Newness!

There's a new bank account-draining charge today from USAC, but I'm not pissed. That means my pro license is through the red tape. It's up to the mailman now (godspeed Ralph!). Eric is somewhere in his workshop up on the hill planning out a pro-style baddass team colored paint job for the race bike, my view of Colorado Springs is changing every time I ride my new mountain bike, and I have a fresh new throat cold to reward me for riding said mountain bike in the snow that dropped this week! The new thing I'm most amped about is the Ira Ryan custom frame that is taking shape in a basement in the St. Johns neighborhood. Ira was incredibly generous to put a custom frame ( or two, although he didn't know it at the time ) up for grabs for the winner(s) of the Rapha Goldsprints during NAHBS last year, and I was lucky enough to have my name on one of them.

Ira loves making bikes that people use every day. He sees cycling not as some opportunity to make a quick buck by importing some plastic from China, or as a way to break into some fashion sub-culture, but as an ideal and sustainable lifestyle. He likes bikes to be dirty. His bikes are not wall-hanger art. They are hand-crafted tools made by someone who knows the roots of what he's doing. Ira's bikes are classics. They're nice enough to hang on the wall, but that would be a waste.

There she blows.This thing will be the do-all. The Do-er. I've been collecting parts for it for a solid year, so it will be the best of everything I can get. The dream bike.

One of the guys at the shop thinks I have bike ADD. That I can't decide what I like or want. Not true. I know what I like. I love euro-trashy, uber-fancy, feather-light road bikes with a lot of history, like the Orbeas. I love left-field "how'd he do that" machining wizardry of uncompromising race bikes like the Groundup (as Eric says it, "a piece of wieghtlifting equipment with wheels). I also love the classics, like the a Ira Ryan single-speed utility bike I can use commute in the snow or take back 20 lbs of library books. Everything has a place in my world.
DT

worth 1000

No matter your opinion on war or policy, you cannot argue that this is a great picture.

From Chino.

Says a lot really.
DT

comics!

for more, check out Maakies.com and Qwantz.com

Hollarado

It's 2009. A new era is opening up in front of us, all that's left is to grab your pen and make your mark. As Joe Strummer would say, "Pin your ears back and Let. It. Rollll!"

After a week (maybe two weeks) of living like a normal 24(!) year old human being, it's back to life as a bike racer. And now that my paperwork has finally been sent in, life as a professional bike racer. So here we start another season. One that hopefully will look quite a bit different. Take my normal season, your normal season, or the season of any road racer, and push it back 4 months. First confirmed race is July 4th. Rumors of a kierin/sprint competition with a 20,000 dollar prize list in early june are coming out of San Jose, but I'll believe that when I see it. And if I see it, I'll be there. Also looking forward to going back to Portland to repeat and improve.
Despite all the fun US racing, the real important stuff won't start until the end of September in Barcelona. Then Nationals right after that, and 2 months from there to the World Cup in Melbourne.

And hey, my UCI ranking jumped almost 30 places from last year. Went from 133 to 107. So that's something.

Starting the new year means starting at the beginning of the training cycle. It means lost of base miles and gym time. It means stashing the track bike somewhere I can't see it for a few months while I get more than a team-sprint first lap in my legs. The beauty of doing this in Colorado is the fact that there are about a million places to ride for hours. And none of them involve the I-5 bridge or Skyline. Skyline is for sissies. We ride real mountains! This is my framebuilder, on the way to one such mountain. He loves signs.



So enough with this bike business. Let's watch someone get ill. Here in Colorado, we don't need to do the same old boring tricks. All we need is Bon Jovi, some extra skateboards and some stuff to jump off of. Watch this video to the very end. Your mind might explode.



DO IT!!

Tony Hawk eat your guts out. HOLLARADO!!

DT

more

The Gimp Pad as seen from the safety of the hammock.


From the track to the beach in 10 seconds.


Windy


Did you know that you can open a bottled beverage with nothing but a Shimano pedal? Kelyn knows.


Yeah. Word.

Holy crap.

I'll post more pictures later, but for now:
Make My Day Better
How's that for a slice of scary.
Wow.
*Dean mapquests nearest gun shop*
DT

some pictures. round one. tasMANIA.

Oncoming rain delay...


Starting a wheelrace in the corner on the 47 degree banked Silverdome is hairier than Robin WIlliams.


Some arguments simply can't be solved with words.


Crowds at the Silverdome in Launceston were even more impressive than last year.


Getting angry


For those that think riding around in circles is an assanine sport...


