Sandblasted.

It's cold out. No, really it's not "cold" out, it is just cooler than Tucson was. We have moved ship over to the California coast, for the Sea Otter classic being held this weekend. It is one of the coolest racing events of the season, with one of the most amazing courses to boot. We have a short track race on Saturday, and the classic XC on Sunday. The XC course is going to be two laps of a 29km course, for a total of 58-60km. It is truly a spectacular course, the terrain almost has a "Lord of the Rings" feel to it. We had a easy 13hr drive over here from Tucson and managed to beat our arrival time record from last year, which was 6:30am, we made it here this year at a quarter past midnight!.

Yesterday it was windy out. Emily, Adam and myself were going to ride to the state park beach from our place, seemed easy enough, 21km one way. We got close enough to want to get the heck out of there. The scene at the beach was Sand! Like "The Mummy" kind of sand. A wall of sand blowing at 60km plus per hour made it very painful on any skin that was left exposed. In my case almost everything was pounded by the burly wall of sand wind. I have been in many situations where I have had to deal with crazy wind, blowing snow and deep cold. Example: Meagan and I were forced to descend off of Mount Rainier in one of the worst Summer storms in the Mountains history. I however have never felt like I just got sandblasted before. It was not super cold, nor soaking wet, it was just plain painful. From 100m away there was no way you could see the one thing that was creating the painful wind that we were enduring, the Ocean.

Right, moving on now, I have to wrap up a solid two weeks of training that had happened in Tucson previous to my current location. It was a solid 14 day block with a good mix of good road riding, and stellar Mountain Biking! Toss in a couple "Shoot-Outs", one flat tire, and only 20 minutes of rain over two weeks and you get one very happy athlete. Next week I am pointing the Van due east and head'ner home for the end of the month. Fred is going to be joining me for the glorious 5000km journey across some cool country. There is really so much to see and do in this part of the US, I could spend years exploring the western States and provinces. This is truly a amazing Continent. I have tried to figure out how many times that I have driven across the country? Actually Continent? I have added the trips up and this is going to be my 23rd time driving from either west to east or east to west, across the most exciting thing ever! The Prairies!. Yay super yay!.