I drove to Fayetteville yesterday to race the Hell’s Kitchen Road Race, which is tomorrow morning. The Ozarks of Southern Missouri and Northern Arkansas are a great, a very interesting place.
Arkansas is a pretty hard place to get to. It is close to 300 miles from Topeka to Fayetteville and we’re one of the closest places to here. Northwestern Arkansas has grown like crazy because of Walmart being located in Bentonville. They dictate that everyone that they do business with has a corporate headquarters near them. At least that is the rumor. Whatever the reason, the building explosion along I-540 from Missouri to Fayetteville is unreal.
But, when you get just a little off the beaten track here, it is the boonies. Kind of like West Virginia or Appalachia. You can be riding on a smooth, paved road, with million dollar horse farms one minute, and then descend into a hollow, where the road turns to gravel or dirt, and there is a cultish collection of mobile homes and such, with chickens running around and dogs roaming galore. I love it.
Brian is staying up on Mt. Gaylord, in a cabin. Mt. Gaylord is the deciding hard climb on the long day of Joe Martin Stage Race. It is a great place to spy hummingbirds during the summer. There are lots of small cabins and lakes around here. It is the Ozarks.
I think I’m going to ride long today. Easy, but pretty long. I got a little behind because I couldn’t not watch the end of Milan-San Remo. I picked Cancellara before the race, but there wasn’t much he could do in that situation. Gerrans played that finish pretty great and deserves the win. Okay, better get suited up and out.
Bromont and I stopped at a drive-in movie on the way down. Still in use. He is standing on top of a mound, which are in rows, so you car is at an angle to view the screen.
There are lots of empty roads and interesting riding around Fayetteville.
Steve, you had mentioned Chris Horner was standing a lot while climbing at Tirreno. He did an interview with “Bicycling” and told them he had a tendon problem behind his knee.
From Interview,
Horner: I couldn’t sprint. That’s what a lot of people don’t understand. Because of the leg problem, it’s behind the knee, I couldn’t have an upstroke. I couldn’t pull up and I couldn’t sit well. So if you watch the video I’m out of the saddle almost all the time when we’re going uphill because I didn’t have the ability with the left leg to have a back stroke that pulls up. It made it painful to sit in the saddle while we were climbing. I had to do all those climbs out of the saddle. Anywhere there was a bump I was out of the saddle, and I was using the right leg, and that threw the pedal-rhythm stroke off too. Even on long climbs I will normally go 50 percent out of the saddle, but at Tirreno I was going like 80 or 100 percent out of the saddle to protect the knee.
Walmart doesn’t require vendors to have offices in NW Arkansas. When Sam Walton was alive he didn’t want vendors to have offices in Arkansas because he thought it might influence buyers to favor those companies instead of doing what was best for the company. After Sam died, a lot of his rules were ignored. I used to work there and they talk about Sam a lot, but it seems like the company has lost sight of Sam’s vision.