This was the stamp they gave me at Burnie so I wouldn't have to pay to get back in. I took this after my day of racing was over. This seemed like good advice at the time, so pass out is exactly what I did.

oops, nevermind

Burnie was cold. That is the one statement that will stick in my mind when I remember the carnivals this year. Cold. Last year we were trying to escape the oppressive heat and lack of ozone, but this year it was shivering to death on the start line, praying for everyone to get thier sh!t together so we could hurry up and go.

I managed to make it into the sprints this time (finally) and found out that our sprint rounds were four-ups. I had Scott Sunderland, Rizal Tisin and Kelyn. Sunderland's a Aussie World Cup rider, Tisin's a Malaysian World Cup winner and Kelyn's my teammate. So what to do. I sat at the back with Tisin we wound up, and with a half lap to go Tisin and I jumped at the very same moment to go flying over the top. So I'm on his wheel at the blue line, never gone so fast in my life, when he cuts downtrack, hits the front and eases off. Without ever considering my actions, I kept the gas on, cut down track with my hips overlapping his bars and sent him off the track. Sunderland and Kelyn made it around by the end but I was pretty happy nonetheless.

The lightning wheelrace was a classic example of shitluck not working out in favor of the foriegners. Every day the start lists show how many riders will get through the heats to the final. Not complicated, it's either 3 or 4, and in heats of 30 riders that's a massive task. This particular set of heats was listed as 4 go through. So I line up, gun goes, get to the front, bleeding out of my eyeballs and see that I can get 4th without wasting too much energy. Save some for the final. Kelyn makes it through his heat as well, and for the second time we have 2 riders in the final and a shot at making some scratch. Then about 10 minutes before the final the announcers says, "yeah, well actually we've decided now to take only the first 3 from the previous heats instead of the first 4." I wasn't in the mood to stir up some shit with the people who paid me to go race, but I wasn't to psyched that they decided to tell us this AFTER the race, instead of before it. WTF.

So that was the end of Burnie for me. There was a kierin in there somewhere too, but I was so exhausted by that point I don't remember what happend, except that I rode in legwarmers and a jacket.

And now I'm in Auckland. Sleeping 13 hours a night the last 2 nights in a row. Trying to get back to normal. Can't wait to get back to Colorado, into the mountains and back in my apartment. There's a new mountain bike waiting for me at the shop, calling my name.

DT

Devonport 2

Day 2 of Devonport looked alot like day 1, but colder. Cari smacked some women around, the Malaysians are too fast for thier own good, the hometown boys had the killer start marks and won the wheelraces and we stayed pretty consistent. Despite illness and lack of speed, I kept within .03 seconds of Kelyn and kept my head above water in the wheelraces.

It's pretty clear now that if I head to any World Cups next year I'll need a few weeks or a month in a warm place with an open track. Cari is already planning a pre WC/carnivals training session in Melbourne next year. There's talk of a Melbourne house for US track racers similar to the Belgium house for US cyclocross and road racers. Seems like that would be the key to carrying over form and pushing each other on to bigger things.

So instead of obsessing about the minor details of a bunch of races I didn't win, here's my moment of the day: I'm sitting at the car, winding down after a wheelrace heat and a shabby looking guy with a loaded touring bike walks over and starts talking to Cari. Turns out this guy is named Ward, is from rural Iowa, and is riding his bike around the world with his wife. Ward used to own a bike shop back home, and one day he and his wife decided that this huge world tour is something they wanted very strongly to accomplish. So after the kids went to college, they sold the shop, sold the car, sold the house, sold everything and bought 2 touring bikes and a plane ticket. Now 32 countries and 3 years later, they end up in Tasmania at the Carnivals, talking to Americans for the first time in months. Ward is probably one of the most inspiring people I've ever met. The idea of dropping the common social constraints of the "american dream" and following your own damn dream is incredible to me. The nerve, the vicious determination involved! What a pair of originals. So we got some pictures, talked for a while and went on our separate ways. If you want to keep up with Ward and Jacky check out From The Benches Of The World.
DT

Devonport day 1

This weather is crap! Woke up this morning feeling absolutely miserable and listening to the rain outside. Still 5 hours for the skies to clear before racing starts, but the news this morning is all doom and gloom about the weather.

