Went Naked!

Well this past week I fell off the grid and left all bikes behind to try and put this tick thing to rest and went to Bend Oregon anyways even though I would not be making the race. For the first time ever I made the list of riders NOT to watch: mtbracenews.com.  It was really weird to finally make the call last minute and walk out the door without the bikes.  Hell, I even had them in the box already!  But with the way I had been felling bike riding has not really been much of an option anyway with most of my rides being replaced with naps.

Anyway it was a fun time.  We went out there and just became tourists!  It took some getting used to but after the first day of drinks and food something clicked, maybe my liver, and it was game on!  We watched a bit of bike racing on Saturday night with the Cascades Cycling Classic Crits happening downtown but that was it for bikes the entire week.  Well minus the coffee and watching the tour with Axel Mercks.  So what did we do?

We started with the Tour of Homes, finally found a house out there and I am still trying to convince Michelle it is where we belong :)

View from the Master Bedroom:

We did a visit to crater lake.  I was thinking that I have seen one Mountain Lake that I have seen them all, was I ever wrong!

Ate too many of these and drank to many of those for a non ride trip!  Oops, might take me longer to get back to non Clydesdale weight!

A hike up North Fork for awesome view of Tumalo Falls:

And even a sunset dinner at the top of Mt Bachelor.  Yup, looks just like Amherst!

So now we are back in Wisconsin and have started to get back on the bike again.  I really thought hard about it and was almost tempted to not bother, but I would miss the team and I think they would miss me?  So today was my first time doing a ride over 2 hrs long in almost 8 weeks and the other plus it did not require a mid ride nap!!  Progress??  Guess time will tell.

Mathematics

This:

Plus two laps of this:

Equals a little ring:

Stop buggn me..

So the last few weeks have had a lot of ups and downs.  First the ups.  I had a really successful spring run at the NUE races and actually found myself leading the overall for the first time ever.  I know it will not last as the usual fast guys start to get the right results in place, but I believe it will be good enough to hold onto a top 5 overall this year, which is a big accomplishment for me.  Here is the last published overall:

	Men's Open	Women's Open	Single Speed	Masters
1.	Chris Peariso	Cheryl Sornson	Gerry Pflug	Chris Irving
2.	Lee Simril	Brenda Simril	Scott Green	Charles Buki
3.	Kevin Carter	Shannon Tenwalde	Patrick Blair	David Jolin
4.	Dan Kotwicki	Kathleen Harding	Mike Montalbano	Terry Blanchet
5.	Jesse Kelly	Linda Shin	Trevor Rockwell	Mark Drogalis
6.	Jay Click	Denise Coppock	Craig Fleetwood	Monte Hewett
7.	Jarom Thomas	Priscilla Baltz	Peat Henry	Al Blanchard
8.	Steven Hecht	Susan Lynch	James Prentice	Alec Petro
9.	Michael Bonsby	Jocelyn Linscott	Ernesto Marenchin	Jody Bailey
10.	David Moore	Vicki Barclay	Daniel Rapp	Ron Sanborn

Now for the downs.  Well I had to pull out of the NUE race out in New York due to fatigue and headaches.  I did not think anything of it with all the travel and everything else going on in life and just kept plugging along.   Then the following weekend I raced well at Rhinelander but was super tired leading up to and after the race.  So with the good legs I was excited for the Mohican 100 and things went pretty good there, once again minus the fatigue and the fact that I literally had to sit down during the race to take a break and could barely function after the race?? I was now sleeping more than I was awake and was in a downward spiral,  The trend continued and finally two weekends ago I ended up in the ER in Hayward.  They run the typical tests and come to find out I ended up with Erlichiosis.  I guess it is a tick bacteria and all I know is it gives you wicked headaches, fever, and makes you sleep like 20 hrs a day.  I am now on a good antibiotic regiment that I get to stick with for the next 3 weeks and Sunday was my 3rd ride in a period of 2 weeks.   Not to mention that my warm up routine consisted of only a nap!!  

Now the next downer, I leave tomorrow for Marathon National Championships in Idaho.  I have lowered my expectations and I now think my biggest goal is to not get severally sunburned while I am out there due to the antibiotics and the 95 degrees and sunny weather they have going on.  

On a plus note, I did have a lot of fun over the weekend hanging with the team and I got to ride with B Frazier at the WORS race!