This week.

No racing this weekend. I didn’t feel like racing at 8 am and then destroying myself on a uphill race with 3000 feet of elevation gain in under an hour. Most races in Colorado for the Pro men start after 3 pm and sometimes closer to 5 or 6 pm, which works very well with my body clock. A few others starts at 8 am- that doesn’t work with my body clock. That’s what time I usually wake up! If I wanted to race that early, I’d be a triathlete!

8 am start time + no prize money = I’d rather just ride.

It was a nice week. I’m still catching up on life after being away, but feeling good and stoked to race in Golden and Boulder next weekend.

It’s been rainy and crazy windy. Not complaining, just saying.

I am keeping this guy in my thoughts and prayers. All we have can be taken from us pretty quickly.

Here are some good memories of rides from this week.

A break at the top of the world:

The man!:

Friday night spin (helmets are for sailors):

Visiting Iowa - April 2008

Another delayed post:

The day of Nick’s passing, I had a previously scheduled trip to Iowa to surprise my Mom for her birthday and spend some time with my Dad, Step-mom, Uncle, Little sis, Step dad and Step brother. I wasn’t sure if I should still go home, but being around family around such a hard time was great.

What did I do in Iowa you ask? Fire a bunch of guns with dad, eat out, relax, drink, watch the Drake Relays in primo seats, surprise my Mom for her birthday, watch movies, eat Tai food, drink coffee and then the weekend was over. It was nice to see everyone!

Here is a photo-dump from my trip, no boring racing pics here of me drooling all over myself.

Disclaimer: The pictures I’m including are a sensational painting of Iowa and my family. Take it all with a grain of salt. We aren’t race car driving, gun toting red necks that live by corn silos …. but that’s totally cool if you are.

Dad firing an AK 47:

Only in Iowa: Racing Limos! I could only dream of riding this stretched Grand Prix on my wedding day (I wonder if it only takes left turns?)

Me: Pretending to be Republican:

Denver has 300 days of sunshine, Iowa has 300 days of gloom (Serious):

Colorado Springs Crit and Magnolia.

The weekend before Nick’s passing, I had the opportunity to race down in Colorado Springs on the Colorado College Campus. Very hard course!

There was a 90 degree hairpin turn, nice downhill followed by a punchy steep hill before the finish. I had a good race, but botched the finish. There were some guys there who will be racing for the US in China for the Olympics, so I was happy to finish and mix it up. I’m pretty sure I was top 20 or so.

Warming up, recognize any jerseys? You’ll see one of them this july in the Tour:

If you look closely, that’s me behind World Cup Track phenom - Taylor Phinney:

The following day, I skipped the road race in the Springs due to a lack of support. On a long road race like that you need some people for water handups and I didn’t have any. Plus, the wind was going to be in sane and I would have had to get a hotel. I opted instead to head up Boulder for some climbing training with Ralph and Kelly. They are both looking good. We rode up 4 mile canyon, then traversed some super secret dirt roads to the climb up Sugarloaf mountain. Then we bombed down that road and climbed Magnolia. It was insanely steep.

My Bros, Ralph and Kelly. Check out the snowy peaks behind:

While I as no spring chicken, I felt remarkably good after during the ride, particularly considering the tough race I had the day before.

After being off the bike for a week, drinking and mourning one of my best friends death, it’s time to pick myself up and use the momentum I had before his death and carry it through the season.

I’m dedicating this season to my fallen friend.

Boehle.

I’ve been a little out of pocket lately. As I was about to leave town last wednesday to surprise my mom back in Iowa for her birthday, I learned that one of best friends died when his small plane went down in an Orange grove.

It’s been surreal loosing one of your best friends and being out of town. I was happy I was with family during this very tough time.

I’m now briefly back in Denver, but leave in a few hours for Scottsdale, where 100’s of Nick’s friends will lay him to rest. Most of my friends were all close friends with Nick and we all have a long history. Aside from being friends since we were 18, Nick and I lived together for 2 years in our final years of college.

