Hey, hey, I’ve got to say that there are some AMAZING hikes up the Poudre Canyon. A couple days ago myself and the pups ventured up Young Gulch (just one of the many trail heads to choose from) - they had a blast romping around in the river crossings while I shot a bunch of photos of the ubiquitous Columbines that were spread throughout the woods. I tried to get a few shots of the dogs but they were too rambunctious and out of control to get them to sit still for just a second. Anyway, it was an awesome hike and I highly suggest this trail, among other trails such as Hewlett Gulch, Big South, and Roaring Creek. Each has its own bit of distinction from another, meaning you won’t be disappointed whichever one you decide to try.

Well, well, so much has happened since I last wrote. First, we finished the Nature Valley Grand Prix (I guess I should never start blogging during a tour because it seems that I can never keep up - the fatigue begins to wear on me). Then, I spent this past weekend in Austin, TX. And now, I am home for a lengthy stay - 2 and a half weeks!! Wow, that hasn’t happened in awhile.

Basically, at Nature Valley we got lucky with the weather conditions. While floods were destroying homes and land in the surrounding states, we only had to deal with 1 day of crap weather. After the chaos in St Paul, every subsequent day brought beautiful bike racing weather. Aaron’s tried as hard as we could to break Kristin on the Mankato stage but she was just too damn strong. We fought hard though and that’s all we could ask for. And Stillwater, well, that’s always a hard race but such a cool one! To celebrate the end of the tour, we had an awesome pizza party at our host family’s house Sunday night. Ruth and Bill have an outdoor pizza oven that makes the most incredible pizza I have ever had! Maybe it was the handmade dough that Bill sweated over for hours, kneading and kneading, while at the fire station (he’s a fire fighter and I am sure most of the other guys must think he’s a nutcase for making homemade pizza dough when you can just order out for a pizza that’s already done and loaded) that makes the most perfect thin crust ever, or maybe it was the fresh mozzarella, prosciutto, and basil that made it extremely delectable, or maybe it was the wood fire pizza oven that gave it that extra finger licking tastiness. On top of the pizza that was eaten as fast as it came out of the oven, Bill gave us freedom to choose any libation from his wine cellar (after seeing the meager prize list he felt sorry for us) that we wanted, top or bottom shelf. Oh, and did we take advantage of that generous offer! Each bottle was drained just about as fast as it was opened, but we had Bill’s trusty Campy bottle opener on hand so we never had to wait long for the next drop.

A big thanks to our host families for such a wonderful stay - we were definitely spoiled! Caden, you watch out - I’ll be back for another round of P-I-G so better bring your best game!

4 days at home and then I was back at the airport for a trip to Austin, TX, for which I was very excited since it was my first time to Austin. Again, we had wonderful host housing, perfect race weather, and good times. One of the highlights of this trip, though, was to the Whole Foods which is their flagship store. This place was unreal. I thought we have it good here in Ft Collins but this store blows any Whole Foods I’ve ever seen out of the water. They had a gelato bar, a BBQ bar, a nut roaster, a beer alley, and on and on and on. It was really kind of mind blowing how big this place was, and at the same time somewhat of a relief to know that I can’t shop there every day or else we’d be broke! And then after spending too much money there, we popped over to Mellow Johnny’s (Lance’s new bike shop) for register for the race. I’m not sure what I was expecting at the bike shop but it was pretty much like any other shop, albeit the 7 yellow jerseys (or maillot jaunes) hanging on the walls and various memorabilia from 7 Tours de France did add a little bit of flair. The race itself was nothing spectacular - we all thought they could have done so much more to make the course more exciting - but the crowd was loud and fun. And there was a group from the local Austin Aaron’s store out in full force to cheer us on. We wish that we could have won the race for them, but hopefully we gave them a good race to watch nonetheless. At least we got to share a few beers with them after the race…and then we went out on the town for a few more! I definitely got a faint glimpse of why everyone says Austin is such a cool city.

This little dude was out riding with his dad in Philly the day before the race. He was having so much fun and we had a good laugh with him.

So, you saw the forecast for last night’s crit and although it wasn’t bad enough to cancel the race, it was bad enough to make the race one of the most chaotic, absurd races I have ever done. There were something like 140 women on the start line and only 46 who crossed the finish line. Luckily, I was one of the 46 and I was also one of the few who didn’t go down either. Funny thing is, I don’t like racing in the rain but for some reason I felt good and felt confident last night. The unfortunate thing was that I had a bad start position and could only weave my way around fallen riders lap and lap rather than actually race my bike. But hey, I kept my bike upright so I can’t really complain. However, I am sure there are many riders who are complaining because they DID race their bikes only to find out later that the results are not being counted towards the overall GC. Seriously, I am not sure how the officials could have made any sense of what was happening on the course last night to reliably and accurately score individual GC - there was a crash in the 2nd turn on the first lap that caused an early separation, there were countless crashes throughout the race that left many strong riders stranded at the back of the peloton with nowhere to go (the officials were tending to push riders back in to the back of the peloton leaving them no chance in hell of rejoining the “race”), and lapped riders were littered around the course as Kristin Armstrong went into TT mode and lapped the entire field once and some riders twice. The men’s race was no less chaotic and became even more so when a lead moto went down taking a few riders with it. Their race was then cancelled.

Just take a look at this to get an idea of what the conditions were like on course:

Tonight’s forecast for the St Paul Criterium….