Those folks savvy with the internet are saying that someday ebay will be the go-to place for online auctions. Obviously this marks a very exciting time for the internet. I’m going to go out on a limb and simply believe them rather than start a debate.

If you’ve perused this website for more than a single entry or two, you’re probably aware that brain injury is a issue very close to my heart. We’re approaching a decade since Dad’s stroke and there are still daily struggles. Brain injury is not a wound that soon scabs over and then in time heals itself. It’s not repaired by a healthy change of diet or rigorous exercise regime. Recovery from a stroke is an ongoing process that lacks any sort of timeline nor promises of gains made. These struggles are often blind to the outside world, but those who know the patients of brain injuries are often painfully aware of the consequences on any semblance of normalcy ever again.

Thankfully there are incredible groups like the Krempels Center, which is a non-profit organization keenly dedicated to improving the lives of those living with brain injury. Were it not for Dad’s stroke, in all likelihood my family and I would never have come across the Krempels Center. You can only play the cards you’re dealt in life, therefore accepting the situation, adapting with it, and ultimately thriving is a daily message from the Krempels Center. Spreading the word of this remarkable organization is a step in moving forward.

100% of my profits from the absurdly stylish and functional iamnotTedKing line of wares goes directly to the Krempels Center. Additionally, the Krempels King of the Road Challenge, the charity ride that my family and I are instrumentally part of, is a tremendous supporter of the Krempels Center, having raised $60,000 in the inaugural year (…ahem, hope to see you all October 20!).

Once again, there’s a way for you to jump on board, especially if you’re a fan of contemporary cycling. Ever hear of Peter Sagan? The kid just won 5 stages of the Tour of California and is the future of the sport, now. Maybe you know Timmy Duggan? My Liquigas-Cannondale teammate who stormed last week’s US Pro championships and earned himself a spiffy new red, white, and blue national champion’s jersey. Or Vincenzo Nibali? He won the Vuelta once. That’s a pretty big bike race in Spain.

In fact, the entire Liquigas-Cannondale roster for the 2012 Tour of California – those three, myself, Daniel Oss, Alessandro Vanotti, Mauro Da Dalto, and Kristian Koren – all signed this 2012 team jersey and with the generous support of folks at The Pro’s Closet, we will donate 100% of the proceeds to the Krempels Center.

Then when the business end of the race reared it’s head, namely with 25km to go local-CO-guy Timmy, Polish dynamo Sylvester Szmyd, homeboy Ivan Basso, and I got busy and chopped off at 55kph until about 3km to go when it was simple mayhem. From there Oss unleashed his leadout excellence followed by a stage win and – better yet – Daniel saluting his rock and roll dueling hands and massive mouth with complementing tongue hanging out.

Champ(s).

An additional highlight is that Daniel has agreed to come to Ryan T. Kelly’s barbeque-slash-picnic. Ryan, famous for bonking to epic proportion and loving chocolate milk, enjoys bike racing, good food, Excel spreadsheet troubleshooting, vegetarianism with an occasional dose of MEAT, and hosting BBQs. He also slams stems, so Ryan is a worthy bloke in the grand scheme of things.

Sheesh what else? Oh, I finally got my mits on an iamnotTedKing mit. And by “mit” I of course mean hand-worn-crown-slash-helmet-excellence made by CutawayClothing. All the photos of this beauty up to this point have been sent to me. This, however, is alllll miiiiiine:

Unlike the photo above staged for effect, in it’s native environment, the crown unit looks like this:

Here’s the ride itself. Six hours today preceded by five hours and 200km yesterday, I’m fairly smoked. This calls for a rest day tomorrow, wouldntchasay?

A well earned day off tomorrow is all the more convincing with the tornado-like winds raging outside my spacious and accommodating condo now in addition to the snow and rain in the forecast. This week has been absolutely perfect in the weather department. Tomorrow is equally perfect, because I’m due for this day off and don’t feel like riding in my snowpants… again.

