The Last Five Days of My Life

The trip started out a day earlier than we expected. Originally planning on departing Denver on Thursday morning at 4am, we left 7pm Wednesday to beat the oncoming snow storm. It worked as we arrived in Las Vegas, NM at midnight missing all the snow. The hardest part in a rushed departure is figuring out for the first time how to fit four bikes and six wheelsets in the back of the vehicle along with luggage.

Thursday morning started out at 7am on the road again driving through NM and heading into AZ.

Our biggest pet peeve of the trip were the semi's who tried to pass other semi's but never had enough speed to pass them in less than 10 minutes.

I found out that Seth is the only guy that I know who separates out his servings of M&M's and cheese crackers into their proper serving sizes.

On a back road in AZ we came to a stop in a construction zone, Carlos too this advantage to relieve himself in the middle of traffic.

We arrived in Phoenix Thursday afternoon and turned our hotel room into a bike shop.

Then we went cruising in Carlos' Denali

Passed the time hanging out in our room watching mostly the Olympics. (From left: Seth, Carlos, Mateo (standing), and Goodwillie)


The time trial was on Friday and went very well, by far my best time trial to date. Then the road race followed on Saturday, Joey had the job of helping unload and reload the bikes.
Joey also too the time to admire the fine quality of the spinners on the mini van next to us.


The road race went okay, not great. There were a lot of problems, both in the logistics of the planning of the race itself by promoters and the stupidity of some of the other racers. Then Joey had to go and sit on his left shifter, but it was nothing that a bunch of tape couldn't fix.
The last stage was the crit on Sunday, I sat fourth going into it and the field wouldn't let me break away to make up any time, so I just sat in the group and took some cash sprint prizes.

We left Phoenix around 3:30 Sunday afternoon and drove straight through to Denver and got home about 4am Monday morning. Not a bad first race of the season, just time to start training for the next race, and maybe catch up on some sleep.