Travel/vacations

Hanging out on the beach for the last eight days has been pretty sweet. Instead of riding our bikes we played football, kayaked, did some yoga and what may be considered calisthenics. The calisthenics consisted of racing each other between two lawn chairs, pushing our rental car out of the desert(The sand was deeper than I thought) and attempting back flips. We didn’t look any better playing football either. Somehow it turned into left handed football and trust me, we looked ridiculous. The ocean kayaking was probably the only form of exercise we didn’t look ridiculous doing.

The house we are staying in is amazing!

In four hours, my fiancé and I will be boarding an airplane to Phoenix. After the short one-hour flight we’ll be met by or friends and spending a night there before driving across the boarder to Puerto Penasco. It’s a great little town in Mexico right on the northern most point of the Gulf of California. We are staying at a really nice beach house for ten days with two other couples. This will be one of the longest stretches I have gone without a bike so I will have to find other ways to stay in shape. Learning how to surf or a run along the beach should do the trick.

My girlfriend’s family invited me to go with them to the Telluride Film Festival this weekend. I decided not to buy a pass to the film festival but to ride my bike all weekend instead. Telluride has a free gondola that takes you from town to the top of the first peak on the ski hill. So the first thing I did when they left for the movies was throw my mountain bike on that gondo and head into the mountains. Don’t let the ride up fool you, the riding is still very hard and there is plenty of climbing. Today’s ride took me 6 ½ hours and was a point to point loop.

Sorry for the lack of updates lately. I have been really busy and not riding as much. Currently I'm driving over to Wisconsin with my two boys to go visit family. (I'm literally typing this on my phone while driving) The last 14 hours in the car have went well and we only have three to go. My boys are awesome!

I had the pleasure of flying in one of my favorite little puddle jumpers from Rhinelander to Milwaukee on my way back to Denver today. It was surprisingly smooth and not the amusement ride feel like normal. The most amusing part of the trip was checking a case of Crash and Burn Kits through security. The moment they saw the words crash and burn the little red lights inside their head must have started going off. This guy pulled out and went through each one of them. My God, next time I'll put them in the mail.

Team Einstein's got up early this morning so we could get on the road and to Minneapolis on time. Well, everyone on the team except Joby, the guy who had our team van and trailer. We ended up leaving about two hours later and decided to pass the time on Jacks lawn by having a few PBR's and riding the pocket bike. Once on the road Joby obviously wanted to make up for lost time and show us his great drafting skills. We followed this truck for over an hour never getting more than 10 feet off his bumper. After that we drafted an ambulance for another 20 minutes.

Like always it's great to be back in Boulder. The first thing I did was ride down the bike paths over to the coffee shop and get my drink. Then I met Hamity at Chipotle for a long awaited burrito. We sat there for almost two hours people watching on Pearl St talking about how great Boulder is. You either love it or hate it and most athletes can only love it. As a cyclist, our lifestyle is unique and it's nice to be surrounded by people who understand and appreciate it.

After another boring trip through Kansas, we were finally able to say “We're not in Kansas anymore.” Oklahoma gets a little more exciting and our destination of Tulsa makes it worth the trip. $72,500 in prize money over three days!

With the race over and Cory finishing 8th overall we decided to spend one more night in Fayetteville to kick back and relax. After eating huge amounts of food we went out for a carbomb at the local Irish pub. Turned out that we weren't the only team with that idea and at least a dozen other teams were represented. Despite the lack of sleep we still hit the road at 7:00 this morning and have been driving ever since. I just won a bet with Hamity over who's phone would change time zones first after crossing from central to mountain. Only three more hours and we'll be back in Boulder and with the people who are important to us.