Author: kennettron

Final days of Cascade report to come.  But first:

It’s 2:26 am Kennett time.  11:26 am in Munich.  I began my day at 5:00 am Kennett time (pacific coast), meaning I’ve been out and about for 21 and a half hours.  Is that right?  I may need another coffee to wrap my head around all this arithmetic.  I’m sitting across from three cappuccino machines in the Lufthansa terminal, gate G-04.  So far I’ve only had a cappuccino and a latte macchiato.  I’m not sure what the difference is, but I’m already typing faster right now than when I started four minutes ago.  In fact, I’ve written the last five lines in just 72 seconds.  I’m gonna go get another coffee and see how fast I can get my words per minute up to.  Hold on a second…

Okay, that’s better.  I chose an espresso dropped in a hot chocolate.  Just barely fits in the cup.  I stopped by a few food stations earlier to gaze at the sausages, pastries, and hot sandwiches behind what I assumed was bulletproof glass.  Forgoing the tasty morsels due to their high cost, I wandered my way over here to this coffee station, where I’ve built up a good sweat from all the hot liquid and/or caffeine that I’ve consumed.  My legs are sticking to the reclining, pleather chair I’m lounging in.  I was wearing long pants a minute ago but I had to strip down to my short shorts and DeFeet compression socks.  Sorry Joe, I know it’s not pro.  Welp, that settles it.  The guy at a table near by must want a competition because he’s had at least four coffees now.  My latest drink is getting a bit low.  Maybe time for a refill.

Holy shit I’m starting to wake up.  I got a Morrochino or something.  It tastes like a mocha.  I might just chug this one since I’m a coffee behind this bald German guy.  Done.  That’s number four for me.  It’s 2:38 am Kennett time now.  Four coffees in 12 minutes.  That’s one coffee every three minutes.  I have another hour and 12 minutes before I have to board my plane (72 minutes in total), leaving me time to drink another 24 coffees.

People are staring at my short shorts.  Here in Germany?  I thought they might fit in.  Maybe it’s my jittering legs, twitching like the sweating flank of a horse, trying to rid its backside of pesky flies on a hot summer day.

Oh man, I need another coffee.  Things are starting to come into focus finally.  The letters on my screen are HUGE!!

Now we’re getting serious.  Café au latte plus a shot of espresso.  This one counts as two coffees.  I just glanced at a TV screen and it was advertising something called Kuntstragen.  To be precise, the commercial showed the square root of “Kunstragen” to the second power (with the math signs and all).  Wouldn’t this just be one Kuntstragen?  Maybe that’s the point of the commercial, to draw the viewer’s attention towards the problematic redundancy of cluttered German life.  A society that prides itself on efficiency and order still picks at the nagging flaws of unproductive distractions.  The evidence is laid out here right in front of me: three identical cappuccino machines sitting next to each other when one would get the job done.  Although, when it comes to cappuccino machines, one can never be too careful.  Three is probably the safest bet, since the other two could break down at any time, their buttons subject to catastrophic damage caused by their jacked up users jamming the espresso button harder and harder and harder as their impatiens for their fifth, sixth, and seventh refills steadily grows.  I’m starting to feel ill now.  More coffee will make it pass.

Like any typical travel story, mine has gone astray from an early start.  I should be in bed in Zingem by now, since my flight to Brussels was supposed to drop me off at 8:30 this morning.  But I missed my first connection in Toronto, had to take a plane to Munich instead of Brussels, and then I missed my connection in Munich that was going to take me to Brussels at 11:00.  Air Canada has really been testing me today with all these missed connections and whatnot.  Not to worry though, since I have all the time in the world.  Because I have THREE GOD DAMN CAPPUCCINO MACHINES RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME AND I HAVE NO SHAME IN GETTING A SEVENTH COFFEE RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!! ARGHHHHHHH!!!!! I’M UNSTOPABLE! NOT EVEN GOD CAN FINGER ME NOW!! I’M SO CLENCHED A FLEA COULDN’T CRAWL UP IN THERE!!!! BRING IT ON LUFTHANSA COFFEE MACHINES!! MAKE MY FUCKING DAY YOU BEAUTIFUL KUNTSTRAGEN TIN BOXES, ROCKETED DOWN TO EARTH BY THE VERY ANGELS THEMSELVES! I’LL DRINK YOU DRY BITCHES!!!

I just got the “weiner malang,” which tastes suspiciously like the Morrochino.  It’s amazing how quickly I lost count.  Oh my god.  I think I can read German.  Oh wait, no that sign is in English.  I still think I can read German though.  I’m watching a commercial and I’m pretty sure it said something about a minister in Poland having an affair with a platypus, maybe in reference to an Australian??—where duckbilled platypuses? platypi? platypises? live.

I stole a pillow and a blanket from my last plane flight in case I’m on the floor at the Zingem house like when I got there last year.  I watched three movies in a row.  I can’t remember what they were.  I asked for a second muffin for breakfast, and I’m now regretting not getting a third.  I don’t think I’ll be in the Zingem house until another four or five hours.  Once my plane picks me up and lands in Brussels I still have to take a train, then build my bike on the sidewalk, ditch one of my bags in a cornfield like last year because I can’t ride with all my bags, ride to the house, drop off a bag, then ride back to the cornfield for my other bag and bike bag.  It’s a lot to think about for a person that’s only had eight or nine coffees.  Maybe a person who’s had at least 12 coffees would be better prepared to tackle this kind of situation?  I’m drenched in sweat, yet chilled.

Whoa.  I was just re-reading the first couple paragraphs because I’m thinking of wrapping this post up right now, and I realized that I typed the number 72 twice.  First in regards to 72 seconds (in the first paragraph), then for 72 minutes in the third paragraph.  I didn’t do this on purpose; it’s pure coincidence.  Check it out up there!  That’s crazy.

More coffee now.  Bye.

Written later:

*I listened to a remix of Bad Romance for the next hour straight.  Loud.

*I misread Kuntstragen.  The actual word is Kunstragen.  I looked it up and it doesn’t exist.  The closest thing I could find is Kunstrasen, which is an artificial turf.

* My total coffee count was one dozen. Or more.

* I got to the Zingem apartment at 6:30pm, or 9:30am Kennett time.  I fell asleep on the train and almost missed my stop, having crashed pretty hard from my caffeine buz.  I would have missed it entirely if it weren’t for a friendly passenger who overheard me talking to the train engineer earlier about what stop I needed to get off on.  My total travel time was 28 hours without any real sleep, and with only four hours of sleep the night I left.  Kind of like when Gabe had to travel from Coeur d’Alene to New York (it’s a long journey between those two places).

 

 

Check out this SICK video Ian made of him and I making some sweet as B-ball shots.  We’ve been honing our skills since we got here on Monday afternoon, and as you can see, our skills have been quite honed if I do say so myself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faSaePUJMxA

Please watch the video, as we’re hoping to get at least 50 views on youtube for our sponsors.

Anyways, in regards to the stage race I’m at in Bend, Oregon, I think I left off after Stage 1 slash the second day after the prologue.  That day being a Thursday and the day of the time trial.  I sucked SO badly in the time trial that I’m not even going to post my result here on my blog.  It was the final straw though, I VOW to practice my time trialing this winter if I’m to race in the States next year, because there’s no reason a guy my size should suck this badly at time trials.  I’m pretty sure I’m faster on my road bike, like Ryan Trebone, who rode on the tops of his bars on his road bike and still beat me.

