so

so since i dont really like recapping races i'll give you a quick rundown on whats been happnin and then go on to somethinginteresting. state rr was pretty good, got 3rd. joe martin was ok got 13th in the rr, nothing really in the tt or crit. tulsa was ugh, it was hot and i crashed and the last day got cancelled. winghaven was hot, and i have never wanted to lay down and curl up in a ball more during a race.

As most of you know who read this blog, i am a person who cares about appearance. I like to look fresh both on and off the bike. on the bike one of the most important elements of image is one's sunglasses. I like to observe the newly formed trend of "radarspotting". this involves spotting the new trend of wearing eyewear that is crazy colored and doesnt necessarily match one's kit. I also like to see some sweet oakley radars that pro's get to have but no one else can get near. Think of the inevitable vino turned millar retina burns before they were released to the masses, only to be quickly spotted on the dome of justin macsilfiijspofnaokovich, and then keaton.













we'll start off with one that anyone who payed any attention to the spring classics will recognize. here is fabian cancellara's orange beauties. they would complement the mesa kit perfectly.












next we'll go with an offering that some may have seen, definatly if they belong to OREC, but these radars only appeared to be pro only. they are actually womens. they were only really spotted this year, but the picture i have is from last year, when t mobile still existed.









now we have an interesting pair. the gold radars, or used to be m frames. glasses that can only be obtained by winning a tour stage.











Now on to one that i have only seen once, these almost "thinglike" radars modeled by valverde.
















One trend that oakley had back in the 80's and 90's was the splatter frame. it has seen somewhat of a revival but only in the pro peleton.
here we have fabian with world champion colors splattered on white frames.

here is hincapie wearing possibly some national champ splatters

and finally here is mcewen with the australian flag colors arranged in splatter
















here are a few ones that have popped up very recently. first is the new celeste colored radars, first shown to me by adam leibovitz in some pictures he took in europe, with mr phinney modeling them smugly.

next we have Florian Vogel from the recent world cup mtb race wearing the same.


and finally from that same day mr geoff kabush modeling a sweeeeet purple pair, ey.















the final pair i would like to show, i cannot. It was a pair i have only seen once. displayed by dave zabriskie in the prologue of the 2007 tour. they appeared to be blinged out with rhinestones. if ANYONE has the 12hour dvd collection and would let me borrow the first disc to confirm or deny my suspicion that would be ideal. i will leave you with a long distance picture of him, which only confirms that they are sparkly and silver.

yea.

So. I dont really feel like talking about the far past. I'll go back to tour of stl. It was pretty fun. We pretty much took it by storm. Chief Wallace took the Carondelet crit, 5th at fopo, 3rd? in the tt, and 1st overall. Graham took 3rd at Carondelet 2nd? in the tt and 2nd or 3rd overall. Adam took 1st in the tt and 1st in the fopo crit and 3rd or 4th overall. Pretty killer. Fopo was a blast. I went down to New Orleans friday and saturday to visit Loyola New Orleans. I didnt really like the school but the city was awesome. I sampled lots of southern delicacies. Such as praline bacon, boudin balls, beerbq shrimp, fried oysters w/ bleu cheese, collared greens and the best omelet ive ever had. I raced washington on sunday. It was a pretty fun but hard course. Two killer hills. There was a nasty crash, and they neutralized us with 5 to go. So we started and raced 5 laps, getting back up to speed pretty quick. I was able to come around and take the final corner fast and first, and sprint to victory. my first 3's victory. I heard from Jon Gohl that i had 5 bike lengths by the time i crossed the line. I dual posted it, but of course, no one got any pictures.

sprinting

before the dual post i guess.

it's not february.

Thanks austin for reminding me. Life is going well. Froze toes went well, with Chief Wallace taking the 3/4 race. I went to mesa today and got re-fit, got some Speedplay zero stainless. Dropped my stem down, so it doesnt look like a boner anymore. It's good now. Glad to see that you're reading my blog Katie. How is Philly?

its february

just trying to keep this thing up to date. no one else really cares....Training is going well. I'm excited for the season. Life is good.

funny

this blog has been cracking me up lately. i really like the thing about the guy doing bike fits. funny shit.

