Today was the last day that Blue Wheel Bicycles was open for business on Elliewood Ave on the Corner (here in Charlottesville, VA). They're moving to a great new location. I don't know exactly when the Elliewood Ave. location opened, but it was certainly before I was born. It is amazing that the building is still standing. Who knows how many thousands of bikes have passed through the hallowed doors... how many exaggerated stories of bicycle adventures have been told there... how many husbands escaped their wives & jobs there... how many UVA students have complained about their gears skipping there... and who knows how many cyclists got their start there. Both Christof and I worked at the Blue Wheel last year for a time. I don't think I'll ever forget what that building smells like: the oil-soaked wood floor mixed with tire rubber, mixed with the upstairs oven toasting Roger’s sandwich mixed with GT-85. It was a real man’s bike shop, down and dirty. There aren’t too many bike shops, lest merchants in general, that truly do business with the integrity of Scott & Roger. (including my Dad’s shop in NJ) Never once did I hear an employee speak to a customer in a way that sought a profit above the right advice or truth. They’d rather turn away a customer than sell them the wrong bike or service. They’d never cut corners while repairing a bike. That’s rare in the service industry.

Anyway, friends filled the shop for its last hour open. We drank beer and ate pizza and reveled in the bacchanalian party of nostalgia.

hey-

Just a quick note to let ya'll know I made it to the DR safely. Katie (D-Gal's awesome girlfriend) met me with a taxi at the airport, and we've already had a whirlwind parade around Santo Domingo, including an awesome bus ride backwards down a one-way street with bikes and luggage packed floor-to-ceiling. The race organizers are totally "floho"- Spanish for relaxed/chilled out/easygoing/optimistic/have no idea what's actually going on.

I'm writing from the Peace Corps headquarters, where Katie snuck me into the volunteer lounge. I'm not sure when I'll find a computer again, but I'll try and keep the updates flowing if possible.

Lots of ridiculously delicious bananas here.

D-Gal arrives this afternoon, and the race kicks off tomorrow. Schwing!

Yesterday was great. Really great.

Today, sucked. Yesterday was the first day I was off the pain meds… I tapered them down during the last several days because the pain is becoming more manageable. But, today I was incredibly anxious and restless all day. I didn’t want to be awake, I couldn’t go to sleep, I couldn’t sit still, and I was miserable. I guess that getting off the drugs is mainly to blame, and also my relative lack of exercise. I wanted to go ride outside so badly, so freaking badly, that I almost did. It was like every cell in my body was screaming at me to go riding. Like, a 120 mile big banger ride, big-ring only. That’s what I want to do, more than anything in the world.

Riding the trainer became very hard with one arm & my back still outta wack. But, I made the most of it on my rigged-up Felt. (which, btw, will be on sale shortly) P-Hen photographed my trainer ride and did an hour with me. 2 hours was all that I could do.

My team had a hard day today in the Tour of California. Zach crashed and had to abandon, and Tyler crashed too. Todd abandoned. Gus just hung on. Shit happens!

"Gain weight now, ask me how!" ~P-Hen

Bring it on, CAT 3 Corner!

browsing through this site you may be inclined to think that 2skinnypros were just gifted with a natural knack for style. nothing could be farther from the truth. see for yourself:

ian. circa 1999

christoph. circa 2004

with the introduction of Sheff, P-Hen, and Cool Honey into our lives we learned a valuable lesson: vanity is not only compatible with the skinnypro lifestyle. it's essential.

Now those three cats initiated some drastic wardrobe changes, but it would take a true professional to fix those coiffures.

Introducing: Marlo.

She's the coiff manager for Ian/Christoph/P-Hen, and countless lucky guys in the greater charlottesville metropolitan area. Pictured here a mere 3 hours ago, Marlo posesses what can only be described as: mad skillz.

we love her. no other hairdresser can make you feel more at ease when your kneck is jammed into that porcelain shampoo sink.

We even recommended her to Sheff, but since he's 3 steps ahead of the times, he's perpetrating the "no hair is the new big hair" theory.

Check the pics bellow in from our goodbye night with Sheff for the latest in style iconography.