So this photo was snapped about 2.5 hours into the ride, after Truckee and just after starting the climb. It goes. And goes and goes and goes. Donner isn’t actually all that high, but it certainly has a downright Giro-feel to it. In fact, most of the climb up, Cam and I were discussing stage 20 of the Giro last year. I think that stage had 20,000 meters of vertical. In the first half of the race. T’was stout.

Now thar’s a snowbank! Sure it’s being compared to a dainty Honda SVU, but the snowbank towers over that Japanese mechanical beauty.

And now looking back east (or south or west or something. Maybe north, I lost my bearings by this point). That’s a beautiful shot, if I do say so myself.

The mountains north of Greenville, SC are spectacular. As are my artistic photography skills.

So as you may have guessed – or perhaps read if you read my tweets and such – I’m down in Greenville for a week of fine weather. Fine is of course a relative term and relative to New England right after Christmas I’d say I made the right decision, since the very day I left, temps were in the low teens and wind gusts were reaching 50mph. As a kid growing up in NH, I wanted to ski and play in the snow all winter long, that sounds great. As a cyclist that’s terrible.

Temperatures here in Greenville mingle in the 30s-60s depending on the time of day and the current weather pattern. Thanks to El Nino or Global Warming or whatever, New England is also undergoing similar weather patterns, coincidentally. But I’m still happy with the decision.

Yesterday was the final day of 2010 and a handful of us ushered in the final day of the year with an awesome ride. There were 10 of us in total (and since someone asked, the pro teams represented include Liquigas-Cannondale, Columbia, BMC, Jelly-Belly and/or Cannondale-CyclocrossWorld CX team depending on the time of year, and Colavita).

Also as I’ve mentioned in 140 characters or less, a near 5.5 hour ride is optimized by a brownie stop at a middle-of-NOWHERE gas station.

The highlight of the previous day’s ride was something of a lowlight, but hilarious to me all the same. We had just pedaled a robust 4 hours and were cruising into town again. We were on a main road, but well off the side as a cyclist rightfully deserves to be. A circa 1998 Chryster minivan procedes to drive up to us, slow down, lower the window, and the driver issued a lengthy and sincere, “BOOOOOOOO” at us! I found it funny as heck so I then let out a mighty cheer. Seriously I think it’s great. If professional baseball, basketball, and football players elicit boos from fans, why shouldn’t cyclists receive the same fanfare? Plus he the fact that he’s slowing down to boo shows he’s at least paying attention to us. Right? Right.

Booooooo! Happy New Year.

…Just not outside of my house.

We’re apparently slated for a pretty wicked Nor’Easter with up to 2 feet of snow expected. I went to bed last night – a merry Christmas December 25th night that is – with the full expectation of waking up to a festive white abyss out the window today. Instead I woke up to dry roads and nary a snowflake in sight. So I took the opportunity to grab an hour on the road bike and then swing through home sweet home to get my brother and then we could meet some other friends for a mountain bike jaunt up Mt. Pawtuckaway as the snow began falling. Yup, and that’s what I did.

Alas, I returned home after the road hour and found Robbie still fast asleep (…in his defense it was not yet 9am. AAaaand yes, I’m still suffering a bit of early morning jet-lag). Furthermore, it was also a brisk 21 degrees Fahrenheit outside and considerably warmer in his bed at that hour.

Anyway, Robbie wasn’t interested in getting out of bed, spandexing up and onto a bike, so I swapped my road shoes for the mountain variety and set off in search of the Day-After-Christmas-Mountain-Bike-Crew. I arrived with two minutes to spare, but didn’t see anyone nor their cars… nor bikes. Figuring that they aborted – or more accurately, I figured that I picked the incorrect of two parking lots at the base of the mountain – I just headed up Pawtuckaway solo.

It was a very pleasant ride and eventual summit. Here’s a photo atop the legendary summit.

I did eventually run into my mountain biking comrades, but we were traveling in opposite directions and I unfortunately was on something of a time budget that I couldn’t budge from. Namely, come back and hang with the fam. But it was good to pass along post-Christmas salutations and exchange down mitten high fives… or is it a high two?

