Bronze Baby!

Whoa… Home again! There is so much I want to share about my trip to Trinidad, but I am still in transit back home to Indiana so I must keep it pretty brief. I got the bronze medal at the Southern Games track Omnium in Trinidad!!! Jimmy Watkins, the US Sprint and Keirin national champ, took the gold for a pretty amazing weekend for the red white and blue boys. The country and the people in it were amazing, so friendly and hospitable that I made friends with nearly everyone I met it seemed. Once I get home I will put up a proper post about the week in the Caribbean, but for now check out some of these photos!

Some of the internation crew of racers and undoubtedly friends for the rest of my life.

Nice view of the mountains from the airport.

My main man Matthias from Germany flashin' those Trini's! We cleaned house on some prizes...

Bennet the match sprinter returns! Somehow I pulled out 4th in the tourney! More on that in the next post...

Mingling with some locals at the track, I think they were part of the halftime show.

My friends Marloe from Jamaica and Richard from England and I checking out the track.

Grass Track racing in the Islands is super popular and a blast to compete in. I found life in the Caribbean to be very relaxing.

fixed gear fever

http://www.fixedgearfever.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=908

this is a power squad if ive ever seen one... can't wait to meet the new guys! I'm a track sprinter in my soul (but the skinny ankles really held me back from going big there) so I always get along well with those fellas, and it sounds like we'll have a deadly combination of strengths down there! It finally sunk in that I am leaving for the carribean in the morning... this rules, bigtime.

Metal Omens.

Sometimes its good to be wrong. I thought Atlanta was the home of Krunk music, I fully anticipated seeing plenty of stanky leg and ‘Joose’ going on, I couldn’t have been further from the truth. Atlanta is METAL. Full out tattoo, leather pants crazy screamin hillbillies metal!

My first experience came when I went to a local bike shop called ‘No Brakes’ to build up my masi for Trinidad. As soon as I walked in the guy who runs the place, Two-tone (very metal nick name), was drinking a beer and absolutely shredding some manowar (known in the guiness book of records as the loudest band on the planet) – this was clearly my kind of place. So we shredded plenty of sweet tunes, glued tubies and sorted my new machine out.

For dinner we went to this place called Vortex (picured above), which is sort of a heavy metal burger joint. Also amazing. All the waitresses had full sleeves of tattoos and they played only heavy music, extremely loud on the speakers. We ran into a chic who turned out to be the girlfriend of the bassist from Mastadon, which completely blew my mind. It was like having someone tell you they were dating God.

As luck would have it heavy metal karaoke was going on next door (pictured above) so we popped over to a packed house full of metal fans wailing away poorly at the mic, again my world was totally blown out of the water. I was planning on doing an oldie but goody, Dio’s Holy Diver, but the line was too long and I needed to get some rest.

Jeff and I in the graveyard hunting Mr. Zombie...

For the coup de gras, I found out Rob Zombie was in town filming a horror movie literally 2 blocks from Jeff and Leighs place where I am staying!!!! WHAT? I have been jamming that dudes music since middle school, I HAD to meet him. So after metal karaoke we popped over to this graveyard and tried to find him with the film crew… unfortunately they had the night off or something, so no Zombie yet, but I’m still here a few days so I’m gonna find him!

Training is going very well too. I got behind the motor with Jeff and hammered away at a tiny 80 inch gear, I’m feeling like I actually have some snap back. While at the track I also had the chance to work with a program Jeff is involved with called Project Adventure Kids, which takes young guys who have had a hard go of it and helps them get back on their feet. It was very cool for me to work with these guys, get them excited about competing and hopefully build up their confidence and team work skills up.

Leaving Wednesday for Trinidad!

It IS about the bike, Lance!

Shameless self promotion - thanks Marco for the awesome stickers! Thanks Fred for the tubies!

Thanks TJ and Masi for the frame and the rush delivery!

Its times like these where a rider has to rely on his support network of friends and sponsors. A suprise exciting trip to race in a foreign country is what this is all about for me, but it has a host of challenges to meet - passports, foreign racing permission letters, putting the bike together quickly and properly etc... luckily I have a host of good people in my corner and I am almost 100% ready to roll. I leave for Atlanta in a few minutes where I will be staying with Jeff Lightnin' Hopkins to re-adjust to the track racing and work with some youngins' on their track skills.

