Not Quite, but Almost

All right back to racing! Oh wait, blah blah blah training, lots of hill climbing intervals this 3rd intense week of a build. But wait wait!

An Important Announcement from My Employer

TrafficBug^® - The Commuter's Companion^SM was released to the public in both website (with Flash) and iApp format this week. TrafficBug helps commuters and travelers navigate through traffic finding the fastest route possible and alerting users about any traffic incidents along the way. TrafficBug has the ability to create personalized trips between any two locations (accessible by roads in the US, Mexico and Canada). Not only does TrafficBug have the ability to create personalized routes, but it also allows takes into account the historical and realtime traffic along the way based on the time of day of your trip. Leave the worrying about your commute to TrafficBug as it is constantly monitoring the roadways to give you the best advice on how to get to your destination quickly or even if you need to leave earlier in order to arrive by a specific time.

I've been working on parts of this app for a long time - over a year now and I am very happy that we finally have a product to sell. There are a whole lot of things I still want to improve, but at some point we have to have something to sell since nothing will ever be perfect. So, please download the app or go to the website and try it out and let us know what you think about it. We would love to hear your feedback and would be ecstatic if you purchased even a one-month subscription let alone a three-month or even yearly subscription.

Piece of Cake

Getting There

Now, it is a huge oxy-moron that I work for a company seemingly obsessed with auto-transportation yet bike nearly everywhere. But the bigger oxy-moron is that the only reason I get in a car these days is to go bicycling (at bike races of course). And now each time I travel to bike races I'm constantly checking our TrafficBug app to see what it actually is like using it in a car.

I had the pleasure of commuting to the Piece of Cake Road Race in anti-bike racing rural Amity, OR with the Guinness Cycling Team Leader extraordinaire Dave Klipper and the cool Cliff Heaberlin (another one of my teammates in Cat 2). Getting to Amity is an interesting task because there are numerous ways to get there and we had opinions from everyone on which route to take. Ultimately it was Dave driving which meant that we were using whichever navigation system he preferred at that moment in time. At first we were using his car's Navigation system which told us to go through Salem, so we headed towards Salem. TrafficBug said to go back-roads via McMinville, but later I found that the geocode result it got (from Google, yes I am blaming them) put the location about 6 miles north of where we actually needed to go.

Once we started driving over the Salem bridge we had a massive navigation breakdown. We had just exited the highway somewhat accidentally and were in a predicament. Cliff was suggesting we go north via backroads, the car navigation still thought we were on the highway and I couldn't press buttons fast enough to make TrafficBug recalculate. Eventually Dave decided to get back on the highway and asked a passing bicyclist how to get back on the highway - local knowledge trumps!

The race

All right, 3 laps with 3 miles of gravel per lap and a whole bunch of relatively flat countryside to spare. I started at the very back which was a bad idea because I had no idea that the gravel came at mile 3. So from the car horn we were rocking and rolling! And then we hit the gravel and people began shattering off with flats about every 20 seconds. Earlier in the week I bought some brand-new tires anticipating this, but it turns out that these tires were the absolute worst tires I have every bought because not only were they incredibly slick in any kind of rain but I flatted out 5/6ths of the way through the gravel on the first lap. These tires will go unnamed for now in the event that I can't return them to the store and need to sell them.

I got a wheel change but the support crew said it was sort of rubbing the brake pad - it was definitely out of true, but I was happy to have a thick 28c tire to support my heavy ass now. I suffered to just get back onto a flat tire chase group and caught them just as they caught the rest of the field which was thankfully going really slow. So now I made damn sure that I was close to the front before the gravel came again and I was 3rd wheel when it came. Just before the gravel, Kyle made his move and motored away from the field. I thought it was still a little early and waited for other moves since there was good representation from other teams. Eventually it became apparent that none of the other teams had any kind of arsenal or organization (except for Soraz's blocking abilities) to chase down Kyle and now Eric was running up the road solo.

The gravel was coming up again and I attacked and started bridging up to Eric and caught him just before the gravel. For the next 10 miles Eric totally put me in the gutter - especially when he was taking his pull! We were closing in on Kyle and riding away from the field, but I lost contact with Eric's wheel and it was all over for me at that point. Well, not all over because I rejoined the chase group and then got to watch the sprint which involved a spectacular crash which involved a guy that seemed to lose control of his bike and hit the ground and then the finish sign and then the ladder holding the finish results camera and finally the medic's car. But apparently he was ok and got 5th! Woohoo!

Meanwhile, in the P 1/2 race

The p12's had to do 5 laps and I was waiting for a long time for them to get back. It turns out that Dave had won it in the sprint by a handy 3 bike lengths! There was quite a story about the race and all the tactical battles and how Dave ultimately found that finish line before anyone else. Very well played.

Public Urination

Uh.. excuse me? Yes, this topic deserves a whole section whole blog post due to the circumstances and fine mannerisms of the bicycle racers on this day in Oregon bicycle racing. It is a wide-known fact that bicycle racers are douchebags and the epitome of the bike racing antics is our need to urinate. You see it is all a function of making sure our bodies stay hydrated during the race in order for the body to perform well. As a result, us bike races need to urinate often - sometimes even during the race - sometimes multiple times in the same race.

Due to the request from some specific people on this matter I unfortunately cannot provide the internet you with further details. I'll just say that there is a big difference between public urination and discrete public urination and also that I learned that I need to hydrate to the point where I should need to publicly urinate. Gosh, I really want to tell this story in greater detail, but I cannot.

Onwards

On Sunday I rode out to Estacada by myself since everybody else was too cool doing their own rides. I had a good time though since I had never biked out there before.

This coming week I've got a rest week, and I am going to try HARD to rest. Starting with publishing this blog post before 10:45pm any further errors be damned! So I've got a few goals that will help me rest.

#1 NO TRYING TO SCORE DATES WITH HOT BIKE RIDIGN CHICKS. I spent wayyy too much effort on this the last two rest weeks I had and probably ultimately drove them away for doing so.

#2 Do fun stuff that I like doing. I'm going to spin some records, work on a website or two and maybe even make this blog look a little prettier.

#3 clean up my messy apartment. I've been all home alone with my housemate being in India for over a month now to support his sick sister. Pray for her. But I need to clean a bunch of stuff since everything got disorganized due to lack of time this week.