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.
