Yesterday we got a pretty solid snowstorm here in Charlottesville, Virginia. With about 5 inches of snow on the ground, I had to rock an indoor trainer ride. 2 hours on the time trial bike. Going nowhere. That’s just not my thing. I’m a cyclist because I love getting outside and feeling the elements. Even with Paris-Roubaix on the DVD player and DJ Z-Trip blasting on the stereo, riding indoors just drives me loopy. Today there was still snow outside but I had a 5 hour ride on the schedule so I decided to brave the elements.

Good call. The snow was still spread thick across the countryside, but the roads were perfectly clear. Pretty incredible. I guess the bright sun and unusually dry air helped clear the roads. I was sporting the fenders, but I probably didn’t even need them.

Anyway, here comes the good part of the story:

I haven’t done laundry in a couple weeks. I’m fundamentally opposed to re-wearing shorts, so this left me a in a bit of a bind this morning when I was getting suited up. I could either wear the junky old shorts that are falling apart and the pad feels like sandpaper, or I could wear a skinsuit. I chose the skinsuit. It’s got nice cushy padding since I hardly wear it except for the occasional time trial and disco night. No problem with wearing a skinsuit underneath the tights and long-sleeve jerseys, right?

Wrong.

About 60 miles and 3 water bottles into the ride, nature called. Big-time. Normally it’s challenging making a pit stop with all the winter clothes on. It turned out to be nearly impossible with the skinsuit underneath all the layers. Suffice it to say that my body geometry simply couldn’t get things lined up to do business. I was standing on the side of the road twisting my torso downward to get my junk over the skinsuit zipper. Then a gust of wind and a patch of snow joined forces to take me down. I totally bit the dust and got snow all up inside my skinsuit. I bet I looked really cool sprawled in the snow with my hands jammed into my spandex outfit.

In case you’re wondering, I did eventually manage to sort everything out and I promptly hammered for the next half hour to try and recover body heat.

No complaints from me, though. No matter how cold the weather or how much snow I get down my shorts, I’m still pretty fortunate to spend my life riding hundreds of miles a week.

sweet,

Christoph

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Cycling is a dangerous sport.

High speed racing. Angry drivers. Slippery Corners. Dogs. Bonking. There are lots of risks in this sport we love. In particular, I'm worried about leg shaving.

I nearly died tonight. My razor grabbed into my ankle and didn't let go until it reached the achiles tendon.

I bled all over the shower. Blood was spinning down the shower drain like the shower murder scene in the Hitchcock movie Psycho.

However I evaded death.

This was my first opportunity to try a "Seal-On" stop-bleeding bandage from our super team sponsor. That thing really worked. I just cleaned up the cut and pressed the bandage on and it immediately quit bleeding. It didn't just soak up the blood. The blood actually stopped flowing. It's probably thanks to Seal-On that I didn't die.

Cool.

Christoph

my ankle:

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today i realized that i am completely infatuated with lemon.

lemon lime warpaide, lemon lime endurox, lemon pledge, lemon dawn dish detergent, lemon lipton tea, squeeze lemon in my drinking water

in my assorted flavor vitamin C canister, I've eaten all of the yellow lemon ones. if there is ever a choice, i choose lemon. never forget it!! (LADIES!!!)

in other news, i was caught behind a schoolbus today when i was doing my :30 on :45 second off intervals. it worked out pretty well because the bus was stopping every 30 seconds to drop off the lazy-ass Marlboro Township kids. So, every time the bus accellerated i started a new interval. the kids were goin wild in the back. they were bangin on the glass and just carrying on like hooligans. i am looking forward to doing some races this year where there are more than 23 spectators at the finish line. those kids today really made the intervals quality.

my sister leaves for a lucky semester in new zealand tomorrow. she's going to be at the university of auckland. i don't know if that's slepped right. ha. i should tell her to visit one of their awesome velodromes there and ride a few laps. she's an Ayers so she can ride.

