Jonez World

Sunday was a crit in beautiful Hanford, CA. Great course, okay field, ended up in The break. My luck was due to turn, and it did… I took 7th out of the 10 man break. The night before the race I watched reruns of Boonen sprinting to win the Worlds last year and well… it kind of worked.

The weekend trip to Nor-Cal was successful, but I’m still bummed about not doing Redlands.

The trip home was uneventful. I only have one observation, why are the windows on planes so low? If you think about it the average man is 5′10″ and the average chick is what, 5′5″? My supercomputer of a brain calculates that to be a 5″ difference. If the window is 12″ tall why couldn’t they situate it so that a slightly above/below average person could see out of the window without breaking their neck? I’m 5′11″ and I have to haunch down and tweak my neck to see out of the window… grrr.

Home is great. I really missed Cass. I also missed home cooked food and have been on a cooking and baking rampage since my return… I just found a rockin’ paella recipe and will post it soon.

The weather is decent too which makes the riding enjoyable. I had a great ride with the EB and .EDU yesterday. We made a first ascent of “Castle Climb” to check out Craig’s Castle. At 976′ it is the tallest mountain on the Eastern seaboard within 25 miles of the coast! Amazing I know Here are some pictures that I found.

One last thing, the EB is apparently out of contention for the April Fool’s Alley Cat he is feigning a knee injury. .EDU tells me the real facts are: she’s 19, found Erik on facebook.com, and they will be playing Frisbee instead of racing… That’s commitment to the sport.

Today was a typical Nor-Cal RR… rain, multiple cows on the course, little prize money, an epic course, and a T-shirt. You gotta love any race where 3rd place is $20 and a T-shirt, especially when they don’t have a shirt in your size. I donated the shirt to my support crew/first time feeders/personal photographers for the weekend (thanks mom and dad for filling in for Cass). I’ve always heard of and seen on TV the attack from kilimetro zero, but never had participated in one before today. What a painfull way to ride 88 miles, but great training!

Bike racing tip of the day:

If you make a deal with riders in a break, honor it. For example… let’s say there were three of us in a break and one guy kept getting dropped but said, “if you wait for me I won’t contest the sprint,” then contests the sprint while cussing you out. Bad form.

Or maybe my sprint is SOOOOO slow that I was out sprinted by a guy who wasn’t sprinting… nah it must be that he was jerk. Yeah, that must be it.

Redlands update:

Looks like a bunch of dudes didn’t finish the crit today. It must have been smokin’ I’ll try to get an insider’s view of the race.

Alley Cat update:

The next Ghetto Haven Alley Cat is one week away. My money is on the EB. Word is he’s been using this whole colligate racing season as prep to defend his title.

Trip update:

Only one and one half days remaining on my spring campain. I am actually missing The 25 Lynwood and am REALLY missing my number one fan who was so dissapointed with my sprint today.

A good article about the first day of the Vuelta Sonora.

http://www.dailypeloton.com/displayarticle.asp?pk=9043

Yes it is all true. Crazy race.

TRAVEL DAY

Heaven on earth this morning (PLNU)…

(View from the old dorm room)

To, well… Fresno

Before San Dimas I was cracked from the rain. Now, after San Dimas I am cracked from the rain and HelLA (Cass’ new term of endearment for L.A.)

Here’s a recap of SDSR:

Day 1 - Mucho Rain
Day 2 - A little shower
Day 3 - Tons of rain followed by a little sun (and I finished 25th on GC & 2nd amateur)

I had a great time representing one last time for SDBC/ Karl Strauss, but am looking forward to a nice new Champion System chamois upon my return to New Haven.

Today is officially the start of my spring break! I don’t plan on doing much this week, just riding and hanging out in Sunny San Diego (it is supposed to rain tonight). How is this different than any other week in my life as an aspiring professional bike racer… well I’m not sure but I’m going to enjoy it!

