Sunday, June 19, 2011

Is it Tour de France time yet?

Wow, another huge time gap since the last post.  It was before the Tour of California when I wrote last, and I was planning on riding the second stage of the ToC from Squaw Valley to Sacramento.  Well as most of you probably know the first stage around Lake Tahoe was cancelled and the second stage was shorted.  The second stage ended up starting in Nevada City and still finishing in Sacramento.  Well due to all the confusion we bailed on driving up to Tahoe with all the snow and freezing temperatures, really a bummer!  But on Monday I did ride downtown to partake in all of the festivities of the ToC and watch the stage finish.  Was pretty exciting and they had bike valets so you could leave your bike and walk around a bit.  I found some friends from Cycle Folsom OZ Lee and Phil Blay and we along with OZ's wife situated ourselves at about 150 meters from the finish line, VIP tents line the finish from there, but we were also across from the jumbotron so we could see everything pretty well.  Ben Swift won, the Team Sky train really working hard to try and contain things.  Got a good 75+ miles for the day and had a lot of fun.  I took the next day off as well and rode out to Jackson Highway and Ione Road to watch stage 3 go by.  As I left the house I though maybe I won't get rained on.  Well two minutes into the ride and the downpour started, by the time I got to the corner I was 20 miles in and was completely soaked. The rain and wind let up for a while when the race came by and began again as I headed home.

Well since then I have managed to ride over a hundred miles on quite a few Saturdays.  I almost feel like I am cheating myself if I don't really do a long hard ride on Saturday, either mileage, climbing or both.  Most rides around here are a minimum of 3,000 feet of climbing if you go over 80 miles.  Did a short 67 mile, 3,000 foot ride on Saturday with the Cycle Folsom group as usual.  Up to Newcastle and then Lincoln, going up to Sierra College Road by way of Twelve Bridges Road, a new route for me.

I wish I had more interaction with my club, although I did work as a corner worker at the Steve Dunlap Memorial Time Trial on June 5th.  Of course I got the corner where they had to cross traffic turning left onto the clockwise loop.  It was a rainy start and I managed to pick up a frog that hitched a ride on the top of my shoe.  Of course I didn't notice it until I was in my car and it hopped away, never to be seen again.  I tweeted about it and Jonathan Vaughters asked if it was on the bottom of my shoe, as I hadn't been specific as to how the frog made it into my car on my shoe.  Well I cranked up the stereo in my car to help provide to "inspirational" music to the riders as they flew by.  I can't believe how many riders have the money for time trial bikes.  I can understand the the Pro and Cat 1 and 2 and even Cat 3 riders having one, most likely provided for by the sponsors, but even the Juniors had TT bikes.  When I was an intermediate we didn't even had aero bars though.  Lemond really started that trend, now everyone seems to have a bike with disk wheel. Maybe someday I may get one, but first I have another 30 or more pounds to lose.

Really wish Garmin would come out with the Vector powermeter, I have been waiting and waiting, but it looks like fall at the earliest and most likely going to be spring before I will be able to get one.

Went shopping today and got a BluRay player and Cathy got a copy of The Fifth Element on BluRay to go along with it.  Don't know why, but it is one of my favorite movies.  And for some more random stream of thought stuff I got presale tickets to the Foo Fighters show here in Sac!  Cage the Elephant and El Mariachi de Bronx are opening.  Of course I went and found youtube videos for both.  I downloaded both Cage the Elephant albums/CDs or whatever you call them now from iTunes, and also found another band that I think I like called Crash Kings.  Crash Kings, according to the bio and all the other info on them are a cross between Ben Folds, which I like, and White Stripes, which I also like, so put them together and I do like the mix.

Well off to bed, another long week of work ahead.  We are trying to get the van registered out here and we have let it sit in the driveway too long.  Got the battery charged and too it to be looked at, but since the battery was completely discharged it dropped all the engine diagnostic codes and so we need to drive it to get the codes to read again, but we can't drive it because it isn't registered, catch-22 all over again, crap!  Well to bed!

Speaking of pounds to lose, I can't eat pizza anymore.  I eat too much and it doesn't agree with me

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