My First Novel

I have some big news for you. This is a really large accomplishment for me and has been a humongous endeavor to take on. I've really taken huge steps to have the most complete and gigantic collection for my first novel. It's really been a towering task- I wanted to do an immense collection of photos for this novel. I really wanted it to be high-reaching and statuesque, stretching to the far reaches of every reader's visual and mental stimuli. I hope that you see the tremendous and at times colossal risks that I've taken to bring you the most grand and towering depictions of what, at times, may seem like an altitudinous challenge. Tall.

Without further ado, I bring to you.................

"Steve Comparisons, 2012"

By: Ian Crane

How is that other guy so BIG?

It's ok, he's only 16

Yes, there is a guy with regular pants in front of Steve

EAT YOUR BERRIES

OK before my readers (in this case viewers) get all angry, how about some photos where Steve looks really BIG?

That's an actual size coffee mug people!

Really though, Steve is one of my closest friends and jokes about his height as much as everyone else. Serious!

See?

Ok, one more height joke.

Poor Steve. Always gets the short end of the stick.

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Wait, We Did What?

For the first time in my bike racing life, we did touristy things. You may remember my snarky comments about doing...stuff... while on bike racing trips. Summary: we don't do stuff. We fly in, make fun of Winger, sleep, race, fly out. Bravo.

However, this past weekend we flew out of PA roughly 26 hours after finishing our last race. This meant we were able to spend a decent amount of time being tourists?! Usually, tourism involves my least favorite things: large crowds and walking. On Monday I tricked myself into making an exception because I felt it necessary to boost my patriotism. USA! USA! USA! This is the pictorial story of how Ben Franklin and I got our swagger on.

The beasts of Philadelphia.

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Thompson Doylestown Crit

I'll start off by saying that there is something about this race weekend that resonates with me. I love these races. I'm not sure if it is the hard courses, or the one-day road race, or the hard courses, or shoofly pies and funny cakes, or the hard courses, or the fact that there is no racing in August so you sit around dreaming of these races for 6 weeks. Whatever it is, I really enjoy coming to PA in the middle of September and doing the bike racing equivalent of grating your knuckles off with a cheese grater for 4 hours and 2 hours. Combine those times and you get the length of my plane flight home. This was like grating your knuckles off with the mouth of a venomous snake, which any sane person knows is MUCH, much worse than a cheese grater.

Speaking of snakes, I do not like these slimy and vile creatures. However, I learned Sunday night that my Chinese astrology spirit animal is a snake. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. For this reason, I just got a tattoo of a snake that starts at my ankle and wraps its way up my leg, around my torso, and the head is at my neck. The snake has a tattoo that says "solamente ganando es bella" and another one that is a tribute tat to Samuel L. Jackson's character in Snakes on a Plane.

For those of you who are awesome, you may remember that last year I had the race of my season at the Doylestown Crit. Naturally, I wanted to try and replicate at a slightly higher scale. Ok, beginning boring tactics talk now:

This course is hard, and the race is long. It is 36 laps that totals 50 miles. Last year I was hunger-flat the whole race so naturally I used this as an excuse to have a huge breakfast and eat ice cream. I also brought a full flask and two bottles, one with coke. I ate 5 gels in  this crit. What?!?! Based on the field, I thought that the chances of a big group going away early with a couple bridging up later were very high. I figured if I made it into the large early break it would make it easier than having to bridge up later when tired. That was the plan. The real plan was to be in whatever move Eric Marcotte was in: He has been in the breakaway in pretty much every race, ever. 

Ten minutes in a group got off the front with Marcotte, an Optum, Bissell, Garmin, Smart-Stop, Quebecois baller, TT1 and myself. Our gap grew to 45 seconds and I was feeling like this:

So the plan is going great: I made it into the big early move with a group of hitters, I was feeling good, and our gap was growing. Maybe 25 minutes later we got caught. All of a sudden I was feeling like this:

Turns out that the one team (Jamis) who didn't have a guy in the move did a crazy chase that blew up most of their guys but brought us back. When we got caught, there were maybe 50 guys left in the race. Now I was feeling like this:

As I drifted back extremely tired, I saw the winning split go off the front. Problem for me, but great for the team because both Gabe and Steve made their crafty way into that move. I spent the next 30 minutes dying 1045 times at the very back of the group, trying to find ways to recover. Finally I called myself Otto and got some Rocket Power and was back at the front, covering attacks with Jon and David. We were racing for 16th.

Soon I was tired again and I found David and told him that I was F'ed for the sprint so he should take care of it. 12 seconds later there was a lull in the group and I attacked HARD. Now I was feeling like this:

 5 laps to go. Three guys came with me and our gap grew. We got our bell and as we hesitated, the pack got closer. I cornered hard with two corners to go and got a gap. It was either go then or get caught by everyone so I went all in with maybe 350 meters of climbing to go. I got caught with 50 meters to go and instead of 16th, I got bike threw by David for 23rd. The bike throw was my punishment for attacking him. At about 63 meters to go in the race, I was feeling like this:

So I personally didn't get a result, but we rode well as a team and that ended with Gabe getting a very strong 5th place. I'm happy with the fact that I executed my plan and although that didn't work, I stuck with it and won the award for most emoticons given throughout a race.

So that's it apparently, 2012 season in the books. I might write a wrap-up later where you learn fun things, but for now, I'll leave you with these words of wisdom:

A ship in the harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.

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Thompson Buck County Classic

30 seconds. You can do an awful lot in 30 seconds. In fact, I've written this much in maybe 15 seconds, which means in 30 seconds I probably could type twice as much. Here are some other things that you can do in 30 seconds: You can poorly cook popcorn, you can scratch your back aggressively, you can listen to 1/8th of a four minute song, you can fall in love at first sight, you (probably not you) can memorize the order of a deck of cards, or you can set a really awesome world record.

However, 30 seconds can also be a really long time. Here are some things that you wish wouldn't be 30 seconds: If you put your hand on the stove, if you're getting an allergy test, if you're listening to a Lil' Wayne song, if you're VERY thirsty and every drop of water evaporates before you're able to drink it, and when the gap to the winning breakaway is only 30 seconds away and your group just doesn't quite make it.

We went uphill really fast the first lap, and a group of 15-18 of the who's who in the race were GONE. Trouble. Fast-forward a couple of laps and myself, Gabe, and Jon made our way into a select group of maybe 12 guys and all of a sudden we were 30 seconds from the front main group. This is as close as our group got. The gap ballooned again, we got caught, another group went (with Gabe in it) and that was as close as I got to the front of the race. A lot can happen in 30 seconds, and unfortunately today our group couldn't pedal hard enough to make it across.

Tomorrow we do a really great crit, and I'm ready to stomp it. But first, I have 30 seconds to go watch 1/120th of 60 minutes.  The episode is about being awesome.

To not talk about bike racing further, I would like to tell you literally the most shocking story you will hear all year. I felt like improving everyone's life so I bought a wiffle ball baseball bat at the grocery store. I was assuming I'd be incredible, because when I was 11 I knew a thing or two about swinging a large bat. However, it turns out I'm becoming more and more two-sided in my life. Cycling and rapping.

We did a NO RUNNING game of wiffle-beisbol which involved outs and points. Gabe was very quick to inform us that baseball is run based, not point. Gabe is very cool and up to date on athletics because he watches Sportscenter.

Surprise, Gabe won the tournament, but that was expected. I mean look at this guy!

 I was assuming I'd do well, but shoot. Not the case.

David won the looking mean category, and also the beating Ian category of wiffling.

Here comes the surprise. Naturally, Gabe the Babe won, but who was second?!?!?

Lil' Steve: The guy I was joke pitching underhand to because he was so, so terrible in our practice runs. Steve turns out can hit a wiffle ball a VERY far way, which is swanky.

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Philly

Alright, I didn't break up with y'all, I was just taking a small sabbatical. I've been all-in on the training and recovering part of life and unfortunately that just meant that instead of being super stressed sitting on my couch writing blog posts in my pajamas while drinking smoothies I was sitting on my couch in my underwear while drinking smoothies. And not writing blog posts. Actually, what I really was doing was spending the time between the last blog post and last Friday trying to convert my track bike into a wood track bike. Not in a mechanical sense to prepare for racing ADT (lol lol lol) but an actual physical sense. See:

TM S.W

That's right! Turns out it didn't make me go faster though.

Fast forward 1 million days to today, where I'm living at the Mayor's house in Souderton, PA. Let's rewind and discuss how I got here: I took a plane. Now that we're caught up, I would like to share two awesome things that have happened so far. I really mean awesome, potentially life-changing experiences.

First, twitter.com/horndogbrocal suggested a movie for us to rent. This movie had two of my favorite actors, so I was convinced easily. Since David has a job, he stepped up to do the actual physical renting, and we set about watching it.

Disclaimer- I watched about 20 minutes of the movie and went to bed, but I think that I saw enough to accurately describe it. Here's the Wikipedia synopsis-

"The film is set in a Los Angeles high school. The story follows Valedictorian hopeful Devin Overstreet (Wiz Khalifa) struggling to pen his graduation speech when it becomes clear that all his academic overachievements have left him with little to no real-life experiences. He finds an unlikely inspiration in the least-achieving student on campus, Mac Johnson (Snoop Dogg). Mac, a 15-year senior and consummate ladies man, is smitten by the school's new substitute chemistry teacher. He soon realizes that the only way he'll truly have a chance with her is if he finally graduates high school. In 3 weeks time, Mac must cram four years of high school academics, while Devin must cram four years of teenage experience."

Next, we all went back to school! Our host mom is a third grade teacher so the six of us went to give a talk at the Elementary school about bikes, racing, traveling, safety, and Jon doing gnarly backflips. I've been hoping that our team would do something like this for some time and it was a pretty fun experience when all was settled and done. I am upset though, because David dominated the sprint in our mock race. 

Steve showing David where South Dakota is

Finally, we went and rode the bike race course. Just living.

Tomorrow we do the road race, and it is going to a real slobber-knocker (S.J. TM). It's been a long time since I've raced and I'm craving some suffering. Bring it on Doylestown.

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