Damn. Overslept again. Been meaning to do these 2-3 hour rides the last few days and cannot get myself into the spandex in the morning.

The Veloshop is crazy busy like usual. Building up cross tubulars, ordering tons of product for the kids. Cyclocross fever is still in full swing. If I had to summarize: Chris King, track bikes, Spooky brakes, Phil Wood and, every color Velocity rim imaginable.

There was a nice little article in the Willamette Week about cyclocross this morning.

Quote: “Erik Tonkin sits hunched on a metal stool, his carved thighs hidden beneath loose gray pants.”

Meow.

Road season thoughts are creeping into my head. Stage racing, team bikes, sponsorships, personal priorities. I’ve got big road season fantasies. I always kinda do this time of year. I think I am fast at cross and that means I should be fast at road racing. Well, bad knees (I just can’t seem to do more than a couple hours without debilitating pain) and poor endurance has kept me from any real road racing glory. Not to add the Veloshop obligations. It is damn hard to find the energy to run the shop after a 4 hour ride and vice versa. Who wants to ride for 4 hours after building wheels for 10? Me, I guess.

Ok, I’ll stop the whining. I’m just kicking myself for not getting on the bike these last 2 days.

And, the verdict is in. I’m can’t be vegan cause I’m a fast bike racer. Your right, I’m not vegan anymore. I gave it up for the performance enhancing benefits of beef. Ha!

Lets talk about Roberto Heras for a moment. WTF? Everybody is getting busted for doping! The only good thing that could come out of that is, they have NOT tested his B sample yet and, if it (the B sample) comes out clean then that may bode well for the loveable Tyler Hamilton.

One can hope right?

Oh, I almost got in a fight with a commuter a couple nights ago. I blew a stop sign blocks from my house and this guy said “nice stop jerk” or something and I instinctively gave him the finger. Not that I go looking for trouble or anything. But, he looks back and says something like “Oh yeah! Bring that shit back here!” So I was like, Ok. I figured, what the hell. If some hippie on a bike wants to harass me for blowing a stop sign and then wants to bring it on…

See, I have this thing about following through. I really loathe macho posturing. Usually I just ignore it but, I like to stand up for myself you know? I’d rather not have a story like “Man I WOULD have beat them up if they would have turned around.” I’d rather actually step up.

“jigga what?”

Yeah, too much Kanye. (it must be all the meat I started eating! it is making me aggro!)

As I am turning around I realise how silly it would be for me to even get in an arguement about blowing a stop sign with another cyclist and I turn around again and keep riding up towards my house. He starts pursuing me and preaching and shouting about how we need to respect the law and karma and ends with, “I hope you get fucking hit!”

Geez!

Cross Crusades race this Sunday. Shannon and Eric are going to put the hurt on me. My little goal will be to stick to them like glue. No matter what the cost. If they are putting in consistent top 10 efforts in the UCI races then that is something to aspire to. I’ve got to step up to that level of speed.

Here are a couple of things I have been struggling with: carrying a line of bicycles in the shop and racing on another (non-veloshop non-vanilla) cycling team.

I hate selling complete bikes. Like bikes off the show floor bikes. I like putting together custom builds for people. They choose the frame and components, I usually build up some sweet wheels and spec out the dream bike. But it is kinda hard to keep up with demand and sell bikes sight unseen. Plus, I don’t get the good pricing that bigger shops do that carry big name brands. My pricing is much higher on bikes and build kits and I often undercut myself to keep it a good deal for my clients. But, a couple of my teammates have bought frames or complete bikes from other shops and I have been like “hey, I could have set you up with that!” but the appeal is actually having the damn bike in your shop so people can see it and touch it. Pick it up and say “yeah that’s like 18 pounds…”. So, I am contemplating buying a few complete cross bikes for next season. But, they must be bikes I would ride. I cannot sell something I would not be proud to race on.

