I’m in sort of a rush this morning, so I have to be short and scattered.  I’m driving down to the Kansas City airport this morning and doing an interview to get approved for a Global Entry TSA pre check thing.  I filled out the outline application and now have to go get photographed and fingerprinted.  This is the first time that I’ve been fingerprinted, so I guess I can forget my future life of crime.  After this I will officially be a “trusted traveller”.

The Dirty Kanza 200 yesterday seems to have turned out brutal.  Wet roads, wind, then heat. Ted King won the event by 40 minutes, but at nearly 12 hours.  Shit.  My team mate Brian Jensen, quit the race, while he was in 2nd.  He was feeling like heat exhaustion was setting in. One year it isn’t hot in Kansas until June, so there was no way to train for it.  I think my brother was out there for nearly 20 hours on a tandem.  I haven’t talked to him, but I’d bet the mechanicals were over a dozen.

After the TSA meeting, I’m driving to the Arts District in Kansas City and doing a criterium.  I raced yesterday, a circuit race at Cliff Drive.  I sucked.  It was a good turnout, something around 60 guys, which is great.  It was a field sprint, up a long hill.  I was somewhere between 10-15 I’d guess.

After the crit, I’m driving home, loading the van up and driving to Breckenridge Colorado.  My friend Stacie, from Louisville, has rented a house and is already out there.  Vincent is there too, but he is racing a MTB in Eagle today, so I don’t know where he is going to be tonight.  I’m not sure if anyone is going with me or not.  Bill was doing support at DK and probably was out there until 3 or 4 am.

Trudi is in France doing the Dauphiné.  It is live this morning here.   Okay, I need to get going.

Keith, Eric and Roger at the finish of 200 miles of gravel. They rode together and all finished in the top 50 in a little over 14 hours. Pretty great considering a World Tour rider only beat them by a little over 2 hours.

The women’s start at the Tour of KC. The houses around the area are magnificent.

Tucker isn’t sure whether he gets to go this morning.

Yesterday, the Kansas gang, plus Karl, heading North to ride MTB trails.  The problem is there is a lot of snow pack above 11,000 feet.  It is June, but it must have snowed here a bunch.  I wasn’t paying much attention to where we were going, but next thing I know, we’re walking through snow.

I am up for an adventure as much as the next guy, but I’ve already done the walk through snow in the high mountain thing much too recently, so I was dragging my feet and casting a dissenting vote on continuing.  I do sometimes learn from experiences.

Anyway, I was out voted so we kept going.  We could ride about 1/2 the time and the then had to dismount and walk in deep snow for a couple minutes.  We were nearly to the top, where there was a trail junction and hopefully more exposed to the direct sunlight, thus no snow.

I finally just said I wasn’t going anymore.  Karl had forged ahead and was out of voice contact.  No one wanted to go fetch him.  He eventually yelled back that it was worse ahead.  So we turned around.

I very rarely turn around on an adventure, but this was the right decision.  It was much quicker going down.  We could ride about 1/2 of what we walked up through because we had beaten down the snow enough to not stop our front wheels.

When we got back to the dirt road, it was started to get super dark and I could hear thunder.  I wasn’t dressed to get wet.  The problem was that there was a 25mph headwind going downhill. I pulled the few miles back to the bike path and then we just took the bike path back.

We stopped and got soup in Breckenridge, which hit the spot.

I’ve been having super headaches every since I got here.  We’re nearly at 10,000 feet and the altitude difference must be the reason.  Whatever the reason, I haven’t been sleeping much. Today we’re riding on the road.  Not sure if we’re headed over to Vail or over Hoosier Pass. Either way, there isn’t enough oxygen here for my current state.

All smiles leaving.

Walking with a bike in the snow is cumbersome.

It got a little deep for Catherine.

Jack, Tucker and Nikola are enjoying the view.