Getting Malled in Bend

This place is fucked up. Yeah, sure, if you approach it from the east, there is a really cool looking backdrop of volcanos/mountains. But the rest of it is strip malls and tract housing. The race venue? It's at an outlet mall. Seriously, I am not shitting you. They shoehorned a tiny course onto a vacant lot out behind the mall. It's covered in snow, even though it hasn't snowed here for about four days. No surprise really, they don't even plow the roads here. The cars pack it all down to ice. It appears that the road crews throw a little dirt or volcanic dust onto the intersections if they get a chance, but that's about it. Everyone has four studded tires on their car. Mostly American cars too.

I don't watch a lot of movies, but I saw "Fargo" and this place reminds me of that. On the 140 mile drive up here from Klamath Falls this morning, there was virtually nothing but an endless forest of Christmas trees the entire way, except for one or two little outpost towns. One of them even had a giant statue of a Paul Bunyan dude. Then you come to Bend, like for some reason someone plopped this little city in the middle of the forest. We got lost trying to find the venue, so we got the tour of the city, which was a big retail maze. Not what I expected at all. There are some rich looking people, some REALLY poor looking people, and a shitload of people who look like they spent a lot of time in Weed. The do like coffee around here. In the parking lots/strip malls surrounding our motel, there are not one, but two drive through barista huts. And there is a Starbucks across the street, and another one across the other street from that. No I am not shitting you. This place is fucked up.

It's fucking cold too. And since they don't plow the roads, the shoulders are completely covered with ice (hell, the center lanes are 50% covered in ice). So much for Oregon being bike friendly. On to the course. Did the open course practice today. It would be a five minute lap if it weren't covered in rutted ice. As it is, there is one 12" wide strip that's moderately rideable. At least it was at noon. Word is that by 3:30 for the 40+ "B" race, the thing was a rutted hockey rink. What time is my race tomorrow? Oh yeah, 3:30.

On about 20% of the course, they cleared the snow off before 1000 yahoos got a chance to pack and rut it up. That part is pretty cool, fast. The rest of it there is no chance whatsoever to put any power down. I'm getting sick too, so I won't have much power anyway, but crashing repeatedly on ice isn't high on my to do list either. Since we have to blow town early Saturday in order for me to get back to La - La land and make my flight home Sunday, I'm a wee bit short on nats party time. So maybe I'll just get drunk before my race tomorrow. Trust me, it won't hurt. Thanks for reading.