http://bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com/2007/12/worst-of-nyc-craigslist-38-41.html

more bad

yeah i forgot another bad thing. I totalled my car the first day of winter break. My beloved subie has hit the dust. She had a good life. It was fitting that she went out to the point where she is undriveable. I could never actually see getting rid of her. I was backing out of my friend caitlin's driveway and got trucked by a H1. I was given a "failure to yield" ticket, but thats still pending. I have another court date so we'll see.

so blogger is being stupid... but i can beat you blogger....

http://hs.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2001597&l=5f076&id=1307790285

so yea. put on my members only jacket yesterday, handfulls of glass in the pockets. it was in the trunk when the accident happened. but i found a possible replacement the other day. A 2002 honda civic si hatchback. sick nast. i hope i get it.

oh and i got my braces off. my teeth are alot bigger than i remember...i feel like michael boogerd.

Ketchup...

I think that it's time I do a little ketchup. I can't count the times that I have thought about blogging but haven't actually done it because the task of recounting everything from the night before CX nationals till right now is way too daunting. But I know there are too many people out there that have clicked on my link on someone else's blog once in a while, and are, yet again, disappointed to see that I haven't updated. I decided that to try and make it easier to ketchup I am going to do a list of the good and the bad that has happened since CX nats.

THE BAD:
-CX nationals: Had a little good and a little bad. I guess it could be considered a learning experience. I got lapped after doing 2 or 3 laps. I really hadn't trained whatsoever for cross at all the whole season.
-I saw 2 guys in the past week smoking cigars while driving. weird.
-On a way more serious note, I found out today that my friend Hannah's father passed away last night. It was really sad to hear that. I can't imagine what she is going through, losing a parent at 18. My thoughts go out to her.

THE GOOD:
-way outweighs the bad.
-I am racing with a new team, just in case anybody didn't know yet. I am racing with Mesa Cycles for 2008. I am racing as one of 7 guys on the u23 side of team. My u23 teammates will be Logan VB, Joe Kukolla, Matt Brandt, Adam Lang (no we aren't brothers), Francis Hamre, and Zach Hockett. The team is also gonna have a killer junior squad again with names such as Adam Leibovitz, Jan Bradford, Graham Dewart, Chris Wallace, Alex Edwards, and the infamous and humorous Ian Murphy, to name a few. The program that Mesa presented is awesome, from the quality of the riders, the organization, the equipment, everything. I am excited to race for Mesa in 2008.
-We had a team camp. It was for 4 days and 3 nights at Adrienne's house. We basically bonded a lot. We figured out things about the team that we, the riders, needed to decide. We went paint balling, hot-tubbed and just had fun. I liked all of them and I am excited to race with them. It was nice to meet guys that i will inevitably sharing hotels with and hanging out with a lot this summer.
-I got a new bike. I got a new Specialized Tarmac Expert, as my new team bike. Its got Ultegra SL, its pretty tight. It's also my first full carbon bike. Its pretty stiff, and accelerates really well.
-I rode with Tom Danielson on christmas, it was tight. He put the hurt down like it was a spring classic. He also came to our team camp, and talked to us about racing and then rode with us the next day.
-I have an awesome girlfriend. Her name is Hillary, and she goes to webster. She is the best.
thats all for now. training is going well, i am finally in a groove.

sitting in kc....

Sitting in my hotel in kc. snow is supposed to fall tonite. my pee is clear, i am ready. bring it on driscoll, and summerhill.

It's Rye Rye

sweetness...she does stuff with M.I.A. too, shes in her new song Paper Planes, and shes 16.

icky thump

I rode with AA today. It was cold as balls. We rode out clayton and after a little over an hour we stopped at the starbucks by mason/clayton intersection. We tried to buy stuff to drink but its more expensive out there, so it was only I, the moneybearer, who was able to savor a mocha latte. Our hands were so cold at this point that it hurt to sit there and let them thaw. We decided to head back to the k-wood webster area, as to stay closer to home base in the case of even more extreme coldness. We rode back in about 30 minutes, with a nice tailwind. Our actual ride time after a little winding through k-wood was arund 2+ hours. So just for good measure I sat around the house looking at my computer in my bibs. As Scotty Hill would say "Chamois time is ride time!!" so I rode for 3 hours. I ran the turkey day run on thursday, my legs hurt. I was lured in to a fast pase by Logie and Austin. They pulled away around 1.5 miles, but I was able to ruthlessly kick Logan down in the sprint. Sprinter on the bike means sprinter on the road?? Listning to a White Stripes cd that I stole from a friend, album is called "icky thump", it's quite good.

yo

So i raced this past weekend. did the b race. i raced super well for some reason. i had like 2 hours of sleep the night before, or really the morning of from 7-9. but i felt great, and i kept attacking/moving up. i started really far back and worked my way into 6th, where i finished. I went to the gym yesterday, felt good. it hurt a little. i was suprised how little weight actually made my legs burn. but im not worried, i should be up to speed soon. this might be the funniest video ever. its 1500 philipino inmates, all men (the one "girl" is in drag), doing thriller. if you havent seen it watch it, if you have watch it again.