And, racing for another team…

Well, I don’t have any Veloshop teammates racing with me on the road this year. It is pretty rough playing solo racer in a long road race. It would be nice to have a few teammates that can race at my level. So my mind wanders. Ideally I would find a team that is pretty serious and would be interested in helping with some racing expenses. The flip side is that I like doing my own thing and I think a lot of people respect me for it. I think I’ll be starting the season in my Veloshop colors and trying to finish the first few road races in the front group and just go from there. If it feels like I really need a team to ride with I’ll weigh my options. Maybe I can find a team for the bigger stage races and just do like a composite team thing if I can make time for the stage racing.

I’m off. Got to work so I can pay for this mess of a racing career.

A quick race report.

Muck. Snotty, mucky mud.

I drove down to Eugene Sunday morning after getting a few hours of sleep (loud upstairs neighbor). Mike Hilbrant, Beth Chase and Brian and I arrived with plenty of time to check out the course, practice and fake like we were warming up in the rain.

Our new teammate Sho cleaned up the C category race and then we got to see Nicole Nestlen take the women’s B race from the start. Impressive.

A cluster of Veloshop B category riders used this race to try out the Elite category with mixed success. I think it was a good test for them.

I had to set up my 29er mountain bike as a faux cross bike on Saturday when my cyclocross bikes did not show up in the UPS Friday. Guess I’ll get them on Monday or something.

It was so rad, rocking the full fenders and straight bars, I even spent an hour the night before cutting the outer knobs off an old pair of my Schwalbe tyres. Gave myself a blister!

I felt great during the race. I took the hole shot and led the first lap until the mudpit section where I was riding everything and a few people passed me running it. I moved back in to the front with Chris Brandt and then attacked him around the backside of the course and kept a gap for the rest of the race.

I had a few mechanicals in the last laps. Chain suck, derailleur getting jammed in the hardest gear, more chain suck. I had to stop and yank the chain out of itself more than once. I thought my rear brake was f’ed up too but, I think it was just packed with mud the whole time.

To be fair, I think I had a big advantage on the mountain bike. It would have been a different race if I was on a cross bike. It does weigh about 10 pounds more than my gucci cross bikes though.

Hey, I won some socks for Brian!!

I am SO glad to be home.

The trip to the east coast was amazing. I got to experience some different and challenging racing. There is a LOT of room to improve and get faster but, I achieved my first little goal of a top 20 UCI finish. The top 15 is going to be really tough to break into.

Visiting my best friends (Sarah and Thomas) in NYC was great, I have not spent much time with either of them in a long while, due in no small part to a falling out over ex-date drama. We never really did get to talk about a bunch of stuff but, I think maybe it was better to leave things as they are and just enjoy each others company for the week I was there.

I am back into the grind at the Veloshop the work is so damn satisfying. Everyday I just have to go and work for myself. It rules. I am really excited about building up some tubular cross wheels for my teammate Steven Hunter.

I’m right back to training. Though the weather this week has been AMAZING! Windy as hell and raining non-stop. I was anticipating my cross bikes to be back via UPS today. no dice. I may have to skip the Eugene cyclocross race this Sunday and maybe I’ll take my road bike out. Maybe ride down there or something. Or just go and heckle, or ride my 29er. I should ride my 29″ though I stuck some cross tyres on it and went down to the Sellwood cross practice and just felt goofy on it. Maybe I should just rock it mountain bike style.

My Veloshop teammates are really stepping up. Take look at this impressive photo. Beth has been putting it down. Gettin ‘er done. There is lots of Veloshop team motivation right now. Mike Hildbrant bought a team van to carpool us all to races. Brian, Steven, Patrick, Matt Hall and others are uprgrading to elite cyclocross this year and next. That is really impressive. All these cat 4 roadies are pretty dynamite in the mud.

Bridgette Stoick has been impressive this year too. The quality of women’s elite cyclocross has gotten so much better since last season. Teams like Velo Bella have infused highly talented women racers into the scene and Rhonda Mazza and Bridgette are having to really fight for thier results. They both get huge shout outs for finishing the USGP #3 at Gloscester.

Man, that race was epic.

