HELP!!!!!!!!

Can anyone help me with this problem? The french can offer no solutions and I am without a bike!!!!!!!!!!!

Blah

Yep, blah, that is about what my body was last week. I went up to that race hoping to have a decent ride and never once during the week did I feel ok. That was hands down the hardest and fastest race of my life and well, I came out of it even more tired and trying to comprehend what happened. It is pretty cool though to be racing some of the best pros in the world, even if I am just trying to hold on and finish.

But, I did get the opportunity to visit a new amazing part of France that I had heard about yet never visited. The Alsace region is quite popular for its white wines and boy was it neat to be able to have our hotel nestled in the heart of the vineyards. It would have been even nicer to be able to sample the wines there, but I will have to wait until this week to undertake that task.

Never in my life have I been a part of a race where we had daily team presentations in such picturesque areas nor had the amount of people cheering us on. It is quite amazing that no matter how far back you are they still cheer for you. Way up high in the mountains were tons of hikers and folks cheering on the climbs and it is pretty darn easy to hear the American tourists out there cheering their hearts out. Here are a few select images from last week that should give you an idea of the week that we had. Once heavily dropped on Sunday, I even had my camera with me to get some neat photos. You cannot forget the dance ensemble serenading us to Billy Ray Cyrus's "Achy Breaky Heart" either. CLASSIC

One stroke at a Time

OUCH. That pretty much sums up the race that I am in right now. It is the tour of Alsace and it has 25 teams in which none of them are fluff, well I am feeling like fluff but that is my own issue. The biggest and baddest team here just missed out on riding the Tour de France this year and certainly know what they are doing. Think of them as a big bully and us as little babies with lots of candy. They are going to get a lot of my candy this week, I would say I have lost a lot so far. I know that these hard races will be good for me down the road but they are most certainly not the easiest things to do. I find myself in the state of mind where moving around my tiny french hotel room to go take a shower as a large task where I need to meter out my efforts. I am 3 stages into this race with 3 more to go and well, close to 500 km's to go. I guess that means lots of food and sleep too.

In other news, I have found an amazing part of France to be in. I am located in the Alsace wine region and my hotel is nestled in the mountains in the heart of vineyards. To say where I am is pretty is a large understatement. I have also found what is quite possibly the prettiest city that I have ever been in the world and that would be Strasbourg, France. Internet is really slow right now with everyone on it, so I cannot get any photos up, but trust me, it is amazing. You shall see tomorrow. Alright, off to bed to try and make some legs appear in the morning.

Record button

That was a weekend that is going to give me lots of lessons to take home. Nothing too special happened, the plan was 2 days 2 races and that certainly happened. What was not planned was making some big mistakes on Saturday and watching a race win roll away. Nowadays it seems that with every mistake made, I then go on to make some different mistake down the road. Maybe I will quit making them and everything will click. Instead of a rewind button, I just have the record button to learn from.

Sunday, was a joke. I just did not have legs. A breakaway went, and someone rode me straight off of their wheel getting across to it. That was one of the more humbling experiences and I eventually pulled out. Nuff said, not a good day. But today, Monday is another day and tomorrow is the start of yet another stage race. I am hoping some things start to turn around.

Today is the day that I will be parting ways with the other Americans over here and while it was great to have them around, I can certainly tell that in 3 short weeks, my French is certainly dropping a bit. Here in about 2 hours I am hopping on the train to head up to meet my teammates in Belgium before we head to the Alsace region of France(German border.) I certainly have a long day of travel ahead of me, but nothing compared to the guys' 10 hour plane rides tomorrow. Sorry, that I have such a boring post, with more time I will get some more french anecdotes up and some amazing candid images of typical Normandy folk up here. Needless to say, walking around and checking out the locals will certainly lift your spirits and give you a bit of a moral boost. No promises on Internet this week, but will try my best.

Also to give you a different perspective on life over here check out the blog

http://dylanbikes.blogspot.com/

Go back 3 weeks or so and check out his experiences, you will get a kick.

Taking off again

The time for my American mates is coming to a close unfortunately. I have really enjoyed having some English speakers around for the past 2 and a half weeks as it continues to keep me sane having a bit of a feeling of home around. They will be taking off next Monday to head on back to good ol America the land of some amazing things. Mexican food, burger joints and milkshakes will all be there for their consumption, it is only a few weeks away know for me to be able to partake in such glorious tastes. But, away from the dreaming and back to reality, I just found out that I am also going to be taking off on Monday. Next week I am going to be heading back up to Belgium to meet up with some of the USA guys to go and do another stage race in the Alsace region of France. That would be right by Germany. But, before then I have got myself another few races this weekend and have some intentions of doing something good in them, we shall see.

Getting back to normal daily life here, my ants have finally gone away thank god. I just now have a nasty bleach smell that will not go away in my room, maybe another week and it will I hope. It has certainly been interesting as we have now employed daily spider checks of beds and attire before putting clothes on as the other day I felt something wiggling in my bibs to only find out that I had a big spider in them. I do not think I have been that scared in awhile. I guess that these are just the things that you deal with when living in a home that is some 300 years old. It is quite funny though to walk our yard and take in our house. The ground and walls all have white powder (ant killer) everywhere and if you did not know what it was, it would certainly look a bit suspect. Thankfully, all the local pets are alive and doing fine. Well, sorry but I have to get back to my Tour de France coverage. Today is a pretty important day in the mountains and I can't wait to watch the fireworks. Until later.

Working on it

Apologies for being away for awhile, it has been a hectic last few days. I got the chance to race on Saturday and Sunday and it was a great weekend for the team. Sunday morning a teammate of mine pulled off his first win in over 4 years which was awesome. Nothing special for me, I just rolled around for a few hours in the group and did not do anything worth calling home about. But, it was the first time that I have had the chance to ride with the other US riders that have come over and that was certainly fun. On a side note, one of the riders, Marcel did not really get to race too much, mid race on Sunday his shifter just fell apart and it fell off of his bike. Somehow he was left to ride the race in 1 gear. Unfortunately for him, most everything is closed on Sunday and Monday in France and having a race on Monday meant that his bike was not going to be fixed. He was certainly frustrated to not be racing since he came here to do that, but we got his bike into the shop and he will be all set for the upcoming weekend.

On to Monday and once again, we had ourselves a good day. Did we win, No. Am I bummed about that you bet I am. We had both myself and Dylan in the race and we were both in positions to do well all day, but we just made some mistakes along the way. Did the race provide opportunities to learn from our mistakes, you bet that it did. But, Dylan Jones pulled off a third place finish on the day which is great and I rolled in for a sixth place finish. I am really happy for Dylan and we even pulled off the top team placing on the day as an added little bonus. That mean a nice trophy for our director and a few euros for the riders-SWEET!!! Losing a race is never fun, no matter how it happens, but it is much easier to lose a race to people that are just plain faster than you. But to lose a race by making critical errors is quite difficult to swallow. Every day I am reminded that I have much to learn in this sport and I just hope to continue working on it. Now we have a few days easy before a big weekend of racing coming up.

Bastille Day

Not the day I was looking for. I have been having the opportunity to enjoy nice, clear sunny days every day here in Normandy now for close to 2 weeks. That horrible spring time weather has departed, folks are taking vacations to the beach and summer is in the air. What a splendid time. Yesterday I awoke to dark, ominous layer of clouds hanging over France. Not an hour later, she decided to open up on race day, but of course. As the time got closer to my departure for the race, the sound of thunder could be heard and lightning seen, but still I prepared. Upon arriving at the race my vision was limited to 50 meters because of the heavy rain. On any other day, motivation for the field would be low, but not on this day, the day of days in France. Every single Frenchman wants to win and every non Frenchman wants to beat them. It was not to be for the latter.

With the heavy rain, wrecks abounded quite frequently and not an hour into the day, we got to experience a stretch of cobblestones in the rain as we raced through of the of umpteenth towns we went through. Like I have said numerous times, common sense is quite limited and especially on this day, every riders sense of risk taking hits a new level. On that cobblestone stretch, I went down with around 40 other guys. Trying to brake on the wet pave reminded me of trying to ice skate, no matter what I did, the wheels would just slide out and compound that to a whole peloton of riders and you have a cluster of a time. Thankfully I came out ok, just sore, but not missing my teeth from trying to eat a cobble or any number of other injuries. That one dude was messed up, he looked like he came out of some horror film. Later when all was settled, the rest of the race who did not wreck were close to ten minutes up and we who had wrecked were pretty much out of the running. Thankfully, the race was neutralized and we got back to them to have a second start which was pretty unique, I have experienced 2 races now in one season where I had to have 2 starts in a day and never once in my life before had I had to do that.

But, it was not my day as more and more wrecks kept happening as the other riders common sense in the rain was turned off. I ultimately pulled the plug, cut my losses thankful that I neither broke any equipment or bones on the day, something many others could not say.

The highlight of the day I must say was seeing the flyover in Vernon from the French Air Force.
I am convinced that this is the whole of the French Air Force too. But, regardless it was cool to see.