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Tue 8 February 2005 : 2005 EST

Wannabe Pro

Been looking around on the web lately, noticing that if you want to be a pro, then you'd better be documenting your cycling neurosis on the web.
Seems like a good idea to me.
I'm not exactly sure who I think will be interested in reading all about the (not so) exciting life of an ameteur cyclist living in Chicagoland but if nothing else, I'll be able to keep the family and loved ones up to date on all the racing and day to day excitement.

This past weekend was the second installment of the ABD Indoor Time Trial series held at the Wheaton Parks and Rec facility. The months of January, February, and March are often bitter cold and very unpredictable here in Chicago. Some snow, lots of wind, and lots of sub-zero temperatures generally put a decisive damper on the outdoor riding. The Athletes by Design team has been organizing this indoor Time Trial series for maybe 7 years now.

It works like this. Your bike is held in a machine called a CompuTrainer. The CompuTrainer is supposedly a smart device that, given your weight, can simulate the resistance that one would feel if they were riding on the road.
In this series, the course is a flat, 10km (6.21 mile) course. You are riding in front of a computer screen that shows a rear-view of a cyclist that is supposed to represent you riding on the open road. Generally, two riders ride side-by side to promote competition.
In 2004, my fastest time on the course was 13:56. Until that point, nobody had ever ridden under 14:00. This year though, the 14 minute barrier doesn't seem so difficult to break. Mark Schwartzendrubber (Delta) broke it in the first race of the series, and Peter Sharis (DICE) broke it this last week. I came in with the second fastest time of the day with a time of 14:02.
My man Al Stern seems to believe that I've got what it takes to break the records again this year... But then again, he's applying liberal doses of cycling optimism and training advice to anyone within ear-shot. I'm just starting to integrate some intensity into the training schedule now so we'll see how the fitness comes along.

Last week, I took the train into the city to meet the Fiance in the city. I scooped up the Friday edition of the Wheaton Sun from off my porch. I had to run to the train station to make sure that I wouldn't miss my train. Once aboard, I settled down with my paper. One of the first articles that I spied was the following

Wheaton Sun Article

Funny how seeing your name in a paper with a circulation of only 21,000 per week makes you feel like you've accomplished something. "This is it! My boat has come in! My feat is listed 'in brief'!". I'd better start looking for an agent. With press like this, it looks like I won't be an amateur for long.

-5000

Wed 9 February 2005 : 2005 EST

Coffee Shop Cruises

A lot of guys rave about their "coffee shop" rides. These are rides where there is no real training objective for the day other than getting out on the bike and turning the legs. I'm not a man who digs on the coffee shops so much so my coffee shop cruises are often my commutes in to work. I spend a half-hour spinning in to work, I'll kick it with my co-workers and homies for 6-8 hours, write a little code, fire off a couple e-mails, and spin another half-hour home.

That was the scenario today, with it being a rest week and all, my Wednesday ride was not much more than a coffee shop cruise. It was a nice ride into work. 29F with very little wind. Cold enough to remind you that it is still February but not cold enough to make you hate every minute outside.

This evening, the snow had started to fall so the ride home was a bit wet. I've got to say though, that I'm super stoked on the fenders that I hooked up in Salt Lake while I was home for the holidays. It was a wicked rainstorm that day and I ducked in to Contender Bikes and my man Ryan Littlefield hooked me up with these little numbers.

Can't remember who makes these. They came in a package with some picture of Jan Ulrich or someone from T-Mobile winning a race presumably on these fenders. Or maybe the idea is that with these fenders, you'll be able to be out ridin' while others are just wishin' that they were riding. In any case, they are super. On and off the bike in about 30 seconds. The coverage is great! No more ass-soaking puddles with these beauties. A definate must have for training in the cold and wet.

Hit the Ace hardware tonight to get some wall anchors to re-hang my coat rack. It met a sad end the other night; one coat too many and it pulled off the wall. They had a bunch of bins of sale items. Everything from colored duct tape to 12pc hose clamp sets. I ended up walking out with a small bag of cheap treasures.

Another thing that I'm stoked about is this Walgreens purchase:

I've always wanted one of these! I'll be rattlin' around the halls of work now like some crazy pusher. You'll be able to hear me coming from blocks away while I'm packin' this heat. I'm off to pack my PM pills.

