This past weekend I took part in a number of great events for the Speedways Children’s Charity in Texas.  The SCC is an amazing organization that has spent the past twenty years making sure children live productive lives.  I am just happy to have played a very small part in growing the organization these last two years.

First up was the clay shoot out at Ross Perot’s Circle T Ranch.  Last year I surprised myself and many around me by breaking my fair share of clays.  I am not known for my shooting skills, but I held my own.  This year was no different.  I did end up holding back my strong team, but not by much.  Out of the twenty-five teams of five shooters we came out close to the top of the standings.

The day of shooting was finished off with the Annie Oakley competition.  If you are not familiar with the Annie Oakley format, I am sorry, it would take far too long to explain.  But let’s just say that, not only did I make it to the final round, I actually won the thing outright.  That was until everyone bought there way back in and I was soon out.  But at least the charity made out well!

The rest of the weekend, which is geared around the NASCAR racing, was more of a culinary experience for me.  On Saturday night, Mario Batali, Guy Fieri and Tim love battled it out in the kitchen to raise over $100,000 for the children.  Then the next morning Courtney, her aunt Bobbie and husband Bill and I were lucky enough to have Guy and Mario cook us breakfast in the infield of the Texas Speedway.  An amazing morning all made better by the fact that the children of the Texas SCC chapter were benefiting from it all.

The hours I usually spend riding my bike each day have been put to use in my kitchen the past two weeks.  I am not quite sure how and when I became so fascinated with food and wine, but now I just can’t get enough of it.  Having traveled all over Europe and a few other parts of the world, I have sampled thousands of different foods and wines and developed a pretty diversified palate.  The challenge of recreating those dishes is what I enjoy most about cooking.

Sampling wines from all over the world is also so appealing because it lets me taste and smell the exact place and time that the wine was bottled without even leaving the comfort of my home.  Wine is such a great representation of any place on the earth, giving you a window into the soil, climate, people and their lifestyles’.   If you can mange to master the cuisine of the region, then it is just that much better.  But popping open a cork on a bottle of wine is the much easier and far less time consuming route.

Since I have been missing out on the usual fall Italian races, I have been trying to feel like I am in Italy as much as I can here at home.  This week has been all Italian in the kitchen.  From osso bucco, to the apricot crostata pictured here.

A look at the small separation from the AC joint and the clavicle.

A good shot of the hardware in my shoulder that probably helped stabilize the blow.  I always think it is crazy that I have those screws in there.

I don’t think I have ever experienced the jet lag I am going through at the moment.  Going to Australia was a piece of cake, but coming back has left me a wreck.  Last night I was completely passed out at 1030PM, but I was wide-awake just an hour later.  How is that even possible?

Being home at this point in the year is a luxury for me, even if injured.  I am usually away racing in Italy through mid-October.  Yes, those one-day races are my favorite of the entire season and I hate to miss them, but the past few months have not gone my way on or off the bike and the crash last week was a clear sign to call it a year.

Now I have several months, at least, to enjoy being at home in Greenville and spending time with family and friends.  And I am finally getting my first real break from the bike this year over the next few weeks.  The only activity I will be doing is some rehabilitation on my shoulder at the Steadman Hawkins clinic here in town.

Another edition of the USA Professional Championships is in the books, and I will once again be waiting for another shot at the title in a few months time.  Thankfully, the event is remaining in Greenville for the next two years and is moving to a new time-slot in the month of May.

Greenville once again proved to be a worthy host to the championships.  Each of the past five editions has seen wins from a number of fashions.  From sprints to long solo breakaways, a worthy winner has always been crowned here.  This year’s race was made even more unpredictable with the race radios being banned from the riders.  This added to the confusion, and forced teams to remain together at all times in order to communicate.

Ben King is a very deserving winner after the effort he put in yesterday.  Blazing temperatures wore down on the sluggish field throughout the day.  In the beginning, talk was of how slow and easy the race was.  “Easier than an training ride,” was heard throughout the bunch during the first hour of the race.  After that, there were few left in the race with the energy to do much talking.

It was a strange race, to say the least.  The required effort needed to close the gap to the leaders came far too late in the race.  Since not a single team was willing to take control of the race when it was still within reach, the gap to the leaders skyrocketed without them having to put much effort in.

I leave the race with mixed emotions.  I am happy to have the event in my hometown and proud to have such wonderful fans.  Yet, I am also happy to have the week behind me.  So much stress throughout the week, to just watch the race roll up the road minutes after we started.

If there is one thing that has been made obvious this week, the organization running these two ProTour races in Canada knows exactly how an event should be run.  From the courses to the hotels and transportation, everything has gone perfectly smooth and been top-notch.  The race through the streets of Quebec yesterday was one of the best one-day events I have attended, and this is in its first year.  The crowds were amazing and I feel the riders provided an exciting race.

Quebec is making a big push to host the 2015 World Championships.  The UCI President, Pat Mcquaid, was even on hand to view the course and see how it handled race conditions.  From the riders view, the course might be a little too tight in some sections, and there are a few too many potholes and manhole covers in my opinion.  Plus, adding another five to eight more laps to yesterday’s race and another thirty or so riders would make for a very demanding day on the bike.  Not to mention that the weather in Quebec in early October is questionable at best.

Today the riders and staff are in route to Montreal for the 2^nd race on Sunday.  After an early wakeup call we were all bused to the train station and boarded a chartered train for the 300-kilometer trip.  Like I side, the organization has everything dialed.  Our lives have been made as stress free as possible while here.

This week has seen the arrival, for the first time ever, of the ProTour to North America.  Riders and staff from Europe made the trip across the Atlantic this past Tuesday on a chartered plane from Paris.  A few lucky leaders had the cushy seats of the business class, while the rest were cramped in the back.  Regardless of how they traveled, each is dealing with some serious jetlag at the moment.  Just being around my teammates, I too feel like I traveled from Europe, and I have quickly fallen into the routine of passing out in bed just past 9 o’clock.

The weather in this part of the world at the moment resembles early winter.  Grey skies, passing showers and howling winds are ever present.  With the first race set to take place tomorrow in Quebec City, we are all hoping that the sun is able to push through the cloud-cover.  The course seems to be quite technical and undulating.  And if you threw in some wet conditions the race would be made in a matter of a few laps.

My first impressions of Quebec City so far are all positive.  The city is very beautiful, and is as close to Europe as you can possibly get, maybe too close.  Most locals really believe that this is France, and I have found that they seem to speak even less English than they would even in France.  Quite surprising as I sit in my hotel room watching Al Roker drive a streetcar through New Orleans on the Today Show.

Life is great as I am currently making the Trans-Atlantic journey from Spain to my home in Greenville.  With even more once-in-a-lifetime experiences now behind be, heading home gives me the chance to let it all sink in, as well as recover!  Each block of time I spend over in Europe just seems to go by faster than the last.  It felt as if I never even unpacked this last trip, and in reality I really didn’t.  I guess that just means Girona and Europe in general is starting to feel more like a home to me.

I’d say the highlight, or most surreal moment, of the summer would have to go to the day we started our race in Poland at the gates of Auschwitz. It is impossible to even put into words the presence that the concentration camp carried.  Trying to comprehend what took place on those grounds, I just stood in awe as we waited for our little bike race to begin.  Moments like those are priceless and put everything in my life into perspective in a matter of seconds.

Sitting in the plane now, with my wife digging her nails into my arm each time we hit any section of turbulence, I can’t wait to get home and reconnect with family and friends.  Living in Europe is grand – I love the culture and general lifestyle – but there really is no place like home.

The coming weeks will be blur as I race out the remainder of the season.  The Canadian ProTour races have all of the ingredients to make for exciting one-day races and I am looking forward to taking part in their first editions.  Then, back to Greenville for US Pro.  After that, my work life is a bit up in the air.  I am planning on attending a few events during Interbike out in Las Vegas, with the hope of continuing on to Australia for the World Championships.  Then, on to Italy for the fall one-day events and finally completing my around-the-world trip when I land back in Greenville for the off-season!

Racing in Italy is always something I look forward to.  Even though at the moment I am completely useless – hardly able to get out of my own way – I am still happy to be here.  The hole I dug for myself during the Tour de l’Ain, racing through a sickness, has been deeper than I would have liked.  Having had only one day where I wasn’t racing or traveling in the past month doesn’t seem to be helping matters either.  But here I am in Northern Italy racing, or more accurately starting, some of the hardest one-day races of the year and somehow enjoying it.

Trittico Lombardo (Tre Valli Varesine, Coppa Agostoni and Coppa Bernocchi) and Trofeo Melinda used to be the races where the Italian World Championship team would be selected, back when Worlds were in August.  If you performed well here you would likely be part of the Squadra Azzurra. Now, even though these races play a minor roll in the Worlds selection process, they are still raced as if the rainbow jersey itself was on the line.  After Dan Martin (Garmin-Transitions) won Tre Valli Varesine the other day you would have thought it was the end of Italian cycling if you had glanced at the newspapers the following morning.  Italians are expected to shine here, and dominate these races in their home country.

The following day in Coppa Agostoni, the Italians blew the race apart from kilometer-zero, allowing only thirty-five riders to reach the finish line in Monza.  I was one of the many to hop in the team car in the feed zone, with my race long over before then.  A feeling I would like to soon forget and I hope to put that performance behind me come Saturday during the Trofeo Melinda.

Trofeo Melinda is held in the Trentino region of Northern Italy, and there isn’t a flat road in sight.  Maurizio Fondriest and Gilberto Simoni are from this area if that helps paint a picture of what kind of rider you’d be if raised here.  On our easy spin today we knocked out 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) in the flattest 1.5-hour loop we could find.  The race on Saturday will be more of the same, always going up or down.  Racing through endless fields of apple trees with only tiny hillside villages separating one from the next will make for a beautiful day.  I am just hoping to see more of the race from the bike than from inside the team car behind.

The Tour de l’Ain wrapped up last Saturday and I quickly, and happily, headed back to Spain.  I left l’Ain totally spent having raced over 2,000-kilometers in two weeks with tons of travel and a nagging head cold.  Not the ideal way to come out of such a big block or racing, but I am hoping a few days rest will breath some life into my body.

HTC-Columbia had mixed results during the week.  Coming close to winning two stages with Marco and Alex being caught just a few hundred meters from the line and placing Tejay high in the overall made for a solid week, but also for one of the few stage races in which we didn’t actually win a stage.  I felt worse by the day, and barely hung on to finish out the race.  Racing a week in Poland and then heading straight into another race filled with fresh riders made for a rough experience.  I am hoping my body bounces back in the next days and benefits from the race days.

Tomorrow will bring yet another travel day as I am off to Italy for the rest of the week.  Some very challenging races are in store.  Plenty of mountains are to be climbed and with these races being some of the final ones for the Italians to earn a spot for the upcoming World Championships in Australia they are sure to be fast.