April and May

Dang, it has been a while since I have updated this thing eh? Sorry about that. I guess I just kind of forgot I even had a blog. Thanks for the reminder ma. Ok since it has been so long I will revert to bullets to save us all precious time and to save me the effort of organizing things in to paragraphs.

• Sea Otter- That race is a zoo! So many people out there. Great trip all around. Road tippin' out there with Daimo and the BB guns was heaps of fun, crashing at Holloway's was easy on the body and mind (thanks again to the Holloways for putting me up!), and the races were just the right kind of hard. Highlight of the racing was spending over 1/3 of the race off the front solo. Didn't win but it was still rad.
  


• Dana Point- Amazing part of Cali. Got the full Dana Point tour from Steve Blick. Muchos Gracias senior. Big thanks to Coryn Rivera for letting me and Holloway crash there for a couple of nights! The race was... well... a crit. I survived just fine and bridged up to the late race break away. We got got. FYI if I bridge up to a break it will get caught. Happened at Sea Otter and Dana and it will happen again I am sure.
  


• The Gila- What a race. France Armstrong and crew decided to show up along with every Armstrong fan in NM. Pretty cool seeing one of my favorite races blow up into such a spectacle. Even cooler is showing up with the legs and head to pull off a couple of podiums. Stetina was riding real fast like and the whole team rose to the occasion. Aside from racing old man Stetina home, I would say the highlight of the trip has to be having out team running around Walker's beat up Subaru before the TT tying to get everything together with the Astana crew set up right next to us in a giant plush bus. Nothing like stealing raisin bran from the hotel so you can throw blows with Levi, Lance, and Horner. Oh, and a HUGE thank you to Dale Stetina and Steve Owens for all there help at the Gila. Those two did the work of 5 staff members and did it well.
  


• Between Gila and Europe- Thought it might be worth mentioning since there might be some questionable photos of me popping up on the internet, graduation season is awesome. Almost makes me want to go back to school. Almost.
  


• Olympias Tour- That race was nuts. Give a man an inch and he will take 10 miles. Going into this race I figured it was just another race. Turns out it was the Dutch world championships or something to that effect. Just thinking about taking a drink of water would put you in the cars and moving into the top ten required the fee of a first born child and a brain aneurysm. Regardless, the race was a relative success. We took 4th in the TTT, Raymond only finished outside of the top 10 once (that kid is a f**king rocket!), I won the most aggressive rider jersey on the 5th stage, and Caleb had an AMAZING day on the last day to pull of 2nd on the day and 6th overall.

So what is up next? Paris-Roubax! The team is wicked motivated and there are good legs all around. Aside from a couple of little head colds, we're all firing well. Tomorrow, we will be previewing the course with the national team and possibly with the Livestrong crew. After that it is off to Philly and Beauce. Really, Really motivated for both of those. If all goes as planned, I should be going mach 10.

Bueno. That is all I have for now. I will let y'all know how Roubaix goes down.

Cheers,
alex