-5000

Thu 10 February 2005 : 2005 EST

"Can't live without my Radio"

The weight room culture is a funny thing. When you show up new to a new gym, nobody gives you any credit unless you can bench 3 plates or are a good looking woman. The gym at Fermilab is no different.
I've been lifting there for the past couple of months now. Its a pretty old place but its got all the equipment and is certainly a step up from the Universal machine that I used at my old place. The Fermi gym is taken care of by this dude named Tim. He's cool. He comes in for a couple hours a day, cleans up the gym, wipes down the elliptical machine, straightens the weights, reads a magazine or two and splits. The gym doesn't need more, and frankly its one of the cleanest weight rooms that I've been in.

I usually get in around 9am and leave around 11:00am when the lunch crowd starts to burst in on my scene.

One of the things that always cracks me up is the radio politics in a place like this. There are about 5 stations that ever get any air time.

The only time that the EZ listening station is tuned is when the old ladies are in the gym. Its happened once in the two or three months that I've been there.
The Headbanger rock station gets going with the lunch rush crowd. There are a group of dudes who always seem to be working on their arms, and they can't lift unless the radio is extremely loud and tuned to the headbanger rock station. They claim that anything less and they'd be "falling asleep". Lets face it, Motley Crew, Motorhead, Metalica, and Whitesnake are staples in the soundtrack of most gyms. Its hard to pump iron to anything less.

Lately, this woman has been sneakin' in before most of her lunch-rush friends. She does the treadmill. She just acts like she knows what she's doing and slides on over and changes the radio to the R&B / Rap station. Its great to watch. For the five minutes that we're bumpin' to R. Kelly, this woman has the best workout of her day. The Arm Crowd comes in about 5 minutes later and they dutifully march over and change the radio to the Rock and Roll station. I'm not sure though if it even matters to her. She got in five minutes of steppin' to Usher and I think it made her day.

Me. I don't really mind. I'm just counting the days till I can be out on the road every day instead of stuck in the Fermi gym.

-5000

Wed 16 February 2005 : 2005 EST

Montero saga

So I suppose that this journal really should be fully dedicated to riding but the past week or so, my life has been a bit pre-occupied with the repair of my whip. The Montero had been complaining the past couple of months with a rough idle and a newly formed voracious appetite for oil. I was convinced that all she needed was a little love at the valve seals and she'd be good as new. I recruited Doug, a friend of mine who is sympathetic to the Montero cause.

We slowly opened her up and found that we were dealing with "something much more evil".

The number 4 spark-plug dropped its insulation off of the electrode. This ceramic piece dropped into the cylinder and has been wrecking havoc ever since. You can see the scoring on the cylinder where something has scratched away at it while the piston did its work.

Here you are looking at the top of the head. You can see the exhaust and intake valves and the hole for the spark-plug. You can see where the spark-plug insulation has been mashed into the aluminum head. It makes it look like the surface of the moon. Bad news!

I had to order some parts and while they are shipped I have to contemplate how far to try to go with the repair of this mess. Currently, I think that I'm just going to try to get by with just replacing the heads and hoping the the bottom end of the engine holds together. Just seems silly to drop much more money into this sucker when she isn't worth much more than a grand now anyway. Hopefully she'll be back up and running in a week or two here.

In riding news. I enjoyed a great rest week last week. It was nice to just tool around on the bike for a week. This week though it is back to work. Since I've been car-less, I did some work intervals over at The Fiance's apartment on her trainer. I'm sure that the downstairs neighbors really appreciated the noise that I was generating right above their family room.

-5000

Sun 20 February 2005 : 2005 EST

Just Wasn't Meant To Be

As predicted Sunday is a snowy and rainy day in Wheaton. I was hoping to get out and ride a bit today. Turn the legs over and get a jump on my hours this week. I thought that since the weather was a bit sour, I'd pull out the mountain bike and get a little muddy. I'd have to fix a flat though first. I worked up the motivation to remedy the front flat that I've had on the mountain bike for the past month or so. As I went to fill the spare tube, I spotted an enormous hole in the tube. Its the tube that I've been carrying around as a spare for the past who knows how long so I'm really not too surprised. I'm just happy that I made the discovery in the comfort of my own home and not in the middle of a snowy ride. I guess that the mountain ride just wasn't meant to be today. Tomorrow looks like it'll at least be dry so I'll just have to hit it then.

Time to get some new tubes.

