no pity in the rose city

If I wasn't a bike racer, I'd be a soccer player...

Watched the Timbers smash Puerto Rico 3-1 at PGE last night with 7800 others. It was a night for the hooligans. I've never seen a match get so violent. After we scored in the opening minutes and doubled it before the half, the Puerto Ricans got pissed and didn't hide it. Multiple fights broke out across the field and by the looks of it, the home boys have been working on thier Kung Fu.

The Army was too big for thier traditional section 107, and ended up sprawling out into 4 others including ours. What a manic atmosphere. 60 percent total chaos and 40 percent sychronized madness. The songs, the flags, the GIANT flags, the chants, the screaming. All while surrounded by cops and PGE officials, but nobody seems to care. The Army really is an army this year. Flyers were passed around for a convoy of busses heading to seattle for a showdown on May 5th. That could get wonderfully messy.

DT

T minus a couple weeks or so...

Track racing's almost upon us again. In May the circus begins again. Big events are afoot in Canada during the first weekend; big races, big fields, big beer garden, maybe even some cold hard cash. I'd love to make it up to the glo-worm velodrome if the financial stars can align themselves and someone gives me some floorspace to pass out on at night. Might have a place with Chader, but he has to check and make sure if its all right with his dog or something...

Once again. Raining. On track workout day. Fcuk.

Anyone up for a puddle-cruise up Forest Park? Single-speed mountain bikes? Maybe a night raid? We could blast up to skyline on the knobby tires, slide back down in full panic brake-lock, charge into town and park our bikes next to the harleys stacked up at Starbucks on 23rd and loudly critique the monstrosities for thier wastefullness and laziness. Could be a good time. Think about it.

DT

someone give Moninger a sandwich

seriously

the sea clam report

I didn't go to the Grand Sea Clam Pro Cycling Nascar Classic in monterey last weekend, but some of our skinnier guys were there, and they were all over it.

I did the Laguna Seca Shimmy when I was a much smaller junior lad, and I can tell you, that course is not even close to fun. Everyone always talks about "corkscrew this" and "corkscrew that" and "oh you gotta watch out for crashes," but by my memory, that's a bunch of crap. In order to get to the corkscrew you have to come up this steep bastard of a hill (which is way bigger than it looks on TV) so once you hit the corkscrew descent you're crosseyed anyway, and then once you actually go down it, you realize that it's probably only fun at about 200 miles an hour. Nice wide, smooth, easy corners that wind down to a 180 and back around to the front straight, which just means that you'll be heading back up that stupid hill in a couple of seconds flat. So if you're on a rediculously powerfull motorcycle or a fantastically expensive car, it's probably great. Maybe even hair-raising. On a bike however, I have a trickier commute home from work.

That doesn't stop the marketers from touting the Sea Clam Classic as the greatest race ever to grace the face of the world, and it continues to pull huge sponsorship dollars, tons of people and lots of industry bigwigs with deep pockets. So a result at the Sea Clam is a big deal. Which is cool, because the Rubicon guys pulled a big result.

Aaron Skeletor Tuckerman rode like a man possed with a bike racer, bridged a bunch of gaps, successfully didn't crash and even managed to drop last year's winner Andy Badjadali in the closing laps by flexing his diminutive little buttcheeks and attacking on the hill, eventually finishing 5th. Brad apparently showed some power-cards by shuttling Tuckie around all day, with Logan doing his part as well. Dan and Kirk overcame gravity to place very well, 10th and 19th respectively. Matt Brandt snagged 18th and the Best Young Rider award, and Richard kept his current streak alive by running into some mechanical issues. Hopefully he can shake the curse sometime before Hood.

The boys even found time to chat with some schoolkids about racing, foreigners and that kind of stuff. I spent my weekend glaring at kids trying to ride big-wheels into stacks of carbon road bikes. The books show we had a record weekend at the shop, which is cool. My brain says that I need to sleep, but what does it really know? I have a three hour Codes and Ordinances class tonight, should be plenty of time to catch up on the zzz's.

DT

midday sale update

I am surrounded by oceans of screaming children who seem like they should be too old to be pitching fits in bike shops. Lines of unusually irritated people waiting for cashiers stretch for miles. Head full of static.

Sea Otter is on. It's on like Donkey Kong. Godspeed to all the boys. Stay upright and impress someone willing to donate some hard earned money to a struggling development team.

More kids. Jesus where do all these kids come from? Is birth control going out of style?

the writing is on the wall

Kurt Vonnegut died today.

These things always seem to happen at the end of good days. So it goes, as the man would say.

If you haven't read Player Piano, Slaughterhouse Five or Cats Cradle, pick one up at Powells some time. It'll be worth it. In fact, get them all. You don't need to watch American Idol (americans idle?) that much anyway.

"Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why."

"I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center."

"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different."
-KV

DT

this week may be a death march

Come one, come all, it's time once again for the Bike Gallery's Big Giant Super Mega Spring Sale To End All Sales.
Happy times.
Seems like we're busy enough without it lately, the store has been smacked by too-frequent waves of madness for weeks. It's a tight rope to walk, being at a shop known for giving cutomers individual attention while there are three times as many customers as salespeople. Most people are understanding of the fact that we have a lot on our plate, but some still think they are the only humans in the store. Possibly in the world. Must be upsetting to realize otherwise...

In the fantasy land known as Bicycle Racing, some people did some crit this weekend. Boat Street Crit I'm told. I did it a few years ago, was brought down in a big fat 20-person crash and snapped a couple of brand new carbon wheels that my parents had saved up for. Bad memories of a sketchy corner, always wet. Haven't been back since. Conveniently, I had to work.

Sounded like the boys were on fine form. They even kept up thier amazing rate of two crashes per crit. Last weekend it was myself and Richard, this weekend it was Dan and Skeletor. Dan The Man flexed his left butt-cheek and broke his chain into a million little peices and launched himself over his bars and Tuckerman probably pulled the other standard Skeletor move (aside from attacking from the gun, which he had already done by this point) and crashed all by himself off the front. Probably tried to ignore the simple laws of physics by trying to enter a 90 degree corner at about a hundred and ten miles per hour. "oh I'm a mountain biker with a funny haircut, I can make it."


The face of sorrow, the legs of strength. That chain never stood a chance. Neither did the jersey.

The rest of the boys miraculously stayed upright and finished well. Brad made it out of the sick bay and on to the bike, leaving Adam all alone in the quarantine. Matt Brandt gets 3 gut points for wearing white gloves, but those points are canceled out by the negative three gut points Kirk gets for racing with his shorts rolled up to his crotch in the J Dangle position. Kenny Williams heard the cash registers ringing and took the sprint ahead of Kirk, keeping his title of "fastest old guy in Seattle" firmly planted on the mantle. Pretty sure that guy will be winning 1/2 crits up there when he's 80. Pure machine that guy is.

Sea Otter's up next for the unemployed. I'll start racing when the temperatures get above 70.

DT

p.s. Pic's from the fastest eye in the west, Amara Boursaw. You should buy lots of pictures from her at www.wheelsinfocus.com. Put them on your walls, put them on your fridge, put them on your pets, put them on your kids, buy that picture of Dan and put it on a t-shirt and be the envy of all your friends.

i think i just wet myself

One Step Closer

That. Just. Happened.

Eugene went pretty well. We brought the noise.

The race consisted of maybe 30 people tops. Pretty low turnout, but that's what you get with a not-so-interesting course in March touting 200 bucks split 5 deep.

Tuckerman was told not to attack from the gun at least 23 times the night before, so I was pretty proud of him for waiting for about 5 minutes to make his bold move. By ten minutes into the race we had four guys doing a team time trial off the front with no other teams represented.
Happy times.
There was much gnashing of teeth and whining "there goes the race" from the back. The boys got the lap, I sat in the back, got tired by doing nothing and messed up the sprint for 5th, despite being handed the world's most beautiful leadout by Kirk. Good thing 200m sprints don't take an hour...

Guess it's par for the course. You spend all winter working on pure strength and track speed, and your endurance goes out the window. No worries. I'll get mine when the avc rolls around.

So we ended up with 1st 2nd 3rd and 4th. True to Rubicon form, we also managed to rack up 2 crashes on the day. Yours truly won the idiot award for crashing in the parking lot before the race. Who knew that looking down at your bottom bracket while riding toward a concrete parking barrier was a bad idea? One minute I'm riding along wondering "what's that noise?" and the next minute I'm on my back wondering "why am I in a bush?"

The best part was that everyone was there to see it. I thought it was pretty hilarious.

Dan and Richard did a deadly dance with 15 laps to go and Richard ended up surfing pavement with Beardsley on top of him. Sheepherder Speer took a good one to the back of the head and lost a few college classes, but was otherwise fine.

Sounds like Piece of Cake was a little harder than the name implies. Reports range from "a little gusty" to "gale-force winds." I spent the day in the shop, but Tuckie spent it off the front with So Pro Dougie O and Mick Walsh. Poor guy was probably getting blown around like a reciept in the wind. That's what happens when you come to the states about as thick as an Olson twin. He ended the day a solid third. New guy Matt Brandt smashed the hopes and dreams of an entire CMG team leadout by beating The Donald to the line.

