Velo Bella downhill helmet ?!

My design for a Velo Bella downhill helmet... (putting aside the amateurish graphics job) I think it's both badass and cool!

OK... enough playing around... back to work ;-)

HEY! We were RIGHT there!!!

This shot was on the Paceline website with a story about the Discovery Channel being nominated for two Emmys for the series "Chasing Lance #7". And when I saw this shot I thought it was cool because...

And the picture I took...

... we were RIGHT there (after Lance handed the flag to George) !

#7 

As two of the over half-million people leave the Champs-Elysées.

What a day!

A Bridge Too Far

A Bridge Too Far was on tonight... one of my all-time favorite movies. It starred, among others, Dirk Bogarde, James Caan , Michael Caine , Sean Connery , Edward Fox , Elliott Gould , Gene Hackman , Anthony Hopkins , Ryan O'Neal , Laurence Olivier , Robert Redford , Maximilian Schell , Liv Ullmann and scores of others. This epic movie about Operation Market Garden, the attempt by the Allies to catch the Germans by surprise in 1944 and capture several bridges in Holland to prepare for an invasion of the German industrial regions near the Rhine, is near perfect.

A close second favorite of mine is Battle of the Bulge, with two of my all-time favorite actors Henry Fonda and Robert Shaw .

I think because I was born not too long after WWII, my father was a veteran of the war, my mother was a teenager in Holland during the war, I have family members that live in or near virtually every major battlefield, and I've personally been to those sites, that WWII movies hold a special place in my heart.

31.8 mph in the fast lane!

I made some changes to her bike for the state time trial championships so I wanted her to check out the new position and other tweaks I had made to her bike. I didn't have her shoes and pedals so I just screwed in some platform pedals and she rode it with her running shoes. After a warm-up loop she took it up to speed to see how it felt at speed. I was expecting her to get up to the low 20's and ride it for a while but as I rode alongside her, her speed kept going up... 22, 22.8, 23.5, 24.9 and up until she was at 31.8 mph and not spun out or pushing as hard as she could! I shut her down because we were running out of road. She was laughing as I was giving her the speeds (her rear wheel didn't have a magnet for her speedo) and said she loved the new setup... no kidding!

No Müesli ?!

The grocery store was out of my Muesli... again!

I just hate when that happens :-(

Eight Below

Three thumbs up! I think Max was our favorite dog and, believe it or not, some of the dogs had "doubles" for certain scenes in the film... a dog's life isn't half bad ;-)

Dirty Duathlon: Warda

Leading the women on the first run! 

Quick transition and she's off! Notice the Jamie Whitmore-like pigtails... that's got Xterra written all over it ;-)

I checked out the Longhorns while she was out on the bike leg.

After the race I joked with her that the burgers that we ate at the ranch were Longhorn burgers... then I found out that they really were!

This course had very little extended climbing and was more of a constant up and down power course which doesn't suit her well, but she still boogied!

A sip of water, wiping the drops off and heading out of T2... her transition times were HALF as long as the next fastest transitions! That's something I worked with her during her IronKids days, when she could be third out of the pool but first out of T1. Truthfully I've never seen anyone, pro or junior, transition as fast as she does. 

The run to the finish... 

Transition bag loaded up and headed back to the car... and that bag's almost bigger than she is! 

Reenactment of the 1836 massacre at Goliad

 

 

 

 

 

 

This guy just had a great face...