A quick update and a good email.

The last few weeks have been busy to say the least. Taking care of Ian, starting my training for next year, sponsorship proposals, date night, taking care of broken bones, sleep... 

The new work out schedule is not too tough but more hours that I have been doing for a while, I'm tired. lots of 80-100 mile days. 

if you remember I broke my collar bone in the middle of last season, and it pretty much ruined my season. This year I waited until the season to break a bone, a much better move. It's only a toe, or a bone right before the toe. It only hurts when I kick something or put too much weight on it. in the long run not too bad.

Here is a picture of Ian, he loves playing in the orange groves.

With all the election talk going on I have to put in my endorsement... or really just pose a question. What would happen if not a single person voted? Besides Florida electing "W.",Would we go four years with out a president?  

I just got this email, I though it was pretty funny:

Dear Red States:

If you manage to steal this election too we've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren't aware, that includes California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood.

We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.

We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss.

We get 85% of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama.

We get two-thirds of the tax revenue; you get to make the red states pay their fair share.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22% lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.

Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq, and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush's Quagmire.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80% of the country's fresh water, more than 90% of the pineapple and lettuce, 92% of the nation's fresh fruit, 95% of America's quality wines, 90% of all cheese, 90% of the high tech industry, 95% of the corn and soybeans (thanks Iowa!), most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88% of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92% of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100% of the tornadoes, 90% of the hurricanes, 99% of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100% of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia.

We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

Additionally, 38% of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62% believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the war, the death penalty or gun laws, 44% say that evolution is only a theory, 53% that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61% of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.

Finally, we're taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico

Peace out,

--Blue States

Cross Vegas Picture...

Here is a great picture that my friend Al took at Cross Vegas of Lance...

I wonder if he likes beer?  I'm sure he does ; )

It has to end some time.

I finally finished the season, and have almost completed my one week vacation. How it all ended up was pretty amazing. After the Tahoe Sierra 100 I raced the Cactus Cup omnium, and finished this last weekend with the Tour of the White Mountains.

The Cactus Cup was my first time trial and first super D, which I got 1st and 2nd respectively. It wasn’t a huge field buy Yuri and Dejay were in the mix. Ok so I was the only other besides them for the omnium, there were others for the Super D and the XC which I placed 1st.

Time trial: I think my time was about 2 minutes and 40 seconds, unfortunately I had to run over half the course due to my chain falling off. But it was probably faster anyways, it was super steep, and windy, Dejay actually got blown off his bike.

The Super D: A little climbing and a bunch of kinda down hill stuff. It was a fun course but a little flat for a singlespeed(we were pretty spun out). Dejay and I were on the front most of the time, I had a little spill about 2 km from the finish where Dejay got away from me. I almost caught him on the last little climb but there wasn’t enough time.

XC: it was a Great course! A bunch of single track with great flow, a few long climbs and some technical sandy rocky areas(made easy by my Niner singlespeed). I was able to pull away from Dejay on the long climb to finish the first of two laps and stay away the rest of the race. My only other objective was to catch as many of the semi pro men that I could, their heat started 2 minutes ahead of the singlespeeders. The last lap I caught three or four people on the last climb and I ended up making up the gap on all of the semi pro men!


The Tour of the White Mountains:
67 miles and about 70 more that I was ready for, still recovering from Interbike and a sleepless few days with Ian. It was the last one for the year, and I had to show everyone the power of Ergon grips. Before the race I did a little warm up and felt like I did before my worst race of the year, not a good sign. I had no power and no pop. Luckily it started out pretty slow and I was able to get second wheel going into the first single track section. Again, my pet peeve… about 7 miles into the race we came to a down tree with a good sized ramp up one side and down the other(we were told it was easily ridable at the start line), the guy in the lead gets off his bike and jumps over the log! When did mountain bikers forget what mountain biking was. Ride over the dam log, your leading the race!

Back to the riding part of the race. Three of us were together for a while, one guy flatted and then there were two. I got dropped on the flats. Got a flat(slow leak), that I stopped to fill a couple times. I had some fun towards the end with a great technical rocky section. And ended up 4th overall and the fastest singlespeed.

Now it's time to regroup, find some new sponsors, race a little cross and get ready to kick some butt next year.

So for the Tahoe Sierra report.

Dejay and I made our way to the Sierras to learn the course and rest up a full week early. Which was good because it took forever to get there, with pulling the trailer on the super curvy and steep roads that were littered with cows that were trying to block the road(so we wouldn't find bigfoot).
Eventually we made it and we able to ride about 85 miles of the course, and get a good idea of what was to come.  The area was beautiful, great views, big mountains and deep canyons(we stopped on the way out for 20 minutes because the van brakes were smoking).  Unfortunately for the 270 riders that registered for the event the promoter had to change course and it ended up being 100 miles of fire road(a few feet were kinda narrow), it was a little boring but it was over quicker even with about 14,000' of climbing, most of it rideable.  Along with being amazingly beautiful the area was so isolated I really had time to focus and get ready for the race.  