Went out and did some hill work yesterday. Felt pretty good and was surprised to see my times up the local hills were pretty competitive to what my times were in the heart of the summer last year. I'm feeling good lately and think that my form is coming along well. Its so hard to say without racing though. I'm looking forward to the first races in the next month or so to see how I stand.

Yesterday during my ride, I thought that I'd eat a Power Gel. It was really cold outside yesterday so I decided to go for it with the gloves still on. I ripped the top off with my teeth and then proceeded to squirt the gel into my mouth. However, no fake green apple taste?! Que!? I had felt the gel emptying... I looked down to see that my right leg was covered in green apple flavored gel. It looked like silly string all over my thigh. I stopped and used some roadside snow to get me cleaned up. What a mess.

Valley of the Sun has been going on this weekend in Arizona. I'm stoked to see that my girl Rebecca Much has been rocking against the pros. 9th in the TT and another top 10 in the road race after working like a dog for Ina. Great to see the old teammate out on the road doing so well.

The car saga continues. On Thursday, Doug and I got the engine out of my car. It was great fun. Doug commented "how often do you get to see an Archaeologist and a Physicist do this sort of thing together?". Somehow, the problem doesn't seem as bad with the engine out of the car. Sort of feels hopeful somehow. Kind of like the first day of school... or the beginning of the racing season... Things are ready for a fresh start.

We're now waiting for some parts. The heads are being shipped from Florida and should be here tomorrow. I had to order a bunch of other random parts from Mitsubishi and those will be in on Thursday. Its looking like we'll be back together by the end of February or the beginning of March.

Doug has been a great help. Its been fun to do some wrenching with him. I've been learning a lot. He's much more careful and organized than I am. Maybe it has to do with his Archaeological background. In any case, its something that wouldn't hurt me to develop.

ABD has a TT frame that I might be able to use this year. Its a Simonetti. Aero Aluminum tubing. Not bad. Its not the lightest in the world but it seems like it'll do the trick. I'm pretty stoked. It still needs a little love; aero fork, drop down stem, wheel-set, and whatnot, but it feels nice. I need to do a little seat-post hacking to get the sizing right. I'm planning on getting out on it this week to get a better feel for it.

That's a long entry. See you out on the roads soon.

-5000

Tue 22 February 2005 : 2005 EST

Simonetti

Today I got out on the Simonetti for the first time. It took a little doing to get my position setup. The seat-tube has some sort of deformation where the top tube is welded to it. It makes it impossible to put a long seat-post into the machine. I've had to chop my Thompson post a couple of times in order to get it in far enough. I think that I still need to chop a bit but it is close now.

Today I got out and did several sort time trial efforts on the machine. It is a solid bike. It is very stiff. I still need to tweak the position though. Whenever I'd stand up I'd smash my knee caps into the elbow pads on the aerobars.

It was cold out today. My hands were completely numb by the time I got home. It didn't seem very cold while I was riding but maybe by keeping the hands largely in one position for two hours I was contributing to their demise

Anyway, I'm excited about the new frame. I'm looking forward to getting it tricked out and ready for racing.

Tomorrow I'm off to Baltimore for the weekend. Got to go back for some work stuff. I'm looking forward to hooking up with the old team though while I'm back and getting in some good hours on the old roads. Jeromejay here we come!

-5000

Thu 24 February 2005 : 2005 EST

Baltimore Hates Snow

Yesterday, while I was out for a little spin, I came up on a spot of road construction. It was a pretty quiet street and the sign dude was on his game. He saw me coming, looked up the empty road ahead, and flipped his stop sign to give me the "slow" indication. Grateful for a little respect from the road crew, I gave him a friendly wave and a nod as I approached. As I came up on him, he picked up his sign and started pointing at the "Slow" on his sign. "Don't you get it man, I said slow!" We both got a good laugh out of the shenanigan. To him, I guess my 35kph seemed super-human.

I made it in to Baltimore last night despite being randomly selected for additional security screening which basically just put us in the line where the security crew did more screwing around than work. Its good to be back here. This is a great city and I don't care what anyone says. I love it here.

I'm crashing at my man Ed's place. We used to ride together on the Hopkins cycling team. He was nice to come out to the airport and fetch me last night.

I woke up really early this morning to make it to an appointment that I had made at the Hopkins Student Health Center. Always good to get the free health care when its available. I had them take some blood to do a Chem-24, CBC, and a Lipid profile.

