More to the point, all the fun and travel and adventure and excitement and baked goods and beers and copious wine and overall gluttonous living and burning the candle at both ends in order to maximize all things awesome have come to a close. Which is only slightly ironic that I now find myself in Napa for the better part of November – there are nooooo good restaurants nor wine here, right? Right. Good.

We can all agree that over the past month the internet has experienced a noticeable dearth of anything interesting. The fact that I haven’t written on this website in a month exhibits an starkly obviously correlation. So in order to bring you all back up to speed, please allow me to take you along my travels over the past 45′ish days, where we’ll rehash a bit of September and then tackle October before we all jump into November together.

Mid-September brought me to the rugged and pastoral Green Mountain state of Vermont. Which brings up a point of confusion in regards to me. Not that it really matters nor should you care, but let me clear the air and announce here and henceforth that I’m from New Hampshire, still have residence in New Hampshire, attended college in Vermont, have family in Connecticut, visit Massachusetts frequently when am back in New England, and we have a family island house in Maine of which I am the sixth generation to be lucky enough to summer there. (Yes, summer is a verb when you’re a snotty New Englander lucky enough to have a summer house in Maine.) Got it? Again, good.

Vermont brought great weather and some stunning scenery. That will likely be the theme of these past 7+ weeks since I seem to only go to stunningly beautiful places in the offie.

I participated in my requisite “handful” of cross races, which is anything from one to six depending on my level off off-season vigor. You’d be smart to guess that I’m smoking everyone and winning in this photo at the Green Mountain Cyclocross weekend. Unfortunately, you would be incorrect.

Speaking of, umm… beautiful landscapes, I made my way to Las Vegas for Interbike for the first time in a trio of years. Which was thrilling as usual and well worth the trip, but reminded me that I only need to visit Sin City once every three years to feel perfectly satiated in the department of overwhelming senses. Bright lights, loud noises, caustic smells, and delicious food. I also bought these shorts for myself. They are stunning.

Lining up 5th row, even with my copious UCI points (or maybe UCI point, singular. I don’t remember) did not help my cause at CrossVegas. The field was STACKED. Worse yet, the officials warned us that we would be immediately ejected if we took a beer feed. Which is lame as heck since it was hot as balls. Thankfully after a few embarrassing laps, I pulled myself together as well as pulled $10 worth of dollar hand-ups. That’s ten bucks more than anyone else who finished well out of the money like I did. Suckers.

I graciously have stolen this photo from Danny Munson. The crowd looks riveted.

The best way of celebrating a criterium in your home city is to win it! However, when the field is lined top to bottom with crit racers and when you haven’t raced a crit in a quarter-dozen years (that’s three years if you’re counting along today), then the next best way to celebrate is to sign some dude’s cast at the start line.

Early October had me treking down the eastern seaboard, beginning in NH, down to VA by way of NYC, then back to PA, and onto CT, and back to NH. This is all of course well before that heinous bit#& Hurricane Sandy reared her ugly head so things were still tranquil and beautiful. This photo is from the PA portion with the Bicycling Fall Classic; in particular, this is the ride winning final breakaway (“ride” and not “race”). Those thousand of us smart enough to disregard the weather forecasters call for rain, who were entirely incorrect, had an incredible day in the saddle.

Remember hanging out with my cousins? Well two weeks after kicking it with them in Vermont during my glorious VT50 win, I swung through CT and had a Patriots game, massive dinner, watched a four year old break dance the night away, and went for a bike ride to the center of town the next day. 2.6 miles round trip. Ayuup, all of 2.6 miles. Off season watts!

I may have mentioned gluttonous living and sweetbreads are nearly always categorized in the over the top delicious/over the top surely unhealthy column. Here they are at Fore Street, which I would argue is the best restaurant east of the Mississippi. Don’t believe me? Give it a try.

I went hiking a quartet of times and twice with my good friend Damon. I also attended his wedding this fall, so hats off to him for getting married during the season in which I can actually attend his wedding. As for the hike, it was warm and pleasant down at basecamp 1, then frigid and pleasant at the summit.

