Slackin'

I hate it when people ask me to work during the day, it really gets in the way of my bloggin' time, lunch time, personal meditation time, and even napping time. I've been bouncing between commercial and residential jobs at work, at least I get to learn new things and stay out of trouble for now.

Since the weather has changed from summer to autumn in the Pacific Northwest, I feel like I haven't been for a ride outside in ages, although I did ride to work for sanity sake on Tuesday without getting rained on much. It has been somewhat of a rest week in any case with Salida coming up this weekend. The TT there should be good for prep for Worlds, even though it is only 8 miles. The competition is usually pretty stout and the course requires a moment's though about gauging the effort. I'll be flying solo since Zac is racing in Chicago, Zak has family in town, Chuck has or is adding to his family any day now, and Brian is going to Niagara Falls to attempt going over the falls in a barrel.

In one of the brief sunshiny moments this week, I took a picture of the house for the before half of the before and after. I'm finally getting the exterior painted after thinking about it for the last five years. The color should be a drastic change, from white to . . . . wait for it . . . off-white. If I never do a bit of exterior painting again in my life, I can die a happy man. It is a time consuming, hideous task, especially if there is significant prep involved. Marty with Trim Master Painting does good work and he's one of the few honest contractors out there in a shady, shady industry.


I started to set the floor in the espresso room. It is one of the easiest installs I have come across when it comes to flooring material, just a hair more complicated than throwing down an area rug.


When I get back to town after this weekend, I'll start pondering finishing off the room . . . as always, one piece at a time between working, riding, and whatever else it is that I do with my time.

A Day Late Race Report

Better late than never I suppose, but I did in fact race this past weekend, hitting up both the Fed Center and Bannock. Both days, the fields were pretty much as expected, mostly local, but hard hitting. I really wasn't too sure what to expect from my legs since last week was the return to some intensity after a couple weeks of just noodling between weekend racing.

For the Fed Center race, we had a full team . . . minus Zac who was tearing it up at Super Week, but plus one freshly married Randy Aardema. On lap one, Greg Krause and a couple others got up the road and built up a pretty respectable gap, but with the wind and the horsepower in the field, it didn't look likely that they'd be able to stay away. Brian got to the front and helped out with some of the pace making and after a few laps we were all back together. I put in a couple attacks and thought a couple times we might have the right mix, but it was not to be. After the race, we had the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" discussion as to what happens if you have Scott Moninger in a move with you and he's not working. If you drill it and do all the work because he's not committed to the move, he'll kill you and solo in for the win, making the only smart option sitting up and reshuffling. Such is life and that's cycling, but a little frustrating when you are sitting in a group with Moninger, Baker, Donald, etc. With everything together, I was comfortably moving around the pack at one lap to go, planning one last escape effort, when things went "wham! psssssssssss . . ." I drilled a pothole, flatted a tubie and even worse, cracked a carbon rim. I really had no choice at that point but to turn around and take the shortest route to the parking lot. I found Brian there, having suffered a puncture of his own as well. Chuck did a great job on his own though and took third on the day.

Sunday, with some nasty clouds hanging low, Chuck and I rolled up to the line with a slightly stronger field chasing the larger chunk of prize money for the Bannock Crit. Given our numbers for the day, we planned on playing it a little more conservatively, but when presented with the opportunity to jump early, I took it and was quickly joined by Moninger again and a lap or so later, Frank Pipp. With 60 minutes of racing left, it was not to be and we were brought back by the pack in a few laps. I spent some time floating and following moves before getting caught behind a crash in corner three. The trip to the pit was apparently too quick and we were reinserted after a free half-lap and had to chase just as much as if we hadn't gone to the pit! After that point, I never really got myself back in the race and didn't maintain position like I should have. While still not a very good crit racer at all, I am slowly getting better and more confident. Sitting at the back with some of the riff-raff was nothing short of horrifying at times . . . getting out of the saddle to go through corners . . . who does that?!? In any case, I finished with all my skin, but never threatened to crack the top 20 come the end of the race.