Marlo, we owe you big-time.

http://www.2skinnypros.com/cat3corner.php

Little by little, I am figuring out ways to do regular person things with only one arm. Some of the more difficult things include tieing my shoelaces, washing my right underarm, washing dishes (well, i just claim I can't wash dishes so that P-Hen must do them for me), and also, driving my stick shift and talking on the cell phone at the same time as steering with my knee. Practice makes perfect. I actually had so much time on my hands today that I made a website about tieing shoelaces. (http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/index.htm) Here's a picture about how to lace your shoes for one-handed tieing:

So, P-Hen wore a fake moustashe today. He had a business meeting, and said that it made anything he said more important and that much more thought-provoking. Needless to say, he looks like an ass, and you can see his man-pelt through his undershirt:

I went to the ACAC (the uber-hip and uber-expensive fitness club in town, where I teach some cycle classes) to spend some time on the reclined cycle machine. ACAC just added a fleet of the highest-tech aerobic gym equipment I've ever had the honor of using. It's by TechnoGym. Each piece of TechnoGym exercise equipment has a flat panel monitor with full cable TV pumped into it, and the monitor doubles as a touch-panel with a million workout options. I sat my crippled self down, with my wireless heart rate monitor on, and cranked out about 310 watts (on avg) for about 45 minutes. It felt so good to work out, it was like cocaine... though I will admit that the Vicodin is the closest thing to cocaine that I've had. Then, I went to the leg press sled and did about 100 reps with 4 plates to get the joints ready for the pounding they'll take over the next few weeks. Here is a photo of the TechnoGym piece of machinery I used today:

And finally, yesterday, your 2skinnypros bid farewell to one of our closest friends, Sheff. He moved out to California to pursue a West Coast life and a real career. We wish him the best. He will still write on CAT 3 CORNER, though! It was really very sad to see Sheff go, but he needed to go. Here are your 2skinnypros with Sheff: We'll miss you, Sheff-Dad!!!!

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"Rite Aid Pro Cycling Team presented by Snow Valley Spring Water" had the first team camp of the year this weekend. We had a blast. The team is a streamlined version of the 2006 Snow Valley team. Our roster has been slimmed down to 9 guys this year, and we've just got one new face in the ranks: our wiley Canadian cannonball: Zach Bell. We gathered together in Richmond, Virginia like a gang of long-lost brothers. With the hugs, screams of joy, and dry-humping aside, we moved on to several important tasks:

Archery:

Pitching tents blindfolded:

and Testing our Physiological Capabilities:

We also recently found out that the we'll be competing in the Tour of Chongming Island in China April 15-19th. The team roster isn't 100% finalized. Part of the selection process involved stomach tolerances. Karen, our awesome team mom, created an incredible party platter of sketchy Chinese delights from the oriental market. Then we all took a cycling trivia test and each wrong answer earned us a fearful bite of mystery-food. Karen never told us what we were actually eating.

So will I be racing in China? Well, I went back to the table for seconds.

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Our good friends, Sheff & P-Hen are keeping their own blog here on 2skinnypros. If you ever need a good laugh, or just wonder what life is like as a terminal CAT 3 racer, read up!

We recommend you first read the mission statement.

Perhaps a jersey pocket would have made a more appropriate place to drop mail in... but most mail is junk, anyway, right?

D-Gal was a Charlottesville guy until he jumped ship to move to Palo Alto, CA. It is in an absolutely incredible area for bike riding. I visited there after training camp to hang with D-Gal. It's also where I crashed, which sucked, but here is a photo-tribute to the great guy who took me under his wing and nursed me back to health. He also stayed for many hours in the hospital with me as our nurse told us tall tales of her days as a belly dancer (slightly disconcerting). D-Gal is riding for a kick-ass elite pro dev team this year, the BMC racing team. Here's to you D-Gal:

Dave ended up giving himself a CAT 5 tatoo on his calf. Despite his near-pro status, he is still an AM.

Today was an amazing day for a great blog. IT's a LONG ONE!!! I started the day slamming 2 pounds of my favourite yogurt: Brown Cow Lemon Nonfat. I eat a lot of yogurt. So, it occured to me that I should try to get a yogurt company to sponsor my cultured dairy habit. I took a photo of all the yogurt containers that I slammed since July '05. I save them because you can't recycle #6 plastics at our center. In fact, you can mail the containers back to the yogurt companies, and they'll recycle them for you. Or you can just donate them to a local elementary school. They always are storing beads and rubber bands and ice-pop sticks and junk like that. Anyway, here is the photo I'm sending to Brown Cow and Stonyfield Farm to solicit a yogurt sponsorship:

The next blogworthy item is that I found the printout of my bowling score from our bowling day at training camp. 177! Check it:

This afternoon, I was going completely nuts not having ridden by bike for 5 days straight. So, I took a bunch of extra vicodin, despite recommendations, and I tried to get on my trainer. P-Hen and Cool Honey weren't around during my trainer session, but I wanted to capture the momentus event on camera. So, I setup my digital camera on the mini-tripod that Christof gave me for Christmas, and set it to the timer-mode. It only gave me 10 seconds! So, I tried running to the bike and rushed to get on. Getting on is really painful, so I can't do it the standard way, and it took me a few tries to figure out a way to get on in less than 10 seconds. Here is time-lapse photography of my attempts:

Rode for 45 minutes, and it hurt my back and shoulder, but I think it helped my head. Lastly, we had a little dinner party here at 220 tonite. Some of the big playas were here like the P-Hen, Cool Honey, Sheff, and Christof. We were trying to hook Christof up with this nice attractive French girl who P-Hen abducted from the l'Alliance Française here in town. But, with Christof pulling shit like this, he's never gonna get laid:

That's it! Shoulder pain is a little less every day. Trying to keep positive. Tune in later.

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I'm back home in Charlottesville!!! Today's flighy from San Fran was incredibly uncomfortable... I can't believe how it would have been without a full dose of Vicodin! I needed to argue with the TSA airport security guys so that I wouldn't have to take off my shoes to go through the security screen. (Can't bend very well without bad pain.) My case consisted of me yelling in pain when I tried to bend over, and a strong warning that if I did take of my shoes, the socks I was wearing for the last 3 days would pretty much bowl over the entire room. He acquiesed, and I got away with the dude wiping those Oxy-pad looking things all over my feet. No alarm.

Soooooo! None other than CHRISTOF picked me up at the airport!!! I was sooooo happy to see him, we hugged for a while and, I cried a little. It was over 17 days I hadn't seen Christof. We went back to my apartment and then I say P-Hen and Cool Honey. We had a big reunion, then I went to work unpacking. A great photo was taken of me during this process: I am sporting my new TT helmet, and aero sling, and Vicodin.

Christof and Zack (Christof's new teammate) made this yrummmy Chicken and Peanut Sauce on Spaghetti concoction dinner for me. It was so shitty, but I ate it anyway. Then they helped me put my dented bike back together. Thanks for nothing, guys.

Tomorrow brings new excitement, including a CAT scan of the scapula & back and painful bodily manipulation by doctors to find out the details of the bodily damage. Of course, I'm hoping that they say that nothing is majorly wrong, and that I can train through the pain while it's healing. I also hope that they renew my prescription for pain medication. Through some experimenting, I have found that adding a shot of vodka to a full dose of Vicodin can really provide greater pain relief and also entertainment. This photo is an example of when I am entertaining myself at the expense of others:

I crashed hard on a downhill turn while training with D-Gal here in Santa Cruz. There was a slick oily spot in the turn and I could not have avoided it. I was taken to Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz where X-rays confirmed I fractured my scapula in my shoulder... specifically, the glenoid cavity where the head of the humerus seats. Also, I cracked my helmet and have a huge deep bruise/muscle strain in my lower back. The shoulder pain is absolutely unbearable. Anyway, the hospital released me after a day and I'm at D-Gal's. He is taking great care of me, I can't thank him enough. I am hoping for a super-quick recovery, but the pain is so great that it just seems so far off at this point. I am due for some good luck, people! Here are some post-crash photos from the fateful Wednesday ride:

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Ian and I just booked our plane tickets. We're headed down to the Dominican Republic to race in the VUELTA CICLISTA INDEPENDENCIA from February 25th through March 5th. Ian, D-Gal, and I will be racing as guest riders on local teams.

Thanks to my Mexican college roommate and the kitchen staff at Cassis, I picked up a few important Spanish phrases:

"I am the butter boss."

and

"My sandles are on fire!"

This is bound to be an interesting trip.

D-Gal is really making all this happen. His awesome girlfriend is volunteering in the Peace Corps down there, and she really hooked us up to get into the race. We'll also be depending heavily on her Spanish skills.

Looking forward to lots of this:

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We been rollin' fo' 2 weeks in the sizzle, but it looks like winter's back with highs in the 40's and lots o' clizzle.

Image stolen from gizoogle.com

Dropped it like it's hot:

http://sites.gizoogle.com/index2.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.2skinnypros.com

check out Ian's gizooglized camp descriptions.

If only Ian had been born across the water in Queens.

All the good folks of Salem, Virginia can finally breathe a sigh of relief. Mistie Dawn Montgomery's reign of terror has come to a close.

Mistie held up three banks by pointing her towel-coverred hand at the tellers. After being laughed away from her first two attempts, she struck third time luck and rolled out with $2000 cash. Gleaming with confidence, Mistie proceeded to the pharmacy drive-in, where she whipped out her assault towel, but proceded to drive away because "I was wrong."

Ladden with her guilty conscience, Mistie was promptly aprehended by the SPD.

New York had Jon Gotti. Salem had Mistie Dawn.

The good people of Salem can now return to O'Brien's Meat Shop to muse about the prospects of next fall's Spartan football team.

Many thanks to our fine police chief for keeping my hometown friends and family out of peril.

"the pen is mightier than the linen"

Here are some photos from team pasta dinner night. It was an all-out assault on the Colavita products! Frankie McCormack had me laughing all night- he produces amazing comedy out of these simple one-liners. Extroadinary.

We challeneged Jeanine (masseur) to finish a half a gallon of ice cream off in 5 minutes for $20. She failed by about 3 scoops, but it was hilarious for us. She's claims that she's not usually this much of a pig.

Here's Kyle showing Mark how to be cool. Wiggedy wiggedy wack!

So! It's Wednesday now, and Tuesday's long ride was indeed long, and hard. About 115 miles of constant pedal pressure, and 2 minute pulls for the last 2 hours. Wheeew! And, like always, I dropped the whole team of course! The reward for the ride was pretty great, however. The Team was invited to a special dinner at Sutter Home, where we met many of the special people that make the team happen. Then, we were treated to an amazing tour of the huge winery, and a very special dinner.

In this picture here, Kyle is very excited to be taking the tour, as is Mark, but Todd is a bit of a stick in the mud. I still like Todd. Anywat, here are some of the photos from after our nice'n-long day + yummy dinner day:

This hunk of buffalo took about 24 seconds to wolf down!

Spacious Living!

Well, there are days like Saturday, when we rode 3 hrs in the 45 degree rain and Mark was attempting to rip my legs off on a climb when my legs were going into winter hibernation mode. That ride sucked, though it was good to make a quality training day out of crappy weather. After long hot showers, we all convened to watch "The Hard Road", a documentary movie that you've probably heard off. Anyway, after getting some good laughs outta that film, as well as "Transition", we packed off to sleep for a good 5.5 hour ride Sunday.

Sundays ride was an absolute darling. We found some beautiful roads, equipped with open stream fords and gravel sections. The route also included constant terrain variation, making for lots of grinders over hills. At about mile 105, we came to a steep 5K climb, steep. I was feeling particularly spunky so I went to the front of the group and kicked it up a notch. Only Herriot sat on my wheel as I paced it up at threshold pace. At this point in the ride, ya kinda just gotta give it what you gots. Anyway, Todd juiced me right at the end of the climb, but it felt good to open the throttle a bit and climb well. We all regrouped and did an absolutely screaming decent. Absolutely screeeeeaming. So screamin' in fact that Gustavo lost it a bit and went into a tree sideways. Fortunately he was fine and my icepacks have been helping him with some of his bruising.

Monday was an off day. It was the most fun off-day, ever. We rolled up to the Infineon racetrack in Sonoma, CA in our private limo. Sutter Home had scheduled us a day of car racing on an absolutely kick-ass track. We were taken for rides around the Formula-1 track at speeds that I'd never experienced in a car before. It was raining, and we were sliding all over the place, it was exhilirating. Then, we got a chance to drive on an auto-cross cone course ourselves, and even race the clock. We drove mini Formula-1 cars, a Mini-Cooper, and a Mustang. Each was very different around the tight course, as everyone spun out and literally burned rubber all over this course. We all had shit-eatin'-grins on our faces for the rest of the day. Bike racers like speed and racing. Sutter Home picked a good venue for us all to get off. Who had the fastest time on the track? Of course, Frankie McCormick- why? Well, his car certainly had the most traction...

Resting easy tonight for the 6.5 hour blowout that's scheduled for tomorrow. Gee I wish I had a desk job.

It's 5:00am, Thursday Jan 26th, and training camp starts. Christof rolled up at my house at 5:40am and he drove me to the Charlottesville Albemarle Airport for my flight destined for Napa Valley, home of the Sutter Home Winery, and the 2006 Colavita Olive Oil/Sutter Home Pro Cycling Team Training Camp. Camp is from Jan 26 to Feb 5. United airlines shuttled me from Charlottesville to Charlotte, from Charlotte to Denver, and from Denver to Oakland. On the last leg of the trip, I met my new teammate Zak, who is from outside of Boulder. Tyler, Seba, Gustavo, Kyle, Todd, and Jeanette greet us in Oakland with the team van, all shined and clean inside, and we're off to the winery... but not before a stop off at the In 'N Out for one unbelieveable burger and fries. Everyone's tired from travelling, but we're in high spirits, because it's TRAINING CAMP BABY. Frank, Randy, and Eva greet us once we arrive, with our gorgeous new bikes out on the rack, ready for us to get dialed in. The new rig is totally hot, with a new paint job and some new componenets. I caressed my steed for a moment, then got my stuff unpacked. I played around with the bike for awhile, adjusting saddle height & setback, adjusting the position of the STI levers on the bars, rearranged stem spacers, and then we went for a little ride to spin the legs out and check the settings. Not yet at camp are Mark, Davide, Viktor, and Page (who obviously won't be attending because of cross). Frank ordered us all some pizza in the eve, and we bombed down about 6 pies. I crashed at 9pm west coast time, and it has been a long day for me.

You can feel the T-camp energy. I can't wait to get out on the open road and get it rolling! But, I miss Christof already :(