It has been a while, a long long long time in fact… but it is in fact true. I got a computer yesterday Wahoo!!! And now I am hanging out in Texas waiting for my oh so late plane to get here so we, being everyone waiting, can head to El Paso.

Now it hasn’t been a long time since I have been in an airport… and when I think I have managed to limit the things I bring with me on the plane I realize there is just no hope.  Then I have to convince the airport security person that everything will fit into two bags as soon as I put all my clothes back on, lotions in my bags, computer back in its bag, everything around my computer back in the same bag, belt on, and shoes on my toes.

I actually wonder what they (being the security peeps, as in people…) would say if someone showed up in their swimsuit and flip flops. It sure would sure make the security line a lot easier. I would do this, but then I wouldn’t have an excuss for all my scattered things on the belt…

So after riding through hail so hard I couldn’t see to warm wonderful weather all while in Bend for a little over a week, I am off to race the Tour of Gila where the oxygen is limited and the moutains are big (yes, I would say mountains not hills) with Emily, Marni, Leah, and Sharon.

Alright so the good news is I have a computer, but the bad new is… Now my camera is MIA (missing in action). So instead of using everyones computer according to message schedule I will have to use my teammates cameras and put pictures up accordingly.

Alright I should head to my gate and make sure it didn’t decide to show up on time and leave. I am sitting by the yogurt stand so I can get one of those first…. yum yum

See you where the oxygen is limited if you are going to be there,

If not, have fun breathing

Cheers,

:)Chrissy

Oh my word, the drummers have finally left and I can’t tell you how excited I am… actually I think a few cymbals were mixed in there too.

Yes in fact this started along with the fever, aching, and just down right sickness what seems like a month ago, but really has been close to two weeks. I can’t even remember the last time I have been this sick… The worst part was the pounding head which felt like everything and I mean everything was going to explode. I am not even joking about this part.

I am in Lucca, Italy right now with the national team, who is off racing all over Europe, while I am hanging out inside mostly on a couch watching a lot of sword fighting, water polo, even pool, and when I am lucky a bike race will be on. Other then that I just sleep and sleep some more, that is now. A week ago at this time I couldn’t even sleep because I felt so bad… This only meant one thing. Phil wasn’t sleeping either. Thank goodness he is here… I am not sure what I would have done without him in a foreign country feeling like eight hippos ran over the top of me…

It has been a crazy couple of weeks… I can’t even remember the last time I went to the hospital and I have visited it two times and been to the Doctor’s once in the last week or so. And let me tell you… Each time has been an adventure. They, being the Doctors, are all super nice but we don’t really understand each other so the visits mostly consist of a lot of finger pointing. Lucky for me they let me use my cell phone in the Italy hospitals so I am able to call Phil (he was gone for all the hospital adventures) to translate.

In fact after the second visit and the pain meds had kicked in I was able to use my skype phone while I waited to get an MRI on my head. I am pretty sure they were worried my brain was so big and powerful (hence the pain), but I might have lost some of the words in translation so can’t be 100% sure that is what they were worried about. Mostly I heard “???? Amercano ?????” , the question marks noting what I did not understand, followed by the one word I did understand, followed by more words I did not understand…

Needless to say without Phil I am not sure what would have come of me. Jim and the girls have been super nice too! Lauren and Carmen adventured with me to the hospital for the first visit. This was very nice considering they were leaving for Belgium the next day…

In fact if you haven’t heard, which I am sure you have, Kristin Armstrong is kicking butt over here. She won a race last weekend and got 2nd in Flanders. Also, Lauren got 6th in the 1.1 race yesterday. Carmen, Alison, Brooke (who had the stomach bug), and Megan have been racing strong too! And Emily, who raced with the girls last weekend, is racing now in France with Melissa I am sure kicking butt.

And before any of this happened…

Phil and I were living in the Fanni castle here in Lucca. In fact I have been looking for the dragon that must live in the castle but have not been able to find him. A touch bummed because it would be great if he could warm up our room on the chilly mornings. However, we have replaced out propane heater with and electrical heater and all is good now… Like him, being the dragon, I would be sleeping right now while it is still raining and a touch chilly out.

On Tuesday I am off to the states to make sure I am all better and get ready for the rest of the season. I am a little bummed, but I know it is something I should really do. So I will be in Bend until I adventure back across the Atlantic to race L’Aude in the middle of May. Then I am back to the US for Philly, Nature Valley, and the Austin Crit. After that I will be back to Europe for some more racing.

Well, now I should go see if more sword fighting is on TV. Living in a castle you never know who you may have to fight off and like I said I haven’t seen any dragon so someones got to be ready.

