Whirlwind

Since my last post, it's been go, go, go, full gas. Everything in the last two weeks has been so unique and amazing that each deserves a specific blog post. The problem however, lies in the fact that I haven't quite cracked the code on the creation of a 27 hour day (although I've proposed this several times to the powers that be), and haven't had time to update.

I had a good week in Georgia. I'm always taken aback by the culture of the people in Georgia. Somehow, as very small country sandwiched geographically between so much awfullness (I think I just made that word up), the people of Georgia have sustained a culture that dates back to biblical times, including a unique language and alphabet. They've sustained this culture while being occupied by six different countries. The thing that has always struck me the most is the warmth of the people there. This was my 4th trip to Georgia and there are two very important cultural phenomenons I've picked up on. First, they believe that every minute you spend with family and friends doesn't extend your lifespan, which leads to a lot of long dinners, etc, but it is a great philosophy. I've never heard a Georgian speak of any stupid reality TV show, or TV at all, when you spend time with Georgian, they want to know about YOU and everything you have going on in your life. Which is an incredible breath of fresh air compared to some of the BS we have going on culturally. Second, they trust people until they've given a reason not to. I've read "Three Cups of Tea", of which, the premises is that in Islamic culture, once you have 3 cups of tea with someone, you become part of the family. In Georgia, if you participate in one proper Georgian toast, you are immediately a friend and they will do anything for you. It's very difficult to describe to people how close I've become with several friends in Georgia over the last year. I feel very fortunate to have been exposed to the Georgian culture and I am luckier to have met some of the people I've met there. Here are a couple photos while I was there.

This is Irakli, he's an awesome guy and I consider him a very close friend. In the background, the presidents house is lit up.
This is a shot of an area of Tbilisi that they're currently renovating and making into a commercial section of town.
Here's a closer shot of the old church, which was first opened 1800 years ago (not a typo, OLD), when the capital was moved to Tbilisi.

When I left Tbilisi, I flew direct to Philadelphia. Nancy was going there for a bridal shower for her close friend Natalie. Since, my younger brother John and one of my closest friends Scott both live in the Philly area, I flew there, so I could see them both, Nancy and keep her company on the drive back to Rochester. Friday night, John picked me up at the airport and I went out in Media, PA with him, his new fiancée Theresa and a couple of his buddies. It was a very fun night. Saturday, we got up and headed over to Scott's house for a BBQ with his family and a few of his friends.

Here's a shot of Scott with his 3 month old daughter Adalyn. Didn't get many pictures of Philly, but it was a great weekend.

Following a overly long drive back to Rochester last Sunday, I finally got home. I had a semi-normal, although busy, week at work.

Yesterday was Chad and Libby's wedding. Chad's one of my regular training partners and over the last 3 years, he's quickly become one of my closest friends. Chad and Libby have been dating since high school (and people think Nancy and I took it slow). That included Chad going to Clarkson and Libby going to BC, and yet they made it work and both ended up back in Rochester. Anyways, I couldn't be happier for them. I will say that there were a lot of fast skiers at the wedding. More importantly there was a lot of love all around! Here are some pics from what was an awesome night.

There's the happy couple!!
Here is all of the RNR and SBR attendee's with Chad and Libby. Left to right - Rick, Jason, Frenchy, Libby, Chad, me, Shannon.

Frenchy and his wife Susanna.
Nancy and I.
Rick and Shannon (getting married next fall).
This pic is me and three of Chad's buddies from College. I met Erik (left) at Chad's bachelor party. He's from Norway originally, great guy. These guys all brought their A-Games for Chad's big day, great hanging out with all of them. There was a notable absentee from the Clarkson crowd at the wedding, named Sam. He's a biathlete that we know well and Chad used to live with in college. He's currently serving the Vermont National Guard in Afghanistan. The best man (Chad's brother Derrick) did a great toast which included mentioning Sammy. We're all praying he get's home safe and is kicking our arses again on snow soon!

Overall, it's been an amazing whirlwind!

Cucumber Season in Warsaw

I've been to Warsaw, Poland somewhere around a dozen times and truly love this city. However, this past week has been a new experience. This is my first time here during the summer months as typically most of my customers go on holiday for the better part of July and August. This long summer vacation is very common throughout the better part of Europe, but one of my Polish friends, Andy, informed me that these summer months are referred to as "Cucumber Season", and even used it in a sentence, by responding to this question from me, "Andy, when will we know the status of that order?" with (in a deep voice and thick Polish accent), "Most probably three or four weeks after cucumber season ends." In any event, I've gained a new appreciation for Warsaw in the summer, this city truly comes alive in full force during the summer months. People are everywhere enjoying the great weather and the historic beauty of the city. I got some time today to walk around a little and snap a few photos:

There's a statue on almost every street corner in downtown Warsaw, here's one of them.

