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Shorter Days.....

I guess its time for a year recap and whats going on in my head. This year was a really terrible year, and also a really great one at the same time. I experienced a lot of problems with my body throughout the season. Some that have been explained, some that haven't.

I was forced to take a lot of time off, and it showed me many things. One was how to let go of things that you cannot change, and to let life take you as it pleases. Turning Pro was one of the most exciting things to happen to me in my life. I was living the dream, and it sucked that when I got to where I worked for years to get to, it wasn't meant to be.

This year taught me a lot about being an adult. I felt I aged a lot this year in terms of mentality. Although the years racing was feable, I also got to travel to a lot of cool places, see lots of new things, and experience a later summer without it being bike oriented.

(Many, many coffee shop days this summer)

I hung out with the guys a lot more, and simply enjoyed the summer, as most years I was away racing. I did the Tour De Quebec, with the Canada Games crew, which was a great experience, one of the highlights of my year. I took a job as a kayak guide which was something I always wanted to do. Many of my days were spent sitting at the coffee shop chatting, and the nights sitting at the bar drinking, or having campfires. It was a great way to chill out. I also did the cabot trail ride at the end of the year, which has always been an extrordinary way to spend a weekend.

As the winter approaches here on old PEI I find myself working construction again. Balls its tough, but it keeps you on your toes. A little bit of suffering a day is good for the body.

( Tried to hang out with this guy as much as possible)

For next year my plans are straight foreward. I plan on going to Europe. Most likely I'll end up in Northern France, where the races are long, hard and shitty. Hard man racing is what I love. The harder the better. Every racing cyclist would be lieing if they said they didn't want to race in Europe, and I feel I've put it off for too long. Coach Luc is working on my set up now. I've even enrolled in French class to work on the lingo. Its tough when the instructor barely speaks English.

From a racing point of view, this year has shown me just how much I love racing a bike. You don't realize how much you love something until its taken away from you. Motivation was always high this year, and I find as the fall wears on I cant seem to stop thinking about next year. I realized that I love racing bikes not because I like the ride of the bike, but I like the competition. If I cant sprint to climb or race someone into the ground it starts to come out in odd ways as I learned this summer. I love the competitive feelings when a group of people are simply trying to destroy each other. That's what does it for me.

I rarely hop on a bike these days(work, daylight, etc) but the time to start training is coming soon.

Check out bartape.net for great docs on the Cervelo Test Team.

Ghetto Thanks

I haven't been riding a bike much this week. After the Eligin 80 I had intentions of hopping on the new roadie and putting the miles, but a solid flu hit me, which I'm still trying to fight off. Lately the cold has manifested itself into my ear plugging it solid, making me feel as if I have one ear plug in all the time.

I started a new construction job today. Its funny how it seems construction is the job of choice for poor cyclists in Charlottetown. The list of construction monkey-cyclists these days are myself, Ryan Belli, Flan-jam, Derek, with of course Cory, Kent and Nick who are not so poor, and not so much monkeys as they employ the rest of us.

I don't mind working construction. You freeze your ass of most of the time but you learn real world knowledge, and get to hang out with the guys. It also teaches you the finer points in life to appreciate. After working construction you never look at a good coat, a sunny day or a good cup of coffee the same way again.

Thanksgiving was this weekend along with it was the annaul Ghetto Thanksgiving. Ghetto Thanks is like the Real Thanks but as if it were in the ghetto. Instead of turkey, we have KFC. Instead of stuffing you mom spent hours on, we have Stove Top. Instead of shirts and ties, we have shirtless and pantless. All the fixxin's are included but consist of chips, Joe Louis, and mystery wieners in a can. I'm sure they are a delicacy in Harlem.

.....And we all rejoice! It was a great hangover brunch!


(Cutting the Bird)










(The result)

Time to get back on Track

Here it is folks....first post in 3 months! Many of you have been wondering if I had died, when in fact I did not! The odd bit has been happening here and there, which I will update within the next few days.