Now I've had plenty of mixed experiences in the blood letting department. A couple times that I've donated or whatnot, its gone really smooth. However a handful of other times, I've gotten really light headed and put myself in some sort of bad way. I'm sorry to report that today an experience to add to the latter group.

The girl who did me was great. No pain for the blood letting. I even managed to take an inquisitive look over at the tube streaming my precious fluids out of me. Kind of cool I was thinking. Up next was a Tetanus shot. Again, a great execution. Not much pain. After all was said and done though, I reported to her that I was getting light headed. She returned with a choice of Gatorade for me to drink. I chose the orange one but the next thing I knew, this girl was asking; "Are you alright?" and handing me the Gatorade that I'd just taken. I guess I just sort of lost it there for a second, and dropped my beverage. A second later, they rolled in the O2 tank which they decided to keep around just in case. Man, I'm such a wimp! The nurse offered that maybe it had something to do with the fact that I hadn't had any breakfast... well, thanks for the support but I'm pretty sure that I'm just a wimp.

Its been snowing all day here. I'm a little bummed out. I was hoping for some nice hours out on the bike in the next day or two. Hopefully we'll be getting our melt on something fierce tomorrow so I can get out. There is only something like 2-3 inches on the ground out there so I'm still optimistic. Baltimore is great though. Even before a single flake fell today, tons of the schools were already cancelled. Its a rough life being a kid, staying home and playing in the snow all day while the grown-ups complain about the snow.

-5000

Fri 4 March 2005 : 2005 EST

Back Home in the Midwest

The weekend in Baltimore ended up pretty nice. It was cold on Saturday but at least all of the mid-week snow wasn't melting like crazy so the roads stayed pretty dry.

Here is a shot of the bike that Jorn loaned me for the weekend. An aluminum Specialized. Nothing fancy, but it got the job done and I was happy to not have to drag my ride around the airport -- plus it saved some cash too.

The LSV ride was fun. Less of the old LSV guard showed up so I only knew a handful of people. We got in a good 5 hours and managed to throw in some pretty decent efforts throughout the day. Ed had some 30min work intervals that he had to throw down. That helped the time fly by but by the end of the day he was pretty wrecked.

We rolled over to Donna's cafe and had some great sandwiches. I had the turkey sandwich with pesto and a cup of black bean soup. Ed had his with artichoke hearts and what looked like a liter of fruity tea. It was a great benediction to the day of training.

Special thanks to my man Ed for putting me up for a couple of nights. He's getting ready to defend his PhD thesis on the 9th of March so right now he is a busy man. It was great to get caught up with him and spend a few days together.

Saturday night, the Fiance and I drove down to DC to meet up with my brother.

It was great to see his new place. The apartment is very cool and a nice place to stay. We crafted some pizzas that night for dinner. The Chicago-style crust that I whipped up was a bit doughy but the NYC-style one turned out great. My Bro and his wife had made a trip to a great Italian market so our pizza fixin's were on point.

Sunday we hit the zoo...

...and took lots of pictures...

and returned to the Midwest.

This week the training has kind of fallen apart for me. If I'm able to get in a long ride tomorrow I might yet be able to salvage it. I started doing some high reps in the weight room. 60 reps on the squat rack did me in. My butt was killing me. Same goes for my calves. Hopefully I'll be tough as nails if I keep the gym work up. The next day I was on the trainer doing some 12 minute TT repeats. The legs were certainly tired and it was all I could do to stay on top of my gear. I think that I'll be doing the TT work before the high-rep lifting in the future.... "its just much easier on your constitution man"

In Montero news: The engine is coming along nicely.

The heads arrived.

We got the block decked. On Wednesday we installed the heads. Last night we installed the rear main oil seal, oil pan, exhaust manifolds, and the timing belt. Hopefully by tonight I'll have a running car. Dare to dream dawg. Dare to dream.

-5000

Tue 8 March 2005 : 2005 EST

Purring Kitten

I missed racing the first practice crit up at Kenosha this weekend so that I could drop the engine back into my car. Doug and I put in 3 solid days of work this weekend to get the whip up and running again. Even though Parkside would have been fun, with sunny skies and temperatures into the high 40s, it was worth it to get the engine into the car.

And so far, she is purring like a kitten. The engine is running better than I can ever remember it running. The Montero still has her quirks but its good to have her back.

The training suffered while we dedicated every waking hour to the engine install. I missed my weekly hours goal for the first time in 8 weeks or so. I think that I'll call it a pseudo rest-week and put in some extra hours next week during the planned rest-week.