We went back into town on Tuesday to get the supplies we needed to make it through the weekend(we thought). lots of food, propane movies and did our last bit of internet/email action before we went back to the woods. We didn’t realize we were out of shot bloks and only had two tubes.

All the usual suspects showed up for the start plus a few others, Harlan Price, the trek crew(Chris Eatough, Jeff Schalk, and Jeremiah Bishiop), Evan plews, Tinker, Josh Tostado, Mark Santubane,  and single speeders Dez, Conrad, Tom, Rich, Dejay of course, Yuri and a few other fast ones that I didn't get to meet.  For some reason this was the slowest start of any race in the series(that I have done), even those with a controlled start! it was super mellow for a little more than a mile,  then the pace started to increase to where I'm sure some people were dropped but not many. At one point while after the pace picked up someone said something to the effect of what is that singlespeeder doing up here in the front, I usually ignore things like that and let my riding show them. But Jeremiah bishop chimed in and said something like “that's Fuzzy he's got the super cadence”.  The short track and marathon national champion saying something like that about will always give you a little boost. Maybe that’s why when we hit the bottom of the first climb the whole field went back to taking it easy, and before I knew it I was a few hundred yards or more in front of everyone else. After I realized that I had a gap I did my best to settle into a groove and ride my race, but it was kind of exciting being off the front of that group.

Two miles into the climb the big eight bridged the gap and we(Harlan, Chris, Jeff, Jeremiah, Tinker, Mark, Josh, Evan and I)rode together for another two miles. A mile or so before the top Harlan threw in a little surge and I decided I didn’t want to go any harder and kept my pace going, and would settle for 9th place overall again(the third time in a row…). I thought I could never catch these guys. But I kept my pace high to make sure no others would catch me. I had Jim Hewitt not to far back on the first climb and a few others were close I’m sure.

In the long run, it was probably best that I let them go, at least my lungs thought so. It was so dusty, being a minute behind the lead group on the first descent it was even thick in a few corners. Then for about 5 miles the dust was gone and I could breath again, I was now at about mile 18 and been on my own for 11 miles when the dust began to get thick again, I thought to myself, am I catching the leaders? But it was just Jeff, who had suffered a bad crash and was limping his way back to the start/finish.
this is how bad the dust was...
I’ll take it, I’m going for eighth now just a bit more motivation to keep the pace high. I was up and over the next climb and on my way down to the bottom of the second long climb when I passed Tinker on the side with a flat or something, I was now up to seventh place. Go, Go, Go!!! This could be my best finish ever with this deep of a field.
23 miles down, and sitting in 7th place, there was a long way to go, and a lot of false flat fire roads with some big climbs toward the end. I kept repeating my mantra, ate my Cytomax gels(vanilla) kept hydrated and talked to myself a bunch for the next 5+ hours as I never saw another racer. I crossed the finish line in 7h 45m 54s about 44 minutes behind Jeremiah and Chris who tied. Some how Josh T. missed a turn and I slipped up to 6th overall, but only five minutes ahead of Dez the second place singlespeeder.

This was my second win of the series and with my two second place finishes I won the NUE singlespeed Category and am the 2008 national SS champion.

Just a quick thanks to Cytomax for getting me gels and drink so fast and making sure I was prepared for the race. To Niner, Dt Swiss, Stan’s no tubes, Ergon, Kenda, Chris King, Shoair and all my other sponsors that keep me and my bikes rolling so fast!
This one was for you all.

Tahoe Sierra 100 race report!

Coming soon. To tired of driving, and played with Ian all day today. I will get the story out tomorrow(Tuesday). For a quick update check out Harlan's recap at this place.  

Don't go to Rich "the weenie" Dillen's site, he has no real report yet either. nor is he good at telling the past(that kid is an Eagle scout, and he is at least 12). 

Tahoe Sierra 100

The last race in the NUE series is this Saturday. It seems like it is mostly or all fire road so it might be a little boring but the views from the parts of the course are great!!! The best of the year. There is also a ton of climbing, I like that! the venue is hours from anywhere, it takes about an hour and a half to get anywhere with cell phone reception, so this will be my last post before the race. Keep your fingers crossed for me. I'm going in tied with Chris M. and one to 4 points ahead of Dejay.  In order to win the series I need to finish better than 7th and with in one place of Dejay...