Oh, Walla!

Last week, I got to take a road trip from Seattle to Walla Walla to Portland and back. The last few weeks, I've been training pretty well, after quitting my job as a bicycle pizza delivery rider for Snoose Junction in Ballard. The work was fun, and it paid well, but working three 5p-1a delivery shifts on Fri-Sat-Sun isn't the best for training. My schedule had me either delivering pizzas, sleeping, eating, or training. Trouble was, if I got the amount of sleep I wanted, there wasn't enough time for training, and if I got the amount of training I wanted, there wasn't enough time to sleep. Something had to give.

On the plus side, my coworkers have a great sense of justice.

(sux to be Mark Hobson!)

Snoose makes some premium Italian food, and I highly recommend Sunday trivia night at 8:30, MC'd by Sean DeTore of Mixtape kind-of-fame. He is hilarious sober, and even more hilarious when he is running trivia night.

So anyhow, I've been back on the bike, whistling as I rumble around the Snoqualmie Valley, nourished by a steady stream of cupcakes. Just so you know, I party:

(Custom gemstone cupcake from the Royal! It pays to know someone in the cupcake business.)

The cupcakes keep me motivated to ride hard.

So I disembarked for Walla Walla on Wednesday, and quickly realized that the theme of my trip would be: clouds. Exhibit A:

(Seattle being engulfed in clouds)

Once I was through ruining everything by snapping pix in traffic, I made my way eastward. Coming over Manastash ridge (or was it North Umtanum?), I was shrouded in such fog that I could only see about 20 feet ahead. More clouds! Still, it was safe, since my station wagon only goes about 50mph up hills lasting longer than 15 seconds. I took out my camera to snap a shot of the milky void, and by the time I could initiate fake-shutter sound, this is what I saw.

(I already regret using the term 'milky void' in the last paragraph.)

Cloud theme continued in Walla Walla when I went for a little spin out Cottonwood Rd. These clouds look fake.

(Just like Vanilla Sky, except I didn't get to bang Cameron Diaz)

Walla Walla was the business! I pedaled, drank the freshest of coffee, and even got to see David Tupper for a massage before leaving town. David is a physical therapist who sponsors the Whitman cyclists with his expertise and skills, and he has the hands of an angel, if the angel were an RPT. He worked on my back for an hour, and then praised MY generosity when I gave him a ride to a meeting he needed to go to. Here is a stock image of Tupper (l) from 2009 collegiate nats.


Also while in WW, I got to glue my first tubular tire. I had picked up the Hagens Berman TT wheels before I left, only to find that the front tire was coming un-did. So I stopped in for some girl-talk with Thomas Broderick at HSP, and he gave me a pep talk about making tires stick to rims. Now look at it!


What a beaut. In my next post, I'll talk about racing, and how Thomas Broderick's advice and Dave Tupper's massage actually hurt me at the Jack Frost TT this weekend. Suspense!