Tour de Murrietta was this past weekend. I showed up on Sunday and guest rode for SDBC. The plan was for C McD and I to get into a break and try to protect McD’s GC place. Well, I got into the break and he didn’t. I attacked through turn one and ended up solo for a half lap. Eventually I was joined by two others and we rolled until some others joined and our group was up to 5. Guess what place I got… yup 5th. Still need to work on that sprint. It was a great race and nice to finally see some results. More results to come soon!

So Kyle and Pushy’s wedding was this past Saturday down in Palm Springs. After suffering in the rain for the last week here in Redding, Cass and I were looking for some much needed sun. The weather man had different plans… it rained and even snowed a little bit.

On Saturday all the groomsmen, Kyle, and the minister headed out for a friendly ride. I say friendly because we are all friends not because it was supposed to be easy. The first thing Neil said during the ride was, “Kyle my intervals for today are to go as hard as needed to drop you.” I started thinking to myself oh boy here we go, should I fake a flat now or wait until I’m really hurting? We climbed up this awesome climb that started at about 500′ and climbed up beyond 4000′ where we turned around due some snow on the road. It was like these tan socal guys had never seen the snow before. As soon as we saw the first hint of snow everyone threw their bikes down and started throwing snowballs at each other! These guys obviously need to spend more time with me in New Haven.

Oh, I forgot to mention that at the rehearsal dinner on Friday night they brought in a taco cart stocked with real Mexicans! Yummy!!!

The wedding ceremony was dry right up until the point were the bride and groom kissed, then the sky opened up. So if I look like a wet dog in the pictures, sorry Diana.

The main event of the wedding weekend was the reception. The obligatory speeches were made, wedding food was ate, and dances were performed. Everyone including yours truly danced the night away. Okay, so I only danced one song but that was enough for everyone. The DJ called all of the wedding party to the dance floor to do one of those dance lines. Neil and I were by far and away the worst. Sorry no pictures are available, at least I hope not.

We had a great time and wish Kyle and Dianna good luck on their Honeymoon in Hawaii.

So some of you have had the pleasure of tasting my mom’s banana bread, for those of you who haven’t here’s the recipe:

Banana Bread (Makes 2 Loaves)
Mix together -
2 Cups Sugar
1/2 Cup Shortening
2 Eggs

Add -
1 Teaspoon Soda
3 Tablespoons Baking Powder
1 Teaspoon Salt
3 Cups Flour
1 Cup Milk
6 Mashed Bananas

Pour into greased loaf pans
Bake 1 hour at 350

This is da bomb and is best served after if has been in stored in a ziplock bag for a day or two. It is also great during a ride.

Stage 6 was 90k on a 3km circuit around a lagoon in Cuidad Obregon. I figured everyone’s legs would be a bit tired, so tried to stay active at the front. Eventually with about 60k to go I finally made it into the move! We eventually got caught with 3 laps to go, but it was a good showing none the less. TARGETRAINING went 1-2. I finished 26th in GC, nothing to get too excited about, but acceptable.

The ride back was crazy. The most memorable part was when as semi pulled into the left lane right in front of us. It was a typical jerk move by a trucker, but the response of our driver was not the normal call the trucker a few names. Our driver decided that it would be appropriate to throw beer bottles out of the car at the truck. Crazy and stupid. After that I tried to sleep as much as possible.

Ryan and I were dropped off at the Tucson Airport and spent the night in the lobby. I hopped on a flight at 6:30 the next morning and was home in Redding by noon.

Next up - testing with Max. I can feel the pain already.

chris

Designing a race course Mexican style:

Today we started the race neutral and proceeded to ride around while the comissario hung out of his car talking on his phone figuring out where we were going to race. The race turned out to be fairly exciting with multiple breaks and about an hour of echeloned out racing in cross-winds. It is not that often that we get to use the old echelon effectively. The eventually ended on a super steep 1km climb exactly like some of the climbs back home in CT. A break of three stayed away and another fellow from CT named Dan Greenfield scored a second place finish. I think I finished in the top 20 but haven’t seen the results yet. Hopefully I’ll squeak into the top 20 on GC, which wouldn’t be too bad for just coming out of base training.

We’re down to three riders now. One guy crashed out and another dropped out today.

Back to the US tomorrow!