Week of May 21st - Race Week, Birthday and Travelling...

Let me warn you about the following blog entry...It's unedited and full of cussing, ill remarks and just plain bad writing. I wrote this on four different occasions during my trip down to Brazil, during the week there and after the race.

Saturday morning at 5am came quick after a long night of packing. Starbucks was open and I stopped on the way to the airport. I knew that this trip was going to be long and it hasn’t let me down…hence I am writing this in Sao Paulo @ 12:41pm local time…I should have been in Floripa by 9:30am… My BlackBerry contrary to T-Mo website doesn’t work here… Fuck! Where do I begin?

Portland to LA was the first leg of this trip. Upon weighing the borrowed bike case stuffed with my new 100s, the B2 and training wheels it was 80 pounds…shit…time to repack. I got it down to 74 pounds and the very nice lady said TAM takes 70lbs free of charge. International bike checking is free – stoked again! Quick flight and there was a lot of babies and little kids on this flight…I think I used up my good karma in this first leg. Once in LA, it was good people watching. I had a sandwich – turkey, pear and brie – good stuff. I had a bit of worry about my luggage (which is later confirmed) so I asked about checking to see if my bags had made it to this flight (AA) I flew on United to LA and then TAM from Sao Paulo. They couldn’t. Had a cup of Starbucks on the flight.

LA – Miami-Dade as the second leg, second longest. Boeing 777 with an isle seat. Flight was fine, but getting hungry. Stretched a bit in the bulkhead to loosen up. iShuffle songs starting to repeat…bad sign. Got into Miami on time and had less then an hour to get to my AA flight, which (and it starts now…) is on the other side of the airport! Almost got lost trying to navigate without getting out the secured area. The corridors I walked down were super ghetto and it looked like they just cleaned up a flood. Not the best smelling either. I stopped at some Cuban/Puerto Rican/Brazilian café and got a espresso shot, Gatorade and a Cuban sandwich and walked to the gate and onto the already full plane. Found my seat, isle in the middle isle. I also got a neck pillow for the next leg, but didn’t use it.

Miami to Sao Paulo was/still is the longest leg… Isle seat again, and a few hours into the flight, it’s still only 7pm PST. Not tired yet. Watched some more TV and read some of this book I picked up. Billions of missing links, by Geoffery Simmons M.D. (he’s a local author). I thought it was more about evolution and missing links, but rather its about “Intelligent Design.” Not really what I was looking for, but interesting nonetheless. The espresso is SUPER strong down here…the coffee on the plane is also “not your average Starbucks cup of joe.” The book says there are too many very complex living things/relationships between them that evolution can’t explain… I don’t know what to make of it yet, but there are sentences that I think, “So what? Just because we haven’t discovered the missing link between evolutions of an elephant, doesn’t mean that it didn’t evolve from something smaller or bigger…” Anyway.

Alright, the fun begins as we touch down in Brazil. I’m thinking, “Is my bike here” Shit yeah! It made it! Fuck! Where’s my backpack? Fuck, I have to get my backpack, go through customs, check-in, recheck bags and board to Floripa.” Over two hours later…missed connecting flight, no backpack, customs line was really long, get stopped for my bike, didn’t understand that I was bringing everything home that I am bringing, finally let go. I head to the TAM counters – HOLY SHIT it’s a mad house, lines everywhere. I find, quickly, where to get a new ticket. However, the 11:50 flight is full and I get a reservation for the 4:50!!! Can you say nine hours later…in Portuguese? I can’t, but I can say Chinga Dera a whole fucking lot! So, I get over to the “Estrada de Listo” and get on the list for 11:50. She tells me to come back to this window @ 11:20 to see if seats were released. I twitter around for a bit and return @ 11am. The door is closed, there are several others lining up. At 11:20 a lady goes and finds out where they are…apparently we need to go to the actual counter – not the instructions given to us! I make it over there and guess what? No more people are allowed since it’s past 11:20… I argue in futility about the instructions I was given, but doesn’t change anything… At this point I walk about 3 meters away and almost, almost start crying (for the record that’s twice in as many days). I’ve been traveling for over 30 hours by now and I’m pissed to no end. You’re all lucky you didn’t have to witness this. I regroup and check my bike in for the 4:50 flight.

