CycloSportif - Oregon Manifest Weekend

The Importance of Recovery

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:02:00-0700

For the Rapha cyclocross roller race on Saturday all of the staff received "King of Pain" stamps on their forearms. It's Monday night and my stamp is faded, but still there. And so is my delirium from the weekend. Last time we blogged, it was two in the morning and Sunday's waffle slinging had yet to begin. Well, it was a slingfest. I woke up a little late, it took a little while to finish loading up, and I was working on little sleep. By the time I got to the Cross Crusade race venue (Villebois down in Wilsonville), everybody was already in full swing. No parking anywhere nearby and the expo area was already closed off. I pulled up as close as I could, jumped out of the truck and started to unload. Luckily, there was an open tent spot very close by. Even more lucky, my good friends Peter and Meredith just happened to see my frantic face and helped me unload and set up. Many thanks and waffles were bestowed upon them! By 9:00 am or so I was fully operational. By 10 am or so, there was a line for waffles. By 2 pm or so, I had sold out. Uh. Wow. My stats:

5 gallons of Belgian waffle batter;
1.5 gallons of vegan waffle batter;
6 jars of Nutella;
1 large jar of peanut butter;
1.3 large jars of marionberry preserves; and
1 bag of miniature marshmallows

All of the above, gone by 2:00 pm. Thanks to all Crusade racers and spectators! When I got home at 5 pm last night I was totally exhausted. And I am still recovering. I just got in some great Reign t-shirts and Opsal Sport t-shirts - both were really popular. I'll have pictures of them up soon. As the weather gets cooler, Castelli's great beanies are also getting some attention. Again, I'll have photos of the new goods as soon as I can.

Two in the morning.

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 01:53:00-0700

It's two in the morning and I just finished making waffle mix (vegan and regular) for tomorrow's race at Villebois. Yes, I'm crazy. I didn't leave the Rapha cross roller race until midnight, so I got started a little late. Too bad if you missed the race - it was awesome. The team costumes were pretty amusing and people really got into it. The beer was very popular, but waffle cravings seemed pretty light. Seems like most people had just come from dinner, or weren't drunk enough or out late enough for the munchies. Most of the crowd had dispersed sometime between 10 and 11. Why was I there until midnight, then? After party. We rocked it out. Great DJ and I just couldn't help myself. I hear a good beat and I must dance. Not the "I'm too cool to dance" stuff, but laying it all out and getting sweaty. Dancing with someone else (who can dance) is nice, but not necessary for me to get my jam on. And then a little staff cyclocross roller race. I didn't know we were going to run the lap after the roller part, so I had cinched down those toe straps nice and tight. I spun it like a clothes dryer comin' in hot and I think I finished first, but then couldn't get my shoes out! I finally did, grabbed the kiddie bike to run my lap, and was pretty nauseated. It's been a while since a gave it up for a true 30-second sprint. Ok, time to sleep for a few hours and let the waffle irons dance in my dreams.

Oregon Manifest and Cross Crusade 2

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 08:45:00-0700

It's Saturday morning, and I'm pretty nervous and excited for the rest of the weekend. Tonight is the Rapha Cyclocross Roller Race, one of the events making up Oregon Manifest. http://rapha.cc/index.php?page=574. It's a celebration of Oregon framebuilders and bike culture. Last night was the opening party at Wieden + Kennedy. It was wall-to-wall hipsters and bike people, with lots of beautiful custom bikes on display each next to a large photo of the responsible artisan. Sorry I didn't take any pictures. Upstairs in the concert hall/amphitheater they were showing some of the films from Filmed by Bike. It was packed. I stayed for a while and chatted with Rick Potestio, one of the founders of the Cross Crusade. He was telling me about a recent trip to Amsterdam - on business! He went to experience and takes notes on the amazing bicycle infrastructure there in order to bring some of those ideas to Portland. One word for that: rad. Anyway, the Oregon Manifest exhibit is all day today, and then I will team up with Rapha and serve Belgian waffles to the raucous crowd cheering and jeering for the cyclocross roller teams. Beer, cyclocross, rollers, Rapha - it should be pretty crazy. I'm thinking that beer is going to ignite some serious waffle cravings. I hope so! I'll finish up around midnight, then clean everything and starting prepping for the full-on CycloSportif tent at the Cross Crusade race on Sunday. http://www.crosscrusade.com/. I will be very tired on Sunday evening. Very, very tired. Too bad this isn't my day job!