Looks like the orange crush is officially hauling ass. Those guys are wicked quick. Can't wait for track season to start, then I can stop looking like the fat slow kid.

Candi Murray got to hang out at track worlds and spectate. Lucky.
DT

the clog bog. finals are done like disco.

The last two weeks have been all power-study and panic-writing. Finals weeks are bad for motivation in every aspect of life. But now it's over for another term, and I'm left tired, unorganized and feeling like a fat lard.

Did a few quality ride with Aaron Skeletor Tuckerman this week. His road bike was stuck somewhere between Spain and Vancouver, so he got the opportunity to do some extra miles on his TT bike. Lucky guy. You might not think he's got too much power by looking at him, but while rolling around town today he single-handedly ripped his chain in half. This excellent turn of luck landed us in a certain well advertised bike shop downtown, where they didn't know a masterlink from an 8-track player.

The team's mostly here, the bikes are mostly done, and we're mostly ready to roll.

Found a new totally sweet internet radio station called last.fm. Just enter a band, a genre or a category and it spits out hours and hours of music you've probably never heard of, but you'll probably dig.

Looks like the Icebreaker Crit will be interesting this year... Should have the usual 37 hutches guys, a bunch of wicked-quick Dr. Seuss guys, a not-so-mysterious mystery blogger and forty other people who all think they can win the sprint from last position coming into the last lap. Little bit of sun would go a long way, but don't count on it.

DT

catsitting around

Seems that the Interweb has not penetrated Columbia River yet, so the last week of cat-sitting for the Godfreys has left me feeling so... alone. Naked without the news, weather and blogging that the internet has to offer. Sure I could try TV, but who wants to watch that many commercials? The final two weeks of classes have arrived. Things are getting very tense now. The grade worry sets in.

Sounds like the California trip Version 1 is turning out to be a rough day in the office (surprise!). One broken bike and a couple of broken souls later, the nerds should be back in town on Sunday. Meanwhile, speaking of broken bikes, Tuckerman gets in tonight.

This is why YouTube would work better if it was run by shadowy figures hidden in an underground lawsuit-proof bunker somewhere.

the cream of the crop

Barry. Killin.

rollin for real

Seems like everyone always talks about bringing an indoor velodrome to PDX, but it rarely seems to go much farther than talk. Now Steve Brown and a group of people are pushing the idea farther than just emails and water-cooler talk. He and Jonathan Maus of bikeportland.org have been in and out of Salem a few times, and have come back with some great news care of Senator Jason Atkison and measure 66 (which allows use of lottery funds to build parks and recreation centers).

From BikePortland.org: "Sen. Atkinson revealed to us that he just finished the draft of a new Senate Bill that if passed, would allocate $3.5 million to build two new velodromes in Oregon; one in southern Oregon, and one in the Portland metro area!"

The bill officially enters the system tommorow.

Already the same old tired critiques of any state spending are rearing thier stupid heads in the comments section of the bike portland article. "why should we build a park that I'm never going to use?" "I want a 3 dollar tax break!" "If we build a velodrome, the terrorists will win!" Okay maybe that last one hasn't come out yet, but give it time. For every complaint there are five or six in favor, so hopefully that's a good sign.

Keep your eyes on the Portland Velodrome Project website and the Obra mailing list for news and how you and all your friends and relatives and everyone you know can help.
DT

ticket-nazis and anonymous goons

Rolled out the door schoolward bound on the fixie this morning to an interesting sight. Nearly every car on the street decorated with a lovely yellow parking ticket. At first I though "ha, poor bastards." Surely the aftermath of some wednesday night party-goers who overstayed thier welcome in this parking-nazi haven.

Then I saw the ticket on my truck.

WTF?

Turns out everyone's permit expired at midnight last night, and the nazis were ready.

How stupid could I be, to let something like that happen? Then I checked my permit to find the expiration date. None to be seen. Turns out the only proof that I can find that my permit is expired is the little yellow envelope pinned down by my wiper blade. F*#!ers. I counted 28 cars on one street alone with little middle fingers on thier windshields. At 50 bucks a pop, that's 1,400 bucks easy money. Per street. Sneaky bastards.

Sure, I applied for my new permit today, but that stupid envelope is staying on the windshield. We'll see if it can handle a few days of rain and wind untill I actually get in that creaky truck again.

Remember I was amping about the new blog last week? Not so impressed. I don't mind some humor and a good natured jab every now and then, but that stuff's mean and vindictive. The main writer's not the biggest problem, it's the comments. Too many anonymous goons with too little to do and not enough brain power to do it with. It's like a big "I got cheated out of the cat. 4 crit championships title last year and now I'm gonna take it out on someone else" party.

Too many children, not enough toys. An idle mind is the devils playground. "Kill the body and the head will die."

Looking forward to my wedding. Are you?
DT

sweet

New jersey on the line at Worlds this year: the Omnium. Events include:

Kilo:
3k pursuit:
5km scratch:
200m fly:
15km Points race:

How much would it kick ass if that continued beyond this season and expanded into an Olympic medal? Seems like it'd be good for spectators; people get a little more connection with riders, yet races are still short enough to keep up with short attention spans... If USA cycling does not pay attention and make this a national championship event, it will be the worst move they could possibly make. Keep the standing 250 a seperate event and add the omnium, in a couple years you'll have some of the strongest sprinters and endurance guys in the world. Seems that in a country chock full of crit sprinters and trackies that this would be our favorite event.

On the road side of things, apparently Slipstream will test its riders' blood and urine 50 times a year. This will carry a price tag of $20,000 per rider or $400,000 per year... I say kick ass. Good positive step in the public opinion battle that road racing continues to slog through.

New blog on the block: Race Oregon. I'm all about some good-nature shit-talking, so I'm psyched to see how that goes throughout the season. Sure didn't take long to end up the topic of discussion though, this is from a 2007 preview:
"Rubicon
How could I forget Rubicon!? Is Norrene going to load up her basement with Kiwis again? The boys in Orange will be around to share New Zealand’s favorite pastime (drinking) and the national dance (the tuck and roll), in a mutually beneficial cultural exchange. Hide your sisters. Word is she's also looking to load up the team with Cat. 1/2s under 20 years of age or something like that.
2 words for the guys in orange this year: Dan Harm."

Yeah we're amped for Dan's season in orange. I'm just happy to have someone else out at the track. If all goes well we should have a pretty good goup in both the sprints and endurance stuff.

As for the kiwi national dance... well.. yeah. we're working on that. Tuckerman's mountain bike gets training wheels this year.
DT

(almost) Back To Racin'

Some pie race goes down a mere 4 days from now, I better start riding... Actually, I haven't done that race for something like 4 or 5 years and I don't plan on starting this year. Too damn early. The pie race proves a very valid point however, and that point is the 2007 racing season. You can barely see it in the distance, bearing down on us all like a grotesque freight train loaded with acid and chocolates. Come mid-march I'll stand by the tracks and run along at full tilt, pick a car and hop on. Hopefully it's the chocolate one.

First Crit of the year happens pretty early down in U-Jean. If it's the same boring, flat course as always I'm in. This time of the year is tailor made for courses you can sleep through. Just fast enough to hurt, just technical enough to make me corner slightly harder than I do on the bike path. Leave the insane dive-bomber "I can beat the lead motor" courses for summer nights.

We all know that track racing is the best thing you can do with your clothes on, so that's all I'm looking forward to at this point. That and beating Ping Pong at Tabor. Think I'm gonna train for the Fat-Off at Tabor this year. Lord knows the Pong certainly has.

The other thing I need to work on this year is a cyclocross style supporter's club. I need a bunch of old drunk dudes in matching jackets to show up every week at the track to wave pirate flags, hurl insults at other riders and sing songs about how totally awesome I am. I'll even train them to throw the flags like javelins for the AVC this year so I can bring down some sweet moolah when I'm the only one that finishes all of my sprint rounds...
Or maybe I'll just hire this guy. He can just wander around the infield and glare at everyone.

DT

beaches are ill

New best thing: mid-January Oregon coast camping trip. Brave the elements. Face the fears. Nevermind your frozen digits, these smores taste great.

bummer...

I suppose this clears a few thing up though.

"The United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) announced on Friday that track cyclist Stephen Alfred of Capitola, Calif., has been given an eight-year suspension after testing positive for exogenous testosterone and for 'pregnancy hormone' human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG).

Alfred, 39, returned a positive result for exogenous testosterone or its precursors and for an elevated testosterone to epitestosterone (T/E) ratio in an out-of-competition test conducted on May 28, 2006. He also tested positive for hCG on June 10, 2006, at the Pan American Cycling Championships in Brazil. The two positives are considered one doping offense according to the World Anti-Doping Code."
-cyclingnews.com

DT

Crash O The Day

This will hurt

DT

computer's dead

My apple died a horrible, click-spazzy death. I have yet to gather the funds to fix it, so updates can only happen when i'm at school, and when i'm at school I just want to go home, not sit in the library and clickety clack about how my day has been and how little I rode this week.