Here's a church close to the hotel. There was a wedding going on there today.

This is the entrance to the University of Warsaw.
Another church.
Statue in front of Church.
This is a snapshot of the Warsaw Hotel, which was the only building in this section of town that wasn't completely destroyed during WWII. They are currently refurbishing and are planning to re-open it to guests in the next few months.
This is the presidents palace. There's a controversy currently going on right now centering around the wooden cross in the foreground. I'm not sure on all the details, but it's a tribute to the recently deceased former president and some Polish citizens want it moved to the church where his funeral took place and some want it to remain where it is. In any event, there were a lot of protesters and news cameras in front of the palace.

This is a shot of "Old Town" Warsaw, which is a big city square. Very vibrant atmosphere.
This is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Poland. It's also currently being refurbished, hence the fence around it.
Random fountain in a local park.
Cultural center donated in the 1940's by Stalin. I could question the irony behind the person donating it, but in any event, it's an immense building in the center of town.

All in all, it's been a very busy week (until today), but very productive. I'm looking forward to heading to Tbilisi tomorrow and also can't wait to get to Philly to see John and Scott next weekend. I also heard that Nancy and I may have a new couch, which I'm looking forward to seeing!

Poland

Very quick update - I made it to Warsaw, Poland safe and sound yesterday and have already had two very productive days of negotiations. I'm here until Sunday, when I fly to Tbilisi, Georgia for a week.

What happened, did you go vegan?

That's right everyone, it's a 2-post Saturday...

Funny thing happened on Thursday of this week...

I randomly ran into our trainer from RIT. I hadn't seen her since I graduated and as such, the Marty Maynard she knew was this guy. Nowadays, I where glasses, spend too much time in cubicle land, and when I'm not there, I am usually training for some type of endurance sport, so the version of me that she knew looked like a college baseball player and now I'm a little lighter to say the least.

In any event, she remembered me once she discovered who I was. Her first question upon realizing who I was - "Did you go Vegan?"...really? you think I went vegan? I'm the same person that you once told "don't drink too much whiskey tonight, I gave you a lot of painkillers today."...and now I went vegan? This question irritated me 10 times more than when I get the proverbial "Do you do triathlon?" (different story, but please, just because I do a sport called biathlon, does not make me a triathalete, the two don't even have any disciplines in common)...It did occur to me however, that people might wonder how I went from looking like this:

To this:
The truth is, it was a relatively slow process, and a long story. I always knew, even during college, that I wanted to get into competitive skiing and biathlon again. I never thought that cycling would play a role in that, but it did. Basically, about a year after college I started working out again consistently, and when I finished grad school I started training seriously and here I am going wherever this takes me, but I'm loving it, and am happy training and racing, much happier than I would if I had resigned myself to dominating the beer leagues. Maybe I need challenges...in any event, I didn't go vegan, in fact, I love eating meat.

Tomorrow, I'm heading to Poland, then Georgia. So, it'll be hectic the next couple weeks, but I'm looking forward to it!

Weekend recap - big hills, horses, dropped chains, yellow jersey and a wedding

The title pretty much says it all, but I will elaborate further...before I get into my take on the tour of the catskills, Rick did a great write-up on the team site with some pics as well. Obviously the headline was that Jason dominated the race winning both major competition jerseys and the final stage!

Last Friday morning, my teammates and I loaded up a couple cars and headed downstate for the Tour of the Catskills, which consisted of an uphill time trial and two hilly 50+ mile road races (and when they say hilly, they meant it). I only raced the first two days so that I could make it back to Rochester for Erica and Joe's wedding, but my races were more than eventful to say the least.

The course for the TT on Friday was flat for about 15 yards, then took a right turn and went straight up hill for the next 2.2 miles. I had a good warmup and was feeling pretty good beforehand, but didn't have my best race. I might have made a mistake in that I tried to race in a bigger gear than I should have, which led to me fading towards the end (or at least it felt like I faded), but who knows. I ended up around 30th in the TT, which wasn't exactly what I was hoping for, but I definitely got to the finish feeling like I went as hard as I could. Jason ended up in 3rd on the day, which wasn't surprising to any of us. Knowing that the overall was going to come down to climbing and knowing that Jason is more than capable of riding very strong on steep climbs, the team did have a little extra motivation to try to do whatever was possible to help him take the overall win.

Following a great team dinner on Friday night (pic above), we went out the the start of Stage 2, which was a 52 mile road race. The course pretty much consisted of about 20 miles of flats and downhills, followed by one long climb followed by some relatively steep rolling hills, and then a flat 10 mile run-in to the finish. As stated previously on this blog, I'm not a huge fan of going down hills, especially in groups of 80 riders going downhill for 4-5 miles at a time (something I have to get over I guess), but at the tail end of the last decent before the climb, was easily the weirdest (and one of the more dangerous) occurrences I've encountered during a bike race. We are bombing down a hill, going maybe 40 mph, when we turn a corner and there are three horses in the middle of the road. All three horses are completely tweaking out (Rick's post at the team site has a video embedded in it of this) as 80 cyclists attempt to stop before plowing in to them. I ended up going in to a section of grass to avoid a couple guys that were having some trouble stopping, but everyone managed to safely stop (I think). We were at a standstill for a couple minutes while everyone just stared at the horses (still freaking out). Eventually the horses got off the road without further incident.

Then, the aforementioned long climb started, which was a really steep wall for about 200 meters followed by about 4.5 miles of a steady grinding climb. To be honest, I was hoping to climb better than I did and hang with the front group, but I was totally red-lined and just simply couldn't accelerate up to that group. I managed to find a pace I could sustain. Following the climb I was in a group of about 6-7 guys, which multiplied to about 20 by the time we got through all the hills, due to riders catching back up on the descent. Then with about 10 miles to go, my chain dropped off. Tangent - I've probably rode a bike a total of 10,000 miles since starting cycling after college and I never once had my chain fall off until 3 weeks ago. During the Tour De France this year, Andy Schleck famously dropped his chain and lost time to Alberto Contador, and I remember thinking, "how does that even happen?". It's never happened to me and I certainly don't have the best mechanics in the world making sure my bike is good to go EVERYDAY. 3 days after that stage in the Tour, by chain fell off while on a training ride, then it happened again during this race, so maybe I jynxed myself and was just lucky all those years, but anyways...tangent over....Not only did my chain fall off, but it got stuck behind my "chain catcher". So, not only did my chain catcher not catch my chain, but it also prevented me from putting the chain back on. Anyways, I eventually had to pull out an allen wrench and adjust it, which apparently also adjusted my front derailer because once I finally started riding again, I couldn't shift into the big ring. I eventually rode a frustrating 10 miles to the finish as hard as I could and ended up re-passing a few guys. Following the race, I scrambled to get back to my car and drive back to Rochester to make the wedding.

All in all, it was a fun time, although I wish things went differently during the races. It was great to hang out with the guys on the team and great to see Jason come up with the win. He really focussed on this race for the last month or so and made it clear that he was the strongest guy in the race. I am already looking forward to next year's Tour of the Catskills and have some ideas on how to train differently.

Life is going faster than a Hackensaw Boys song...

Let's hope my skiing this winter continues with the trend of life in general these days, in that everything seems to be going faster and faster...somehow it's already the end of July and fall is right around the corner.

Typically, things are a little slower at work over the summer since most of my customers tend to take long vacations for 4-6 weeks. Not so this year, as this has easily been the busiest July I can remember from a work perspective. It's all been very good stuff for business purposes, but there's certainly hasn't been the usual "deep breath" that we typically get in July. I'm not sure if this is coincidence or a sign that the economic slow down in Europe is improving, let's hope for the latter, but I'll leave that speculation to the "experts".

Things outside of work seem to be just as hectic, but also great stuff. It seems like every weekend there has been some type of event to attend, but I've also been busy riding, roller-skiing and watching the Tour De France (if you've never given the TDF a chance as a follower, I highly recommend it, it's a lot more interesting than you'd think and the Versus commentators Phil Liggett and Paul Scherwin can add drama to almost anything). I managed to log more hours training in the last four weeks than any other 4-week block since I started keeping a training log, including several 4-5 hour rides, something I'd never previously done with any real consistency. So hopefully the extra volume will pay off down the road.