While Nick was a great pilot himself, his pilot was flying the plane and they were en route to Southern California where Nick was set to expand his very successful businesses.

Read about the crash here

While I am still filled with sadness and pain, I’m comforted knowing Nick died doing what he loved. He also achieved and experienced more in 27 years than most of us will achieve in our whole lives.

I’ve never met anyone that lived life with more vigor, happiness and joy. His drive was unparalleled and he never failed to inspire his friends to chase their dreams and live their life to the fullest. I’ll miss his generous and animated personality that always put a smile on my face.

At 27 Nick was a raging self-made success. He starting several thriving businesses and enjoyed taking to the skies on a regular basis in his beloved planes. In his off time, he traveled the world extensively, surfed Indonesia, Snowboarded the best powder, wakeboarded, raced cars, motorcycles and enjoyed skydiving. Nick could even shred one of his many vintage guitars with the best of em’.

I’ll leave everyone with some links to his Nick Boehle’s online obituary. It’s amazing how many people have left comments.

His Online Guestbook

Here are some pictures of Nick and I that bring a smile to my face.

Keep Nick, Lisa and Brad’s family in friends in your thoughts. They were are bright young people.

Nick - I’ll never forget you brother

I love you, Garrett

Lookout photoshoot

Last weekend my friend Scotty Quinn and I went up to Lookout for a test photoshoot. He has a great eye and had some high dollar lighting rented for a shoot he had later in the week, so we spent an hour on the mountain having some fun.

Eventually, I think we’d like to have some images we could sell for stock, but these probably won’t be it. We learned we will probably need the right lighting on the truck and a nice sunset to achieve the desired dramatic effect. It was just way too bright even at 9 am.

The second round should garner some pretty awesome shots.

Most of the time I was on one hairpin and I would ride up and down over and over while he ran around like crazy trying to get the right angle. For the last shots, I held onto his truck and he drove us up to the top and then he set up shop in the back of his truck with a high power stobe flash attached to it. He had someone else driving. We then went down the whole decent with me 5 feet off the bumper at various angles.

It was fun stuff. Here are just a few of the shots.

Driving on 6th avenue

Ok, I have a quick story to share.

So tonight around 5:15, I’m driving home on 6th avenue toward downtown Denver for my daily race to get on my bike after work.

I pass a lowered white sedan, I happened to look over right as I passed. I was going, oh - 70 ish, this guy was going 50 ish. In that split second as I passed him and looked over, the guy in the car looked right at me.

Pretty strange timing right? It gets better. He was wearing what looked to be giant Bose noise canceling, over the ear headphones and he blew a giant cloud of smoke out of his mouth. What I saw in his right hand just completed the package … a big ass blunt presumably full of weed. Unreal.

Nothing like hotboxing your car during rush hour with your favorite beats boomin’ in your ear …. not that I would know.

I imagine if he had a few more friends in the car, this is what was happening an hour later:

Only 15 minutes later I was just as happy as my new friend Cheech as I pedaled toward the sunset

Tokyo Joes Spring Criterium.

After a long week working and squeaking in rides, I had a good weekend of organizing, riding and getting caught up on some work, freelance and relaxation. Did my taxes, which was awesome! Mostly because I’m getting a ton of money back. Very nice since I’m footing most of the bill for racing this year.

Sunday morning, work up and met my buddy who is a photographer for a shoot on Lookout mountain. It was fun, I’ll have a post on the shoot once I get the images.

I went home and relaxed until about 3pm and then headed out to Golden for the crit. The best part about racing in Colorado is nearly every race is 30 minutes away or less and the fields are great. I did a nice hour long warm up heading up highway 40 up the I-70 corridor. The first 10 minutes I felt like hell, but the legs came to life. On the line it was the usual suspects. 70 + of Colorado’s finest.

The big local teams plus Healthnet, Bissel, Toyota-United, Jelly Belly, Slipstream and Team Type 1 had riders. Hell it seemed like whoever wasn’t on the Slipstream Roubaix team was at this crit. Unreal. I’m not going to lie, I was a little intimidating. Plus, I havne’t been going all that well so far this year.

