Save Ferris Bueller

Okay, we’ve all seen Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, so now you’re wondering why we need to save him. If you’ve got a good memory, you’ll remember some random guy walking the halls of Ferris’s high school with a Coke can saying "save Ferris Bueller" trying to raise money to pay for Ferris’s med bills. Ferris’s sister knocks the can out of the guys hand since she knows he isn't sick. Instead he was out on the town (Chicago) having fun.
So what does this scene have to do with Matt Weyen, it’s his blog right? Well we all gotta band together and Save Matt Weyen! Get out your Coke cans and collect your spare change, ‘cause Matt Weyen needs to go to Indonesia. The Bobs-Bicycles.com team has been invited to race the Tour of Indonesia, all expenses paid… But, there’s always a But. Here’s the catch, I’d have to miss two weeks of work and it would be unpaid since I’ve used all of my 16 days of vacation for racing already. On top of that, I would have to get an expedited passport and a UCI racing license ($350 total there). Anyone have a Coke can the size of the one on the local Red Bull-mobile? And it’s gotta be full of dollar coins, ‘cause that’s what it’s gonna take!
Wait! Don’t stop reading now; I’ve got more links to the Bueller movie! If Indonesia falls through and nobody reading this happens to live on a pocket full of gold (and truely thinks that the Weyen kid needs to go to Indonesia), the other option is to go to Elite Criterium Nationals … in Chicago. We won’t be cruising town in a Ferrari 250 GT California or lip-syncing Twist and Shout in the Van Steuben Day Parade, but we will be racing our Giant TCR 1’s in front of a (hopefully) large crowd in downtown Chicago. Okay, I’m fresh out of links to the movie unless you want me to get even cheesier.

On other news, Tara’s (my younger sister) wedding last weekend in Pullman, WA went well. Absolutely perfect weather and free beer = good (beer=good has been predetermined in the last blog). Now I’ve got another brother (in-law), Josh Gaines, and he’s cool (his family proved to be more fun than ours at the wedding reception too). The only drawback to the weekend was that the team wasn’t too happy that I missed a great race (aka battle) in Baker City. Oh well, the Elite National Time Trial is only two weeks off and more specific training is probably a better thing anyways. This weekend is a 3 stage race in Pocatello, should be fun. The following weekend will be camping near Elk City with my dad’s side of the family and then it’s off to Seven Springs, Pennsylvania for nationals!

So, here’s to another successfully completed blog – isn’t that just a weird sounding word? Like you could just say blooooooooooog, pronounced with a really long soft O and a bored looking face, almost like you’re gonna fall asleep. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Bueller... Bueller... Bueller...
Um, he's sick. My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious.

My Ever Present Past; thanks for the title Sir Paul McCartney

This last weekend, the past came rushing back to me and it was great.
So the story goes: hop in the car after work on Friday afternoon and do my best to blaze my way north. I had just enough time to pop out a couple new CD’s the day before since I don’t have an input for the Ipod, but if ya do the math, 80 minutes per CD * 2 does not equal 5hrs of driving. Thus, I got a bit of a broken record by the time I was dragging the final stretches into Kendrick. Yeah, Tom Petty just kept Free Fallin’ all afternoon.