got exciting news that i'll be joining the team at the San Dimas stage race in March. I am afraid that all these trips out to California will make NJ seem even shittier than it seems now... which is currently an 8.5 on the shitty scale. today i learned that rush hour is no longer the most dangerous time of the day to ride. the most danger exists between 2 and 3:30 pm. frickin' teenagers getting out of high school and mothers picking up their kids and racing them off to some after school activity the child has none of his or her own motivation to do. the moms are frickin insane, and so are the 17 year old chicks with tinted out Acura Integras and crapola hanging from their rv mirror. all new drivers should not get cars with more than 100 horsepower.

my first car had 95 solid horses under the hood. 1978 toyota celica, GT 5 spd. with custom headers that sent crackles out the muffler from 5k to 2k rpms. you could hear me rollin' a mile away. kinda like my mavic open pro rims decaying from all of the road salt NJ put down during the last snowstorm.

time to eat some of mom's cookies and milk. g'nite

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I feel like Chevy Chase in Funny Farm. I've sat down to write a little bloggy nug several times in the last week, but just wasn't gelling. All it took was a 5 hour nap on a Sunday afternoon on the couch, and I'm ready.

Ian lives alone in a haunted house in Atlantic Highlands, NJ. It has 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 2 living rooms, 3 bathrooms, and a big front porch. Neighborhood cats come to visit most days, and Ian only feeds the black cat... because the rest are fat. Ian is currently stealing the Internet from one of his neighbors who didn't secure their wireless network. Ian has a cast iron bathtub and no cable TV.

Yes, the stage is set for another great American adventure in neo-professional bicycle racing. After my brief 4 month stint in corporate USA this fall (and also coincidently the city with the highest crime in the USA, Camden, NJ) I am completely fulfilled to embrace cycling lifestyle.

Nothing is greater than getting up in the morning to ride on the slushy, congested, freezing cold winter NJ roads. Well, except sleeping in and then clamoring into Dad’s bike shop down the street to be derided about slacking off. Nonetheless, NJ sucks in the winter, and I’m a worthless piece of crap when I get into the bike shop to actually work. I can’t wait for Feb. 24th when I arrive in Napa Valley with the team.

So, today I realized that I must be getting really powerful on the bike. My chain broke. I put a new one on there, though. But, my DA 10 cogs were so worn out that the new chain was skipping over the old cogs. I decided to not put a new cassette on because the new Felt machine is supposed to arrive any day now. So, I just rode in my 53 x 14 and did low cadence drills for 3 hours. Hopefully I can find some half worn out cogs at the shop to keep me going until the new bike arrives.

I made for dinner tonite what Mike, Rob, and Bo cleverly named “Shit on Rice.” Essentially, it is homemade chili on brown rice. It does in fact look pretty shitty, but it tastes good and I make it several times a week. Sometimes I need to take a break from Colavita pasta and free leftovers that friends drop off a the bike shop. NOTE: anyone who does drop me off free food… thank you, please do not stop, you are my hero.

Time to stretch myself. My soigneur gets pretty pissed if I don’t stretch. If I don’t, she’ll decide its time to find a tight muscle band in my ass or something and ride on it until I cry. What you say? Soigneur? Yup. Awesome.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everybody. Today’s a good day to just go for it. (the good stuff, that is)

Ian

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i made an origami lilly and it's beautiful.

this is all i have to say today.

thanks for your time.

christoph

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Today I picked up my cap and gown. It's fo' real. Looks like things are still lined up for me to become a college graduate in may.

I went to the bookstore with Sunny to get our cap 'n gowns. They didn't even ask for ID or anything. You can just walk in there and get a cap and gown if you want. Well, that would be dishonest so you shouldn't do it. But you could. Sunny thought it would be cool to get a bunch of gowns and then sew them into some sweet black curtains. Black polyester. It's in these days.

I think a cap and gown is probably the most pointless clothing creation ever. First of all it's made of way too much cloth. Why on earth does it make you look intelligent to wander around in a huge black drapery? And then there's the whole reusability issue. Besides making hip curtains, what can you do with an old gown? Maybe you can use it to store your artificial Christmas tree. It'll keep the dust off. I think that's the only answer. You certainly can't give it to the needy. It's too drafty to keep the homeless warm, and any style-savy panhandler wouldn't dare to rock the gown. Conclusion: it's a waste of material. They should either reuse the gowns each year, or at least make them into some nice form-fitting outfits that use 10% as much cloth. They could be like those little onesies that toddlers wear. That would be destinctive. I won't even get started on the square hats.

I'm an environmental thought and practice major. Consider me an expert in resource conservation.

Wednesday I did a "CP30" test. 30 minutes of time trialing delight. The good news is that I totally rocked it. My power was 5% higher than when I did the same test a year ago. The bad news is that my interval training is going to be 5% harder now. Actually that's good news. Bring it on.

Rediculously good music:
Tegan & Sara - "So Jealous"

who doesn't love feisty rock n' rolling lesbian twins?

done.

Christoph

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Folks, I just can't stop thinking about quiche. It's been a recurrent theme over the last few days. I can't explain it. Well maybe it's because I've gone quicheless for a long time. I can't even remember the last time a savory piece of quiche tangoed with my tongue. It was probably back in the summer of 2004. Those were times of plenty.

I think of quiche when I ride.

I think of quiche in class.

I thought of quiche when I was watching people ice skate downtown tonight.

I even had a dream about quiche. There was quiche and then a big cop car ran over my car and smashed it up. I was pissed but there wasn't much I could do, ya know?

If you're reading this and you can bring quiche into my life, please contact me ASAP. Don't even think about telling me to make my own quiche. It would make me terribly sad to make my own quiche and then eat my own quiche and then just forget about the whole thing.

longingly,

Christoph

p.s. In case your wondering, quiche isn't a euphemism. I'm really craving some cheesily scrumptious pie.

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The picture on the left is a display of the latest in aerodynamic design. Inspired by the aero shape of the Trek Madone’s seat tube, my new prototype offers several advantages over the technology that’s available today. As you may notice, the space between the frame and the tire has been reduced to a minimum. Also a fairing has been added in the bottom bracket area to minimize air disturbance as the rear wheel spins past the frame. On the front end, the head tube has been fitted with a pointed fairing to slice effortlessly through the air.



While there exists a multitude of popular frame materials, I decided that most of the popular materials simply wouldn’t suffice to build the optimal aerodynamic frame. For this reason, I have selected a special hydrogen/oxygen/mud compound known as ICE. This compound is created from only the finest slush, carefully harvested off the roadways of Albemarle County, Virginia. This innovative material can also be used to create bladed spokes, as pictured above.

Because this frame design hasn’t yet been approved by the UCI, I have incorporated a special feature into the frame. If a UCI commissaire informs a racer that the bike will be inspected, the frame design can be quickly modified using a normal hair dryer. Within minutes, the frame will comply with UCI standards.

While certain critics have commented on the 36-pound weight of this frame, I fully believe that Team Snow Valley presented by Seal-On will vindicate the value of this frame in the hotly contested North American Downhill Time Trial Series (NADTTS).

Okay. Whatever. I’ve entirely run out of BS. I went for an epic ride last Saturday. With the company of my UVA collegiate teammate Paul Berry, we rocked 7 hours in the saddle, including the last 2 hours during a snowstorm. It was awesome. It felt absolutely surreal to be rolling on snow-covered roads with the moon lighting up the white farm fields all around us. When we got done my face was sore because I had been sporting a huge idiot grin the whole time. It wasn’t really our plan to do a 7 hour training ride, but it was definitely worth it. It’s epic rides like this that keep me lovin’ the bike.

5242 Calories
204.5 kilometers
7 hours and 4 minutes
5 bottles of semi-frozen Gatorade (highly recommended)
2 completely frozen feet

Freakin’ sweet!

cheers,

Christoph

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