aluminiumsucks

I have reached a certain level of fame, You Tube fame. I feel like a rapper. Green for the money, gold for the honeys.

Well, this will be the mid-trip Argentina post for anyone that gives a crap about what I do.... I gotta say though, if I were someone reading this, I'd be mildly interested in reading what I had to say. I mean, really, I have never been to Argentina before this little escapade and I gotta say, this country is pretty goddamn cool.
It seems every time I leave the US I think about my brother; he has no car and no real driving desire to see anyplace to which he can't ride his bicycle. He really loves where he is. Sometimes I admire that, and wish for that, but when I'm outside of the US I remember that there are innumerable, really awesome things that you can see if only you were to go there and check them out.
This race reminds me of the Tour de Beauce, only en Espanol. One of the reasons being that I'm on my own and this is really a pretty big tour... one only has to gaze upon the start list to see that. The other reason is that they speak a different language, sadly it's Spanish here instead of French. I could at least understand French. Plus there are homeless children and feral dogs on the streets during weeknights! How exciting is that?!
I've found that there must not be many dudes in this particular region with bushy blond beards and an arm full of tattoos because I've gotten a lot of priceless looks when I walk down the streets by myself, and the bartender remembers that I tip pretty well, even for a Gringo because she pours me some pretty tall whiskey's con hielo, even after the lights have been dimmed.
It's funny because when I was in New Zealand last year I thought, "gee... am I wasting my time sitting in cafes during the day and bars at night trying to talk to the locals? Shouldn't I be out there, checking out the scenery and sampling some other element of this experience besides walking around town and stepping out in front of traffic?" What I've realized is that Mountains are all over this stupid planet and that stuff never changes, at least it doesn't change at a rate that is perceptible to human beings..... I have friends that are fighting wars on mountains right now that carry the potential risk of death, and I have friends that are out there, climbing other mountains that have been at exactly the same risk even though there are no bullets flying so to hell with mountains.
There is an osmotic quality culture posses that scenery does not for me, and that's why when my boss says, "we might be doing a race in (insert foreign country here)," my heart skips a beat in the hopes that I might get to travel for thirty hours to god knows where to go with the team. I guess I'd just rather get stabbed than fall down a crevasse....
Anyway, if I have a key to your house, or I can walk in during dinner without knocking without getting clubbed by a blunt object, you'll be getting a souvenir and I miss you. Photos of homeless children and feral dogs will follow.....

My general disposition as of late has seen me casting my gaze to the ground quite a bit and I'll be goddamned if I didn't find a pot leaf on the road, in the pile of this fall's fallen leaves by our trailer today. It must be a sign from God. Hilarious!
I mean, everyone hears how this state has a more progressive view towards marijuana policy, but to have pot leaves falling on the ground like oak tree leaves or whatever the hell else really gives you some perspective to just how progressive they must be. I mean, seriously, it was just brown and dried up like all the other leaves on the ground just laying where it fell. I mean, that is a pot leaf right? I'm not really a botany expert or anything, but that's what it is, right?

