly horizontal trying to stick the landing. Which of course is a wonderful time to go, so I went. Into the finals. I knew it was a good hook when he was still laughing about it after two cooldown laps.

McMuscles rode Beardsley pretty perfectly and drew second in our ride. The ride everyone is used to seeing from me is the one where I take it easy, wind up slow, steal the lane somehow with a lap to go, lead it out and go from there. It's tried and true. It works. But people expect it now, so I tried something different. Sneak attack with 2 and a half to go, let up, drift Stephen uptrack a bit coming into the bell and hit it from there. It worked. Rolling around on the apron afterwards, McMuscles rides up and says "well, that was different."

You know what else is different? Seeing Jimmy Lingwood in all his tall-socked glory in a Keirin final. The final in question was legendarily messy and I screwed up big time. When I won last year, I pretty much had my eyes closed the entire time and the thottle full open, hoping I would make it to the finish line in one peice. This year I should have done the same, but suddenly the next couple of months flashed before me and I got careful (read: sissy) for half a second and that was all it took. Ended up second, with Jimmy Tallsocks making a huge charge to come around me on the line. Didn't quite make it, but he only needed another couple of meters and I would have had to tackle him off his bike. He's got Kerin-Fu in his blood... Come to the dark side Jimmy. Do it.

DT

commence with bloodflow rejuvenation for glorious nation of khazakstan

Yet another khazaki pro-tour guy got positived (i hereby declare 'positived' a new transitive verb) the other day. Caught in the big out of competition rounds like a dolphin in a tuna net. A really skinny dolphin. From Khazakstan. Funny thing is, they got him for the exact same thing as his Astana buddy and countryman the venerable hero alexander VINOkourov. Homo-logus blood transfusion. Don't they know that stuff was so 2004? Just ask tiny Tyler Hamilton, he'll tell ya. I have visions of strapping young square-jawed, blonde-haired cyclists lined up at the "now leaving Khazakstan" sign recieving SuperSoakers full of blood to help them on thier journey...

You know what reeely sucks? I'm going to miss the state crit champs this year. Yeah, I know. It sucks. Especially after last year, which with 3 to go looked to be a pretty sweet Dean Vs. Skerrit Vs everybody else field sprint, then the big Tim Coffey Spill happend. Shannon ended up on his head, I ended up dodging flying bodyparts but trackstanding in the middle of the road anyway, and Father Bosson rode away with it. Can't get the day off work though. I've tried everything aside from "We're renewing our vows. From last week." If Shannon wins I'm probably going to off myself.

Been having fun hearing about how everyone had a great time at our wedding. That's exactly what I wanted to hear. "short and sweet ceremony, good food, killer party." Mission accomplished. Also been having a great time referring to Jenny as "the wife" and "the old ball and chain." Seriously though, don't tell her I said that last one...

I need to get myself out to the track, old blood and all. Only 8 weeks to Nationals. Only one week to Jimmy's bachelor party though. hmm. I'm gonna be on poor form for that one as I'm off the sauce again, but I'll soldier on. And try to stay upright this time...

I'll leave you today with this soothing video. If someone could get this played before every theater movie, the world would be a better place.




p.s. that guys black shirt says DOPERS SUCK. Funny stuff.

DT

sooo....

i got married this weekend. It was quite the party. Pictures forthcoming. My mom won the 'coolest person of the wedding' by dancing everybody into the ground. I'm back to work snap quick. Going to have to start training again. Never an easy feat to jump back in after a couple weeks of wedding stuff.

Good stuff from US Rep Patrick McHenry (R-NC) in response to pro-bicycle legislation:



“A major component of the Democrats’ energy legislation and the Democrats’ answer to our energy crisis is, hold on, wait one minute, wait one minute, it is promoting the use of the bicycle.

Oh, I cannot make this stuff up. Yes, the American people have heard this. Their answer to our fuel crisis, the crisis at the pumps, is: Ride a bike.

Democrats believe that using taxpayer funds in this bill to the tune of $1 million a year should be devoted to the principle of: “Save energy, ride a bike.”

Some might argue that depending on bicycles to solve our energy crisis is naive, perhaps ridiculous. Some might even say Congress should use this energy legislation to create new energy, bring new nuclear power plants on line, use clean coal technology, energy exploration, but no, no.

They want to tell the American people, stop driving, ride a bike. This is absolutely amazing.

Apparently, the Democrats believe that the miracle on two wheels that we know as a bicycle will end our dependence on foreign oil. I cannot make this stuff up. It is absolutely amazing.

Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the Democrats, promoting 19th century solutions to 21st century problems. If you don’t like it, ride a bike. If you don’t like the price at the pumps, ride a bike.

Stay tuned for the next big idea for the Democrats: Improving energy efficiency by the horse and buggy.”

Seriously. Not making that one up. See for yourself. Just click on "Congressman McHenry Slams Democrats' Antiquated Energy Plan"

Brilliant!

DT

tuckerman's really letting himself go

Good to see that he's getting some excercise though...

DT

i feel dusty

Winthrop in late July is a dusty, dirty, hot tinderbox just waiting to burst into flames. It's like Bend, but hotter. Great place for an outdoor wedding, don't you think? Actually Solomon's wedding was this last Saturday, it was pretty great. Hot, but great.

