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.

I don’t really have much to post here today. Racing at 10 am. The course is pretty good with one pretty steep climb each 20 mile lap, finishing on the top of the climb the 4th time up. I’ve won the race a couple times. Brian has also won it at least once, maybe twice.

I didn’t feel too great riding yesterday, so kind of cut the ride short, only 40 miles. The riding around here is awesome. We rode southwest of Springdale and hardly saw a car the whole ride. It really rolls around here.

I have to say, once again like yesterday, it is amazing the what the distribution of homes are like here. There are mansions, huge horse farms, and then just a little bit down the road, it is nearly a trailer park, but worse. It is like a school bus park, that the people eventually moved out of their school buses and into single wides, but they kept the school buses for extra storage. I saw a place today that there were at least 1 school bus for every two mobile homes. It was amazing.

Like I said above, I didn’t feel too good riding today. I haven’t since Wednesday. Maybe today I’ll be better. You never know until you get going. It is going to be a nice day, so I can’t think of a better way to spend it.

I didn't see anything as cool as this near Fayetteville yesterday. I'd like to see this though.