Univest.

I went for the experience, and experience I got. Univest is a UCI 1.2 race. I dont know what this means other than you need to have an "international" license to race it, and if you win you get world ranking points, oh and your bike has to be over the UCI limit.

Turner and I jetted out of town getting to Fred's around 9. This gave us enough time to fiddle with our bikes for 2 hours before going to bed. Fred was sure that the Navigators were playing with their bikes at 10:30 in a dark garage.

Saturday, the bike race. 107 miles. A few KOM's, 150 riders etc etc. The start was awesome, the city was shut down, people were everywhere. In the morning, they had a tourist bike ride and apparently 600 people showed up. This is different than showing up in the middle of Lancaster county and the people who live on the course dont even know that there is a bike race going on that day. There were 2 helicopters above the race all day.

We line up. Im in over my head. Navigators, Slipstream, world champion stripes everywhere. The announcer goes, "these are 200 of the best cyclists in the world!" HA. We head off and the attacks start and go. Minturn IS the break for a second, then some more, then more attacks and the move is gone.

Ill spare the blow by blow but give weekend highlights instead.
- LOTS of different languages spoken .. 17 countries there.
- Navigator next to me dropped his chain on a climb (To think that I was embarrassed
doing this at Mingo when I was a cat 4!!!)
- while bummed out that I go dropped, I rode in with a dude from Hungary (who looked very hungry by the way, maybe weighed like 120). Dude flew to the US just for this race. That will be a quiet trip home with the DS ("no food on plane for him!")
- Kids asked for autographs. HA!
- I got my first handoff crom a moving car. It was the Mexican team. The dude held the bottle for like 1 minute while I "grabbed it," then he slingshotted me back to the pack.
- Apparently what the P R O's do is ride through the pack saying "service" while they have like 90 bottles down their jersey. That is how those dudes get through the pack so quickly and get to the front and give their teammates drink.
- Geronimo is truly a very nice person.
- Chasing on through the caravan is totally insane on winding country roads. The caravan was like 30 cars long.
- Raceing a pro crit with your brakes rubbing is not possible and is not a "recognized mishap"
- stubna is tough. Maybe someday he will win the dirty dozen, because that is way more impressive than riding in with the group at Univest.