:)Chrissy

ps… I am all cooped up, but lucky for me in a nice place. We have been staying at the SRM place which has been nice. But I have not really been outside in a long time. Soon though, soon. I am just happy the drummers have departed from my head and I am starting to feel better.

If you are a biker, or actually even a jogger; and for that matter, heck even if you are a driver you already know there are many different types of honks while out yonder eating or not eating gus… (not a human Gus… I guess that gus is a gue)

Although, I can’t say gus or gues, which ever it is, capitalized or not, would be my choice of food in the car… I mean really if I am bonking while driving I mine as well eat something good and use my knees to direct my car… in fact if I could figure out how to do this while riding, I would quit eating gues on the bike…

Which really quickly brings me to my first thought… If I really wanted to spell all my words correctly I would probably use spell check, and then everyone that likes fonicks would be screwed…

In fact, Let me see if I can find this email sent to me…

Dang, I deleted it… but anyways (which is like anyhow… probably also not a word … yet closely related to anyway, but more then one way) if I spelled everything exactly right, then you (being someone) couldn’t write me a note…

which is why most of you probably are as confused as I am at this point and are really wondering the real question… am I in school right now??

So on to more important news…

How can I figure out how to ride my bike with my knees so I could eat way better food on the bike without worrying about a wind gust or in fact one of those turtles (not the animal turtle… the plastic, usually white thing)

(trust me I saw in happen in Azzie (usually not spelled that way) by rider RG… I won’t mention any names, but that is who hit a turtle and hit the deck)…

yep, if she had been using her knees this would have never happened…

So I am still in Santa Rosa where I went golfing with Helen and Bob (who I am staying with) yesterday and almost pulled my tricep trying to hit the ball as hard as I could… and that is when I hit the ball so I am kinda wondering why I am so sore

Well, mainly because it didn’t happen that often… hitting the ball (but fun to go hit the few balls I did hit out yonder into the wild green grass)

That will be my first invention… a bigger ball (easier to hit and see after you hit it) although if you are on a driving rang then if your ball is easier to see you can’t claim that you hit the ball the person next to you hit way down the driving rang, so never mind…

But before any of this, first I was going to talk about honks, but got way off track… really you know what kind of honk you are getting while out biking(usually called cycling), jogging, running, walking, gardening, or driving because it (being the honk) is either followed by a wave of five fingers or one finger making it easy to figure out…

Well, it is time for me to go practice my singing of Happy Birthday for this weekend…

:)risychs

ps…
let me see if I can find my warning at mock speeds from a long time ago, heck it might even be on my bio…

Warning: I am not a state of the art genious… although close. There may in fact be a few spelling and grammar errors (if you sound out most words you can figure out what I am saying (thanks)

Now I am not saying I crossed any dateline like you may be thinking about. Yes it is true, I have a boyfriend so did not go stand in a long line… well not any date lines anyways. However there were many other lines I did find myself standing in. Most often the start line, line. I hate it when you, being me in this case, make one too many circles around the crit course and end up in the very back of the line wondering how many corners it will take traveling at extra mock speed to make it up to the front…

Anyways, after being across the Salty Pacific for two weeks a lot of exciting things happened, the most being the jumping kangaroos.

And in other exiting news that you have already heard about, or may not have yet. Katharine won the sprint jersey, Katheryn Curi-Mattis (Mattie-Curi, not sure which one goes first) won the World Cup, and Kristin Armstrong won the New Zealand race!!! It was awesome…

Not so awesome was the crash that occurred at 30mph/50kmph on one of the days over yander coming into the finish line. Hello, if you run into someones front wheel at mock speeds it will probably cause a big crash and bikes to go flying… All I have to say about that is holy catfish, geeze

But again back to racing and my teammates… On the team leading out for the sprint jersey was Alison, Lauren, Carmen and Brooke. I was usually hanging out in the back cheering them on drinking as many gues that I could so I could make it up the climbs… just kidding on the gues. I was drinking whatever drinks I had in my water bottle and eating gues…

Now I am in Santa Rosa hanging out until my parents come with Mattie…. which I am so excited for And then head over the other salty pond toward Europe where I will get to see Phil, swim and race, hopefully in that order…

For now it is time to go learn an Italian word so when I get there I will be ahead of the game… like they always say. You must always be a head of the game, yep
Cheers,

:)Chrissy

ps… I wonder if it is easier to spell in Italian then English

After flying over the salty gigantic (yes gigantic… the flight was oh so long) ocean we made it here, being the land where the Kangaroos jump wild (maybe run, but I am guessing mostly jump), and ever since have been riding on the left hand side of the road. We being Katharine, Lauren, Alison, Carmen, Christine, Craig, and Andrew are camping in our sweet camp ground houses.

And what a difference a day makes. For one the first day we got here I thought I was going to have to start doing toe exercise because they were so round and plump… oh yes this is true, my shoes were a bit tight or actually really tight. And you know thats what they (being someone says) if your clothes are tight… well, you know what I mean. Anyways, thanks goodness I don’t. But that isn’t what I was really thinking about, I really can’t believe how hot, and when I say hot I mean scorchin’ it was yesterday and how I was wishing I brought my swim goggles with me today.

But in way more exciting news…

Tomorrow the action begins here in the land of Azzie where we will be doing a race against ourselves in the am and a race with others in the afternoon.

But for now…

It is time to go eat some dinner and do the usual pre race stuff… find all my stuff.
:)Chrissy

 Shammie tanning has officially began here in Cali, California. We (being all 13 of us on ValueAct Capital cycling team… Hannah, Taitt, Sharon, Marni, Lara, Katie, Leah, Martina, Courtenay, Nicole, Lisa, John, and Me) have been enjoying the oh so delightful weather here in Healdsburg were the hills are filled with wine. Yeah, I am thinking the same thing… make sure there is one water bottle empty for the spring

I have to say I haven’t found one yet, but most mountains have natural springs so I am hoping one of these hills have a natural wine spring…

Anyways, I officially don’t have a computer still so you must look at Martina’s Blog for pictures and all my other teammates blogs who have been blogging….

We have been riding up and down and around all before the first race of the seaons comes our way, but not my way. Most of the girls are racing the Santa Rosa crit where they will be making right hand turns. This works out great because we have this awesome fountain in the driveway we circle around for seconds even minutes a day…

I, along with Katharine, Alison, Carmen, and Lauren head over the Pacific Ocean toward the land of Azzie where we will be later joined by Brooke.

I will take lots of pictures and as soon as I get a computer in a year or two I will for sure put them up on my blog.

For now it is almost time to eat dinner followed by a pillow fight and a hot tub dip.

Until next time have a good time,

:)Chrissy

ps… I am totally kidding about the pillow fight. We all get a long really well on the team and don’t fight.

pss… we really haven’t been doing a lot of camping. I keep hoping we are going to roast marshmellows and make smores, but the ice cream is a good second

Before I came to the land of a great salty lake where the snow is falling and the daily activity consists of meetings and testing this and that… I was

Doing the usual activities I usually do… waking up, pressing the snooze button eight more times or actually it was more like 4 wishing it was 8, then realizing I have just enough time to ride the trainer before I have to sprint around the house gathering up lunch for work all while wondering where the car keys might be, then peeling (because I like the sound) out of the driveway to drive at mock speeds there, which is REI, and then coming home at less then mock speeds for an exciting night of hanging out…

But this isn’t what I do everyday, well except the exciting hanging out… I mean thank goodness I don’t have to work everyday, let me tell you. But, don’t get me wrong I like working at REI… anyways, other days I actually adventure into the outside where I travel around the streets on my bike

NEWER NEWS…

Well the above update was from about a week ago while I was in the land of the great big salty lake, often called Salt Lake City where Katharine, Carmen, Alison, a lot of Under 23 boys, and myself were elbowing each other for the five trainers or more often then not a seat in one of the three cars traveling to dinner.

Then I was off to one of my best friends weddings, Jill. It was a lot of fun, but let me tell you… My feet just recovered from my walking around in 11 foot heals all day. OK, maybe not 11, but surely 7. Oh, yes and while we were down there we (being Jen, Josh and I) camped in Joshua Tree before waking up at 3:30am to head northward…

Which means i am back in Bend doing my daily activities…  

However, in about a week or so I will be adventuring down to the Southern part of the World, Cali California for our ValueAct training team camp, then over the salty ocean to Auzzie land for racing, then back to Cali California for some state side racin’, and then over the other salty ocean to Euro land for more racing, but even better to see Phil.

So now for the best part…

 Katharine at camp in Salt Lake………………

 Jill in her wedding dress…………………………………….

 Jen and Josh getting there tent ready, while I just put the seats down in the car and slept in there….

 And the full moon right before dark……………

A bunch of pictures of Mattie, some new and some old…Oh yes, and I sould mention Mattie is my parents dog. We definately can’t have a dog traveling all over the globe…  

 and one of my favorite pictures of Italy last June

I still don’t have any new years resolutions, but I figure most people break them by the end of this month so if I wait till the end of it I might make it till next year without breaking it…

alright until next time,

Have fun having fun

:)Chrissy

Howdy and Hello…

While you have been doing a lot of this and that I have really been doing the same thing as you… this and that. Some of that being… working as a cashier at REI which means a lot of punching buttons and folding clothes into bags. Thank goodness most clothes get messed up as they are carrying their bags because I am no expert clothes folder… let me tell you.  AND hopefully I will be a spinning bike class instructor at Bend Bike N Sport here in Bend. I say bike because it is okay with me if you bring your cruzer in and spin on that… in fact I might bring in Jenny’s Tandom Cruzer and see if anyone wants to ride it with me… this is ideal because if you, as in me, get tired a quick lift of the legs lets you, as in me, get some rest and still get where you, as in me, want to go… something I do often while riding it with Phil

Other then that, Phil and I have been playing a lot of tennis, which includes a lot of home runs… not usually counted in tennis, but something we have added to the game since so many of our balls go over the fence.

And in more exciting news…

Mattie… she is one big girl for 9wks and likes to run full gas for about 23.5 hrs of the 24hrs of the day… or it may just seem that way. Here are a few pictures… and only a few because I can’t find the computer adaptor for my camera… where a lot more pictures are… anyways,

Mattie…

She is actually sleeping right now, thank goodness… just kidding she is more fun when she is jumping all over the place. The other day she discovered the sliding glass door at mock speeds… no you cannot run outside when the door is closed. Now she has slobbered all over it so much it doesn’t look clear anymore… I think she did that on purpose so she wouldn’t forget so I don’t want to clean it, in case she forgets.

Then there was halloween where…

 me and Phil as Willma and Fred

 Jenny and Josh as a dog and fire hydrant

AND  all of us

Well, until next time I hope you have fun doing this and that…

:)Chrissy

Another day in the great town of Lucca, and even a better day because I managed to keep both wheels on the ground and Alison was off the front of the race for almost the whole race winning the most aggressive rider!!! She attacked after the first sprint and was solo for a major part, being most of, the race. Very impressive for sure…

Alison is going to send me a picture so I can put it up…

For now, let see… well I have more buddies to hang out with so I am excited about that. Some of the TTers are finito so they can get ready to kick some major butt at Worlds…

Dang, hold on I have to kill this mosquitoe flying around me… sorry any mosquitoe lovers.

okay so as I was saying I have more buddies to hang out with… Amber and Alison are done. And Katheryn is here too. We are watching the end of the Vuelta… They had some super climbs today… 17% at times… wow, and it is raining out so they have to make sure they don’t slip back down the hill… no really you should see the rear wheels slipping. That would suck to have to do it twice…

Sweet I just got pictures…

Alison is in the most aggressive jersey…

here are a couple

one of her and one of everyone (being the others who also get a jersey)…

Cool, I got a few pictures up…

Well, the others (Lauren, Mara, and Brooke) are off racing right now and will be home in a bit… hopefully they are kicking some major butt. For more detailed race results you could visit Brooke’s site… it is www.brookecycling.com or Alison’s site too… it is alipowers.blogspot.coms (yep, no www.)

Geeze… I just wrote about this and that and right when I was all done it(being my master piece) disappeared. I am pretty sure everything was spelled correctly on it too… but I can’t make the same promises for this one…

So what I was saying was that you (in this case me) have to be very careful when taking a hand off your bars over here across the salty seas of the Atlantic. Oh yes this is in fact true… I was just planning on going out with Kristin and Katheryn for a nice ride when all of a sudden a women (not man eating for obvious reasons) eating pot hole grab my front wheel and made me fly over my handle bars…

Yep this is in fact true. I was about to explain and demonstrate how my tank top was fitting… yes, I had a tank top on… and wam bam then next thing I know I am on the ground and I didn’t even get to tell my story. I am pretty sure I hit the only pot hole in a radius of 179km or miles for that matter here in Lucca and managed to end up on the ground. And the real bummer is I don’t get to tan in my tank top…

And you may ask, or my not… why am I training over yonder and not racing. Well the race got confused and thought I was Katheryn (not that I don’t want to be her… I mean she is super fast and all). So after a few mix ups here and there they gave me the boot and so now was focusing on getting a nice tan for Vegas so I look nice when I win millions on the 5cent machines I plan to play…

But yeah, exactly… crap, now I have a bunch of scratches all over my shoulder and elbow. Not to mention my inner thigh is killing me…

Oh well, I must move forward and still win millions.

Now, I wish I could put up pictures, but Kat took our computer home with her. Just kidding, it really isn’t both of ours, but I bet she misses sharing it with me. Thank goodness people are still getting messages everyday so I can do the computer rotations.

Well, now I have to find something cool to do until they (being Lauren, Mara, Brooke, Amber, and Alison) get back from climbing two gigantic mountains or they (being Katheryn and Kristin) get back from their training ride…
Have a good day doing whatever you like doing…

:)Chrissy

ps… so the moral of the story is… don’t try to ride over pot holes that you don’t see coming with only one hand on the bars, unless you are good at it