You're Nobody Till Somebody Kills You

Which means my wonderful car is a nobody. Which doesn't make sense, because I love this car. So since I love it, does that mean that if it is a nobody that I love nobody? If I love nobody, then does nobody love me? Oh dear.

However nobody that my car is, it was almost somebody. (SIDE NOTE! I just realized a flaw in Notorious BIG's song. If you're nobody unless you're killed, who does the killing? Mr. Notorious suggests that somebody is the guilty party- how do they become a somebody? Is the nobody getting killed by a ghost?) Ok, back on track.

What I've been scared to type is that my wonderful #swaggerwagon almost left us last week. At 254xxx miles I crashed my limousine on I5. Some of you may know me as the one person in the world who could drive the length of Bellingham-Seattle blindfolded, and this is still true. However, when two cars are all of a sudden facing South-bound on a North-Bound freeway and you are going 60 mph, there is only so much that I5 experience can help prevent. I am extremely good at Mario Kart on WII, Fast and Furious is the best movie ever, and Talledega Nights taught me how to be a person. None of these prevented my car from slamming into the car in front of me. Start the John Williams symphony, because ish just got real sad.

I can't say that I entirely agree, but if watching Fast and Furious one (through five) didn't keep me from getting into an accident I guess I'm a little bit skeptical.  Time to assess the damage, round one.

Whoa. Not too bad. I couldn't accurately capture in a photo, so imagine this-

Both sides, popped out like some dangling piñata left over at a seis de Mayo celebration went haywire. Let's get to the real problems. The frame is bent, the hood is bent loco, the hood doesn't stay shut, and my electrical tape racing stripes are now misaligned. For a few sad, desperately tragic moments I thought that I was about to have to resort to transporting my things like this-

However, all is not lost in this household.  Calm yourself fans of and fellow #swaggerwagon companions, for this one lives on.

New hood latch!

Guess what! Me and the #swaggerwagon (get that trending folks) are going to live another fight. I was fairly busted up, but huge thanks to Noble Chiropractic for making me back to normal in no time at all. Seriously, if you're in Bellingham, or even Washington, you need to go see Dr. Noble. Even if you aren't hurt, you should go. Do it!

Fly on soldier, fly on.

(PS... was this foreshadowed by dreaming about new cars? Was I being punished? Did Steve getting a new car shift the driveway hierarchy, causing conflict with mine?)

I guess I'll drive it 400 miles this weekend to find out if it really works or not. If you see me hitchhiking on the side of any road leading to a bike race with a road or time trial bike, please pick me up?

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A Summary of Recent Social Media

Hello folks.

I know that you are all supremely busy. Way too busy to read Kennett's twice-weekly novels. Yeah, I understand. The problem with social media today is that it is becoming very spread out. Social media networks have expanded so much that catching every detail is more difficult than the training ride I did this weekend. So many KJs!! Let me tell you all about the numbers.

Wait, NO, that's stupid.

Instead, I have decided to make your life easy by offering up a social media site that compiles everything into a newsflash-a visual blink of your eyes, everything at your fingertips, cornucopia of information, holy shit exciting, source of social media. 

Right here on my blog!

Craneimal.blogspot.com proudly presents.....

A summary of Social Media for riders from the Hagens Berman Cycling team*

 *and Lang

Let us get started, shall we?

First, my dear friend Kennett created a holiday in order to make him feel better about the fact that I personally have been in caloric deficit for like, 4 months straight. Kennett need food (attention @everyone, that "grammatical" error was on purpose). 

Yes, Kennett created himself a holiday based around over-consumption (oh wait, like all American holidays?). In summary, here are pictures taken from Kennettron 5000 that depict the day that Mr. Kennett Peterson lost the Mt. Washington hill climb TT.

And that was only breakfast! You should've seen how he celebrated lunch, second breakfast, pre-dinner, and dinner.

Next, we summarize the Facebook.

I chose not to include the picture because I was morally disgusted with the act. This Canadian warrior did something questionable. My only hope is that Cody's Facebook page was hacked by his housemate Jacob, who after beating me in the best young rider competition at Tour de Delta probably gained some inner-knowledge of ways to confuse me. Then he kidnapped Cody, tied him down, took pictures of his legs, and posted them on the internet. That MUST be what happened.

