It turned from serenity to chaos yesterday up here at the compound. Kent and Katie Eriksen showed up, then Pat Lemieux rolled in a little bit later, along with his girlfriend, Gwen Jorgensen, plus his dad, and finally Catherine showed up at the River Eatery around 8, during the Packers/Bears game.

It’s hard to stress how important Packers football is in Wisconsin. Especially rural, Wisconsin. So when the Packers play the Bears, the roads are empty.

I’m not going to ride much today. Probably about the same I did yesterday. Just over to the course and then the last 6 miles. Turned out to be a little under 25 miles. I don’t think I can get any fitter in two days, but I sure can get a lot more tired.

I haven’t really been checking into who is coming. So far it is the normal contenders, Brian Matter, Tristan Schouten, Cole House and Co. Cole’s team mate on the road, Mike Olheiser, Competitive Cyclist, who finished 2nd last year, is back. Along with 3rd place finisher Jason McCartney, ex- Radio Shack, now United Healthcare Pro is also back. New to the mix is Matt Busche, current Radio Shack Pro. I haven’t heard antthing about Christian Vande Velde yet, but his family has a place up here somewhere, so it wouldn’t surprise me to see him at the line.

It is funny, but everyone is asking if I get more nervous when the field is better. It is exactly the opposite. I would like to be racing against the best guys in the world every weekend, if I had the opportunity.

One year when the MTB Worlds were in Canada, there was a rumor that a bunch of European road pros were going to come over and race. My friend, Thomas Frishknecht, said something I thought was great. He said that he’d pay for up to 10 airfares of any Pros that wanted to come over. His rational was that he was going to beat them all and that it would just make him look that much better. And that would have been the case for sure.

Today always gets away from me. By the time we ride, clean our bikes, go over to pick up the numbers at Telemark and eat dinner, it is nearly tomorrow already. It is good that Dennis has so much room here for guests, the only problem is tomorrow morning for breakfast. It always takes a bit of a juggling to get everyone out the door tomorrow morning for the 10 am start. It should be fun though.

We stopped at the Rivers Eatery yesterday after the ride to have a beer. Here is Bill, Chap, Deb Wood, and Jeff Bradley.

Here is Dennis making a couple peg board hangers for the Kansas garage.

Here is Gwen making a “strange” oatmeal concoction.

The oatmeal contains – oatmeal obviously, plus walnuts, poached eggs, raisins, honey and almond butter. Yummy?

Here is Gwen on last months cover of Triathlete magazine. She gave Dennis a framed, autographed copy.

Dennis brought out the autographed copy, but……..

Dennis also brought his “cover photo” from Silent Sports.

Okay, T-minus a few hours. I don’t think I’m riding that good, but sometimes I surprise myself. I hope today is one of those times. Whatever the result, it is going to be a good day. I have ridden this course so many times, there is nothing out there that I don’t know.

I did an interview a couple days ago and one of the questions was, “Why do you like the Chequamegon Fat Tire so much?” I answered that one of the main reasons the race attracts my interest is because I do well at it sometimes, even though the course doesn’t suit me. Chequamegon is really a power rider’s course. It is nearly a gravel road race now. I usually need some technical and sketchy sections to separate myself from the guys I race here. But, for some reason, one that I can’t really identify, I sometimes have a bunch of power racing here.

That being said, it is what it is. I wish that Gary would give us number plates that reflected the rider’s place from the previous year. Most everyone here knows me, but I only know a few of the guys that are up in the front group for the first hour.

Honestly, I think there are going to be a lot of riders together at the finish. Lots of the sections that help weed the group down to the “good” guys have now been turned into maintained roads. I would really be surprised if the winning time isn’t less than 2 hours. The course is a little different, especially at the end, but it is essentially the same race. Someone is going to win. I sure hope it is one of the guys that have paid their dues racing their mountain bikes and not one of the guys here to “cherry pick” the race.

Catherine, Gary CrandAll, and Trudi.

Our gang heading out to pre-ride the course.

This is the woman that registered me tonight. She took my license, looked up at me and said, “I guess you’re the one.” Made my day.

I met my old Raleigh team mate, Mark Frise at the expo. His friend from LaCross, Jamie, was doing an expo for the Davis Phinney Foundation.

This is really the brains behind the Fat tire, Trish.

This is Gwen going out for a 12 mile run, after riding with us on MTB bikes. Then she swam 3 ish miles. I think she burned more calories than the rest of us yesterday.