Its sunny and cold out today and I'm just about to head out for some cruise intervals around the ring at Fermilab.

Sun 13 March 2005 : 2005 EST

Back to a Schedule

With the car back together, I had much work and training to get caught up on this week.

I realized Friday that I had something like 8 hours that I needed to cram into the next two days to meet my goal for the week. The forecast on Friday was for flurries and sub-freezing temps. Perfect day for a mtn. ride.

I struck out and did the large triangular loop of the Prairie Path. North West from Wheaton to South Elgin. South along the Fox River to Aurora. and North East through Naperville to Wheaton again. The temperatures were ridiculously low and the snow on the ground from Wednesdays showers was really wet. The bike was probably 5 kilos heavier by the time the ride was over.


It turned out to be a great ride, got in some hammering and around 3 hrs.

Saturday morning I woke up early to get in my ride. Another cold one. I rode from Wheaton up into Algonquin. Colonial Cafe just opened their 7th store and Clinton Anderson had us on on the guest list for the "Friends and Family" grand opening. The ride up was nice. Nice open roads with minimal traffic for the most part. It was cold. Cold enough to freeze the straw on the Camel-Back I was rocking. I guess I need to be taking more frequent drinks in sub-sub-zero temps.

"Friends and Family" though was fantastic. Colonial Ice Cream is a great place. If you have the means, I recommend stopping in some time. They have great 24-hr breakfasts -- I'd suggest the Colonial Country Omelet -- and nice entrees. They've got these muffins which are some strange bouliabaise of bran, raisin, carrot, and nuts, called Morning Glory Muffins... they rule though. As one waitress once said... "they don't sound very good but they are". She had it right. They are fantastic.

After we ordered, the computer system went down -- apparently too many friends and family at once... It ended up taking over an hour for our food to get out (very unusual by the way). It was great though. We were there to enjoy the grand opening, and it was fantastic.

Beckett Tracy, me, and Clinton Anderson enjoying Strawberry Lemonades.

Clinton keeping the kitchen in order during the computer meltdown.

Today, I finally got to get out and race. Puffer and I headed up to Kenosha to hit the 2nd of a series of 3 training crits at Parkside. It was freezing cold out but at least the roads were dry and the sun shining. We had a small field of 16 dudes at the start. The race turned out to be pretty fun. Puffer and I had a good time. We counted that it took 6 attacks between the two of us to get away. Puffer rode a pretty sizeable chunk of the race solo off the front. I was able to finally put in a good attack to drop my group and bridge up to Puffer. The two of us finished One Two on the day. It really couldn't have gone much better for us.

It was great to get out and race. Somehow it makes all of the winter training drudgery worth all the hassle. I guess thats what keeps the customers coming back for more every season.

After the race, my baby met me at home and brought me a wicked post-race meal.

Clockwise, from the bottom, that's Chicken Alfredo, French Toast, Corn Bread, and a strip of Bacon. What a sweet buffet. Fuel to keep my Maserati running smooth!

-5000

Wed 16 March 2005 : 2005 EST

Krabby Burgers

I won one of those oversized hollow plastic candy canes at one of Honey Carrot's family Christmas parties. The candy cane was stuffed with a bunch of strange Sponge Bob Square Pants gummy candies. Somehow I managed to forget about this treasure until just the other day.

I got back from a ride and was in serious need of some candy. I have been pretty good this year about not having much junk around the house. If the junkfood is there, I know that I'll just eat it. But this particular day, I was feeling the sugar craving something fierce. I somehow sniffed out the candy-cane full of these gummy Krabby Burgers. Words cannot describe the joy that has been flowing through my body ever since. Each Krabby burger comes with a rather rare gummy quarter-pounder patty and a translucent, gummy piece of lettuce sandwiched between a sesame seed, yellow No.5, bun. I thought about going Atkins style on these guys but that lasted about a second -- there is just too much gummy goodness to be had in each delightful burger.

"If you have the means, I highly recommend picking some up..."

Check out Puffer's race report from Parkside last Sunday. There is no direct link to it so you might have to dig a bit. Its his journal entry from March 14. I guarantee you haven't read a race report quite like this one. Good times!

