Cascade's come and gone. It was an alright week for the team with two stage wins, one from Jeff Louder on Saturday and another from Kirk O'Bee on Sunday. In the stage 4 crit, I made the ill-advised decision to follow an attack from Ryan Trebon on lap 2 of the 90 minute race. Navigators, who were defending the lead and ultimately won the race, just laughed collectively and let us go. They then rode only hard enough for the next 70 minutes or so to keep us from lapping the field, which I'd imagine made for a pretty easy night for them. Eventually some other teams started to chase and we were caught with 4 laps to go. Other than the prime money we picked up, all we really gained were tired legs and a bunch of time looking goofy in front of the home crowd. And, of course, I got to show off the Lead Oregon Rider jersey. Yeah!

After two nights at home, I drove up to Vancouver BC with my teammate Roman on Tuesday. We're up here for the last of the Canadian Superweek races: Gastown, Burnaby, and Delta. Gastown was crazy. It's held on the waterfront at the north edge of downtown Vancouver and it always gets huge crowds. The course has some tight corners over old, uneven brick streets. And this year it rained! I don't remember the last time I was so nervous before the start of a race. But luckily I got a front row start and stayed out of the early trouble. I actually crashed myself out at one point, but I came away largely uninjured and got back in the race. But within 2 laps of getting pushed back in, I found myself in a break that I thought might stick. I really wasn't up for trying to sprint for the win though, so I wasn't particularly disappointed when we were caught a few laps later. Another group went away shortly thereafter with Kirk O'Bee in it, and from then on my only goal was not to break another hip. Kirk ended up winning the race and I finished near the back of the chase group. Check out the cyclingnews results, I've never seen such a disproportionate ratio of starters to finishers. And one guy who's on that DNF list but really shouldn't be is Aaron Tuckerman from Rubicon. He flatted out of my group with only a couple laps remaining, but he put in a pretty incredible race before that.

Thursday was the Giro di Burnaby (why the faux-european names?) The rain held off and it was much safer. A break went, I wasn't in it, and Kirk won again. Thank you Kirk!

Tour de Delta (there it is again) starts tonight with a 700 m (as in meter!) hillclimb. Finishing times are generally about a minute and a half. Then there's a crit tomorrow night and a road race Sunday. The forecast calls for rain all weekend. There must be a more sensible way to make a living, right?

So I promised a link to the podcast from the KBOO Bike Show last Wednesday. Here it is at PortlandTransport. Overall I was pretty happy with the way it turned out. The hosts, Ayleen and Tori, were great to work with. I really wasn't too sure what to expect going in, but they seemed genuinely interested in the competitive side of cycling and had some really good questions to ask as well. After the first 20 minutes of basic discussion about bike racing, they started taking calls and to their apparent surprise there were actually people on the line. The first caller, a guy from "team beer," seemed intent on making me look like a pompous elitist by pointing out how inclusive his team was and, by extension, how exclusive the rest of us are. But it turned into a great chance to segue into a discussion on local racing and how easy it is to get involved. It also gave an opportunity to distance bike racers from the full pro-team-kit wearing "Bike Path World Champions." Those guys drive everyone nuts and give all bike racers a bad name. Don't be one.

Later that morning, Evan Elken and I met our coach, Jeannette Rose, out at the Alpenrose Velodrome to play with our time trial bikes a bit. We were hoping to find the place empty so we could do our thing without being in anyone's way, but we ended up right in the middle of the Bike Central team practice session. Sorry guys, hopefully our ineptitude at least provided you with a few laughs. We toyed with my position a little, so now I won't be slow in time trials anymore. I also managed not to clip a pedal and fall off the track. That would have been embarrassing.

Why so slow?

Now I'm over in Sunriver waiting for the start of Cascade on Wednesday. Adrienne was here for a couple days with me, but I'm on my own now to mix with all of the Californians and their tanned trophy wives. I've been feeling great and getting some good rides in around the area, including a beautiful ride up to Newberry Crater this morning. Pictures are below. That's enough for now.

Paulina Lake, in the middle of the Newberry Crater.

Mt. Bachelor and the South Sister, looking north from the Newberry Crater.

Another view from the top.

I'm going to be on the radio! This Wednesday, July 4th, at 9:00am I'll be on the Portland based KBOO Bike Show. The show is titled, "Is Lycra really necessary? A discussion of the sportier side of bike culture." It should be interesting. The show will be live on 90.7FM in the Portland area and they apparently stream live at kboo.fm as well. A podcast will be available shortly afterward at PortlandTransport.com (which, I should mention, is an excellent site in its own right.) I'll get a link up here when it's posted. So, there are clearly plenty of opportunities to hear me getting taken to task for our collective lack of fashion sense. Check it out.

On the racing front, It's been a pretty light season for me thus far. After Georgia, I got a short break before slaving away on the front for Nathan O'Neill in New Mexico at the Tour of the Gila. He won the opening TT and then the rest of the team spent the next four days defending the lead. At the end of May, the Mt. Hood Classic in Hood River followed basically the same script. Nathan lost the jersey for two days, but got it back just in time to make us ride the front for the longest, hottest, hardest day of the race. Not that I'm complaining, it's a lot of fun getting to defend a race lead. Nathan tends to give plenty of opportunity for that.

Other than that, I've been pretty busy getting beat up on by local fast guys. Aaron Tuckerman of Rubicon has been consistently outsprinting me up at Mt. Tabor, and his teammate Bradley Paine just made me look foolish out at last week's PIR training race. It's great to have plenty of fast guys to race with at home; it keeps me sharp. But it'd be nice if they'd let me win sometimes for the sake of my fragile, fragile ego.

And on the topic of crushing defeats, I just missed out on the Oregon State Road Championship yesterday down by Eugene. Aaron Olson put the fear in everyone by showing up in his full T-Mobile kit, and Barry Wicks and Ryan Trebon came out on their freakishly tall Kona bikes as well. I got in the break with them along with Evan Elken of Jittery Joe's and yet another local fast guy: Chris Hamilton. But alas, my chicken-dance-sprint was no match Evan's more practiced version. First loser again. Thanks to Kenji Sugahara for the photo.


Next up is the Cascade Classic in Bend a week from Wednesday. Maybe I'll post updates from there. Maybe.