I’m asked what music I like to listen to. I have an extremely eclectic list from Massimo Bubola and Andrea Bocelli to pay homage to my transplant Italian home, Harvey Danger and Herbie Hancock to appease the H’s when scrolling down my playlist, plus Obie Trice, RJD2, and the Wu-Tang Clan just because I like their music. But if I’m picking 10 songs right now, this is what that list will look like. And while you’re jamming out to that list, feel free to read a quick corresponding pre-ToCA Q’n'A.

In unrelated but news from the delicious, I saw this this morning. Which looks amazing and if I weren’t a professional athlete in season, I just might try it out.

…instead we have man eating craters that rival the Grand Canyon that span the middle of the everyday thoroughfares.

My post-Paris-Roubaix/pre-Tour of California self titled Tour of New England is rapidly coming to a close, as I’m off to California tomorrow. It’s a blast for me to have family and friends all throughout the northeast because between weddings, baseball games, bachelor parties, and simply traveling for the sake of seeing close friends whom I would not otherwise see, I’ve been blessed to tackle some riding across the finest section of America – even if that means occasionally catching air at 70kph on a screaming downhill when I hit a frost heave and jet over it’s frightening crevasse.

One of my recent adventures took me into the White Mountains. I started the day in the basking sun of home down south, nearly two hours’ drive from my riding point. Down yonder it was warm and pleasant and I was definitely not expecting anything but a pristine day. So when I stepped out the car and saw my breath I was less than psyched. But I soldiered on and soon warmed up a bit, until I reached the top of the Kanc’ at which point it was snowing on me and I was reaaally unprepared and freezing, I therefore decided that a rapid descent into Lincoln was in order. A $0.99 coffee complete with a splattering of instant cappuccino warmed my soul while a $5 pair of gas station gloves warmed my fingers.

What’s topped even that is that I then began another, separate five-day journey that saw me in the Upper Valley of NH and VT for a pair of days, followed by a blustery day of riding in Burlington, and then off to the most northern and remote town in all of New Hampshire called Pittsburg (nope, no -h at the end). When you’re in Pittsburg, NH you may as well be on the moon except that we still Live, Free, or Die here in the great Granite State. Despite now being in the midst of New England’s well documented turbulent spring weather, I was still not anticipating snow… or maybe I was just not appreciating snow. So when it dumped snow in downright blizzard-like fashion for 18 straight hours, and I woke up Saturday morning to a blank white scene, I was extremely pleased that I still had those $5 gas station gloves safely stored in my car. I doubled up the riding gloves that day and my toasty warm and extremely stylish fingers were all the happier for it.

If you’re curious what the nether reaches of New Hampshire look like, when you haven’t seen a car in hours and there are far more “Brake For Moose” signs than there are moose, then you know you’re practically in Canada, eh, then let this photo above appease you. To one direction you look back south at New Hampshire and you see this wonderfully English and French signage. Bienevue!

And in the other direction you’ll see the fiercely impenetrable and vastly underused New Hampshire–Canadian border patrol.

Which, believe it or not, on the other side of these buildings looks curiously like northern New Hampshire.

Oh, I was concerned that I wasn’t going to see any moose on this adventure to the great white north. On my big ride in Pittsburg I saw one hedgehog or lemur or ferret or something sprint across the road. That was exciting, but I really wanted a moose – the forest’s most awkwardly tall and gangly animal. Then after feeling defeated upon leaving Pittsburg early Sunday morning, I was about an hour south on my way to show Tim a thing or two about how to ride a bike, I saw my elusive moose walking across the road.

No photo because it was too awesome.

And if you’ve made it this far into the post, you deserve something actually worth reading. Please let THIS site satisfy your viewing pleasure.

It was a year ago last week that I returned home from a European spring racing campaign for a little American decompressing RnR before Tour of California and the second half of the year. To put it mildly, it was a challenging spring where I was trying to meddle some lemonade out of tendonitis plagued lemons. In that situation, half the battle is putting on a smile and telling everyone that everything is peachy and that tendonitis and time will heal itself. The other half is convincing yourself that’s the truth.

Planned all through the spring by my good friend and photog to the stars Chris Milliman, I had the perfect slice of welcome home goodness in the form of UVEpic – a hundred mile group ride of which more than 70% is dirt(!) with friends, friends of friends, and “that fast dude with hairy legs from across the state”. The email invitation which begins small, slowly seeps out to riders worthy of an epic with probably 50 or 60 people ultimately get the nod of approval. If the weather is perfect probably a third of those will attend because of family commitments, conflicting race schedules, travel to the nether reaches of New England, and whatever other lame excuse people can spew out. If the weather is junk, however, then maaaaybe ten neoprene and Gore-Tex clad idiot cyclists will show. With sun and temperatures in the 60s all week leading up to last year’s UVEpic, we woke up on ride day to a sloppy sheet of white on the entire Upper Valley of New Hampshire and Vermont in the form of frigid April snow. Crud. We still rode, but our century turned into about fifteen treacherous miles until safety and good sense prevailed when we ended up at the pub. Un-crud.

