Cerial Champ

We have a new Cerial Champ: Andrew Dahlheim. During the “hour of power” he beat Peter fair and square even though he fell behind early. Both are a little fed up with Cinnamon Toast Crunch right now but, maybe in a couple of weeks, Peter will get his revenge. If not, I am seriously thinking about challenging the new Champ myself… but then again, both didn’t look too good after the challenge, so it might not be too good of an idea. Oh, and the 2400 calories will not help with getting into race shape either…

It’s been a while...

Since my last post. We did two races since, Valley of the Sun Stage Race and Pace Bend. Neither of them went too well. Unfortunately they neutralized the road race finish with just 2 k to go which was too bad because we were doing really well there. A split had just happened at the front of the race and both Andrew and I where in it when they stopped the race. Too bad…

Pace Bend just didn’t go well. I wasn’t feeling too good during the race but the team controlled the race until the last lap. That’s when it started falling apart for us. We just messed up the finish… well, better luck next time.

Anyways, we are staying in Austin with Peter this for the rest of the week. I’m really looking forward to getting some good riding in with some “Texas climbs”. Should be fun.

More soon.

Everything's bigger in Texas?

I don't think so!



It took me over 3 month to finish that baby. 3 kg of Nutella will last you a little longer than those little thingies you get here...

Hallo There

I’m back! Just flew in yesterday from Frankfurt straight to Phoenix. Oh, how I missed this place. Flying in at sunset over the city, all the memories form last year’s winter which I spent in Phoenix with Christine came back and I must say I still like it here.

I met some of the team who got here yesterday, too. It was nice to see some familiar faces again but also some new ones. I also got my “goody bag” (thanks Brad!) and got a sneak peak at my new bike. Very cool! I’ll get a chance to ride it a little later today.

So much for now. I still feel a little jet lagged but it is definitely good to be back.

Quote of the Day

"It’s not as if I like the bad weather, I just go better that some of the others. We are more used to bad weather in Luxembourg." Kim Kirchen on his win last year at Fléche Wallonne on Cyclingnews.

Enough said.

Just like Cipplolini

So for you who thought Europe was cycling-crazy/ -friendly, let me tell you, you are wrong. First of all, the weather sucks ;-) but despite snowy conditions I decided to go ahead and do my motor pacing session as planned. I didn’t get too far though. We were cursing along at a decent pace when suddenly a cop car showed up and pulled us over… well, turns out that Mr. Police officer didn’t like cyclists (at least that’s the only explanation I could come up with) and started lecturing me and my dad on how dangerous “whatever-we-were-doing” was. As if that wasn’t enough he really wanted to drive his point home and stomped back to his car to browse through the fine-catalog and write us a hefty ticket. It took him forever (I guess he couldn’t really find a punishable action that fit motor pacing) but he finally presented us with a ticket over € 98 (that is $ 126). Actually, he gave us two separate tickets. One was for “dangerous speed” (we did 45 km/h through a village; max speed in Luxembourg in villages: 50 km/h...) and one for “use of hazard lights” (which we put on to warn other people on the road that we might be a bit slower then the rest; seems to be a bad idea, especially in the weather we had today).



Anyways, stupid stuff, but nothing we could do about it. So we paid the fine and I rode the rest of the way by myself (they wouldn’t leave until my dad had taken off, so no more motor pacing for the day). Let me tell you: riding at lt by yourself for over an hour is no fun compared to doing it behind a car. Plus it is really hard to hit the speeds you would like…

Well, at least now I can say I’ve got one thing in common with the big Cippolini: getting a ticket for motor pacing (even though I wasn’t doing 70 km/h on a highway). Europe might not be as harmonized as the States and cultures are very different but at least when it comes to giving tickets to cyclists, Italy and Luxembourg seem to be on the same page…