BUCKEYES #1!!!

Need I say more?

Sweet Team Car Harm:

My buddy Harm Jansen is the director for Toyota United. A friend of my lady was at one of the stages this past week and took this picture. Sweet car Harm. Even my lady was busting on this one.

I spoke with Harm today, to bust his chops of course. His response: "I am still a better driver in my Prius than Johnathon Vaughters is in his BMW. He was all over the place."

Fantastic.

T of C Buckeye Awards:

Buckeyes are awarded to outstanding play on the football field to members of The Ohio State Football team. I am awarding Buckeyes to the following riders from this year's T of C:

• My first Buckeye is awarded to Ivan Dominguez who won the last stage of Tour of California yesterday in Long Beach. Ivan was a frequent riding companion of mine when I lived in So Cal and it was nice to see him get a win this year at T of C.

• Omer Kem gets my second Buckeye for his frequent television time in the early parts of the Tour. Although he had to pull the pin and DNF during Stage 3, he gave it a go during his 160km break away on Stage 2. Way to go Omer!

• Come to think of it, I am going to give my third Buckeye to the little team that could: Priority Health. For a smaller budget US domestic team, Priority Health showed themselves well during the T of C. In fact, were it not for the officials changing the rules on stage 1 and making the circuits neutral, PH rider Ben Jacques-Mayne would have been in the leader's jersey. Brian Sheedy held the first KOM jersey after the prologue, Omer had his stage 2 exploit, Tim Zirbell was at the top of the leader board for a while during the TT stage and B J-M got into the break in yesterday's final stage.

• My fourth Buckeye has to go to George Hincapie. The dude fell early during Stage 7 and, as it turns out, broke his wrist. He picked himself up, dusted himself off, chased back on and then proceeded to throw his considerable horsepower into the chase that finally brought back Stuart O'Grady's dangerous break away.

Buckeyes are not going out to:

• The officials who changed the rules extending the neutral section of stage 1 out past 3 km to go. Although I can see both sides of why they would do that I have to cry foul on this one.
• The guys driving the motorcycles for the camera crews. I want to know if I am the only one who noticed this, but at numerous times throughout the week I was noticing on OLN's coverage (I will never call it Versus), some pretty sketchy decisions being made by the moto drivers as to where and when they decided to pass the groups. The most glaring example was Sunday's stage when BMC was on the front and a moto came through a gap so small between the bunch and the dividing cones (what's up with that by the way, cones in a UCI race) that they clipped a cone and knocked it over. Fortunately the cone flipped away from the bunch.
  I will give a last Buckeye to the entire Tour of California. Here's hoping this event has some legs and will be around for many years to come!

I have been beating my head against the wall dealing with some morons as of late. Someone forwarded me this quote with the instruction that I should hang it in my office:

"Never argue with an idiot; they'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience."

Fair enough.

PRIORITY!

Priority Health is making its presence known at the T o C. I am not just talking about Omer Kem getting some face time and a shout out from Phil Ligget because he crashed. Read about it here in Velosnooze. Why do I care? Because I was a guest director for them at Cascade last year and got to know Glen Mitchell, Tom "love my mullet" Zirbell and Omer "Phil Ligget knows me now" Kem. They were great guys to work with and we all had a good time, especially when Zirbell scored a stage win. Local boy Morgan Schmitt is also on their roster.

They got shafted yesterday by the race officials who decided to change the rules and extend the 3KM rule out to somewhere just after the start line so local boy Levi "My Wife and I Like Silly Toy Dogs" Leipheimer could wave to all of his hometown fans from the podium. Otherwise Ben Jacques-Maynes would have had the leader's jersey and we could have seen Omer riding tempo on the front just in front of the Discovery Channel train.

How classic would that have been. Keep at Priority!

BUCKEYES!!!!

Football season is over and you thought you were safe from all of the Buckeye hoopla. Wrong my friend. The Ohio State Buckeye Men's Basketball team is ranked #1 in the coach's poll and #2 in the AP Poll.

Go Buckeyes!!!!

IT COULD DEFINITELY BE WORSE

OK, so anyone who has been visiting this site or who knows me knows that I broke my elbow for the second time in 5 months and I have been moaning about it what with the season coming up and all. So I am chained to the trainer for at least 8 weeks and the weather has basically been perfect for riding on the road, blah, blah, blah, woe is me....

Well, as shitty as riding a trainer for 8 weeks is, at least I can ride. There are those worse off than me in bike racing land.

The first is an old acquaintance of mine: Pat Briggs from the Bay area. Pat and I met at Superweek back in 1999 and our paths have kept crossing ever since. Pat was doing the Early Bird Crit, an early season training crit that has been going on for the past 18 years, when he was involved in a crash. Well the result of that crash was that Pat ended up breaking the top of his femur! That's right, the longest, strongest bone in his body....broken. Plus, rumor has it that Pat has no insurance. Ouch. No word on what his recovery time is going to be but I can only imagine it is going to be longer than mine.

