Hey Folks.

I’m back. Jeez… I know, it’s been over a week since we last talked… my apologies. It was a busy week to say the least. I had hoped to give you guys nightly updates from the Tour de Georgia, but man… after racing, cleaning up, eating dinner, stretching, get a massage, calling Suzanne and having a nightly team meeting… well, as you’ve noticed, it just didn’t happen.

But, lets put that behind us, because I’m back and I have a lengthy up date for y’all (I picked that lingo up in the South).

As I typically do, I will neglect a fair amount of the racing chitter-chatter and instead give you some behind the scenes talk. Like 3 videos from before stage 2… You see, there were five of us riders, and Thomas the soigneur, heading down from the 12th floor of our hotel. We were on our way to the van to climb in and head to the start line. The elevator on the 12th floor was taking it’s sweet time, so we decided to catch a ride down the service elevator with a hotel employee that had just walked by…

Keep in mind, and I will remind you on the video, a “short-cut” is defined as “the longest distance between two points”…

Video One: A choice encounter with a long lost King man…

Video Two: “No, hopefully it won’t go anywhere”, said the man standing safely on the other side of the door.

Video Three: Freedom at last…

A weekend prior to this, at the U.S. Open in Virginia, Trent and I hopped a ride down on the service elevator… This time, the guest elevator was horrendously slow, so we decided to walk down a few flights of stairs. However, for some reason the stairs stopped at the 2nd floor. Hm?… So we waited some more for the elevator, which like I said was “horrendously slow”… so we strolled through an unmarked door that looked like it was meant for official hotel employees only. On the other side of the door was a wooden service elevator. So we took it down to the 1st floor… however… it opened up right, smack dab, in the back of the restaurant’s kitchen. So there, Trent and I were, standing fully kitted up, with our day bags filled with cycling gear, in the middle of the hotel’s kitchen. You should have seen everyone’s faces as we strolled through there asking which way to go to get to the lobby. Eventually, we found it.

Alright, no more elevator talk. But just remember to always practice safe elevator skills… or you might get stuck.

For me, the high point of the week was winning this bad boy…

Stage Two Most Aggressive Jersey.

That day, I went fishing for the early break… and caught it. This is what it looked like for about 160 out of 217 kilometers of rolling roads and a block headwind… Me, Garrett Peltonen (Priority Health), and Glen Chadwick (Navigators Insurance).

Well, I think that’s all for now. Plenty more happened during the week, but I’ll have to talk about it later. I have a few more pictures I’d like to post, so I’ll do my best to get around to it. As for me, it’s a down week on the bike. I’ll take a few days off to relax and enjoy myself before getting back to training by next week. The next big target on the racing schedule: Philly week.

Cheers.

Categories: Daily Jibber Jabber.
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