Okie Noodling

Lins, Mo and I landed in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Thursday. Lins picked me up from the airport and we headed to our AWESOME-est hosts. I must offer a depiction of the setup"

house #1 Darrell and Melissa with their 2 cutey-est kids Mattie and Mia

house #2 Marilyn and Mike with 5 cats and a SWIMMING POOL

house #1 and house #2 have connecting backyards---so let's just call our host set-up the COMPOUND.

Getting to race all over the country is so amazing--what's even better is the people we get to meet. I have been so fortunate to be treated to incredible hospitality in most of the places I've been...Tulsa has been no exception to that!

(Kimo and Randy: Recognize these guys? Here's me hanging with Bud and Lisa--they were our connection to our awesome hosts and they cheered us on in Friday's race!)

As a town Tulsa is impressive--its not that big but has a lot of art, culture, trendy spots and general interesting goings-on. We are staying in Midtown--a mere few miles from all the races.

And talking about racing, our first race was on Friday Night in the Blue Dome District of Tulsa. Hello trendy fun times!

(Lins and I share a pensive moment before the start)

We had a BIG field, I heard something about 90 starters? Damn that's a lot. I had decent position for the start and just kind of tried to hold that for the 1st part of the race. Tried getting

in some early breaks but nothing stuck. The course was a figure 8 (so tons of turns) and once you got towards the back it was hard to move up. I got swarmed towards the back in the later part of the race and with 5 laps to go just tried to do what I could to move up. Lins and Mo had unfortunately both crashed out of the race earlier. With 3 laps to go I just stuck it out in the wind to try to move up as much as possible. On the last

lap I basically just held onto my not totally ideal position and finished 14th in a big fat field sprint. You can check out the results here at cyclingnews.

(photos courtesy of Mike)

After the race, I reconnoitered with my wounded teammates (both are ok, Mo's bike was pretty messed up) and with our awesome host families and with Bud and Lisa. It was so great to have all these awesome Tulsa-ians there to take care of us! Of course I had a big love fest with Bud about the Randypants--they miss you in Tulsa kid!

I cheered for Wherry for a few laps before going to a nearby pub with Lins for garden burgers. We headed back to the compound and hung out at HH2 with Mike and Marilyn. They have been a ton of fun and very instructional as to the need-to-know things about Oklahoma. For instance, not only did I learn what noodling is, I was informed there are MOVIES on the subject! That rules, where can I get the soundtrack?