I'm in Kortrijk, Belgium now waiting to start the Trophee Grimpeur on Sunday, which is a couple hours south in Paris. Internet here is limited and the public computers have different keyboards. Those last couple of sentences took far too long to type. More updates when I find out how to get my own computer online.

My post yesterday was long, so I'm going to be lazy tonight. Today's stage was hard. We had two KOM's prior to taking on Brasstown Bald, which is probably the hardest climb I've ever raced up. I last did this race in 2004 and I'd forgotten just how tough that climb is. There were some good crowds up there though, and that always helps out. Those that are here last year say that the crowds were quite a bit smaller today than in '05. That can probably be attributed to the retirement of one particular rider. Regardless, it's still nice to see people coming out and cheering. There was also apparently a race going on in front of me up that final climb, but I knew nothing of it. For me, it was just 10km of trying to avoid getting off and walking my bike. That might well have proved faster, though.

Only one more stage left and it's our last chance for a stage win. My roommate for the week, Nathan O'Neill, put in a great climb today but still slipped back a few spots on GC to 7th. That makes him the top non-ProTour rider, which is very respectable. Tomorrow's stage won't provide and opportunities to change that position, so we'll be looking to get Karl Menzies or Gord Fraser the stage win instead. For me, that'll mean hard riding on the front to help them get to the line as fresh as possible. After that it'll be a few well earned beers and a little bit of time with Adrienne before heading out for a month in Europe. Those beers will probably supersede an entry here tomorrow, but I'll try to get the GPS file up at the very least. Thanks to everyone that's been following along this week.

Today's file is here: http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/episode/view.mb?episodePk.pkValue=647896

It's been a couple days since I've posted and quite a lot has happened. Yesterday's time trial stage finished in Chattanooga, Tennessee and the internet connection there was awful. I had a signal just long enough to download the GPS data, then I think the system became bogged down by the sheer volume of bike racers returning to the hotel and looking for pictures of themselves online.

Personally, I knew there'd be no pictures of myself yesterday because I didn't ride very fast. I thought I did, but I turned out to be mistaken. My confidence was boosted a bit when I found I had the second fastest time and was only 0.25 seconds out of the lead after crossing the line. Of course, the fastest 2/3 of the field had yet to finish at that point, so my position was very short lived.

The course started in a little town called Chickamauga, which was home to one of the major civil war battles. The town seems to take great pride in that. Each team was presented with a gift basket containing, among other things, little plastic replica cannons. There was a full brigade of civil war reenactment guys there firing off cannons and muskets. Each rider's start was signaled by a musket shot. Now, maybe I'm alone in this, but I fail to see how anyone can glorify an event as gruesome and horrible as the American Civil War. Memorialize it, sure, but reenactments seem to celebrate the event. Strange.

But enough of that. The stage finished in Chattanooga, which seemed like a very cool town. It's not often in my travels around the US that I end up in a place where I truly could see myself living, but I thought just that after my 18 or so hours there. It was a very atypical town for the south; the downtown seemed to be truly thriving and there was hardly a stripmall in sight. Our hotel was the old train depot for the town. The lobby was the original ornate terminal, with a few seperate, newer hotel buildings in the back. They had old passenger cars converted to guest rooms as well. None of us stayed in those, but I liked the idea. The major event of note for the evening was that lightning struck a light post in the parking lot and showered the Sierra Nevada team car with broken glass from the bulb.

Today's stage was the first of two big climbing days. I got away in the early break, but Dave Zabriskie of CSC was there as well, so we all knew it was doomed. After the first big climb, there was a series of attacks and three guys got away from our break. I tried making it across to them, but couldn't. After that I was pretty cooked and got dropped on the second to last climb of the day. I ended up finishing with the grupetto at 10:30 down on the leaders. Long day.

On the first climb of the day, while I was up front trying to hang onto the break, there was apparently quite a show back in the field that I missed out on. Some squabbling between Popovych of Discovery and Hunter of Phonak led to a full-on fist fight on the side of the road. I think those two might have discovered the missing ingredient to cycling's ultimate commercial success in the US. Riding with mouth gaurds may prove difficult, though.

That's all for the night. The last two GPS file are up online at ollerend.motionbased.com.

Another day down. We spent about 45 minutes riding through one of the nastiest thunderstorms I've ever seen. It was absolutely pouring, but it was still warm. It was kind of a strange sensation; sort of like taking a warm shower. But not the relaxing sort of shower. I'm talking about the kind of shower that's shared with 120 other guys in lycra while dodging lightning strikes. You know?

But anyway, we rode really slowly almost all day long. It was a late start anyway, so that made for a very late arrival in Rome. The finishing circuits were hard and fast and Karl got another 4th place. The GPS file is online again. Here's the link: http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/episode/view.mb?episodePk.pkValue=636388

The TT is tomorrow. It looks hard. I think I'll go to sleep now.

James Brown fired the starting gun of today's race. No kidding. Just before firing the gun, he said, "uh, I feel good." I wonder if he ever gets tired of saying that? Regardless, I can't think of any better way to get a stage race started.

Also of note: about 80 miles into the stage, I was riding near the front when one of the Saunier Duval riders was handed a paper bag by one of his team staff members at the side of the road. The race wasn't going too fast at the time, but it was hot. That's important to know. So, the Saunier Duval rider sat up, started digging through the bag, and pulled out a box of orange popsicles. He then proceeded to share them with everyone around. Floyd Landis took a popsicle, so I figured it was alright to do the same. It was good. Thank you Saunier Duval rider!

Other than that, it was a pretty standard day of racing. It was really, really hard at times, and not quite so hard other times. The GPS ride file is online. Here's a direct link: http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/episode/view.mb?episodePk.pkValue=631922
Notice the overall elevation change and keep in mind that this was considered a flat stage. They only get harder over the next week.

Fellow Oregonian Aaron Olsen, who rides for the aforementioned popsicle-sharing Spanish team, got away midway through the stage with a few others and built a lead of up to 10 minutes at one point. Discovery, Lotto, Phonak, and Toyota did the work to bring everything back together, but Aaron managed to hold on until the finishing circuits. The finishing circuits, I should mention, were very tough. The climb, which we did four times, was on a rough brick road. I hung in until the last lap, but ended up in a small second group a few seconds behind the leaders. My teammate Karl Menzies, whose name I seem to mention quite often, came across in 4th place. Not bad, but he's pretty disappointed to come so close and not get the win.

And Sam, I'm doing my best to get on TV. I rode in the elevator with Phil Ligget on the way to dinner tonight and slipped him $50 to say something good about me. Let's hope for the best.

So I'm now on the first leg of what will amount to a very, very long time on the road. I'm in Augusta Georgia awaiting the start of the Tour of Georgia tomorrow. We'll be flying direct from Atlanta to Europe next Tuesday, and I won't be home until the 23rd of May.

I got a little present in the mail before leaving home: a Garmin Edge 305 GPS cycling computer. It's the biggest cycling-dork toy ever. I wonder why the team decided to send it to me, of all people? Regardless, I'll be using it throughout the Tour of Georgia and the rides will be posted online. I've only used it a few days so far, but everything is posted at ollerend.motionbased.com. Some plug-ins may be required to view everything. It synchs up with Google Earth to create profiles and provide all sorts of other semi-useless information. It stores heartrates too, so everyone will be able to see just how bad I'll be suffering up these climbs. Looks like a great way to waste even more time on the computer.

That's all for now. I'll try to keep the updates coming a little more frequently throughout this trip.

Due to an error in a configuration file, whatever that means, this site was down for a few days and the web was spared my ramblings. But no longer.

Things have been busy lately. After telling everyone that asked for the last couple of months that I wasn't going to be at the Sea Otter this year, I found out just over a week in advance that I was mistaken. So I got to go back and pin the number 1 to my jersey as the returning winner, even though I had not actually won the circuit race last year. The road race, which I did win in '05, was cancelled this year along with the time trial. It's a shame to see what was once one of the major US stage races reduced to just a two and a half hour circuit race. Hopefully things will take a turn for the better next year. Nonetheless, the leadup to the race was a fun experience. The race itself, however, was much less thrilling. Karl Menzies proved to be our best rider by far, but unfortunately we left him alone for the finish against three Jelly Belly riders and there was little he could do. I made it to the last climb before completely exploding. Quite a contrast to the euphoria 12 months previous. Oh well. The plus side was that Health Net holds a big corporate retreat in Monterey based around the race, so we were treated to two nights of incredible dinners. Maybe the problem was that I ate too much lobster bisque the night before.

I'm back at home now, but not for long. The Tour of Georgia starts next Tuesday, and from there I'll be going straight to Europe for a month of hard racing. We'll be doing the Trophee Grimpeur, the Four Days of Dunkerque, and the Peace Race. It should be a great experience, but it'll be hard. I'm enjoying my last few days of training in Portland before heading out. It'll be a long time on the road.

That's it for now.