Fast-forward one year to this past weekend and things are peachy. They’re downright awesome in fact! I’ve had a very successful start of 2012, factoring into wins at Tour of San Luis way back in Argentina in January, followed by wins in Italian races to follow in February, then an excellent Classics run. Riding for a guy like Peter Sagan makes it easier to have such an “excellent” cap to the spring, but lest we forget that it’s riders like me that help make him look so fast and savvy on a bike. You’re welcome Peter.

A few iterations of the UVEpic have spun off over the past year so that we’re now onto version 6.0. Chris meticulously studies the countless roads, dirt roads, fire-roads, and strade marroni (brown roads, as opposed to stradi bianchi) that spider web all throughout the Hanover area. As a friend on the ride yesterday said, “I’ve lived here for ten years and I’m still finding incredible new roads all around me.” Beat that Boulder. Zing.

I had the distinctive and fortuitous pleasure of being back in America when version 6.0 was rolling out this year. Making it to the start was less of a To-Do and more of a Must-Do when I once again found myself home after the European spring classics and before Tour of California. The only stick thrown in the spokes was the 60s, 70s and sun all the week leading up to the UVEpic-6.0 and the contrasting angry lightning bolts and massive rain drop icons on the weather forecast icons. But gosh darn it, when you’re going to ride an epic, you may as well make it an EPIC.

To take the snap out of my step, I rode 99 miles (with just 1% of it on dirt) the day before with the coincidental pleasure of seeing the Dartmouth collegiate bike race with my beloved Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference. I got my start in the sport with collegiate cycling and I shed a tear with nostalgia, seeing the abundant mismatched kit intertwined with the well dressed folk sporting more carbon wheels than were raced in my day, the full white skinsuit with TUFTS hand inscribed on the back, and the jorts (jean shorts) competition taking place post race. UVM won that competition, but they weren’t even trying. (Seriously, collegiate cycling is incredible. I donate a lot of my gently used clothing and equipment to local colleges and those poor, leg shaving co-eds need all the help they can get. You should contact your local college and do the same. Or go marshal a race or coach a team.)

Here’s that 1% of dirt on Saturday’s ride.

I’m honestly having trouble producing the words to describe how awesome Sunday’s UVEpic was. With the lowest point coming early in the form of Chris’s tubulars feeling spitefully jealous by just how bright his shoe covers were and therefore spouting out latex with a messy, foamy cloud, the rest of the ride was the tops.

We had seven hours budgeted from start to finish – which I figured was a ridiculous over estimate – and it turned out to be a hair short. With short punchy climbs the order of the day, more often than not tipping over the 20% gradient line, we quickly and easily (…or not so easily) notched more than 3,500 meters of climbing. By comparison, Liege-Bastogne-Liege which I’ve raced twice and which also took place yesterday is about 50% longer than our ride and has a small sliver more climbing. Again, zing… to the legs.

Jersey pockets are accommodating, but more than seven hours of tough riding requires more fuel than you can cram into a jersey pocket. Moreover, one of the best parts of riding these far reaches of New England are the village center stores, selling anything from red pickled eggs in a three gallon jug (which we avoided) to maple whoopies pies (which I purchased the last one) to the ahem… “white trash mocha cappuccinos” – a heavenly mix of 1/2 coffee and 1/2 instant $0.99 impossibly sweet hot chocolate. These steamy beverages served exclusivity in environmentally hateful containers compliment a mid-ride whoopie pie on a chilly, dank spring day perfectly.

Those aforementioned angry lightning bolts and massive rain drop icons in the weather forecast? We apparently had a ginormous umbrella over our ride the entire days because the few miles of pavement were virtually bone dry, the 70+ miles of dirt were matted down perfectly by rain the night before, and I could count all the mud puddles I saw the entire day on one hand. What’s more, within ten minutes of putting my bike in the car and swiftly shuttling south for a family dinner, the skies opened up and I drove through one of those it-cannot-possibly-rain-any-harder deluges.

I pin on a number and race because I love racing my bike. But rides like yesterday, UVEpic 6.0, one of the top 3 bike rides in my life? THAT is why I ride a bike. Thank you Chris and everyone else who helped make it awesome. I already know that UVEpic 7.0 is in the works and I can’t wait.

Here it is: