Rollin'

Life in general is just kind of rollin' along at the moment. Plouay (my first Protour race) went pretty damn well. To my supprise I was able to do some decent attacking early and actually spent some time off the front solo! I was even bitterly close to making the main break away (not that I would have been able to keep up with them after 80km anyways). In all the experience was amazing and I am glad I got such an increddible opportunity to do such a prestigious (if you do not think it is prestigious then come hang out in the fully packed grandstands that we finished in or battle through crowds that were 6 people deep on each hill and try and just try and tell me it is not a big deal) race. Thanks Slipstream.

Anyways, back to real life. Right now I am in Spain. Solo. I have never been in a foriegn country all by my sefl before and I have most definitly never had a giant dusty old Spanish apartment with crappy plumbing all to my self either. It is a bit strange to say the least. As I said earlier life is just kind of rolling along. Long hours on the bike fill most of my day and hours of walking aroud town trying to find simple things like batteries and alarm clocks usually fill my afternoons. I have managed to make a number of new friends here (like the girl whos house I flooded when I took a shower and the pipe ruptured) and my spanish is comming along nicely because of it. Although, I think my advancements in Spanish have come at the expense of my English (at least my spelling) and my desperat need to learn French seems to be going unnoticed at the moment. Whoops.

Other than that, not much else to say. Life is good and living in Spain sure beets living in the real world.

alex

Life at the races....

The flying Dutch Man

Kiki has a pretty sweet house

France

Is tough. My legs are finally starting to come around but over here that dose not mean much. Right now I better than I have been for the whole trip but all that means is that I can hang on to the main bunch a little longer and on the rare occasion that they sit up I can go get water for the rest of the team. On the bright side: the rest of the team is starting to come around too. Kiki is an absolute power house right now and Huub Duyn (pronounced down) is the baddest bitch in town. The flying dutch man scored a sweet 4th place yesterday!

With that being said, I am late once again.

alex

kiki's casa

I pulled the plug on the last race. I'm sick for reals. It sucks. Nothing like trying to find a doctor in a counrty where you don't speak the language. Oh well, there is no better place to get better than Kiki's house (team mate of mine). His house is super cool, very suave french style, and he has the sweetest little puppy dog I think I have ever seen. The best part of all is the fact that it is not raining here and you can go fishing just behind his house!!! Hopefully, I can be better in a few days so I can race again.

Till next time,

alex

France

France is wet. Real wet. It hasn't stopped raining since we got here. The race sucked today. Correction: I sucked today. I'm half sick. The kind of sick where you still have to race but you really suck when you do. Oh well it was fun. Kinda. Not really. Anyways.... the break went pretty early and we missed it. I felt like crap so instead of sitting in and getting dropped @ 100k I chased like crazy and got dropped @ 50k. Me and Kiki road like hell to make the time cut (and we did!!!) and that was all she wrote. Everyone else finished some where in the group. Hopefully it will.

welp, time for bed.

alex

Living the life

Yesterday was one of the best days I have had in a long time. Quick list of how it went down:

-Trip to Girona's giant farmer's market. I got locked in and atm booth on the way but that did little to sour the fun.

-Road out to the Med. w/ Pete. The water was nice and warm and all the spanish ladies were letting it all hang out.

-Got a chance to chat w/ KT for the first time in a long time. I think she almost wants to be here more than I do.

-Went out on the town w/ pete's spanish girl friends and learned all sorts of dirty spanish words.

Spain

Spain is pretty rad. Way cooler than anywhere else I've been to in Europe. It feels a lot like home here and it's kinda nice because I can almost speek the language, which makes a huge difference. So far we haven't had much time to do anything other than a little ride and dinner at a sweet tapas bar. Oh and with a little bad luck I mannaged to destroy my glasses on the stairs up to the apt. Guess I'm gonna find out real fast how good my spanish is when I try to go buy a new pair/ repair the pair I have today.

Glasses = Gafas

Wish me luck.

ps- my blog update site is now in full spanish too. so spell check no longer works for my english posts. bear w/ me.

45mph

More info later