It has also been three years since I attended the Dempsey Challenge last. It’s up in the middle of nearly nowhere Maine and it’s truly amazing the number of people who come from far and wide to catch a glimpse of Patrick Dempsey. Thankfully, I’m called up as a VIP rider so I get to hang out with him and end up as the buffer amid a gaggle of frenzied soccer moms. It’s very entertaining. Plus there’s Gritty’s for ample late night entertainment.

The 38 degrees of rain on ride day were enough to make me want to keep trucking the entire day and not really stop and warm up (because warm up is followed promptly by cool down). But the day before was another smaller ride and I got to know Matt Updike who is a really great guy and something of a stud both on and off his bike; the paralympic gold medal in London this year is a testament to that. This photo shows Matt teaching Patrick how to use his ridiculously low to the ground bike with Freddie Rodriguez giving pointers to the side. Or else Fred is just trying to hold Patrick’s hand.

Six words, folks: Krempels King of the Road Challenge. My BFF, teammate to the stars for two years, and TBI survivor himself, Timmy Duggan made the week-long trip to the east coast to kick it with vigor, eat seafood like a champ, crush wine, and speak about TBIs to the Krempels Center. Plus he saddled up and rode the KKotRC with me, Jesse Anthony, Pat McCarty, and 200+ of our best friends and family.

I spy with my little eye…

Here we are slaying the dirt, also with vigor. Actually the dirt has just abruptly ended. Which is probably safer.

Our ride also featured an off season smorgasbord of riding delicacies. Peanut Butter & Co., Simply Stroops, and of course New England’s favorite Marshmallow Fluff were only part of what powered us through the ride.

Sheesh, where are we. Still two weeks of off season to go!

The day after the ride I went with a triplet of friends plus extended family to a New England Patriots game. I’m a Pats fan with the best of ‘em, but I only go to about one game per year. Or every other year. These guys know how to rock out a good game, and it all starts with the pre-game tailgating party. This array of scallops is only a taste of what we had on the tailgate that day. And yes, those are very nice bottles of vino.

The man, the myth, the legend George Hincapie retired this year. He’s a stalwart member of the pro peloton and as an American, something of a pillar to look up to over the years. His accomplishments of 418 grand tours and however-many national championship wins is enviable. I was flattered to be a distinguished guest among friends, family, and my ilk of pro cyclists at his Gran Fondo. I give him a hard time because I tell George that I was coming to settle our on-going battle of best tennis player in the pro peloton (me) and he really clinched my arrival when I learned chef Michael Chiarello would be cooking. I’m in!

This blurry and terrible picture is of Chiarello on the far left, his right hand man from Uruguay who is awesome in the middle, chef Lucas Euser in the middle, and my good friend Tebbetts stoked to be poaching the photo on the right. Hi Matt!

George’s Gran Fondo was ridiculously hard. I’m 100% certain that the folks who designed this course did so in mid-season fitness. They didn’t realize that late October would be zilch in the fitness department. Ouch.

This photo is a pure thing of beauty. I’m, umm, smiling and saying hello, the peloton is shattered, Scotty to my right is actually smiling despite the 18% grade, and Brian is looking less than content behind Scotty. Good work team breakaway!

Meanwhile in Charleston, SC there are more good friends needing a visit. Moreover, it’s a corner of the world that I don’t know much about, so I took a 48 hour reprieve there. Actually it was slightly longer because even though we had pristine weather, Sandy was wreaking havoc on the northeastern United States so my flight was delayed a whole bunch of… hours. And thankfully just hours and not days, because not even 36 hours of being home, I unpacked, repacked, and hit the road onto Napa where I find myself today.

So from Greenville, SC it was on to Charleston. In Charleston is Husk. And in Husk is an amazing restaurant. Their 2011 Best New Restaurant in America claim was worth investigating. Everything we ordered was delicious and the pig ear tacos were a highlight for sure. Turn on your adventure and taste buds, cause Husk is awesome.

It wasn’t just gourmandism ruing the day in Charleston. I also went for a pair of runs and took in some history. This here is a photo of Fort Sumter on the central island in the distance. 42 arbitrary Ted King history points if you can tell me exactly why this place sits prominently in the history books.