Ok, gotta run, people keep calling me on my cellphone to haggle with me about bike parts in the shop. I should just get back, I’ll post more of this re-cap later.

USGP #4 wrapped up yesterday in 60+ degree weather! What a crazy weekend. I am really, really pleased with my race on Saturday.

I thought I had an amazing race on Sunday.

I’m going to make a long story short, mainly cause I am exausted and really need to take a nap. I am sitting in Sarah’s apartament in Brooklyn again. Waiting to meet her for an early dinner and then head off to JFK airport.

The race on Sunday was awesome. My kind of course, lots of off camber turns, hard sections that I could ride and make time up on other people forced to run them and, really fast flat sections. A “power” course it was called.

Well, per usual, I started dead last. Now typically it would not be that big of a deal but, there were like 80+ starters. I had a great start and rode a smooth race. I was catching and passing people left and right the entire time. I caught this group of 6 in the last lap and attacked them right away and finished my race up really, really strong.

“Man, that was totally a top twenty race!” I KNEW I was in the money!

So, I’m all pumped and get changed and head over to collect and check the results. I’m scanning the top 20, nope not in there, scan the top 30, nope not there either, hmm…

…34th! What the?

There you go. My BEST race this season was also my worst placing! Ha! I felt a hundred times more confident and solid in my race on Sunday than I have at ANY other race so far.

If you look at the riders in this field, it is basically the EXACT same field we are going to have at the Cyclocross National championships in Rhode Island this December. So 34th is not pathetic.

But, I have to say I am dissappointed. It is truly frustrating still having to race from the back. I have GOT to score myself some UCI points this season. I think I am going to head back out to the East coast the weekend before nationals and try to snag some at a couple smaller UCI races. I do have 6 USGP points so now I can at least battle it out for a top 20 USGP finish. I am really motivated right now to step my racing up a notch.

Ok, enough about racing.

I miss Portland TONS. I’ll be in around midnight tonight. Then up at 7am Tuesday morning for a brutal mountain bike ride in forest park.

Training, soy mochas, bikework.

Snow.

Yeah. Still here. The big apple.

So, it IS true, Portland has the best espresso. The best bike culture, the best racing scene, the best organic produce, the best coffee shops. What can I say? We are spoiled. At least I know it. I used to think I was this super tough big city kid when I was living in San Francisco. Now I can’t handle all the people and hustle-bustle! Portland has turned me into a softie!

I drove up from Newark, Delaware Monday afternoon and made it to Sarah and Thomas’ house. They have a little apartament in Prospect Heights with our friend Johnny Mayhem in Brooklyn. That is where I am staying. It is all of 4 blocks from Prospect park, a nice little park, closed to traffic most of the time and filled with little footpaths and “forest” trails. It was pouring all day Tuesday and I dutifully hopped on the Vanilla and made it up into the park for a couple hours of sluggish practice. Stairs abound in the park and I made good use.

My old friend Mark Beattie gave me a call and said he would meet me up in the park for a ride. We meet up after it starts raining really hard (I had been riding a couple hours already) and getting cold out. He did not bring his bike, I guess it was farther to go home and get it than to just head straight to the park from his girlfriend’s house.

Mark Beattie was THE person I hung out with when I first got into cross racing. We would scam rides and make our way up to Tacoma and Steliacoom as well as doing the Crusades series races 4 years ago. He let me borrow those Simon Burney cyclocross books for a while and I just devoured them. Mark is a true friend. He was a wrench at the Performance out in Beaverton and at the CCC for a while and would help out in the Veloshop a bunch when I was really struggling. Donating parts and labor ALL the time. He even helped me fanagle a warranty return on a frame I cracked at Mt. Tabor race one year. He was totally pro: had 2 single speed bikes at the races (granted they were frenchy POS bicycles and falling apart all the time) and I thought he was nuts at the time. “Why don’t you just ride with gears? You crazy!” Little did I know…

I got us lost in the park and we eventually met back up at Sarah’s. We walked to Gorilla coffee where I bought him a coffee and we chatted. I remembered that he is one of the founding Veloshop team members too. Mark B, old school, the original pink kit! I think Ira Ryan and Bridgette Stoick are only a couple of the current riders who rocked the scary pink kit.