-5000

Thu 17 March 2005 : 2005 EST

Fermi Characters

One of the great things about working out in the weight room of a National Laboratory are the other characters that show up to get their sweat on. This new dude though, takes the cake. Today he shows up with a backpack full of books. He is an older dude, with glasses, some wacky, four-striper black sneakers, and a baseball hat that sits high on the top of his head. He's got a pair of glasses that sit awfully low on his nose and by the way he continually squints his eyes, I'd say they provide only a slightly focused picture of the world. He is usually clad with a large black hip pack too... who knows what implements he keeps in there (If my 7th grade science teacher can be used to approximate this guy, I'd guess that he's got his calculator, rulers, calipers, maybe a length of surgical tubing or a small star chart crammed into that thing. He doesn't seem to go anywhere without it... and that includes the elliptical machine.

Today, the elliptical was once again on this guys training schedule. He dug three hardback textbooks from his backpack and shuffled over to the machine. He carefully placed all three books on the magazine rack on the machine. Next, he unclipped his hip-pack and carefully attached it to one of the hand-rails of the machine. And climbed onto the elliptical with a surprising amount of coordination.

As he got things moving, he opened all three textbooks and began rifling around. He'd dash to and from the index in a mad reading frenzy. The amazing thing to me was that it appeared that he was actually using all three of the books that he brought to the machine for whatever it was that he was frantically studying while ellipticizing. If the dude was 30 years younger, I'd guess that he was maybe studying for a Quantum exam later in the afternoon. He's quite the character and certainly a site to see. I was trying to figure out how I could get to my camera to snap a pic for these pages but I couldn't figure out a way to get it done... and then I figured that maybe gyms should be like Vegas. What happens there stays there...

-5000

Sun 10 April 2005 : 2005 EST

One Second

Today was the finale of the ABD indoor time trial series. Ironically enough it ends with an outdoor, 10 mile, ITT.

The good people of Prairie Path Cycles and Griffen Bikes came through and got me setup on one of their Vulcan B4C TT frames. Its a sweet bike! I got her built up on Wednesday and managed to get a ride in on her on Thursday. Its very stiff and the fit is great!

I'm also stoked for sentimental reasons because the paint scheme is the same as I had on my old Waterford road bike. It feels like a bit of a homecoming. And gold is simply a fast color. You'd better be riding fast if your bike is gold eh?

My rivals in the indoor series had been; Peter "the Sheriff" Sharis and Mark Schwartzendrubber. Peter had been housing me at all of the computrainer TTs that we'd done so far. He can crank some mad watts!

In this event our start-times had me starting a minute behind Schwartzendrubber and two minutes behind The Sheriff. I felt pretty good on the new bike throughout the ride and I was sure that I'd made up ground on 'drubber but wasn't sure about Peter. Turns out that I'd beaten 'druber by nearly 30 seconds and the Sheriff by almost a minute.

My celebrations were short lived however when my teamate, Bryce "Big Bird" Mead, came across the line with a time just 1 second quicker than mine.

Its always disapointing to lose but I guess that there is no better way to lose than to your teamate. I'm stoked for the racing to come. It looks like the ABD squad is going to be a major force to be dealt with this summer!

Sat 30 April 2005 : 2005 EST

"...Not Exactly Purring"

Well Raby and I had decided on heading down to St. Louis for a road race on Saturday followed by a Sunday crit. It turned out that there were no other vehicles available except for the Montero. I figured that it'd be a good chance to finally validate the work that we'd done on the engine. The vehicle isn't exactly a useful vehicle for a cyclist unless it is up to the rigors of 4+ hr road trips.

We were off early and things were going well. Raby and I were catching up and enjoying our drive. We were around 80 miles into our trip when we noticed a vehicle who had just passed us started using their window wipers pretty heavily. Not a cloud in the sky and no rain to speak of... that's odd. Seconds later the drive of that vehicle was motioning us to pull over. I looked out the rear window and we were smoking like that bad-ass spy car in Spy Hunter and the back windown was showered in oil.

We were able to get the car pulled over and shutdown before any catastrophic engine failure luckily. It looks like the rear main oil seal popped.

In our haste to prime the oil pump after our rebuild we tried using some excessive air pressure techniques and I believe that we un-seated the oil seal then and it was only a matter of time before it came off.

Thats a good look at the oil slick that we left on I-55. Noice!

Lucky for me, my Fiance is the nicest in the world. After a quick call she jumped in the car and headed out to fetch us arranging a tow for us along the way. The world was a pretty decent place there at mile marker 203. But it was even better to head home once she arrived.