How bout that World Cup, eh? Get some Sarah Hammer. Get some.
DT

day off

It's my day off, so happy new year and here's some pictures.










Bike pictures from PUMA. That guy with the tabloid is Grant. He doesn't think this is very funny.

This is what tracks should look like.

The westfalenhalle. Dortmund, Germany.

Three Words

new-team-van

partyphotobloggin'

This is half of the rock band IndoChina with accompaniment from an orangutan in a sweater.

This is why your parents didn't want you to drink alcohol when you were young. Because you might get naked with nothing but a speedo and a singlespeed champions belt covering your pale, malnourished body in front of a bunch of co-workers you don't know. And that would kick ass.

Ping pong looks a little uncomfortable on the guitar with a naked monkey behind him...

DT

Humungus for Governor

If I lived in California, I would give him my vote.

http://www.inch.com/~william/humungus.html

DT

the finally finished with finals post

Been a long time coming, but it's done for another term. That was a rough one.
Pretty sure I'm ready to be done now.
Yep, pretty sure.
Too bad I'll never be done. I'll be done with this degree pretty soon, but then it's on to the bachelors (after a nice break), and then maybe a masters if I'm not dead before I get my B.S.

Updates: Mr. TooVanilla Burrito Cozy Shack Cats Pomegranates Skerrit scored a second at the Masters Natz cross race yesterday.Pro race finished 30 seconds ago. Trebon pulled off the big V to become a double national champ. XC and CX. Nice.

Updates: Scored 4 free tickets to see the Faint and Ratatat a couple of weeks ago. That rocked my socks off.

Updates: I'm considering making my own christmas presents this year. Maybe newspaper hats or ceramic ash trays or something. I can't hold money long enough to buy gifts with it. It all finds its way into my stomach somehow. Here's a sample of my food intake one day last week after lifting, riding and schooling: 1 turkey sandwich, 3 cups of coffee, 1 whole roasted chicken, 1 peanut butter and jelly sandwich, half of a large pepperoni pizza, half gallon of milk and 6 or so cookies. and a partridge in a pear tree.

Updates: Can't go to Burnaby due to overlapping EMT certification tests... drag.

Updates: My new phone is smaller than yours.

Updates: The BG holiday party is tommorow. Free food...mmm.. scavengertron ACTIVATE.

Photobloggin (now with 80% less racing)

Slater and Tall Mike at the USGP Portland. Crossin. Cross Dressin. Drankin.









Hot Tubbin at the run-up.





















New team car. Big enough for 3 climbers and the team cat.













Man?
Woman?
Weako?
Neanderthal?
Orangutan in a woman's sweater?









Winter. It's cold out there.

the dude abides...

Indoor tracks are why I need to make a lot of money. I could see myself driving the 6 hours each way to train and race pretty frequently in the rainy months if I had the cash. Rumor has it some people are getting serious about building a top-class indoor velodrome in Portland. That would kick ass and I'd do what I could to help make it happen, but for now all we've got is 6 hours to Burnaby or 15 hours to LA.

So to Burnaby we went.

All I've done since Nationals is lift weights and ride to school, so that first 200 was a bit of a shock. Enough of a shock to send me crouching over the toilets for a few minutes. Apparently Gatorade does not change color after being in your stomach for a while.

For those of you that have never been up to the most densely populated frozen tundra in southwestern Canada, the track in Burnaby's pretty sweet. Sweet because it's not outside (it's in a giant balloon), it's made of two different kinds of wood (pine and plywood (and duct tape)), and it's short, sketchy and kinda slippery. This is what I look like on it.



Did you know that I'm fast enough to wear white gloves? I couldn't pull off the white gloves at a cross race (like some real fast people) but fortunately sprints and kierins are much shorter than cross races. Fewer chances live up to my slowness potential.

I lost pretty consistently to the Canadians, but all in all I had a good time. Those guys are great fun to race with, they're not afraid to chuck out the elbows, and they almost usually keep thier clothes on most of the time. Rumor has it the January SixDay they're hosting is going to have madisons, sprints, messenger races (or "courier races" as they say in French Canadian), a beer garden, a petting zoo and a ferris wheel. Be there.

Quote of the weekend from Keith Bruneau, "I'm almost a whole you older than you..."

The Basil Wars

Ever played football? Think you're good in large crowds? Like kicking double-wide strollers? If yes then come on down, come one, come all to the Portland Farmer's Market. I like the FM, but I hate all the other people who like it too. Maybe not all of them, but at least the ones who get in my way. Which is most of them.

So the rain is back, school's in full swing and track season is over. Time to skip the border to our Northern brothers and head to the Big White Worm, Burnaby Velodrome. Nothing says "off season" like more racing and a 200m duct-taped half-plywood half-board track inside a giant balloon. Someone should put that on a greeting card.
November 11th and 12th. Be there or be lame. yeah.

I think my dad has the brain fever. Or maybe the black lung. Not sure. Bummer either way. He missed a great time at the last cross race which included watching everyone fall, every lap in the same corner, the Solomonster demolishing the single speeds in a single speedo (and falling in the tricky corner), a couple of legitimately nasty and unfortunate crashes, dousing Walrod with beer during the A race (3 times), feeding Walrod beer during the A race, and competely psychologically cracking Walrod by handing him an empty beer bottle during the A race (oh the dissapointment).

See you next week at Flying M, and you better be wearing a costume.

DT

tired

So Nationals if over. Again. If I never had to go back to LA ever ever again, I'd be psyched. The place is a landfill. The track is cool, the surroundings are not so cool.

Speaking of Nationals, the kilo was awful. It was probably the worst one ever. Ever. Each time I do a kilo, it's always the worst one ever. However, I think this one actually was the worst, because I went considerably slower than last year. That's the story of the kilo.
Still ended up 3rd in the U23 class. Probably helps that no one wants to do the kilo anymore, now that it's not an Olympic event, and because it sucks.

Sprints were fun, but not as good as I hoped. I gambled wrong on a smallish gear and rode an 11.3 instead of... faster than an 11.3. Which is what I wanted. THE ULTIMATE 200M DESIRE EQUATION: D=T*.97 where D= the time you want and T= the time you get. Got through my first round without too much trouble, then had to race Adam Duvendeck, the top qualifier. That was trouble. Tried to jump him early and disrupt as much as I could, but that guy's too smart and too fast. All I heard as I was chasing after him through the final corner was Jame Carney screaming "GO LUKE PERRY!!"

Beat Lakatosh in the reps, which felt good, but it was for second. Plus I'm pretty sure he sat up. Baby steps i suppose

Duvendeck fought the power with Giddeon Massie for the gold and went down swingin. Big G wasn't taking home another second place, he brought forth the fury and grabbed the big V.

Endurance stuff was ruled by Tiaa Cref, predictably enough. The big upset was Dave McCook winning the scratch race out of a bunch sprint after Jame chased every single Blue Man Group down. That guy rode like ten men. Ten very small, angry men.

Props to Mikkel and Steveo for both riding a solid scratch.

Sounds funny. Solid scratch.

Most importantly, mega-props to my parents, who made the whole trip happen with major financial support, 30-some hours of driving and lots of moral support. They really believe in me (for some reason) and that helps tremendously when there's no big dollar pro deal anywhere on the horizon, just more medals from different places, and maybe a free bike or two...


DT

results

4th in the 250. (3rd U23) Time standard was 18.69, I rode 19.12. Not too happy with the time, but I'll take the result.

Sometimes I don't understand how these events work. Not sure if they're organized or improvised. For instance: the 250 is intended to be a qualifier for the national team. If you can beat the time standard, you're in. If not, too bad. It was specifically described as a talent pool qualifier and NOT a championship event.

As we're warming up, the announcer says that the 250 is in fact a championship event as of riiiight NOW. How does that work? How can you have an event that is NOT a championship event when people have a chance to register for it, then as the first guy is rolling up to the line and registration is closed, THEN you announce there's a jersey on the line? Whaa? So if a jersey's on the line, is there a U23 jersey as well? "oh, well no." Why not? "Um, I dont know, ask that guy over there" So why not, guy over there? "oh um, well, you see... LOOK A UNICORN!" *guy runs away*

8th in the kierin. sketchy and faaast. mega fast. so fast it deserves 3 a's and no capitalization. Couple of wierd calls too. McLaughry was relegated for a hook that I had no complaints about, but another dude was just warned for punting Zac off his bike.

Kierin awards are right after 250 awards, so I stand around to watch and hear another official try to explain to the top place U23 rider why there are no U23 jerseys for the kierin. "Oh, it's because we only do espoir awards for the timed events." That's odd. There was no award for the timed 250, yet there was a jersey for the first espoir in the scratch race (mikkel bosson got that one by the way... way to go buddy). You know, the non-timed mass-start definitely not time-trial scratch race.

I guess sometimes you just have be on the right side of the coin toss.

Kilo is tonight.

