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 shellsea. 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 ....
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?
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.
Not all bike racers are huge-headed. Just Lang. But huge-brained, that's a different story. I mean Colin graduated College. And so did David and Chris Parrish! And maybe someday Steve will also.
But here I have proof that our minds didn't rot, either from almost a month off of school (me) or from long days working in a hotel and doing extremely weird things to their bikes (Kennett).
Really Kennett? A homemade saddle bag? Those cost like, two dollars. A Bento Box? Please, pull down your compression socks and remove the neoprene wetsuit off your brain and think for a second. Who am I? Where do I belong? Do I want to return to these days?
Remember Kennett. It's always better to starve than to have a Bento Box strapped onto the front of your bike.
Anyways, here is a FB chat conversation that Kennett and myself had. Clearly proving our intelligence.
:I can't tell if it was likeable or not. Now I'm tearing myself apart
: What did you say?
: I don't even remember
: do you think that things that no one remembers actually happened? there's no way to disprove this. or prove it.
: I've read that three times and I've come to the conclusion that if it can't be remembered that it doesn't exist- but if something doesn't exist that means that in order for it not to exist it must begin to exist
: you're saying it had to exist in the first place but then not be remembered?--therefore nullifying its existence?
: I'm saying that the simple act of existing existentially shows that remembrance is directly correlated to the inclusion of existing memories
A couple mere minutes ago some time in the past I typed some fateful words into an internet comment box. I said-
Smith hat would match me
Maybe make THE Joe Holmes proud?
Probably maybe
The reason for this occasion? Simple. A Glider Bison Giveaway. I've entered many of these in the past, simply trying to win things that were once handled by THE Sam Johnson. But this time, something quite magical happened.
I was a winner!
To tell this in a format that might make more sense, let me interpret this message via......
KROGG!
"Krogg hold huge contest. Prize worth three whole turkey leg fresh off fire started from huge clump Mammoth belly hair! Krogg no like this hat, hat makes Kroggs ears look big like Mastodon tusk growing off face of KING MASTODON! Krogg have idea- make people write funny things into comment box and let number generator pick the "random" best one! Krogg know however, Caveman-Ian write good Haiku many times over- more times than Krogg climb mountain to chop tree for fire- AND Krogg know that THE Joe Holmes feel good about sponsor related products! Krogg KNOW that Ian haiku worthy of hat-prize. Krogg number selects WINNER. Celebration of five successful-hunts!"
Ok, I promise to leave that form of writing to the expert from now on. I'm quite happy! Ever since I lost the Haiku Favorites Runner Up Contest I've been scheming. FINALLY!
I'm too sleepy right now to think of any sort of creative lyric or sonnet or anything to post as the title. Titles are usually the hardest part of writing a blog because how can you really categorize the crazy things that run through my head into a simple sentence or phrase? It's difficult. It's also probably pretty difficult to come up with titles when you write about something that happened 6 months ago. Not that anyone I know does that.
Here's a fun game for you to play. Try to think of as many song TITLES that have some sort of California related connection in them. It sounds pretty easy, right? Here are some obvious ones-
California Love- Tupac
Beverly Hills- Weezer
Back to Cali- Notorious BIG
California Girls- Katy Perry
Dani California- Red Hot Chili Peppers
Compton's in the House- NWA
Say Goodbye to Hollywood- Eminem
ETC. So now try and think of any more. It's actually pretty difficult, huh? The first time that I made the driving trip down with T$ to LA last Nov. we played this game (whoa! blogging about something a year old!), and came up with list roughly 11 things long. We thought that was pretty good, but since the internet knows everything I did some research. Turns out there are a lot more than 11 songs about California and that there is an entire Wikipedia page devoted to these songs.
So now that I've made up for a lack of title with interesting trivia, let me catch us up on our journey, California style.
I flatted again today. But instead of talking about that, let me engulf you into a story about a man and wildlife. A man and nature. A man and his bike.
I was riding my bike alone, just doing some simple through and off on PCH. Unimportant to the story, but relevant to the mood, I was wearing my Summer Whites, aka my white HB jersey. As I was through-ing up a hill (NOT THROWING UP) I happened to glance to my right into the vastness that is the Atlantic KIDDING Pacific Ocean and I saw something. The unmistakeable excitement that is a shark attack about to happen. I'm talking several fins Jaws-theme-songing their way through the shallow water, about to team up on a helpless something, much like in the excellent Sy-Fy original "Malibu Shark Attack".
As I was preparing for an epic Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus type battle between this herd of Sharks and whatever they were about to choose to eat for brunch, I was disappointed, or maybe overjoyed, to see that these sharks weren't actually ferocious killers, for they weren't actually sharks! They weren't just flotsam either. I wasn't fooled by something floating at me like the dumb girl from the movie "Deep Blue Sea" but I was just incorrect in naming my species. They were either a pack of Porpi (my way of saying porpoise plural) or a dollop of dolphins. Because once they started jumping in and out of the water like a graph of a function that kept going from negative to positive along the X axis I knew that they weren't sharks. Sharks can't be bothered to jump out of the water like that, unless they're really hungry-
That was a clip from an episode of the excellent television show "Planet Earth". Everyone should check out that series it's quite stunning.
But yes, I saw a dollop of dolphins on my ride today, and since I'm in California, why not?
Ok, the next exciting thing that I am choosing to talk about instead of talking about how I've gotten more flats in three days of riding here than I did all last winter and the beginning of this winter combined is this awesome structure that I saw today. And yesterday.
From a distance, this son-of-a-gun looks like your simple water-tower. Ya know, like a candle on stilts with a roof on it sort of thing. Wait what? A roof? Yes, this "water-tower" is actually a vacation rental home.
Since we all know how much I enjoy living in luxury, I have some respect for this $4000 a week rental. In fact, as I was changing a flat in its shadow I sketched a quick picture!
Last week, I tweeted something along the lines of "hashtag I'm so weak I had to lift the xmas holidayz tree my arms are so little". This was a fun experience because when I lift a 8 lb medicine ball it does not equal a AT LEAST 15 pound Christmas tree. Yikes! That fun continued yesterday on my bike pedal.
I rode with two track riders, and I attacked them on 12 occasions. However, that is not the story.
It starts roughly 47 minutes into the ride, when I flatted my rear tire. Simple, I removed the tire, checked for debris, and put in a new tube. I noticed that my rim-tape was sort of crooked. So I straightened it out, and then I used a hand pump to put roughly 3 hours worth of riding PSI into my tire. My right arm felt slightly tired.
One hour and four attacks later, I felt the rear starting to get soft again. Pulled over, removed the tube, found some glass, noticed a off centered rim strip. Changed the tube. Pumped it up to slightly less PSI than before due to horrible, horrible pains in my arms. Removed the hand pump. PSJHSDKJHKSHFGJHFHJSKL:LKJHGFDFGHJKL. With the removal of the hand pump came the removal of the valve stem. NOT HAPPY. Now I am no longer on top of things- since I only brought two tubes. So I borrowed a tube. Down to one tube for 3 of us. This time I used a C02 canister because my arms felt as if I had just competed in a handstand-handwalking marathon with a midget doing a tango on my feet.
PS, my tires are ~680 cc so they don't come on and off easily. At this point my hands are now throbbing and my knuckles are bleeding from smacking them into my spokes. Repeatedly.
So we start riding. Collin and I drop Ian up a climb. Four minutes later I flat the rear, AGAIN. This time, I'm assuming that my rim-tape is F'ed out the Ying Yang (twins).
So instead of changing this flat, I was conned into believing that there was "a bike shop like, 2 miles from here!". So I decided to ride the flat to the bike shop. Since I had no air in my tire, I was riding out of the saddle. Which is doing a reverse pull up on the front of my bike as I held my girth away from the rear wheel. About 7 minutes of that later and 400 arm twitches it was decided that this bike shop was still maybe 3 miles away. So we pulled over, and I hand pumped the tire back up to riding PSI so that I could do 12 seconds of really fast riding before the tire went flat again. This is 3 times with the hand pump now.
A couple minutes later it became time to pump it up again, so I pulled over right after a construction sight, and got to pumping. For those of you that have never seen a cyclist on the side of the road using a hand pump to put air into a tire, it may be the reason that the average American citizen tries to run cyclists over. Imagine that video of the guy at the Texas Tech football game ringing the bell. It may look like something else.
I get around 50 psi in the tires and hear some laughing. Look up and the construction site is LOL'ing at me pumping up my tires. Ok, continue.
And we made it to the bike shop! But it was a BMX bike shop, and when I asked if they had road tubes, the employee said "uhhh... maybe". He did! So then I took the tire and found a staple that had worked its way into my tire. I had to dig the sucker out with a razor blade! And then for kicks and giggles I bought a new rim-strip. And made it ALL the way home without flatting again!
3 flats, 4 tire changes, 1 million mini-pump pumps, bloody knuckles, and sore arms.
Then Tela made me carry a milk jug home from the grocery store! OUCH!
I left you in a state of despair. In fact yesterday I ALMOST did something ridiculous. I just about, was planning, was on the verge, around the corner, pick and choose, or non-debatable going to ride the...rollers.... yesterday. I was originally going to try and ride on the track, but since my bike is in the attic in Bham and my road bike tires don't accept the proper PSI (proper strength indicator) for the steep banking, I couldn't.
So I took all my stuff to the track and by the time I had gotten there I had made up my mind that I wasn't a soft-pansy-child and I came to California to ride the bicycles outdoors in the sunshine, and I'll be G'D if I don't end up doing that. So I chose to ride outdoors. As I was preparing for rain riding, here are some of the statements that these other bike racers said to me-
Did you know it's raining out? (yes I did) Here in California a rain day means a rest day!
THIS IS YOUR FAULT FOR BRINGING THIS
Why did you bring this from Seattle?
It's probably not going to be very much fun out there?
Eat a Burger!
This wasn't very kind of you to bring this weather from Seattle
LOL
So far, 7 people have blamed me for the weather. Which c'mon, after a quick Google search it's pretty clear that it is physically impossible for me to carry a rain cloud with me from Seattle. So I ain't no hollerback gurrrrrl.
I've been making some connections and plotting some lines on Mapmyride, Ridewithgps, and Strava to try and find some good rides for me to go on in the next couple of days. I planned a really awesome ride with tons of climbing all within a pretty close distance to Cypress, which was sort of odd. So I google map zoooooooooomed in on it, and turned out that both of my climbs were dirt hiking trails. Problem? No, not really. Then I found this. I'm still all set to give it a go, but I'm pretty sure that I should wait a couple days so that the dirt roads have a chance to dry a little bit before I begin the madness.
In other related news (not actually related to anything I've talked about) (but related to this trip), my sister is weird. True story. Somehow she got in a conversation with someone about something. And this something is a taller, crazier tale than the time that someone else did something taller and crazier. Tela and her associate discussed sleep patterns. What happens when one sleeps? What really goes on in the depths of dormir? What occurs in dream-land? Inception.
So Tela downloaded a "Sleep Talk" app for her phone. This app is designed to turn on at any indication of noise. So turns out T$ is a crazy mo-fo and potentially is possessed. Most of the things that the phone recorded were along the lines of an agressive roll over, or perhaps a deep breath. But then there was that one recording where Tela started talking about nonsense like a demonic satanic cray cray loco person. The key words were "rabbits" and "that's it". So take what you like from that.
So naturally, since I needed to know that I am not a crazy person and demonic-sleeptalk doesn't run in the family, I downloaded this same app last night.
Some may hope for a happy tale, one ripe with song.
Or even a night filled with wonderful stories, some right, some wrong.
But in fact I'll tell you, that on this very night,
I said nothing, nay, my mouth, yes it stayed shut tight.
So if you think that perhaps, this night chatting runs in the Fam, PLEASE
For since when you listen to my recording, yes, all you'll hear is Zzzzz's.
: 
: 