Typically, the day before a race, some kind of an opener (a ride that gets the body ready to go for racing) is optimal, but I didn’t have time for that, so while on the road I pulled out the Compex (electrical muscle stimulation thingy) that I’m still borrowing from one of the fast newbies on the crew while he’s in Ireland (thanks Rose) and electrocuted my legs while zoning on the highway with cruise control on. It wasn’t a ride on the road, but it was the next best thing that I had available.
So I finally pull into town and get the usual rush of wishing I didn’t live in sage brush land. Kendrick rocks for training hard on a bike; everything around goes up, up and then up some more on roads with low traffic and friendly drivers. It’s always pretty sweet for all sorts of other outdoorsy stuff too.
Anyways, get to the race on Saturday morning and realize that the wind is going the way I’m always hoping for (tailwind) but never seem to get! At the line, the field appears to be missing a few strong riders that I’m used to helping force the pace to the bottom of the grade (namely Ben Rhodes). So I drill it myself and pay the price a bit as local strong mountain biker Jeremy Pinto is now having no problem staying with me on the grade. I was actually fairly glad to have him there as the wind going up the grade wasn’t much fun since we were now going against it instead of with it. With around half a mile to go, he jumps me and tries to get away, but I wasn’t coming off of any wheel too easily and am on it immediately. Coming into the last 500 meters (yards-ish), he jumps again and I followed. I waited for him to completely run out of gas and returned the favorJ, it worked perfectly and I pulled off the win. It was like old times only reverse of how I would lose it to Rusty Beall back in the day.
Then I headed back to Kendrick to meet up with Jami and the pooch Lucy, who I hadn’t seen in 9 days. That night, we were to meet up with some friends from high school, so I had just enough time to go hit up a couple grades on the bike and get ready to go. Out the door and ready to eat, drink and be merry for the rest of the night. Jami and I meet up with Kelly and Anna at the ol’ hang out (MJ Barley Hoppers). I hadn’t talked with Kelly since graduation! After a 9 year hiatus, you’d guess it might be slow going for a bit, but 5 minutes in and you’d think we did this on a weekly basis. Of course, the immediate addition of social lubrication (pronounced al-co-hol) helped some, good stuff J Add in a great meal (smoke salmon fettuccini) to good company and microbrews = good times. The goal was to get in a good ride and do a fathers day breakfast the next day so we didn’t stay out too late (11:30), but it was fun minus the hangover. The next morning, Jami and I took my dad and grandma out for breakfast at the small town café that I’ve ate at exactly 1 million times (my eyes just turned brown). Sundays on a two day trip up north are always a bit of a disappointment since I have to leave long before I want to. I hold out until the last possible minute of getting home at a somewhat decent time and brace myself for another rendition of the two CD’s, only this time I get to share it with our 1yr old beagle, Lucy. Since Jami’s going to be working for her step-dad in Nez Perce for a few more days and they don’t have a fenced yard, she thought it would be better for the pooch to go with me. I’m pretty sure that Lucy’s taste for music doesn’t discriminate between the aforementioned Tom Petty, a bit of Paul Simon, Amy Winehouse and even some Metallica.
So, here’s the weekends scorecard in the order that they took place:
Cool:
1 – listening to a fresh mix of tunes
2 – rockin’ out at the same race I’ve been doing forever
3 – getting to hang out with and catch up with ol’ friends
4 – good food and beer while doing number 3
5 – fathers day with some of the fam

Not:
1 – once the fresh mix gets reran too many times
2 – 10hrs of driving for 2 days of fun
3 – the rush to get back into the swing of things for the next week

Okay, 5 to 3 = good weekend. Still would be if it were 3 to 3.
Over N’ Out until the next edition.

You are what you eat, so start pumping the high octane gasoline

Okay, this might sound weird to those who don’t care about what kind of foods they put in their mouths, but cyclists become something like pseudo-nutritionists if they want to get ahead. Food to a cyclist is like gas is to a car and the higher octane stuff ya put in, the faster it goes. Since I’ve been a cyclist for 13yrs now, I’ve read my fair share about all sorts of foods. So, I got the crazy idea that maybe (key word there) it would be an interesting thing to share my grocery list. Since I prefer fresh foods, I gotta hit up the grocery stores at least once a week, so the following list is for something like 1 weeks worth of food. Be forewarned, this may seem like a disgusting volume of food to the non-cyclist!
Anything with an O next to it means that it’s organic.
1st, I hit up Fred Meyer:
Kettle Tortilla chips – O
2 rolls Smoked Salmon and avacado Sushi (yeah, I ate that right away)
32 oz Stonyfield yogurt – O
3 cans of Fred Meyers Oysters (loaded with Iron – only brand that tastes good)
2 cans Healthy Valley Turkey Chilli
bag of dried ginger - O
Barbara’s blueberry fig bars - O
32oz Aloe Vera juice (first time trying this stuff) - O
2 cans of Muir Glen split pea soup – O
1 can of Wolf Gang Puck tortilla soup – O
2lb Continental Salad, spring mix - O

2nd, I head on over to Winco for more
9 cans of Brunswick herring sardines
Idaho Harvest golden flax and whole grain bread - O
3 bags of frozen Dole blueberries
total of 1lb of Tony’s smoked salmon
6 pack of Guiness Draught (first time I’ve bought beer at the grocery store this yr)
2 large avocados
1lb of flax seed meal
3 Kiwi’s
1.5lbs of Kale
1lb of Spinach – O
3 red pears (usually get Dan’jou pears)
2 bottles of Briana salad dressing (1 honey Dijon, 1 poppy seed)
32oz bottle of Bolthouse Veggie
1 gallon of milk (sometimes I go with organic, but that stuff is spendy!)

