On the road again

So... two weeks of massive activity and nothing to show for it on the old blog. Catchup time again!

I spent a week on the road, dragging Chris and Sheryl along, beginning a on the 18th. We drove to Lake Placid to watch Ironman USA. I also wanted to ride on the course and sign up for the 2009 race. Poor Sheryl and Chris spent most of the weekend hanging around the country inn I found for us to stay in. I had a great ride on Saturday with a dozen team mates on the Ironman USA course. It was a good workout and gave me confidence about the hills I'll be facing in Ironman Canada in four weeks.

Race day was terrible though! Torrential cold rain almost all day, with the racers unprepared for the conditions. Most of the spectators (i.e. me) were similarly unprepared. I had to abandon the sidelines a few times to warm up and buy dry clothes. Because of road closures I was effectively trapped in Lake Placid while Sheryl and Chris, and the car, were back at the inn. It was inspiring and affecting watching the racers cope with the weather, especially all my friends. I shouted encouragement to one and all and nearly wore out my cowbell. Not many pictures from the day though, as I was worried about damaging my camera. I kept running into Tara Norton, a top ranked Canadian pro athlete on the sidelines. After the race she put me in touch with a friend with a spare room in Penticton, so now I know where I'll be staying during Ironman Canada.

Although the race was still underway most of the roads were re-opened in the early evening. Sheryl and Chris came into town and we had a nice warm restaurant meal, watched The Dark Knight at the local Bijoux and then headed back to the course to watch some of the last few racers reach the finish line. Mini-review of The Dark Knight: interesting final performance from Heath Ledger, everything else about it was crap.

Monday was when the enticing part of the trip began for Sheryl and Chris. We drove into New York City, stopping briefly at my brother's house near Woodstock to drop off my bicycle. We spent three nights in Brooklyn at the funky new Nu Hotel. Lots of shopping, gallery visits, and general tourism. We visited, as I always do, my brother's old neighbourhood of Brooklyn Heights and the Brooklyn Pier. Subways were ridden, tour boats were traveled upon, streets were walked. We even took a bicycle cab one evening. Sheryl loved the shopping and exploring the Meatpacking District, I loved the ambience and MoMA, Chris loved the food and the NBC Studio tour. Chris hated the shopping (although he seems pleased with the summer shirt I bought him) and hated the MoMA (hardly anything's modern or art!). Incidentally, the MoMA has a great web site for iPhone users that gave commentary as we wandered the galleries!

The big buy of the trip was the Garmin GPS I picked up toward the end. I was getting sick of losing my way... It worked great and Sheryl bought herself one the next day.

Heading back toward home we stopped overnight at my brother's house to visit his family. Nice to see Maya and their girls looking well. Sadly my brother was in Mexico an assignment for Rolling Stone. Maya blew us away, as she always does, with her gourmet Indian cooking.

Since getting home I've been training like mad trying to make up for the lost week. On Saturday I rode 140K solo, on Sunday I put in a 24K run. My calves are sore as hell now! I've been massaging them with my "Stick" which has helped quite a bit, but I have a physio session scheduled for Friday morning. I spent an evening watching my recording of the German Grand Prix and rubbing my calves. An interesting race, with Lewis Hamilton setting a pace that Ferrari weren't able to match. A big shunt by Timo Glock's Toyota (see photo on the right, he was fine) bunched everyone up and Lewis had to overcome a bit of poor team strategy to win. He's back in the lead of the driver's championship now. Neither Kimi or Massa were very competitive this weekend, Ferrari has some ground to regain.

Listening to: One Horse Town by The Rembrandts from untitled.