Welcome To Purgatory, Population 10 Million

We've arrived in L.A. Sunday night after 16 hours of driving, one muddy rain storm, a packet of jerky, 2 cokes, 4 tanks of gas, a bag of trail mix and a half gallon of water. Poor Abers took a break Sunday night in Sacramento (5 hours from LA), only to get stuck behind 4 accidents the next morning. Took him 11 hours to make the final leg of the trip. Bummer.

In 2 days I've been nearly hit 3 times driving around this southern California wasteland. Our hotel is a little over a mile from the track, but I won't ride to it. No way. Not going outside with those automotive idiots out there. Too many small people in big Hummers slurping frappucinos, talking on cell phones and powering down In 'n Out burgers while flying along at 80 miles an hour on side streets. Last year our hotel was a similar distance from the track, and Norrene still managed to get smacked by a station wagon on her ride to the velodrome.

Drove to the track yesterday to reaquaint myself with the ADT wood bowl. That track's pretty cool. Very wierd rolling up on a track that's steeper than Alpenrose and three times slicker. Those boards are crazy smooth, but not grippy.

Still feeling the affects of a lingering head-cold, but I have the technology. I have the medication. I have an up to date banned substances list and I'm taking just about everything that's not on it. Couldn't find "intravenous injectin of Cozy Shack," so I'm safe. Gotta clear myself out by tommorow morning at 7. Go time.

Good Luck at Nationals, Me

I dedicate this video to myself. Hopefully I'll come back from LA in one piece and with all my teeth this time. Go me.


Get this video and more at MySpace.com

holy crap

Word on the street is that McMuscles threw down a 10.68 at the Springs and Massie did a 10.2something. Alfred is MIA.

Nationals in C-Springs next year would rule. That track is mega-fast. Funny that an outdoor concrete track is faster than our indoor board track... I guess altitude and a perfect 333 makes up for a lot.

Awesome.

DT

The Blue-Man Bruiser

Check out the dude it the blue. He pulls an extreme move I'm calling the "hurricane Katrina."

stunning

So I was riding home the other day, ripping down Sandy on the fixie, and I start to catch up to this other dude, also riding home on a fixie. I'd mention at this point that it's broad daylight. We're going at a pretty good clip, I'm probably 20 feet behind him, we roll up to this intersection, the light's green (very green) and a black car rolls out in front of us, crossing Sandy against his red light. Adrenaline spikes and it looks for sure like this guy is going to ride straight through the car's passenger window, until he pulls the most amazing brakeless powerslide right-turn onto the cross street.

Black car stops (while still on Sandy) right in front of me. So I pull a sweet sliding stop and we both wait as the tinted window rolls down.

So this dude's going to apologize right? You know, cause that's what you do when you almost maim or kill 2 people by not just blowing, but blatantly rolling through a stop light. Right?

This guy starts yelling at us. For being reckless. Because we're riding on the street and not the sidewalk. And not paying attention. Really, man? Are you serious?

It bummed me almost all the way home, until I rolled by Doug Fir and saw the 40 bikes parked out front. Rode by Shanghai and Berbati's and saw the 40 bikes parked out there, the pile of bikes outside of Dante's and the mega-pile of commuter bikes chained up outside Powells. That just made me think that the idiots can't win. We outnumber them (at least in my small corner of the world). And we look better in shorts.

DT

The New Giver Stick

Say it with me now. Off the sick-ter scale.

The Edge

I bet something happened in the Vuelta today. Not sure what, because I haven't been paying attention, but I can guess. Today it was hot. Really hot. It's hot in Spain this time of year, and today was no exception. It was also hilly, because Spain is also not flat. Some guy would have attacked out of the parking lot, because I hear the Spanish are into siestas, and they would have wanted to get things over with by 3ish or so. Another guy played it smart and did not attack out of the parking lot, he attacked later in the race and won. He's probably not the guy you expected to win either, but he's got heart, and maybe something a little extra in the bottles...

I got the competetive edge this morning by staying at Stumptown for an extra cup of coffee before I hit the track. I hear hydration's important, and coffee's mostly water.

Couple hours of efforts later and I'm ready for a nap, just in time to rush to work. Sounds like coffee time.

Photobloggin'

Andy Smalls. Rennaissance Man.


Ramming speed in Raetehi, NZ


Staredown Championships '06.


New team van. Just needs a black paint job.


Breakfast of champions

DT

Coffee Time

As summer winds down, life at the bike shop gets wierd. Managers get tense as profits fall, staff gets restless as the shop stays empty regardless of the sunny weather. Most of the people who make it through the doors these days are either "just looking" or in for a tube and some energy gels. Neko Case is singing about stars again. Clouds are hanging around too long in the morning. Solomon thinks Summer is dying. I need to get to the beach this summer before it's dead.

Watched some poor woman case it on her motorcycle in front of the shop yesterday. Big, bright red jeep is stopped at a light, she's not paying too much attention, careens toward the jeep and turns to see it, smacks on the brakes at the last minute (which sends her right hand off the bar), she executes a frantic rodeo impression for a split second and finally gets bucked to the ground. Fortunately this all happens at about 20 mph, so she doesn't look too bad, but is a living example of why you shouldn't ride your motorcycle in a t-shirt, velour sweatpants, Teva sandals and no gloves... Fire is on scene immediately and has her on a long backboard before you can say "where's AMR?" Ambulance arrives a solid 20 minutes later. A good natured homeless guy tries to direct traffic on Sandy around the giant Portland Fire rig, but the police shoo him away at his most glorious citizen-in-charge moment.

Dick Speers' back in the mother country and Tuckerman's headed back on Saturday, so we had a little send-off last night. All was good untill he found my phone and began calling everyone in alphabetical order. Including my Dad. At 1 in the morning. Lucky for Tuckerman he didn't pick up.

Not a single person has walked into the shop in the last 2 hours and 13 minutes. I wonder what Ping-Pong's doing right now?

DT

Ruckus

So that friday night crit was pretty intense. There's a series of pretty sketch corners in that course (actually the whole thing is all sketch corners), so Dave and I set up at a place where we could see the two sketch-est. The first was a downhill 90degree super-rough peice of road, the second was an uphill-but-sharper-than-it-looks little beauty.
So the gun goes off, the Yamaha R1 lead bike rolls through and the first thing I see is Tuckerman completely sideways throught that first downhill left, layed out corning on pure luck and some pretty good tires. He miraculoudly survives and charges up the hill so hard he passes the lead motor on the inside in our second corner. I didn't see the final one before the straight, but I'm told the motor came back around him and Tuckie passed him one more time on the inside through the last corner. Good stuff. After that, I saw a lot of orange guys in the hurt box for the rest of the night. Made me not sad to be sitting in the beergarden. Other highlight of the evening was watching Mark Blackwelder fly ass-first into the downhill corner, blow up his rear wheel on the curb, do a header into the art museum, get up like nothing happened and sprint up the hill with his bike (in his road shoes... full sprint) to the pit. I'm not gonna lie. I was impressed.

Let me say this one first: I love the state crit in Gresham. Fun, wierd course, yet easy enough that I can still do something. I don't tend do so well on "challenging" or "hard" courses. I get tired. I like flat, and the state crit is very flat.
The sun was out, birds were chirping, all the guys were all on board with the plan to keep everything together, the bike was shining and I was feeling pretty good. The first 57 minutes went exactly as planned. If anyone went away, Richard, Kirk, Logan, Aaron or Steven was either sitting on the back of them, or chasing like a banshee. I hung out in the top quarter all day. Supervising. It was kick ass. THEN. The last 15 laps started to get a bit hectic. The pace started heating up, people started getting nervous and I found Shannon's wheel and stuck to it like glue. I figured it was a good place to be, but so did everyone else. Had to pull some serious eyes-closed elbows-out ninja moves to stay behind those chiseled calves. Faster and faster we went, Mr. Vanilla and I made our way through the field to about 10th with 5 to go, meanwhile Mikkel and his Dr. Seuss cronies went to the front. Coming around the final corner with three to go, we were hauling ass. The front group had pretty well worked itself out, we were going too fast and taking up the whole road, so those in the back didn't have much chance to safely sneak around by this point. Anyway. Going into this corner, I'm planted pretty well, Mr. V and I are on the inside line and I see some genius in blue and white go flying up next to the sidewalk on the inside at mach 10 trying to make up 50 places in one corner. Most bike racers know that you can't go inside on a corner at that speed without ending up on your face (something you usually figure very early on), but this guy didn't, and not surprisingly, he ended up on his face. Unfortunately, he decked himself maybe 2 people in front of Shannon, who executed a perfect forward double-axle front flip that should have landed him gold at the X-Games. I avoided everything by pure luck, including Mr. Skerrit's rear wheel, which was inches from taking my head off. Meanwhile the front group rolls away up the straight...
I ended doing the mad sprint to get back to the group, then not doing a very mad sprint to win. Ended up seventh, but with all of my skin intact.

DT

rockin the park blocks

According to WillyWeek readers, the BG is cooler than iced coffee. Once again, we've been voted Best Bike Shop in WW's yearly Best Of issue. Boo-ya.

Another big winner was Molly, who won the award for Best Transgender, All-Vegan Bike Shop Owner. Big ups.

I singlehandedly won the award for Best Commuter Racer this morning when I beat the 14 bus up Sandy through traffic all the way from 12th to 53rd. On a fixie. Uphill. Big ups to me.

Pretty sure I'm gonna win the Best Beer Garden Heckler award at the Portland Crit this Friday (as long as Tuckerman's racing). If you think you can challenge, or maybe just want to watch a master at work (by master I mean me), while watching some dorks ride around the Park Blocks, come on down to the Art Museum around 6. We'll rock out.

On a more cinematic note, if you haven't seen An Inconvenient Truth yet, you should. Seems that Al Gore has kept himself pretty busy since the 2000 election debacle. If you are trapped in your house or have no access to a movie theater you could also check out thier website, which is pretty hot, in a fact-ey kinda way.

Did you know they serve Tots at the Side Street watering hole? Discovered that little jem at Solomon's retirement party. Tater Tots. I know. Awesome.

I missed PIR this week, which made me sad. I'll get to do the State Crit Champs this year for the first time in 3 or 4 years, which will make up for it. Till then, I'm praying for a field sprint again... Just have to figure out how to fill Skerrit's tires with cement.

DT

Sometimes You Win, Soemtimes You Lose

What a weekend. So we went down to Tijuana, you know to see one of these shows... and.. wait... wait... Seattle?
Right.

So we went up to Seattle hoping for a big track race, and pretty much what we got was a local Friday night training race with a bunch of Portlanders and Canadians. (Two of the finest species of track racers in all of creation). Seriously. They had pretty decent money, but what's the point if you're going to run a 26 person Keirin tourney with one round to the finals and no reps? Especially when the Masters get a couple rounds including reps. What? How does that work? Either way, it wasn't super successful on the racing end. Didn't make it to the finals in the keirin, Lost to Zac in the semis of the sprints and ended up 5th, screwed the pooch in the team sprint and dropped steveo off about 10 mph slower than we started, then ended up somewhere around 8th in the miss and out. Made enough money to cover my gas, food and beer garden tab, so I guess you can't complain much about that.

Beer garden. The yardstick of civilization. Fat Tire showed up with kegs and kegs, setting up shop in a fenced off portion of the grandstands to everyone's delight. Spectators enjoyed it and sprinters loved it. I finished my racing around 8 or so, but endurance events were scheduled until about 11. What is one to do? The Canadians were clearly having a great time, so I joined them instead of sitting in the infield pouting. I successfully held on to my 2006 Points Race Heckling Championship jersey despite Matt Chater's amazing display of Vanilla Ice manuevers and a pretty aweome running man. I guess the Fat Tire people were pretty happy with the fact that we cleared a couple hundred bucks worth of beer in two hours, so they gifted us with sweet FT pint glasses. Full of beer. With extra beer on the side. Good times.

Vancouver Crit the next day went pretty well, all things considered. Mr. TooVanilla himself turned up in full double white Nike wristband splendor. I'm not gonna lie. That guy's not slow. Team Evan Elken showed up to put the hurt on everyone. I was there mostly to look great. Big group took off super early which included the Great White Vanilla, Team Evan, Da Conda Curry, the eldest Bosson, Kirk, Aaron Negative Tuckerman and a few others. Aparently Richard and I were elected Group Police, and spent the rest of the day chasing would-be breaks. After the group got thier lap, things were looking good until the bell rang for a 50 dollar prime. Da Conda was huffing and puffing a little ways off the front and Shannon was feeling ambitious, so he summoned the power of the donkey and lit it with a half lap to go. Unfortunately he was riding a Trek, so he didn't quite get Curry, and I burned my one final match by completely unnessesarily dragging the group back up to Mr. Skerrit (who was probably about to sit up anyway).

Kirk ended up second behind Team Elken, and was awarded a giant blow-up fake bottle of Wild Turkey, which I promptly destroyed.

Miami Vice anyone? Talladega Nights on Friday? Beerfest The Movie coming soon? Awesome. AWE. some.

DT

floyd schmoyd

Nevermind. Floyd's not the man.

Probably not anyway. I guess time and the B sample will tell, but a bit odd that he would get popped on the day of his inhuman victory in the Alps, eh?

DT

boo-yah

It's about a million degrees outside on Sunday, so instead of spending my day off in the AC slurping on some chilled frappa-latte thing, I spent it at the track (naturally). State champs for the Sprints and Keirin means go time.

I've been doing 200s in a pretty small gear so far this year, so hey, it's the end of July and time to put the big boy gear on. So on it goes and up on the track I go and it feels pretty fast until I get into corner 4 where it feels REALLY fast and suddenly I have this wierd sensation that I'm about to drag my elbow on the apron, do the bike throw at the line and I beat my PR for this season by 4 tenths. Sweet. 11.61. As far as I'm concerned, I can go home now, my weekend is complete. I'm psyched.

Sprint rounds follow, Beardsley tries to kilo me and I have to pull something out of my toes to get him by the line, then I do the one thing I knew I shouldn't do when racing Zac Copeland (I let him lead it out). Hence I lose with my tail between my legs, race Eugene for third and get it, and it's on to the keirin.

The Keirin final is pretty stacked. Tim Luther, Zac, McMuscles, Casey Deck, Eugene and myself. BANG the gun goes off, I grab the motor (which is actually Mikkel on his track bike, as our decrepid Moto Guzzi has died for the 50th time this year), Mikkel winds it up to real keirin pace (which is about 10mph faster than the motor could ever go), he drops us off, I pick it up a bit and as I look back with 2 to go I see a tim/zac/mcmuscles team sprint starting to wind up on the blue band. Que? No way. Tim flies by me and pulls up to let Zac and McMuscles go through with a lap and a half to go, but I do the big jump, squeeze between Zac and Stephen, and chaos ensues. There's yelling and squealing of tires, I black out untill I'm coming around Zac in the last corner and he's pulling a sweet drift on me all the way past the blue line, but I stay on the gas, get a sweet dive off the bank, kiss everyone goodbye and sail home to a bike length's win.

Casey Deck fought the power and squeezed through the mess behind Zac and I battling up the bank and made a huge push for what he thought was second, but the camera thought was third.

All in all, boo-yah. My first Senior elite championship. On to FSA and LA.

DT

floydmania

I said it a few months ago and I'll say it again, Flyod's the man.

Photo of the day is from Cyclingnews, Mark Gunter, and Kui Song picking the worst possible place to go down.



Miraculously this guy is not hurt that bad. Check out the series of photos here.

DT

The Exploder

While discussing very important (and relevant) business issues today at our mutual place of employment, Solomon and I decided that the best name for anything is The Exploder. Seriously.

Just kidding. But seriously. A tire called The Exploder? Awesome. An intimate undergarment called The Exploder? Priceless. What if you had a candy called Exploders? Can you imagine what that stuff would do to you?

Quote of the day (once again, courtesy of the red-headed stepchild): "we should have a wrench-fight."

Honestly I think that I could take Solomon in a wrench-fight, but how does that pop into someone's head at 4:32 on a Wednesday at work at the bike shop?
Also. What if you could spend an entire day totally invincible and impervious to pain for one day? Tall building parachuteless base-jumping. Real Frogger. Wrench-fight in the setting sun.

Skeleton on wheels.

Most Awesome Thing Ever

Yesterday was a pretty average day at the shop. Couple of hybrids, couple of kids bikes, then BAM. Two of the sweetest bikes ever fall right into my lap. First was the Alma. I'm not a big mountain biker, but this thing's hot. Orbea Alma 29er. Full carbon frame, X-lite wheels, carbon post, carbon bars, carbon brake levers, carbon cranks. 24 lbs for a medium 29er. Crazy. The other 29ers we've had in here are 28 lbs minimum. Not so sure about the integrated "fender" on the downtube, but the shaping overall is pretty hot.



THEN. The most amazing bike ever rolled right through the front door. Remember in Napoleon Dynamite when Pedro gets the new bike? The one with the shocks? And the pegs? The one he catches sweet air on? The Sledghammer? Yeah. That's right. I saw a Huffy Sledgehammer. It had the exact same paintjob that the one in the movie did (black with NEON ORANGE SHOCKS). It was magical. I prayed the guy would buy a new bike and leave the Sledgehammer with us so I could shine 'er up and it could be my ultimate hipster bar bike. How amazing would that be? Everyone thinking they're all cool pulling up to stumpown on thier classic track bikes and I rock up on the sledgehammer? Who wants a roundhouse kick to the head when I'm riding this bad boy? Fuhgettaboutit.

Made my week.

You know what else is hot? Double toe straps on your track bike. I converted. Finally. Shoulda done it sooner. Seems like it really improves that over-the-top dead-spot in the pedal stroke. Overall, it does not suck. However, it does suck when your TEAMMATE right turns in front of you in the first half-lap of a sprint at 10 miles an hour and you topple over because you can't get out of them. But when you get back up and drag race it to the line and win without even flexing your left butt-cheek, they're worth it.