Wednesday morning, I am putting my spandex on and Sarah’s cat Mimi nuzzles me and then just LAUNCHES up onto my shoulders and refuses to move! I really wanted to put a little leash on Mimi and strut around NYC like a rich old lady walking her cat. She is too cute. I usually don’t wax about kids and animals, sorry.

Once I pryed her off, I rode over the Manhattan bridge and through the city to Central park! Like I was saying before, now I am a total softie. Riding through Manhattan was horrible! There is no way I would be able to handle living in the city. I should have stopped and taken photos of the traffic I had to ride through. It took me an hour and a half to ride from Brooklyn, over the Manhattan bridge and up into Central park! It was pretty funny. I could not handle having to do that everyday to just get some quality training time in.

Once I got into Central park I spun for a few minutes. There were some roadies doing thier thing. Lots of MERLIN bicycles here! The park is packed! There are literally people everywhere! It is hard to find a quiet spot to yourself. Dodging runners and walkers and carriages and piles of horseshit. I really had to pee and it became painfully clear I would have to go home to pee. It has been frigid here. (ok, I get cold when it is 60 degrees out.) It was biting (40 degreesish) and really windy out. So, I turned around. I got a little lost on the way back but, eventually wandered back to the Manhattan bridge and back to the apartament. Took a bath, shaved the legs, headed back out on the subway to Manhattan to meet Sarah for an early dinner.

VP2. That means Vegetarian Paradise 2. Mango mock chicken. Mmmm. Oh, yeah. What is the deal with nobody being Vegan anymore? I feel like I am the only one left. Again, Portland is a veggie haven but, all of my old friends are not living it anymore. In NYC, Portland, wherever! I remember something cute before I left. Erik Tonkin leans over to me and asks, “So you are still Vegan right?” Yep, I am. “Yeah? Make sure you get enough protein. It is important!” It was a sincere gesture of concern. Yes, Vegans are at risk of not getting enough of a lot of nutrients. And before I go on a tirade, yes, most Vegans and vegetarians I know are “bad” vegans. It truly takes effort to eat right. Add being a serious athlete or a really, really busy person to that and it becomes really, REALLY hard to keep on top of a healthy diet.

What is the point? I think it becomes hard (and expensive!) to keep up a healthy vegan lifestyle. Thats got to be the big reason people kinda fade out of the lifestyle. It actually gets tiring and stressful sometimes having to fanagle eating right.

That is why I’ve switched to espresso and cookies. Quick and cheap. Keep you going for days on end.

Ok. I am ending this post. Been working on it for too long.

Got a little news from the home front. My housemate-Veloshop teammate Brian Ellin ripping his rear derailleur off while leading his race. Ouch. I read some of thier race reports, seems like cross back home is going really well though a bunch of people are having more than thier fair share of mechanicals and flats. (c’mon, you can get away with 2 BAR if you have good technique!) I just woke up in NYC Tuesday morning and it is STILL pouring. We are going to walk down and have bagels and tofutti+espresso drinks. I think Sarah will head off to work and I’ll be left to get on my bike and do like 20 laps of Prospect Park. Or just head down to the coffee shop and drink a few Soy Mochas. Hmmm…

Woke up early this Sunday and headed up to the Wissahickon race east of Philly. A UCI cat 2 race today as the first World Cup race is also today (but in Europe.) I just checked out those results, I really, really like the Petr Dlask jersey thing. I don’t remember, did’nt he get dropped from his team for no good reason recently? What’s up with Jon Page? Mechanical? Bad day?

Well, back to my BAD day. I woke up and felt great! Got to the venue and felt great! Great!

The course was a lot like the PIR race Brian and I just put on. Flat, fast, a little sand section, lots of off camber, not much deep mud. Again, I got shafted for the start, last row. Then, as Tim Johnson (he gots no UCI points for a call up) was squeezing his way up towards the front rows he got caught by the UCI officials and they made him go back behind me! Oh, the irony.

