Superweek Day 5.

These numbers are getting confusing, today is day five, but nothing has happened yet, so I'll write about day 4, which was yesterday, my rest day.

After I left my coffee shop here in Brown Deer, I drove into Milwaukee. I just drove around a little, as I'd left my bike at my host house, and couldn't explore as I had in Chicago. I was trying to find a bike shop, had the address, was on the street, and must have driven it 5 times when I decided to park and walk. I found the address, but it was in the middle of a park. I called the phone number I had and the kid said they were located 100 blocks north, and about 10 miles west of where I was. I decided I'd go to a different bike shop that could list their address correctly in the yellow pages.

I found the shop, Crank Daddy's, probably the dumbest name I've heard, and their employees lived up to the name. The first girl didn't know what a tubular tire was, then the boy that helped me, told me straight away that they didn't have Tufo Tubular Tape. Luckily the manager overheard this and cleared things up. They did have the tape, it was about 2 feet from the kid, so I left with everything I needed.

I'm not sure if I mentioned that I flatted about 20 laps into the race the first night in Beverly Hills? Anyway, I did. I was shocked as well to find out that all it takes is a little drywall screw to puncture a tubular.


I really lucked out in that it came out the sidewall about a millimeter from the carbon rim. The was it is, I had to replace the tire, where I could have been replacing a carbon rim. Thanks again Scott. You now have 2 new tires.

Back to shopping yesterday. I spent the next hour trying to find a hardware store to get some acetone. Finally found a Lowes and got my acetone.

I ended up walking around Lowes for probably 45 minutes. I've always known I was pretty simple minded, but only recently have I realized the walking through a home improvement store and test driving drills and hammers is about the best therapy I can find when I get tense.

It's only been a few days since I left Sioux Falls, but I get tired of never knowing where stuff is, then I get frustrated and it just a downward spiral from there. If you ever need anything at a Walgreens or a Family Dollar, you should come to Milwaukee. I drove by at least 3 of each last night, and 5 of those stores were on the same street.

Anyway, enough crabbing. I got to make myself some Lavazza coffee this morning and I finally found a comfy place to hang out with free WiFi. Thanks to Andy Couch for the Panera Bread tip. It turns out I have the couches all to myself, although a friendly Lutheran Pastor sat down with me and traded life stories for about an hour. He was a nice old man, and gave me his card so we can keep in touch.

Tonight is 90k on a 2.3 mile lap. Someone really needs to inform these race promoters about units of measure. They measure all of our race distances in kilometers, which is great, I'm used to riding in kilometers, but then they measure all the courses in miles, talk about average speed in mph, and just make it confusing all around. Sunday night, we raced a 0.9 mile loop. We were supposed to do a 100k crit. They had us do 75 laps. Bear with me here. 0.9 mile loop x 75 laps = 67.5 miles. 67.5 miles x 1km/.62miles = 108.87km. Something doesn't make sense, and I blame their refusal to standardize units of measure. As Uncle Al's brother's bumper sticker was going to say "Honk 10 times if you love the metric system!"

Alright, I'm going to go get ready to race. Thanks for checking in.