Seriously though, it wasn't that easy, but I was happy to finally win something. This season's been a bit average so far, and I finally felt like I could match Zac and McMuscles. Speaking of the big black sharkish guy himself, big props to McMuscles who pulled the only move I did not expect. Dude took off like a rocket out of the blocks, caught me sleeping and with a bigger last lap could've probably taken it. Fotunately for me I got on level terms with 2 to go, held the gap and with a half to go I was ready to do the big jump when he sat up and started chuckling. Good show. Luther's getting wicked fast, that guy's jump gets bigger every week. Awesome.

Anyway. Back to work. Back to the gym. Back on the bike. Back to something constructive.

AVC (and the armed maniac somewhere outside)

AVC went as well as could be expected. I had very little speed so that left me with only my good looks and recklessness to keep me alive. I skipped embarrassment in the form of the kilo and started the weekend by qualifying 6th in the 200 with a 12.01. Not quite what I wanted but not last either. As I looked at the times I thought to myself "hey, at least since I didn't get last, that means I don't have to race Stephen Alfred in the first round!" Somehow I thought wrong. Alfred's a great guy, but he's one of the more demoralizing sprinters out there. The guy is a robot. He never changes expression on the bike, never looks like he's in trouble, always looks like he's about to eat you. Anyway. I went for it (early... way early) and didn't make it. The rest of the sprints were pretty average. I made a couple pretty sweet moves, but they only got me into 6th by the end of the day.

The Kierin... now that was fun. I love kierins... I think my new bike loves kierins too. Big thanks to Justin and everyone at Orbea for making sure my new track rig turned out exactly the way I wanted it. When I tell it to turn it's already turning, when I want it to go I have to hang on and pray. Good stuff when you're shooting a gap in the last corner underneath and between 4 guys that all outweigh you by a few pounds. I think I almost made my mom pass out a few times while she tried to watch the rounds.

Here's a sweet picture from the Oregonian. Me trying (unsucessfully) to dive under Alfred. Notice how Alfred's bicep is bigger than most of my body. He's big. And fast. And scary.


In other news, I saw about 20 cops scream by the shop while I was writing this, so I cruised down the block to take a gander. A pleasant blue-shirted guy with a big gun informed me that an "armed individual" is roaming around, but not to worry, they have about 20 square blocks posted with a car at every corner, so he won't get far.
Just stepped outside while writing that to see the news channel 8 chopper hovering maybe 50 feet directly over the shop.

So I'd avoid Sandy from 30'th to 40th for a while...

DT

Pre-pre-race update

Sounds like the Independence Day Grand Prix in the Springs was pretty much a bust. It's tough to run a big-money track race when it's raining out, so most events were cancelled or delayed until late in the night. If they have enough money to install a huge light system for night racing, they should be able to install a huge... you know... umbrella system. for rain racing. Come on, do I have to do everything myself?

PDX forecast for this weekend calls for no rain, mid-80s.

Two days to go and I finally have my entire bike ready. Yeah i know, the whole thing. I can hardly believe it myself. Big props to Orbea for making sure the boat from Spain didn't overrun by pirates or anything. I hear that's going around. Also big props to the proffessional mechanics at the bike gallery, specifically Thumbs Cardinal, who threw that glued, unstretched Continental on my front wheel like it was no big deal. I guess that's what a few years of fixing flats on hybrids with Armadillos will do for you. Bionic Thumbs.

Apparently Ping-Pong fell of the wagon with his Solomon diet already. His plan seemed to include racing Tabor and not eating anymore, but Tabor last night was Pong-less. Adam Curry was out there, however. He slayed himself to win a pair of Adidas shoes (lucky sample size nine), to keep him comfortable while watching movies next to Tuckerman in his Adidas hat when Norrene comes home from Nike. Couple of classy guys right there.

We'll have a Serotta Meivici in the shop soon, so if you have $13,000 kicking around somewhere you should come check it out. Or you should give it to me. I will give your money a good home.

DT

AVC

AVC starts this weekend. Kinda nervous. This will be the first big test since my car vs. concrete adventure. I've been doing decent times in training, but they're nothing to write home about. It's go time.

DT

Prosecute!

From Cyclingnews.com:

The various teams taking part in the Tour de France have
now suspended all of their riders implicated in the
Operacion Puerto affair, including Ivan Basso (CSC), whose
nickname was allegedly "Birillo" in Fuentes' files, and
Francisco Mancebo (AG2R). Joseba Beloki (Astana-Wurth) is
another to be sent home. After Jan Ullrich and Oscar Sevilla
were taken out this morning by T-Mobile, the teams are now
pulling their other riders out.

Notables on the list so far (not all names are included here)

***Astaná-Würth: Michele Scarponi, Marcos Serrano, David
Etxebarria, Joseba Beloki, Angel Vicioso, Isidro Nozal, Unai
Osa, Jörg Jaksche

***CSC: Ivan Basso

***Caisse d'Epargne-Illes Balears: Constantino Zaballa

***Saunier Duval: Carlos Zarate

***AG2R: Francisco Mancebo

***T-Mobile: Jan Ullrich, Oscar Sevilla

***Phonak: Jose Enrique Gutierrez, Jose Ignacio Gutierrez

***Comunidad Valenciana: Vicente Ballester, David Bernabeu,
David Blanco Rodriguez, Jose Adrian Bonillla, Juan Gomis
Lopez, Eladio Jimenez, David Latasa, Javier Pascual, Ruben
Plaza, J.Luis M. Jimenez

***Unibet.Com: Carlos Garcia Quesada

***Retired/suspended riders: Roberto Heras, Angel Casero,
Santiago Perez, Tyler Hamilton

Pong'd

The AVC is only a couple of weeks away, and I feel very slow right now. Like not Cat. 4 slow, but definitely not nearly national-level fast. Which is slow. I think. I dont know. Rode a 12.01 at sprint night last week, which was a perfect example. All day, all I was thinking was "must go sub 12... sub 12... sub 12." I was visualizing and aligning my chi and keeping my positive ying balanced with my negative yang and when it came down to it, I missed it by 2 hundredths of a second. Bummer.

I kept thinking about it all weekend, and when I finally got back to the gym on Monday I went way beyond what I have been doing lately, which made walking around for the rest of the day a bit tough. Also made PIR a bit harder than it should be. PIR was pretty classic. Super windy, small-ish field and a single inhumanly strong pro in the field equals big splits and probably a solo or small group finish. And it did. Tuckerman, Ping-Pong and yours truly rode the entire race battling for last wheel. The only exceptions were the hot-spots before the break got clear and the final, in which cases I did the last half-lap blast around the field to get in position for the long tailwind sprint. This final was good fun. Three guys were away, but we wanted our money's worth, so I found Richard's wheel with a lap to go and got a pretty sweet ride in. Dude's got a great motor, and everything was going perfect untill we got to about 400 meters to go, I saw a bunch of shadows jumping around on both sides, but instead of doing the smart thing and hopping on somebody and popping them at the line, I dropped into the 11 and went from waaaay too far out. I held it, but barely. I saw stars. Went cross-eyed. Lost all function. Cramped big-time. It was hard.

I recovered the next day by lifting like a madman and trying to race Tabor. Makes sense, eh? Went Mano-uh-Mano with the Pong on the big Volcano. Long story short, I cracked hard after 10 laps or so and while riding by myself some friendly spectators at the top corner handed me the March 1987 Playboy to keep me motivated. Apparently while I was riding around staring at 20 year old pictures of naughty bits, one of Tabor's hippie longboard skater chicks did a pretty impressive digger into non-soft pavement. She was carving some sweet turns heading directly at a cross-eyed pack of bike racers, when she suddenly realized the magnitude of bummer she was about to enter by nailing 20 bike racers head-on, so she swerved out of the way and put a foot down at 30 miles an hour. I hear she didn't handle it so well. Everyone seemed to have thier own story about the aftermath, but all agreed she was unconcious, bleeding and not looking so good. Medics were on hand before you could say "what the.." and off she went to Emanual. Big drag for sure, but proof that common sense is not something we're all born with.

DT

Ninja Skills

Tests and exams are all done for the term, so as soon as I get my card in the mail I'll be a certified EMT. Boo-ya.

So hot. Can't put together real sentences. Weather calls for 104 degrees today, it's 93 right now. I don't dig. Nothing like a high-rise apartment with no A/C to really brighten your day. Im so hot I almost considered going to the mall just for the air conditioning. ALMOST. Went to the gym for a second time today instead. Yesterday was hot as blazes as well, so after the sun went down I decided to go for a stroll. Council crest sounded like a fine idea, wind blowing, no clouds, city views...

I pulled up to the final turnoff up to the hill and was greeted by roadblock signs and cars in the middle of the street. But these didn't look like police or city cars. No no. These were clearly high school rigs. Lowered civics and mom's Jeep Liberty, guarded by two overgrown lunks in baseball hats and pink polo shirts. So I changed course. Parked around the block and elected to walk the rest of the way up the hill to see what was going on. Some kind of party maybe? Human sacrifice? Rampant drug use? I picked the trail I've walked up before so I could stay in the dark (you know, just in case). I rounded the corner and made my way to the upper loop, the water tower and the big red flashing lights. No party. No sacrifice. Just 7 or 8 piles of wriggling boardshorts and more pink polo shirts on the grass. Each pair maybe 10 feet from the next. Stacked like some hilarious makeout conga-line. Guess I had approached so quietly no one even knew I was there.

*This is akward*

I head back down the hill like some wierd conqueror. Ninja skills at work. 2 More couples made thier way up through the trees and tromped right by, not even 5 feet from where I was standing. I guess I can pass for a very short, sickly tree if it's dark enough.

Pretty dissapointing if you ask me. High schoolers are so boring these days, even we were more creative than that. I was hoping for at least a group of people with a bonfire and a couple of racks of PBR. I mean really, if you're going to take over council crest for the night, you should at least do something worthwile. Maybe a little human bowling? Time-warp outdoor dance party? Smack-talk smack-down? Anything?

By the way. It's hot.

DT

Just thought you should know...

SO there I was, knee deep at PIR when one of my teammates (who's strong like an ox) gets dropped from the break and comes back to the field. Meanwhile Molly Cameron is whining something about how the break is gone boo hooo.I think to myself. Hey, That group must be sailing. They're probably givin'er as hard as possible... wait... then I see some dude dressed in a stretched out purple kit come flying back to the group from the break like his brakes are dragging, or his tires are flat, or his frame is broken, or his pedals are siezed or maybe he's not very fast or something and check it out. It's Ping Pong. That guy is so slow I could probably outclimb him. Uphill. On a BIKE. Yeah. I know. That's pretty slow.

So we keep rollin along, some of us actually doing some work instead of doing the old "eehhh it's hard, we should just go home... i could be at stumptown not updating my blog right now...." like someone else who shall remain nameless. For anonymity's sake we'll call that person Molly Cameron.

In other news, the tour's about to start. I think Ullrich's gonna go into the mountains leading Savoldelli by a couple of tics, then out of nowhere Lance jumps out of the Disco team car foaming at the mouth and tackles Basso while screaming "IM THE MANNN!! IM THE MANN!!"

Rider Sues Bike Shop, GT Bicycles for Failed Quick Release

from Bicycle Retailer and Industry News:

"MAY 26, 2006 -- SANTA FE, NM (BRAIN)—Archibald Sproul, a Santa Fe contractor is suing Rob and Charlie's, a local bicycle shop, and GT Bicycles who made the bike he purchased more than 10 years ago, for injuries he sustained when his quick-release failed and his front wheel came off.

The lawsuit, filed on May 18 at the First Judicial District Court Santa Fe, New Mexico, includes as defendants GT Bicycles, Pacific Cycle and frame maker Ishiwata. The damages sought by Sproul are unspecified and no court date has been set at this time.

The suit claims that the defendants are at fault for manufacturing and selling Sproul a GT All-Terra mountain bike without warning him of the dangers of a quick-release hub and implying that the bike was safe for its intended use. Sproul claims the quick-release eventually failed, causing the front wheel to fall off and causing Sproul extensive injuries."



Awesome.

Apparently this is coming from a lawyer who has a history of frivolous QR lawsuits (of all the wierd niches to get into).
I love that some people refuse to take responsibility for themselves. How evil. How slimy.

p.s. Anybody want free coffee? Eh? eh? Just show up at the Bike Gallery at 5329 SE Sandy at 6pm on Mondays and ride with us to Tully's. We'll buy. Good deal. Do it.

DT

I'm through it Harry...

Finals are done. Holy crap that was a proccess. Two and a half weeks of hair-pulling and teeth-gnashing.

Had an interesting one last night. The 150 question final in my EMT class was a bit of a hard one for everyone including my instructor. He's a great guy, and looked like he wanted to jump up and tell us all the answers to the test because he'd want us all to do great, but of course he had to sit and pretend to grade papers. Fidget, fidget. People finish sporadically and wander into the hall for "the wait" and the first words out of everyone's mouth is 'beer.' After the results come in and everyone predictably does better than they thought, we all make our way to the nearby college watering hole to wind down with a few games of pool and speculation about who in class would make the worst EMT. We envite our instructor, but he laughs it off and turns us down on principle as a teacher. He says it loud enough so the administrators in the building can hear him clearly.

Two games in, he charges through the door of the bar. I don't think I've ever had a teacher that I could sit down and chat with about completely non-school related things, so it was pretty cool to hang out for a while before throwing out the old "i've gotta get to work in the morning, bla bla bla" escape route.

All things considered, it's great to be done for a few precious months.

See you at PIR.

DT

New Format, Old Story (i would've won if...)

So it's official. The new format for sprint night kicks ass. In the past it's been seeded by 200m times, fastest races slowest, second fastest races second slowest and on down the rest. By that method if you're on the bottom of the tree, you're guaranteed to lose your first couple races, and if you're on the top of the tree it's not much of a challenge to get through those first rounds. This week they did a new one. 4 groups split into 4 riders based on 200m times, and each person in thier bracket races every other person in the bracket whether they lose thier rounds or win them. The person with the most number of wins at the end of the night takes it. The cool thing is it gives you more chances to race with people that are closer to your speed, so it's a better workout and better fun for all.

Our group was solid. Zac Copeland, Steven McMuscles, Tim Luther and I. Once again, I'm the skinny guy (by a lot). I think all four of us are getting more and more comfortable racing each other, so each race made me sit back and think a bit about what I was doing. I also thought about how crazy ripped Zac Copeland is. The dude's about as tall but as heavy as a Volkswagen bug, and it's clearly not cozy-shack and beer. That guy's like a little bucket of muscles. Fast twitch muscles. He jumped pretty hard on the backside, I made the mistake of trying to come around too early in the wind, corrected, shut down and turned the giver switch back on out of the last corner to draw even with him... but it wasn't quite enough. All accounts said he had it by a couple of inches. If only I would have gone faster. Then I could win. Other two rides ended well. I think what little road endurance I have left plays in my favor by the 3rd round, makes up for the skinniness a little.

HeatherV came back strong and beat Craig Sinnanian. I congradulated Craig on his race by yelling "YOU JUST GOT BEAT BY A GIRL." Motivational speaking has always been one of my strengths.

DT

so tired....

My apartment is a chaotic mess. The kitchen looks like a war zone. Textbooks, worksheets and notebooks full of illegible scrawl are on every surface in that place. I haven't had a spare minute to clean in weeks. My schedules are getting worse and worse as the final two weeks of school creep closer.
Yesterday for example, went like this: 5:30am wake up head to the gym, back by 7:30, grab some food and out the door by 8 to ride to work, spend the day at the shop working until 5pm (trying unsuccesfully to study at lunchbreaks and whenever it's slow), then head straight to class which starts at 6, try to remember everything I've learned all term so I can pass my 4 hours of practical finals, head home at 10 and finally get back through my door at 10:30 or 11 where I pass out and probably forget to do some homework for some other class.

Whoo.

On the 17th it will be all over. Finally. Going to have to change a few things when I go back next fall, this schedule will not work again (it's barely working this time).

Sprint night tonight, Ballard tommorow (oh crap). I'm at least happy to be heading to ballard, it's good to be racing (not that what I will be doing can be considered racing).

Drove to Hood River last week to check out the Mt. Hood Classic crit. Tuckerman decided not to pre-ride the course and then try to take the first hairpin turn a solid 15 mph faster than everyone else... and crashed. That just made him angry so he tried to take off a couple times to catch Greg Henderson and his coattail-riders, but no such luck. Hendi smashed all in his path to take the win, Kirk almost got his front wheel chopped off in the sprint, Adam missed a prime by the skin of his teeth and Richard and I successfully hassled a Canadian dude.

Magic.

DT

When did hospital billing departments and insurance companies become so horribly unpleasant? Was it right around the time that they refused to talk to each other? I was under the impression that I had handled the whole hospital vs. insurance vs. physician's billing vs. insurance thing pretty well until out of the blue I recieved a final notice yesterday. I crossed all the T's dotted all the I's and sent everybody everything they needed and yet somehow I'm on the brink of being at the mercy of some bloodsucking collection agency? And all this for three excruciatingly painful hours waiting in a room for 2 chest x-rays and a doctor who says "yup, you're pretty busted up, and no you can't have any pain meds, but here's a perscription, good luck finding your own..." at eleven o'clock at night on a Sunday. Somehow I don't see the returns...

Sounds like Tuckerman is trying to ride his own guts out at Hood. That guy's going crazy fast. And Kirk, our newest guy hauls off and throws down a second place on a tough sprinter's stage. That's what we call rockin the casbah. Made me a little sad to be here at work hearing about sprint finishes, just wish I could have been out there to do the afterburner leadout. Just need to make it two more weeks, then schools out and my schedule takes a turn for the better.

