I’ve been here for only two weeks and I can’t imagine having better time. Since my last update I have raced a mountain bike race, went sightseeing which included a monkey zoo, ridden the track for the first time in my life and have done some of the best training rides in recent memory. Throw in a couple beers and awesome weather and well, life doesn’t get much better.
My first track experience was here at the track in Apeldoorn which just hosted the world champs.

The local MTB race was next …

Team Jamis’ Blake Harlan has taken a 8 week residency program in Holland and checks in from his first week in Europe:
————
I have traveled a lot of places in my young life and the pleasure of meeting new people never gets old. I met Gert and Gerick in Chile this year at Trans Andes Challenge. Eating together, racing together and eating together once more, by the week’s end we had become pretty good friends sharing jokes and making fun of each others quirkiness. Back then in January Gert invited …

Ever tried to solve a “mental puzzler” while at 180 bpm?

With only about 20min left of Stage 4′s TT, Ben’s spare tube came un-taped from his saddle and fell into his cogs on a pedally downhill. In a brilliant piece of skill and ingenuity, the tube looped tightly around the gears, took some chain with it (chain forward of the gears?), and had no exposed ends from which to unravel it. Without a knife, we were sort of baffled with where to start on unraveling the green monster. Maybe a …

We came down to Phoenix just to pedal. Sometimes you go to ride trail, sometimes to “train”, sometimes to climb….for the Phoenix trip its all about pedaling. Be it trail, road, climbing, or goofing off, sometimes you simply need T.O.B….time on the bike.
Jamis’ mtb product manager honch, Sal, is in town and Friday we’ll meet up at South Mountain with the Rock Shox crew and put the GoPro HD to use. Should be good stuff along with the new 2012 RS gear!

7 Days.
The Trans Andes Challenge was only 6, but it took 7 days to recover from. And counting…
Stage racing on a mountain bike is completely un-like road stage racing. Road stage racing is hard, you empty your soul, rest, waste time, then repeat….and that’s the off the bike time!
Nah, just giving the roadies a hard time – I’ve spent my time doing all of the old standby’s – vintage Redlands, Mt. Hood, Volta Rio…you name it. Road stage races have coasting, sitting in, and of course climbs and the gutter …

If you click on them, the Vimeo originals are higher resolution. The new GoPro HD’s are almost like being there.

We’ve been in wifi free zones for the past few days, but this afternoon, Daniel, Marcelo, Hestler, and myself crammed ourselves into a 3 person seater flatbed pickup and drove the 45min from Mantue to Pucon for a chocolate beer and a bit of www.

After winning the first two stages, Ben and I were a bit complacent and didn’t ride as hard as we should have on the 3rd stage – mostly a road climb then a 2-track downhill. Towards the top Ben and I put in a dig but …

Holy smokes. No photos to put up yet, but here’s the Strava.com file which does NO justice to the route. Today was a day to dig deep into the bag of courage. Deep as in scratching the lint out of the bottom of the bag in an attempt to come up with something usable. Of course that’s me speaking…Ben probably has a tale of gentle climbs and relaxing vistas.
Today’s route started with a small climb, then a 1hr climb on soft volcanic gravel with tall grass and a fair amount …

The one thing that I’ve not even tried to wrap my head around is how late the sun is setting here. We’re all sleeping until 9 or 10am, having breakfast at 11am, and next thing you know we’re thinking about dinner but its already 9pm. Not that anything is wrong with that, you know. But in just a day we have to be back in work mode and clip in at 8am.
That’s going to be a rough one if we get any more comfortable.
Better start things off by jumping into …

Wifi is a bit hard to come by, and slow. That’s typically a good thing and welcomed on an adventure trip like this, but bad for uploading photos and video.
With Blake still several hours out, Ben, myself, and the Dutch guys attempted to head out for “an epic ride”. It was epic alright, with every attempt to get off the main road resulting in “fail” since you can’t enter the reserve preservation area without a hired guide. As tempting as it might have been to hire the guide then promptly/accidentally …