just add salt...

..to the wound, that is. Hanging out here in Georgia training rather than racing. The training has been great but is little solace for not getting into the Tour. The TdG time trial went by about 3 blocks from Eddy's house yesterday. Some of us went down to watch and cheer our buddies. It definitely burned a little. In a previous email, I said some negative things about TargetTraining that I regret. They are a quality team and I wish that both of us could have raced Georgia. Anyway, I tried to get a pic of Landis as he went by but he was so fast that I only got his follow car (it has nothing to do with my picture taking skills). The pic is a typical road that we've been training on the past few days: rolling, surrounded by trees, no traffic, immaculate roads.



Sooooo, the answer to the pop quiz posted earlier:
I made it 7 more miles on that tire before the tube finally blew. I was getting ready to hoof it home when I had a MacGyver-type idea. I used the foil wrapper from some poptarts that I had eaten to use as a barrier between my patched tube and the ground. It was enough to get me back the remaining 3 miles home. I was feeling pretty smart - well as smart as someone can feel having left for a ride with a tire that badly worn...

For those in the midwest, I'm sorry but the schedule on the team site is wrong at the moment. We are planning on doing the Tour de Beauce in Canada that same weekend as Nature Valley. I will lobby for a midwest race, though. Now a little advice: try not to shove 8 pro cyclists into a house for days at a time when they haven't raced for weeks! Restless to say the least. There are a lot of blank stares and "lost puppy" looks going on around here. I think it's going to be like releasing a tiger from its cage when we finally do race, though.