I've been hesitant to post here because I knew it'd be hard to top Adrienne's last entry. I should have her write these all of the time. But since she's at work now, I'll give it a shot on my own.

Georgia ended rather uneventfully for me. After fighting all week to make the break, I finally got in the move in the Atlanta circuit race, only to get a flat tire on the second of ten laps. After getting a new wheel, I didn't think there'd be much chance of catching back up to the break, so I just waited for the field to catch me and then sat in and sulked. I helped a bit to bring the break back on the last lap, then it came down to a big bunch sprint in which I finished somewhere near the back of the field.

After that we ate a nice dinner on the west side of Atlanta (midtown, I think), then came back to the hotel to find the post-race party in full swing in the bar. They'd just made last call, so I didn't get to partake. I was way too far behind to have much fun hanging out down there anyway. A few hours later, there was a loud pounding at the door and my roommate for the week, Tyler Hamilton, went to answer it. I briefly panicked thinking that it was someone coming to tell me I'd missed my early morning flight. But no, it was my former teammate Greg Henderson, who'd won the day's stage, wandering the halls at 3:00 am wondering why everyone else wasn't up and partying right along with him. Greg barged into the room and stayed for a good ten minutes before Tyler finally struck on the brilliant idea of suggesting that he go find Mike Creed. And I got a couple more hours of sleep.

After getting back home the following day, I spent the next week relaxing and going for some easy recovery rides to prepare for Mt. Hood. It's going to be great having the first couple of stages here in Portland this year, and I'm especially excited about the Mt. Tabor circuit on Wednesday. It's far from the ideal course for 130 riders to compete on, but I know it wasn't the first choice for the race promoter, Chad Sperry. In fact, I'd been involved in helping him select an incredible course up in Washington Park, but some last minute permitting issues forced him to find an easier alternative. At least it's close to town and should attract a good crowd. With any luck I'll get the home town call-up at the start and the narrow roads, along with the ensuing splits in the field, won't be too big of an issue for me. Hopefully it goes off safely and none of the real contenders find themselves stuck behind a split. I'd like to count myself among those contenders, but given the quality of the field that's going to be there, it'll certainly be harder to get a win than it is at a normal mid-week Tabor race. But I could certainly use some cheering.

Since my rest, training has been going well. I had an especially good ride on Sunday with Kevin Hulick. We did the Bridge of the Gods loop:

If you live in the Portland area and haven't done this ride, schedule a day soon. It's amazing. I took my Garmin along to record the ride and the file is here.

I also have a couple stories from Tuesday night that demonstrate both the best and worst in people, both within a couple hours of each other. I thought they were worth sharing. First, the bad: On the way out to the PIR race, I was on a narrow, uphill stretch of road approaching the St. John's bridge in northwest Portland. Anyone familiar with that spot knows it's a little crowded, but it's also pretty heavily used by cyclists. I was on the fogline, approaching the red light at the top and trying to stay out of the way as much as possible, when I heard the unnerving sound of an 18-wheeler blowing it's horn behind me. The guy started to pass me, but as he did so, he veered toward me, giving me the option of either going underneath the wheels of his trailer, or steering into the ditch. Of course, I did the latter. But as I mentioned, there was a red light ahead, so when I got there I approached his cab from the left side to let him know my opinion of that maneuver. And get this: he stuck his tongue out at me. Seriously, who does that? Though I suppose that intentionally trying to harm a cyclist demonstrates little more than a 10 year old's intellect, so it makes sense to use a 10 year old's taunt as well. I didn't immediately have the piece of mind to record his DOT number, but I caught him again at the light on the other side of the bridge and did so at that point. I made a complaint to both ODOT and his employer, JET Delivery, the next morning. Though I have to admit, I have little faith he'll ever be punished. It's scary that people like that are even allowed on our roads, not to mention the fact that they're given commercial drivers licenses.

But on to the good. Adrienne was driving home on our scooter later that night and had forgotten to grab a set of clear-lensed glasses. An older guy on a sport bike pulled up next to her at a light and, after admonishing her for not wearing glasses, gave her the ones off of his own face. Then he rode away without saying anything else. Hearing about that cheered me up a great deal.

That's enough for now.

Within the last couple of days I have received a handful of phone calls from Doug. He is in some remote area of Georgia where the internet is sparse. I was asked to give a brief update on the race. This, I fear, is a test to see how well I’ve been listening when we talk on the phone. I’m alarmingly short on the vivid details of his journey. Nobody out there should think less of me as a wife but know that I am a poor phone companion- one that is often distracted by picking her own fingernails or scratching her cat’s ears.

I’ll start by mentioning the blatantly obvious: Doug was tired after completing Brasstown Bald. As I was told, he managed to hang in there long enough to make one last delivery of fresh bottles to the big contenders before the final climb. Earlier in the race, his teammate (Mike Creed) was disqualified for receiving a little nudge to catch back onto the field. Doug seemed to think that this maneuver was commonplace in the pro peleton but the officials felt otherwise. The details are hazy (because it was I who was listening to them) but if I were Mike, I would enjoy spending the day in the team car after a week of hard racing.

Tomorrow is the last day of racing in the Tour of Georgia. It’s a 60-mile circuit race in Atlanta. Hopefully when Doug finds himself a speedy internet connection, he can replace my post with something far more eloquent and tell us all about how it all went. As for me, it’s long past my bedtime.

-Adrienne

Well, I knew today was going to be hard, but I really didn't know the half of it. It was not a lot of fun. Not at all. Oscar Sevilla is clearly riding incredibly well, and he pretty much single-handedly dismantled the rest of the team out there. At the start of the second lap, he ended up on the front up the hardest climb on the course. Every single one of us was struggling to hang on, and when Tyler finally shouted at him to slow down, he looked over his shoulder in complete disbelief. He was hardly even trying. That was pretty much it for me. I took two more pulls on that second lap, then I couldn't do any more. Surprisingly, Santiago Botero came off just after me, so the two of us ended up riding in together. As a whole, we could have done a lot better if we'd metered the effort a bit better. We had the third best split after lap one, then the tenth best time overall. That's not the final result any of us were hoping for.

Today was only twenty or so minutes of real work, but tomorrow's a long one. 130 miles and three medium-sized climbs. I had two slices of pecan pie with dinner tonight, so I think I'll be ready.

I'm on a roll with the dumb moves. As anyone following the race today knows, there was a nasty crash about 60k into the stage. Timmy Duggan of Slipstream, one of the nicest guys out there, ended up in the hospital in fairly bad shape. Thankfully, the injuries were much less serious than they sounded at the time. There was concern of some pretty serious head trauma at first. His crash happened on a fast downhill while everyone was still fighting to establish the day's break. Just after it happened, four guys slipped off the front and one of my teammates suggested someone should go after them. I went, and I shouldn't have. It was dumb and I deserved every bit of verbal abuse that I received, and then some. I really feel the need to apologize publicly. It was certainly far from my finest moment.

So get well soon, Timmy. My deepest apologies for your misfortune and my own insensitivity to it.

Otherwise, it was another hot, hard, fast day that finished in a sprint. Things get more interesting tomorrow with the team time trial. I'll be trading pulls with a former world TT champ and a former olympic TT champ. It's not going to be comfortable.

Again, there isn't a lot to say about the stage today. Just like yesterday, it seemed that everyone in the field wanted to be in the break, so it took over an hour and a half before something finally got away. It was exhausting trying to cover moves for that long, and I think everyone was relieved when the small break finally got away. Predictably, the break was caught and the stage finished in a sprint. I finished midpack after narrowly missing a pileup just inside 1k. Scary.

I did make one particularly dumb move today. I'd had an empty bottle in my cage for awhile when I spotted a group of kids ahead cheering outside of their elementary school. Kids seem to like water bottles, so I figured it was a good place to jettison the empty one. I was in the middle field and started to throw it, but as I was doing so I had visions of knocking a kid in the head, so I checked my throw a bit to get to land in the grass in front of them. But it didn't even come close. The bottle bounced off of the back of a Symmetrics rider and landed back in the middle of the field. And I looked like an idiot. But what's new?

That's the best I could come up with for the day. Time for bed.

It was a pretty uneventful day today. And short too, just two and a half hours. As is sometimes the case in races like this, too many people wanted to be in the break, which leads to absolutely everything getting chased back. I gave it a couple shots myself, but nothing lasted more than a few minutes. A small break finally got away late, but it didn't made it far. Near the end, I tried helping out in the sprint leadout for Freddie, but I only managed one pull on the front before the Astana team swarmed us and I got out of the way. So the team really didn't get anything out of the day, but it was good to get started nonetheless.

Off the bike, things have also been going well. It's a welcome change from the Tour of California, where uncertainty and controversy dominated the leadup, while bad weather, crashes, and illness were the theme for the race itself. Here, the sun is shining, and everybody's healthy and in good spirits.

I just got silly-string attacked by Creed and Hamilton. Time to sign off.

There's not too much to report here in Georgia. We've been staying out on Tybee Island, which is a vacation community on the coast about 15 miles east of Savannah. The island is accessible only by a two-lane causeway with rumble strips in the shoulder (safety first!), so both of our rides the last two days have involved riding in the lane of a 55 mph highway. This being the 'Redneck Riviera', we've been able to watch people leaving the beach and getting into their cars with frosty cold tall-boys in their hands. It's a little less than comforting to know that those are the same people buzzing within six inches of our elbows. But thankfully we all defied death. We even got a few waves with more than one finger.

There'll be one more trip on the causeway tomorrow, but this time we'll have a full road closure and police escorts. The first stage passes through Savannah, makes a loop to the West, then comes back for a finish in Savannah. It's only 70 miles, and dead-flat, but it could be windy. Being the first major race for me in almost two months, I certainly don't expect it to be easy. But I'm excited to get going. We have a team here that's capable of both stage wins and contending for the overall title, and it'll be a lot of fun to be a part of it.

We have one more night here on Tybee Island, and the internet is free, so I'll get a post up tomorrow after the stage.

One thing I'll say about Rock Racing: this team doesn't do anything the ordinary way. After initially not receiving a Tour of Georgia invite, the team managed to convince the organization to have an 11th hour change of heart. I got the call Tuesday afternoon that I was going. And now, on Friday, here I am. Crazy.

It was a long flight and it's late here now, so I don't really have much more to add. I'll try to get some posts up throughout the week as time and internet access allows.

There's nothing worse than getting to a bike race and finding a long line for the outhouses.

But on Saturday at Kings Valley, I had no such problems.

A guy could get used to this.

Thanks, I think, to the Kings Valley organizers for this honor. And thanks to Dave A... for the pictures.

Last weekend was the infamous Ronde van Oest Portlandia. I missed it last year for Redlands, but this year I was lucky enough to be in town. It was harder than Redlands, I'm certain of it. Kevin Hulick rode along with me all day and had his Garmin with him. He was kind enough to send me the file. Dave Roth had some pictures posted as well, but his site seems to be down right now. Maybe it'll work again later. But here's a set of Flickr photos by Kevin Wagoner. My goal for the day was to finish the ride without walking up any of the hills, a goal that I narrowly achieved. Whoever organized that ride, and I'll assure you it wasn't Brad Ross, is clearly an evil genius. Thanks.

March 28th, Washington Park: