Some serious work represented here… After the first winter of fur in 8 years I’m back lookin like a bike racer. Sad.

Yeah, it’s cold, note the tights/thermals, but I guess it’s warmer than the weather back home so I shouldn’t complain too much…Need to remind myself sometimes that I can be a model whiner, truly establishing a level of bitching and moaning that others can only aspire to match.  A valuable skill, or something.
We got in about 6ish last night to our little “resort” up above the tourist trap (a cute one none-the-less) of Julian and quickly got to work fine tuning the rides that Kevin and Daimo had just finished building. With a good of quiver of frames from Felt to pick from we’ve got a couple of differentrides goin’ in the group and after a 4 hour ride with plenty of tinkering today we’re all pretty damn happy. For me in particular having not been on a road bike since October this thing feels like a rocket ship. I’m on a compact model with a monster head tube and the geometry is pretty much spot on - a rarity for me.

After playing with some new toys we had some chow and then met individually with Paul from the Agency for Cycling Ethics (ACE), the group that is handling our inter-team anti-doping program. For the first month here we’re giving up a LOT of hard-earned bloood to the vampires but the goals of the program and its’ attempt to establish a positive movement looking forward makes it well worth the effort. For these first few weeks they’re establishing a series of bio-markers that can then befollowed throughout the year (and at some point possibly linked into power data from the new wireless powertaps) to both watch the riders health and look for anything…er..suspicious. We’ve partnered with WADA as the first officially WADA endorsed program and hopefully will be joined in this effort by other programs whose resources permit the investment involved. T-Mobile is just beginning a very similar program but for now we’re it. 400k can steer people away..maybe someday it’ll all be covered by the UCI and become mandatory..maybe. Regardless I think it’ll be a cool opportunity for us to actually learn about what’s happening in and to our bodies over the course of a season and see what we can do to improve on our general health and maybe eeek out some help from legal suppliments.

Now we’ve got nearly three weeks to ride, relax, get dialed in on the new gear and get ready for a BIG season ahead.

Huh.

Sent from my BlackBerry wireless handheld.

On the eve of heading off to camp in Julien (without high-speed net apparently) I’ve finally managed to connect my computer to the net using bluetooth and my blackberry’s internet connection. Thanks to P-lo for the time he logged getting it started. Check out www.fibble.org and get ‘er going yourself. Damn cool.
Oh yeah, dropped my last Pearl in the toilet. oops. Crackberry says goodbye. Cheynna was happy, briefly. Fortunately it was before the business side of the visit as hesitation before retrieval was minimal. Thanks to the kind folks at T-Mobile for taking care of me, again.