Second mention in the "They Have It Worse Than Me" topic is my buddy Jacob Erker who rides for The Symmetrics Cycling Team. It seems that Jake has a knee issue that is keeping him off the bike. He has no idea what is causing the pain in his knee which flairs up every time he tries to go for a ride. At least I know what my problem is....and I can still ride. Add to that the fact that it is actually Jake's job to ride his bike where my need to pedal is only due to some chemical imbalance in my brain.

So, although I am still going to be grouchy (scratch that, I mean grouchier) and generally pissed off that I can't ride outside, I am going to keep reminding myself that at least I can still ride in some form and get my endorphin fix.

My thoughts go to Pat and Jake, hang in there guys.

WHERE IS DICK POUND ON THIS ONE?:

First Waltrip fuel dopes, now Gordon fails his "machine analysis" after winning. Damn and we thought cycling was in turmoil. You think Congress will decide to waste time on NASCAR's cheating phenomenon like they did with baseball? And where is the public outrage on this? Do you think we will see letters to the editor of Rednecks, White Trash and NASCAR from fans telling us they are turned off from their beloved sport as a result of all this cheating similar to the melodramatic ones seen in Velonews following Puerto and last year's TdF? Probably not. I am sure they are all too busy buying their lottery tickets, cases of Keystone and packs of cigarettes (AKA: white trash survival kit) in preparation for the Daytona 500 this weekend.

Interesting:

At least me and my lady (who pointed this out to me) thinks this is interesting.

Google "Seigler Sports", go on...do it. What comes up and in what order?

1. Seigler Sports Website
2. Pruitt's Blog
3. Richard Seigler, linebacker for the best football team in the entire land: The Pittsburgh Steelers
4. My blog.
   Why is Pruitt's blog listed higher than mine when I work for the frickin company?
   More importantly, how awesome is it that there is a Steelers connection?

RIDING IN THE BU

I did some blog surfing last night and stumbled across this post from Neil the editor at Road Magazine. I loved it because it reminded me of my 5 years of posting up at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf at Cross Creek Blvd in the Bu. He was right on with his description of the posing that ensued at the meet place, from the desperate housewives to the "deal makers in the industry". Don't be fooled, we were posing ourselves. It was awesome. The place to see and be seen. Like the time we saw Pamela Anderson come stumbling up with Kid Rock. The best part of us bike geeks posing at the coffee shop in the Bu were the Euros of the group. They ate the sun and the eye candy up. We all did.

Slover, the metrosexual hairdresser mentioned in this post got me on my first team in LA, and he cut my hair. He even drove me home from the Porterville Stage Race in the back of our team van after I broke my leg in a crash. For those reasons he will always get props from me. The gang used to meet up at the Coffee Bean at Cross Creek on Thursday mornings and do Latigo. I used to drop down Malibu Canyon from my place to meet up with the group. It was quite the cast of characters. A virutal island of misfit toys. Latigo is one of the best canyon climbs off of the coast. Our other favorite canyon to do was further up the coast, Mullholland. That's right, of Mullholland Drive fame.

If you ever get a chance to log some miles and some sun in So Cal, do it. Head out from Santa Monica or drop down Malibu or Topanga Canyon from the Valley. Make sure you leave early enough to grab some spro at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf at Cross Creek. The service is terrible and the coffee is only slightly better. But that is not what you are there for. You're there for the sun, the eye candy and the chance to make a spectacle of yourself with all of your bike riding buddies before trying to tear each other's legs off up Latigo, Mullholland or Piuma. It really doesn't get any better than that.

Trust me. Do it.

SEIGLER SPORTS

It's coming to B-town soon.

Stay tuned for details.

Goodbye and Good Riddance to January 2007

I am glad to finally get out of January 2007 and have myself 5 days firmly into February. I hope it is better than January. Why so down on January you might ask?

• Steelers did not make the playoffs
• The Buckeyes got crushed in the National Championship Game against Florida
• I broke my elbow again for the second time in 5 months
• A few things went down at my place of employment that I was definitely not in favor of
  I know, boo hoo, it could have been worse, blah, blah, blah. Well to January 2007 I say, "Good Day". "Good Day, I say!"

SUPER BOWL

I love Super Bowl week. I love it because I love sports cliche and hyperbole, especially when it pertains to football.

"They came to play"

"It's gut check time"

"Down in the trenches Ridell to Ridell"

I love it all. But mostly, I love Super Bowl week because the NFL Network and ESPN replay all of the old NFL Game Films shows about previous Super Bowls. And that always means 4 30min. episodes of the mighty Pittsburgh Steelers of the Seventies. The 4 Champion Teams of 74, 75, 78, and 79.

Terry Bradshaw, Lynn Swann, John Stallworth, Franco Harris, Rocky Blier, Mean Joe, LC, Dwight White, Jack Lambert, Mel Blount, and all of the rest. One more go around of the mightiest dynasties of all time, the 1970's Steelers. I love it.

Operacion Joeto

So, I have felt like crap ever since my operation on Friday. I chalked it up to the 4 hour + operation during which I was face down and under full anesthesia and then the 2 days in the hospital. My surgeon agreed that those things did have a factor but the main reason I had no energy and felt like crap was I had lost a lot of blood during the surgery. So much in fact that my hematocrit had dropped 23 percent from pre to post surgery. 23 percent. I asked him if he had collected my lost blood into bags which were now in refrigeration in his office under my cat's name and that I could collect in July before going to Superweek.

He said "no"and that I should "go eat some red meat". I told him if we were in Spain he would have. Damn it.

THE SIX DOLLAR MAN

That's what I feel like right now. About $6, not $6 million. Although I have enough hardware in me to say otherwise. Make that 6 cents. I feel like crap. I had surgery on my elbow Friday. The good news was the surgeon did not have to re-break the old injury to access the new break. He did have to "pull my tricep away from the joint to do the repair". Just the sound of that made me wince. The after effects are making me wince now. I was in surgery from 3 PM until after 10 PM. They had to operate on me face down which meant I had a chest tube in to breath...and a tube inserted into my manhood. The adhesive they used to fix the chest tube was industrial strength and my skin was not liking it. My chin looks like I am a burn victim with blisters. So add that to how you think I look after 2 days in the hospital. That's right...I look sweet. The morphine drip was good the first 16 hours or so. Now that I am at home I feel like I took the short end of a beating. My rib is really killing me too. Needless to say, this surgery seems to be having more of a negative effect than the last one in August. I feel a lot more banged up and am in no big hurry to get back on the trainer. I want my mommy. Or Dr. Rudy Wells to make me bionic....

THE BREAK

There it is in all it's glory. The hardware is from the previous fix. The new fracture is above it, in the end of the humurus, 4mm across. They might have to re-break the old injury to fix the new. My left tricep will never be the same.

Surgery is scheduled for tomorrow at 3pm at Virgina Mason.

THE VERDICT IS IN

And it's not good, but, it was expected. I need surgery on my elbow, again. I go in this Friday. The end of my humerus that goes into the joint at the elbow has a 4 mm fracture in it. Looks like a plate and lots of screws for the fix. The best/ worst part is that due to the location of the break, there is a very high probability that the surgeon will need to re-break the old repair to access the new break. He might also have to relocate my ulnar nerve. So...the doc says no road riding for at least 12 weeks, so I know from last time that means at least 8-9 weeks. Needless to say, the happy train has left my station with no scheduled stops anytime in the near future.

Thanks for the comments of support (those of you who know my true grouchy demeanor might want to aim those to my lady instead). I can tell you that since the fall and break on Saturday I have yet to miss a day of spinning my legs. It has only been on rollers with a fork mount for 25-30 min. at a time but it's at least something. The last time I only missed 3 days: the day after the break, the day of my surgery and the day after. I will say that I have yet to muster that resolve again for this time but I did just return home with a new toy: a trainer. I have always been a rollers guy and never owned a trainer before (using a fork mount with last break). But even with a super heavy rear wheel and tire, a massive gear and heavy drums, the resistance was ok but not great. So I was able to get my hands on an Elite Fluid Wireless Trainer with watt output. I am curious to see how that is. Maybe it will help to strengthen the motivation because I can tell you, it needs it.

Out.

BROKEN AGAIN

Call me Cadel Evans, except slower. I broke a bone in my elbow again on Saturday. Same elbow as before, different bone. X-rays revealed a break in my humerus near the joint. and no, it's not funny. Needless to say, I am pissed and more than a little depressed. A line from a Smith's song keeps coming back to me: "I wear black on the outside because black is how I feel on the inside."

Especially since I was really looking forward to the spring races and, dare I say it, had really good form that was only going to get better. I think I bruised or cracked a rib also, so the pain in the ass factor is back. Not to mention the expense. I see the surgeon tomorrow and am probably going to have another surgery. Andy from the team said he was putting me on suicide watch. Might not be a bad idea. I don't know if I have the motivation in me to do another 2 months on the trainer. I think all of those chips were cashed in last time.

F*#K!!

IF YOU AIN'T FIRST, YOU'RE LAST(TM) Ricky Bobby, Inc.

NASCAR in Kitsap County?! I say bring it!

BREAKING NEWS: KLODEN WINS 2006 TOUR!?

Details here.