The first day of Devonport was actually quite good. Since the carnival is split over two days, we only had one UCI race to do on top of the wheelraces. That UCI event would be the kierin. I was feeling pretty good about myself after yesterday and my goal was pretty clear: figure out my round and do nothing wrong. Once again it was 2 go through with a stacked field, so saying "I want to qualify" would be like hopping in my truck and saying "I want to drive a top 5 in a F1 race." So I started at the back and watched everything shake out. One of the Malaysians was trying to push Perkins off the track (despite perko being twice his size) and they were inspiring the rest of the field to get amongst it for the first few laps. I was rolling at the back with a small gap, watching everything shake out when I saw one of the Kiwi kilo riders swing just a bit too high off Azizul Awang's wheel and I fired off a good one and took the wheel from him. So here I am, 2 to go, motor pulls off, I'm on the wheel of the fastest guy in the race thinking "SWEET." One to go and I'm actually entertaining the thought of sticking to Awang and maybe me sneaking in for a second place. Then he jumps. It's not like I missed it, I could see him winding up for it. As he stood up and jumped, I stood up and jumped. And as I jumped I watched him accelerate away so fast it didn't even seem natural. My brain had a bit of trouble grasping how fast he was traveling. Either way, I made it to mid-field and he made it to 4 bike lengths off the front of the field in about as many pedal strokes.
Just before he jumped.
The lightning wheelrace went much better. Not much you can explain about such a short race. Just making it into the finals is an accomplishment in itself, as every heat starts with 25 and only the top 3 go through. The Devonport oval was being whipped by an offshore wind all day, so the homestraight was a stiff headwind. I went out hard, caught the front markers, hid from the wind and went with one of the kiwis in the last 100m to grab second in the heat and make it through to the final. Kelyn made it through his heat as well, so we were both in the big show off the same mark. Starting off 55 in a 1k handicap is a tough mark. You're pretty far from the frontmarkers, and at the same time, if the scratchmen catch, they'll have a full head of steam and you'll never have a chance. So the challenge is to keep it fast enough at the front to overtake the guys off 150 and keep the scratchmen behind you, at the same time saving enough for a sprint. Tough to do by yourself, so you have to split up the work. As the only one of us who's been on the track doing sprint work in the last 2 months, Kelyn was drafted to do the finish, while I would do the bitch work in the first 700m. We were off to a decent start, caught the frontmarkers reasonable quickly, I hit the front at full noise with 500m to go and pulled off at about 150. Somewhere in there Kelyn lost my wheel, but still managed to snake by for 3rd. Only 2 of the 5 scratchmen caught, and they would be the two in this picture:

Lightning Finish
So overall, the day went well. Made enough money to have a decent New Years Eve and raced smart. It took until the last day at Burnie last year for us both to make a final, so things are looking up.
DT

Devonport day 1

slinging spew at the silverdome

At my darkest moment yesterday; legs seizing, lungs full of fluid, couldn't breath, head spinning, I reeled toward the bathroom and came across a sign that it could always be worse. One of the Malaysian sprinters was doubled over the toilet, wretching the last little bits of his breakfast into the porcelain, making this horrible howling sound like he was being stabbed by some invisible torturer while it was all happening. He had just been very publicly smashed by Shane Perkins in the sprints. Immediately I feel better.

Racing actually went fairly well yesterday. Despite the poorly timed cold that has made itself at home in my chest, I managed to ride halfway decent and not look like a complete a-hole. My 200m time was nearly a half second faster than last year with (with no track time for 2 months) and only a hundredth of a second slower than Kelyn's. The depth of field for the racing this year is pretty incredible. Both on the sprinter side and enduro side, seems like it's the who's who of Oceanea. It's a bit disheartening to see previous winners of wheelraces and national champions starting 50 or 100 meters in front of you in a short wheelrace, but what can you do? HTFU. So the even the heats are rediculously quick. For instance. Our 2k handicap heat today finished in 2:08. The final finished in 2:01. Holy cow. Tactically I'm feeling great and I know where to be and when to get there, but my legs cannot match that much speed endurance. So on to the kierin. I lined up with Shane Perkins, Shane Niblett, Azizul Awang, Joel Leonard, and Razil Tisin. 4 of those 5 are current Olympic riders, and Joel Leonard has been doing World Cups lately. So for me to earn my start money, I at least need to put on a good show for the 3000 people in the stands and who are hollering like banshees for anyone that shows some flash. So whaddya do? You put on a 98 inch gear, right turn up to the rail before the motor pulls off, come screaming down and a thousand miles an hour brushing everyone's shoulders to keep them from jumping with you and take off at the front for a lap. Of course I didn't win, but for the first time I could hear the deafening roar of several thousand people loosing thier minds at a bike race.

Of course I didn't win. Or get second. So I didn't qualify. But who cares? The final was essentially a world cup round and I pulled the move of the night in my heat, so who can complain? I've never raced in a 98 before and last year I was getting dropped off the back of every kierin I did here with 2 laps to go.

