Playing in the Mud

Question: What's more manly that facial hair, mud, and diesel powered heavy machines?

Answer: Nothing.

For the past few decades, we at the King household have had a wonderful backyard. It's about 2 1/2 acres of lush grass surrounded by tons of trees, where growing up we could play awesome games like tag, hide and go seek, baseball, or whatever else sounds cool to a kid. Last year, however, the yard became a quagmire. The spring showers turned to May flooding and the yard became a muddy mess. We hoped that it was just due to the excessive amounts of rain last year and perhaps 2007 would be just like the previous 20 years. Sadly, that was not the case. Robbie is a fairly industrious fellow, so he rented a front and back loading tractor with the hopes of digging up the current (presumably broken) drainage pipes in the yard, lay new pipe, cover with rocks, and grow new grass. It all sounds simple enough - if that were only the case.

Despite the wise adage that a good carpener doesn't blame his tools, the tractor was not capable of the task at hand. When we drove even remotely close to the flowing water to begin digging, the tractor sank. For the next 90 minutes Robbie and I worked our tails off to remove it from the axel deep mud.

This is what we hoped would happen. Robbie looks rather productive in this shot... our productivity didn't last very long:

This is what eventually happened:

As for the facial hair reference, Robbie grew a beard which looks perfectly in it's place on the tractor operator.

Home again home again, jiggidy jig

I always look forward to coming home to New England and getting to race the local races that I've grown up doing the past few years. After arriving back to Rochester, NY one week ago from Joe Martin in Arkansas, Mayo and I packed the lightening quick Civic Hybrid up to the brim (thereby vastly limiting it's lightening quick capabilities) and drove through a ferocious rainstorm to home sweet home in New Hampshire. The weather continued for the latter part of the week to be rainy with a chance of more rain, so the prospect of waking up Saturday morning before the sun rose in order to drive to central New Hampshire didn't seem like the best idea. However, at 5:30 Saturday morning I was checking the consistently incorrect Weather Channel website and saw that there were only "Rare Showers" in the forecast. Being the optimist that I am, I took this to mean warm and sunny.

Alas, after about 90 minutes of driving to the Lake Sunapee Road Race in wonderfully scenic Newport, NH I discovered that it was most certainly raining consistently outside - not the rare showers as previously advertised. So with warming oil on the legs beneath my leg warmers, and an awesome Gore-Tex jacket and enormous Gore-Tex mittens, I was feeling toasty and as warm as I possibly could be. It was awesome seeing friends whom I haven't seen in about 8 months; lots of people I raced against in the collegiate ranks and then over the past handful of years too. On top of that, I won the race, which was pretty darn sweet! I figured that anytime I have to wake Mayo up before 6am in order to drive in the rain, I ought to make it worth her while.

Additionally, the circumstance for my trip home in the first place called for a win. I'm sad to report the passing away of my paternal grandfather. Edward Oliver King lived every day of his 93 years to the fullest and truly brought happiness to all those who had the priviledge to meet him. He passed away last week and his memorial service was the same weekend as this race. He was always very proud of everything I did and I therefore figured that a win would make him especially pleased. Grampy was a very enthusiastic singer, so we sang Grampy's favorite medleys and old college fight songs during the memorial supper. Here are his children, Betsy, Kathy, and Dad belting it out! Yea Gramp!

On a lighter note, Robbie celebrated his doctor's prescribed 6 weeks of no riding following his surgery. That ended last Thursday with an exhilerating 30 minute ride with me and Mayo. Although dry, it was colder than I would have hoped. Robbie's a burly man now and has a full beard to show for it - it's keeps him warm in the cold New England spring. Mayo is obviously very excited to be riding a bike, as seen by the look of glee on her face.

Go Razorbacks!

The Joe Martin Stage Race has come and gone. I'll skip the relevant details of the race and talk strictly about the highlights concerning the race as it pertained to me (is that vain?). The utmost highlight of the weekend for me was in Saturday morning's road race. The entire race was incredibly fast in brutally stiffling heat and humidity. Beginning at 8am, when one would expect it to be pleasant and cool, I was already pouring sweat like a faucet. Blah blah blah, with 40k to go, I broke away with Jimbo Meadly (aka James) from Jelly Belly. We rode and rode and rode and rode, with Toyota organizing a fairly efficient chase to protect the race leader. The two of us passed the 10k to go sign, then 5k to go, then with the peloton chasing frantically I dropped James, and kept on truckin'. The gap dropped from 1:30 to 1 minute, to 45 seconds, to 30. I was going full on time trial as hard as I possibly could, but was finally caught by the entire peloton with just 50 meters to go. It was heartbreaking to be so close and to come up empty handed. Sheesh.

