update

so the shift key on this computer is really hard to hit, so i'm just not going to bother. i'm sorry for the spotty updates. i was planning to do a bunch of them from the phone, but it doesn't seem to be working. oh well

life on the island is sweet. its really really hot and super humid, but there's ac most everywhere so its not too bad. we were in a hotel for the first two nights as the newsday cycling classic was up in port of spain. best part of the trip so far is the accent. i can't get over how cool people sound here. we were spinning around and little kids would be like: hey biker mon, skillful bika. lemme teach yuh how ride dat ting. amazing. people have been really nice too. i think we"re surviving on the good graces of the promoters and such and we got a nice guy named isham to drive us all over, take us to lunch and then up to the old fort that overlooks all of port of spain and a good part of the island.

second best thing about trinidad is the driving. in a word: insane. you drive on the wrong side of hte road to start with, which has almost killed me a number of times while out spinning. people also dont really follow the traffic laws, they swerve like lunatics and you can just stop in the middle of the road and park whenever you feel like it. its actually somewhat comforting to ride here, because you never take anything for granted. back in the states you never really know if a car is going to follow the letter of the law and yield and all that. here its like a big crit that everyone is always in, and you ride under the assumption that anyone could do anything at any time.

so we had the first race yesterday, and i had no idea what to expect. we'd seen some other foreigners from scotland and the netherlands and also rumors of really strong caribbean riders, like pan-am junior champs and all that. the course went counter-clockwise around king james the 5th park, so if you weren't as lazy as i am you could probably find it on google maps. decent pavement minus the 8 inch deep open rain gutters on the finishing straight.

it turns out hte first race was a one lap sprint. no, not a timed sprint, or a team pursuit, just a suicidal mass start one lap crit. we rolled to the line and got all three of us up front, and then they told us it was the junior race and to go away. so we went to spin a lap and when we came back it turned out they had been lying and we all got stuck in the second row. so our race was pretty much over. lame. daniele made a good effort to get up to the front, but it was a lost cause. turns out track is pretty big down here, and the guys who took off were pretty much gone by the time i turned the first corner. my goal was to keep my skin, so my race was a big success.

so we found some shade to lounge in until the real crit a few hours later. in the meantime that had some other categories as well as a 5k run that must have had a few hundred people. before the run they got everyone into the park and led them in an aerobic workout. some guy, dressed head to toe in spandex, was in the back of a HUGE monster truck with a wireless mic shouting out the moves while reggae remixs of pop songs played full blast. really a site to see!

it was finally time for our race. the team plan was to just take it easy, follow anything that had the three big teams in it and basically save the legs for the stage race. roger, who's directing, said these guys are strong as hell, but not used to stage racing, so that if we could just lay low for the first two days of racing we'd be fresh and ready to crush it during the road races. we all got callups to the line as honored foreign guests. i guess i should mention that the race was a fundraiser for homeless children, and also had a total carnival atmosphere with music blaring, vendor booths and tons of people and kids running around.

right, so callups, then the official comes down and says that she wants to see a clean race, no intentional braking to let teammates get a gap, no pulling other riders and no switching (chopping). great. always a good sing when the official has to specailly mention those things. anyway, after that somewhat frightening intro we were off. the first few laps were pretty fast, with people attacking hard, but nothing really working. i saw the scotish guy that we had riden with get switched in the first few laps and hit the deck hard. great.

i was covering moves from the big three teams and found myself in a break of 7 with 2 foundation riders, one trek, one heatwave and two other guys. we had a decent gap, but people were skipping pulls and the foundation guys were taking turns attacking. i nabbed a four hundred dollar prime (trinidad dollars, damn) by a good margin so i felt good about my odds in the group. then the wheels totally came off and the two foundation guys were up the road together. roger yelled at me to get my ass up there and so i did. the race was only 30 laps of a 1.2 mile course and we had two big teams unrepresented and 15 laps to go. they attacked me once, and i yelled at them to just work together and they could have 2 guys on the podium. so we settled in. roger was great, giving me advice every lap and always yelling that they were chasing hard and that we needed to keep working. we rolled super steady until the very last lap, with me taking long pulls on the tailwind and getting them to hammer into the headwind finishing straight.

on the last lap the bigger guy, joshua, sat on my wheel and wouldn't pull through so i yelled at the other guy to lead it out, which he amazingly did. he drove it up to speed, took us through the last corner and all the way to about 150 before he looked back and started to sprint. i hit it with everything i had, with both calves cramping, but somehow managed to pull ahead of lisbon, stay ahead of joshua and take the win. insane.

something like this cheering crowds, people snapping photgraphs, podium interviews and my first ever trophy in cycling. awesome. just awesome. my boys were back there in the pack shutting everything down and letting the other teams just blow themselves up chasing. they rode an awesome race and i owe a lot to them.

all in all a really fantastic way to start the trip. i'm only hoping we're not totally marked and that we can keep up the good streak.

after the race we ate sandwiches back at the hotel, and then hopped in a car with elijah greene and his nephew to get a ride down to san fernando. craziest car ride i've ever been on. we three were crammed into the back of his subaru something or other while he did 100mph in a 50 zone on the freeway, dodging in and out of traffic, riding no more than 2 feet off the back of other cars and occasionally racing other drivers, all this while frequently looking back to talk with us and make sure we heard him over the blaring reggae. and yes, we went FLYING past at least one cop with his lights on. amazing.

its now pissing rain and we're just crossing our fingers that it lets up a bit before the 7:30 crit that officially starts the tour of san fernando. tomorrow at 7 am is a 1k uphill tt that looks to average like 18%. god help me.

i'll see if i can't get the phone working to send more timely updates and hopefully a few pics.

much love.