wandering

wow! yeah, ouch neato fun painful quiet sun clouds bluesky smiles friends timegaps trails rocks dirt sand gravel food water beer beer beer brownies rolling grimaces trees bruises bones sadness and love.

lots of love.

ahhhh le Tour is in the books. I'm back to reality, yesterday, huuuuge recovery of barely doing anything after a late night arrival home and then slept for something like 14hrs last night. The Tour was pretty much everything I'd hoped it would be. Survived it fixed, slummed not quite as much as expected but did find a very very empty & hollow place during the Deathstar timed section on the last day. Got to ride with sooo many good people, GC ended up with a solid 26. Cheryl took home her 4th Tour le Femininne, J. il Sparrow Bishop also claimed his fourth Tour over Sam Koeber and the Cupcake's own Reubane. Bryan Walking Texas Ranger Fawley captured both the Sprint and KOM jerseys, at one point holding three of the four jerseys at once, an unheard of accomplishment. Ryan D put in a strong DFL move on the last day, helping out an injured Andy B to keep that jersey in the JV Squadree's camp.

Other notables of those you may know, off the top of my head: H'burg heros packed up the lower half of the top 10, but there was a Fooftowner in fifth with Martino, then locals Carpong, Mumbles and Kyle. Bucky slotted into his traditional 10th spot, Pedro Salsa was in the lower teens with Jenkini where Travisimo should have been if it weren't for the unfortunate rib snapping. The Tractor does get the tough guy award for rolling the 100 miles on Tuesday with the offending bone. Mac Bo ye's rode le Tour with his unique style and was always there with an inspirational word or two, not afraid of saying what needs to be said. And Bender finished his first Grand Tour in style, being just the third person to ride all the mtn stages on a single.

Personally, I flirted uncomfortably with the DFL slot for the first few days until I had a decent 30minute plus margin. The fixed gears treated me the way I figured, suffer to go slow. Luckily, the route nazis gave me a leash on the road stages so I could roll it off the front thru the rolling terrain, using the mo and not slummin' with too slow a cadence on the ups. Lots and lots of solo time off in the wind during the parades, lots. Then more solo time off the front of the parade mtn climbs with the 2:1. Give a little extra on the parades, give a little less during the timed sections, find the balance and it all works out. Sweet benefit was seeing the early unfolding of the timed sections, pushing my gear on the opening climb and watch the big dogs play their game, front row seat was nice while it would last.

I have a handful of pics to go up on the Smug, plan to put some up here with short fuzzy memory stage recaps.....

peace out, it was fun.