The day got progressively worse. Raby and I headed out to get in some hours on the bike. I flatted when I rode over this huge piece of glass and then smashed into Raby's handlebars (and his right pinky finger) about 200m from his house. We figured that the day just wasn't meant to be and called it quits on account of crap luck.

The rest of the ABD team didn't fare much better this weekend. Puffer, Dierking, and Mead were in the South for Athens and Roswell and a couple other big cash crits. It turned into a crash fest with each of our boys going down at least once. Puffer came away with the worst damage with 20 stitches in his knee that is going to require some time off the bike.

Mon 9 May 2005 : 2005 EST

Turkey Hill Cycling Classic

Three years ago when I was a cat 4, I raced the Turkey Hill Cycling Classic in Lancaster, PA. It was a great race. I was away solo for over half the race and got caught at the line by a storming 17yr old kid who ended up beating me to the line. Pretty sour memory but I soon forgot all of my worries as I drowned my sorrows in free Turkey Hill Chocolate milk and ice cream. There was so much free food that you couldn't be sad for long. A veritable Shangra La in the middle of nowhere complete with a gigantic plastic cow.

When I realized that the THCC was happening again and that the data worked with a little family gathering that I was hoping to attend, I couldn't pass up the chance to race in Lancaster again.

I dragged my family up at 5:30 am and we rolled out of DC in my brothers trusty little Mazda. The parents got the true bike racing experience, complete with tight spaces for long hours on the road.

The race was pretty much as expected. A couple of pro teams were represented in Snow Valley and the Navigators but none of the teams seemed to be too cohesive or well coordinated. A bunch of my old teamates on the LSV Kelly team were also there. It was great to get to race with my college bro Ed Brignole again.

7 laps into the 12 lap affair, I found myself in the lead group. We headed into the steep climb and KOM points hill for the first time and I put on the gas a little bit. At the top of the hill, there were only 4 of us including Bobby Lea, a Snow Valley, and a kid named Josh. We rolled along pretty well together and it was soon clear that our group was the business-end of the race.

I managed to wrap up the KOM and Bobby got most of the points for the sprint points race. On the last lap Bobby wasn't taking many pulls and was marking me pretty closely. with 2 or 3 km to go this Josh guy jumped. I let it go and Bobby jumped around me and soon made it up to him. I was having a hard time latching on but managed to do it with about 1km to go. I was sitting third and Bobby had the sheltered route around Josh so I was forced to try to jump first. I went out into the wind and he jumped right. He beat me pretty easily for the win and I sailed in for 2nd.

Once again, plenty of free chocolate milk was on hand for the celebratory libations. My recovery window was non-optimal with two chocolate milks, an orange juice, and an ice cream sandwich, but when you only race Turkey Hill once every three years I suppose its not so bad.

It was great to have the parents on hand for the race, they certainly seemed to enjoy it

My bro captured this great shot of my mom and dad between laps. They look a little bewildered as to why I dragged them up to Lancaster here. They were great though. They were cheering with the force of 10 regular fans. It was fantastic to get to race with them on the sidelines.
Some more photos of the race can be found here:
THCC Photos.

Wed 11 May 2005 : 2005 EST

Windy Midwest... Sheesh!

I ran the Fiancee and her sisters to the airport at 6:30am this morning. She's off for a week back home in Salt Lake City, UT. "LUCKY!" There was some crazy weather on the way to the airport. I saw the clouds rolling in something fierce as we were loading the car. It rained like crazy all the way to the airport. Visions of an extremely wet 3 hrs today or an extremely miserable couple of indoor trainer hours preoccupied my thoughts. Not much going on in my head at 6:30am usually and this dread was an unwelcome surprise.

Luckily the weather turned. After a miserable return trip from the airport and a quick nap, I was ready to hit it. The winds had dried the roads and Kaneville was calling my name.

I misread the wind and realized just as I was making my turn-around that it was going to be a long couple of hours back home. The winds were raging and my speed was flailing. For my own self-confidence, I think that I'll chalk this one up as a hill workout because it was some slow grinding home.

Was thinking a lot about Matt Wittig today. Matt is a young Wisconsin rider who died in a crit this past weekend. Its rough hearing about cyclists dying. Life is such an amazing -- and surprisingly fragile -- thing. My condolences go out to Matt's family during this tragedy. Its hard to comprehend.

--5000