Archive for August, 2008

Today I got started by searching for some breakfast. After finding Wendys closed, I used the magic powers of iPhone to search for food near the hotel, and managed to find a cafeteria in a nearby office building. On the way there I got a decent view of downtown, but this is as close as we came to downtown Minneapolis.

With a shorter drive today, we had a relaxing 6 hour trip, during which we saw numerous cheese shops, lots of road construction, and a Midwest ski slope built into the side of a very small hill. I also finished the book I’ve been reading. Next up is Baldacci.

After getting in to the western part of Milwaukee, I was going to go for a bike ride before realizing I had no CO2 cartridges and would be in trouble if I flatted on the road. I headed over to REI, and I plan to ride in the morning instead. It was Lyndsay’s birthday a few days ago, and to celebrate a bit we went for dinner at a really tasty Italian place. I had a draft root beer, a spinach and gorgonzola cheese salad, and stromboli. The resteraunt was perched on what I suppose could be described as a hill, at least in the midwest. We had a nice view of the sunset.

Tomorrow we’ll be heading into downtown Chicago and doing set-up for the Accentrue Chicago Triathlon, this weekend’s event. It will be really nice to be staying at the Chicago Hilton right downtown, which also happens to be the same place the expo is at – even more convenient. We’re considering checking out the Weber Grill (the resteraunt of the famous home grill line), and I’ll definitely be finding more deep dish pizza again this weekend.

Today we drove the 525 miles from Dickinson, ND to Minneapolis, MN. I spent much of the time in the truck reading when I wasn’t driving. I’ve read about 400 pages of a Clive Cussler novel the last two days, and I’m hooked. The goal is to finish tomorrow. Coming into Minneapolis, we passed an exit for Edgerton street. That sighting can be added to the Edgerton Highway in Alaska and Edgerton the town in Ohio.

Tonight I took a truck and drove over to Outback Steakhouse to meet up with my grandma who I hadn’t seen in several years. We spent much of the time catching up on life, talking about my job, and discussing politics. Her quote of the night had to have been “He’s (McCain) older than I am, and I’m way too old to be president.” And in my opinion, she’s young for her age.

It was interesting driving on I-35 to our hotel being reminded of the bridge collapse in fairly recent history. It was the I-35 bridge that collapsed, and the interstate is closed a little ways past our hotel.

Tomorrow we have an easier day of driving to get to Milwaukee. The end of the road is in sight (though not literally, and only for this week).

Today we drove 660 miles. Much of the drive was fairly boring with not a whole lot to look at, but there were some hay bales, a bunch of sign series that had messages on them, and several mountain passes.

Montana is a big state, and the bugs also seem to be proportionally bigger. The increasingly larger pinging noises of bugs culminated with a large bird of some sort (perhaps a grouse?) slamming into the front of the truck and scaring Nate and I. We’re glad it didn’t hit the windshield, because we likely would have needed a windshield replacement.

We were far too excited to find diesel under $4 per gallon for the first time since I joined the tour. We’ve paid as high as $5.50, so perhaps prices are going down, or perhaps the northern part of the country just has cheaper prices, or most likely some of both.

Towards the end of the drive, we came upon a section where the scenery reminded me a lot of the painted hills area in South Dakota. We also chased a large orange moon sitting just over the horizon.

The hotel we’re staying at in Dickinson, North Dakota is rather eccentric. The decor clashes quite wonderfully, and there’s this awkward mezzanine area styled like it’s outside, only it’s not. Our room window overlooks it, so we won’t be waking up to sunlight in the morning.

After today’s Danskin triathlon in the Seattle area (Molly finished well and enjoyed herself. We had a successful event and have now finished with the Danskin series for the year.), we headed East and will be on I-90 for the next several days. We just got to Missoula, Montana tonight and managed to push the truck 270 miles on a single tank of gas to get here. Tomorrow will be a long day of driving to get to Dickinson, North Dakota and the plan the following day is to end up in Minneapolis. We’re on our way to Chicago for our next event this upcoming weekend – The Accenture Chicago Triathlon. I’m tired. Time for some sleep.

I realized that more than a month into the trip, I’m using the names of my teammates without ever really explaining who they are. So, this is when I attempt to introduce my teammates in a biographical manner. The biographies will likely be based in the truth, but will also undoubtedly have many inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and probably some made-up stories and will be anything but a reliable account of who they actually are. That said,

NATE

Nate graduated from some university in Ohio last year with some sort of fancy schmancy masters degree in sports business. He’s the only surviving member of the original ’08 Crocs running tour marketing team (surviving the tour, that is). His parents own restaurants in Colorado and spoiled him with good food as a child, and as a result he likes to eat, and eat good food at that (which I can certainly deal with). He thinks that he can eat a lot, but there’s no doubt in my mind I can outdo him with relative ease.

Nate runs a lot. He’s currently training for one of the marathons coming up that our team will be working, and has his distance worked up to around 17 thousand miles. He also swims, bikes, apparently plays some tennis, and basically does whatever he wants and usually makes it look easy.

Nate has a girlfriend who we got to meet in Nashville briefly. She recently started a new job in Dallas, so he is constantly scheming about how to invent a teleporter between the hotel room closet and Texas.

Also, he never drinks water at a restaurant without lemon.

MOLLY

I think I can get Molly accurate to some degree given our common path to this job. She graduated from the U of Oregon the same year I did (which would be this year if you’re keeping track). She has the same degree I do, and also the same marketing concentration. Throughout the course of the trip, we’ve found we share many friends and acquaintances, and yet we really only knew of each other at school through AMA’s work with her Hybrid.STAND project for KEEN footwear. It’s odd we never really ran into each other at school outside of that.