This weekend I'll be racing in the Tour of the Catskills, which is a 3-day stage race in the Catskills region (not just a clever nickname). It will feature a lot of climbing, with some long, sustained climbs, which is very different from the terrain found near the Finger Lakes region that we typically spend our time riding in. Although I'll be missing the final stage to come back for a wedding in Canandaigua which Nancy is involved in, I'm looking forward to the races in any event. Our field will be very big, but almost the whole team is racing and I think that we're all in pretty good shape right now, and should be able to be in the mix throughout the weekend. The wedding should be a lot of fun as well.

Following this weekend's activities, I'll be in Rochester for another week then I head to Poland and Georgia for a 2-week work trip, which will include a little bit of everything, including a race called the "Slave Run" over the weekend that I'm in Poland (that'll be a full blog post for sure). Following that, I'll be headed to Philadelphia for a weekend to see my younger brother (who just got engaged!) and Scott. So, it'll be Labor Day before I know it. So, life is moving pretty quickly, but the next few months should be pretty exciting!

Note - Just to explain the title - If you've never heard of the Hackensaw Boys, they play gnarly bluegrass really, really fast. If there is a world record for most notes played in a 90 second song, they must have the record.

Like a warm handshake from an old friend...

Last weekend Nancy and I headed downstate for my buddy Dan Weglinski's (Ski) wedding. Ski was a teammate of mine in college. He was a right handed pitcher with a ridiculous 12-6 curveball. He also happened to graduate from the same program as I did (although he graduated with a 3.9 GPA, and mine was...well, not a 3.9). Anyways, the wedding was Sunday night on Long Island. Similar to our wedding, there was a strong presence from RIT Baseball alumni, so a bunch of us decided to make a weekend of it. Nance and I drove down to Fairfield, CT Friday afternoon. Nancy stayed there until Sunday with her friend Natalie. Lucas picked me up on his way into Manhattan (where his girlfriend Lindsay lives) Friday night, and we met up with Ware and Adam Gerantine (another teammate who lives in Hoboken, NJ) Friday night. Since the Yankees weren't in town, we decided to opt for a Mets game on Saturday afternoon.

Left to right - Lucas, Ware, Joe B, Knodel and I. Overall the game was a great time. Following the game we went to a restaurant where Jen's (Joe's wife) friend works at in Manhattan. We had some good food and drink to cap off an awesome day.
Joe and Jen B. Joe will be Mayor of Rochester some day, mark my words, you heard it here first. He's a huge Mets fan and this was his first trip to the new Citi Field as well. Other than the Mets losing, I think he had a good time. Oddly enough, Jen is a diehard Red Sox fan...the hats you'll wear through love I guess...

Upon waking up on Sunday, we headed straight out to Long Island to make sure we didn't get caught up in any traffic. The wedding was great - the ceremony was at the church that Courtney grew up in, the priest actually also married her parents. The reception was at an awesome location at a country club on Long Island. In general, the usual shenanigan's occurred that typically occur when you put the Lucas-Ware-Knodel-Colin-Joe-Marty combo together. Strangely enough (insert sarcasm), we were all seated together in the back corner, but also strategically located three feet from the bar (Thanks Ski). Everyone had an awesome time and I can't be happier for Ski and Courtney, they compliment eachother very well (meaning, she's normal and he's not)...but, he's been an overachiever his whole life and only continues that trend with Courtney.

That's Ware and his girlfriend Erin, who's also a Sam Adams rep. Needless to say, there were zero Sam Adams left in the entire country club by about 9pm with most of the damage being done by table 19.
Joe and Jen B at the cocktail hour.
Left to right - Nancy, Lindsay and Jen. They were clearly embarrassed to be associated with the rest of us.
Wedded Bliss - Ski and Courtney.
This is the RIT Baseball crew in attendance with the exception of Knodel and Sarah.

Overall, it was an awesome weekend and, as always, great to see all my college buddies. It was the first time hanging out with this crew since my wedding. It was, as they say, "like a warm handshake from an old friend..." (so was the glass of Jack Daniels that Lucas handed me after the country club ran out of Sam Adams).

Since getting back into town, we had our year-end sales meeting at work, which meant a lot of work functions every night this week. I've also been trying to ride a lot, I've managed to squeeze in 170 miles in the last 3 days. I believe things will normalize slightly and I can get back into a semi-normal routine for a few weeks anyways. Miraculously, I've been able to train a decent amount for the past few weeks and am really looking forward to the Tour of the Catskills in a couple weeks and the Green Mountain Stage Race later this summer.