Well folks, it's a new year and all sorts of shit has happened recently with both the personal and professional life of yours truly. I'm forcing myself to write a blog since I made the mistake of starting one in the first place. I figure I might as well keep the lie that people care about what happens to me, and that what happens to me is even moderately interesting, alive.
The story of my year as a mechanic for a professional cycling team is shaping up to be the most unfunny joke ever told because we still don't have any frames to turn into whole bicycles and I don't think they are going to get here before I leave for Argentina next week, which means I'm going to be nothing but pounded in the ass once our training camp starts. A training camp which starts a day or two after I return from Argentina. I will however be bringing back a select few of my readers a souvenir, so send me a nice email before wednesday the 15th and I might actually bring you a dried up horse turd, or whatever Argentina is famous for. They're the ones that have the vaqueros right? Horses poop don't they? Anyway, I'm pretty damn fired up for yet more international travel, and I'm not saying that with any amount of detectible sarcasm in my voice. This is truly the reason I've always wanted to do this job; hang out of cars adjusting derailleurs in exotic new lands? Are you f'n kidding?! Adventure! I'm mostly just ecstatic that I don't have to drive the van and trailer to Tierra del Fuego or anything. That's pretty awesome.
I was also quite chagrined and dismayed to wake up at the end of my first drive across the country this year to find that I'm actually PAYING to live in California. If you've ever met me, you know I'm pretty stupid, but now you understand the depths at which my stupidity flows. If stupid could cause desalination, I'd be the Gulf Stream, and Europe would already be the frozen wasteland it is destined to become.
The where and why of living in California can be answered in fairly short order. I'm living in Santa Rosa, 50 miles north of San Fran, a region I think might not be utterly destroyed by the 'big one,' but I don't really know or care if that is correct. The why? I got engaged to a very pretty lady that took a job with a different, unnamed, pro cycling team that is based in the aforementioned city in NorCal.
So it's a mixed bag I think. I'm very excited for the upcoming trip to Argentina, and some further international travel with the team planned for this year but I was an idiot and didn't buy the Spanish Rosetta Stone as soon as I found out I was going, which means I'm going as another stupid American that can't speak the language. What's even sadder is that it's Spanish. Shouldn't we all know Spanish by now? Too bad they don't speak French there. There's always the Tour de Beauce I guess.....
While there are a few things in life that I'm finding a bit frustrating at the moment, the engagement obviously trumps all of those things and makes me feel like I've been walking around with stones in my pockets for my entire life, and now they are all gone. An odd metaphor, yes, but that's how I feel goddamnit. If you don't like my metaphors, please stop reading my blog. Photos:

If you cross the boarder into California via interstate highway, this is how you'll be greeted: large trucks with large tires hauling large trailers. Trailers that are filled with dirt-bikes. Not a recipe for fuel efficiency, but wtf, we aren't gonna move on until it's all gone. It's just our way. I sadly fit in pretty well with the team rig, getting what I calculated to be between 7.4 and 8.6 MPG depending on wind conditions all the way from Charlotte, NC to Santa Rosa. Damn.....


This is for Monie Campo. It's stuck to the pallets of my toolbox so I'll always have a reminder of Seven Pounds. I love the entire Campo Family and I usually seem to miss them most when I'm gone.


Another landmark event occurred in my life this winter: I managed to get the best ice-beard I've ever had while on a good, long xc-ski with my pal, Matt. God my beard is awesome.

In an attempt to elude boredom's clutches last week I sat in a chair while a man stuck me with ink drenched needles. In other words I got a new tattoo. It is magnificent and giant, and while I was there I got to see some also magnificent testimony to the fact that man kind really can't be long for this earth.
While I was sitting there getting poked a guy walked into the tattoo shop where my pal Curtis (who tattooed me) works. Curtis and I were probably four or five hours into a six hour and fifteen minute job. His eyes were probably getting tired and I was certainly tired of the pain, when our spirits were lifted by laughter. Laughter aimed at another human being, which is the best among an already good medicine.
This kid walks into the tattoo shop and is obviously pretty excited because he has just turned eighteen and was all amped up because at long last, he was able to lawfully get a tattoo. He had settled on a tattoo of the boarders of the lower peninsula of Michigan, with a star marking the town we were in, and where he was from; Lansing. The tattoo artist who was doing the walk-in stuff that day asked him, "Do you want the U.P. on there at all?" to which this young fellow replied (and I'm spelling phonetically) , "gnaw man, I ain't never been there. It's just a bunch of stupid trees, right?"
At this point Curtis started telling me that the new trend for the gangster kids in Lansing tattoo wise is to get the area code for Lansing tattooed somewhere on their arm. Which is funny in and of itself because the 517 area code comprises at least eight Michigan counties and doesn't really do much but tell people you're from a large area of central Michigan, but at least it's SOUTH Central Michigan....
Anyway, the tattooist that was helping this young Eminem fan did the drawing as described by the customer, put the stencil on the young fella's arm and said, "Go check it out in the mirror and see how you like the placement and everything." We saw the guy go out to the mirror, check it all out, go back into the area where he was to be tattooed and he says, "Is that where Lansing is? Let me see a map." Yes folks, you guessed it, the guy didn't even know where his city of residence was on a map. I guess it's hard to get people to understand the importance of Peak Oil when most of the General Public can't point out where they are on a map. Now, I'm not the smartest person out there by any means, but I thought scenes like that were just staged comedy for other, slightly less retarded General Public morons that watched Jay Leno. It's been good knowing you all, I hope your deaths are painless and quick, because we're all doomed.

I, on the other hand, knew exactly where I was.
Curtis is a good tattoo artist. He works at Vivid Ink in Lansing, MI. and you should go there and pay him to permanently ruin your skin.

To the bear I almost ran into last night while riding my bicycle home from the bar,

Dear Mr. Bear,

I'm not sure if you have the internet in your lair, or den, or in the forrest at large even, but if you do, I hope you can find your way to my blog and read this letter I am writing to you now. Nothing against you, or bears in general, but why were you just hanging out in the road at night? I almost didn't see you, and I almost ran straight into you. It was my swerving and brake noise that scared you away and made you run into the swamp by the road. I know humans may be encroaching on your habitat, which is cool and all, but I wasn't even on a trail in the woods... I was riding my bicycle home from my favorite local drinking establishment. Anyway Mr. Bear, thanks for not swatting at me with your claws or biting at me with your teeth, that would have totally sucked.
Maturity truly ruled the night last night. You were mature enough to realize that I meant you no harm, and I was mature enough to not scream like a small child when I realized that I was about to run into you. Anyway, thanks a lot, Mr. Bear for not killing me and just walking away. Cooler heads prevailed.

Yours Always,
Ben

I cried like Oprah....

If anyone reads this blog, they might read the title of this post and think that I'm referring to the current economic troubles that are facing this country. And while all of that stuff really sucks for some people, I'm not getting too worked up about that shit because I live in a van most of the year and don't really have that much money to lose anyway so whatever, my horses won't starve because I can't afford horses in the first place, and I haven't driven a car in over two weeks because gas is too expensive and riding a bike is cooler.
The collapse that I am talking about has more to do with the anti-intellectualism that seems to pervade our culture. I'm talking specifically about some evidence I've recently noticed about this country's slide towards an environment depicted in the movie "Idiocracy."
This movie plays out the scenario of intelligent people being more cautious about reproducing due to economic and social concerns and stupid people not really caring and having children at an alarming rate, thus diluting the gene-pool and turning this country's citizenry into a bunch of semi-retarded consumerist morons. It's a really funny movie, but the sad thing is that I think it's slowly coming true. How do I know this, you ask? Even educational programming has suffered. Just watch the Discovery Channel and you'll see. There used to be all sorts of good, informational, educational shows on there, now what has it become? Well let's see, there's a show on there called "Destroyed in Seconds" which is nothing more than a run-of-the-mill footage show of stuff blowing up.
Now there's a show on there called time warp or something like that. It's basically a show of stuff being filmed happening in super-duper-slow-motion. They shot a banana in slow-motion. Wow. They have a guy making farting noises... in slow-motion. And the big capper? They show something blowing up in, you guessed it, slow-motion. Seriously, the next step is "Ouch My Balls." The show where people get hit in the balls with stuff...then the spin off can be Ouch My Balls, in slow motion.

I can officially say the season is over. Sadly it ended with one of the more brutal drives I had to do this year. I was flown out to the land decency forgot, did the interbike thing then drove the new team car back to the Motherland once it was over. I left Las Vegas Friday late Friday afternoon, drove for twelve hours, folded one of the seats down at about four in the morning, slept for an hour, woke up from the cold, took all of the t-shirts out of my backpack and covered up with them, slept for another hour, woke up from the cold and kept driving for another twenty-three hours until I found myself, miraculously in my driveway. It was not fun, but it didn't last long.
Interbike was more or less cool. It was interesting going to a trade show as news of a coming economic meltdown was breaking. It was sort of like of the cover to the Black Flag album, Nervous Breakdown and we were the guys with the chair, and the guy bearing his fists in the corner was the bike industry. That being said, Glen still managed to secure some pretty sweet deals with people so that's good. Interbike is usually a good source of inspiration though, being that you're around some of the best and the brightest the cycling industry has to offer, and I think I had about two good ideas while I was there. The first really good idea I had was to pick the biggest flat-bill-souther-california-looking jack-ass I could find on the floor of the show and pretend like I thought he was some famous moto-cross dude and see if I could get him to take a picture with me. The thing that put the brakes on that idea was that in the past year the flat-bill-southern-california-looking jack-ass archetype has been eclipsed, nay forcefully deposed by the tits-and-tats-affliction-tshirt-las vegas-looking-UFC-cagefighter-wannabe dude, and frankly, while lame, they could still probably beat me up, so I just passed on that idea entirely. I also came up with a really good band name while I was walking the showroom floor, but I've since forgotten it. Yes folks, I'm never going to be your boss. I may be your janitor, but never your boss.
Now that the season is over the big goal constantly comes back to the idle hands being the devil's tools crap I always talk about on this blog. I've been doing some framebuilding type of work, which has been a massive pain in the ass, but it's better than taking up smoking. My girlfriend has gone off to finish her degree at school so I don't have her to bother and work issues are slowly strangling my dream of doing a bike tour. Damn. I haven't given up on that yet though. I just might be riding through a little snow towards the end.... Nothing I haven't done before. Photos!
I've got a few from Tour of Missouri and interbike.

Lars Boom is cool for a couple of reasons in my book:
1. He's a cyclocross world champion
2. He isn't too cool to wash a car for his team.


I have a dream job. 4:30am, cold, dark, and rainy. Pretty great.... Missouri in September? I don't need any long pants. Ooops.


The Easton booth at Interbike had some good Bissell stuff up. I've used my boss for scale. You should buy some Easton stuff, Jerky.


This is the best, funniest thing I saw at Interbike. I'm guessing it was this guy's first time at the show. Sometimes it's just not enough to show up for work after a long night. I'd also like to point out that it's like ten in the morning and this young chap is still down for the count.


Some off-season fun-time shots. Shooting rats at the train-yard and doing a repair I should have said no to.

I've been home for almost a week after the tour of Missouri and some easy work at the warehouse and that was the last of it. The race itself was a bit boring, if not really fast, and nothing particularly exciting happened, but it was cool all the same. It was one of the few races where we've hired our second mechanic, so that was nice to hang out with Jim O'brien and have a really easy time working and getting done really early in the day so we could hang out and relax.
While the season is certainly gasping its last breath for me, it's not entirely over. I still have one last trip to make before I can actually say I am in the off-season. I have to go to Interbike. I'm looking forward to it this time because last year I was just so totally overwhelmed with the grandeur of it all that I wasn't able to focus myself on anything specifically, but just the shiny mass of bike shit that surrounded me. It's definitely going to be an eventful trip no matter what goes down. I'm excited.
I also have to drive home from Las Vegas in the brand new Bissell Pro Cycling team car, which I was originally planning on stopping and camping at cool places along the way, but considering my grand plans for an actual bike tour in Oct., I'm going to just haul sausage back to MI so I can do some shakedown trips and what not before the epic begins.
On that note, I've made great strides towards my ultimate goal of riding my bike from MPLS to Caddylack. I fired up my old-ass MSR Whisperlite stove that I haven't used for a great many years and after cleaning out the pump, replacing a few o-rings and praying nothing blew up, it worked like a charm, so I'll at least be able to boil water for coffee while I'm on the road. Anyway, whatever. What else do I do during time off? I go to the dunes. It's better there.

I suppose I should just bite the bullet and write a new blog entry. I've sadly let this blog slip and I don't think anyone really reads it anymore. It's really been due mostly to laziness and the fact that nothing has been happening. This season has been stressful and I don't really feel like writing about shit that isn't very entertaining or cool. I've been home for a total of about 20 days since January 2nd, which means I've been on the road for basically the entire year. I left and didn't come home for five months, which sucked, but was partly by choice so I shouldn't get too bent about it. I'm basically waiting for this season to be over so I can regroup, and try to get back into shape. That's probably been the biggest bummer of the season is the fact that I was in pretty decent shape last year and this year has been an absolute disaster in terms of me actually getting exercise.
I have a plan though to pull myself out of this nose dive. I recently purchased a cargo bike frame from a shop in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It's a frame that is built around the xtracycle rack stuff and it's pretty cool. I had a bike a long time ago, back when it was the only way I got around, that had an xtracycle attachment and I really like those things, and I'm imagining a frame with the extension already built in will be stiffer and way cooler. The problem that I have is that I won't be able to get it home because I simply don't have a car big enough to get it home. My only option is to ride it back to Michigan. I came up with the idea of riding my bike to my brother's place in Minneapolis when I was living in France and never really got around to it, and this is sort of a different version of the trip I initially envisioned, but it'll still be cool. I have some ideas that will make it better. I plan on riding home after The Homie Fall Fest in Minneapolis, which is basically a giant, pre-halloween, gathering of crazy bike people in the city which usually degenerates into debauchery and people jumping their bikes over a bon-fire. It's an all day event, and it's fun. I went once with my brother and a couple of my (read, my only two) friends from Michigan. Jim broke his finger like a retard, and it while it was a bit of a buzzkill, it was pretty classic Jim Oliver, getting drunk and falling down.... Anyway, the ride will start in late october which means two things. The first being that I will not be able to take the boat across the lake, and I'll be forced to go through the UP so that'll be cool. And since I'll be in the UP in late October, I should run into some pretty good weather at some point. I'm also considering riding south from the Mackinaw Bridge to my house on the North Country Trail, which would add a pretty stupid amount of off-road mileage on non-bike friendly trails, but I still think it'd be pretty cool. Anyway, that's my plan for the off-season. My next blog entry will probably have something to do with how work has dashed my hopes and dreams once again, but hopefully it'll all work out. The planning is coming along well, now I just need the time, and thankfully my job does generally afford me some big gaps of time off in the fall.
Despite all the stresses and the sad beginnings of repetition that has come with going to the same races for the last few years, there have been some bright spots. I have seen some funny stuff on the road and had my usual run-ins with crack-heads, bike-nerds and your average run-of-the-mill-asshols that I enjoy so much. And I managed to take some photos to prove it. Anyway, the season is winding down now, with only the Tour of Utah(which is one of my past favorites), USPro stuff, which will be fun because J.O.B. will be on staff, some podunk Michigan thing, and The Tour of Misery, which I haven't done before so I'm excited for something new. Then it's over, so at least it'll be a strong finish.



The most classic example was at a bar on Tybee Island, GA before the start of the Tour de Georgia whereupon a police officer walked into the bar I was drinking at and started throwing a set of the bar's darts. After losing a couple of rounds he inspected the darts, left for about fifteen, then came back, still in uniform, with his own darts. It was pretty awesome.

I also went to Durango with my girlfriend. I saw this deer, standing all regally on a hilltop in the snow. I'd of been a fool not to take a picture.
Then there's been work.... I've seen a lot of the following:

Broken Shit

Crappy Dinners that would give John McCain a flashback

And my greatest triumph: getting Mark to buy black handlebar tape. It is true, what they say about 'going black.'

I also got these sweet coveralls thanks to Jim O'brien and his hook up with DEI. They have my name on them.... I suppose they can spare a set of coveralls being that they probably have more money than NASA at that shop.

And plenty of Parking Lot Weirdos

And PBR

You have a belt buckle with your name on it. It's just Johnny Cash bonus cheddar style points when it proclaims you Queen of the 1999 Durango Rodeo, and it's the real buckle from the rodeo. I've apparently been doing things right this whole time. Who knew?

Well, this is another one of those blog entries where I apologize for not writing a blog entry to people that probably don't read my blog anymore. It's the circle of life though, I'll get new readers... maybe....
Anyway, I just read my last entry, and it's pretty insane thinking about all the places I've been since I wrote the last entry. I'll try to recap things a bit. Since spending Easter in California, I drove across the country to spend about a week in North Carolina with a few day stop in Durango, CO. After NC, we did the tour of Georgia, which was pretty cool. From there it was a week in New Mexico for another race, then ten days or so in Oregon, uh then drove to Michigan for the Tour de Leelanau, had about three days off which I spent reorganizing my life after five straight months of being on the road, then had to leave again for Arlington, VA and the Philly week crap just as I was getting ready to relax at home. Maybe next time I guess. I have a bunch of photos that are on my dead phone, I'll try to post those a bit later. I'll also try to come up with an interesting blog entry in the meantime. Thanks for checking in.
I did get attacked by a bat when I arrived at our house in Pennsylvania.... Maybe I'll tell you that story when I return. I'm thinking it was trying to get some retribution for it's fallen comrade that I murdered last year while making the drive from Oregon to Philly. I did post a photo of the desiccated corpse, so I guess I had it coming....

There are a lot of situations people find themselves in on a day to day basis where the path isn't always clear; moral quandaries, where you don't always know what you should do or what the right thing to do is. Well, I didn't have any problems on Sunday for Easter when Glen's neighbor, Tony asked me if I wanted a glass of Brandy before noon because he followed it up by telling me that, "da pope-a-called and a-said dat it-a was okay." Phew, I was worried for a second. Why not partake in the Sacrament? It's f'n Easter!
Glen's neighbor Tony is this super old guy from Italy who has two acres of land smack in the middle of downtown Santa Rosa, upon which he grows grapes and makes his own wine. He reminds me a lot of my friend John's dad. He has a garden, makes most of his food from scratch and lives a life completely different from most everyone around him. He's a disappearing piece of this country's history of immigrant labor, who came at a time when sucking it up and working your ass off actually meant that you would someday get ahead and live comfortably without being a wage slave for the rest of your life. Those days are gone now and we only have these old dudes who were kids during WWII left as proof. Thanks VISA. Thanks Master Card. Thanks debt industry. I don't think you have the same kind of chance in this country now and it's an interesting look back at a very different, and in my opinion, more common sense time.
Anyway, he made Easter pretty interesting, and that was cool. He cooked us an absolutely enormous meal for lunch and then another one for dinner after Glen and I had split a bunch of wood for him. Anyway, I took a bunch of photos because he has a pretty cool compound, and it was a good way to begin the end of my time in the land that sanity has apparently forgotten. It's off to San Dimas tomorrow, Redlands next week, then the Tour de Georgia and beyond.... Shazam.

Glen, Tony and myself doing the work that will later get us so well fed... uhh... and lots of wine, and brandy... and grappa....


The barbeque that made the food.... It's a bunch of shit that has nothing to do with barbequeing that is welded together to make an actual barbeque. There's even a chainring off a bicycle in there! Fancy that!


These boxes were filled with the wine Tony made, and everyone drank. It was good. The wine Tony makes has no sulfates in it which means, delicious and no hangovers. Did I mention Tony was cool?


More wine making gadgetry that I thought was cool. I tried to make wine once... it wasn't even this high tech, and the yields were much less enjoyable....


Another interesting thing about Tony was that he dove for Abalone when he was a younger man. He literally had hundreds upon hundreds of shells on his property.

I've been getting a lot of requests for blog updates, and I can only assume that is because people have taken the comment I made about being like a CIA agent literally. This really could not be further from the truth, and I only meant that I was like a CIA agent at that particular moment. If you don't believe me, I'll tell what is going on around me at this very moment.... I'm sitting on a bed at Glen's house, watching one of his cats lick its butthole. Pretty exciting isn't it? Things have actually been pretty damn boring as of late. I shouldn't say boring, but I haven't really been doing all that much. Definitely nothing worth writing about....
The black hole of awfulness that is the month of racing in the central valley of California has been done away with, and I've had a pretty big chunk of time off lately. The team was cool enough to actually fly me someplace in the contiguous 48 so I was able to go to Minneapolis and see my brother for a little while. That was cool. It was pretty bad timing because my visit happened to coincide with the passing of his girlfriend's sister, which meant that my brother and his girlfriend were not at home and I basically sat inside of their house for five days and cowered from the Minnesota Winter, while life passed me by outside. I've become a pretty serious pussy when it comes to winter anymore. I'm ashamed, but I'll probably have opportunities to turn that around later. I did get to see JIM and the rest of the marvelous populous of the great city of Minneapolis though for a few days and that was cool. My brother did a good job of helping his girlfriend's family through their rough time and I was proud of him. Funerals are always strange for me and this one was no different. I didn't know the dead person, but I was still struck by the odd wave of inexplicable sadness at different points during the funeral. Whatever though, just more proof for my theories about life.
Now it's two weeks in Santa Rosa hanging out waiting for the remainder of the crappy crappy California races to finish up, at which point I will head east for the Tour de Georgia, and Jim O'brien's place, where we will further pimp the trailer and eat barbeque pork sandwiches. Yum.
Sadly my current phone has limited my ability to take pictures because it is one of those fancy smart phone and it takes forever to get the camera thing up and running. It's a shame really because Merced was a very target rich environment in terms of parking lot weirdos. I really missed out on that, and I'm hoping to have the opportunity to get back on that horse very soon. There's a lot of nut jobs that aren't getting their pictures posted on the internet because of my phone, and that just makes me sad.
Oh yeah, and in other news, I've been asked to start a blog for the team website here, so you can all go there and look for blog updates if you aren't satisfied with this one... ya bastards.

It's been a pretty long six weeks. I think the last time I wrote a blog I was doing something like driving in a snowstorm.... We'll, the snowstorm ended and the shit-storm began with training camp once I finally got to California having to try to maintain a fleet of 36 race bikes, plus all of the bullshit you need to run a professional cycling team all by myself. What's that you say? Impossible? Well, it was for me. Thankfully Mark saw the desperation in my eyes and we hired a SRAM neutral guy to help me out so we could get everything mostly dialed before ToC started. There were still a few bumps along equipment highway, but everything was pretty smoothed over by stage two so wtf?
I managed to make the newspaper after the first stage when I got so sick in the car that I had to have Glen pull over so I could vomit. I thought it was an errant case of motion sickness, because every now and again I do get a little pukey in the car when there is someone sitting in front of me, obscuring my view of the race/horizon and there was, in fact, a reporter sitting in the front seat. The reporter had a pretty goddamn big head too, so that was just another thing to deal with. All that aside though, it turned out that it wasn't actually motion sickness because I was sick for the next three days and had some impressively voluminous hurls after the car rides were over. The sort of funny moment was that when I was getting sick in the car I told Glen that I needed him to pull over, but apparently there was something more important happening in the bike race so he hands me a musette bag (the small cloth bags the soinguers put food in for the racers during the race) and says, "I can't pull over, you'll have to go in this...." I would have quoted the line from Wayne's World when Garth says to the roadie "if you're gonna spew, spew into this." and hands the guy a folded up dixie cup, but I was far too sick and trying not to actually have to use the musette bag to throw up in.
ToC is now in the books and, you know... whatever. It was pretty good. I was sick for most of it, so I basically just washed bikes, tried to stave off vomiting in the car by sleeping during the race and that was pretty much it. I was awake and feeling okay in time to see Zirbel have the best race of his life though pulling out two fantastic results and looking like an absolute stud on the last day of the race. Maybe it wasn't the best race of his life, but I think he was definitely our team's MVP. This is all not to mention BJM's top 20 GC finish..... Now it's off to someplace... I'm not exactly sure where. I'm sitting in the lobby of our hotel awaiting instructions. I'm like a CIA agent, bitch.

I made it to Calfornia. My friend John was the only person that called me to express any sort of concern. He also wanted to call dibs on my motorcycle. I'm not sure how to take that, but when I do die for real, John gets everything. Photos!

When Jim O'brien and I get together, sparks, and scotch, always fly! In process of building the new, giant trailer.


This is the beginning of the end for my drive through Wyoming. These two semi's got side by side and herded, nay shepherded traffic through the blinding whiteout at an agonizingly slow 15mph.


Same thing, but during daylight. It may not look like it, but this is what Eisenhower spent all that money on... a baron, snow drifted wasteland of expedience through the middle of the US.


Everytime I drive though Nevada, I see some really awesome trick of light. This wasn't the best angle to take the picture from, but I was too busy eating a pop-tart to catch it in time. Hopefully not all impact was lost due to pop-tarts... but damn are those things tasty.

I remember when I was in High School my Mom took my brother and I on a cross country drive from California to Michigan. And on that drive I remember thinking a couple of things. One was just noticing how immense this country is, second was me thinking how cool it would have been if I would have been born back in the pioneer days and third, being amazed by just how much boring shit there is between California and Michigan. I thought that if I had been born back then I'd of been some Jim Bridger type. I'm realizing now, considering the fact that I am, as I write this, stranded in a rest area hunkered down just outside of Laramie, WY while a snowstorm rages outside the van, that I would not be the heroic, Jim Bridger type that kills bears and rescues white women from the clutches of indians, but the more common and less storied retard that gets drunk and falls into an ice cold river a tad west of the Mississippi and dies of hypothermia, or gets mauled by the same bear Jim Bridger will eventually kill with a sharp stick. Oh well, the world needs Janitors too, right?
I figured I'd write this as both the usual blog chronicle of my travels, but also as a last will and testament because at the rate I am going, there is no way in hell I'm going to make it to California. I left Mark's place Wednesday around 4:30pm and drove to about Des Moines, IA where it started to snow and blow so hard that I was forced to pull off the road. I probably saw about 15 accidents happen, and that particular stretch took me back to my bedwetting days in High School because every time I'd hit a patch of ice on the road, the back wheels of the van would lose traction, the rear end of the van would slide out and the trailer would start to swing. And every time that would happen I would pee just a little bit. It was very humiliating, but thankfully I was alone.
I pulled over at 1am after that happened about a dozen times or so thinking that I shouldn't push my luck, and climbed into the waiting arms of the first bench seat in the van where I slept for a comfortable nine hours and resumed my forward march. As an aside, the new Merrell winter jackets we got (Merrell is one of our clothing sponsors, buy their shit, I command thee!) are great because they are pretty long and double as a good blanket if you ever have to sleep in a van during a snowstorm.
The scene that greeted me upon returning to the freeway was that of a frozen Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. There was CAR-nage everywhere. Some wrecks, mostly just people that probably didn't turn off their cruise control and dumped it in a ditch, but a couple of the accidents were very serious, zero-percent survivability looking disasters.
Anyway, now I'm here, nowhere, writing a blog post because I'm bored and stranded. And for the last will and testament part... uh... I pretty much threw everything I owned away, but if you like guitars, I've got a few of those at my house. Or if you need tools to fix bicycles I have a lot of those laying around, and several bikes to choose from.... FIrst come, first served. I'll repost when I'm in California so you vultures don't take all my stuff before I'm actually dead.