Anyway, Molly is from Park City as you’ve hopefully figured out from recent posts, and her family is pretty rad. In her free time when she’s not studying my eating habits or zoning out in the truck, she likes to read, exercise, and wander unfamiliar cities. She has a new scar on her wrist from a fierce fight with a trash bag full of shoes. You should see the trash bag.

She’ll be doing her first triathlon this weekend – the final Danskin women’s sprint triathlon of the year, and I have no doubt she’ll finish well. That is assuming we can get her a bike. Otherwise the plan is to have Marco give her a 12 mile piggy back ride. That could hurt her time a bit (and Marco’s pride, hand, and knees for that matter).

Go blow away the competition this weekend!

MARCO (POLO)

I’m not sure who this guy is. He just showed up one day and started selling shoes. He seems to go to Mexico a lot and rumor has it he resides somewhere in Texas. He also works for some ad agency, and apparently he decided that they’re better than we are, because he’ll be leaving the tour after a few more events. He insists that it’s because of the stresses of school and work (not even including the travel for Crocs) that he’s leaving, but I think he just doesn’t like us (who would?).

Marco also has a random blog that usually confuses me. I see him in the hotel one minute and the next he’s posting pictures from Mexico. Body double? Identical twins? An evil twin?

STEPHEN

Stephen is a trickster. He’ll tap you on the left shoulder when he’s on your right, and we think he might have wanted to stab someone once. He once threatened me with a spoon. He has his roots in Texas somewhere near Marco, and spent some of his recent years as a serious endurance mountain biker (12 and 24 hour races – he must utilize the same skills in conversation that he did while training for those long races).

He also seems to know everyone everywhere which can come in handy. He’s been on Tour with Crocs since last year and this year is the retail manager. We haul around the shoes. He sells them. Marco does too. He has a fiance/serious girlfriend that works for Southwest so he flies for free much of the time. As a result, he is always hopping around the country from event to event while we’re stuck with an overheating truck in the middle of the desert.

His personality should come with a warning label (something like “dry clean only”). But I enjoy him.

LYNDSAY (and Marco’s evil twin)

Lyndsay was recently thrown overboard from another tour that capsized, and she washed ashore in Massachusetts at our last Danskin event. She decided to make the running tour home just recently, and as of now I still have a lot to figure out about her. She is from New Mexico and when to school in San Diego a few years back. She is infamous for once booking a cruise instead of a hotel for an off week on tour. She has a personality that will mesh well with the rest of the Q team.

As the picture clearly shows, Marco’s evil twin is trying to eat her soul, so I better get to know all the important details soon.

All in all, I wouldn’t want any other team with me on the road than the one I have.

Today got off to a slow start, and I took the time to get my bike fully tuned up.

After Chris got back into town, Mike and I joined him for the Coburg Hills loop. The entire ride length ended up being over 85 miles, and Chris and Mike are both in good race shape, so I was hard-pressed to keep up. We did some tempo work pushing speeds between 25 and 30, and I managed to somehow hold the wheel in front of me. Felt really good considering the complete lack of race intensity I’ve had in the last several months. After the ride, my legs were toast.

After the ride we regrouped and met up at Mike’s place for some BBQ chicken and grilled veggies (and beans, and salad, and sweet peas, and chips with salsa, and roasted garlic, and…). Here is Chris trying to figure out how to work the pepper grinder.

And here’s Karey playing grill-master.

After dinner I watched some Olympic gymnastics and swimming. The men’s 400 freestyle relay was absolutely insane, and when the announcer is screaming it’s hard not to get into it.

I started off yesterday running some errards with my brother and putting the finishing touches on packing his car. “Packed” is a good way to put it. Somehow we managed to keep good views of all the mirrors.

My brother was actually rather excited about two days of doing nothing but driving his car. Note the smile and everything. From a text message this morning, it sounds like he’ll be at my parents’ place early this afternoon.

After he took off, I went over and checked in on all my stuff in storage. Kind of odd to have pretty much everything I own packed up and sitting in a corner.

While there, I picked up a tennis racket and built up one of my bikes to take with in the truck hopefully for the duration of the trip.

Later in the afternoon, I met up with Laura to do some clothes shopping. I found a couple polos at Old Navy and then ended up at Valley River Center looking at something like 5 different stores before finally finding a swimsuit. I kind of ended up with board shorts, but considering it’s all I could find, I’ll live. While in the mall, I stopped in Journeys and chatted with the employees there about their Crocs line for a while. We discussed the merits of the Soles United program (Crocs recycling) and found that they have the same difficulties making use of it that we do on the road. Everyone raves about the idea, but no one actually brings in shoes to be recycled.

I parked the truck for the night and hopped on my commuter bike. It felt good to cruise around Eugene again. For dinner, Mike and I hit up McMenamins on 19th and caught up on life in the past couple months. After that, we headed over to Rennies to play pool (we played 8-9 games and never even got challenged for the table. Slow night). We drank gin and tonics and watched Mr. Phelps win gold number 1. We also talked fencing for a while (the medal ceremony for the women’s sabre was on – the gold medal winner was incredibly annoying during the round). Somehow in that conversation we decided there should be a broadsword competition at the Olympics.

I ended up crashing on Mike’s couch, and he cooked pancakes this morning while we watched a cheesy infomercial for the LandRider autoshifting bike. Comes with a seat post shock absorber and everything. I’m sold.

Today Chris, Mike and I are going to ride for approximately 4 hours, and then grab dinner and maybe catch a movie or something.