The way I figure it, it’s cold and harsh New England winter, so there are no roses available to stop and smell. But if you don’t stop and smell the roses, you may as well at least stop and take a picture every now and again.

Life’s an adventure. Remember that.

Alas, I did see a handful of votes for the triple-P and/or non-triple-P, where some folks voted themselves as pumpkin PIE people and/or non-pumpkin PIE people. The question isn’t so much whether you like it’s pie incarnation as the entire gourd-like squash of pumpkin in general. I took the liberty of extrapolating your answer by simply removing the “pie” part of your vote.

I have a busy week ahead of me consisting of training and general attempts at greatness, so I decided that a hearty breakfast of Pumpkin Pie in a Bowl is exactly what the doctor ordered. I opted for the raisins, tons of ground clove, vanilla yogurt, and a small portion of flaxseed meal for extra heartiness.

Wheaties is the breakfast of champions, I’m told. Pumpkin oatmeal is the breakfast of Ted King.

A quick weekend recap: I spent Saturday night at a really nice event for the Marin County Bicycle Coalition. Any sort of advocacy that helps put bikes SAFELY on the road is a worthy cause in my mind! Especially here in CA where there are seemingly more cars on the road than there are grains of sand on the beach. Sheesh, beep beep, eh? So a big thanks to them for an enjoyable Saturday night promoting bikes.

Then Sunday I slayed nearly four awesome hours in, on, and around Mt. Tam. Like I said yesterday, if you have Tam in your backyard – or within a few miles anyway – you’re spoiled. That place is a cyclist’s playground! Then an afternoon in San Fran and home by midnight. Good stuff. Great stuff.

Enough of that waxing poetic stuff! You want sappy? Then go read Family Circus.

In that post, I also happen to allude to the fact that I had fifteen minutes of restfulness before restlessness set in. Let’s delve into a somewhat typical day over the course of the past month. Hold onto your pantaloons my friends, because there’s no rest for the weary!

This particular day was a Thursday and it begins with me spryly leaping out of bed to brew up some coffee. No exaggeration whatsoever, coffee still brings enormous joy to the start of my day. The routine of it all – grinding the beans, deciding and executing the method of brew (French press, standard drip machine, espresso… maybe cutting straight to the chase and eating the beans), impatiently waiting for the good stuff while mindlessly doing something else – yeaap, it’s the routine of making coffee that makes me as happy as anything else. Okay sure, drinking seems to provide me with a buzz as well, but truly there is something wonderfully calming and reassuring in the process of making of the coffee. LOVE.

Now properly en route to caffeination, it’s probably a hair after 7am. Perhaps needless to say, I’m an early riser. While not necessarily into an obsolete taxon used by Carolus Linnaeus and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck for all non-arthropod invertebrate animals per se, the early bird gets the worm.

I’m trying to hone Italian, or maybe learn is a better word, so the next forty five minutes is occupied by keenly studying Rosetta Stone. With my Italian now coming along bene, and while still on the computer I’ll tackle the one to one-hundred emails filling my inbox. Some fun, some back and forth banter, and some downright business related. You can use your imagination and fill in details there.

With the clock ticking towards 9am, it’s time to get some exercise. I’m a new user of the TRX so with a brief joggy mcjog and then some dynamic, plyometric-style movements to funky beats in the garage, I’m feeling strong and nimble in no time!

Despite being merely mid-morning, it’s never too early to be thinking about dinner. It the freakin’ off season after all, so indulging in some fine foods is the only way to go. Tonight’s dinner is pulled pork, which doesn’t take all that much effort, but is a long, low-heat, braising style process that takes some decent foresight. Sugar and spice and everything nice plus one pork butt later, that was in the oven and it’s now time to whip out a two hour ride.

Continuing to ride first-class on the productivity train, my two hour ride includes a swing by the post office and the bank. One delivery, one bank deposit, and about thirty riding minutes later, I then visit the LBS to discuss the impending cyclocross race that will be both excellent and awesome. As it turns out, carbon tubular wheels are a helpful addition to one’s quiver of bicycles especially in a ‘cross race, so very unworthy but quite unbegrudgingly, I accept a pair of carbon wheels and spend the next half hour critiquing the installation technique of said wheels (mind you, I have no installation technique myself, so whatever they’re doing, they’re doing it better than I ever would).

