It's So Hot in Charlotte!! And it Takes So Long to Get There!!!

Photo taken by Natalie Klemko!

Bowlsie here thinks that wrapping this shirt on her head keeps her cool. I think it traps her body heat in and certainly doesn't make her LOOK cool. The debate goes on. What do you think?

Presbyterian Hospital Invitational (Formly known as Bank of America Crit) is a big money crit that attracts all of the big teams and sprinters! We were going and we were bringing Jen McCrae...our "big" sprinter.

My road trip began at 7Am. I dropped Maddie and Zabina off at Blake's then swung back to pick up Anna Milkowski at my house. We drove the BIG van to Kutztown to pick up Kirsten and Davide. The Colavita men followed us in their team car....we had a convey! Having this "convey" made for some laughing and joking around. We stopped a bunch of times before settling on where to actually have lunch...Panera Bread was the winner and Cracker Barrel was the BIG loser! Sorry guys. Those Italian and Spanish racers really love that place...yuck. It took us 13 hours to get to our host house, a beautiful condo right in Charlotte. Our host family, John and Mary, took our entire team and their beautiful family (with awesome grandchildren) out for dinner...all 25 of us! I imediately ordered a nice Belgium beer to recover from the trip.

OK, the race. It was HOT and there was a lot of HOOPLA going on. Rachel, my childhood friend, drove into Charlotte to see her first bike race ever! She was thrown into all the excitement and enjoyed the entire thing. The race was pack full of crashes. I seemed to escape the bad ones but went down in one and was caught up in two more......in these two I chased back on! Take the free lap, I know...somehow I just react and get the hell out of there instead of think and take the free lap. Oh well. Jen took herself out with her water bottle. Strangely her bottle popped out and bounced off another bike and slid right under her back wheel while she cornered. She slid out and lost half her shorts! She took a lap and got right back in there. Jen was able to muscle her way up there and got a very respectable fourth place finish! Tina Pic won, Gina Grain and then Laura VanGilder. I came in still in the money...19th. I was really tired and HOT!

Next day: Jen flew home and the rest of us were off to Hanes Park Criterium. Only a 5k purse, but all the teams from the day before were there. I felt MUCH better in this race even though it was like 100 degrees. I tried all day to get in a break, but nothing stuck. Not even the break with all the top sprinters from the top teams stuck? I lost some positioning in a crash on the last lap and tried to sprint in for some money anyway. I'm still not sure what place I got. I didn't stick around for results and only the top 4 have been posted. Tina won again!

Anna, Kirsten, Gina Grain, and I took off for the LOOONG trip home. We managed to laugh and have fun all the way home in the rain! Even the dead stopped traffic for 90 minutes didn't get us down. Anna just walked around befriending all of the truckers to find out what was up! Back to Panera Bread and 11 hours later we dropped off Gina and Kirsten in Kutztown. What the heck were the Amish girls and boys doing out on their bikes at 1:30AM???? It was kind of creepy. They were out in "gangs." :) Don't they have to get up early and milk cows or something? I had two very strong espressos at Kirsten's and off we went again. I had to be very careful not to hit the Amish on the way out. Anna and I got in around 4AM!!! I'm still trying to recover from the lack of sleep.

The next day Bill stayed home so that we could have a fun day with Maddie. We went to the movies (thought it would be fun, but I could sit and rest too)! We saw UNDERDOG!