My lack of posts has been half laziness and half the results of a computer that would crash every time I would try to load a picture on it. Well, here I sit with a new computer and some insight into my boring life!

I realized I had a lonely gap in my life. No matter what I tried, I simply couldn't fill the gap. It felt like there was always something missing. I tried the gym, girls, the church, but nothing could fill the void which has been wide open in my life. Then it hit me......

I needed a new booze cruiser! Yes, pulled from the wreckage of the CPEI bike swap I claimed this old bird. After some restoration, some rebuilding of the bearings, layers of fresh paint and new wood panelling, I now have a new best friend to get me home from the bar.

A brake less fixed gear with flats was getting too risky.

5 Fingers

(Halloween last year)

Today is the Canadian Road Nationals. I had a pretty good race there last year, and honestly thinking about this day was what pulled me through the long lonely hours in Tucson. Unfortunatly I had different ideas of how it would go at the time. In the TT a couple days ago there were some surprises. Some guys road great, but in the end the big guy Svein took the win again. It was good to see, as he's had a tough year this year. Christian surprised everyone with a 2nd in the TT....those little legs have the power.

Anyone of my buddies on the island knows I've been having a tough 3 weeks. Whatever I have took hold in a bad way and I had a lot of trouble simply functioning for the past while. I became so weak and sick I had a hard time getting out of bed some days. Along with horrible stomach pain, difficulty breathing, incredible weakness and dizzy-ness, some days I felt like I was about to die.

For three weeks I felt this, going from doctor to doctor with no satisfying answers, and all negative blood tests. Then, it seems the sickness started to subside. I was strong enough to go for a walk one day, then went to the park with my friend and her little boy the next day. The day after that I went for a mountain bike ride, then yesterday I went for a road ride.

I'm feeling ok now. Some symptoms I've looked at as single possible things. A doctor suggested I have an ulcer, which I then started a med for I feel much better in that area, after a week on it. In another area I started an allergy medication, which seems to be helping the breathing problems quite a bit. As far as the crazy sickness, I think it may have been a long long bought with mono(It felt like the mono I had when I was younger, apparently you can get it again?).

Anyway, I think I'm starting to feel like my old self.

PS. I love this guy....he's like a bull! I read a forum about how Bert Grabsch hasn't really been heard of until last year when he won the World TT championships. Of course many people pointed to the dope, then one guy said...."Have you ever thought that maybe these are the guys who would win(Bert, Svein) normally if everyone else wasnt on dope" His chest is like an oil drum.

New Ground

Most fresh cut trails need a good year or so of use to get broken in to the point where the ride feels natural. Well, with the upcoming Canada Games in a month, the new trail needed a little bit of speed cleaning and fast breaking in.

I headed out with the crew to put my efforts into raking and stomping down the fresh cut trail to try to get some flow out of the dirt. To my surprise everyone else on PEI who rides a bike seemed to think the same, and headed out to Brookvale to do their part. In total there was probably about 50 people out to either rake, chop, or stomp the new trail. Some crew simply rode, which in this case is what was needed.

Being out the woods working on trail brought back a lot of memories. When your riding you seldom take the time to simply smell the fresh pine, or the fresh dirt. Despite the horrible bugs, it created an inch in me to build some trail. I have been guilty of not making any new trail in many years, but maybe it something that I will have to take up again. It is something that only takes a few afternoons, but proves to pay off over years and years. Like a good tattoo.

I just finished "We Might As well Win" by Lance's DS Johan Bruyneel. It just came out on paperback, which brings the price down quite a bit. Picking up the book, I could tell the gist of it would be about Lance's tours. I dont mind reading that stuff, but any cyclist in North America gets pummelled with literature and movies about those seven years, so I didn't rush into reading it.

As expected most of the book is about Johans relationship with Lance, and his seven year run. Anyone who has an interest in cycling pretty much knows those years in detail as its hard to find anything else related to cycling unless you get an obscure book from amazon.com.

The book also speaks about Johan's own professional career throughout the 90's. Its funny how he continually says he was nothing special despite wearing the yellow jersey and winning two stages of the Tour.

Toward the end he talks about his time with Alberto Contrador, which was what I was really interested in. It offers a glimpse into the stressful life of a director sportif, but was written for the layman of the sport. Don't get me wrong it was very interesting, especially providing the mirror view of the sport which most people and racing cyclists never see, but it didn't get into the nitty gritty which what really interested me.

The book only lightly touched on the training habits of himself, Lance, and the other many great cyclists he's worked with. He would mention the training plans, but wouldn't talk numbers or anything in specific detail which was what I was hoping the book would go through.

Overall "We Might As well Win" is definitely worth reading. Cycling books to me are like candy, they usually read really easy, and fly by as my mind is usually in that head space for most of the day anyway.

One thing Johan did touch on that was interesting are racing tactics that get overlooked in our North American society. It seems that as I was growing up most riders in NA are concerned with the numbers, the training, and how 'strong' a rider is. Johan talked a lot about the strategy of the race. Predicting how it would play out and who was riding well simply by noticing small things about the way they ride. Anyone who has been in a bike race knows that when race day comes usually the guy who can read the pack the best, and play the one correct card when needed is the guy who wins.

Its during the race that the numbers usually go out the window. I think the difference between Europe and NA, is that in Europe there has always been the old guy who tells you how the race will play out. The guy who has been there 40 years before and knows who is riding well, and who isn't simply based on seeing how they sit on the saddle. Its the guy like that who teaches the younger generations, and it seems those guys are few and far between in our society. I guess that makes it more valuable when you finally do encounter a 'Johan Bruyneel'

Into the Clouds

Life has been moving pretty slow as of late. I raced the PEI Canada Games warm up last weekend, and netted a 3rd overall. The courses were super nice, especially the road race. There was a ton of climbing and wind, but super nice views. I'm glad I drove the course beforehand because while bike racing you don't really notice anything else but the race itself. Stuart Write and Justin from NB are riding really strong as Nationals and Canada Games are approaching. They will both make really strong showings.

Directly after the race and until later in the week I caught some sort of flu or bug that knocked me out solid. I pretty much just stayed in bed for a couple days. It was really odd how you can loose all strength all of a sudden. I think some of it is still lingering, although I'm feeling better.

The Tour De PEI happened all this week as well. Its pretty neat how how there is a World Cup bike race in your backyard. PEI is the perfect place for an event like this with a great mixture of solid roads, nice riding, interesting loops, but its something that is slow to catch on here on old PEI.

Its funny how something like a U15 Regional Hockey championship would net gossip for a month after the event and be all over the papers, the news and the coffee shops, but when you have WORLD CUP bike race, with riders from all over the world, everyone complains that they had to close the roads for a couple hours.

In other news......There has been an influx of bikes that people donated to be fixed up and re-distributed to anyone who would want a bike that otherwise wouldn't have been used. Well, I took the liberty of looking over the pile and found an old rusty gem that has been missed from all the other scavengers. The old girl is in rough shape but has quite a bit of history.

Its an old Bartali, which was hand made in Italy in the early 50's. Its mostly Campagnolo Record and it was the brand made by Gino Bartali, who won the Tour in 1952(I think). He was Coppi's number 1 rival, and there is now a race named after the both of them in Italy(Won by Damian Cunego this year I think).

(Bartali and Coppi, they say he was built more for manual labor or playing rugby, instead of cycling. Sounds like someone else I know)

Someone did a god-awful job of re-paining it, so it looks like crap, but after some work I think it should still have some life left in it. I've been looking for a bike like this for a couple years now, and until now haven't had any luck. I knew with bikes like this, they find you....not the other way around. After measurement, it should fit me like a glove.

The plan is to get it going before the Cape Breton ride in October. Which is a 300+km 3 day loop with camping and bonfires and the like. I'd like to rock the wool the whole time and ride solely on wine and baguettes. Its gonna be sweet.