Things that I usually get, but didn’t have to this last week:
1lb of freshly ground almond butter
1lb of locally harvested clover honey
box of Sweet Home Farm honey nut granola
box of kelloggs all-bran original
box of uncle sam’s original
large bag of bin fruit granola cereal mix
Since my dad got his elk last year and I helped pack it out, I got 34lbs of that and I’d guess that there is about 10 to 15lbs of that still around. Also, the neighbors gave us some deer meat, so we occasionally dig into that as well.
I also take two Omega-3 pills per day – the ones from GNC with GLA and all sorts of other cool Omega’s in em’.
In general, I try to keep a high volume of fruits, vegetables and foods that are less processed and prefer them to be organic. I try to eat a high fiber diet with less saturated fats and more poly and monounsaturated fats (very picky on whether or not the poly-unsaturated fats are processed as they oxidize very badly and are big time known cancer causers).

lapping the field is fun, but it's no cake walk

The 7th Day criterium yesterday was ran in the wettest conditions I’ve ever raced in in the Treasure Valley! Since this race was put on by our team, we all got to volunteer (pronounced voluntold) for all of the events but our own – the pro/1/2’s. Over the day, it poured down 8 tenths of an inch! Only the hardcore locals showed up, but they got the experience of racing on a great criterium course. By the time our race came around, I was only half-heartedly getting ready and less than 100% motivated when I first put my leg over the bike. Once I got rolling though, it was game on as usual, no matter the weather. It’s amazing what the competitive juices can do for ya! There were jumps from the gun and the pace was up and down until my teammate Chris Stuart made a real move, going up the road by 10-ish seconds. A few attempts were made to pull him back in by the other teams, but when local criterium specialist Tim Root hit the front, it was lights out for that move. Pulling Stuart back put enough strain on the field that it made a perfect opportunity for me to counter. I stayed away on my own for the next 30 or so minutes when I heard that Stuart was coming across solo. I was super glad to hear that as I was getting tired setting pace on my own the whole way! I sat up and waited for him to get on my wheel and we were gone. With two laps to go, we had the opportunity to fully lap the field, but sat up a little and let them play out their sprint for third. At the line, I gave the “W” to Chris. It was like déjà vu from Friday night other than it was raining and the crowd was way smaller. Either way, it was pretty kick@$$ to have two Bob’s guys lap the field two times in one weekend!

rockin' the Eagle Criterium

Somewhere around 15 to 20 minutes into Friday night's Eagle Criterium, I flew the coupe trying to get up the road after the field had been chasing a break that had my teammate Brandon Archibald in it (team bios: http://www.teambobs-bicycles.com/modules.php?name=Riders-men). After passing the break and having gained something like 10 seconds on the break and 15 or so on the field, I heard over the radio that Brandon (aka Buster) had split the break and was coming up solo. I sat up until Buster was on my wheel. I gave him a couple laps to draft me and then we started working evenly, splitting the workload lap for a lap. We were getting time splits on corner two every time around and occassionally on the race radio. The gap was getting larger and larger until all of a sudden we were told that it had shrank a bit and then we kept getting reports that the gap was getting smaller and smaller each lap, which made us a bit nervous since we only had around 12 minutes left in the race. Then we rounded corner 2 with about 8 minutes to go and we could see the field going into corner 3! All of a sudden, we realized that the gaps we were getting had been flipped from how far up we were to how far away from lapping the field we were. With 3 laps left in the race, we caught the field. This thoroughly messed up the officials keeping track of who would finish 1-2 and then 3rd and so on. From the moment that we could see the back side of the field, I knew that we were going to take 1-2 and that Brandon had most assuredly earned just such a win. It was crazy awesome for our team to go 1-2 in front of a large downtown Eagle crowd. So much fun.Jami's gone for 2 weeks (1 week in Montana and 1 in Nez Perce, ID) now, so you can count on some more frequent blogging, hopefully I can keep em' interesting :)

tying up loose ends at the Hood

As a team, racing for highest possible general classification at Mt. Hood is the biggest goal. We all focus on making sure that the highest placed racer gets every advantage from all of us whenever possible. Going into the last road race, my teammate Mark Santurbane was the highest placed on GC. Both Mark and I were similarly placed in 16 and 24th, but I had wrecked and was much less likely to make a go of the overall. When Mark flatted less than a quarter mile into an 89 mile super hard stage and the field was stretched out (meaning everyone was going as hard as they can go), Justin Mayfield and myself dropped off the back in an attempt to make sure that Mark got back on. By the time Mark got going again, it was already determined that I should try to get back on the field. I was in no man's land, no follow vehicles to draft on, no other riders to draft off of and doing 32mph up a 3% grade just to maintain my place in respect to the field. When Mark finally did come through from being towed back by our team vehicle, I was in no shape to help him through the caravan (string vehicles following the race). He did catch on, but then the field turned left and went up a sharper hill and Justin and I were together, blown out the back of a major race from the very beginning. This is the last place in the whole world you want to be (other than in a wreck) if you are a competitive cyclist! So Justin and I finally decided that it would be better to just keep on keepin' on and we motored in, catching a few sorry sorts out on the long road to the Meadows Ski Hill on Mount Hood. By the time we finished, we were both in a zombie like state from the 4 and a half hours of full-on effort. The next day, we finished it off with a 1hr criterium in downtown Hood River, in front of the Full Sail brewery. I was lucky enough to get stopped before plowing into a major pile up on the last corner before the start/finish line about half way into the criterium and they even gave me a free lap like all of the wrecked racers. A second wreck would have put me into a serious world of hurt. Anyways, Mark finished 13th overall, Justin and I were much further down in the 50 to 60's range, mainly because of the stage that we rode in alone. Only 82 of the 146 original starters actually finished!
And now I'm stuck sleeping on my right side for the next 3 weeks... joy. Maybe I can make some $ at this coming Friday nights' Eagle Criterium and make things right again! Yeah, it's a never ending desire to kick @$$.
Time to rest and recover... until next time, it's been fun-
Later

Life is a highway... and coffe shop connections help

Here I am in a Hood River coffee shop, figuring out who kicked who's butts today in the hardest time trial I've ever done! It hurt more than usual this time, not only because it went over some serious climbs and directly into the Gorge wind the whole way, but because yesterday I took a fall that makes any movement fairly difficult. Waking this moring, I got the experience of what it's like to be less than perfectly mobile. My hip and all up along my left side is shredded with road rash, the helmet was demolished, both my shorts and jersey were destroyed and I have an internal bruse in my back that makes breathing deep difficult. All of this because of a post race mistake on both my and my teammates behalf. We were riding back to the car post race and were riding close enough to talk over the oncoming wind when a bee got the better of my teammate which resulted in our bars getting intertwined and me hitting the deck at 30-ish mph. It is by far the hardest I've ever hit the ground and a very rude awakening as to what riding a bike can do in a moment.
All-in-all, I'm happy with how things ended up today as the power on the bike was left in tact for the most part. I caught 6 riders and held off the guy that started behind me, a very strong time trialist (Ryan Trebon) by around the same gap we started with. Oddly enough, the bike is about the most comfortable position I've been in since the wreck. Our team is down to 3 from the starting number of 8, but we aren't the only team to take a substancial beating. What we've done in this race so far has been impressive and I'm very proud to be part of such an organization of tough guys.
Anyways, if you've read this far, way to go... and I'm gonna go down some more calories and try to build back up an aching body before tomorrows amazing tough stage. BTW, results of stage 3 are up here:
http://www.cyclingnews.com/road.php?id=road/2007/may07/mthood07/mthood073
more can be found by selecting the "previous stage" link
Anyways, over and out for today.