It's been three or so weeks since the last update. Absolutely inexcusable. After riding the Tour de Delta up in B.C. (that 'de' really drives me nuts, but what can I do?), I came back and spent a little bit of time training at home. Not too much was going on, so I ended up putting off updating this site. I did see a girl in downtown Portland carrying a pet skunk last week. That seemed worth mentioning, but I didn't figure it deserved its own post. I really need to carry the camera around more often.

Now I'm in Utah for the first year Tour of Utah. We just finished the fourth stage today and it was kind of ridiculous. The final climb was 20 or so miles and finished at about 9300 ft. Our mechanic, Billy, is going to have a late night scrubbing bits of lung off of my stem. See it for yourself at ollerend.motionbased.com. Even though I had a rough time, two of my teammates fared much better. Scott Moninger took the win with Jeff Louder in second. That puts Jeff in the race lead with Scott just two seconds behind. So, now I get to take my familiar place killing myself at the front for the next couple of days to defend the jersey. This is Jeff's hometown race, so he's obviously really motivated to hold on to the lead.

But speaking of hometown races, the Health Net Portland Crit is tomorrow night and, unfortunately, I am not going to be there. It's pretty disappointing to be missing it, but it's just the way the schedule worked out. Five of my teammates will be there though, so everyone in Portland should go out and cheer them on. And drink some beer. The team's sure to put on a good show. I'll be racing an evening circuit race tomorrow night in Salt Lake. I need an oxygen tank.

That's all for now. If anyone sees the girl with the skunk, get a photo. Thanks.