El Sal # 3

Yesterday was hard, hot and hard. It seems to be the standard around these here parts, the heat, the humidity and the lack of sleep due to illness. I was still dealing with the butt pee and we had to ride from the Multi Plaza to Santa Ana, but over the hills and far away first. 140km with butt pee. Nice.

We started out straight down the hill, one of many, out of San Salvador, hit 70 kph and held on for dear life. The locals were all over the place and some of them just didn’t even try and turn, almost running straight into the back of Dolan’s wheel. It’s really true, the generalizations about the Central American riders: no good at turning, descending and crosswinds. It was a harrowing descent to say the least. We somehow all made it to the bottom but there was still a bit more riding to do.

The pack rolled along in its nervousness and we started going up and up on these little rollers that became big rollers and then a climb. The Tecos team from Mexico started putting in attacks, then the Columbians would counter then Andy Randell from Symetrics would trail as many as he could, then it went, right in front of me: the break that would stick. We had just come to the top of this roller and I hesitated, then chased, then sat up. I hesitated and lost out; stuck in the bunch, again. Soon the break had 2 minutes, then 3, then 4. The Columbians chased their balls off with 6 guys at 50kph along the flats, but for nothing. The pack finished 3:30 down on the breakaway group and that was that. Tom B. and I were stuck out in the bunch for the last 40km or so with no water since the team truck was taking care of the other guys. It was a bit of a mess and Tom and I panicked a bit on the radio, but it all worked out in the end. Tom B. had a flat with nothing left to go and came in through no man’s land, finishing with Dave S., who had gotten popped off the climb and rolled in a little bit down on the group. We all survived.

Today was a bitch and a stubborn one at that, one that came at us twice. In the morning: a 28km team time trial and in the afternoon: a 67km road stage. An annoying day, to say the least, complete with long bus transfers, heat and hard riding. We rolled the TTT super mega tempo and just got in under 36 minutes, easy peasy. It would’ve been nice to roll it all titted out, but we had no gear and we didn’t hold 3 guys in the main bunch the day before, so there really wasn’t any point to go harder than we had to. We’d already dropped a couple of spots on team G.C. On the way back from the race, while the rest of us were piled into one of the Tour’s buses, our team truck shit the bed and Noah (our team DS for this race), Tony C., Dave S., and Andrew (the official team photographer) were stuck with a bunch of bikes, wheels and assorted crap as well as one dead diesel engine. Later on Dave would tell me that when Noah pulled the air filter out to tap out some dust an entire ant hill’s worth of dirt came pouring out of it. Nice.

The bus brought us back to the Multi Plaza for lunch, which the team was terrified of- but ate anyway, since we were all capable of eating the ass end of a camel at that point. Rice, chicken, mystery beef, some overcooked pasta and mystery veggies with ham, and some very stale bread.

“Aqua, por favor?” I asked the drink guy.

“Pepsi?” he replied

Aaaaaalrighty then.

We ate it though, and it was what it was: fuel for later.

We bus-jumped back to the hotel, got our kits ready for the road stage, de-prepped our bikes out of aero trim, rode down the extremely bumpy avenue A to the Multi Plaza for stage 2 of the day.

It was hotter than Abu Dahbi, but much greener. It was the same downhill as the previous road stage, only much more frightening, but this time I whistled the whole way down and that seemed to do the trick to get guys out of my way. I wouldn’t say I have no fear of descents, not like the Fowlkes bros., but I hold my own.

Down on the flats it got interesting, guys were all over the place and it was total chaos. The group was swinging left and right at any movement from the front and then a moto decided to stop and the crash started on the right side of the pack, moved left, into the center, then two guys started to rub right in front of me, and BUFF, one guy was sprawled out it the middle of the road and his bike is sliding straight for me. Now, there usually is this slowing of time when you can see you’re going to stack it; my moment lasted for a while. I thought the bike was going to slide past, but then I saw the handlebar stick in the asphalt and swing right at my front wheel. I went left, but then I found the guardrail with my knee. I was pissed as I couldn’t clip out since the bike was stuck in my rings and under my bottom bracket. I finally got it unstuck and tossed it, a la Bjarne Riis, into the road and got myself unstuck from under the guardrail, checked the bike and got back to it. It took a little while, but I was back in the pack eventually and tried to keep it upright for the rest of the stage. There was a hill with 8km to go and that hurt.

I passed a grip of guys, but still finished way down on the leaders. Oh well. Then there was some serious chaos at the bus that was our team car for that today, which had to become a people bus. The natives got real pissed off, we got pissed off, and then we all got on after we unloaded our bikes, got yelled at, got a couple of trucks to carry our gear and then, with tension I could feel up to my ears, we drove back to the hotel. Not so good for international relations, but what can you do? We needed a more aggressive translator.