Completed Successes

My partial successes from the other day have been shifted over to the smashingly successful column. I had to pat myself on the back for a job well done on troubleshooting and installing the timer for the espresso machine. I ended up buying another timer at Home Depot since the old one wasn't function properly. The new one did exactly what it was supposed to do so for fun, I took the old one apart to see what was inside. The innards weren't too shocking, just a motor for the clock and some contacts that were supposed to connect and disconnect when actuated by the posts on the dial. The contacts were stuck together though which would explain why the timer wasn't turning off manually or when the "off" posts passed. After doing some cleaning, I cycled the clock manually to make sure everything was working properly and then installed the timer in its new home. The new timer went back to Home Depot and the $50 back in my pocket.


The whole thing is starting to come together nicely and I am being so green, minus the whole 220v, 12L boiler commercial machine for limited home use bit. I didn't have to think about remembering to turn the machine on before bed or worry about waiting 45 minutes for the boiler to come to temperature. It turned on at 4:30ish as expected and all I had to do was pull some shots before taking Dempsey out for his morning constitutional.


Right now, I only have one set of on/off posts installed. I can't really think of a good reason to have an afternoon schedule set during the summer, but come wintertime when I need extra motivation to get on the trainer, I might want to come home to an espresso machine all fired up and ready to go. While standing near the espresso machine, I did some head scratching on the whole counter top issue. I might consider gluing the blocks in place as opposed to making the top and then installing it. The stainless steel option is starting to look more appealing, but I will forge ahead, boldly and blindly, hoping all the while for the best . . .

Saturday afternoon, Steve and I went out to the truck to kick the tires a couple times and get the horn installed all proper like. All it took was some wiring, some soldering, some fishing aforementioned wiring through the firewall, and selecting placement for the auxiliary button. The good news is that the horn now toots Dixie. The even better news is that the horn can be used for everyday attention-getting purposes, as long as you don't hold the button down. With a short press, you get a random (choice of one out of five) trumpet blast that is sure to stop any offending traffic in its tracks.

What better way to celebrate than to break out the fryer and dine on some fried scrimps? It had been a while since I dunked food into hot oil and fried shrimp sounded like a good idea. With the sky and the contents of the pantry being the limit, we cranked the oil to 350 and started making a variety of different flavors of tempura batter. The discovery of the evening which should have come as no surprise, is that Old Bay mixed into the tempura batter makes one hell of a tasty fried shrimp. There will come a day that I try to fry anything and everything I can get my hands on, but Saturday was not that day.

Yuk Yuk and Yuck

I've never been a milk drinker. I don't sit down and down a glass of milk (with the exception being Promised Land Chocolate Milk) just because it sounds good and I don't regularly buy the stuff by the gallon. When I came across an article in the WSJ about a woman in North Carolina who was starting a camel farm for milking purpose, I had to keep reading and say, "eww, yuck!" The concept is pretty grim and it keeps getting worse, the more you read. I don't necessarily see the marketing charm of either a brand name of "Camelicious" or saffron or date flavored milk. On the yuk yuk side of things, the puns have gotten out of hand with the writers at the WSJ. I'm just saying, but I don't want to be one to stow thrones in grass houses.

There was another article about beverages (also with bad word play in the title) this morning about the failure of the new "G" branding campaign to spur growth in sales of Gatorade. As a sports drink, very little has changed in the technology of the beverage, except to substitute cheaper products like corn syrup for sugar. Somebody pointed out long ago that Gatorade never compared their product to anything except water and it really isn't hard to improve on the basics. I'm not sure if CEO Indra Nooyi knew what exactly she was saying when talking about the market share Gatorade was holding on to:

Clearly some of those [former] users switched to cheaper alternatives. They didn't have a right to exist in the Gatorade world.

Uh, so has Gatorade/G been some sort of elite product and I never knew it? Or is Gatorade for "real" athletes who spend "real" money on their hydration options? Promised Land says on their website that many athletes consider chocolate milk to be an energy drink and it is great for recovery because of the vitamins and protein, but do I have a right to exist in the milk world, especially if I will snub non-bovine sources?

Fine Dining and Wine Shopping

Not like there really needs to be an excuse to go get a Hebrew National hot dog and a soda for $1.50 at Costco, but uh, I had to get gas in the car and stuff, so I was going to be there anyways . . . Steve and I rolled over and picked up a few other items. On the way out, we did some browsing in the Costco liquor store, but didn't find anything compelling, besides the sheer number of items in the 1.75L size. I threw out the suggesting that we head over to Divino to do some browsing there especially since I needed to restock the wine "cellar" and their selection is much better.

The cellar is now pretty well stocked, with a variety of varieties and not a bottle over $10. I'm going to have to make a little scorecard so I can keep track of what was what and what I like. Steve picked up a bottle of bourbon for the house, for medicinal purposes of course. From the sounds of it, the dental program he is taking part in at UCHSC will likely lead to drinking heavily.

The next round of sorbet hit the freezer last night as well. I had a watermelon that was screaming to be made into something frozen. I didn't want to just do a plain, sweet sorbet, so we did some thinking and some sampling to see what savory/spicy flavor would go well with watermelon . . . cayenne pepper won. I proceeded with the sorbet formula as usual, but added in a tablespoon of pepper to give it a little zip. The taste test in both liquid and slush forms indicated that the sorbet will have a sweet beginning with gradually growing heat as you eat which will be confusing but compelling with a frozen treat, results to follow.

Partial Successes

I was somewhat motivated last night after work and my workout. I started the remainder of the evening by hanging some more pieces of drywall, the low hanging fruit if you will. I filled in a few spots with the small, random shaped pieces that I could reach without too much trouble. I hope to get enough pieces in place to put the floor down soon.

By the time I got sick of drywalling, Matt called and asked if there was any beer drinking in the works. Beer drinking can always be arranged, plus we had a horn to install in the truck since all the bits and parts showed up. Unpacking the horn took a little more effort than you would think and there was a significant amount of planning as to what would go where in the ample space provided by the F150's engine compartment. Short story is that the horn works. The long story is that we need to track down some more wire and connectors to make the ghetto-rigging factor below nine on a scale of one to ten. Success . . . sort of.

Meanwhile, back in the house . . . I decided before Matt arrived that last night would be the night that I finally got the timer hooked up on the espresso machine. So I cut the power and then cut the cord only to be reminded that I had 4-wire 220v power and the wiring diagram for the timer refers to a 3-wire system. So the real question was, what wire goes where? I did some research, polled Matt and Steve, did some more research, and we came up with a firm "possibly" on the two hot wires going to the terminals in the timer and the common running straight through. The good news is that the proper voltage shows up and the machine operates. The bad news is that the timer doesn't seem to turn off as it should, maybe. I need to tinker some more tonight and see if it trips itself off when the mechanical dial clicks through the cycle and moves the contacts. The other bad news, sort of, is that the pump came disconnected at one wire and in poking, I shorted something and fried the switch for the left brew group. The good news is that I wanted to replace the switches anyways because they don't light up anymore. Even better, I rarely use the left brew group, thank goodness for a two group commercial machine. Without it, I couldn't get into any of this trouble!

Weekend Rides

I really had no desire to do the Mt. Evans Hill Climb this past weekend and a quick look at the results confirmed that I made the correct decision. The top 31 in the P/1/2 category finished in under 2:00 which is faster than my fastest time. Sure, I might have set a new personal best, but I might have also sapped my will to live. So instead I headed out on my own terms and got in a good ride with Brian, Randy, Mike, and Leonard. We all rode together at times, with Mike and Leonard continuing on Golden Gate where we foolishly turned left on Robinson Hill Road.


Fortunately Randy's Mavic R-Sys wheels didn't explode on the dirt descent on Smith Hill, but he did return home after the little side trip. Brian and I continued up Golden Gate to Peak to Peak where we caught up with the others again and headed for Coal Creek Canyon. I ended up with just over 100 miles on the day (the map doesn't show me backtracking up Smith Hill to find Randy changing a flat . . . twice) and around 7000' of climbing. It was all done at a pretty easy past, but that is still a long time in the saddle.

Sunday, I headed out to Golden Gate again with the Pinkertons. I decided to head home after the first summit with the plan of getting back in the car and heading to the blackberry patch on the side of the road on 32nd out past Lakewood. When I rolled past on the way home, some people were stopped and picking . . . damnit, that was my spot! I decided the couch looked like a better idea by the time I got home, so I took a nap instead.

Steve is in town for the next month for a dental rotation at the University of Colorado Heath Sciences Center. It will be amusing having a roommate for the next few weeks. Steve was out here 10 years ago passing through so the house and the neighborhood have both changed significantly since he was last here. His visit got started off right with a trip to Sushi Den and some plotting and scheming to eat everything that counts as a "location of culinary significance" in Denver. It should be a good month.

Changes

There has been all sorts of action in the neighborhood as of late and the word on the street is good for the most part. I noticed the other day that the Asian Imports store on Pearl across from Sushi Den was having a going out of business sale. That didn't take long at all. The good news is that the owners of Sushi Den bought the building and plan on opening a Japanese Deli/Fish Market. I've always thought they should have a fish market since they have access to the best seafood in town.

Mulberries, the cake shop on Pearl St. is moving on . . . not a biggie since I tend not to buy fancy cakes and their regular stuff, cookies and the like were not very good. I am partial to Gateaux anyways. They have always been extremely friendly and their pastries are ridiculous.

Further down the street, they are actually fixing the street! Iowa is designated as one of the Denver bicycle routes, but the road damage has gotten beyond shameful. Hopefully they will fix everything from pearl to Santa Fe. I see a lot of riders bouncing along, riding in the middle of the lane, trying to avoid the craters and/or string together the few patches of decent pavement left.

In other bicycle news stupidity, the county commissioners of Jefferson County, home to some of the best riding and training routes, are seeking legislative power to prohibit bicycle use on certain county roads. That's some good, forward thinking right there. There are laws in place statewide concerning bicycle/vehicle safety. In short they read something like, "Bikes, you stay to the right. Cars, don't hit them and pass with care." I understand that it is hard to hit the gas pedal after you have slowed down to pass a bicycle. As a cyclist, I'll be the first to admit that there are a significant number of asstards in our midst who certainly don't help the cause, but the residents complaining about bicycle use on their routes home should put the same effort into banning the cars that also get in their way on the road. Just the other day, there were like, 800 cars in the way on I-25 on the way home.

It is getting harder to mention stupidity of any form without thinking immediately about the guard shack next door which is coming closer to completion. The "trellis" feature has been added in the form of heavy beams, at about head height, over the sidewalk.


Just like the other "architectural features" the beams are out of scale and everything about the thing looks heavy handed and awkward. Even at the original height, it would look goofy, especially with the gate that looks like an after thought. I'll be curious to see the completed project, but I'm guessing it won't look much different than the above shot.

Boulder TT

I ended up heading to Boulder last night to do the Wednesday TT for a change of pace. After my Tuesday workout on the TT bike in the hills, I had no idea how my legs would feel at full speed. They felt ok I suppose. I forgot how nasty the first few steps are of the climb back towards town, but I did a pretty good job of keeping my cadence nice and high to keep the legs from loading up. Somewhere after the halfway point, I let my focus drift from the effort to the clown drafting off of me. Nice work on the individual time trial effort there chooch. I have no idea what my times have been in the past, but given the high level of variability when it comes to wind conditions, it is probably irrelevant. It was good to get the effort in and even better jumping in the pool at Chuck's house after. I might just have to do it again next week.

I took advantage of my recent discovery in the work neighborhood finally. At lunch time, I rolled over to the bakery outlet over on 39th and Dahlia. It turns out to be two bakeries under one roof. One focuses on artisan breads, baked the old fashioned way and sold for a lot of money at places like Whole Foods and the like, for $5 a loaf. The other bakery supplies bars, restaurants, and other food establishment type places with hoagie rolls, sourdough bread bowls, and the like. Turns out they sell their day olds for $1 a loaf and with the artisan type breads, a quick turn in the oven at 350 make them spring back to life. At that price, I figured why not give it a shot, so I have a Ciabatta to try as well as a loaf of German Rye and a Cinnamon Raisin, although I'm pretty sure mine is better, it never hurts to have a loaf in the freezer for snackin. It also doesn't hurt to let somebody else heat up their place, rather than get my oven cranking during the middle of the summer, in my mostly non air-conditioned house.

