Here’s a quick check-in from North Carolina.

Eric and I are out here at the Crossroads Cycling Classic for six nights of racing. Our teammate Jeff made the trip too to join the mix in the 8:45pm high-humidity action under the lights of towns around the Charlotte area.

The first couple days have been a tad rough. Eric’s Orbea bicycle got damaged in shipping and the airline's claims department told him that because he didn’t report the damage in the first four hours they weren’t responsible. The four-hour window seems a little unreasonable given that we got in around 9pm and weren’t at our room until around 11pm. We’re not even sure that there would have been anyone available to report the damage to when we actually found it. But apparently waiting until morning to report the damage was the kiss of death for any chance that the airline would take responsibility.

Tuesday morning we had this fine plan to sleep in and get a good rest before the first night of racing. But, alas, apparently there’s another run of McMansions going up next to the house we were staying in and the work started before 7am (that’s 4am West Coast time). The beeping from the dozers going in reverse was bad-enough, but then something started shaking the house—like they were building an intricate maze of underground tunnels. It was like being woken up by the longest 2.3 quake in history. So Tuesday started off earlier and noisier than expected.

And unfortunately the Tuesday night race ended earlier than expected for a couple of us. Racing out here starts mighty fast. It was on from the whistle. And then some dude in front of us took turn one too wide and nearly crashed a bunch of us out.

Crashing would have been the only real hope of staying in the race at that point as we would have been able to get a free lap, but instead we all avoided the mess and got gapped. And that was all it took to be done with race #1. There was no way I was getting back to the pack. Eric and I were done for the night. Jeff hung in there and flew the Clif colors.

Now we’re resting up, doing a bit of computering after eating significant amounts of food at the complimentary hotel breakfast, and thinking up tasty new product ideas like the ‘Candied Shrimp & Mayonnaise Mojo Bar.’

On the bright side of things: Eric’s bike is staying in one piece so far; I haven’t soiled my all white Capo track suit yet; Jeff, as always, is riding like a champ; Eric had some sort of stomach distress and probably lost a few pounds; we’ve seen all sorts of Clif presence at the races (from product to ball caps to bottles); seems like most meals out here somehow include bacon; and the hallway of the hotel we’re in now doesn’t smell half as nasty as the last one. .

We’re hopefully close to shedding our travel-heavy legs and getting a good race under our belts.

We race again in about eight hours.