CX recap

Hey,
So ive been racing cx. its awesome. i really like it. I did my first 3 races in the c race and then my 4th in the b. I started out with a 6th, then a 4th, then a 2nd. So then i thought it was time to move up. I kinda got by butt kicked but, i think the course and my over inflated tires had something to do with it. I'm also doing cx nats, in the u23 category so that should be interesting. i rode fopo the otherday. people need to get their shit together. walkers and joggers on the gravel, bikers and rollerbladers? on the paved part. I hate weaving through the people walking. Seriously, walk on the gravel. I might just ride my cx bike on the gravel trail if they are so keen on the pavement. fopo needs police to enforce this rule.
bye.

CX Bike

So i realllly dont feel like talking about state crit, gateway and the twilight crit. I raced well at sedalia, 4th in the 4's crit, 17th in the 3/4. I was 5th in the 4's road race the next day. gateway was disappointing as usual..

im racing cross. heres my bike. its pretty hot.

Covert Ops.

Hey so nothing has happened in life worth blogging. I think i posted about the tt? maybe maybe not. read mike t's blog if i didnt, it finally says something other than "SUMMER!!". heres whats been going on.

i built a wheel rack. in the shack. in the back.



i got a cool new sign.................CHECK IT OUT.





in other news i decided that i needed to investigate a better option for shaving my legs. i decided that i deserved a better, smoother longer lasting shave. I purchased myself a venus. I didnt get the vibrating one, i didnt really want anything electric in my shower, and i didnt get the one with the big ass lube strips. After conferring with my friend Libby last night, neither o us know what "model" it is but we both decided to call it the "bright blue" one, she likes it though, so i expect great things.

I have a list of movies that i want to see. I just saw bourne ultimatum last night. It was the shit. I loved the first two and this lived up to them. I was almost slightly dissappointed by the ending, then it got freaking awesome for the last like 20 seconds. If you saw it you know whats up. I wonder if there will be another. I think bourne and nikki, juila stiles character, dated before he was in the treadstone thing. I also want to see superbad. It looks realllly funny.
heres the unedited trailer.


i also want to see clerks 2. if anyone saw it please tell me how it was. logan and mike t are coming over and we're riding and then leaving for jeff city for the state crit. yaaay.

wattage cottage?

I rode the grants trail today, it was pretty nice. The only thing that sucked was that i had a cup of yogurt rite before i rode and i had cramp, i think caused by the yogurt, for the last 45 minutes of my ride. Another sketchy part of the trail was the kid practicing his bb-gunning skills, on the side of the trail shooting paralell to the trail, at coke cans. I thought he was gonna pop me.

I found this picture of logie up in canada, getting put in the hurt bucket by team japan.

20 inch blades, on the impala!

Check out this new bling. You don't even know how much I love things that are banned for mass start events because they can cut off peoples appendiges. Allthough, frozen chickens have proved that wrong. Just ask.

Colorado...

So im in colorado rite now as most of you know. I drove out with my mom on monday, the 2nd, and im staying with dan while she stays at a friends house in breckenridge. I'll recap the rides. The first day we started off on a cool bike path that ran along a creek then we did a cool dirt road climb that was pretty hard. Then we finished riding through the U at boulder campus. The next day we hit the mountains and did a 3:40 min, 60 mile ride with 3000ish feet of climbing. We rode up a long climb and then down a switch back road then a slight uphill to nederland, where we got some hippie cookies and water, and cruised downhill for about 18 miles to boulder. I rode the climb that this segment of American Flyers ends on. Its pretty difficult actually.