And that, my friends, is a chronological smattering of my off season adventures. I assure you that this is only on fraction of the fun had, but I figure this is enough to give you a taste of what I’ve been up to of late, which explains my lack of blogging.

Bring on monk-like living and the ruckus of 2013!

In my humble opinion, the bad idea of the day is to run 50 miles. Off road. In the mud. At 6am. In sub-optimal weather. Over hill and dale and all throughout the Green Mountains of Ascutney, VT for the Vermont 50. Yuck, that sounds miserable.

BUT I’m not a runner. I’m a cyclist, so the idea of mountain biking those 50 miles sounded like an excellent off-season activity. After all, I had a title to defend. Better yet, I had family to see.

My crazy cousin Jay (father to a pair of those children above), his friend Amy (mother to the rest of those children above, myself not included), and about 548 of their good friends took part in the running portion of the Vermont 50. While I think that sounds horribly unpleasant, they both succeeded and had a smashing time in the process.

Backtracking a bit, my cousin’s family and their friend’s family rented a house nearby and made a sweet weekend getaway out of it. The fringe benefit of being their cousin is that I got to tag along. In an awesomely quirky mountain cabin, complete with stuffed dear heads, gazelles, puzzles, and a fire-pit, we had a great time. Plus I got to Vermont in time to see the crew above dominate the mini-run. 1 mile around Ascutney sounds like fun. Multiply that by 50 and that sounds less fun. But that’s just me.

Meanwhile, I woke up at 2:53am so that I could be fully digested and ready to roll at early hour of 6am. Waking up to rumbling thunder and fog and mist so thick that merely driving to the venue seems dangerous was an ominous start to the day. But upon arriving to the race, even before 5am, the energy and excitement of the additional 800 cyclists becomes downright palpable! Or maybe it was just the fog and the two dozen port-o-johns. Either way, people were stoked and so was I! With the ginormous help of the cannon atop my head at the pitch-black hour of 6am under, I was able to take the lead early and carry that momentum to an overall smashing race win… as well as the new course record.

Again, here I am with my adoring familial fans – Anna, Emma, Freddy, Paige, and Luke. (I’m the guy in the middle who is over 5′ tall.)

Oh, well worth the side note: the night before the race before going to bed, these amazing, 3-5 feet tall people performed a talent show. A dancing Luke, the three year old, took the cake in my book.

In addition to that record, I also took home a beautiful glass container of Vermont maple syrup from Top Acres Farm, a block of Vermont’s best known cheese: Cabot Private Stock Cheddar. Plus a pair of Vermont Peanut Butter’s jars of nutty excellence. (Actually that’s an exaggeration; I bought one jar the previous day at race registration – because I think VTPB does great things – but then I won another jar, so that pretty much made my day. If one is good, two are better.)

STRAVA! Plus a handful of well deserved KOMs if you ask me.

Another good idea is to take advantage of the 6am start as it pertains to the rest of your day. Namely, finish up the race a hair after 10am, soak up the limelight of having just won such a massive bike race, bask in the bike cleaning station and warm showers before they become caked in frigid mud, partake in a tasty sponsor beverage, enormous BBQ, and festive music, and STILL have time to drive 3 hours south to eastern Massachusetts and watch the nation’s coolest bike race, GP Gloucester! Take folks, take a page out of my book: you’re not living unless you’re living.

I wisely opted not to double-up and I therefore packed up shop and drove down to MA to watch Gloucester rather than race it. I don’t do well in muddy cross races and this was some of the finest mud America has to offer.

Let the off season adventures continue! Oh speaking of which, I have a really good idea for you…

I am riding parallel to a busy road, so I find myself on a bike path. Very few patrons in sight; in fact, I haven’t seen anyone for a good five minutes. I am approaching what is obviously an elderly lady, who is very well kitted-up on a fancy European bike complete with Euro-stylish riding clothes. That is, she looks both smart and ridiculous.