Here's a nice picture of the start of the race. Note the foggy humidity. In fact, the fog has actually cleared quite a bit in this picture. On the drive from the house to the race, we had to drive about 13mph in some spots because the visibility was virtually nill!For one reason or another, ever since Gila we've had an abundance of fruit around the kitchen - namely apples and bananas. Due to this fact, I've been baking lots of breads - namely apple bread and banana bread. After making yet another tasty banana bread, I heard Glen holler from the kitchen if he could have a piece. Naturally, I said yes of course. When I arrived in the kitchen some time later, I noted that Glen is obviously partial to the inside pieces of bread. Isn't he clever.

like it ain't no thang

With lots of help from mechanic BenO, we made the lengthy trek from New Mexico to Arkansas over the past two days. Pretty much right from the get-go, we were in a groove. Ben drives, Omer navigates and reads something like 400 pages per day from his book, I lay down in the front bench and occupy my time reading, crossword puzzling, and sleeping, Garrett watches DVDs, Scott sleeps and emits odor from his nether region, and Rich and Kate sit in the back of the van doing whatever they do back there. With just a few gas stops, one stop at Motel 6, dinner at Denny's (see pic), and lunch at Panera, we made it safe and sound to Fayetteville, AR home of the Joe Martin Stage Race.

One highlight of the trip came during a gas station drop. For starters, we picked this particular exit because it prominently featured a Starbucks sign visible to drivers passing by. Little did we know at the time, that's pretty much the extent of what it offered. The building wasn't yet complete, so needless to say Starbucks was not open. Alas, we were already off the highway, so we needed to fill up with gas. Garrett and I ran across the street to Walgreens, where I got some normal food and Garrett got Garrett food. He ended up buying a can of Progresso soup - the kind you pop the top, dump it into a bowl and microwave or into a pot and cook it on the stove. But Garrett don't need no hot soup! He proceeded to sip a little out of the can, in order to make room for a packet of tuna fish and taco seasoning! Stir, stir, stir and enjoy!

Alas, nearly 20 hours of driving and 1000 miles later, the seven of us successfully made the trip to northwestern Arkansas! Here's a panoramic shot of our host house. It's located right on a lake and on a really quiet road. It's actually a really nice spot, as long as you don't mind being chased by dogs and seeing lots of recently run over armadillos, turtles, and snakes.

Word up.

They say that breathing at altitude is like breathing through a straw.

If it were only that easy.

Slightly to the South of Nowhere

Being back in Rochester made for some sweet recovery from Tour of Georgia. Truth be told, I wasn't nearly as worn out after GA as I usually am after a tough 7 day tour. That bodes well since stage racing is more fun than criterium after criterium... at least that's my opinion. After a bit of R and R, Mayo and I partook in chocolate cake. This cake is from the local grocery store, Wegmans. Wegmans is much more of a grocery store, though, it's more of a way of life. In fact, I just read that it won the Food Network's award for "The Grocery Store That Changed The Way We Shop." Now that's some lofty praise! The cake itself is relatively tiny, but this bad boy is RICH. The small size allows you to eat it without feeling too guilty, although with more butter than flour, the majority of the weight is from the sweet, chocolate, butter-cream frosting. Yum.

During this R and R, in addition to eating cake, we made out way to the Rochester Public Market. I don't know too much about it, but I think it's quite well known among public market goers. It runs year round and is especially good in the summer with lots of good produce. I suppose all public markets can claim something along those lines, but this one is particularly large and attracts vendors from all over. I thought I heard once that it's the oldest public market in the country. Maybe the biggest? I think it has some superlative along those lines. In any event, here's a picture inside one of the long pavilions.

After the public market, Mayo and I tested our golf skills at the driving range. I've taken only one golfing lesson in my life, and I only remember one thing they told me, but that slight bend of the wrist has changed my game enormously. I'm BIG off the tee. 300 yards is no problem. Not bad for someone who's lucky to hit the links once annually. Mayo's got skills too, as demonstrated here.

Silver City, NM is the home of the Tour of the Gila bike race and is where the team is currently located. One might say that Silver City is in the middle of nowhere, but being in the middle would imply there's something there in said nowhere. However, in this case that would be incorrect; allow me to state the truth: Silver City is well outside of nowhere. From our host house, we have one road to ride and that takes us back into Silver City. Please don't get me wrong, though, the town itself is really cool! The enitre area is really cool. Our host and house house are really cool too! My point from the beginning of this paragraph is that it is very desolate here. I can certainly understand the attraction to the area; the southwestern United States is an amazing location that so unique from anywhere else in the country. The art, the culture, the landscape... if you've never been to New Mexico it's well worth the trip. Here's a panoramic shot of our host house. Last night we sat by a fire on the back patio where there's an amazing nighttime view of the rolling hills lit by a full moon. It was rad.

Lastly, here's a shot of Rich and Omer taking advantage of the inside of the house. Mainly I took the picture because they're wearing the same outfit, which I thought was rather adorable. Additionally, I thought they deserved the enormous publicity as found in being showcased in my blog.