Ok. Next. Lang has a fast girlfriend. Pretty much everytime I hear that they ride together or do a bicycle race in the same category I have to ask King-Lang if Rhae beat him.

This is especially exciting on TT days because Rhae is a bit of a freight train and Lang is still looking for that silver bullet. Lang generally comes out on top, but he'll argue that he ALWAYS comes out on top.

Then this picture appeared on the internet.

Lang perhaps might be tired from tri-weekly Strava KOM attempts, but as you can tell by the pre-ride preparation he was trying to get every advantage before taking to this race with Rhae. You may not have noticed the booties that Lang chose to wear, but upon closer glance you will see that he indeed has them, and they are white! Lang was searching for the extra 20 watts that everyone knows comes with wearing white shoe covers. Next, notice Lang's posture. The lack of symmetry in his out of the saddle acceleration suggests that perhaps he is not accelerating, but cracking under the stress of the hill and the pressure put down by Rhae's acceleration, which in contrast displays a perfectly symmetrical lower body power transfer to the bike. Continuing on, please note the position of our subjects sunglasses. Lang has chosen to remove his, opting to allow his sweat-streaked eyes to receive some form of breeze, where as Rhae keeps hers on- not allowing her prey to see into her eyes. Finally, please note the composure differences. Lang gasps for air through his wide open, slightly askewed mouth. Rhae nose breathes, her lips shut tight, as if the effort is nothing but a simple recovery ride in the sun.

PS- Lang drops me pretty much every time we go uphill.

The arguably newest and most simple method of social media is Twitter. For those of you unfamiliar, twitter allows for short statements with not much backing that allow the reader to draw their own conclusion.

First, let's look at how Colin Gibson uses twitter. Note his response (signified by the @ ) to Lang provides a certain amount of ... zing! Speaking of zings, Colin earned a reputation last weekend of being the first to very-excitingly respond to an email regarding a group ride and then cancel at the last minute for unclear reason. Sucka please.

And more!

That is a nice transition into looking at how Winger316 has been using twitter.

Incorrectly.

I'd like to elaborate. I really would, but I don't really know where to begin. Let's start with the obvious-

 OMG REALLY? ARE YOU IN HAWAII?? News to me! Good thing @hbcycling is aware of it.

Chris Wingfield @winger316
@hbcycling @everyone @smith_optics HEY I'm in Hawaii! I just saw a bird, in Maui! Drinking water, IN MAUI! #rideblue (in Maui)

<3

Anyways, time to read Canadian twitter. (twitter.com/ca/jessereams/flannel/choppingwood)

As you can see here, new teammate Jesse seems to have crashed on the ice in his homeland of really really Northern Canada. Well technically he wreaked havoc on the leg warmers- he must have forgot the word havoc. Since we are speaking "technically", he also is in California. Where it is warm.

The unfortunate situation here is that through social media he is proudly displaying early signs of Canadian Crit Driving Syndrome. Looks like team camp we will try to beat that out of him.

Speaking of "prison rules", David Fleischhauer encompasses his persona with one tweet.

Poetic, eh?

Next, lets witness how Steve uses social media to try and advertise an important moment in his life. Luckily for everyone in Bellingham, Steve's vanagon is gone from our driveway. Now a real car that works is in its place. Bravo. However, let us take a moment to analyze his steps for adulthood. Are those steps adult sized steps, or Steve sized steps?

Surprising for Steve, this picture wasn't taken in a public restroom.

Last for now, new teammate Danny. I've only spent a total of ... 12 hours with him ever, so I'm not sure if my lack of understanding of his social media has anything to do with that, or with the more obvious fact. That Danny speaks in code. I will spend the whole season trying to break this code so I can decipher his twitter-tweets.

I FIGURED IT OUT! "Today I went for a ride and made good trainings".

Ok bye.

twitter.com/iancrane

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I had a Dream I Said

BUT FIRST! Check out the first episode of "The HB Show" !!!!!!!!!! 

Holy mother of dream wanderers have I had some vivid dreams the past couple of weeks. There has literally been a cinematic explosion of characters and stories that have entered my mind while I catch up on my Zs. Not quite sure why the sudden influx of dreams that I actually remember, but I am going to share two of them with you.

Don't repeat what I say I said, he said nothin
He agreed with his head, he just nodded like this
What I believe to be a yes I re-peated what was said
It came to me like a whisper, last evening I said

The first dream occurred during that week of snow where ISH was really going down (in the real world). Both Tela and I were having some vehicle related troubles- Tela's car was leaking power steering fluid like that one time Air Force One leaked gas in the movie Air Force One with a heroic Harrison Ford. My problems were a bit more weather related. Long story short, for a brief time the only door that worked on my car was the drivers door and the trunk. So when I drove people around, they crawled through the trunk to their seat of choice. Entering dreamland:

Tela and I were having quite the time celebrating the fact that we got new cars. Since we are both bike racing bums, this is quite unrealistic because I live at the Grocery Outlet and Tela strains coffee grounds through underwear because filters are much too expensive. So how'd we get cars? Well Momma-Crane got so fed up with Tela and my consistent car troubles that she bought us matching cars because the monthly payments were "so unbelievably cheap" ($30-40) that she was willing to cover those payments until Tela and I could take over. Here is where the dream gets very specific. I knew that the cars were Kias, and I could see them perfectly in the dream, but I had never seen this car before. Tela got a Crimsony-Red and I got black on black.

OK I'm awake now. Knowing that dreams are dreams I naturally immediately went onto the Kia website when I woke up. And found that the exact cars from my dream are actually real. Unfortunately, the monthly payments would be more than 30-40 dollars.

Let us get back to reality really quick. If this were indeed my car, I would sharpie the rims black, immediately put some electrical tape racing strips on the hood (+40hp), and put a dragon surfing on the side panels. 

"Whats the deal playboy," was the greeting he said
First thing I wanted to know was the reason he was dead
"More money, more problems, better believe it," he said
"Careful what you wish for you might receive it," he said

Dream #2 is direct proof that bike racing is coming and it's been too long since I've taught Logan Owen some life lessons. Well, considering now that I've dreamt it, it must be time to bring life-school back into session. Yes friends, dream #2 involved young Mr. Owen.

For some reason, Logan and I were the only two people doing a certain race. Joe was obviously there to direct us (I mean Logan is only 14) and it was some form of money making criterium bike tournament. Perhaps T.O.A.D? After the race I had collected my prize $ and still hadn't seen Logan, or known how he had done in the race. I had no clue! I had gotten 6th and made $600, so I was pretty G'd. But where was young Logan! Finally Logan rails a corner and appears in the dreamland. And he is PISSED! I had never seen him so angry before. Turns out Logan won a preme, and he didn't see the value. What Logan won was four $100 gift certificates to Trader Joes, and he didn't understand their purpose! It took some time, but I was able to convince him of the significance of the Gold that he was holding in his hand. Not a bad split for 2 people and one race!

Of importance but also WTF to the dream, Logan was wearing a long sleeve button up dress shirt with a short sleeve Hagens Berman jersey on top. Sweater vest style, except with a bike jersey instead of a sweater vest. What does that mean?

I did mention that Joe was a character in this dream, and he really held no relevancy. Joe appeared in this dream to do donuts in the rental car in the adjacent parking lot while I was explaining to Logan about Trader Joe, Giotto and Jose.

I see I said, jealousy I said
Got the whole industry mad at me I said
Then B.I. said, "Hov' remind yourself
nobody built like you, you designed yourself"

Not quite sure what's with these really specific and very vivid dreams, but maybe it means I'm getting a deeper night's sleep so my mind is calmed and I am waking up clearer and more rested? Probably

What he said, I said, has been said before
"Just keep doin your thing," he said, say no more

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Get Rich Schemes #8

At this rate, instead of actually doing all these things I could just bind them in a book, have Malcolm Gladwell write the introduction, and make quad-trillion dollars selling these do-it-yourself manuals in local book stores. I'd include a couple blank pages after each idea so that people could have some time to reflect, scribble some notes, draw some logos, and then boost their financial baller-ness. But none of you are allowed to use Cran-ye, that's my golden chariot to living the MTV cribs lifestyle.

Moving right along, this next product is sure to revolutionize roughly one-third of your life. Unlike some of my other ideas that are pretty life-changing, this one is not that. This one is life ALTERING. First let me explain the difference between those two words.

Life-changing- How you go about your life is changed by the new product, business, or fame. You become a slightly different (better) person if you invest in my Burrito store. Your habits are changed.

Life-altering- Your life is legitimately better after investing in this product. You live healthier, happier, lose 45 pounds (if you need to), and enjoy going to the opera with your wife. You have a bounce to your step, a smile to your day, and a whistle to your tone. You're welcome.

OK, so what's this magical elixir that alters your life? That you spend 1/3rd of your life doing? Hint- it's not watching re-runs of COPS in hotel rooms.

SLEEP! That's right folks, I've invented a product in my mind that will change the way you sleep by bringing comfort to your lives and peace to your REM cycles.

I'm about to put a tic-tac sized worry in your head that over the course of the next several weeks will evolve and grow and expand and eventually turn into a huge WTF is wrong here moment inside of your cabeza.

I'm sure many of you are quite comfortable on your sleep-number beds, your tempurpedic mattress, or your water bed. How many of you think that your current situation is as good as it gets? Well I have an answer for you. It could get a whole lot better. EVERYONE knows that if you sleep on your face, you suffocate or wake up with an ache in your neck reminiscent of the time that you tried to break dance at that one college party back in the day and woke up in the fountain at your school wearing your schools mascot uniform. And the common human knows that sleeping on your back can lead to nightmares, midnight snacking, IBS, and 6 different forms of stiff back syndromes.

What I'm leading to is that the ONLY way to sleep safely and comfortably is to sleep on your side. You can breathe better and your body stays naturally aligned. However, there is one problem with this gem. Most humans have two arms.

Dun dun dun. How many nights have you spent completely unaware of what to do with your mattress side arm? Have you ever woken up with tingling fingers similar to the time you tried to see what would happen if you drank only coffee for one week straight? Have you woken up with one perfect shoulder and one really sore shoulder? What I'm really asking is... Are you actually happy with your current sleeping comfort level? I didn't think so.

I have the answer for you.

Introducing.................


The Crane Cut Mattress Line


Correct. I have created a product that has the answer to your arm-worries. With the perfectly measured slit in the mattress, your arm comfortable rests below your body- allowing free movement and pressure-free sleeping. Wonderful! Imagine a door with a mail-slot. It's like that, except the mail-slot is a lot bigger and more towards the top 1/4 of the mattress. Simply slide your arm in and drift off into an island paradise of sleep.

If you order a mattress for the whole family, we'll take 10 dollars off your order!

(MSRP $1499.00) (It's 1/3rd of your life. Spend the money)


But wait. In order for this mattress to work, you need the matching bed frame! Sure, you can use your current bed frame if you want to hacksaw a hole into the frame, therefore weakening the strengthening points in your IKEA model#542. Or, you can purchase the matching bed frame, with a 10000 ton strength guarantee. Our scientists have evaluated the tensile strength of the materials we used, and trust me when I say that they're awesome.

The great thing about the bed frame is that they will come with many majestic things carved into the headboard.  Fighting gorillas, prancing ponies, Chunk from the Goonies, or Hilary Clinton. Whatever you want to watch over you while you enjoy the PERFECT nights sleep, we will have our woodcarver mold into the strong, durable, stylish wood that supports your new mattress. 

(MSRP $2500.50) (It's 1/3rd of your life. Spend the money).

If everyone had this product, there would be no war, there would be no debt, and Tupac would have rapped the National Anthem at the Super Bowl with background vocals provided by King Tut.

Daydream
I fell asleep beneath the flowers
For a couple of hours
On a beautiful day
Daydream
I dream of you amid the flowers
For a couple of hours
Such a beautiful day
-Lupe Fiasco

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Keeping Busy to Avoid Doing Homework

Hey Friends!

First of all, I just wanted to ask how you are doing? What's new? Any new stresses at work or at home with your Xbox-live account? Are you managing? How are your New Years resolutions coming along? I sincerely hope that everything is swell on your side.

That's better. I feel like blogs are too one-sided and often forget to take into account the most valuable asset to the success of the blog- the reader. What if I wrote a blog that was making jokes about the mating habits of South American poison dart frogs (which I'm sure are joke worthy) but I didn't know that ALL of my readers on that given day were activists against unprotected poison dart frog mating and didn't find humor (or humour, because I KNOW that there are some Canadians who read here) in the jokes that I presented?

That would be terrible. So if anyone has any gripes or stories to share that would positively influence the mood on this site, please share!

LOL

Continuing on, school is terrible. Luckily I was able to teach Aristotle a lesson when I compared him to Malcolm X to Woody from Toy Story in a presentation. I'm not going to elaborate on that because there is no reason to because all you need to know is that my favorite character in Toy Story (one) is Rex. He is such a good friend- it is heartwarming.  If they were to create a movie with Rex from Toy Story as the Protagonist, I don't think that it would be very successful because Americans HATE seeing a dinosaur as a good guy. I would watch it though, and try and learn as much as I could about how to deal with having short arms, because I think that is a problem I suffer from.

So besides training, I've got to keep busy somehow. Here's my recent top three (besides homework and studying of course)

1) TV Shows

I invested in a Netflix subscription and ooooh my has it been paying off nicely. We don't have cable so I've been doing a lot of catching up on shows that were SO HUGE a couple years ago but just blew right past my head like anything over 5'3" does for Steve. I like TV shows better than movies because then I don't have to commit a full 1.5-2 hours for a movie, and then feel like a dirtbag for spending that much time watching something. So instead if I watch 3-4 TV episodes, I don't feel as bad about myself! Here is my recent list of what I've been watching- luckily I am so far behind that I'm not going to run out of new-to-me episodes anytime soon.

       - Dexter
       - The League
       - Breaking Bad
       - Always Sunny in Philadelphia
       - Sons of Anarchy
       - Burn Notice
       - Freaks and Geeks
       - Entourage
 don't forget about the ones I watch on HULU
       - Modern Family
       - Parks and Recreation

"Wow that is a shocking list. Ian you have such good taste, and quite the variety of selections also!  May I come sip tea* and watch something with you?"
        - Probably what you're thinking right now

Now that I typed it out I'm a little concerned because that is a lot of shows. I swear I do other things.

* I recently .... picked up... a small tea obsession. And whoa did you know how awesome tea is?

Always Sunny is my favorite. Right now.

2) Books

Did you know that if you read for pleasure it's more fun than reading for school? Yeah, really! And oh boy I have a small problem that involves 7 books that I am currently in the midst of. PLUS 9 more waiting to be read during the traveling season. Hopefully those 9 last me through March.

The two that I am most consistently choosing to read are Operation Mincemeat and In the Pursuit of Excellence. Radically different, because one is essentially about not going 4 loko crazy when you compete and the other is about going 4 loko crazy with your ideas on how to win (a war). Both interesting and both potentially lifechanging, much like the Wu-Tang concert I went to last week.

3) Cooking

Every once in awhile I love a chance to get all Ratatouille up in this motha'. I won't Kennettron it by breaking down the caloric intake so everyone feels bad about themselves but I'll say I really like vegetable soups. I also made a pretty awesome curry that tasted like it was imported from a place that curry is created regularly (my mom's kitchen).

Cooking tip for the day- Don't burn things.

The exciting news is that in one month I don't have to be bored anymore and I get to participate in the World Championships! At Mason Lake. And then I get to do lots of cool races, which I'll talk about more sometime in the next month when Fe-Bru-Ary gets boring and I want to share my race schedule. Which is awesome and everyone should be on their toes with excitement about. Like me!

I've taken us on one large full circle.

Important- I've gotten into a habit of illegally poster-sizing without photographer consent through Costco in order to turn cool pictures from the internet into fantastic wall art for my bedroom. Case in point:

Pretty much my room is awesome. If there is any ever questions about photographer consent blah blah blah let's come to the agreement that it is pretty awesome that DBC photo DOT COM was able to get a press pass for Milan San Remo and snag a great shot of Matt Goss winning with Gilbert looking ROOSTED and Cancellara looking quite angry. Pipo Pozzato is also in the background but he is in the process of seducing an Italian woman off the side of the course so he isn't in focus.

Moving on, long story shorter, Costco messed up the colors on my most recent print. Did it turn out better? I can't really decide. It's almost seizure inducing, but at the same time, somewhat bad-ass. Help!

Thank you very much for reading and I hope that you have a wonderful day.

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Intelligent Times

The theme of my week has been liquid. Of course I mean that because I have ridden indoors without the fan that Steve has been hoarding in his room while I go through two bottles and two towels in a one hour roller workout and still leave a sweat puddle the size of Papua New Guinea (also, for you haters who are thinking in your mind "uhhh Ian, Papua New Guinea is actually quite a small country, so therefore you probably didn't sweat that much if you're comparing it to a mini-country", you're wrong and stop your playa-hating because it's still a country which is a large land mass that is home to over six million people. Which means it's a HUGE puddle on the floor of the garage).

So when the snow made a mess of Bellingham I dealt with it. But I'm no hero because lots of people rode inside all day this week OH and also congrats on posting it to your facebook that you rode X-amount of hours on the trainer, twice.

MOVING ON. I rode outside today! And I am going to talk about that. After 24 straight hours of torrential, down-pouring, sky emptying drizzle (kidding it wasn't a drizzle, it was raining quite hard) Lil'Steve and I went out on a bike pedal adventure. Most of the snow had melted away but there was still some sketchy sections where the snow hadn't quite melted yet and there was icy-slush (not liquid form, that's why it's not blue) residue in random spots on the pavements. Steve went a little bit faster than me in those sections because he was riding a cross bike with narrow road tires which are designed for slicing through the ice getting him down to the pavement underneath the ice whereas my wider tires kept me above the surface and made me slip and almost fall three times. But I didn't! Hooray for that. Also, Steve's center of gravity is quite low.

The best part of the ride was how delicious the water in the bottles tasted. Just pure wonder inside of the bottles. The air temperature was of proper levels and the bicycle-pedaling exertion was at the right balance that the drinking while riding was pure pleasure. I know you've experienced those days- the ones where the water tastes SOOO GOOD that there must be something in it that makes it taste better than normal. Delicious. Delicacy. Dreamy.

I could continue with liquid stories but I'll stop there. I now leave you with a text message thread between myself and my sister. She just got back from racing track bikes at the Beijing World Cup and I think she picked up some humor during the long plane ride. Or at least planned for this moment that I properly countered.

T: what did the ocean say to the other ocean?
I: nothing, it just waved
T: are you shore you got that?
I: stop being so shellfish, your jokes krill me!
T: haha, I sea what you did there. what are you going to watch whale you ride the trainer today?
I: we shell sea. the trainer is a beach but I'll find something to tide me over
T: oooh, you're good. oar are you cheating?
I: I could say the same to your fishy responses!

Also, everyone should follow @telacrane (she's not a liquid but links are blue, so click it. Well technically I guess humans ARE more than 60% water but....) on twitter because when she tweets, she often makes fun of me.

We're normal, I swear it.

Peace Bros.

"Now what we have here is a Capuchin monkey, he makes his home in the rainforest. Now the rainforest is threatened by ....

The rainforest? That sounds WET"

-Brian Fellows, Safari Planet, SNL

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A weekend of Bonding

My arms and back aren't sore anymore!

This weekend was the first meet and greet of the 2012 season for the HB Elite team. It was an opportunity to reunite with the teammates from last year and a chance to get to know the new guys before we are forced to go through airport security together at 4:50 am- a time of the day and a situation where you really get to see the true personality of a man.

Friday for me started out pretty normal. I was sitting in my car waiting for David, when this creature stared at me from across the road. It proceeded to stare into my eyes, through my cornea and into my iris, sliding right through my retina and directly past my cerebellum into my cerebral cortex and just grazing past my medulla oblongata. It walked across the street, pounced onto my car, and stood there, staring into the depths of my potential as a human. A direct sign of trust, and a haunting foreshadowing of the trust exercises to come.

Fast forward to downtown Seattle, where all 13 of us (on Friday the 13th #scary) got to spend some quality time inside the offices of Hagens Berman, AKA the penthouse suite of Seattle. After a 1/8th of a second elevator ride that took us 33 floors into the building, we sat down in a conference room, greeted by several pitchers of water that were chilled by ice cubes that were created as a result of the Titanic running into the iceberg, chipping off large chunks of ice that made their way into our pitchers. Or perhaps even if someone filled a plastic bucket with water, then froze that. Ice cold. We did some general team meetings, individual rider meetings, sponsor presentations, and video interviews.

Reps from Blue bikes/Cole Wheels and Shimano came to give us some knowledge on product that we will be using this season. It's pretty great to have utmost confidence in the product that we'll be racing on this year, and it was awesome that the Shimano reps brought in the shoe ovens to fit our new R315 kicks. We'll be using those shoes, Shimano pedals, Blue Axino SL frames, and a pretty wide range of Cole wheels. I'll usually be on the T-50s or the C-38s, but I'm looking forward to doing some racing on the super-light Ventoux wheelset also.

Alex and Mercedes from Shimano set Cody up with his shoes

Where we sat for awhile. Optimal

Here is a quick teaser of what is to come with our video interviews- The goal is to have footage throughout the season and use these as fillers as videos we do for sponsors. And by we I mean WingerStudios.Com, who is responsible for the video. Also, all pictures I'm using are from WingerStudios.Com, unless I took them with my cellphone. Or also there are pictures that Winger took with his cellphone, so that technically does mean that some of the cellphone pictures are WingerStudios, but if there is no studio does that mean that Winger didn't take the picture?

Wingerstudios.com

I'm not really sure how Kennett got onto that subject, since the questions were all about things like "what type of rider are you?" and "what's your favorite race?".


After our meeting at the firm was over, we had a slim amount of time to change into fancy clothes and get to a restaurant for dinner with Steve Berman, our title sponsor. Naturally, we decided to change in the parking garage, do up our ties in the reflective windows, and steam iron our shirts with our breath.

Problem. We get to the van in the parking garage and notice that it has a flat tire. Since we are late, we decide to walk to dinner, to deal with the flat later. So we all change. Then someone has the bright idea to check to see when the parking garage gets locked up, and that time is troubling. That time means that now the flat tire must be changed BEFORE dinner, which means now 13 guys with little to no experience wearing fancy clothes must change a tire WITHOUT getting clothes dirty. We all succeeded except Kennett, and his clothes were definitely not dirty before starting the changing process. And by we all, I mean that three or four people changed the flat.

Now you might be asking "Ian, who was the most stylish, as well as most properly dressed for this occasion, besides you?" That is a good question since clearly I pulled off the fancy dinner clothes look the best, but I'd have to say that Cody was the next stylish. And I chose that because he wore the exact same color combinations as I did.

After dinner we went back to our hotel for the night. Before going to sleep, us locals (David, Colin, Steve, Winger and I) decided we should show the out-of-towners the Space Needle and Seattle Center. So we walked there and checked it out. It was quite majestic in the evening light.

Saturday morning we headed to Gravitec, who are one of our sponsors. We all were quite excited for the fun that was to be had. Kennett unfortunately caught some sort of 12hr bug (seafood?) so he didn't sleep well but he still was raring to go.

Gravitec is a company who specializes in fall protection for people who work at heights. They also do corporate team building activities- and we were able to participate in both of those throughout the course of the day. Here are some things that we did-

• Human chain
• Four way Tug-a-war (in which Jesse, Chris, and Myself were clearly superior to the other teams but lost due to ... weather)
• Eight people standing on one milk crate (in the snow- Picture a movie where the protagonist finally accomplishes something they've been looking to do for their whole lives and as the rain falls in slow motion and fireworks explode into the air the characters throw up a fist pump in excitement and pound their chest in a slow-motion, excitement-filled frenzy)
• Trust activities
• Trust falls
• Harness related repels
• Rope climbing
• Ping pong ball moving team exercise
• Floating pvc pipes
• Burritos
• Leadership stuff

These activities were set up so the task gradually got more and more difficult throughout the day, and we were able to see our progression as a team. We all took something out of this experience, and it was cool to see some peoples inner-leader come out.

Here are some of those fancy Winger Studios pictures I was talking about-

Human Chain- My legs are currently a... tunnel for Colin....

David falls into our soft, supple & trusting arms

Schmitz gets his 100 ft of rope climb on

Rescue simulation

4-way Tug-o-War

Cody, David, Myself, and Jesse manipulate the elastic to try and grab the paint can

Pictures say a thousand words, so this blog post was 13,000 + words in length. So Kennett may have posted first, but well, yeah. These exercises proved A) how competitive we are and B) how well we work as a team.

I give my advanced apologies for every soul we crush this year in Bike Racing tournaments.

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