Local News

The Denver Post is a terrible paper. The newspaper delivery person mixed things up today and I got the DP instead of the WSJ. I have gotten used to reading articles that are 1000 words as opposed to 68 and I have to say, I like the detail. I can choose to read it or I can skim, but with an anemic article barely covering the simplest of facts, there's not much to work with.

Also, in the local news, zoning/building codes hit a neighborhood project. I've been watching the "thing" next door go up, wondering how long it would take before the City put the beat down on it. It has been beaten down . . .


When I got home this past week from racing, I noticed the guard shack next door had been altered dramatically to conform to code. It was moved back from the sidewalk a good few feet and the top and bottom had been chopped rather severely. It still looks dumb, but now it is well off the sidewalk. I'm waiting for the neighbor to confront me. I'll probably tell him to take it up with the inept architect/builder who told him to do it in the first place . . . zing!


The doors and windows are now completely out of proportion and way too low for normal standards, but since when has a trellis had doors and windows anyways? I feel slightly bad that time and effort went into something that had to be taken down, but you have to build what you say you are going to build when you get a permit and you have to know the applicable codes.


Meanwhile, back in the espresso room, drywall isn't exactly flying onto the walls, but I am making progress slowly. In short order, I should be able to get going on the top. I did things kinda goofy with my desire to spread some of the load to the walls instead of having the espresso machine and top sitting directly on the cabinets. Long story short, it will be done before I die. Things are shaping up with some corner bead in place, there is hope yet.

Dogs!

It is nice to see worthwhile programs getting some media coverage, especially in the day and age of relatively worthless social causes. Having taken a dog through formal training with limited success, I am always impressed with the behaviors taught to service dogs, be they seeing eye dogs, assistance dogs, etc. I didn't realize though just how specific the training can be or what dogs (and their trainers) are capable of. In this weekend's WSJ, there was an article about psychiatric-service dogs and a training program that places dogs with prison inmates for the training.

Puppies Behind Bars is the non-profit responsible for placing dogs in prisons for training. They have achieved a number of successes not only with the dogs, but with their handlers as well. I remember reading an article in Smithsonian Magazine a few years back about the organization. It is a great way to defray some of the costs of expensive training for assistance animals, using the resource of unlimited free time that those incarcerated possess. I hope other creative thinkers find similar win/win situations like this one.

I only got to race once this past weekend, since I really didn't feel like trekking down to Colorado Springs to do a 16 minute, uphill time trial. The Longmont Crit was plenty of race for the weekend though, with a deep, deep field of 100+ riders in the P/1/2 race. The good news is that I am slowly getting better at riding crits, the bad news is that I still haven't managed to do anything in one yet. I still put in efforts too early and don't maintain my position at the end of the race when it is most important. It was interesting to get out there after riding easily all week. I was almost afraid that my legs wouldn't know what to do when things got going. I felt pretty comfortable in the first 20 minutes which hasn't been the norm for me in the past. Next weekend will be an off weekend for racing since I don't feel any great need to do the Mt. Evans hill climb. Strange to think that I only have a few weeks left of local racing. Then there will be one more big block of training and then off to Austria.

Survey Says . . .

Quick poll . . . is the population getting dumber, smarter, or simply more aware of seemingly complex subject matter? There is no shortage of stories about general stupidity exhibited on a daily basis. The category of criminal stupidity is one of my favorites, especially the stories where the "victim" declines to press charges for reasons like "nah . . . that was the best laugh I've ever had and the dude got his punishment" (story about somebody trying to siphon gas off a motor home but tapped into the sewage tank).

I went to lunch the other day and tried a place in my new work neighborhood. I might as well take the opportunity to explore while I can. We headed to Phoenician Kabob for some Middle Eastern grub and I give it a so-so rating. The gyros were good, but the rest of it was questionable. The baklava had so much rose water poured over it that it tasted like eating perfumed soap. The highlight of the meal had to be the bill though.