My race was brilliant! A wicked fast start, with Johnson nipping at my heels the whole way. I made my way up into the top 15 and all of a sudden this guy comes barreling at me and bounces offa me and into a fence! Tim J. uses that to go around me and I get right on his wheel and we drive it up and around a few people. I bump shoulders with this Richard Sachs rider a bunch and then as I am passing him in the sand section he actually tries to push me off my bike! I keep it upright and ride ahead of him “Hey, you can elbow me but you can’t take your hands off the bars and push me!” I shout kinda laughing. I’ve lost Tim J. at this point and ride past an audibly pissed Ben Turner (“shit!”) and into the top 10. Then out of nowhere the Sachs kid makes this huge effort on the road section just to bodycheck himself right into me trying to crash me into a fence! I keep it upright again and look back, “If you are ready to play dirty, I’ll play dirty.” “I’m not playing dirty, I’M JUST FASTER!” he hollers at me.

I laughed and rode away from him.

I could not believe he even said that.

I just don’t take myself that seriously. Can you even imagine hearing that in a bike race? I mean really, what kinda mental state are you in to bark that out? Especially after trying to crash me out a few times to no avail, and still not getting around me. After the race, it turns out he is Justin Spinelli. Apparently he rode in the Giro di Italia for Saeco and is a big jerk at local east coast races. (so I hear, no offense.)

Oh, ego. Oh, testosterone.

Well, I was pretty sure he was going to punch me at some point so I just raced away from him. Kinda wierd to think that he rode in the Giro and now he is getting spanked by a transgendered vegan cookie eating mother fucker. Ha!

Well, back to the race. And really, I’ll make it short, reading about racing can only be so fun. I promise I’ll gossip about doing it and making out in a minute. I bridge up to these fast Fort-GPOA and Rock lobster riders and “Lets work, I REALLY wanna drop this Sachs guy.” “Yeah!” they shout back. We work really hard and then…

…I bonk! With 2 laps left in the race I go from 9th place to 20th place. In 2 laps! You can NOT imagine how embarassed I felt. I was letting myself down, my sponsors down, my friends down. I counted the 11 people as they just waltzed past me. I had nothing. I was finished. I wanted to quit right there and hobble off to the car and sob.

But, I did’nt. I knew what was hapening and as much as it sucked, I had to finish it up strong. I would call it my “black day” but, I think that is racist.

Hey, 20th place, I got my race fee back, $30!

After the race I wandered over to get my $ and met Mark Mcormack. He was a really nice guy! You deal with this stressed out meat heads (see above) so often in bicycle racing that meeting someone with a pleasant personality was a breath of fresh air. We introduced each other and he told me to eat more than a banana for breakfast next time. Noted. Lesson learned.

Everyone on the east coast has been really stoked to see Vanilla out there putting it down. I heard random people I have never met screaming “Portland!” “Go Stumptown!”. I met Richard Sachs too! He was really nice. I got to watch him race in the masters race. Sacha once told me he was impressed that I can run a bike shop and race seriously, I think it is pretty impressive that Richard can STILL be a framebuilder and STILL show up and race! I hope that when I am a little older, my shop is still around and I am still involved with racing in one way or another. I really like it when I see Sacha racing his SS, you have to be in touch with the people you are building bikes for.

So. I’m in NYC right now after driving up to stay with Sarah and Thomas in Brooklyn.

So, making out? I got nothing. I miss my ladyfriend. For reals! We’ve been calling each other everyday and it is really nice. I did take my mom out to dinner at “Homegrown” in Newark. It is a restaurant that this woman I used to fool around with in the darkroom in highschool during 6th period photo class opened up a few years ago with her husband.

Thats it, thats all you get. That is the closest I’ve gotten to fooling around.

Now I am off to get Thai food.