I'm not bringing my laptop to Trinidad, but I will update with new as soon as I can!

Photo Spectacular

A good mix of photos from Nantahala State Park with the Marian College cycling team where I am hanging out currently and helping guide some training, and some from Kenda team camp just a few weeks back now.

You cant beat the view from the our giant 3 story mansion on a lake secluded in the mountains! The dutch have a saying something to the effect of falling with your rear end "in the butter." Seems to fit the situation!

Brett and I putting in some time on the front.

Liebo preparing for some serious chamois time... or something.

Givin' it a little curry up Paris Mountain!

The group that rallied up Paris Mountain at training camp, plus DS Todd Lee (who basically ROCKS at everything) and Tennyson our mechanic, who impressed both with his style and his wrenching. Who doesnt want a mechanic who dresses 'metal?'

Scottie and Jake jammin' it good, and me pretending not to hurt... they told me we were going to do it in the big ring for the camera, so I did, but I think they were just messing with me, suckas!

Chasing Jake "Bobcat Goldwaithe" in the lovely spring weather.

King in the castle! Pretty cool for a team photo shoot, we used the shoe shining chair in our hotel.

Road Warrior: at it again

A week flies when your relaxing, and I am already back on the road putting the miles in on the bike and in the truck. I made it down to Nantahala national park in North Carolina with the Marian College team for their spring break training camp yesterday with only a few directional mishaps in the mountains. I am pretty much prepared equipment and organizational wise to leave the country, so now I can focus on my training after a nice rest back home to prepare my mind and body to win big down south.
My good friend Geraint Parry is running a very quality site that organizes the Bloomington racing community that 'spawned' me, and I was very honored to do an interview with him - so check it out!
The Marian guys are riding exceptionally well, I was pretty blown away by many of them. An extra big shout out to Isaiah Newkirk, who went completely ballistic and rode away from no less than 4 collegiate and junior national champions on a mountainside - leaving us going, who the hell is that? The terrain is perfect, very steep at points, so good to prepare your top end racing speed. No photos at the moment, but I have charged up the batteries to I'll be sure to throw a few up soon.

camp part deux

Camp has finished up and was a tremendous success on all fronts. In a span of four days we managed to bond bigtime as a family of riders, support staff and sponsors – previewed the nationals climb (Rytlewski pretty much killed me) and received an entire jeep Cherokee full of swag!

Camp is the only time of the year the entire team is together, normally we travel in 8-10s so having the full 30+ people together at least once is important. Team management chose not to spend a ton of time on the bikes, but rather a lot of time off the bikes doing fun stuff together as a group. We played a rousing game of flag football in the rain and mud, which turned quickly into a full scale battle; as well as plenty of meetings, team dinners and sponsor presentations.

I also got a chance to give the fellas a good laugh and food for stories for another long season, by channeling my "inner Brian Matter" and busting out a full scale assault of a dance called "the stanky leg" on our last night together. It was pretty well out of my hands, Marco went to the DJ and got a special request for the song, "this one goes out to Bennet van der Cougar Hunter!" This whole place turns and looks at me, the whole team is cracking up (thanks for the sweet nick name fellas) and it really only left one choice, dance! Poorly? Yes. With Gusto? Yes. Go ahead and youtube "stankyleg" and then imagine my 6'2" 170 lbs of bike rider doing this.

I'm back home (Bloomington IN) right now relaxing and enjoying the first days of spring at my parents house. It's great to be off of the road finally and seeing my close friends and the fam. Though its a pretty good haul away from my next destinations, it is important to re-charge the mental as well as physical batteries.

So heres the big news.... I'm going to race in Trinidad! My friends from the T-town track got in touch with me, and after running it by my team I'm super pumped to go represent down south! I don't have a ton of details at the moment, but it will be one day of crit racing, and two days of track racing on a grass track (think super tight packed - short grass, like a golf green.) Another good reason to be in Bloomington at the moment... I need to put the old trackie back together and go get a yellow fever/hep B/malaria shot from my doc! I'm very honored that they would choose me to come down to this race and can't wait to see the country. I have been overseas before, but never somewhere tropical!