From here, it’s a fifteen minute sprint home followed by an hour on the lawn mower. I’ll remind you of these gems just to assure you that I am both a) safe and b) a prolific lawn mowerer. As any tried and true New Englander knows, autumn is beautiful with it’s majestic swath of colors (yup, I just said that) but it’s also the backbreaking time to rake, pick up, and mulch leaves. I opted for the third of these methods and therefore spent an hour on this particular fine day making a powder out of freshly fallen leaves. This was preceded by some more ’round the house work for Mom and Dad with a solid twenty minutes using the blower to shuttle leaves off the deck, off the patio, and into TO-BE-MOWED territory.

By now it’s lunch time and a quick, delicious, and salad ensues. You might say that a salad isn’t nearly enough, but if you saw the size of the salad, you’d think I’m serving a family of four. Nay, this is for a voracious eater of one, namely me. I also house a can of sardines, which are delicious and bursting with omega fatty acids. Being home and in the kitchen, I’m now able to tend to my pulled pork – which means the laborious three second task of flipping it over – and then head out the door to run more errands. A separate visit to a bike shop, back to the original LBS to pick up my tubies, and a swing through the grocery store. Next I meet a friend at a coffee shop where I briefly consider having a cup of decaf, but then right my ways and have a real cuppacoffee. It’s good to catch up for a bit before it’s time to head home.

With family friends on their way for dinner, I’m asked to make a dessert. Impressively, these friends are coming with the goal of making dinner for us (now that’s service!) so the pulled pork will come out of the oven but continue to steep in its own delicious and spicy juices for dinner tomorrow night. So I whip up the most amazing batch of homemade brownies that I’ve ever eaten with the secret ingredients being dark chocolate chips and about 3/4 teaspoons of cinnamon. Do it. DO IT.

While that’s baking away, I hack out a dozen emails, and then FINALLY have a bit of time to relaaaaaaaax. Nice glass of wine, kick it with the family, hang with these good family friends, and then enjoy an incredible cioppino dinner created by the fam’ friends who began their day in Maine including plucking fresh Maine mussels from within the shallow depths of the Atlantic Ocean. Wow.

And yes, that was complimented by decadent dark chocolate spice brownies.

So there you have it, youarenotTedKings of the world. Welcome to a day in the life of yours truly. Maybe interesting or maybe not, but it goes to show that we cyclists are more than a one-dimensional strictly bike racer type. Or else that idle hands make the Devil’s work, so I may as well stay busy.

However, despite me being downright stupidly busy I managed to concoct something that deserves your attention – BBQ pizza. This took place this evening after mowing the lawn and tackling the rigors of cellular telephone and banking customer support. So once again we’re doing to do a little Tarentino’ing: I’ll tell you the final product and then work backwards to sort out this delicious saga. Final product: grilled BBQ chicken pizza a la Teddy.

So it all started with a homemade crust. Organic, no, but who the heck needs their crust to be organic? Not this guy. I made a batch of this sometime mid afternoon which gave the yeast just enough time to kick into gear and do some rising of ye dough.

Next I took my neighbor’s garden-grown acorn squash, cooked it, and then made it a nice mashed puree. Any sort of root vegetable or squash is deliciously in season now and I had to take advantage of the neighborly vegetation.

We had some organic chicken breast – nothing but the finest – cooked that and gave it a dicing. Mix the chix with diced red onion, some garlic spice, BBQ sauce, pine nuts, and some salt and pepper to taste.

Meanwhile heat up the grill, toss on the crust for about 3 minutes.* When it’s begun to retain it’s shape, give’r a flip and then be ready to act quickly. In lieu of traditional tomato pizza sauce, I used the squash puree as the “sauce” and spread that around with deft maneuvering of the spoon. Next toss around the chicken/onion mixture, and then sprinkle with cheese. I gave it a nice sprinkling of S+P and just a dash of dried basil. Yes, I said dash. And I meant it.