The price was right on the "sandwitch" which was pretty well stuffed with grilled meaty goodness. The misspelling would have been forgivable had there been a more ethnic staff, but the front of house guy was full on, white-bread, probably couldn't find the Mediterranean on the map, kid out of high school.

Speaking of kids and high school, this kid hasn't even made it out of high school yet, but his career path is pretty well guaranteed. There is no question that this youngster is smart as a whip, hopefully he doesn't end up in jail for hacking that helps himself rather than others. Access to this type of technology and intuitive understanding is becoming more common as kids are exposed to it at younger ages. I remember the good old days of working on the Apple IIe in the weekly computer lab classes at Durham Academy . . . wow, will you look at the stats of that high powered machine!?!

I'm still debating the merits of this article which was in the WSJ this morning. As with some other articles in the past, the tongue in cheek writing is outstanding, but the subject matter makes me afraid for the future of society. Creating a festival out of mooning the Amtrak trains as they pass seems right in line with the glimpse of society provided by Idiocracy.

The fact that the festival gets out of control should come as no surprise . . . there are a lot of asses involved.

The past couple weeks of training between races have been relatively easy. I feel slow during the week, but fast on the weekend. Case in point, I participated in a midweek race last night.


I got smoked, but at least the kid bought me some ice cream after. Hopefully I will be fast again on Sunday for the crit in Longmont which isn't the State Championship this year, but it will still be fast.

We're Not in Kansas Anymore

I'd call the trip to Lawrence remotely successful. Everybody had a good time, there was lots of relaxing in our free time, and the racing was decent. When we finally got around to racing, the crit was a fairly standard, eight corner crit but the wind was picking up making the backside a little tougher. The midwestern style of racing is a bit peculiar, the pace was much easier than the majority of our local crits, but the amount of negative racing was unreal. There was actually a guy in one of the little moves I was in, "blocking" for his teammate who was only five meters off the front of our group of six. Had he stayed out of the way, since we were going to catch his teammate anyways, we might have actually made some ground on the field.


I put in some good efforts, got in the mix, spent a couple laps off the front solo, hoping that guys would come across in small numbers instead of dragging the entire field with them, but no luck. Eventually two guys got off the front and nobody wanted to chase in any sort of organized fashion. The two stayed clear, Zac got 10th, but got hosed when it turned out that the finish camera didn't have enough light and the finish photo was too blurry for them to handle any protests anyways.

Having pre-ridden the circuit for Sunday's race, we knew it was going to be a tough one. The course took full advantage of the topography offered up by the KU campus. There were two climbs on the profile and the one prior to the finish was steep and twisty enough to take away all momentum. My goal was to hang on as long as possible and keep an eye out for Zac who is riding really well right now. In the first few laps some moves got up the road, but came back. A couple times, I got to the front to keep the pace up and to close things down. Eventually, as expected, everything came apart leaving multiple groups on the road, dangling behind the leaders. On lap whatever it was, I'd lost count by then, I was feeling decent and others didn't look so happy, so I collected Zac and drilled it. I pulled him as far as I could and told him to go if he could. By the time I recovered a little and reattached myself to the back of that group, Zac was long gone, off and hammering his way into the lead group. That was about it for me in the circuit race. I yo-yo-ed off the back of that group a couple times and then called it quits. The last time I went up the climb to the feed zone, I was creeping. Zac finished 6th out of the group of 9 off the front. I think he'll do just fine at the Super Week races in the coming days.


We got the van packed back up and ready to go for the long drive home. Zak and Melissa were ready for some prime movie watching on the DVD system in the Grand Caravan, Chuck was ready for the comforts of the Pinkerton mobile, and Zac had his shirt off, ready for the drive through the land of humidity sans A/C. Given what we saw on the way home, I wouldn't want to drive with the windows down in this part of the country. Not only did we have a plethora of smashed bugs on the windshield, side windows, side of the van, but we also came across this guy at a gas station.


I am 99% sure that is the image of Jesus on the back of the moth. I should have collected him in a jar for later analysis, but frankly I was scared. Chuck offered up $20 if I ate the moth, but as you can see in the next shot, he was a big one.