We showed up on Wednesday for some bachelor and bachelorette party time, and to help set up the big shindig in Brandy's parent's back yard. Actually, it's more of a mountainside acreage than a back yard, so setup involved alot of carrying chairs and tables around, building dance floors and clearing 20 years of accumulated knicknacks and gardening things. All the while, brandy's parents would keep us hydrated with a steady stream of beer, which does not work as well as one might think. (it's made of water, right?) The ceremony itself was cool, despite having to stand next to solomon in the groomsman attire of black shirt, black vest and black shoes in the 95 degree heat. I guess we know which one of my groomsmen is wearing the skirt and heels at my wedding...

The reception was all anyone could hope for. Plenty of drinking and merryment, good food, good dancing, and in true hippie fashion, an impromptu rhythemless drum-circle, which was fun all the same. Jenny and I retired late, woke up far too early the next day, piled in the truck, drove the 8 hours back home and collapsed on the couch. As I was sitting there I could hear Des in the back of my head reading me the riot act in his sickeningly calm and quiet carribean manner, bemoaning my 6 days without turning a single pedalstroke and 4 days of excessive calorie intake (mostly in beer form) and excessive alchohol intake (see previous parenthises). So I knew I had to do some kind of ride.

It's now 5:30pm. I could A: do the stumptown-bikepath-cemetery-stumptown loop, which makes for just short of an hour if I go slow, usually a good choice for a recovery ride or easy day. I could do B: The stumptown-cemetery-council crest-skyline-germantown-23rd loop, which is a good hard couple of hours. I could also do C: drive up to Vancouver, pay 15 bucks and see how long I can stay in the Courthouse Criterium, and hope there's an early prime wortwhile. C seems pretty alright... Long story short, I thought I was going to spew within the first 5 minutes, and 10 minutes in I realized that A or B would have been far smarter in the long run. I lurked around in the top ten for a while until I heard the bell ringing for 50 bucks cash around 20 minutes in. I stomped on it on the back straight, got a decent gap and who do I see coming up behind me in the last couple of turns but the Aussie. Fan-effing-tastic! Kept it fast but reasonable the last couple of turns as he drifted everyone back a couple of lengths, he made a show of sprinting up to me in finish straight, so I did the same and it was game over. So 50 bucks in hand I pull the pin, ride around the block a few times, barely avoid hurling in front of an 8 year old, and roll back to the van, where Engine 82 from the Vancouver Fire department had just pulled up to watch me race. Little embarrasing there... "hey, we thought you were racing today!" yeah... about that... I only dress the part and ride the bike... not really a bike racer today...

DT

transfusions of blood for make benefit glorious nation of kazhakstan

Another one bites the dust.

When Skerrit told me Vinokourov tested positive this morning, for a split second I thought "but he seemed like such a great guy!" Then I thought back on doping cases of the recent past:

Roberto Heras. Nice guy
Tyler Hamilton. Really nice guy
David Millar. Nice guy, and Scottish too
Stephen Alfred. Exceptionally nice guy
Ivan Basso. Quiet, but always looked nice
Floyd Landis. Funny looking, but nice
Alexander Vinokourov. Crowd favorite. Like cheering for a scrappy puppy in the middle of a huge dogfight.

How ironic that his road stage came at a very familiar point, and in a very similar situation as a memorable stage last year. He gets spooked by the testers on the TT stage so uses the same old blood he's had for the last 48 hours, gets stomped, recieves some fresh blood the next day and makes a miraculous turnaround. One day he rides like a cold turd and the next day he's a heroic pheonix soaring to victory on a flaming golden pillar of fire, burning to a crisp everyone in his magnificent wake. Didn't floyd do that? oh yeah. Tried to forget that one.

So I guess I'm bummed, but not surprised. It's like when you broke the glass vase on the mantle when you were a kid and your mom says "I'm not angry, I'm just dissapointed."

DT

the new harry potter book

RULES

DT

pull the trigger, push the kill button.

Turned in our 30 day 'notice to vacate' at our apartment today. The Plan thus far: Get married, get Jenny through her finals to finish her bachelors and out we go. Off into the great blue yonder. Looks like I'll be headed back to the springs for a few weeks before the nationals champs to see if I can get scary fast. If I get scary fast and ride some blazing times at Natz, I'll head home, pack up some stuff, grab Jenny and head on down to the other olympic training center in sunny San Diego for the cold winter months, train train train, race a world cup or two, then head to the new Home Base in Colorado Springs.

If I don't get crazy fast and can only manage to get pretty fast, and if I get the old "good job, at least it's progress... maybe next year" bs, then it's back to PDX for a couple of months, save up some cash, then head to CSprings in february or march, as soon as the goons get back from San Diego.

So I suppose my life is taking a rapid left turn that even I didn't really see coming. But hey, I'll roll with it. Jenny's into it. Adventure on, man. Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead and all that good stuff. Just like kierins I suppose. You plan as best you can, but when it all comes down, you really just close your eyes, hit the gas and hope for the best.



DT

bored. gore ahead.

This picture is a 9.4 on the nasty scale, and will probably blow your mind.

I think we should rid our country of prisons and just hold a running of the bulls every couple of weeks. Idiots like this could thin themselves out of the gene pool.