Bend: a whole lot to love.

Bend reminds me a lot of Bozeman. It's up there, in the clouds, and people care about hippie crap like drinking organic coffee and there are fancy pants stores for the rich people and tourists, but really, it's built on a bedrock of hard, normal-people jobs, and it's cold. Also, it's the home to lots of good beer, which I have begun to and will continue to use to slowly poison my liver and/or put on some extra 'off season' weight- the offseason ending just a week from today, so surely i'm going to regret it more than just once...

This morning were the B races, which were some reason made "open" so that true B-racers who paid thousands of dollars to get their selves and bikes to the biggest race of their season could get lapped early and pulled by people who really aren't B's. Why did USAC set it up that way, allowing riders with UCI licenses to contest B's? Makes no sense. Either way, Mike, a true B, raced and had a crap start position but was picking people off pretty solidly, but then took a tough fall and DNF'd, spending a short time in the first aid tent. And someone stole his $150 Vermarc tights. Who does that? Craptastic.

Later in the day was Paul Sadoff's Masters race. We had spent a little time in the beer tent and were enjoying heckling on the barriers and were seriously looking forward to this race. It did not disappoint, particularly because Richard Sachs and Paul came through TOGETHER on the first lap. For the rest of the race, the two framebuilders-- the two most influential builders in the sport, East and West-- were trading places. In the end, the Rock Lobster bested the Richard Sachs, but it was the coolest race to watch.

After that we ate some, drank some, dropped Ben off to chase trains and retired to the hot tub with the Heenans. (see note above about hating the new additional weight) Naturally Ben showed up and jumped in the way he always does. Sitting in an outdoor hot tub at ten degrees, watching the steam rise... it ain't so shabby. Follow that with a big group Rock Lobster team dinner, and it's a good day.

Seriously, though, it's all exhausting. We all have something we want to do or somewhere we want to be at all times, and it sort of piles up and leaves me exhausted by 10pm. Which is the time now. OK, 10:15 or so.