I slow considerably and upon noticing that she is resplendent with a helmet mirror, I spend a fair amount of time behind her so that she’ll observe that I’m there. I even make some noises and shift and so forth so that she’ll really notice me. I then slowly come back up to speed and approach to her left to initiate the pass. I’m now decently close to her and call out, “On your left”.

It was around about this time that I immediately recognized that she had NO idea I was ever there. She absolutely freaks out, clearly nearly has a heart attack, and cries “Great Jiminy Cricket!” …which just might go down as the best curse word ever. When I’m scared out of my wits I tend towards uttering four-letter words; apparently the elderly crowd in this town happen to be considerable fans of Pinocchio.

Oh and best yet, as she was crying out to Mr. Cricket, she also pulled one of these moves (that is, the awesome shimmying that takes place at 0:13). Thank goodness she stayed upright.

I apologized and she proceeded to scream that “…young man, I am a 75 year old woman! How dare you frighten me like that!” No harm, no crash, no heart attack, no foul. That’s what I always say.

(End of scene. Exit right. Look at trees in the town in which I was just visiting.)

The off-season adventures continue to chug along in high gear. I was easily convinced to go to Interbike for the unveiling of the Cannondale Pro Cycling team. This is enormous news and no better place to tell the world than in SinCity. So that was excellent. Rather than making Vegas a mere 12 hour adventure, I also opted for my first attempts at CrossVegas. My optimism ran high since I had just completed two UCI races the previous weekend, thereby completing 66.667% of my cross season in just two day, and therefore my cross skills were adept and honed. I also still had 10 UCI points from the fall of 2011 at my disposal for an awesome start position.

Wrong. I found out that at a stacked race like CrossVegas – where the beer, credibility, and ego run high – 10 UCI points plants you prominently in row 6. Out of 10.

From Vegas to Boston Criterium. Reaaaaady, and go!

I present unto you Boston’s TD Bank Mayor’s Cup Criterium. I haven’t raced a criterium since I did this one two years ago. So much like the stop-start of a cross race, this isn’t my bag. But it’s oooooh so much fun. If every criterium were run as smoothly and well as this, if every race took place in a major metropolitan city, if every race were thoroughly endorsed by it’s mayor and therefore were able to be run prominently through it’s central city streets, then cycling would gain an enormous foothold in America and everything would be perfect. If only…

So while we wait for that utopia, we graciously accept this amazing race in the meantime.

And then onto more adventures like 2 days in the Rocky Mountains

Followed by a wedding this Friday evening for two great friends, either watch GP Gloucester or attend this once in a lifetime (or once per year, I’m guessing) event on Saturday, and then defend my title in the Vermont 50 marathon mountain bike race on Sunday.

And lest we forget, we are now down to just three weeks and three days until the Krempels King of the Road Challenge. We’re thrilled to announce that Cannondale has generously upped the ante and will give away Cannondale EVO 2 complete with SRAM Red to folks who surpass the $5k mark in fund-raising. So that’s massive. So I encourage you to sign up today and start towards that goal (you have until November 30 to reach that mark, so bonus 1 month+10 days).

And if you can’t make it to NH then you can always participate in the very generous opening of your wallet and helping me reach my goal. A sincere please and thank you.

I could say the “USA Pro Cycling Challenge” or I could incorrectly say “Tour of Colorado” or I could simply say “Colorado”. Anyway, that race in the end of August in the Centennial State pretty much just came and went in my book. I won’t dwell on it, because I already did that for the days afterwards. But suffice it to say that a) it wasn’t my cup of tea and b) racing over a 30km ascent the first thing into a stage, plus pedaling yourself over 12,000 feet in the process is difficult as is. Next throw aggressively throwing up into the mix which interferes with the all important process of breathing at 12,000′. I was seeing stars going over Independence Pass and my day didn’t get much better in the 60km chase following that.

A highlight of that morning before gasping what seemed like my final breaths, though, was meeting young Dante here. The kid is a cycling fanatic, but perhaps you could have guessed that from his daily attire here. It’s so cool to see that level of passion at such a young age in America. I was playing with hockey cards and GI Joes at that age – definitely not yet playing “peloton.”

Me: “Just keep doing what you’re doing, Dante. Trust me kiddo, chicks dig scars.”

