I posted a blog on the ROAD Magazine website. Spoiler alert: I’m a big deal in Missouri.

My luxurious office

Yesterday was my four-year anniversary at ROAD Magazine and at the end of the month is my birthday. The former I’m happy about, the latter not so much. While I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot here at ROAD, I thought now at my age I would be at least running a third world country or assistant manager at Starbucks. My parents are still surprised that I make a living writing about bikes, even after I showed them my office and paycheck! Anyways, thanks for reading ROAD and look for more stuff to come from us here at H3Publications.

So as I write this we are about to send the latest issue of ROAD off to the printers. Obviously this is our Tour issue and it is packed. I spoke to Bobby Julich throughout the Tour and he had great insight into the daily happenings of the race. I told him when he retires that Versus should snap him up. He’s make a great addition in the commentary box. Then early yesterday morning I had a chance to interview Levi. Usually we like to get the interviews done a little earlier than the day before the magazine is due, but c’est la vie. We talked about his time trialing and threw a few hypothetical questions at him as well. While the Tour was being contested, the Tour of Quinghai Lake was taking place in China. Tony Cruz of Discovery Channel knows stories that you won’t find in other magazines, like how Chechu almost got beat-up for entering a mosque. And of course there are the obligatory diarrhea stories that come when you travel to a foreign country. Alex Candelario also raced in China and gave us his view of the race as well.

So that’s all for now and I appreciate everyone checking the blog and I’ll do a better job of keeping it updated.

This is probably going to be my ‘look’ for the next eight days

I’m almost outta here for the Tour de Georgia. I’m 99% packed, I just need to toss my laptop into its carrying case and I’m off. This trip I’ve decided to pack a little lighter and go with the bare essentials. I’ve got several ROAD t-shirts, one collared shirt, shorts and a pair of trousers. In the past I’ve brought a couple of nice shirts and pants in case we are invited somewhere nice. At the Tour of California we ate at an expensive restaurant in San Francisco with the National Team, so I needed to look a little spiffy. But this is the Tour de Georgia and I think we’ll be eating at the Waffle House most of the time. Tim claims that he is packing so lightly that all he’ll have is carry-on for the flight. I can’t see that happening, but maybe he’s a master packer and has squeezed all his clothes into his camera bag. The other option is that he’s only bringing two pairs of everything. Speaking of Tim, he is a Tour de Georgia virgin, so this trip will be full of surprises for him. Humid weather, chance of thunder storms, boiled peanuts, small winding country roads – we’re not in California anymore.

Check back to this blog as well as the ROAD Magazine blog for video, audio, photos and rambling text from the Tour de Georgia. I might be able to talk Tim into continuing his series of ranking the hotels we stay in.

These are the only clothes I’ve ever seen Tim wear

This is the cover. It will be cropped a little but you get the idea

It’s been awhile since I blogged. I’ve had stuff to write about from the Tour of California, like Tim Johnson telling me how the Health Net squad and the Slipstream team got into a food fight. Johnson is great at giving me the hot scoop on what’s really going on. But like Tim blogged on ROAD Mag, we were slammed. We got everything in this morning so we are officially done. The one thing that threw a spanner into the works was choosing the cover shot. We had a bunch of great shots, but once we blew them up to cover size, they started to pixulate. Or the photo was ever so slightly out of focus, giving the photo a ‘soft look.’ It was two days of Tim going over photos, printing them out and then us looking at them trying to make a choice. At one point we almost had the cover. It was crystal clear, but not very exciting. Just the front of the group rolling along. Not something that really grabbed us. I had shown Tim a photo I took from the prologue. It’s of Levi throwing the bike across the line. It turned out very sharp. We were going to use it in our ToC feature, but I jokingly said why don’t we try that as a cover? I’ve never had a cover, so my life has been an empty shell. Using one of my shots would complete my life. Tim did a mock up of my photo on the cover and we liked it! So it is official, I have a cover shot!

Now that we have a little bit of breathing room, I’m going to start blogging more and write about such subjects like who scrawled ‘ROAD Mag’ on our training loop in Santa Clarita, how the Rock Racing team is like the Steelers, and why Floyd Landis called an editor at Bicycling Magazine a butt pirate.

Tim and I saw this on yesterday’s ride on Old Road in Santa Clarita.

Me interviewing Bettini at the ToC. He’s thinking about my Britney Spears question.
“Si, we did bump into Britney. She’s pazzesco!”

The Rock Racing guys rolled up to Merced in Cadillac Escalades with big chrome wheels and thumpn’ sound system. Word!

I knew I was going to have a good interview with Floyd when he started off with this quotable gem, “I’m going to give you my Lindsey Lohan quote of the day. ‘Being sober for the past two weeks has been the hardest thing I’ve every done.’ What was the second thing for her, ninth grade?”

On the Christmas Elf that I had on my blog, “That was funny! Is that still up?”

Floyd told a quick story of how he was leaving his lawyer’s office in L.A. A homeless guy was laying down on the sidewalk with a cardboard sign asking for money. Landis, being big-hearted, gives him $40. The homeless guy thanks him and asks what Landis does for a living. He tells him that he’s a cyclist. The homeless guy presses Landis for details and he tells him that he won the Tour de France. The guy then wanted Floyd to autograph his cardboard sign. “My real fear was that he was going to argue with me and tell me that Pereiro won it!”

I love interviewing Floyd!

Comparing beard growth

Tim and I are in Greenville, South Carolina for the USPRO time trial and road race. For anyone who hasn’t visited Greenville, it really is a hidden gem and I can see why George Hincapie as well as Craig Lewis call this city home. Greenville is located at the base of some mountainous roads that offer great training routes. The downtown area is very cool with eclectic coffee shops (ROAD recommends the Coffee Underground), a variety of restaurants and amazingly friendly people. The local bike shop has almost daily rides through the countryside. I spoke to Rich Hincapie and he told me they have a nightly Tuesday road race with a police escort! How cool is that?! Back in L.A. the only time the police come out to our rides is to tell us to ride single file. I gotta figure out how to open a satellite ROAD office out here.

While we were walking around downtown we came across Lucas Euser and Chad Hartley enjoying a post-training ride coffee. We swapped stories and rumors for a few minutes. Both those riders are up and comers and we’re sure we’ll see them on a ProTour team in the future.

Next was the press conference. Press conferences are useful, not to so much for us, because we’re not too concerned with getting timely quotes up on the web, I’ll leave that to the other guys. For ROAD it’s about getting our credentials and more importantly grabbing food. Before the press conference began I caught the eye of David Zabriskie who was at the dais with George Hiincapie, Race to Replace winner A.J. Smith, Chris Wherry and Chris Baldwin and Craig Lewis. We nodded to each other and I noticed that Dave is rocking a full beard. I rubbed the side of my face and gave and mouthed, “What’s up with the beard?” David shot me back a double thumbs up. Classic David Z…doing his own thing. Dave is a fast rider, in contrast to his every movement which is like watching him in slow motion. From unscrewing the cap to the bottle of water, to running his hands through his hair: slow and deliberate.

The mayor as well as sponsors spoke about how excited they are about this being the first time the USPRO is open to Americans only, as well as the first time that it isn’t being raced in the streets of Philadelphia. Usual press conference stuff.

However, David Zabriski stole the show with his deadpan answers.
Announcer: What motivates you?
David Zabriskie in a slow drawl: I want to win. That’s what motivates me.
Announcer: How’s your form for tomorrow?
David Zabriskie: It should be okay. I can’t complain.
David Z is like the comedy of Monty Python. Some people think it’s the funniest stuff ever or they just don’t get it.

Afterwards I put some important questions to Dave.
ROAD: You’re rocking the beard. What’s up with that?
David Z: After I got done shaving my arms and legs, the razor was too dull to go to the face.
ROAD: You didn’t decide to go buy another blade and shave again?
David Z: There comes a time when every man needs a beard.
ROAD: Will you shave it down to a goatee for the time trial?
David Z: They kicked out the only other guy with facial hair, so…

After the conference we went to the lobby of the hotel to where the food was being served. It was classic delicious Southern fare, but one entrée stood out. They were serving what I called grit-tails. Poured into a plastic martini glass were grits and shrimp. Let me tell you, it was damn good! A.J. Smith sat down with us to give us the full scoop on riding for the Discovery Team for one race, the time trial. He was blown away by the organization of it all. Unfortunately, he’s had some hamstring problems that haven’t allowed him to train for the past two weeks. But he doesn’t lack in confidence. A.J. and I made a few $10 bets. When we gave him a copy of our Tour of California issue he bet me $10 that he’d win a stage of that race, another $10 bet that we’d have him on the cover of ROAD, and $10 that he’d win the upcoming national pursuit championships at the ADT Velodrome. Some might say that’s cocky, but in order to win you need to be certain of what you want to accomplish, otherwise you’ll always be the guy who finishes top 10.

Tomorrow the T.T. Stay tuned for more random stuff.

I’ve been slacking recently about blogging, but I do have a reason. When I returned from the Tour de Georgia we immediately went into “production.” This is a week of laying the magazine out, collecting the articles and finding out that we are missing a photo or other random stuff. This is when working at a magazine sucks. So we got that issue done and I just needed a week to relax and ride. Now I’m back and on the gas again to crank out the next issue. But looking back at TdG there was some stuff I didn’t have a chance to write about. On the first stage I got James Brown to autograph a copy of ROAD. Not sure why, but it seemed like a cool thing to do. I had brought extra issues of ROAD with me to give out and I kept the autographed issue separate from the others. However, in the confusion of packing and re-packing every day I must have stuck my signed copy with the issues I was giving out. So someone, somewhere has my autographed copy from James Brown. Damn!

One of the hardest climbs I’ve done is the Brass Town Bald stage. When we started the last three miles of climbing I was forced to zig-zag back and forth on the road. Talk about a kick in the ass!! One of the guys we rode with got off and walked and was faster than we were. Then to see Floyd and Tom battling it out on those slopes and riding straight up after racing for four hours was amazing.

People ask if I get in the team cars for stage races. I usually don’t because it is like being stuck in traffic for four hours. You generally don’t see anything and when you do it is an emergency, so the stress in the car goes from a two to ten in a matter of seconds. The exceptions to that rule are circuit races and time trials. Circuit races are fun for a lap, like stage 7 at the Tour of California. I jumped in with the Sierra Nevada team and got to see the mass of crowds for myself and then get out at the finishline a lap later. At Georgia I jumped into the Navigators team car during the tt. The course was fairly straight forward, with a few downhill, off-camber turns. The driver of the Navigator car had those tires squealing as he whipped the team issue Audi from side to side. Plus, I’m able to crawl out the window of the car and get some good shots. You can’t really climb out the car window in a mass start race because of the ref and because it is a bit dangerous, so I have to choose my moments when the ref ain’t looking.

So I’m at the finish of the tt and David Zabriskie comes over to me. He wants me to take a picture of him giving a CSC jersey to this guy in exchange for the Discovery Channel jersey he was wearing. David is getting CSC fans one at a time.

Just got in the ROAD jerseys from Hincapie Sportswear and they look great. We are expecting ROAD bib shorts and caps as well. Damn, we’re going to look good!