It’s the weekend after the international tour of toona’ and the bank of America crit.. Everything went well. I finished my first stage race since the valley fever and I even made the break one day in toona’. The break was great as it turned out to be the winning move, the only one of the week that did stay away! Only problem was getting dropped about 20k to the finish. Truth be told, I started to cramp. I was pretty bummed but excited in a weird way because all I said the entire morning was that I was breaking away blah blah blah. I was pissed that I didn’t make it to the finish with the guys I set out with, I was even more pissed because I let my teamates down. I think if I had more racing in my legs I would have no doubt been in there for the finish. There is no training that can really simulate a hard race, I can go big training, dig deep, ride til the sun goes down, but no one can train as hard as the races. (if you want to read about the stage and some pictures its here: http://tinyurl.com/qub7p) I heard a quote tossed around from a friend telling me that Mike Sayers once told him: “never get dropped out a of break, under any circumstances.” It’s safe to say he wouldn’t have been too happy with me. My roommate / teammate Andy Bajajali rode awesome and got the podium for 3rd place overall. We were happy for that and it actually came down to the last days crit where he held off Karl Menzies who was charging hard for the last podium spot but Baj beat him by 1 second to take that last spot on the podium. Bank of America crit was a great race, my first time doing it and what a huge turn out even though rain and storms were tearing through. I did my early job and was done before the real rain was hitting the ground, all the guys went down crashing and it was a pretty gross circuit for crashing, nasty grates and sewer covers everywhere. Going out in Charlotte after was fun. Charlotte is a real nice city, I think its that southern twang everyone uses when they talk. The Australians and the southerners have a lot in common if you know what I mean, the accent thing. We had some great host housing in NC, thanks to Charles, Steve and Katherine for having us all. Steve brought a couple of us to a AAA baseball game, the Aussies first baseball outing. They actually called it a match. Whatever. We sat on the third base line and Caleb almost got hit a couple times. Halarious. This weekend in New York was a cross’ race. Yes, a cross race. I couldn’t believe when I heard, I checked it out and registered up, got the cx bike out of its box from Europe, since it was still in there and got 2nd after a crash in the first lap dropped me back a fair bit. Good news is I got the cash for being the first rider across the line after the first lap, bad news is, my shoulders and arms are killing me from jumping the barriers all night. their was great money and it was only 45minutes long, so, well worth it. The course was fun about a 2 minute loop with a berm and some whoops, barriers, and did I mention this all happened under the lights at 9pm at the New Jersey state fair!? Here I am with the Northampton crew after the race eating some turkey drumsticks. After that I hopped back in the car and drove to Albany to do some racing with Jones this morning (Sat.) Jones patrolled the front for me when I broke away with a couple guys on the first lap. I got 2nd again today! I just cant get a W!!! Well it’s nice to know the valley fever is 100% gone and the form is finally starting to come back little by little. Sorry for no updates, but all I’ve been doing is sleeping and riding bikes. Until next time. Seeya.