The day after the TT was Friday and we raced the New and Improved Cascade Lakes stage.  92 miles in a little over 3 hours, which was fast but not that hard until the final 20 minutes.  Instead of starting down in Bend and climbing up to Mt. Bachelor, then descending and doing a loop around the backside of the mountain and finishing up in the Bachelor ski resort, the new stage had us start already up in the ski resort parking lot, so we started off with a cold descent.  I did not like this, as it made the stage much easier than in prior years and there were a good 40 or so more guys in the field to deal with, possibly making things a bit sketchier but also leaving everyone with fresher legs for the finale.  There was a terrible vibe going on the entire day, with a lot of scary, nervous riding that ended in multiple pile ups.

Half way into the race when the breakaway had been established due to the peloton recently taking a pee break:

Kennett: “Gabe, let’s move up in case there’s a crash.”

Gabe: “Okay.   And sorry for anything I might have ever done to displease you.  Also, I’ve never killed a fly.”

4 minutes later…

Kenda guy: “Looks like it’s gonna be on laundry cycle all day.” (Referring to guys constantly moving up on the sides to get to the front during times when they didn’t necessarily need to–probably because they didn’t want to crash and thought that the front would be safe like I did).

Kennett: “Yeah. I just don’t want to crash right now.”

Kenda guy: “You and me both.”

11 seconds later…

Kaboom.  Big old crash right in front of us.  I applied my brakes to full, skidded to a stop, unclipped, went around and sprinted onto the back of the 30 or 40 guys up the road that were congratulating themselves for being in front of the crash.  The pack rejoined pretty soon, though, and everything was good and right again in the world.  20 miles later my tire, which had a giant patch of missing rubber due to the skidding, blowed up.  I got a wheel change from a different team since team manager, Alan, and mechanic, Doug, had just stopped in the team car to take a pee.  The guy failed to close the quick release all the way.  I chased on with the help of our team car and slowly began making my way to the front again for the final climb of the day.  I entered a bit too far back.  My legs still felt pretty good.  I jumped on the Sam Johnson express for a second or two at the base of the climb while he briefly led a teammate of his.  I came off when my rear wheel did something that felt weird.  I sat down and kept going.  I stood up again hard a few moments later as the climb got steep.  The rear wheel jumped big time and almost came out.  I did a front wheelie and nearly came off the bike.  I cursed, realizing what the problem was.  I re-accelerated again this time, deciding I’d just sit down for the whole climb.  30 seconds later I felt that I needed to stand up and make some ground if I wanted to get in a good group for the flatter part of the climb.  I attempted to stand up but do it super slowly, hoping that the wheel would stay in place.  It did another big jump, with me doing another front wheelie.  This time I let out a huge F bomb as I realized I needed to get off the bike and fix the problem, or crash.  I stopped and tightened the quick release, which was just dangling at this point.  My day was pretty much over and I sulked by myself to the finish line, brooding over the incompetence of the guy who’d changed my wheel.  It’s not like I could  have won on such a long climb, but a top 40 might have been doable.

Today (Saturday) was the crit.  The team met up for a nice coffee shop spin in the late morning after we all finally got some actual sleep (10 o’clock starts mean we have to get up at 6am every morning).  Today was a 7pm crit.  After coffee, Ian and I shot the video that I know you watched and loved.  While Ian edited the video, I watched three episodes of Testees.  Colin “slept” for six hours and emerged from his room looking dehydrated and shameful.  There were new blisters on his palms that he denied were new.

The crit: it was hard and fast.  Ian crashed again.  After a little under 75 minutes of racing I ended up 52nd, which was by far the best I’ve done in this crit, but still far from being good.  I should have moved up more with 7 or 8 laps to go. Shoulda woulda coulda.  I didn’t do it and paid the price by being stuck too far back.  I just needed to be more of a dick I guess, and cut more people off in the corners.  Jesse and I frequented a fro-yo establishment on our way back home for some samples.

Tomorrow is the circuit race, which is by far the best chance I have, or any of us HBers have, of getting a good result at this race.  There are a couple steep, short climbs that hurt like hell.  It’ll be good.  Cascade always starts with around 200 riders and finishes with like 90 because that last day is just pure torture.

It’s that time of year again.  Time to pack up my entire life and head out on the road for the next three months.  Time passes quickly, at times.  It seems like only eight and a half months ago that I drug my cardboard bike box and Black Diamond duffle bag, which was loaded full of heavy things like bars of soap and canned soup, from the Denver International Airport to the bus stop heading to Boulder.  My arms were dead tired already, but the dragging of equipment continued as I went from the bus stop to the taxi.  And from the taxi to a dark, empty apartment where I’d be staying for the next two weeks.  I didn’t know a soul in Boulder when I arrived.  A lie.  I guess I knew two people.  But I’m pretty sure they’re atheists so they don’t have souls anyways.

A few days ago I had to pack up everything I owned and move it to Kim’s and my new apartment, which is extremely far north of Boulder, by like three miles and is going to be a pain in the ass to ride to my favorite grocery store of all time, Sunflower Farmer’s Market.  Packing didn’t take me long, since most of it fit in the same Black Diamond duffle bag and bike box.  The rest I left back in Boulder, mainly being clothes that I don’t wear very often and extra boxes of dental floss and bars of soap that I never used.  Early Sunday morning I gazed upon the mountains one last time as I said my goodbyes to the dry desert mountains of the Front Range as the bus took me back to the Denver airport, for like the seventh time this year.  Whatever carbon offset I have by living a car-less, low-plastic lifestyle, I destroy with all the damn miles I fly.

My head nodded to and fro in the aisle seat, jarring wildly like a Lang Reynolds Bobblehead dashboard action figure, whose only action is having an extremely large, bobbling head.  My sleep the night before had been ragged and restless, hence my drowsiness on the plane ride; I’d been anxious and excited about the upcoming trip, like usual, and I had to get up at the wee early morning hour of 5:05, six hours earlier than I like.  Luckily my smart brain woke me up for 30 seconds mid-flight, just in time to get some peanuts from the flight attendant before passing out again.

After the plane ride I spent the day and night in Sherwood, OR, before the team van picked me up on our voyage to Bend for Cascade the next day.  I was treated to an amazing homecoming, getting to partake in my mom’s photography club BBQ and going on a scavenging hunt with my parents and Thomas T Tabernackle.  Thomas’ highlights of the day involved being fed many pieces of a hot dog under the table, jumping over a fence, digging for gophers, and almost knocking over a small child that got in his way.

The next day, Monday, involved more travel.  My legs were feeling good on the morning ride I did.  The team rode together on the prologue course that evening when we got into town.  Having a prologue AND a time trial in six-day race is………an extremely smart idea!  Who wants to do dumb road races anyways???  Not us Americans, that’s who!

Prologue:

The course was 2.8 miles long, starting on a downhill (re-occurring theme here at the CCC) and ending on a series of short climbs.  It was a super fast, exciting, painful time.  Super cool course.  I had to brake, and nearly crashed, on the one and only corner you needed to pay attention in, but only lost like 50-70 seconds.  So no biggie.  I would have won if this hadn’t happened of course, but whatever.  I placed 69^th instead, borrowing Jesse’s TT bike since mine hadn’t shown up yet from FedExceptionaly slow.  Jesse was our best finisher, five seconds faster than me for 47^th place.

Stage One McKenzie Pass road race:

With the time gaps pretty dang substantial already from the previous day’s prologue, the GC battle had basically already been wrapped up, nullifying the last five days of the race.  Everyone went into the strictly ceremonial stage #1 without any pressure (very similar to the last stage of the Tour day France).  The next five days would basically just be one large parade lap around the mountains of the Central Cascades.

Starting at the top of a very long, fast descent on a highway, we were all 100% CONFIDENT that there would be no high-speed crashes in the opening 26 miles of downhill like there had been last year.  I mean, everyone would be paying extra attention and be extra super careful this year right?  The promoters must have thought so, since the course was exactly the same as last year after 50 guys went down at close to 50mph.

Approximately 13 miles in, a small pile-up of 30-40 guys went down in front of me.  I braked hard and missed it, along with the rest of our team—save for Colin, who ended up with a deep chain ring wound on his calf and a banged-up arm and hip.  He made it back into the bunch before the 20-mile climb started and the real pain began.

The approach to the climb was a long, winding false flat drag that meandered through the tall green pines of the McKenzie National forest—breathtaking both literally and figuratively (HA…HA.  See what I did there? Exactly the same thing Paul Sherwen and Phill Liggit do every single time there’s a climb in the Tour).  Anywho, the lead up to the base of the steep part was tense and edgy, with everyone fighting for position before the climb pitched up.  I eventually found Gabe and Colin and sat behind them on the outside strip of the road, bumping bars and shoulders every once in a while with riders to the left of me who wanted my spot behind Colin’s sweet, sweet ass.

I attacked Gabe and Colin as soon as I had the chance and moved up three spots.  Excellent.  We were still jam-packed on the small road with no where to go but forward, though in the peloton you often forget you’re even moving even forward, since your main frame of reference–the other riders–stays stationary.

Once the road got steep, the pack thinned and stretched out quite a bit.  Gabe and I could see Jon up in the top 20 for the entire steep part of the climb, while we sat a further 30 guys back.  The hard part of the climb lasted about 20 minutes.  I was in some pretty uncomfortable pain during the first five of it, then recovered well and was only suffering a medium amount for the rest of it.  As riders dropped off the back and the sound of heavy breathing increased, so too did the thick white fog as we made our way up into the clouds.  Steam came from our mouths and backs, which were already soaked in sweat.  We all removed our glasses to see in the rain forest.

The top part of the mountain is rolling but fairly flat with a few descents to break up the pain in the legs.  The clouds broke and sunlight shown down on us.  The red lava flow on either side of the road went mainly unseen by us as we focused on maintaining position and re-fueling after the climb.  We’d started with 190 riders and were down to a little over 100 after it, which was larger than in years past—or so I’m told.  I’d never made it over McKenzie Pass before with the main group.

My Wise Guru Coach Sam Janson was up the road since the opening miles of the race, and was still away collecting the KOM jersey and throwing his breakaway friends to the wayside, much like the eagle in the video.  The peloton sprinted for the scraps of 4^th and 5^th place.

We descended, we sprinted for the scraps of the Sprint points (I didn’t), more guys crashed into the side of a car (a lot of our crashes happen when the road gets ‘pinched’ due to cars and trucks pulled off to the left of us), and then all of a sudden I realized there were only 10 miles of racing left since today was such a short race.  We took a series of turns through the town of Sisters.  Gabe and I found Jon and rode together to get to and try to stay near the front.  It lasted a little while.  The pace was pretty hard, heading up a false flat on a rough road with the wind seeming to come from both sides.  Maybe there was a tail wind or something.  Anyways, we lost our good positioning but made it to the base of the second and last climb in good enough position to hammer it up the first steep pitch and stick in the main group for the next couple miles of flat plateau before the climb got steep again for the final 5K.

I got popped from the group with a little under 4K to go, then popped again from the small group of six or seven I was with at about 3K to go.  One final group came up on me in the final five or six minutes of the race and I finished 64^th, two and a half minutes back from the winner, Mancebo.  Although not a great ride, it was the best I’ve done on this stage in the last three years of doing this race.  I’m looking forward to the circuit race on Sunday as it suites me well.  The crit on Saturday is another day for the Biggunses, and who knows?  Maybe Friday’s new road race course could suit a breakaway better than the previous parcours.

When we all finished and rolled to the van and car in the parking lot at the top of the Three Creeks Sno Park, our mechanic, Doug, and manager, Alan, had plenty of rice n’ black bean mixture for us (with a fresh pot of sAlsa too) and PB&J sandwhhhiches, that Winger had made.  I quickly ate all my food plus 13 Snickers bars to replenish the calories I lost in the three hours of racing we’d done, Colin helped himself to an extra five or eleven bowls of rice to help re-grow the skin he’d lost in the crash (Spencer Logic), Ian didn’t eat anything or drink any water so he’d be light for the next day’s flat time trial, Jon also didn’t eat anything because he had weighed so much today that it caused his seat post to slip down on the final climb, Gabe applied his country folk knowledge to the construction of a snare, which caught him a snow shoe rabbit that he cooked on a spit, Jesse tackled a moose by the side of the road and ripped into its jugular with his Canadian teeth while singing Oh Canada!, and Winger captured all of this on his camera for the next installation of The HB Show I mean Instagram.

Tomorrow is another cursed time trial, this time much, much longer.  Maybe I go fast for it?  I won’t have Jesse’s bike though.  We ate burritos after the race at Long Board Louis’.  This is number 91 for me.  They had a salsa bar and FREE guac!

My room came equipped with a mini kitchen.  I whipped up that sandwich there in no time.

Longboard Louis’

“Gabe I swear to God if you eat even a scrap of my burrito I’ll murder your family in their sleep!”

 

The last few days have been the first reprieve from the heat in a long, long time.  This last June was the hottest EVER on record, with multiple days in the 100s and almost every other day in the 90s.  Now it’s POURING!!!

Sort of.  Off and on.  The riding is still good and it’s warm out.

Reprieve is a word I’ve never used before in writing, or in life.  I didn’t spell it right at first.  It was warm this morning, but it’s been raining and thundering for a couple hours now.  Man, this is the most boring blog post I think I’ve ever written.  Ughhhhh.  It’s like a ride you go out for half heartedly, feeling dead tired from the day before and the power just isn’t there but god damn it you’re going to force this stupid ride to happen anyways!  And then, after an hour and a half of terrible sensations and sluggish pedaling at 75 rpm, you finally break through.  The legs are there, you can climb, you no longer have that feeling of almost bonking that you had the hour before.  You no longer feel the dire need to turn back home and eat more breakfast.   You can at last get on with the workout and stomp the hills once more, which will probably lead to overtraining.

My newest roommate, Michelle, is an Australian triathlete.  She’s from Darwin and she says the word “heaps” ALL the time.  Like, she uses that word heaps and heaps of times throughout the day.  Heaps and heaps is key.  Also, Australians and New Zealanders both pronounce the word “fillet” like stupid people, pronouncing the T extra hard.  As in: Fill-it.  Like, “I want a fill-it of fish.”  It’s really hilarious.  One more hillarious thing: this Australian commercial talking about how you shouldn’t SLEEP on the road at night.

One last hilarious thing: this New Zealand commercial about drunk driving (Geoff says this commercial is legend in NZ for all its classic quotes.  I can’t understand most of the words, but it sounds really funny regardless.)

Michelle moved to Boulder a couple weeks ago to train with her new coach.  Unfortunately, her coach ended up having a mental break down, thought long and hard about ending his own life, and kicked Michelle out.  So she ended up here, the Homeless Boulder Athlete Hotel.  Sadly, everyone is moving out of the HBAH house within the next week.  The two non-athlete roommates, whom I never see, already left.  They took their food with them, except for a bunch of spoiled stuff in the fridge.  One roommate had THREE containers of the expensive Greek yogurt in the fridge, with one of them being completely full and unopened.  You can imagine my excitement.  In juxtaposition, you can imagine my intense rage when I found out that said yogurt was one month past its due date.   KENNETH MAD!!!!  If there’s one thing I hate, it’s wasting food.  If there’s a second thing I hate, it’s not getting to eat someone else’s food because I waited too long.

Kim  and Michelle are moving out next Friday.  They’re both moving into a place Kim and I signed a lease to last month.  Since I won’t be living there until October, Michelle is taking my room until then.  It has a pool.

I won’t get to use the pool this summer though, since I won’t be here.  I decided to race in Belgium again this summer and into fall.  I leave right after Cascade on the 25th of July and get back on October 11th.  You might be wondering how I managed to pull this off, since it does cost money to fly across the world and live in a foreign country for three months, even if you’re living in a run-down shack and stealing potatoes for sustenance.  On top of that, I haven’t been working at Ras Kassa’s for the last month, since they couldn’t work around my race travel schedule any longer, so I had to find a way to fill the monetary void with odd jobs and my new mistress and savior, ebay.  Turns out there are droves upon droves of people that want to buy my old crap.  MY old equipment??  Yeah, surprising…and scary.  But I had full disclosure on everything I sold, and luckily all my buyers have ended up pleased with what they’ve bought, which was mainly old HB clothing, some half broken wheel sets, shifters, and other odds and ends.

The training for Cascade is going really well.  I sold my SRM, so I don’t know for sure, but I FEEL like I’m going well anyways.  The other day I crushed a huge set of the death sprints that Wise Guru Coach Sammy ‘The Far out Sea Lion’ Johnson has me do somewhat pretty frequently.  I did 20 of em on the hottest day of the week.  It was a blistering 110 on the road.  Luckily some guy had put out a big Gatorade cooler of water by the side of the road for all the cyclists (which was just me that day) going by.  I filled my bottles three times.  That was one of the most painful workouts on the bike this year.  And I had to tape a stupid alarm clock to my bars to time the intervals, since my SRM is gone and the little bike computer I got doesn’t do timing.  At one point during a rest period I realized that the second hand on the alarm clock got stuck.  I thought some of those 30 second sprints went by extra slow.  I cursed at the clock and banged on it to get it going again as its hands melted and bended in the heat.

A few days later, Morgan, Geoff, Kim, and I met Tricia down at Water World, a water park just north of Denver.  I rode there from Boulder to build up a good sweat.  Tricia had bought matching flowery swimsuits for Morgan and I.  I’m not sure, but I think we had more dudes looking at us than ladies.  We didn’t care.  The water was cold and the slides were steep and fun.  And on top of that, Morgan and I looked Fabuloooouuuuuus!!!!

That pretty much covers all the trivial things I’ve been up to.  Now onto the important subject: burritos.  As many of you know, I’ve adopted a new Twitter handle (KPburritos), with the goal of documenting the burritos I’ve eaten this year.  I don’t have a lot of followers, and half of the followers I do have are comprised of burrito restaurants scattered across the country.  But, despite my current unpopularity, having this Twitter handle has made me somewhat of an expert on burrito knowledge and rules.  If there was a court case involving burritos, I would definitely qualify as an expert witness.  My price is three burritos per hour.

Anyways, I’ve been taking a poll in regards to what qualifies as a burrito.  Since I’m leaving for Europe this summer, my burrito consumption is going to take a big hit (all they eat in Belgium is turnips, beef, and chocolate covered turnips).  Stupidly, I got off to a slow start this winter, so my goal of 300+ burritos this year isn’t likely to happen.  But in order to boost my numbers before I leave (so I have a good number to beat next year), I’ve been consuming more burritos this past month than normal.  Of course, I have to try to stay light for bike racing, so most of my burritos are a tortilla wrapped around some mix mash of vegetables and egg.  I’ve received quite a few complaints about this, as some individuals don’t think veggie burritos qualify as real burritos, but as wraps.  But you don’t need bean, rice, meat, or cheese for a burrito to be a burrito!!!

In my expert opinion, the word “wrap” is just an invention of the White Man’s, designed to give a burrito a more “dignified” and high-class feel for those Caucasian prickle pusses that turn their noses upwards at the “unclean” and “barbaric” cuisine of the country to our south.  Me, though?  I’m no hatter.  I call it like it is.  Anything with a tortilla enclosing something within its shell is a BURRITO, not a wrap.  If I want to make an Asian stir fry and wrap a tortilla around it, voila it’s now a burrito.  If I cook up some mushrooms and broccoli by themselves, it’s just that: mushrooms and broccoli (ewe).  Enclose that within a tortilla and douse it with some Valentino’s extra hot hot sauce…now you’ve got yourself a meal to be excited about: a burrito, a burrito you’d happily let slide down your throat, lubricated with a nice film of hot sauce, a burrito you’d be glad to be associated with, a burrito you could be seen in public with, a burrito you’d be proud to call son.

Now, some of my critics might say, “Hey, Kennett I know what you’re up to.  You just want to classify these “fake burritos” (really just wraps) as burritos so you can get your tally up.  You’re a cheat, a liar, and a terrible human being.  I hope you get killed by a cement truck on your next ride.  No, actually I hope you just get crushed and paralyzed from the eyes down by that cement truck, so you’re forever unable to eat another burrito again in your life.  You disgust me.  You’re a pathetic excuse for a human being, you prick.  Do us all a favor and jump off a very tall bridge, you burrito fiend.”

To that, I say…wow.  You’re a pretty intense person.  I’m sorry I upset you so much, but I understand completely, for I share your burrito enthusiasm to the T.  You’re passion for burrito law is profound and, for that, I applaud you.  But alas, it’s flawed.  I beg you to reason with me, for I have outside evidence that I’m going to quote.  Yes, I’ve decided to bring external facts to my argument.  I know that’s not the tried and trusted method for proving a theory, as we all know that just by simply writing your own opinion you automatically become an expert in that particular field, but I’m going to do it anyways.  My highly reputable source claims that, “A burrito (US English /bəˈritoʊ/, Spanish: [buˈrito]), or taco de harina,^[1] is a type of Mexican food. It consists of a wheat flour tortillawrapped or folded into a roughly cylindrical shape to completely enclose a filling. (In contrast, a taco is generally formed by simply folding a tortilla in half around a filling, leaving the semicircular perimeter open.)” (Wikipedia)

Note: it says absolutely nothing about what constitutes the filling.  All that is required is that the tortilla shell be closed, and not open, which would obviously be a taco.  DUH! Hahaha, like that needs explanation!  Um, hellooo??  Jeeze, I mean how stupid does wiki think we are that they need to explain that to us?  Oh man.

By this burrito gold standard stated up above, even a PB&J tortilla, folded and completely closed up, counts as a burrito.  I had two today on my ride, which helped bring my yearly total to a whopping 74 burritos.  Sadly, I think this is way below my life yearly average.  In high school I sustained myself probably with at least 75% of my calories consisting of burrito calories.  Next year I plan to start it off right.  This was sort of a practice year.

I got my weekend started at the early hour of 7:15 am yesterday.  I’m not sure if yesterday was technically Saturday, but now that I’m no longer working at the restaurant for the summer, every day is pretty much a weekend.  Who am I kidding, all my days were like weekends before.  Anyways, my New Zealand triathlon buddy Geoff, heard about this great little bike to work event going on in Boulder/the rest of the nation.  To get people excited about bike commuting, the city put up like 200 breakfast stations for cyclists and pedestrians walking their way to work.  Free food.  I repeat:

Free.

Food.

All you can eat.

Free.

Food.

America.

Sex.

Drugs.

Rock &Roll.

Kennettron5000.

Free food.

Fuck yeah.

Geoff and I rolled out of my driveway and crossed the busy street of Arapahoe, and low and behold there was a random breakfast table set up with yogurt parfaits!  Not even a quarter mile from my garage.  This was going to be easier than taking candy from a dead baby.  And we came prepared.  We’d brought backpacks.

Breakfast burritos were next.  Note: this picture may or may not have been taken during the National Crit last Friday.

After that was bagels, salmon lox cream cheese, fruit, juice, bananas, oranges, etc.  Basic bullshit.

A few minutes later we were munching muffins, just the tops.  Pumpkin and walnut?  I’m not sure.  We started on our second cups of coffee as we sat on a bench in the shade.  It was already 90 degrees and not yet eight o’clock.  The next place better have some cold smoothies!!!

The smoothies had to wait, for our next stop was another spread of bagels and cream cheese and hot coffee at Performance Bicycles.  I saw my friend Will’s decked out Sprinter van sitting in it’s usual spot in the parking lot, in front of Performance where he works.  Will was probably still asleep.  Geoff and I had already consumed more food than any other human beings in Colorado.

Our next stop required a little more pedaling than the previous few places, but it did not disappoint.  It was the Dushanbe Tea House breakfast station in downtown.  They were serving chai tea, a hot egg and potato dish, and scones with jam.  No time to mingle, we had a strict deadline.  The breakfast stations closed down at around 9:30.

Not even a full block away was a fitness studio that gave us some free passes and miniature spinach, egg, and ham panini sandwiches.  Geoff was starting to hurt.  I was holding strong.  I’d been training for this day my entire life.  Bike riding+eating massive quantities of food…I was born for this shit.

We grabbed some water bottles from a person in front of my old workplace, the Boulderado Hotel.  Water bottles?  That’s it?  Cheapskates.

Stop eight, not counting the Boulderado water bottles, was a real good one.  I didn’t even get to try everything.  They had miniature pancakes, miniature parfaits, Izze soda, breakfast burritos, hot chicks handing out the burritos, Skratch Labs electrolyte powder (plants love that ish), and smoothies!

And directly across the street…more smoothies!!

Farther down Pearl street, the Google building had more smoothies, bagels, fruit, coffee, etc.

I was no longer hungry by now, and had mainly just been loading my trusty Shimano shoe bag full of goodies for later.  I had to be able to pedal my bike hard at some point that day.

The last and 11th stop on our journey was Whole Foods…the grand finale.  This was no quick breakfast snack table, this was a full on meal.  We’re talking pancakes, sausage, egg frittata, oatmeal, fruit, berries, nuts, yogurt, coffee, and condoms.  Yeah, condoms.  No joke.  I asked how popular the XLs were.  The girl handing them out said not that popular, Boulder is pretty white.

Food bag that helped feed me for the rest of the day.

Geoff feeling pretty ill.  Geedy bugger.

After two hours of free-loading, I had to carry my oats back home for another day.  Geoff moaned and groaned on the living room floor for a half hour before he had to leave for a swim workout.  I hung around until mid day before heading out on my five and a half hour ride in the hot, dry, smoky mountains.  The Flagstaff fire from the day before had miraculously been put under control over night at 40% containment with no new growth expected, but a new thunderstorm brewed two more lightning-strike fires while I was on my ride.  I ended the ride down in Denver at Tricia’s house, where I was going to hang out and do the cruiser ride with her and Morgan that night.  The ride involved making homemade V-necks, riding to the capital plaza, and navigating the Circle of Death: a tight pack of drunken, terrible bike handlers that sped around in circles in front of a loud rock band.  It was awesome.  People crashed, pedicabs went the wrong direction, someone threw a glass bottle in the circle that was immediately run over and smashed, a girl threw a punk BMX biker on his ass when he ran into her, double decker tall bikes and high wheel bikes amazingly maneuvered the chaos without incident, dance circles formulated, everyone was in some sort of costume, and we all had a grand old merry time without even one police officer present to ruin it.  I was amazed at the turnout.  Every Wednesday this goes on with easily over 1,000 people participating.  With the bike to work breakfast festival and the Cruiser Ride, I got to experience two cool ways people are getting excited about riding bikes.  The more people on bikes and out of cars the better.

My shirt had a picture of lightning striking a forest on fire and a person below facing the other direction ignoring it and watching their plasma screen.  Very few people thought it was funny.

I looked up from the melting pavement as I rode from the post office to Suflower Farmer’s Market, my favorite grocery store of all time.  What I saw made me do a double take.  A huge plume of smoke was spreading into South Boulder, just a mile away, like fallout from a nuclear bomb.  The air was thick with nasty, brown smoke blowing quickly east due to heavy winds coming off the mountains in the west.  The sky was buzzing with helicopters and jets dropping red fire-retardant chemicals.  Shit.

Just an hour earlier, while coming back from my bike ride, I’d been hit by a few big drops of rain as a quick thunderstorm passed overhead.  I saw about a dozen lightning strikes nail the ground.  I thought nothing of it at the time; my mind was set on a cold frozen yougurt from Boom, where my roommate Kim works.  I finished my yogurt, rode home, packed up a half dozen items to ship to various people across the world who, for some reason, decided to buy a bunch of old ratty bike stuff on ebay.  I packed my backpack to the brim with bungie cords strapping large boxes on in every direction.  After annoying everyone at the post office by filling out the addresses at the front counter instead of earlier back in line, I got back on my bike and headed to the grocery store.  How many gallons of gas will it take to ship my crap to New York?  That’s literally what I was thinking about when I saw the fire on the hillside above Boulder.  It had reached 300 acres in an hour and a half.  The wind was violently swirling the out-of-control fire into massive swirling flame tornados, starting new spot fires a quarter of a mile beyond the rim of the original flame.  Houses were already being evacuated and it looked like another Waldo Fire, the one Colorado Springs is currently enjoying where the fire is presently spreading into the city.  32,000 people have been evacuated from Colorado Springs, which is just to our south, and it’s burning an area well over 6,000 acres.  It started just a few days ago.  Up north, Fort Collins has been ablaze for weeks, still only at 60% containment.  The flames are closing in from every direction.

As the brown smoke billowed off the mountain into downtown, I continued riding along in awe.  It was another scorcher today.  100 degrees, even higher on the radiating pavement under my wheels.  It’s been in the 100’s for weeks here in Boulder, with the only rain coming in the form of brief thunderstorms that only start more fires.  I parked my bike in a corner of the grocery store and went about my business, loading up on a week’s supply of fruit and veggies.  Inside the air-conditioned super market, the feeling of calm was enhanced with soft, pleasant music, played to enhance the mood for purchasing.  The capitalistic mantra of our nation: when fear looms in the air, spend more money.  Outside the world was a flame.  Inside, we were distracted by the great sale on cherries from Argentina.

With Colorado’s record cold and snow fall in the winter and now record heat, drought, and fires, it’s hard to ignore the presence of climate change.  And yet we’re doing a fine job of it.  I stuffed my backpacking to the brim with food, strapping on bananas and a carton of eggs to the outside because.  Like usual, I bought too much to fit inside.  There was one other bike parked in the store (Sunflower is awesome about letting the expensive bikes sit inside) and there was one bike outside in the bike rack.  Adversely, the parking lot was full.  Typical.  Even here in Boulder where people pride themselves on being green and conscientious of their waste, we still fall way behind the rest of the world.  We pack our SUVs full of plastic bags and packaging, processed food, and hamburger patties that require 60 calories of fossil fuel to create one calorie of actual meat.  The SUVs are driven one to three miles home, where they sit in gigantic garages big enough to house entire extended family in India.  It’s always rush hour traffic in Boulder.  I saw thousands of cars on my short ride home from the store.  I saw only five human beings.  Once home, our groceries occupy a fridge 200% larger than those in Europe, within air-conditioned houses packed, like my backpack, to the brim with plastic and other non-biodegradable crap that will end up in a land fill within seven years.  Just outside there’s a massive fire burning down what’s left of nature.  As long as it stays up there in the hills…who cares?  The deer maybe.  But the fire is no longer on the horizon, it’s here in front of us, knocking on our doors and still we sit inside and ignore it.  The nocking grows louder, so we turn up the volume on Fox News.

While my house isn’t air-conditioned, I don’t use any plastic bags, and I ride a bike around, I did just fly across the country a few days ago, emitting carbon high into the atmosphere where it’s twice as detrimental.  I bought bananas from Panama.  I shipped an old skin suit to Canada.  The problem is, even those of us who care, don’t really care.  Maybe we’ll take notice when we finally catch fire.  Until then…it’s business as usual.

It was a scorcher out there today.  Not so much extremely hot, but super humid.  I spent the entire day soaking wet from head to toe in a combination of water, sweat, drank mix, and, uhhh, other bodily fluids.  I think I went through around 25 bottles for the four hour race, half of them poured over me and half consumed.  My stomach was full and sloshing with liquid for the first six of seven laps, never requesting any of the water I kept force-feeding it.  But the super hydration paid off and I had terrific legs the entire day.  Unfortunately, the result was not there.  Typical.  At least I got to ride hard.

With just under 180 starters, our team of six had a 3% chance of winning–strictly by the numbers.  But judging by the way we started out riding, it seemed like a first place or at least a podium was guaranteed.  I followed some wheels into the early breakaway, which went about 500 meters into the race.  I helped drill it and get the thing established, which it eventually did despite a pretty large lack of cooperation amongst us all.  After about a half lap the break was set at seven or eight of us, with most of the strong teams represented with at least one rider.  One guy wasn’t pulling through, but with some mean verbal abuse from the rest of us, we eventually got him to start working.

Lap two (there were seven laps total, 104 miles, 7,ooo ft of climbing.): This is where my memory is already getting fuzzy.  Early on the second lap, Gabe and three other guys bridged up to us.  Gabe said he wasn’t feeling great (not quite true as it turned out) and that I should take it a bit easier than him and to “be smart.”  A few miles later I followed a Juwi Solar guy (Julian Keyer–the guy who ended up winning) off the front and the two of us worked pretty easily to stay 10-15 seconds away from the disorganized group behind us.  I was pretty hesitant to go hard, since Gabe had just told me to be smart and there was a lot of racing left to do, so I just rode a medium pace until we both decided to sit up since our gap wasn’t growing and no one had bridged to us.

Before the second lap ended and the the other guys caught us, I saw that the group had grown by another six guys or so, including another teammate of mine: Ian.  Now with 16 off the front and every team represented, some with two and some (like us) with three, I was certain we’d stay away.  The gap to the field was around two-three minutes by this point.

Lap three and four was basically Gabe sitting on the front keeping the pace going and chasing down attackers while small groups of 3-5 continued catching us, with almost equal amounts of guys falling back into the field, suffering from the heaat.  Our lead group turned into a strong group of 22 riders.  Ian and I sat on for the most part, under Gabe’s order, following a couple attacks now and again but not trying to get away.  With Gabe crushing it we didn’t need to waste energy trying to get away.  Just let him whittle the others’ legs while we sat on for a free ride, saving energy for the final laps.

Lap five and I was still feeling amazing.  It felt as though I’d just hopped on my bike after a week of rest, with the previous two and a half hours of hot riding never even existing.  It seemed too good to be true, and I feared the inevitable downfall to come.

A series of hard attacks went a few miles into lap six, eventually shelling Gabe after he’d done a TREMENDOUS amount of work for Ian and I.  Now was the time to step it up and go with moves.  I covered a number of attacks over the rolling hills and slight cross wind sections at the tops.  Our group slimmed down significantly, as well as our gap to the charging field behind us.  Finally, Ian got up the road with three other guys.  I covered moves and sat on, and eventually Ian’s and the others’ gap grew to over a minute.  The cooperation in my, now large again, chase group decreased steadily until we got caught by a small group just off the front of the peloton as we entered the feed hill of the seventh lap.  As we crested the top, a few moves went off, which I decided not to follow since the pack was now eating us up.  Ian hadn’t made it with the other three leaders over the final hill of the sixth lap, so we were now pretty much relying on the power of the peloton to bring back the three remaining guys up the road.  With one lap to go it seemed like the gap would come down and we’d catch them, especially since there were still over 100 guys left in the peloton, but there wasn’t a concerted enough effort made by any of the teams with the numbers left.  We were down to just me, Danny, Jon, and Steve.  Steve and Danny had raced the U23 race the day before, so them just being there was a feat in itself.  No one expected anything more out of them, but Steve went to the front in the final kilometers to help reel in the break, and Danny offered to help lead me out and position me for the finish, which was a 1 kilometer gradual climb that flattened out at the top for 200 meters around a 90 degree bend.  It was a great finish for me and I was still feeling remarkably good.  But I screwed it all up big time, entering the hill about fifty guys back.  I closed a lot of gaps and came around a huge amount of people as the field shattered.  (Okay, side note: if you know you’re going to blow up a half K before the finish, why do you have to get in my way and ruin my chances?  Seriously, just stay at the back.  Have some consideration please.)  Anyways…500 meters, 400 meters, 300 meters, I was still gaining on the front little group that had gapped the weaklings.  I smashed it all out with 200 meters to go and finally came to terms with the fact that I was doomed for only a top 20 and had entered the base of the hill way, way, way too late.  I finished 18th, with the three guys off the front sticking it to the end.  I shook my head in disgust at my ill planning at the base of the hill, let out a silent curse to myself for being in the break that long and not following the right wheels, then rode around the finish area for 10 minutes searching for our van.  Recovery: pedialyte, water, recoverite, snickers, twix.  I didn’t even feel that tired.  So much legs today and such a shitty result.  That’s bike racing.

Danny was 10th today, 10th in the U23 crit two days ago, Steve was 5th in yesterday’s U23 road race, and Logan missed out on first place in the 17/18 yr old road race by less than a tire’s width, so 2nd place.  All in all, it was a great trip with a few good results for the team and a lot of aggressive riding.  It was my first time in the true dirty south and I liked it, even though I never got to see an Alligator.

Thank you to Alan for making this trip extremely easy on us, for doing a great job in the caravan, and thanks to Marcel for feeding countless bottles to us today in the hot sun.  I leave you with this:

After bragging to Ian about how I’d stolen some of Marcel’s granola and coconut milk the day before, Ian infromed me that that granola and milk I’d stolen wasn’t Marcel’s, but his.  Uh oh.  I knew Ian would be looking for revenge in the crit, and kept a watchful eye out.  And low and behold, true to his evil spirit, Ian took his revenge.  Aproximately 2/3rds of the way through the race Ian snaked across the front of the peloton trying to put me in the fence, but caused a huge pile up of 50 riders instead, crashing out Horndog Brocal instead of me and destroying his bike in half.  After the race Alan had to drive 700 miles to Atlanta that night to pick up a new frame at Blue’s head quarters (Blue is our bike sponsor FYI).  Nah, just kidding.  That didn’t happen–the part about Ian causing the crash.  Everything else did.

Here’s a NASTY Vimeo clip of Jon’s crash.  Beware, there’s lots of blood and guts.  It’s worth a watch.

It was hot and muggy as we sat in the parking lot waiting for our race to start.  We’d set up camp in a mini blacktop Bayou.  A thick stench of septic water and urine wafted into our nostrils and eyes as we packed our backs and groins full of ice socks, trying to keep cool and our socks dry.  Alan had provided us with all the necessary tools to keep cool and hydrated for the race.  We had 80 bottles of water, six extra gallons, four or five coolers, gels, bars, all the normal powders plus a few extra kinds specifically for the heat (extra salt), enduralytes, ice socks, cold towels, and even a few liters of special prescription saline solution with 900mg of sodium per 100ml serving.  I added about 130ml in my bottles for the race.  First sip I tried to take, 15 minutes in, I squirt directly into my face by accident.  Good thing I have an extremely high pain tolerance (way higher than anyone else in the world) and I didn’t feel any discomfort as the salt water bleached my eyes.

When the race started, Ian took two laps to clip in.  I was stuck behind him the entire time.  Somehow he ended up getting to the front and attacking with Gabe and Jon, while I drifted far into the depths of the pack foder.  Danny and Steve, who’s birthday it was yesterday, were racing the U23 race after us, so we only had four guys in the race.  We just needed one more guy…

So while Gabe covered EVERY single move for the first 45 minutes of the race (and just about all of them after that too), I drove my bike like I hadn’t raced a big crit in two months, which I hadn’t.  Luckily the race was a long one at 80km, so I had enough time to re-learn crit bike racing and get to the front and attack.  I ended up towing another guy with me to two others up the road.  Our four-person break turned to 10 before long and we quickly put 20 seconds on the field.  We were off for a while but it became apparent we wouldn’t stay away, since only five of us were working.  With 13 laps and the organization completely going to shit, I attacked and got away by myself.  I spent the next few laps futily attempting to hold the pack off for the next half hour (long laps).  I did not.

Gabe attacked.  Ian attacked. Jon was in the medical tent.  His bike was in two pieces.  I got up to the front and sat there as Gabe’s last move was slowly reeled in.  I followed an attack and pulled through, dropping the guy who’d just attacked by accident because he forgot to keep pedaling.  I was half way between the peloton and Gabe’s two-man move now, with just 2.5 laps to go.  I didn’t quite make it.  I was absorbed by the field with 2 laps remaining.  Gabe and his breakmate were caught a half lap later.  Ian found himself on the very front with a lap to go and drilled it with a tiny gap.  He was caught.  All our cards were used up…except for our sprinter, who’d been sitting and resting in the field all day for the inevitable pack sprint.  NOT.

We went into the race with the plan of attacking the S outa that S and we did, knowing that we most likely would not win in the field sprint since there were two or three guys in the pack that pretty much had that wrapped up.  Our efforts were valiant but we didn’t win.  At least we entertained David in the process:

After the crit we rode home, showered, and ate Top Ramen to re-hydrate.  Then we drove back to the race course to watch the U23 race, where Danny, Steve, and Marcel suffered in the heat while Logan, who got 6th in the 17-18 crit, ate yogurt with a snicker’s bar.  He was DRIPPING with sweat.

Here he’s blowing a long stream of snot out his nose.

This is “Pat,” the guy our team cheered on throughout the race.  We were convinced Pat was going to CRUSH the sprint, since he conserved at the very back of the pack the entire day, but then he got dropped.

Danny after the race.  He got 10th!

This is the most unflattering picture of Danny I could take.  Upward angle.

Marcel and Steve.  Steve was an absolute animal like Gabe had been and spent the majority of the race smashing fools’ legs as he bridged gaps and drove it off the front.

After the race, Gabe, Jon, Logan and I went out to eat with a couple nice Southern girls.  Logan was only 17 and Jon has a girlfriend…so logically both those guys ended up sitting right next to our company while Gabe and I sat at the far end of the table.  Jon spent half the night on his phone and Logan spent half his time making pools of salt on the table with a salt shaker.  I couldn’t hear a damn thing the whole time since it was really loud and I was so far away, but nodded and laughed along with unheard stories going on at the other end of the table.  I’m not sure, but I may have laughed and smiled after the tale was told of someone’s dead aunt.  Gabe and I shook our heads in disgust with our seating arrangements while we all grew hungrier and hungrier.  Two hours later our food came.  Today we rest.  Tomorrow we do the real race.  Heads will roll.  As will eyes.

I’m only writing a blog right now because my teammate Ian is writing one next to me.  I need to keep typing at a good pace so he thinks I’m making progress in my blog post.  When in reality I’m not.  Let’s see, what else can I type right now?  I should laugh out loud a little to myself so he thinks I’m writing something funny and/or witty.   I just laughed.  He just said, “Already laughing at your own jokes are you?? Okay.”  I think it’s working.  He’s hitting the back space quite a bit right now, most likely thinking to himself that whatever he just wrote isn’t up to pare with what I’m laughing at.  The fool.  Haha, he just gave up and went into the kitchen to eat more food to console himself for being an inferior blog writer.

Here in Georgia, you got your Chick-Fil-A, Churche’s Chicken, and Popeyes, among others.  But the real deal is at the Waffle House, where Gabe, Jon, and Logan went last night without telling any of us.  We flew in plane, then drove in a few cars for a long time until we got to our host houses, just after dinner time, so I was really hungry and we had no food all night long!  So you can see how mad I was when I found out that they went to the Waffle House without me.  Anyways, it sounds amazing and I’ll write about it after I experience it first hand, but Gabe’s steak sounded delicious: fatty ground beef shaped into the form of a steak and cuttable with a plastic fork.  Just dripping with flavor.

We just got back from a ride, which was only two hours but FULL of excitement.  The highlights were A) seeing a bayou, B) making jokes about bayous, such as, “I’m gonna bayou a boat at the boat store.”  Q: “Where’s the remote?”  A: “It’s right bayou on the table.”  Neither of those were actual jokes we made, but they’re similar.  Anyways, back to the highlights of our amazing ride…C) Ian getting hit by a gigantic dragon fly, D) Steve being short, E) drinking a slurpie, F) riding into South Carolina, G) comparing Danny to Winger–in a good way, H) singing Colt 45 as a team and remembering 87% of the lyrics, and I) getting a LOT of room from just about every single car that passed us.  And I’m not even being sarcastic, it was really amazing considering how bad I figured we’d be treated, as cyclists, down in the south.

While we did see some smashed roadkill, my non bike-racing goal for this trip is to see these animals during our stay here: water moccasin, wild boar, alligator, and a snapping turtle..hopefully all at the same time eating each other in a bayou.

Riding along in Georgia before we head up north.

Marcel

Steve.

Ian.

Danny.

Note: I’m making the O face/Catfish face because of a road sign, not the dogs.  Never mind the dogs, they’re just there by coincidence.

See.  The sign.

We were pretty sure this counted as a bayou.

Steve and I found this other bayou while Ian flatted on a rock.  Ian weighs a LOT so his tube didn’t really stand a chance.  Poor thing.

We stopped for Slurpies after Ian did approximately 27 minutes of sprinting to warm up for the crit on Friday.

My room has some female company in case I get lonely at night.  Marcel, get your hands off my lady friend!

I also have an exercise bike for cooling down after riding in the heat outside.

Sunday’s road race is gonna be HOT and wet.  It’s really humid.

As many of you know, my teammate Ian Crane, has been doing some pretty important work preparing for elite nationals in Augusta, Georgia this coming weekend.  The biggest obstacle in the race, aside from the other people trying to cross the finish line first, will likely be the heat.  Ian, coming from the snowy, southern Alaskan town of Bellingham, is currently just coming out of winter hibernation, and although he’s lean from his long winter slumber, he’s completely unacclimated to anything above 49 degrees F.  So in preparation, he’s compiled a list of things he’s done to get his body ready for the heat.  To build new capillaries, he’s been training in a parka, much like Cody and Jesse do up in Canada every day.  While many of his practices sound sensible, such as listening to Riahna to feel the warmth of the Caribbean, I warn you–don’t take his advice!  I, Kennett Peterson, have all the best techniques for heat acclimation, which I’ll share with you right here.

Step #1: Shave everything.  This includes buzzing of the head, groinal region, armpits, and shaving of the torso, arms and legs.  Luckily for me, I have the power to control my hair growth and slow it down, diverting the hair energy into building stronger bones so that when I crash, I don’t get hurt as badly.

#2: Go really fast around corners.  The heat generated from the G forces when you corner really fast will get your body in the mood for Georgia-esque temps.  Also, the higher the angle of the corner, the better heat acclimation you get.  A 90 degree corner is only half as good/hot as a 180 degree corner.  Yesterday I looked down at my bike computer and saw that I was going 54.8 mph heading into a 200 degree corner.  Although I had to come way out into the left hand lane into the blind corner, risking life and limb and peeing myself just a little, the heat acclimation I got was astounding and well worth the risk of dying.  Later that day I didn’t even feel my hand burning on a stove while I was cooking spinach until like six seconds after I rested it there.

#3: Ride in the heat.  It’s been in the 90’s here all week except for earlier in the week when it wasn’t.  It was 101 today.  If you live where it’s cold, quit your job and move.  It’s amateur, I mean ELITE nationals for heck’s sake!  It doesn’t get any more prestigious.

#4: Deprive yourself of water on long, hot rides.  One of my old soccer coaches had us do this during summer practice.  He said that during the game we wouldn’t be drinking whenever we wanted, so to get used to it we would only drink like once during practice.  Today on my ride I only drank eight water bottles instead of the 31 that I wanted to drink.

#5: Load up on salt.  I’ve been putting salt on everything.  I do that usually, but lately I’ve been using even more than normal.  The body can store up a lot of salt, and it’s pretty much impossible, while you’re in the race, to consume as much as you’re sweating out during those 4.5 hours.  So stalk up on salt before hand.  Top Ramen is a good choice if you want some flavor with your salt.  Also, with your body super saturated (not really) with salt, you’ll be able to carry a lot more stored water along in you, while increasing your plasma levels.

#6: Eat lots of watermelon to replenish your water stores, post ride.  I really like watermelon, especially in the summer.  Science has proven the fact that eating one liter of watermelon is equivalent to drinking 7 liters of water.  I always carry at least half a watermelon on me from the months of May-Sept.  And despite its name, it CAN be brought on planes, TSA!!

#7: Never use deodorant or sunscreen, as both will clog your pores and inhibit them from secreting sweat.  It’s much better to get really sunburned than to lose even a single pore’s ability to cool you down with sweat.

#8: Stretch your skin to create more body surface area.  Like an elephant’s ears, you want as much surface area to mass ratio as you can get when it comes to cooling down in the heat.  More surface area means you have more blood being pumped to the outside of your body, effectively cooling the blood down when it’s pumped to skin near the air.  I recommend manually pulling and stretching skin for at least 90 minutes a day.

#10: Eat hot food.  I can’t remember if Ian said this or not and I don’t want to go back to his blog to give him even MORE hits, so I’ll just assume that he didn’t say it.  By eating spicy and hot (temperature) foods, you’ll increase your body’s ability to produce special enzymes to cool itself.  Don’t ask me about it.  It’s science.  Also, the hot, acidic food you’re eating will acclimate you in another way when it exits your body.  The spicier your poop, the more heat tolerance you’re getting.  Here’s a little poem to go by: If it smells overripe, hurts to wipe, and leaves a red stripe, congrats! You’ve no reason to gripe, so keep pumping that pipe with spicy foods and tripe.

#11: Have a large, fat cat sit in your lap on a daily basis for heat acclimation.  You must be acclimating all the time, 24 hours a day.  Not just on rides.  I don’t have a cat, but I do have a hot pussy to sit on my lap instead.  OH hahahah!! No, but not really.

#12: Fart in the shower.  And don’t have the fan on.  Farting in the shower increases the room discomfort level by 12 points, which translates to temperature by 23 degrees.

#13: Glance at the sun every now and then.  Don’t look at it for more than forty minutes straight, as it’s bad for your eyes.  I recommend the 20/20/20 rule.  20 minutes looking at the sun, 20 seconds looking at something 20 millimeters away, 20 more minutes looking at the sun, etc.

#14: Avoid products like Sensodyne, the toothpaste for people who can’t eat cold things because they’re weak-minded.  By using Sensodyne, you’re reducing the overall amount of cold you can feel.  The percentage of temperature your body can sense, increases towards hot.  If anything, you want to reduce the heat not increase it.  Don’t use Sensodyne because it will make you hot.

#15: I’m sure you’re like me and you can’t get enough fatty northern fish, like mackerel, sardines, and herring.  The pungently delicious odor of a good can of herring, wafting past my nose on a hot summer day is so appeasing that it’s making my mouth water right now as I type.  A few months ago my teammate, Dan, explained to me why this type of northern fish is good for you.  I didn’t really absorb or understand what he was saying, but basically the gist of it was that when you eat animals from the far north or south (cold places) the omega-3 fats your body absorbs helps your body stay cool.  So eating animals from cold places increases your tolerance to the heat.  You might (naively, I might add) say to yourself, “Wait a minute, Kennett.  Wouldn’t eating foods from cold places help you stay warm, since those animals have to stay warm in the extreme cold?  And even that logic doesn’t make any sense so what are you talking about?”  And to that I say: shut your dirty little mouth and be quiet when I’m talking at you.  It’s science.  Shut up.  There’s even a quote in the Bible that backs me up:

Page 312, verse 19 from the book of Jehovahs: “And they lord said on to him, thy kingdom come, ‘there shall be great chilling of the spirit when’st thy eats the cold, dead flesh of his fellow man.’”

#16: Build yourself an ice vest for before the race.  It can get hot just rolling around in the parking lot the 30 minutes before the race, and you might as well stay cool then.  I built a sick as ice vest a few months ago but left it behind at a host house by accident.

#17: Change your name to something that can be muttered in as few syllables as possible.  That way when people ask your name you won’t waste precious mouth moisture by going on and on, finishing your long, mulit syllable name.  While ‘LL Cool K’ sounded appealing to me, I decided on the more practical ‘Keehhh.’  I can say that without even opening my mouth.

If there’s one person who knows about heat acclimation, it’s Thomas T, who is pictured here stealing a cantaloupe rind.