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Written by Adam Craig
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Thursday, 19 April 2007 |
 Somehow in the last week of hanging out in Puerto Rico I’ve been overcome with thoughts of winter. I’m pretty sure that’s because it was hot in PR, real hot. We’ll start this little storytelling session off with some anecdotes from the steamy carribean island and wind things up with some wintertime random happenings and some semi-dry business exposure stuff.
Did I mention it’s hot in PR? Kelli was fired up about this, as was I. We figured we’d get a tan, sit on the beach, be hot for a while, etc. Sounds nice, right? Well, it is. Unless, of course, you’re trying to race your bike, which we tend to do from time to time. This particular bike racing time came at two in the afternoon, which happens to be when it had poored rain the three days before the race. I spent the previous afternoon mounting up the green meenie Michelin mud tires in anticipation of being comfortably wet and muddy throughout the race. No dice. Switched back to the awesome new XC Dry2 for blue groove hardpacked clay singletrack under 90 plus degree sunshine and humidity approaching saturation. Awesome, sort of.
Fortunately, we’d been sleeping between 10 and 12 hours a night (after our Chicago O’hare airport induced 6:30am arrival) in the guest apartment of Val and Greg, a couple from the east coast with a clever PR winter home. They were kind enough to open up their doors to help Doel Gonzales, the Medalla Light Ultimate Dirt Challenge event promoter, out with some extra beds. We figured with that much sleep banked we could race fast no matter what the temp. Nope. I lasted a couple laps riding with the usual gringo suspects before I got real hot, tired and downright slow. Held off the Chilean National Champ for 4th place. Barely. Had a good time railing clay corners though. Kelli lasted about a lap before she too was working to hold off some spainish speakers. Eventually she succumbed to their climbing prowess and ended up 5th. I totally won the lap bet too, caught her on the last one, should have made a better bet. We were both riding pretty pathetically though, so I’m not sure there was a real “winner”… At least we were both on the podium for the cataclysmic downpour that ended the Ska concert prematurely and made us all wet and kind of cold for the first time all week. Ironic.
The next couple days we spent riding in the mountains and on the beach, relaxing and drinking lots of water in between. Ate some good food, and some bad food, got a bit more of a tan, explored a good bit, slept more. You know, normal island stuff…
Now let’s move on to the snowy season past and plans for the future. This winter was awesome. In Bend, Oregon especially. Let’s see, it snowed a ton when we weren’t riding bikes anyway, and a buddy left two snowmobiles in my yard, so backcountry skiing was suddenly awesome, and made more awesome by my amazing new K2 Pontoon Skis (huge and hilarious), Carl bought a proper (old Subaru Impreza) Rallycar, raced it once thus far, placing 3rd in Group 2 at the Doo Wops Rally and getting inspired to fly down and spectate at the WRC Rally Mexico, I had Lasik surgery so I can start seeing, it rained quite a bit so boating was solid, but it rarely snowed in town so Carl didn’t have to shovel too much, I started working with Bart Bowen for some coaching, which led to weightlifting and actual structured training, with an SRM powermeter even, Carl balanced this develooment by sticking to his guns and not training on the bike until march first (he XC skied a ton though so don’t be fooled). All of these activities were nicely complemented by the fact that neither of us left the state of Oregon for more than a couple days for the better part of four months. We figured Kelli could fill the XC team winter travel quota for the three of us with her “snowiest Colorado winter ever” avoidance techniques, including trips to California and North Carollina for bike riding in decent weather like a normal professional cyclist. Good on her. She also came to Bend where some catching up on recreating was done on the ski hill and dirt bikes, although she did miss the sweet snowy Thanksgiving ride at the Christmas Valley sand dunes (that’s Carl picking up his bike in the photo)…
In the world of winter business development, Carl and I still haven’t purchased the Elks Lodge for sale in The Dalles, Oregon, nor have we finalized renovation plans which include everything from an indoor BMX track to an Autocross course in the (9000 sq ft) parking lot and a dozen loft style apartments adjacent to a central (pre-existing) bar and spring loaded dance floor. I have, however, secured some editorial positions within the outdoor industry and gotten my likeness into some ad campaigns and such. Anyone who’s interested in reading random jargon can flip over to a page in Mountain Biking magazine that I’ll be printing 500 or so words a month on (maybe even with a pretty funny Puerto Rican misadventure). Thuleroadtrip.com has gotten me on board to provide a few stories over the course of the summer of generous length and creativity. They pretty much gave me carte blanche to write whatever travel adventures I see fit and encourage me to seek out said adventures from time to time. Shouldn’t be a problem, in fact, it’ll probably happen naturally anyway. Although I am fired up about being a bit more focused on proper World Cup bike racing this summer instead of doing everything possible under the sun and being spread really thin. Fox Racing Shox is running an RP23 Shock ad in major print media sometime soon with a podcast link highlighting the day the ad was produced, www.foxracingshox.com for some info and links. Charitymix.com has playlists from Carl, Kelli and I that anyone with questionable music taste can purchase with proceeds benefiting non-profits like IMBA. Giant Bicycles is starting a website and ad campaign to provide a bit more insight into how some of their athletes really work. One of the print ads is going to provide some solid insight… The website will then follow up with video and more random info. www.giant-bicycle.com and link around for some more info, and some random blog entries and photos from the road, or wherever we’re at. Speaking of photos, a slightly more concerted effort is being made this year so send everyone some random, very amateur photos from adventureland. We’ll see how that goes, hopefully these photos and some others with make it over to a revamped www.adamcraig.net along with some other random content such as blog entries and maybe even a “Carl’s Rally Corner” complementing a “cool stuff that happens off the bike” corner. We’ll see how that goes. All this training, traveling, racing and screwing off doesn’t leave too much time for uber-internet exposure, but we’ll try to keep you all in the loop. We’re always open to suggestions too, if you think you’re clever, let us know and we’ll see what we can do with the idea.
Until next time, cheers from Carl, Adam, Kelli, Rando, Amiel, Tom, Elke and Dusty’s entertaining Giant Racing Team, as ingeniously planned by Frank Trotter and supported by lots of good folks |
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