So Devonport today. I'm hacking multicolored goo at an alarming rate, but f#@& that. Didn't fly around the world to sit in the hotel room and cry about it. As chopper would say...



DT

thanks qantas!

After leaving our bikes on the tarmac in Melbourne, Qantas finally delivered our bikes. After most of the racing was over.
The sprints went by with no rides. As did the keirin and the first wheelrace. Finally right before the feature wheelrace heats were about to go off, Cari's phone finally went off and to the gates we ran. This gave us a solid 30 minutes to warm up, which wasn't so bad. Went for a spin on the road, investigated a little of backcountry Tasmania and got back to the track just in time to line up for the race... and run for cover as the rain started dumping. 2 hours later, with no open track or warmup: "RIDERS TO THE LINE."
All things considered, everything after that went fairly well. After two months of almost exclusive strength training I managed to not completely detonate at any point in the 3k full noise handicap, and simply ran out of gas after a tactically sound race, ending up around 6th with 4 going through.

And that was the day.

Tomorrow is unfortunately a day off. The next day is my favorite track: the Launceston Silverdome. A beautiful indoor board track packed out with tons of spectators and plenty of crazed intermission entertainment. Looking forward to it.
DT

nobikes!

Christmas with the Starrs was pretty great as usual. Nancy and Rick threw down a huge Christmas Eve dinner for everybody, Rico and the parents threw down some hilariously entertaining argument, everybody threw back a bit of champagne, and I ate so much I was a forkfull of stuffing away from throwing up. The Starrs made Kelyn and I feel at very much at home on Christmas Day. Even got us some rad-sweet presents.

After making both our flights with several seconds to spare, we finally landed in Launceston yesterday. Trouble is, our bikes never made it out of Melbourne. So Latrobe is a hour and a half drive from here, racing starts at 10, and our bike should get to Launceston by 10. Math. Doesn't. Work.
So maybe we'll get bikes by the time the feature handicap heats start. Maybe. Fingers crossed.
DT

from LAX

You know what's funny? Sitting in an airport bar, listening to an LA sports radio dj argue with a half-drunk kiwi about whether rugby or football is more manly and violent. I love airports.

all tomorrow's parties

In 24 hours I will be in LA.

::barf::

Even though that city is a steaming poo-hole, at least it's about 60 degrees warmer than Colorado (high of 12 tomorrow!), and I only have to be there for 6 hours. Long enough to sneak out of LAX for a greasy meal and maybe a 9 dollar beer. The low here tonight should be a downright tropical 1 degree. I'M OUT! My sunblock, multicolored wifebeaters, acapuclo shirts and speedos are packed. Get me on that plane.

Armed. Locked and loaded. Ready to get reckless. Wreckless.

The UCI sprint series start lists are impressive to the point where I'm so outgunned I'm not even nervous (which says a lot). I'm walking into a gunfight with a knife, but why not? I have zero track time, so my 200s will be less than stellar, but the beauty of the carnivals is the wheelrace. The beauty of the wheelrace is its total unpredictability. You can look at it through an economic filter. To win the UCI sprint series: 500 bucks. To win a minor wheelrace: $1000. To win a feature wheelrace: $15,000. So if I can't even make the sprint rounds but make the right move in one of the wheel finals, there's my rent for a year. Even top 10 in a final nets more cash than my roundtrip tickets. It's like a Vegas poker room if there was a thug with a pipe wrench breaking 1 of every 40 collarbones in the room. The odds are for you making it out clean, but against you making off with any of the house's dough. But luck can change either way.
"Buy the ticket, take the ride."

5 days to go

Till I start my favorite/least favorite journey. I love being in the South Pacific, but getting there couldn't be less fun. Fly to LA and sit there for 8 hours... Just to get on a plane for a 13 hour flight. Gross. No complaints though, I'm just happy to go again and test myself against the wheelraces, now that Kelyn and I have a better idea of what we're doing. Should be interesting to see what I can do after a hard summer and 3 months off the track. Still snowdrifts on turns 1 and 2, so all my on the bike training has been on the BT for the last month...

The good news is that when I get back there'll be an indoor velodrome waiting in Boulder. Looks like the track surface is done and their just plugging away at red tape to get the sucker open.



Open your velodrome! Get me off this trainer! I will pay to ride!
maybe.

watch this video right now

Presidential Duck

Apparently this guy is a hero in the mideast now. He's my new favorite.

makeover

I decided my site needed to look much better than Tuckerman's so here ya go. Now 100% pro-er. Links are all updated, so checkemout.
DT