Sunday, December 31, 2006

A Merry Christmas

I'm about to finish a period of about 10 days off the bike as I'm on vacation. I'm at my in-laws in Arkansas. It has been really great being here. Spending Christmas here was really different than anything I've experienced before. I'm an only child. My cousins are half my age. Our family is split between East Coast and West Coast. And it is small to begin with.

But the family here is huge. The Reeves side had 19 people at the family get-together. The Bone side was more like 10, which isn't huge I know, but Piero has a great (to say the least) restaurant in downtown Jonesboro and on Christmas Eve many of the staff came over to the house and partied. So that was about 20 people as well. So much life and so much warmth was just what I needed. A great chance to step outside of myself and be part of something bigger.

I hope this turns into a theme for the coming year. I want to successfully integrate into being part of the team. Last year I was mostly just riding for myself after April as our Cat 3 team had kind of a dud-ish year after that. It wasn't really their fault, some had awful travel and others were training but not racing well for some unknown reason. They'll get it together this year I know and produce at least one new cat 2.

In 2007 I'll be part of a group of guys that have skills that are equal to or greater than mine and our best chance will be to work as a unit. I've ridden a few times with Pedro, Mark and Peter and I'm just hanging on out there. Hopefully I can get used to it and stick it out in the races and have some punch left at the end of the race.

So anyway I've had a good rest. I haven't gone crazy at the table. I've gotten in a few workouts. I feel fresh body and soul. I'll be ready to be crazy for the bike once I get back to the land of big GOV. Peace out and go San Diego Chargers!