Look out if you're riding the crit at Hood tonight, somewhere near one of the more sketchy corners you might get heckled by a pack of BG employees pouring beer down thier throats and on the course. There's a caravan leaving from the Hollywood store around 5pm if anyone's up for a evening of bike spectating and a bit of mt bike riding tommorow.

Picture of the day comes to us from Cyclingnews and Carl Decker, who doesn't care what you think of his showercap.

Weinercannon

There's nothing quite like a rainy, early morning at a bike shop. Nothing happens for what seems like forever, all you can do is stock tubes, sweep, maybe organize a calf-off and listen to some music. Solomon and I drew the early shift this morning, so the day started the way most rainy mornings do around here.

The Bet.

What time to we get the first customer. Store opens at 8. I say 9:10, Sworas says 8:43.30. An upstanding young gentleman strides in at 8:42 to purchase a tube for his BMX bike. Here's the question though... He arrivedcloser to Solomon's time, but actually paid closer to my time. So who wins?

I say me.

For those of you keeping track of my school life (namely the ones financing it), yesterday was a pretty good one. Our EMS class ran a mass casualty incident, which was sweet. 7 cars all mangled together, 9 victims also mangled together, 8 ems crews arriving at different times and I get chosen to direct the whole mess. What a trip. I froze for a few seconds after we arrived, just stared at the other medic on my crew trying to comprehend what the hell I was supposed to do while 9 proctors stared right back at me... I snapped out of it, got things rolling and everything went smoothly from then on. After it was all over it was quite the feeling to be able to accomplish something bigger than writing some essay or selling a pair of armwarmers(even if it was all pretend).

I'll leave you with this image.
Matt Slaven (the shop's inventory manager and probable calf-off champion) lived in Nebraska for a while, and apparently one of his fondest memories is of the hockey game breaks. The players all file off into the locker rooms and a big dude appears in the middle of the ice with his trusty assistant, a mystery bucket and what looks like a home-made cannon. He then starts randomly firing hot-dogs (wrapped in foil)into the crowd on semi-automatic while his assistant reloads the wienercannon.
Huge fat guy shootin weiners into the drunken hockey crowd.

So There I Was, Givin'er

Evan Elken is kinda fast. Seriously.

Here's how the sprint at Swan Island went.

1 lap to go and it's some random dude, Crazy Cardio Carl, then Dirty Dave, then myself, with everyone else on my wheel. Drag. Everyone I wanted to be in plain sight with one lap to go is now behind me, where my eyes are not. Half lap to go, Carl's gone, Daves giviner all he's got and BAM he's got no more. As he blows he simultaneously wheezes something that sounded like "ghgaamaa" but turns out he said ADAM which is short for Curry, who happens to be RIPPING up the left side at about 80 miles an hour. I pull some massive acceleration out of pure nothingness to get on the wheel behind Curry(after punting some dude out of the way (such is life)) and I think "life is sweet." I've just gone from swamped and finishing 20th to being inches from grabbing the golden ticket. Curry finishes his heroic pull, turns right, I start the final push to get around big tall guy from the Wine Team and just as I pull halfway up to him and run completely out of jet power, and out of the corner of my eye I see this orange UFO go bbbrrwwaaAAAA!!! up the outside and demolish both of us by about 4 bike lengths. Woah.

The rest of the race was uneventful for me. I was lazy and hung out in the middle the whole time. The Gallery team were all over every break on the road, trying to get something started. They must have missed Tuckerman.

In other news, I'll be a certified EMT in 4 short weeks, so watch where you fall and break your hip from now on, chances are I'll be out to lunch.

DT

Gleukos at the Gallery

Come and get it. Lemon, orange and punch in powder form, so it's easy to mix any way you like. 15 Measly dollars will get you enough to make 2 gallons of sports drink. You know you want some. Do it now.

I Declare Myself Healed

So take that, you stupid rib. Showed you.

Happy mothers day to my mother. And to the team mother as well. And to any other mothers reading this. Big ups.

Friday night was my first race back, and it wasn't as embarrassing as I had predicted. 200m time was still relatively slow and Steven McMuscles pretty much walked around me with a full lap to go, but at least I didn't end up last. And my chest didn't rip apart. That's good too. Oh and you know what else is good? I got a killer sunburn while doing a 5-hour track workout on sunday. boo-yah. Sunburns mean sun. And sun is good.

So how about that Aaron Tuckerman eh? I've been keeping a lazy eye on the results from the Joe Martin nrc stage race, and I keep seeing that angsty little guy up in the top 15. Who spiked his PBR before he took off? 6th on the first hilly road stage, lead group finish on the flatish sprint finish road stage, 13th in the TT, and 14th in the crit for a grand total of 12th overall. Damn. Not bad for a field full of the best domestic pro teams in the country. What a angry guy. He's like one of those little tiny birds that look like thier made of paper clips and tree bark, but then you walk by and they dive bomb and peck you freakin eyes out... But uglier.

Rest of the boys were up thier fighting it out as well, Kirk, Logan, Richard, you guys get gold stars for just going to Arkansas in the first place, let alone racing your asses off in that godforsaken place.

Good luck at Tri-Peaks you poor suckers.

So it's official. I'm pretty much the slow guy on the team then. I'm cool with that. I still have until October to prove my worth. Just have to keep my eyes open (while driving) and keep working to get back to pre-rib form and beyond.
DT

I Didn't Know I Had That Much In My Stomach (and other recent quotes)...

Now that I'm feeling healed enough to giver' a little bit on the bike, I'm realizing how slow I am. 5 Weeks off the bike doesn't do much for your sprint as it turns out. Or your endurance. Or your anything. I've been riding off and on since my accident, but I've carefully avoided any efforts. Now that I'm confident that I can jump a few times without ripping my ribcage apart, I've started to get back into the good stuff.

Rode out to the track last Sunday to do a little workout with Brian and the crew. No worries right? What could possibly go wrong? This is where Brian says "haaay!" He says "HAY we should do some sprints!" Sure, why not?

First ride is against Casey Deck, who has just done about 5 hard flying lap efforts, is wheezing a little bit and looks pretty beat. I on the other hand have been riding in my granny gear for twenty minutes, so I think "no problem." We wind it up, come around for the final lap and suddenly I felt like I broke a shifter cable in my legs. Normally with about 200 to go I'd turn on the go-jets and run it home, but here it seemed like I'm stuck on cruising speed while casey lopes right past me. My heart rate, however has no problem jacking all the way up to the sky, and after doing a 13 second 200m I feel dangerously close to passing out.


Same thing happens against Beardsley the senior a few times. I'm doubled over gasping on the infield in between sets. Everyone else seems to be fine. Maybe 3 or 4 sprints into the day I start feeling "it." Very calmly, I put my sandals on, grab some water, walk up to the parking lot and loose my clif bar breakfast in some of the most violent spasming heaves of all time. I manage to cover most of the upper parking lot in bile. What an accomplishment.

Not surprisingly, I feel a bit better after that and finally take doug in the very last race... but barely... and with some very questionable tactics.

I was really looking forward to taking things up a few levels this year, but looks like I'm starting off by taking a few giant steps back. Looks to be a long and difficult summer, so steer clear of me after a few hard efforts.

DT

Welcome To The Club

Sounds like the Willamette Classic was pretty much a disaster for the Rubicon/kiwi contingent. Tuckie crashed, richard crashed, adam crashed. We even lost people without crashing. Rough weekend. I on the other hand, watched some TV, hung out at the coffee shop next to my place and basked in the sun, went to the track, rode until it hurt and basked in the sun some more. So I guess Willamette wasn't a complete disaster, it went pretty well for me.

As a result, Richard's joining me on the team sick list. Sounds like he got punted off his bike in a sprint and spent the next couple days coughing blood. He came out for the yeah yeah yeahs at the roseland, apparently he's in the broken rib club now. Drag.

Speaking of the Yeahs, they took the stage late enough to let the crowd get anxious and liquored up, then proceeded to blow everyone's mind to little quivering peices. They were ON it, Karen O was slamming about the stage like she was on fire, the crowd was amping, Nick Zinner the guitarist was throwing down these crazy guitar solos from space even though he looked like he shouldn't be strong enough to hold his guitar up, tuckie was heckling random people like a true champ, everyone was into it.

Euro-pro sidenote: Horner kicks ass. Pulls the big victory in Romandie, takes the mello yello jersey and looks like he's having an epileptic seizure during his celebration. What a rock star.

Headline of The Day

From CNN (again)

"Naked carpenter: I wanted to stay clean"

OAKLAND, California (AP) -- A carpenter who keeps his clothes clean by working in the nude was arrested after a client returned home early and found him building bookcases in the buff.

Percy Honniball, 50, was charged with misdemeanor indecent exposure this week for the October incident.

He told officers he stripped before crawling under the client's house to do electrical work because he didn't want to soil his clothes, police said.

Honniball said Thursday that working in the nude gave him a better range of motion and that a skilled craftsman can work clothing -- and injury -- free.