Bank of America; is now called the Presbyterian hospital invitational in Charlotte. I like the south and I forgot how much I like it. I could fit right in, theirs tons of chrome rims, fried foods, cookies, good south music, nice people all around and uhh. NASCAR. The race was however a wake-up call. I was racing around with some good training in the legs and I thought I was in good enough condition, I wasn’t. I got shot out the back pretty quickly, to be exact about 2/3 of the way through the race, Cody crashed, Jones wasn’t having a good day, it was bad. When all was said and done, The Baj was our only finisher, pretty pitiful honestly and I was pretty discouraged with my ride. The encouraging part was to get that racing in and start racing with the big boys again. The next day Cody and I headed towards Jon Hamblin’s up in Raleigh-Durham area for the Hanes park classic. The race was much better for Cody and I…until about 2 to go. I had tried for something early, just to test my luck and get in some good training then I found myself with just enough gas to get Mike set up, so after about 3 laps trying to make it back to the front as health net was making some tempo and it wasn’t as easy as earlier to get up front. I got Cody in behind Friedman and Dominguez, Unfortunately if Cody and I had gone to get our cards read earlier we would have found out it wasn’t meant to be. Cody crashed about 20 seconds after the drop and he got pretty jacked up. I had a front seat and watched Mike plow a couple steel metal barricades at 30 mph and impale one of them right into his chest. The one to his chest didn’t do much, but he ripped his nail on his left thumb off…partially. So, Hamblin and I went down to see how Mikey was doing after a quick shower. When we got the their the hospital let me right in. I found out quickly how he was doing, bad idea. Mike was getting his surgery at that exact moment. Mike tricked me by being on morphine (which I didn’t know!) with his happy attitude! They were removing his nail, or what was left of it and I was completely grossed out with blood everywhere and they had to get me a chair, as I felt nauseous. So Hamblin and I got kicked out after I almost booted in the ER and Mike called around 11:30 and Jons wife and I picked em’ up. What a night. We headed to the airport on Monday with Myerson and his flight was money, no probs, however, Mike and I needed to hitch a ride with US Airways back down to Charlotte as our flight was late and we were going to miss our connecting flight, we weren’t the only ones though. A bunch of people hopped into this van and headed back south to Charlotte, just like a reality T.V show. 12 strangers in a car. It was funny. First we met this guy Craig who operated/owned a website and was friends with Ian McKissick parents, (random!) Then their was Katie. Katie rolled up and sat between Mike and I. and it was hilarious, we stopped for gas, Katie went in and bought a 24oz- 6-pack of bud light and the rest was history, we passed driving time to Charlotte quickly after a couple tall ones and laughed the whole way. When we got to Charlotte Mike and I barely caught our red eye flight and managed to get the bikes on free to and from Hartford. Now its back to training and getting ready for the real racing, which starts in a couple weeks. Seeya!