Before blowing up, I was proactive and rented some internet to the tune of 2 Real to get the hotel address so my backpack would show up, sometime this week. Another 6 Real to call the airline and give them the details…I know now that I could have just walked to the baggage claim service and given them the address…cause that’s where I went to actually GET my bag. It came in on the 10:30 flight from Miami. I ran into a bloke from the UK who said that 50% of the time his bags show up on later flights from Miami to Sao Paulo…I think I would find a new hub to go through…

So, now I have checked in my backpack to Floripa…I leave @ 4:50 this afternoon BST. That’s three hours from now!!! Another shot of espresso…yum! Typing fast now! I think I will have a JetStack, JetFrites and PostMix 400ml meal…yeah, that’s right!

Oh snap, forgot the only thing keeping me sane at the moment…chics. There are some of the finest asses in the planet here! Everyone is related to J. Lo and Shakira! It’s awesome.

These are my twitter moments…

There are enormous lines here too…like when you travel on the holidays in the states, it’s all day here, line after line after line…also a reason things take just a BIT longer than normal.

I had an Antarctica beer with two little penguins on the can on the plane. Tasted like Pabst.

There are several little beggers running around asking for change…love saying “no comprende” like they understand me!

What should I be doing about getting a hold of Bill and the group in Floripa to tell them what is happening…pay another 2 Real to get the phone number and then another 10 to call the hotel? I’m sure they are wondering what the fuck is going on… yeah I should go do that.

Then go do my budget…then maybe go through security to the gate…

Oh, and the Gate Monitors are wrong…leading me to believe that I need to be at Gate 9, not Gate 1 like my ticket says…argh!

And, I’m pretty sure that I forgot or lost my watch for the race…wonder if Polar will be at the Expo…loaner watch? Buy a cheapo HR for the race? Go without data?

I’m sitting inhaling diesel fumes…mmmm…benzene.

I finally get to the Venice Beach Hotel. I had a van get me. I was a little worried since the owner, Katja kept saying I’ll see you tomorrow, when I was coming in today. She went to college in the States. Everyone was surprised to see me, since Katja was saying tomorrow to them as well. It’s a nice place, very clean and very loud as everything is tile.

Gant, Brynje and Byron were just coming back from dinner, so I had a few beers with them and crashed for the night.

Monday morning I was up at 9:45 and headed to breakfast. Lots of breads, cheeses and fruit. I squirreled away some food for lunch that afternoon. I built my bike up today as well. Looks like everything made it just fine… Later that afternoon Gant, Bill and I went for run along the course. It goes right past my hotel. We ran to the start about 6k away and got a taste of the super steep hill. It’s steep! A little bit after the run we went swimming, sans wetsuit, the water was a great temperature. There are a couple moored boats off shore we swam to and around. It was very choppy and windy, but fun.

Tuesday morning I was up at 9:45 again…headed to breakfast. We swam shortly after breakfast with wetsuits…it’s been awhile. Same course out and back and forth between the anchored boats. Today was also a ride for about 40k out along the courses only three hills… And wouldn’t you know it…my left crank arm falls off! WTF!!! Can this trip get any worse? Well, yes it can… It must have happened in transit because of the way the bolt was sheared… Unbelievable. I have a couple options, new crank, new crank arm or borrow Byron’s for the race. I’m leaning towards borrowing a crank… The ones at the expo are spendy and 172.5s. Anywayz!

As we head to dinner Tuesday night I start getting some sniffles and by the time I go to bed, my head is pounding, I’m achy, stuffed up, feverish, chills…good times! I was hot/cold/sweating/shivering uncontrollably all night! I was so miserable. I have been under crazy stress ever since I left the states…It’s me time the rest of the trip. I have some Vicks – stuffy head so you can rest medicine that I am taking, so hopefully that will do it.

Birthday morning…not feeling any better. I’m sitting eating breakfast sweating buckets…another girl here has a bag of meds that her flight school doctor gave her. She hooked me up with some drugs for today. I haven’t got worse, but my headache is bad. And now I have a slight cough. We rode to the expo today to get CO2, water bottles, crankset? and other gear we needed. US$10 water bottles!!! Crazy. Nothing good so far.

Gant, Brynje and Bryon went to dinner with me, I was a stick in the mud cause I feel like shit. We had a good quasi-Italian dinner. Brynje had a steak covered with marinara and egg! Looked and tasted really good.

There is a local guy that has friends with bike shops here, so maybe I can get a good deal on a crankset or something…cross your fingers.

I’m getting crazy shivers with are pretty much negating my leg wax by the minute… Also, my legs are very stiff and tired from shaking all day and night – miserable… I just think back to other professional athletes who get sick before big games and come and have the day of their lives…I’m going to have one of those! I’ve never drank so much water and peeing so much in my life!

Thursday we rode a little bit as I am feeling better. Still sweating a bit a night. I can’t remember if I swam today or not, but I sure didn’t run. For dinner we went back to the Cantina Pizzaeria for dinner. I got some seafood pasta that wasn’t all that great. Bryon got the Santa Maria calzone that Gant and I had a couple nights before as a pizza. Fillet Mignon on pizza/calzone is grubbin’!

We picked up our packets today as well. Not much different than past events. I wish we were staying a bit closer to the start, so we didn’t have to ride to get our stuff.

Friday rolls around and we rent a car to head to the Centro to visit Giselle’s clothing store, Coulche or something like that… I ended up getting the car, we got a VW Gol. I think I took today completely off as well. It was fun driving here. People drive crazy, but controlled. Your blinker is a declaration, not a question…you just go. It was fun. It was a quick 30 minutes to the city and we parked in Floripa’s version of Smart park where they give you a card and when you get back, you pay.

We never did find the store, it must have closed. We found a billion other shops, mostly for shoes. There a little trinket shop we stopped at that was full of local artist stuff, some cool, some junk.

I got a massage today as well. Everyone said she was good, but I disagree. It was good and relaxing though.

Tonight was the athlete dinner at the start/finish. They had crazy little status of women and on with an animal and human head in the jaws…weird. They said a bunch of stuff and then translated into English, which we still couldn’t understand…and eat and left.

Saturday rolls around and we are debating on what to do for breakfast race morning. They have yogurt, granola, coffee, fruit, rolls and stuff every morning, so since we can’t find peanut butter, we all settled on the usual. It worked, just ate more of it.

We all rode to drop off our bike and bike/run bags in the afternoon. Our plan was to run the 6k back to the hotel along the ocean, which was nice. This run was the first run since Mondays 75 minutes. It started off pretty rough and was hacking a bit still, but by the end I was feeling okay, not great, but okay. I stayed off the feet the rest of the day.

We had a dinner planned at the hotel with pasta, chicken, meat sauce and vino.

So, it’s a couple days after IM now, I’m Costa Norte with my dad and brother. I was hoping to surf, but it’s not happening, ocean is flat. We walked around town one day and did some shopping as well go back to the Centro Mercado to shop some more. That night we went to a soccer game Avai FC vs. Gremio…it was fun, but got pretty cold, 10 degrees C. We bought an Avai FC scarf to keep warm, but that didn’t help much. The funniest thing about the game was the at half time the referees were escort courted off the field by a dozen riot geared policia, guess they aren’t popular…

The trip home was just as bad as the trip down. I spare you the details, but I missed the connection to Miami from Sau Paulo because of TAM. Spent the night in a hotel in SP and got on the wait list for Dalles/Forth Worth @ 9:50pm. Made that flight, STOKED! The nicest lady at American, by far the nicest and cutest Customer Service rep put me on a direct to PDX from Dalles, STOKED! Anyway, I made it home, two days after I left Floripa...