Today would be different.

Half the field was on the sidelines after getting popped halfway through the race, but I was hanging tough. I even made a solid bridge attempt to the break containing Henk Vogels and a few other big dogs. It was the first time I felt like I had some legs this year. It wasn’t all that hard of a race, but it was fast. I screwed the field sprint and ended up like 30 ish out of 40 some finishers, but I was stoked to have a good day on the bike. Hopefully, more of those are on the way this year.

Check out the results. I’m on there twice. Unfortunately, the second image is my actual result. It’s been a slow start, so I’ll take it.

Accidental result:

My actual result:

Tues? Feels like a Thursday.

I’m currently back in the throws of getting the shit kicked out of me at work. The week is still young, but yet it feels old. I actually got excited to watch The Office tonight because it felt so late in the week, but then I realized it was Tuesday. Drat!!!

The Ad/Design world is feast or famine. One month, it’s 50-60 hour weeks, then for three weeks you can’t find anything to do. Guess what happens next? Yep, it all comes back! Don’t get me wrong, being busy is a good thing, particularly with the economy stuggling, but it’s tough racing to leave work so I can ride in daylight only to think about the hours of work I still have left when I get home.

… and I’m done. Bitching that is

So … Whatcha gonna do?

Me? Keep moving forward and enjoy the ride.

More importantly, what would Larry David do?

Best bumper sticker I’ve seen for a long time:

Here are some examples of what Larry David would do … watch and learn my friends, watch and learn:

(offensive language … earmuffs kids!)

Pee sitting down:

Get in that Ass! (great racing advice):

Oredigger Classic

This past weekend was the Oredigger classic. It’s a two day race in Golden, Colorado. Saturday is the individual time trial up lookout mountain and Sunday is the circuit race.

I felt decent on the lookout climb. My goal was to go under 20 minutes, but I was in the 21 minute range instead. Not so bad considering the slow start I’ve had this year. Though the time wasn’t what I wanted, I had some good sensations and I’m looking forward to the mass start race up lookout mountain in May. I’ll go into it with a good amount of confidence knowing I can hang with the leaders.

Saturday afternoon, My friend Lindsey and I went up to Boulder to go on a light hike and show her around. It was a good time and relaxing post race activity. She was in Denver from Chicago checking things out. She dug it and it looks like she’ll be moving out here in the next few months. It will be good having another good friend out here.

Sunday was the circuit race …. it was hard! A very technical fast course with a long climb that seemed to never end. Unfortunately, half of Colorado’s Pros were up in Boulder racing the Koppenberg that was canceled last weekend, so our field was only 25 or so guys. When there are two race federations, they sometimes work against each other. Pretty crazy to think there were two Pro races happening on the same afternoon less than 15 miles apart.

Since I pre-registered for the Oredigger, I was stuck racing in Golden Sunday. I would have preferred the Koppenberg, but I was still excited to race in Golden.

I had a decent race. Couldn’t make the break and suffered to hold on most of the time, but I finished mid- pack. I’m still looking for my official results. It was a good race for me to hone my suffering skills. My legs felt decent and I think I’m at the beginnings of coming around. It was a hard, hard day though.

Check out the photos Lindsey snapped of the race action:

In the pack:

Riding behind Jobi:

Chasing down Hutchinson:

Deep in the pain cave:

Final laps:

Hanging with Lindsey after the race:

Hiking in Boulder:

UPDATE: Koppenberg …. CANCELLED!

Huge bummer.

It was cold, but the snow and rain held and it would have been relatively nice during the race. Since the ACA didn’t update the site until the morning and I check the night before, I was stuck in Boulder in an empty parking lot, ready to race.

Since I made the drive, I decided to hit the mountains solo for some solid training. Sunshine Canyon to Gold Hill. It was beautiful. I wish I would have ridden longer, but I felt like I was on borrowed time with the weather and at any moment the skies would dump snow and/or rain on me. I stayed warm and dry except on the way down. Very therapeutic, meditative ride at tempo pace.

Here is my journey: