As always, it’s nice to be home. Very. Nothing quite like it… I love Girona - it’s a far too easy place to live, but that said it’s still not quite home. 10 days yet to enjoy before heading east to CSC, Philly week and Beauce. And a new, very, VERY random Velonews.com Journal went up on Monday.
A pic of Senor Meatball hard at work with the sewing kit trying to modify his shorts to, err, relieve some pressure. He has a few more, or way more, problems than most in the t’aint deparment and gives us all some quality entertainment with various attempted fixes. I think the banana in the shorts quote in bicycling magazine a few years back now was the best publicised. These days he’s working on a top secret, soon to be patented, “d-n-t” design. That’s all that can be said. Does it work? “Umm, I’m gonna have to disagree with you on that one.”:)Picardie is truckin along. Keepin it upright, which with this race has been going is something of a minor miracle. A split stage tomorrow, 95k am and pm should be oodles of fun. Then back on a plane stateside for a bit more time at home pre-csc and philly.Now for my plee. Anybody know how to remove the “sent from my blackberry wireless handheld” which will surely appear below this post from a blackberry, not using the bb enterprise server system? I’m too lazy to google it and read web pages on my bb, but it’s cracking me. Please. Help.Sent from my BlackBerry wireless handheld.
Why do so many euros have a complete lack of understanding about personal space. Airport lines are prime examples.
And that blind faith part: After crashing this week, and reading about the constant carnage down at the Giro (claiming Dave Z, fracturing his L1 vertebrae) I started really thinking about what we do. I do this from time to time after crashes, but man, it’s bad right now. My crash, mid-bunch, on Friday was straight up bad luck. I was in the middle of a bunch of 140 guys, packed together between curbs on 2 lanes of road with barely inches between us. When somebody a few riders ahead touched wheels and hit the deck I followed suit. Before this I was going 60kph, my heart rate pinned, and madly pedaling forward based upon the assumption, and hope, that nobody ahead was going to f- up. But somebody, who I’d placed that faith in, did. oops. There are SO many times over the course of the year when you’re racing, FLYING downhill, fighting in the gutter, battling(did I say that?:) into a finish, all the while simply counting on the fact that nobody ahead is going to screw up. If they do, well, you’re screwed. Fortunately most of the guys we race with are pretty adept on 2 wheels and don’t botch it very often. This is one solid reason why the category system, with rules for progression, is so key in citizen racing. We’re just generally going a bit faster.
All that said, I can’t wait to heal up and get back into one of those races, likely one where we’re going to be smashing away in the gutter, praying that those ahead are doin the right thing…
Well, not quite what I’d hoped for up here. I ended up hitting the deck yesterday in a solid 60kph stack right in the middle of the bunch. Nothing like center-punching a stack of guys on the ground and superman-ing over the top. Managed to get up eventually, swap bikes and get an uber tow from the medical car, and then the team car, back to the field, but once the gas went back on ended up in the caravan for 15k, dangling off the back. Finally they slowed down, we stopped for a pee, and when I tried to get started again the knee completely locked up. A little one legged riding up to the waiting car and that was that. Now a lot of ice, advil like smarties and rest for a few and hopefully it’ll end up not being too bad. Power of positive thought, and stuff… Off to watch the rest of the guys on a really hard circuit today and hopefully catch the Giro ttt on tv this afternoon - go guys go!
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless handheld.
