Holy shit, March!

It's been a while since I've been able to blog, so I'm going to take the easy way out and just string together all the photos on my phone from the past month. It's been three months since I left home. Three. Long. Months. I still have a bunch of stories from the 'cross races in January I need to tell, and hopefully I'll get to it. But now that I'm finally back in Boston, it seemed like it was time to do a little review.

First, beer:

Sadly, I don't even remember what it was now. But doesn't it look so gorgeous just sitting there all dark and sweet? I'm almost certain it was a Saint Bernardus Prior 8, and I had it at the Globe, in Athens, the very first day I got to town. Yes, of course it was, because it was the second thing I did on that day. The first thing I did was this:

When I was in Gainesville, FL, in January, I was staying with Phil Gaimon, and we got to talking about some wacky tattoo ideas he had. But like 1000 monkeys with 1000 typewriters, he started talking about getting a bar of soap with the word "clean" on it, as a symbol of racing drug-free. Naturally it stopped me in my tracks, I begged him to let me steal his idea, and then we were off. We agreed that ideally, he'd get it as well, and perhaps it would inspire a little movement of people getting this piece. I mean, you _could_ wear a blue wristband, I guess. Or you could get serious. The work was done by Mike Groves at Pain and Wonder in Athens, who is also working on my dinosaur sleeve.

I only got to spend the weekend in Athens, and a short visit with Janice, before heading up the Winston-Salem for the Team Mountain Khakis training camp on Monday. I've learned over the past few years that training camp typically has very little on the bike training in it, and a whole lot of job training. We got new bikes and really intensive bike fits from the folks from Specialized, who are doing our shoes and saddles this year (that will get it's own blog entry later), we visited or got presentations from Mountain Khakis, Edifice, Budget Self Storage, Specialized, Kane, and Reynolds. And then, eventually, we did some training, too!

I did have to make a coffee run while I was getting my bike fit:

We finished the Winston-Salem part of our camp with a group ride on the legendary Triple Hump loop, where the guys finally got a chance to turn some screws on each other and see who'd put the work in over the winter. 5 hours on the bike, then 4 hours in the car back to Athens, for part two of the training camp.

Sunday we had a group ride planned that left from our new co-sponsor Jittery Joe's roasting location in downtown Athens:

This is by far my favorite Jittery Joe's location. They have a different bar than they use in the other stores, they roast the beans right there, and the folks behind the bar are people who are serious about coffee. I don't know if I caught his name, but the barista made me a really nice macchiato, all foam and no milk, as it should be:

The building is some kind of old barn/warehouse, with huge screened windows that light up the whole area with the smell of roasting beans when they're at work.

In so many ways, being at a roastery can feel like being in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory:

Mark my words; when I've made my millions racing bicycles and I sell Cycle-Smart to CTS, the next phase of my life will revolve around beans and beer.

The Athens part of the camp was great, as we finally had a little more personal time, and got to do more riding. We had a few great dinners at our patron Barbara Dowd's, paid a visit to the Tifosi headquarters and got new glasses for everyone, and spent some time team building before everyone went their separate ways. For some guys that meant heading to California, but for me it meant staying put in Athens for two more weeks, to continue building my form for Battenkill and Speedweek in April.

So on Wednesday it was back at it, with Jered Gruber joining me on Thursday. The training around Athens is so incredible, with dirt roads, long sections through farms and woods, covered bridges, everything. I was doing 6-7 hours a day, and a ton of exploring. It all starts to run together.

The Watson Mill covered bridge:

I keep joking that I'm going to stop renting places, and just start squatting everywhere I go:

I'd probably need a gun to do that safely, though. Wait, what?

Which reminds me, I took a LOT of road kill photos this month. I'm not going to post them all here, but if you follow me on Facebook, you know about my Cars Did This project there. But sometimes you just see some fucked up shit out there:

Who cuts the horns off an animal's head and then tosses it on the side of the road? When it's contrasted with so much other beauty out there, the persistent reminder of violent death is hard for me to take.

Hopefully the horsies and flowers and trees will cheer you up. That's what it looks like most of the time.

At the end of the next training block the following Thursday, I decided it was time to put the laptop away and allow myself a night of social activity. I met up with my friend Megs for conversation, beer, and dessert at Aroma's, a cute little bar/restaurant in 5 Points in Athens, right across from the Jittery Joe's there. Three Philosophers and Black Cherry Cheesecake?

Beer/food pairing VICTORY!

That weekend I raced the Union City Georgia Cup crit and road race outside of Atlanta. I rode 3 hours in the morning, took a nap, then drove out in time for the 6 pm start. I managed to make the break, and when Andy Crater attacked with 1/2 lap to go, I took it upon myself to jump after him when it didn't look like he was coming back. I caught Andy with 300 meters to go, and managed to dump everyone but Ty Magner, who popped around for the win. Gah.

Thanks to Steve Magner for that photo.

Sunday was a 75-mile road race that my teammate Thomas Brown had won previously, so between him, myself, and our teammates Neil Bezdek and Oscar Clark, we felt like we were in a good spot to win again. We put Neil and Oscar in the early move, and then Thomas and I bridged up together in the final hour. On the way in, I attacked the group relentlessly, while Oscar and Neil covered any counters, and Thomas waited for the sprint. I finally got away by myself with a few K to go, but shut it down when the lead vehicle started to misdirect me through an intersection. They wanted us to move to the center lane and so were pointing left, but did so while we were going through a 4-way. I had to stop pedaling for 10-15 seconds to be sure we were turning, but in fact we were still going straight. That was pretty much that, and when I was finally caught, Oscar took over the train, with me in tow, and Thomas third wheel. Oscar go me to about 1k to go, and I got Thomas to the final corner, where he lit everyone up to take the victory.

