El Sal # 4

Thursday, May 04, 2006

Let’s review today, because it was a doozy. First off I should start by saying where we rode to on Wednesday. From a military airbase in San Salvador we rode to San Miguel, which is in the hottest part of the country- hotter than a hotel room at the Indes, or San Salvador at noon. Oh yes, it’s possible to be hotter, like Riyadh, Saudi Arabia hot, and the only reason I know it’s as hot here as it is there is CNN International and my Polar that is showing 45 degrees Celsius while I’m riding. It was 180km of rolling to mostly “flat” roads with the break going right in front of me on one of the rollers just after the start. AAAAAgghh!!! I swear, one of these days when I stop thinking… After that Tecos rode tempo at the front even though they had a guy in the move. Ben Raby from Chicago, but riding for a team out of Guatemala, won the stage and picked up the mountains jersey for his efforts. Not bad for a hot day’s work. We all finished a little after, at dusk, the sun sitting on it’s haunches on the horizon. I think the Champion System team went through about 80 bottles, even after losing a guy. It was hot man, hot!

We got a room at the Tropical Hotel (ironic name, if you ask me) about 2 blocks from the finish of the stage, ate dinner in a huge banquet hall with a hundred of my new best friends and crashed out soon thereafter. Lance and I shared a room and we were asleep in minutes. Good thing too, since we had to do 220 km in the heat of the day tomorrow.

This morning, we woke up and went down to breakfast where they we serving eggs with chopped up ham, pasta, and black bean mash, probably refried. There was warm milk in an urn, but no coffee. For that you had to go down a dark hallway into a corner nook, where there was another urn with coffee, some Styrofoam cups and sugar, but no sticks to stir with. It would make no sense to put that out near breakfast. I ate the eggs I was so hungry, thinking of Marco and Rashaan the whole time. Superweek Salmonella, here I come!! We got ready to race, lubed up with some SPF 30 and headed downstairs for the start. We rode, it got hotter and then the fun started. I’ll just make a list.

1. A little tan dude got run off the road and flattened by a cow.

2. What was flat in the race bible was UP in reality.

3. It was hotter than Copodarco. Honestly Nealy, unfeckingreal hot.

4. A break went, we missed it.

5. Some more of our guys packed it in.

6. I got crashed by one of my teammates while getting water.

7. My STI lever didn’t work.

8. I had to hop on Dolan’s Flyte (bike).

9. I was bleeding.

10. I got sunburned.

11. I got a wrapper stuck in my rear wheel and that was there for 100km.

12. In the last 2km my back finally gave out.

13. I thought about going to a psychic to figure out which one of my ex-girlfriends was sticking needles into my voodoo doll and to somehow get me some better luck.

14. Two cows decided to run along with me and the Commissaries car before making a sudden right turn to get across the road- in front of me. Can you say ‘brake check?’

15. It took one Nick Warren album for the bus transfer (1hr 20min).

16. I tried to take a picture of the green man but my camera is broken.

And now here I am, in our hotel room at the lovely Indes, waiting for Noah and the boys to get the truck here with our bikes so I can decide needs to be done to get my bike working so I can climb up an 18% mountain tomorrow, which is right at the end of 185km and I still haven’t eaten yet.