The squeegee was the only thing we could find that would give it decent reference without having to get too close. The only other excitement on the drive was . . . well, there was none, it was Kansas and eastern Colorado at night.

Road Trip

Yesterday morning, I woke up at the same time as usual, but instead of heading to work, I kept driving past the exit for Quebec and kept heading east into nothingness. We had four people, four bikes, ten wheels, a bunch of bags and some cookies packed into a swank 2009 Dodge Grand Caravan, courtesy of Vista Auto Group. By way of drives, it was a pretty easy one. We made it to Lawrence in just over 7:15 without incident and surprisingly without seeing anything incredibly blog worth, other than the sign that read "Abortion Stops a Beating" with a tiny logo filling in for "heart" that really doesn't stand out. Apparently Kansas doesn't have the meth problems that Colorado and Wyoming have.

The set up for the race is pretty sweet. We are shacked up in the Eldridge which is right in the middle of the downtown part of Lawrence. We had plenty of time after the drive to tool around town a little bit and get settled in. Knowing that a college town would have a barbershop, I headed down the main drag to get my mane chopped. Back in the luxury suite . . .


The street sprints were just outside our front door which was convenient for heading back up to the room after the one "sprint" effort. I'm not even sure why, what, how, but I had very little expectation of doing anything in the event, but it was a little bit of a cluster. I'm not sure if any of us left the room mentally for the sprints, although Zak's girlfriend Melissa took 4th in her event, without even knowing what was going on.


Back in the comforts of the room . . . usually, we try to find the most economical lodging setup possible, but since the race organization was covering the costs for staying at the Eldridge, it was a no brainer. Comfortable is good since we don't race tonight until 7:30.


We've got bikes galore. It could have been a bit tighter in the room, but Zak and Melissa very wisely decided to get a room at a little B&B down the street. We still have bikes for four guys and two of Zac's extra bikes since he is heading on to SuperWeek after this race. He and Chuck carpooled out here, but Zac didn't drop the "I don't have A/C in the car" until it was too late for poor Chuck.


We are almost out of cookies which is disastrous. I can't race without cookies . . . I did the prerequisite, pre-race baking Thursday night and made a double batch of peanut butter chocolate chip cookies for the trip and it might not be enough. Well, only nine more hours to kill before the race . . .

Confusion

Hats off to the City of Lakewood for making sure they restripe the bike lanes every once in a while. The bike lane symbol is now as clear as mud.


Either somebody isn't smart, or somebody is very, very smart and has a sense of humor. My guess is the stencil got put in backwards and nobody cared or noticed. I am trying to figure out what the new symbol is telling me. Is this the area for bikes to crash head on? Has bike traffic been stuffed into one lane and this denotes a passing area? Should I be making out with fellow cyclists while in Lakewood?

The lackadaisical nature of yesterday's ride was well represented in the amount of time Pinkerton and I spent trying to get a clear picture of the above, while still riding. Of course we aren't going to stop for something like this, but it also wasn't to be missed. With tomorrow's early departure for Kansas, I'll likely go on blogging vacation as well unless there is something phenomenal to post . . . until later . . .

Too Hot

It wasn't very long ago that I was complaining about lingering winter weather and looking forward to the heat of summer. I'll take the cooler weather again any day now. I got out for a couple hours yesterday and thought as I was leaving the house that it wasn't so bad, but the heat wore on me pretty quickly and I found myself constantly thirsty, go figure.

Riding around in the heat and relatively humid condition, for Colorado at least, will be good practice for the trip to Kansas. I looked at the forecast there and it reminded me of what I grew up with as I saw percentages much higher than I have seen in a long time when it comes to humidity. It's a good thing our races start late in the day. I will need most of the day to sit around doing nothing but consuming liquids.

Today's ride is going to be a noodling ride through the southern suburbs of Denver. I think Joey and I are going to hit Englewood, Cherry Hills Village, and Littleton on the way down towards Chatfield. We may or may not go over Deer Creek at a slow pace before turning towards home. Today is the last of the super easy days before opening it back up before the Tour of Lawrence weekend. I'll make the most of it, it isn't often that I'm told to go ride slowly.