Yesterday we rode some more dirt roads and some singletrack trails that, considering how they handled the dirt roads last year, would make keaton and austin poop their chamois. It was really fun, and the only part that i couldnt ride was a technical descent that would give most people trouble on a mountain bike. Tommorrow we are riding up Mt. Evans, the highest paved road in north america, at 14,000-something feet. It is like 24 miles to the top and it should be pretty interesting. I also visited CU, CSU and Regis. I'll report on those later.

Some Races

So, I'll start back at webster and work my way up...I raced webster juniors. It was pretty easy. We basically rode around at a fair pace and chased any attack that was made. I was kind of working with ben pholman because neither of us had a real teammate in the race. We both knew that zach and daniel would work together and rory and zach are both on the same team. Coming into the last corner i was sitting 3rd wheel with rory on front and zach right in front of me, on rorys wheel, and daniel just to my right. He pushed into my spot because he chose a stupid time to move up on the inside, considering there were 2 youger juniors right there. I knew that at third wheel i could at least get 2nd. I could either come around zach and rory would have a big gap through the corner, or zach would stay just a tad infront of me and rory would blow up, or, more realistically i would just outsprint both of them. Anyway, we werent going very fast, 23 maybe, and i just jumped right around the group on the left side of everyone and took the corner first. I sprinted and put about 20-25 feet into zach/rory who went 2/3, and apparantly i was opening a gap. Then there was the 4/5 race. I rode at the front for the first few laps and nearly had a 50$ prime, which some MACK guy ganked from me. He took the corner like i did in the jrs race and i almost caught him at the line. I ended up finishing in the pack. Rory offered me a pull to the front with 2 to go but the 2 crashes in the last 2 laps put a damper on our ambition. I finished top 20 somewhere. This past weekend i raced proctor, which i'd never raced before. The road race was pretty stupid. It was flat and narrow. You couldnt move up because the group of about 60 never really got strung out or separated. We just rode as a solid pack. The climbs werent big enough to do anything to the pack. I can usually make the front group on a climb in a road race, ala hells kitchen, joe martin and dogwood, which ends up benefitting me. About 4 miles in we came across the sight of a crash which ended up killing a cat 4 woman from xXx racing in chicago. It was pretty humbling to see that and i was kind of in my own thoughts, not really wanting to continue racing after seeing that. I finished just off the back of the pack. The crit was the next day and mike convinced us all, me keaton and mike t, to ride in support of logan to try and get him the illinois state champ jersey. The race was really fun, not quite quad cities quick but not stupid lame like most stl jr races. Mike t lasted like 10 minutes with the group which was constantly attacking. Keaton and i reeled in breaks and took fliers of our own to make the others, who, for the most part, didnt have any teammates, chase us back. Logie ended up attacking with a half a lap to go and holding on to win. It was hella tight. The 4's was pretty fast and not too fun. It was windy and people seemed not to know how to ride through the 4 lane wide corners w/o hitting their brakes, but we accomplished our goal for the day.

heres logan with 1st and 2nd loser on his left and right.

bear

So, winghaven kinda sucked. It was really wet and was pretty much like an ice rink. It was actually kinda funny watching all of the crashes in each corner because no one was seriously hurt and we were riding at like 15mph so it was ridiculous how many people went down. I got gapped off of the pack on a huge crash in the roundabout just before the finish line on the first lap. After watching keaton go down on the roundabout after the finish, i found myself in a chase group with mike heff. Our group didnt seem to be compelled to catch back on, instead they just wanted to ride the same pace as the pack, about 30 seconds back. I tried to jump a few times but i couldnt quite make it more than halfway each time. We caught them on our 3rd lap right before the downhill. Then after the downhill going through the roundabout before the finishline, some idiot decides to try and pass me on the inside. He slid out and the guy on my outside slid out too, but it was the moron on the inside who clipped my wheel and took me down. It wasnt my tires at all or my braking. I didint skid or slide once the whole race, and my courchevels worked perfectly. Today and wednesday I rode around dusk when its not so hot, and i rode my super close to home "lap" rides, where I ride various laps as many times as I want to. Sugar creek has gotten reallly nice now, because of the daugherty ferry bridge bieng knocked down there is no traffic on daugherty ferry and about half of the traffic that was on sugar creek. Right now I am watching the NEW EPISODE OF MAN VS. WILD!!!!. Bear is a pimp and he just parasailed to the top of everest, if you dont believe me, read his blog, I believe its linked. Riding long this weekend, high ridge/covered bridge, and out to ellisville. Austin says 4 hours but....