The result was truly breathtaking. “That was the most amazing thing I’ve eaten in a long time!” candidly proclaimed one ravenous eater (…Mom).

I’m not kidding, this was the bomb. Like bomb dot com. I recommend trying this at home every night for the next month. That way you’ll really hone the recipe and then you can have me over to compare and contrast BBQ pizza notes.

Piece… of pizza.

Oh right, I meant peace.

*My crust ended up being a near disaster thanks to its wildly sticky characteristic. So it ended up hitting the grill and then being pulled into the shape of a butterfly. That was entirely accidental. I was going for a circle and ended up with a butterfly. Crud. Thankfully that doesn’t effect the taste.

Early January this year saw me arrive at a cool, windy, and wet golf course alongside the Algarve coast in the western Mediterranean. Team camp commenced bringing in my second year with the Cervelo TestTeam all throughout the circuitous roads mapped across the rolling southern Portuguese hills.

The photo below was out my back porch on an unexpectedly dry morning as the sun peaked over the horizon and glistened the dewy golf course. (I apologize for waxing poetic; I’m just laying down the facts as eloquently as possible.)

Now I find myself nearly nine months later having arrived just hours ago to southern Australia and the UCI World Championships. Racing begins this week with the showcase elite road race next Sunday October 3. I snapped this photo in a dry spell between the bouts of spitting rain. That’s fine, though, since Algarve (as well as life in New England) hardened me up so I’ll do just fine in the potentially tumultuous conditions.

As for the race itself, I think it will be far tougher than the average Joseph McBike is expecting – namely, the course is a bit more undulating and not the pancake flat sprint fest that some had mentioned. Anywho if if it comes to a sprint, it’ll be a small group since the circuits on course features two short, leg searing climbs. Additionally, the weather isn’t the summery Shangri-La that some are expecting. Sure sure, we have good weather forecasted for the latter part of the week, but rain, wind, and cold could also play an important part in the race. Let the games begin!

Let’s now leap back in time, or at least take a gander at the past few weeks. The best word to summarize this time is home. A good follow up is focus. Let’s Tarentino it and figure out why…

Spending time at “home” these past few weeks has been different than what is typical for me. See, in most circumstances given the time of year or time of season, when I’m home in the fine state of New Hampshire I’m usually fully engrossed in any and all activities related to relaxing. Chilling, putting out the vibe,  doing mind-numbingly nuthin‘ come to mind, as well as golf, and slightly more vibe emission. June, for example, had me returning home having just finished the Giro… which just so happens to be a race taxing enough to warrant an easy few weeks of bike-less fun. Similarly, in seasons past, early September marks Tour of Missouri and/or USPro championships, which as a perfectly fitting time to be calling it a season.

Alas, these past three week have been a bit different than the norm as I have happily remained full-gas in regards training and maintaining race season focus. I went to USPro ready for greatness and hoped to continue that form at the World Championships. I had an excellent time in Greenville thanks to hanging out with my former teammate Lucas and being hosted by Craig and Courtney, plus entertained by their hilarious and incredibly hospitable family. I met some great people (this one at the CutawayClothing booth)…

I met a very stylish young cycling fan with a KoS approved King of Style shirt…

I enjoyed the pre-Nationals ride with the Hincapie clothing folks…

I did some bike racing…

Thanks Thomas Woodson for the photo

…and lost some skin with an untimely feedzone incident… That one need not a photo, but suffice it to say that it a) sucked and b) sucked. Thankfully it was a superficial wound(s) and my mind and body were ready to make the trek to Oz where I am now. So now that it’s nearly 10pm and I’m feeling the drowsying effects of jet-lag kick in as I type this, let’s just summarize by saying I’m thrilled to be here this week for the World Championships. Our team is an awesome collection of American cyclists with talents ranging all across the board; we really are in the hunt for greatness.

So with that, goodnight and (and hopefully I don’t wake up at 4:12am). PEACE.

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