o, canada!

I'm no longer ashamed of my country. But I am ashamed of my ugly new passport. I had to ditch the completely full of cool visas, chip-free old-style passport when my name changed. At least they sent it back as a memento... the new passports are ungodly ugly.

Anyway, yeah, Ben and I are being joined by Kevin for our weekend jaunt over the border. I called USAC weeks ago to secure Ben's "permission to ride abroad" letter, so that's square, and we're all ready to roll. Word on the street is this is a good chance for him to get that UCI point, but as the day draws near we're learning more folks are crossin' the border than we thought: J-Pow, Tim-J, and Molly, for a few. We'll just go out there and have a good time, ya?

There's a little pressure on, though, no thanks (or thanks?) to the weather report. This could be the first weekend of actually doing bike wash during the race. We come bearing an old-style bike-pump-pressurized water-refillable fire extinguisher so that I won't have to throw elbows in a pressure washer line, but it's going to be a challenge to figure out how to de-mud the bikes quickly without getting myself completely soaked AND how to keep warm through it all. Wish me luck. At least it's just an hour. It seems like something that would be super simple to do, I'm sure once I have a process down it'll just flow.