Before I got back to training, I had another round on my dinosaur sleeve planned with Mike. Essentially I try to get some time in every time I come to Athens. We've been working on this for three years now, and it seems like we're finally entering the home stretch. We had a big open patch to finally get to, and I was pretty excited about how we were going to fill it. As this piece has evolved, we've added a lot of things. Not just dinosaurs, but we got the awesome idea for ROBOT dinosaurs, FTW! So it occurred to me over the winter, "where do robot dinosaurs come from? How do they get here?"

SPACESHIPS!

It's so much fun to be closing in on the end of a big piece like this, with an artist whose work (tattoo and other fine art) I'm totally in love with, and that doesn't mean shit. I mean, there are some themes and symbols in here that originate somewhere, but it's refreshing to have a tattoo that doesn't have to be important. I like dinosaurs. The end.

After that, I had two more days of amazing 7-hour rides that generally followed the same loop, as I worked out the kinks:

http://www.mapmyride.com/route/us/ga/athens/321126955731034397

Bridges:

Dirt roads:

Double flats on said dirt roads. Yeah, really. I was planning a block of threshold when I made my next turn, and since most of the dirt roads around Athens are smooth, I figured "what better way to get ready for Battenkill than by doing threshold on dirt?" Except when I got to a fast descent that had recently been "repaired" with golf ball sized stones, it was immediate failure. Fortunately, I'm smarter than Teddy King and I had two tubes with me and was able to change the flats.

I did have to make a sacrifice to the cycling gods, however, say "Patrick Versluys" three time while walking backwards in a circle, and pray I didn't puncture again between there and the 50 miles I still had to get home:

Which prompted this winning response on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/no_one_line/status/10995572943

Which reminds me, did you see this love connection (to borrow from LATFH), based on a photo Jered Gruber took of me at camp?

Versus this:

I mean, I know you like making some of your photos look "hard," Jered, but dude, come on! Nosferatu?

Anyway, back to bike riding...

The loop just got better and better on the second day when I made some tweaks and added some distance. Folks in Athens have some mental block about going south of I-20, but south of I-20 is where the sweetest riding I've done out there really starts:

That last bit is Forks Road, which comes out on Swords Road, and leads to, you guessed it, Swords, GA.

You gotta love historical markers that tout whiskey as an economic driver, and Prohibition as the reason a town went under. When I do long rides, I like to try to get as far away from home as possible, and pick destinations along the way to use as my lodestars. Swords is one of those towns.

As I continued on, it turned into one of the best days I've had on the bike in Athens. Lunch break:

My milkshake brings all the cows to the yard:

Also, notice all the haze in that photo? It was threatening rain all day, and I was thinking it was just starting to get foggy. But I was riding through some seriously rural farmland, and foggy was definitely turning to smokey. A lot of the farms were burning wood and waste, but something else was up. Eventually I got to the next intersection and got my answer:

The woods, the woods, the woods are on fire! We don't need no water let the motherfucker burn!

Seriously, they were doing some massive controlled burns in the state forest I was riding along the edge of. I'd never seen anything like it. That's the road shoulder. IT WAS ON FIRE!

A few miles later, still in the middle of nowhere, out of the corner of my eye I noticed a gravestone in the woods, miles from the last house or town I'd been through:

I had to investigate. I don't usually get off my bike to take these photos or try to interrupt my ride too much, but this was special.

I had to find out more about this little gravesite, and my biggest clue was at the bottom of that last photo. I Googled "Hearnville Cemetery" and lo and behold, I found this:

http://www.hearnweb.com/hearnville_cemetery/

No shit, they had all just been there days before me cleaning up the site, and there's an actual Hearnville Cemetery Project. If you have the time, click through the photos and descriptions on that link above. I probably wouldn't even have spotted it if they hadn't done the work, and I certainly wouldn't have been able to walk around and take photos of the gravestones.

Sometimes, sometimes, bike racing is special.

The next day, I packed my life up again and headed to North Carolina for a pair of races in Greenville, NC, hosted by East Carolina Velo. I knew about these races from teammates doing them in the past, and they were a perfect stop on my drive home. The races were run on the same 1K course each day, but in opposite directions. And strangely, they played out differently each day, with the second day having a shorter, steeper hill, and the first day hitting it more gradually from the other side. It seemed to make it easier to make a decisive attack on Sunday, and wind was definitely a factor both days.

Saturday we had a group of 6 that got clear, and with a lot of attacking and counterattacking in the closing laps, I was able to get back on terms with two turns to go, hit out from the last corner, and take the sprint:

Sunday we ended up going clear in a group of 7, and this time I had teammate Neil Bezdek in the group with me. My former teammate Mike Stoop was in the move both days, is a former winner of these races, and was riding really strong. He attacked the group repeatedly until 3 of us were separated from 7.

Mike and I both tried to get away again and lap the field by ourselves, but eventually all three of us made contact with about 10 laps to go. No one got away from there, and I was able to take the sprint again, while Neil stayed clear with Mike's teammate Jeff Buckles to hold on for 5th.

If you made it this far, well done. I'm tired of writing, so I'm certain you're tired of reading.

So what's the moral of the story?

The moral of the story is that three months is a really long fucking time to be away from home.