…and tapping away over an obnoxiously large “cappucino” that could only be found in the US. Even comes with free wifi.

Portugal wrapped up on Wednesday with a TT. While most of us cruised in easy just to finish the race off Danny gave it a serious dig and ended up 7th, a killer ride on a rain/diesel slick course over rolling terrain against some guys going really, really fast. Impressive. For me successfully finishing the race was a great feeling after my crash on the 2nd day and a bit of a battle to get the body going again. We started the race expecting 5 or maybe 6 of us to finish and ended up with all but one making it to the end, hard to explain, but something of a victory for the team. Everybody jokes that Portugal is the fastest race in the world and if you can finish Portugal you can make it through the tour. As a durability test it was a good one and as prep for nats it couldn’t have been better.

Yesterday I flew back to the states and managed to sneak in a quick ride, mainly in search of Chipotle. After 7 weeks in Europe a hankering for “Mexican” food gets pretty strong. My standard barbacoa fajita burrito, black beans, corn and hot salsa, lettuce and guac couldn’t have tasted any better while plopped down in front of the tube back at the Marriott. Now I have a day to get the body back to fighting form here before the Downers Grove “Warm-up” race tomorrow and then Pro Crit on Sunday. I haven’t done a single crit all year and it’s gonna be a bit of a shock to the system. Regardless, it’ll be fun catching up with friends and getting going again on US soil before the road Nats fast approaching. With Meatball and Huff both on some good form for the crits we’ll have our work cut out for us and a repeat of last year’s victory for Brad would cap off the weekend in fine style. We only have 5 riders racing, while the team limit is 10, so it’ll be some serious work but with a bit of luck on our side maybe we can geeet rr dun.

There have been a number of comments and e-mails coming my after I pulled my little “Moment of Zen” post. An explanation: Knowing better, I shouldn’t have put it up in the first place. At a certain point one runs the risk of becoming a little self-riechous and losing the ability to actually have a positive impact, instead just becoming a pain in the ass that people laugh at and skim over. As for what could I have done in said situation? Not much really. Whatever this random dude did he didn’t win the race because of it and, while good for a laugh, had something been said nothing would have resulted from it. In some places there are courses of action to accomplish something, in Portugal not so much. So it is. Moving on.

My coffee stimulated state of alertness (doping?) is wearing off and it’s time to walk back up to the counter here and see what’s next. Then it’s off on the roads into the endless suburbia that is Metro-Chicago…