Don't Mess with Texas

I'm here in Houston for a multi-day stop over on the way to our next event, the Danskin triathlon in Florida. I have to say that I'm really glad to be in a place where I can sleep in the same bed for more than one night.

I spent a lot of time in this city in a past life, so I was looking forward to hanging out with my friend Paul, visiting some of my favorite restaurants (including the best Thai food I've had anywhere), and going to a couple of independent record shops. I also did the local Thursday ride here from West End Cycles, which is a ride I used to do almost every week. It's a real leg burner since it travels through the heart of downtown and about the first 5 miles are nothing but sprints between traffic lights.

Now to catch you up on Wildflower. Hmm...let's see. I seem to recall "WOW" being said numerous times by us to describe this event. The first WOW probably came when we arrived at the venue to set up and got a look at the size of the transition area. It was massive, and no wonder considering that over the 2 days of events more than 9,000 people would be competing, which caused the second WOW, and many other WOW's after that. The venue itself was pretty far away from any civilization. The town of Paso Robles was probably about 30 miles, but the setting was awesome. Lake San Antonio is pretty big, and has some really nice hills that surround it. Another WOW-inducing fact came when we decided to take a stroll through the other camping areas with Ian from Trek Travel, who we met at the event. Ian had raced the long course, and wound up camping with us after our introduction to him. He had been in overflow camping, and showed us the path to the other camping areas, which was an absolute ocean of people. We were in camping area B, and we made our way to area R. Ian told us that 30,000 people were camped at the venue! That ranks right up there with Tour de France levels. Wow.

For us, the event was a success. We were busy answering lots of questions about the bikes, doing fittings and test rides, and setting up two women who were going to borrow some bikes for racing. Erin has been competing in triathlon for a short while and had a personal best on the Madone she raced. Sue entered Wildflower as part of her preparation for an Ironman. Both were extremely happy with the bikes and have promised to keep us informed about their progress as the season continues. We didn't let anyone test out the Equinox at the event, since we only had one, but we had it on display all weekend and it turned a lot of heads. We'll have the complete size run of Equinox bikes available for test at the Danskin in Florida, so if you've been looking for an aero, triathlon-specific bike, be sure to stop by.

Wildflower also gave us a chance to get some other loose ends sorted in terms of our setup. We weren't even the last ones to get packed up this time! We did have help from the very cool Cam Widoff, who has an impressive resume of triathlon wins, including four Wildflower's. Cam is a pro who rides one of the coolest Project One bikes, a full carbon tri bike painted black with orange flames. To learn more about Cam, have a look at his website www.widoff.com.

I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention our new pal Benny. Benny, like us, is a 'demo guy'. He drives around the western half of the country for Thule and found himself at Wildflower. It's possible that between the three of us, we were the only people who actually just do cycling. Based on that we quickly formed a bond with Benny. We'll be catching up with him while we are in Boulder because, as I've learned recently, apparently everyone lives in Boulder (including Cam Widoff).

I have some pictures from Wildflower that I will be adding to this post as soon as I get them edited, so keep an eye out.

On the way here I saw sheep. If you've read my profile you'll know that I really like sheep. Seeing sheep during the drive always makes me happy. Plus, I think 'sheep' is a cool word to say.

Breakfast tomorrow at this lovely little French cafe across the street. Real French people work there and everything! Great stuff here in Houston.


-Chris