So my good mate and team mate Danny Vaillancourt has headed back up to Maine! I am pretty sad to see him go, as we have trained and spent time together every day since the start of February. We have had such a great time together, and started a great friendship, so hopefully we will be back in the same place again soon!

I call Dan “Danny the Lion Tamer”, because there was this movie in Australia years ago called The Big Steal, and the parents, when referring to Danny, would say, “Is that Daniel the Lion Tamer, or Daniel our son?” I guess you have to have seen the movie, or even have to be me to find it funny, but for that very reason, that is why Danny is always going to be Danny the Lion Tamer!

Danny the Lion Tamer bacame Danny the Snake Tamer on our last ride together in Athens. Check it out! This snake was on the road so we stopped to throw sticks at it and stuff, when Dan decided to ride up pretty close to it and pick it up…

Well, he didn’t pick it up, but the photo made it look like he was about to!

Now that Summer is creeping in, there have been so many snakes on the roads. I guess i am seeing up near ten on each ride, depending on how many quieter roads i take; the less cars on the road, the more snakes there are, dead and alive… Scary huh! Indiana Jones and I both hate snakes! By the way, Keally and i went to see the new Indiana Jones on Friday.

Here is the Mexican Bakery Thingy we stop at on training rides. It has the best cakes and pastries, and they are only 60 cents each! Perfect for recovery rides, or at the end of a long day, or for any time we pass it! It is so bad ass! This photo was perfect, bacause it meant i got another picture of Danny for the “Farewell Danny” blog post, and also it kind of looks like Jay and Silent Bob, just with bikes included!

Happy Birthday to my beautiful fiancee Keally, who turned 23 on Thursday! Feel free to write birthday comments on this blog… Actually, feel free (that means please write comments!) to make comments of any description!

Keally and I went back to her parents house for a very nice birthday dinner, and her birthday cake was made of cup cakes, to save dirtying dishes like knives and forks. It was a great idea!

Happy Birthday Keally!

There was a storm in Atlanta last week, and i think there was a tornado near Keally’s oldy’s place too. Oldy Dave saved some of the hail that fell on their house, which has supposedly shrunk a lot since it first landed! Whether it has or not doesn’t really matter, i wouldn’t want to get hit by one of these suckers out training!

It might be Keally’s birthday, but i am definitely getting older! Check it out, i am like an old man:

Multi-tasking while sitting in a grandpa chair, complete with a lamp, and, a cup of tea. Yes, that is tea in that mug! Awesome!

Here is a typical Georgia house. For some reason, when you get up to the Georgia mountains, there is a need to collect rusty old cars and things like that. I know this photo doesn’t do this guy’s collection justice, but it is incredible! There must be more than 100 metres of junk in this guy’s front yard. Maybe i might have to film it one time, it is on the way up to where we train in the hills.

So anyway, there’s a bit of an update on some of my happenings. Training for Philly Week is going well. I had a good long day today, and Keally motor paced me too - she is so good at it! I have been training heaps, and have started training with an SRM too. I have Gord Fraser guiding me along, and i am sure that if i am going to set the world on fire, it is because of the new training programs!

I will get out more news later in the week hopefully. I will do some searching for some new blog photos, and find something to report on. It is pretty quiet right now, just a lot of training getting ready for the big races coming up…

The Indianapolis 500 was today, so here is a fact from that:
A long-standing tradition of the Indianapolis 500 is for the victor to drink a bottle of milk immediately after the race. This practice first began in 1936 after Victor Louis Meyer asked for a glass of buttermilk, something his mother had encouraged him to drink on hot days. Afterward it became a ritual as milk companies became sponsors of the race purse and handed a bottle of milk to the winner to promote their product. A sponsorship of currently $10,000 now paid out by the American Dairy Association if the winner swigs the milk in victory lane. Among Indycar drivers, Emerson Fittipaldi is infamous for drinking orange juice instead after his 1993 victory, before he drank the customary milk. Fittipaldi owned citrus farms in Brazil, and wished to promote his industry. He was promptly booed in driver’s introductions the following week by the crowd in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the heart of “America’s Dairyland.”

Also, for a bit of a laugh, click here and then click on “view gallery”. I hope it works, for those who bother to try…