After narrowly surviving last night's criterium in Reno, I'm back in Portland now, grateful to be alive and ambulatory. Though I did escape with two fully functional hips, my bike and the team's grasp on the race lead were not so fortunate. Here's the short version of a very, very long 90 minutes:

For the first 30 minutes of the race, due to the combined effects of being 4000 ft above sea level and posessing very limited fitness, I basically just tried to keep from choking on my own tongue. Then, just when things started calming down and I was finally starting to feel useful again, another rider dove inside of me on a corner, clipped his bars on a hay bale, and sent me to the pavement. Anybody else sensing a trend appearing? Worse yet, I went down on my right side, site of my freshly healed hip. Fortunately it happened on an uphill section of road, the speed was low, and I managed not to break any bones. But the impact did snap my handlebars clean in half. That earned me a ride on a Shimano neutral bike that was hastily adjusted to my approximate position and I was thrown straight back into the mix. After a few laps of getting used to the new bike, I made my way to the front for a hard 45 minutes or so of trading turns at the front to keep things in control for Karl.

With 4 laps and about 8 minutes of racing left, I decided that I wasn't going to be of much more use, so I pulled off at the pit to return the spare bike to the Shimano guys. Then I made my way down to the finish line to watch the end of the race, which due to the work we had done, should have been simply a formality for Karl. We had allowed two riders who were far down the overall to stay about 1 minute off the front, and since the race was an omnium and only points mattered, Karl simply needed to finish in the top 15 or so to hold onto the overall lead. Call it greedy if you'd like, I prefer ambitious, but he decided that he might as well try to take the field sprint for third anyway. From where I stood I couldn't see the final corner, but I heard the terrible shotgun-blast sound of Karl's rear tire blowing off the rim, then I saw spectators scrambling away as he slid across the road and slammed into the barrier fencing. That meant no finishing points and no overall win. Despite the dramatic appearance of the crash, Karl was basically fine. He just needed a few stitches to his upper lip. My former teammate, Alex Candelario, also went down in the crash but he too came out without serious injury.

So it was a climactic but largely unsatisfying end to my first weekend back to racing. But I didn't let that deter me from heading out to see a bit of Reno beyond the casino walls. It was just as I expected: interesting. Garrett and I set out looking for a restaurant and ended up on a few dark backstreets in the middle of a manhunt. We were repeatedly spotlighted by a passing patrol car and an overhead police helicopter. Then, on my way back to the hotel a couple hours later I found a cab that was waiting for fares outside of a strip club. Garrett had stayed out so I was alone at this point. The cab driver obviously assumed (falsely, I must assert) that I had just come out of said strip club and that, as a result, I must be a bit wound up from the "look no touch" policy. So he started the hard sell on a so-called "ranch run" to the brothels outside of town. No more than $15 to get me there, he claimed. Much better looking girls than the strip club, he claimed. He seemed genuinely disappointed in me when I assured him that I simply wanted to go to my hotel. It appeared to make no sense to him. But after finally dropping the brothel idea, the cabbie started extolling the virtues of his obviously deranged hometown: you can buy liquor, assault rifles, and hookers all on the same street corner here, he said. Paradise. I should really come back soon, he said. And be sure to try out the brothel next time.

I'm glad to be home.