Match Made in Heaven

The author of this webcomic (click the comic to read it all):






Should meet the author of this song:

HTML - The Hot Toddies

Mario Kart Love Song

This should please my friends over at TheMonstro, many of whom spent more time playing Mario Kart in college than they actually did.....in college. Now all this guy would have to do is come out with a Super Smash Bros. song.

StarCrossed

So StarCrossed Happened.......

How Do I KNOW It's The Off Season???

Here's how:

Top Three Pennsylvania Dutch Desserts

So our time in Souderton, PA was a grand one. We raced an epic race, we stayed with a wonderful couple of Pennsylvania natives, and we were exposed to several traditional Pennsylvania Dutch desserts. In fact, we were exposed to so much of these glorious confections, I now consider myself and expert. Thus, in no particular order, I give you:

THE TOP THREE PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH DESERTS

SHOO-FLY PIE
This molasses-based concoction is utterly delectable. Apparently, shoo-fly pie was named so due to its ability to attract flies when placed on an open window-sill in order to cool after baking. While I find this to be a trait held by just about any pie worth its crust, the name is catchy nonetheless, no? The pie consists of a traditional pie crust, a gooey molasses bottom layer, topped with a lighter molasses based cake, and covered in graham cracker crumbs.
FUNNY CAKE PIE

A funny cake was more discovered than it was invented. Apparently, as legend goes, someone wanted to make a cake with chocolate on top, so they took some vanilla cake batter and put chocolate on top -- but after they baked LOW AND BEHOLD, THE CHOCOLATE SUNK THROUGH THE CAKE, FORMING A LAYER BENEATH THE CAKE BATTER!!! This was found to be so humorous (chocolate sinking through cake batter? What a knee-slapper, huh?) that they named it the Funny Cake Pie. It's got gooey chocolate on the bottom, vanilla cake on top, and a glaze of, you guessed it, more chocolate.


GROUND CHERRY PIE

This one is pretty self explanatory: it's a fruit pie made with a ground cherries, a local staple. Ground cherries are about the size of large blueberries, they grow on the ground, and come wrapped in a thin papery husk. They taste a lot like grapes, and have a texture similar to a tomatillo (lots of tiny seeds, but rather juicy).

Big Big Ouch

Today Krogg have big big ouch from team time trial. Adrian much stronger caveman, and for first time in Krogg's life, Krogg on the receiving end of stronger riders in TTT. We start good, but before long, we down to only three riders -- minimum number for finish today -- oh no....Krogg start to have bad pain in legs, ouch ouch ouch! ADRIAN, YOU GO TO FAST OUCH!!!!! SLOW DOWN PLEASE HOLYSHITTHISISWAYTOOFAST

ICAN'TKEEPUP--SLOWDOWN
PLEASEHOLYSHIT!!
ICAN'TGOANYFASTER!!
HOLYSHIT!!!!!!

Then Krogg remember all those times in college when he smash teammates legs into pulp in TTT and have no mercy -- for all those times, Krogg now understand receiving end of this scenario.


Adrian once again have good race report -- him deserve all camera time he get.

Also, interested parties can see re-cast of race at this place.

UPDATE: apparently we got 6th place. not bad. I know their A-squads are all at Missouri, but it still feels good to stick it to teams like OUCH and Kelly.

FUCKING WATCH US ON TV, OK??

We are out at Univest. Univest is awesome, and will be awesome to watch. Universal Sports is going to show us racing tomorrow. It will be streaming live on universalsports.com starting around 11 AM Eastern Time (our start time is roughly 11:40 AM). Go to the website, AND FUCKING WATCH US ON TV, OK?

Krogg Find New York City Magical City of Wonders....

Krogg don't know how exactly he wind up in New York City, but holy mastodon, this one crazy place.

Here....You....Go.....

Here's Adrian's final report from GMSR. I didn't do very well, but gosh, it was fun, and Burlington is awesome. That's all I have to say about that.

Our Homestay in Vermont

We're building up quite the reputation out here -- and between how we're riding, and what we've been driving around to the races, we deserve one!














Also, here's Adrian's recap from the stage:
The good news: turns out I got the jersey yesterday! I tied Vaillancourt for the GC but going back to the prologue I had the lead by about 3 tenths of a second. A little bummed to have missed out on a podium presentation (they didn't do GC until after tearing down the race), but psyched to be the shirt.

The bad news: wearing the jersey pretty much marked me out of the race today. It was another case of faux-GC, where somehow everyone just watched what I was doing and seemed to ignore all the guys who were nominally behind in time, had full teams, and had a much better shot of placing.

We rode a good race though. Sam bridged into a big early move just before the first major climb, and I watched the other GC guys back in the field. The move was really big and not working too well, but with nearly every team represented it neutralized the race. I wound up doing a little chasing on the descent from the first climb just to keep the pace up, then Sam sat up out of the break to help. He came back right before the few miles of dirt road and KILLED it, basically single-handedly towing the field up to the move. He got lots of compliments from the chuckleheads in the field.

Going into the final climb it was all together and I marked a few moves on the lower slopes. Over the first summit Driscoll attacked and one of his teammates and Vaillancourt, both on his wheel, threw out the parachutes. Somehow no one else in the 30-40 man field wanted to do anything, so I wound up having to chase on the flat/descent going into the final 5km climb. Again, a case of everyone watching the race ride away from them just because of the dumb jersey. I actually had a gap for a mile or so because guys were racing so negatively they let me ride right off, but it wasn't enough to stick and I was wasting energy in no-man's land.

I wasn't feeling stellar at that point and didn't particularly fancy my chances on the steep, pitchy final climb. I definitely didn't give up and ride it in, but just paced it all the way to the top and focused on limiting my losses more than on trying to follow accelerations.

No results yet, but I definitely lost the jersey and fell pretty significantly on GC. Obviously not psyched about that, but I could see it coming, and we rode a very solid, respectable race in defense of the lead. I'll look over the results and figure out whether it's worth going for time bonuses in tomorrow's crit to move up on GC. If so, there are three time bonus sprints plus the finish, altogether worth around 40sec. If the overall is well set I'll just go for the stage and primes. Regardless, after two podiums, a day in yellow, and making it through today without crashing, I can come away satisfied with the weekend.

I haven't really figured out what happened in the 2's race, sounds like it was a pretty tough day with lots of cramping to go around. I'm pretty sure both Bing and Stoney were in the top-20 though? Solid.

So We're Here in Vermont.

It turns out, I love Vermont.

I did this again:

Aside from wondering (out loud, repeatedly) why I'm such an idiot, and why I failed to learn the LAST time I did this, I was able to solve the problem quite easily. The local bike shop was willing to loan me a new post for free for the time that I'm here -- and it's a Thompson, not a Thud Buster.

We had dinner here, at American Flatbread (a Vermont institution), and the place warmed my soul as much as the pizza dazzled my tongue. If you've got time, poke around their website a little. Read what the place is about, what they stand for, and how they run their business. I'd suggest reading some of the Dedications (this week's menu is dedicated to...). The current one (not up yet -- it will be) so poignantly captured some of modernity's greatest troubles, I was unexpectedly touched and inspired.

We've also been at a bike race. Adrian, if you'll forgive me, I'll borrow your words to describe what's been going on:

Friday's 10k TT.

Finished up the prologue here in Vermont. Sam and I had a rough travel day yesterday, around 15hrs in transit without a ride. We were shellacked today and no one felt stellar. I was the top finisher in third behind Dan Vaillancourt (Colavita, 8sec up) and Jonathan Chodroff (OUCH, 2sec up). Sam had a bad day and finished 39th, but it shouldn't matter much for GC as the gaps will get big from here out.

Bing and Alan are racing in the 2s and had a so-so day, neither went ballistic and will be looking to the later stages for opportunities on the climbs. We all did better than Sam's 30sec man though, who somehow took himself out {crashed} at an uphill finish of a time trial on a road bike. Wow.

We have a great host house, same as last year with the BikeReg.com team (formerly Fiordifruita). We also got an awesome loaner team vehicle (see pics). Tomorrow is a rolling circuit race that should end with a sprint. Time bonuses go 5 deep and I could take the jersey with a first or second. More updates as they come, and Alan is updating the team twitter account to boot.

And today's 76 mile circuit race.

Things are picking up across the board for us here in Vermont. Today's stage was a very dicey, rolly stage that ended in a sprint. Sam swung the axe early in the stage and got into a few unsuccessful breaks, was off solo for a bit, then took some monster pulls on the final lap to single-handedly bring back a dangerous move. With 3k to go he took me to the front through litany of crashes, and I finished third again. But I also got an 8sec time bonus so I moved up to second and am tied for first on time.

Alan, Bing and Stoney had a less eventful day in what apparently was a more gentlemanly race. The HB leadout train apparently plowed its way to the front with about 1.5k to go, but Bing faded a bit in the headwind sprint with cramping legs.

Tomorrow is the queen stage with lots of long, steep climbs on tap. That should just about wrap up the GC, though Monday's crit has enough time bonuses to keep things interesting. Right now I'm just hoping to make it to the finish and exorcise my demons from last year. Pulling on the jersey would be a great way to finish that process.

That's about it. More Vermont goodness to come I hope!

My Friend Adrian Wins Bike Races On Command

Here's the recap of last week: 

Tuesday I was introduced to the bizarre world of the weekly series at the Pacific Raceways. We raced for about an hour around a motor race track; three fields chasing each other 'round and 'round at the same time. It was pretty silly. The super long straight aways combined with the gentle wind, and huge, curiously negative field made it impossible to get away. I tried and tried, but to no avail. 

Thursday we raced the weekly Seward Park crit. I went up the road with Adrian and two other guys. Adrian took a hard pull and one of the other guys opened up a gap. Nobody closed it, and then the other guys marked me back to the field. Rats. Adrian, won with ease. 

Friday I raced my final night in the cat 3's at the track. I got smoked in the Keirin, but I had a helluva time walloping everyone in the miss-n-out and the Scratch race (which now makes me the men's category 3 Scratch Race STATE CHAMPION! -- SUCK IT WASHINGTON!!!!).

Saturday was the final installment of the our club's three race series, the Lake Washington Velo Circuit Race Series. Hagens Berman laid down one our most dominant performances in recent history, taking first (Adrian), second (Lang), third (Wingfield), fifth (Nick), sixth (Aaron), eighth (yours truly), and tenth (Benny). That's 7 in the top ten people. Adrian spend more than half the race off the front solo. We stacked five guys into a seven man chase group, and Benny took second in the field sprint. Boo yeah. That's how we do!

Sunday was some sort of bizarre replay of thursday, another crit at Seward park. Our previous day's success perhaps bred a touch of over-confidence. I went up the road with two other guys, but my teammates kept trying to bridge up to the move. I was pretty confident I had the race signed and paid for, but to my horror, a fast charging Kenny Williams (leading the field) came powering past me into the final corner on the last lap. Our greed was our undoing. 

NOW THEN....it's off to Vermont for the Green Mountain Stage Race. I'll try to take some photos. Goof. GOOF GOOF GOOF. 

-S