So post Colorado, I then enjoyed a bit of Boulder in all her Rocky Mountain splendor with hosts and best friends the Duggans, before setting off back to the right coast for eventually this week’s Quebec City and Montreal Grand Prix-es. Getting my head back in the right place really couldn’t happen in a better place than right here in Vermont. Middlebury College is where I fell in love with cycling, and quite literally Middlebury and Appalachain Gaps are where I found cycling (see, that’s where I first watched a bike race. I obviously picked a good one since that’s where my brother Robbie won the first of his three collegiate national titles).

If Normal Rockwell were alive today and somehow mysteriously into virtual reality instead of painting picturesque scenes, AND if he wanted to create a New England late summer weekend, he truly couldn’t have done it better than this four day Labor Day block. The perfect weather matched the impeccable scenery paralleled the idyllic roads in tandem with the lush green foliage that’s just beginning to show the hints of burnt orange and red. The pumpkins are coming out for fall jack-o-lantern’ing, the dirt roads were aplenty, and the stonewalls and maple syrup were as abundant as I remember. I’m fairly certain that I never once stopped grinning for the full 96 hour weekend.

I’m equally sure that part of the exorbitant good times are due to smashing out three progressively massiver rides on these roads upon which I found cycling. My nostalgia bone was tickled to the point of tears. I’ll quit waxing poetic here – just please recognize that even though this was merely meant as a training-block get-away, this was a very special weekend that just makes me say wow and thankful I’m able to do what I do.

Remember this very weekend in 2010? I was racing and looking dapper in the the Green Mountain Stage Race leader’s jersey for half the race. Soon after that, however, a whole bunch of political mumbo jumbo ensued that I don’t understand, and the UCI decided that they would prefer my WorldTour colleagues and I not race rather than support local races like this. The Green Mountain Stage Race is either the best race you’ve never heard of… or the best race you’ve ever heard of. Period.

This photo above is from the West Hill B’n'B looking out upon another flawless green mountain morning. With requisite “laundry” hanging on the front porch, our hosts Susan and Peter are obviously in the right mood for the weekend. I don’t what was greater: their incredibly benevolent hospitality or their selection of oatmeal toppings. Both were exquisite (yes, complete with maple syrup, obviously).

Right out my back door lays the steepest one mile of pavement in America, Lincoln Gap. Don’t believe me? Google it. I rode it twice, because there are two sides to ever coin and two sides to ever Lincoln Gap and they’re both frigging steep.

As I said, dirt roads were abundant. This is day one going from Middlebury towards Bristol. I don’t know why it looks like it’s 7:52pm because this is about 2 in the avo. More to the point, this particular ride featured a Chris Milliman-like 50′ish miles of dirt. “Rad” sells the ride very very short. It was awesome.

Waffles were available from Susan this morning, but I still went with the oatmeal. The left over waffles resulted in the perfect ride food. She had them wrapped like the perfect little ride treats with the blueberries secretly nestled inside. It was a very satisfying first bite when I gnoshed into this badboy.

Convenience stores are a token New England characteristic. Misspelling ICE is only part of the fun in Ripton, VT.

Roxbury Gap. Dirt. Steep. Very most excellent.

The final day I rode the legendary L-A-M-B ride. Aptly named since it criss-crosses the Green Mountains over four of the gnarliest gaps, Lincoln, Appalachian, Middlebury, and Brandon. In truth, I guess my ride was more LAB-M since that’s the order in which I rode. I want to swear with excitement and spike a football in celebration it was so good! But 6 hours later, I was pretty cooked so I had some corn on the cob instead. Yes, naturally it was freshly cooked, salted, and peppered at the local general store. Learning something from my roommate for the weekend, I also procured some ride beverage – a mini maple syrup.

Twist my arm, Tim and Peter. Yeah, I went golfing afterwards. It was pretty excellent since even if I was exhausted bordering on passing out; I hit a good dozen balls decently well, we didn’t crash nor flip nor flat the golf cart, no one was arrested, and I had my best score for the 14.5 holes we decided to play. That has never happened before when I hit the links.

Isn’t Vermont magic?