Good day!

So I loaded my bicycle on the back of my motorcycle and headed over to St. Kevins, the first climb in the race.  My prescribed workout today was to walk up a 45 minute hill.  See, I'll be doing some walking in the race, and it was to be a light day since I had a long ride day yesterday.  So instead of just walking, I also pushed my bike up the hill.  That's even more like the race and that way I get to ride it down, which is fun. 

So that went fine.  After that was over, Matt headed out on my bike again to get another tube for the rear tire of his bike.  He picked up a nail two days ago, and yesterday he got the wrong tube by accident.  Unfortunately the closest place to get a tube at all was an hour-plus away, much of that because of construction on the main route between here and there.  But as he was leaving with his new tube, the guys in the motorcycle shop said "don't go around, just go through...they've been letting motorcycle guys through."  So he tried it.  And they weren't letting motorcycle guys through on this day.

So he tried to find another route, which ended in futility due to a newly reopened mine that was hogging an entire mountain top.  He ended up back at the construction site, but this time asked the foreman.  The answer was still no, but that there was a "hiking trail" just above the site that he could make it through since my bike is so off-road capable.  So he went looking for it and had to make his own trail to get there, but made it.  And at times he apparently had to basically stop and wiggle the handlebars between trees, but he made it through!

All this craziness meant it took him about an hour and a half longer than I thought (and I was kind of freaking out a little, but that was probably just because he delayed my lunch so much), but he got back and we got the tube installed.  And it seems we did everything right, because it's doing great.  We went for a late evening ride on some of the bike race course along with some exploring.  And we got these pictures:

Matt

Moi

That was cool and all and we did about 40 miles, mostly gravel with some occasional awesome pavement.  I still need to tweak my rear suspension some, but I really like the bike.  Well, other than dumping it on its side once when trying to make a very low speed turn in some very soft earth.  But it didn't hurt anything and it's light enough I had no trouble picking it back up myself.  So no harm, no foul.

Then we made it back to town and had to scare up some grub.  There's a local joint called "Quincy's" that is NOT the chain from days gone by.  This place has filet mignon Sun-Thurs and prime rib on Fri-Sat.  And nothing else.  Well, except a vegetarian lasagna, but that hardly counts.  And they have Fat Tire, which is also important.  So I ate and ate and ate this 16oz of prime goodness:

My coach said "Eat plenty of red meat."

I could swear my coach said to up my beer intake, too.  So I've been working on that.  *ahem*  Anyway, good day here in and around PbVille.