No golf, no “baby victory salutes“. I hope Ryan or Barry never, EVER do that…

Woke up this morning and rallied my mom to head north a bit towards Granogue. (GRA-NO with a frenchy accent, please.) Things did not go well between us today, she is my mom, she drives me nuts. And, today was NOT the day to drive me nuts. We stayed up late watching that Adam Sandler football movie. The Final yard or something. Ugh. You ever think about those guys making that movie, did they ever stop during filming and just think how f’ing ridiculous it was that they were making it? Or were they all too busy dude-ing out to let thier guard down and think about anything? I think the latter…

Well, I was busy dude-ing out today. Like I said, the Granogue course was very hilly and super off camber, with a couple runup sections and slippery, slippery mud throughout. You would climb to the top of this witch’s tower and ride around the back side of it and then drop down the front of it, sliding kinda out of control the whole time.

I got shafted on the start per usual, starting far behind the callup. The course started on this road section and I drilled it to the top of the road, throwing elbows and shoulders the whole way up. Pissed a couple of people off “Hey!” “We are gonna take you out! @#*%!!” I kinda thought, hey, we are racing, I’m agressive, you are losing. I got spooked for a second and wondered if someone was going to throw a punch, it was really dicey with all the slick mud.

Well, my race went ok, I hooked up with a group racing for 14th place and got spit off the back of it in the last lap. I was cooked. Ended up 17th and $47 richer. Got passed by Adam hodges Myerson with a few laps to go and he was riding FAR better lines than I was. So I copied his lines and watched him ride away. I think he got 11th. I rode better after that. I did not crash and did not make any major mistakes, I think I even pressured a couple people into making errors and crashing out when they were chasing me which, is totally fair. It is all a game of tactics. I don’t really like people on my wheels resting in my draft so I would take super hard lines or change my line at the last possible second to throw them off.

I have a ways to go. My technique is average, my fitness is average.

Well, I miss Portland. It is crazy depressing here. Delaware is pretty, in a New Englandy kinda way. But it is so, so bad here. I spent 2 hours looking for anything healthy to eat tonight, walking up and down Main st. (settling on a crappy salad and hummus) in the heart of the University of Delaware. UofD sucks. It is a frat-party college. Did I mentioned I went to high school here? Those were hands down the worst years of my life. I feel like the people and culture here is crazy. That is what I get living in this little socially conscious bubble on the west coast. I spend so much time taking care of my body and trying to keep healthy that is freaks me out that people don’t even know what Vegan is. I even asked where any veg friendly food was at the hopelessly small Co-op here and they sent me down to: “Spanky’s. Its new”. “Spankys?” I asked. “Yeah, they have a raw-bar.” A raw bar? I got my hopes up thinking hmmm, ok maybe there is some progressive thinking in town. Nope, raw sushi bar (not that sushi is ever cooked). Y’know, raw fish is vegetarian. Well, I guess to some people it is.

Sorry, I’m pissed! It is kinda ridiculous. It makes me sad. Anything besides almond-pumpkin-lattes, new cars and consumerism is beyond most people here.

Sean Woosley hooked me up with some vegan cookies after the race. Thanks dawg. woof! He drove up from his new home in DC.

I’m feeling the Vanilla love too. More than anyother bike I noticed, people would stop and stare at my bikes. When I rode past the Richard Sachs and IF team cars they stopped talking and stared at my bikes. I’m not full of myself really! Just passing along the facts and I am damn proud of Sacha. His work is beautiful. He called me after the race too to ask how it went. That was sweet, I had a whirlwind few days before I took off and did not get a chance to say good-bye to a few people.

No Shannon today, no Tonkin or Mazza either. Just Barry, Ryan, Sean Woosley and I representing for the hometeam. Ryan won. I was nowhere near getting lapped. That feels nice.

Ok, my head is spinning, I found free WIFI inside a 24hour Dunkin Donuts. Watching the college kids pound pastries and coffee working on thier schoolwork. No really, my head is spinning, I think I have vertigo or something.

I hope I get a reputation as the rider that elbows everybody. heh-heh.