Feeling like my home right now could either be a small dark room in Tucson, a plane, a hotel in Austin or other planes. In the last 8 day I've travelled from Tucson to Kelowna to Tucson to Austin to Park City and soon to be Kelowna again. Gone four or four on no bike charges. And I'm on my way to Star Alliance Elite status.
Last weekend was the first big bike race for us mountain bike bike riders. I would say from a country stand point it went well with Canada going 1,2,4 in Elite men and 1st in Elite women. I think we counted like 17 Canadians racing, which was great to see. It was crazy fast with Olympic selection coming up here in the next few months. For myself it went pretty well. Couldn't have done it without the awesome support from the National team, coach Dan and Mechanic/life teacher Scott Kelly. For the project lots of spots were turned down and it ended up being the trio of Evan squared and Haley Smith. It seems like every project I go, they get better. With a late Thursday arrival we all had to build our brand new never been ridden bikes, as well as go on our first MTB rides of the year. I had a very interesting couple weeks going into he race with having my race bike stolen from Tucson. Luckily I am
sponsored by Rocky Mountain Bicycles and they were able to send me down a pretty much identical bike, it was a size smaller but thats easy to correct. It was too bad US Customs decided to put a 6 day clearance delay in it with it to arrive only 15 hours before I left to Austin, TX for the race. I also flew home 7 days before Austin for 40 hours to see my biggest supporter and fan, my grandad, who lost his battle to Cancer last Thursday. I know his wish would have been for me to race and kick as much ass as possible. It was a tough weekend but you have to respect the wishes of your elders. Race day came and it had felt like the first races as all the usual little routines were a little off or not there. I was lucky to have a second line call up and was able to squeak right into the top 8 off the start and through the first lap, which I paid for a little later on but totally worth it! I had a good solid clean race. It wasn't bad but wasn't as good as it could have been. I had to learn how to hurt again for a long period of time. Finished up 18th and 3rd U23. Not too shabby at all. Definitely a course for the Element RSL! After a cool down with Adam Craig about discussing how jumping rental cars over the bumps near the course would be sick I started eating food and drinking water as the hot temperatures and as a western Canadian would say the slight humidness wore me out. On the car ride back I got Mcneely to open my can of sardines out to window to drain the juice and sure enough he dumped the can too early and the juice was blown with the wind into his face. After a group complain about a now no sardine eating un the car we made it back to or near Austin to clean up before we went out for breakfast fr dinner with milkshakes with the Canadian clan or Dan Proulx, Scott Kelly, Cody Canning, Felix Wilberg, Raphael Gagne, Kris Sneddon, Haley Smith, Evan Mcneely and myself. Peanut butter chocolate chips milkshakes are recommended.
Sunday was our Austin City limits ride where we started at Lance Armstrongs Mellow Johnnys bike shop for a coffee and the watched some rowing along the river, raced around the football stadium at the university and of course made a Strava segment. Duhh. The. It burrito time, packing time, the. Back to dinner for some burgers. We also were right across the street from a 15 man 1 women brawl. The girl was taking it to them as the boys didn't want to hit her! Lucky. Then some evening bike packing. Left the beautiful city of Astin Monday to head back to
Park City where the snow was sorta flowing. I also think I pulled a muscle petty bad in my back from racing around the university for our strava segment, as I can hardly put on my own shoes.
I also did some ghetto coffee brewing this AM.
All for now, Gossip Girl.
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