The quick update, I am in Minneapolis racing with Kelley Benefit Strategies/Medifast. How I ended up here is a bit convoluted, so I'm just not going to say that it all worked out well.

**Wednesday Evening, June 20th**

It's just after the first stage and we're back in the loft drinking high life listening to the latest album by the Blue Scholars, waiting our respective turn to take a shower in the European style bathtub. You know the kind...the one that is 3 feet long by two feet wide and you have to bathe yourself while sitting cross legged Indian style. The topic of conversation moves quickly away from racing and towards...fake breasts. I'm not entirely certain how we got here, but it may have something to do with the fact that two doors down from our loft is "Sinners" and just beyond that lies "Sex World." Regardless, our soigneur Larry offers Johnny 10 million dollars if he will get a set of implants for a year, one B cup, and one DD. This is of course contingent upon Larry winning the Powerball, but slight details like that are ignored. Those who don't have to race tomorrow (and Johnny) are on the way out to the bars, and I am hitting the sack.

**Thursday morning**

My results for the first stage were far from impressive. I'm not happy with them, but I'm not unhappy either. I was middle of the pack for most all of the race. I had a brief bit of excitement when 20 minutes into the race I came down on my saddle hard tilting the nose down at a ~45 degree angle. I had to ride that way for 15 minutes until I got stuck behind a crash and was able to stop by the pit and get it fixed. I spent the rest of the race similarly middle to trailing edge of the pack until about 5 to go when there was a crash in front of me that split the front group off. I'm guessing I finished about 30 seconds down, but can't say for certain. Considering crits aren't my strongest discipline and this one had some turns described as "barely legal" I'm OK with how it turned out. I'm just glad that it didn't rain. It was threatening throughout, and we had plenty of crashes even though it was bone dry.

Today is the first road race. It's known for brutal cross winds that shatter the field. Last year it blew up 8 miles in and never came back together. I'm going to try to get up front and do what I can to get my wind blocking butt in a favorable position for my teammates. I'll let you know how it goes.

As Andrew pointed out it is the one year anniversary of my blog's coma. Seems like as good a day as any to update the tired thing. I'm not sure anyone even checks anymore, but given that I'm currently struggling not to scream at the "all representatives are currently busy voice" that I've heard ~ 15 times thus far, I haven't got much better to do. I'm in the middle of canceling my non-refundable ticket to Nature Valley after that plan completely collapsed. Bummer, but shit happens. On the bright side my ticket was non-refundable and now I'll get to be in town for the meeting on the 20th that I was eager to be absent for.

YAAAAAYYYYYYY!!!!!!

What's new...I'm worthless at updating my blog, my end of April slump showed up despite best efforts and intentions (as evidenced by lackluster performances at Walla Walla, longbranch, and Enumclaw), but on the bright side, Paris Hilton is in jail (I wish that I could say that I was ignoring it completely, but I'm not-so-secretly enjoying it).



I didn't race Ballard because I'm a big fat rain weeny when it comes to crits. Instead I sat on the sidelines, drank beer, and heckled people. Actually the only person that I really heckled was Harry, one of our cat threes, but it was fun. The weekend before was Ravensdale and we had what I'm convinced has been Wines' best team performance since I joined. It was the 9th race in the 10 race series that is the Washington Cup. Since I was in the leaders jersey and Tubbs was in second there was very little chance that HB would let a break with me get anywhere so I mostly sat in for the race while my teammates covered the breaks (normally my job to try and make the break). An early move went with Campbell, Hone, and Ian Mensher. It seemed like a long way to go for only three guys so I wasn't too worried. They came back not too far into the race. The next notable move was started by Nathan (have fun on the East Coast, deserter) Schneipp bridged up to him, then a couple more groups bridged up with Andrew sitting on one of them. Soon there was a group of 8 up the road with two BRI, two Garage, two HB, and Two Wines guys. With no one putting in a concerted chase effort the gap continued to grow until the finish. Andrew won from the break and Jason took third. Ian Mensher (who was in the first break as well) took second after spending pretty much the entire race off the front. I took the field sprint for 8th and clinched the Washington Cup (by my calculations...I don't have official word, but I think that I have more than 100 points on 2nd with one race to go).

I was really glad to see Andrew get his first win, Tubbs called Andrew as the winner with one lap to go when we were talking about who was in the break. Too bad he couldn't zip up his Jersey for Amara.



I like the course out there but if you are paying $30 per person for a race then I would expect more than $60 and a piece of donated Microsoft software for first place. Joe Holmes charges $30 for Blackberry but hands out $5,000 for the pro 1/2's at Blackberry. None of us are doing it for the money, but that's just getting a bit silly. Heck I won $60 at the track the other day, it was $15 entry, and I didn't even win (I'm not particularly good at the track just yet...working on it though). Done with my mini-rant.

Well I'm done with the Northwest Airlines refund hotline, and as I suspected, no refund for my ticket just credit towards a future ticket purchase minus a $50-$100 gouging...oops, I mean service charge.

Just got another call as I was typing that sentance, it looks like while the original plans fell through, I might be guest riding with Priority Health. I don't know what is going on, I'm dizzy. I'll post again when I figure out wtf I am doing.