Kansas... again!!

At the request of those of you who will not be joining us at Cyclocross Nationals in Kansas City this weekend, i'll be updating my blog to give you the daily reports through the eyes of the Richard Sachs team.

Our troupe of five will be trickling into Kansas City by air over the next two days, and the team will be represented tomorrow on the race course by none other than our fearless leader, e-Richie. After that we'll watch for results on Saturday from Matt and Will in the Masters 35+ and collegiate races, respectively. Finally, for the finale, Justin, Will, Matt, and I will compete in the Elite races on Sunday afternoon.

OK, so there you have it. Keep your eyes on the blog - updates and photos will be streaming in! For now, you can enjoy this picture of me crashing on Saturday... I don't know how it happens, but there is always a photographer ready to capture it every time I fall off my bike...

Small Town Saturday Night

Day one of two is complete at the Northampton Cycle-Smart International cyclocross race (the longest running annual cross race in america by the way!) Since the race was near my hometown, I split off from the team tonight and headed for mom's house. I've just learned that I'm missing some good fun at the race hotel though!!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Richard Sachs
Date: Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 9:53 PM
Subject: Re: ah ha!
To: Amy Wallace

we're watching the shining -

all work and no play makes jack a dull boy atmo all work and no play makes jack a dull boy atmo
all work and no play makes jack a dull boy atmo all work and no play makes jack a dull boy atmo
all work and no play makes jack a dull boy atmo all work and no play makes jack a dull boy atmo
all work and no play makes jack a dull boy atmo all work and no play makes jack a dull boy atmo
all work and no play makes jack a dull boy atmo
all work and no play makes jack a dull boy atmo
all work and no play makes jack a dull boy atmo
all work and no play makes jack a dull boy atmo
all work and no play makes jack a dull boy atmo all work and no play makes jack a dull boy atmo all work and no play makes jack a dull boy atmo
all work and no play makes jack a dull boy atmo
all work and no play makes jack a dull boy atmo
all work and no play makes jack a dull boy atmo
all work and no play makes jack a dull boy atmo
all work and no play makes jack a dull boy atmo
all work and no play makes jack a dull boy atmo all work and no play makes jack a dull boy atmo
all work and no play makes jack a dull boy atmo
all work and no play makes jack a dull boy atmo

The Road Trip Winds Down...

Everyone is boxing up bikes and packing away dirty laundry here at Oli's house, ready to head homeward early tomorrow morning. I can't exactly say that anyone is going home with extra hardware, but someone is going home with this sweet plywood plaque!!

Yup, our buddy Will Dugan took the #1 spot on the podium in the U23 race today!! The women's race for Alie and I went... well... it went! We had fun anyway. WILL on the other hand rocked it, racing in a group for 10th spot for most of the hour-long event. Eventually finishing 16th, he was the first U23 rider and was congratulated by his teammates after the real podium girl gave him nothing but the bouquet and plaque.

Homeward bound tomorrow, and we reconvene next weekend in Northampton, Massachusetts for the next UCI cyclocross races there.

Oli rides the flyover...

Nothing like a good ol' blog to post embarrassing pictures of your friends...

Also, our team sponsor SRAM asked us to promote this organization, the World Bicycle Relief group. Check out their website here.

The Bluegrass State

The final destination of the October adventure road trip has been reached – so here we are in Louisville Kentucky. Not only is this weekend the first in the USGP of Cyclocross race series, it also happens to be the home of the one and only OLI! We all caught up fast last night after checking out the race venue that afternoon, and today didn’t do a whole lot other than eat, make a couple airport runs, and ride bikes a little bit. More tomorrow, with race reports included! Richie, don’t worry, we are going to look good. Myles, we’ll check out the bridge and take some recon pictures for you!

Loveless Lunch

Today's lunch was one of the tastiest meals I've ever had:

The Loveless Cafe & Motel on the west side of town was ridiculously good. The key lime pie was nothing to scoff at either.

Thanks everyone for your "things to do in Nashville" suggestions - we're trying to fit it all in!!!

Update from the Music City

Here we are in Nashville! After a nice bike ride yesterday on the Natchez Trace Parkway, we headed downtown for the obligatory visit to the Country Music Hall of Fame. The visit also included a tour of RCA's famous recording Studio B, where thousands of classic country hits were recorded. I mean, we're not necessarily into classic country, but the tour was really neat! and the Hall of Fame itself was great - lots of memorabilia and paraphernalia and amyalia and whathaveyoua. 

After dinner with Freya and her parents, we all headed to Nashville's symphony hall for a bass and mandolin performance by Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile. Well... as much as Alie and I appreciated the symphony scene (and we did! they were fantastic musicians!!) we didn't feel that this was exactly what we needed to fulfill our musical requirements for the evening. After the symphony, we headed for Broadway and found more bars than you could count on two hands, all with live bands and no cover charge -- if only Boston worked this way!!  All in all, we had a fantastic time exploring Nashville's Tuesday night music scene. And we've gotta put in a plug for this guy, our band of choice for the evening - Craig Campbell was awesome!! Check out a clip of his song "the whiskeys fine".

NASHVILLE

Well, we made it... eventually. You get one shot at guessing the circumstances leading up to this event:

Yup... pair of geniuses driving along I-81 done run outta gas. OK, I can't say pair of geniuses... I've gotta take full credit/blame for that incident. Luckily it occurred right before an off-ramp, we exited, annnnd needed to go for a bike ride anyway! No harm no foul, we made it to Nashville on schedule.

Halfway to Nashville

After a little more bike racing today in Ludwig's Corner, Pennsylvania, Alie and I said goodbye to the rest of the team and hit the road.  This was the highlight of our drive:

OK, so the Exxon station tiger was pretty sweet, but this ceramic feline may not have been the weirdest part of our trip. At a small italian restaurant in Winchester, Virginia, our 25-year old server referred to Alie and I only as "lovely ladies" and "pretty princesses" when he waited on us. I feel like you're only allowed to refer to a girl as a pretty princess if she's under age 4, or mayyyybe if the guy saying pretty princess is a half blind and mostly senile old man.

"Hi. I'm in Delaware."

Imagine being magically whisked away to Delaware!

Well, it happened to us... we did in fact wake up in Delaware this morning. It's actually way cooler than you might think. Today we raced at a beautiful Dupont estate, complete with a big stone tower and random bamboo forest.

It was a beautiful day for all sorts of parking lot socializing, including baby strolling, sewing spandex, and binocular use.

Pending Road Trip... why not??

Stay tuned for updates from the road and the A-team reunion upcoming this weekend. That's right, Miss Alie Kenzer will be on the east coast this weekend to check out some cyclocross action courtesy of the Delaware Cross Coalition of Delaware, followed by a little road trip action...

View Larger Map

After the usual bike racing, we head south for the music city itself, Nashville, Tennessee. Do you think we're ready for it??? After soaking up a little country music and sightseeing and BBQ action, the yellow car heads back north for the USGP cyclocross race in Kentucky. Look out Louisville, here we come!!!

New England World Championships

Arguably the best weekend New England bike racing is upon us... the Gloucester gran prix!! As if they needed to do anything to attract even more spectators to Stage Fort Park, this year's race will also feature a beer tent and beautiful weather. So, check out the race preview, dig out the cowbells, and bring some sunglasses!! This race will not disappoint... and neither will the Richard Sachs team!

Seriously though - look at that face. How could that guy disappoint??

hikin' and bikin'

Another beautiful September weekend has come and gone. Sadly, this was my last weekend with Kaity in town! We spent Saturday doing some hiking at Mt. Monadnock in Jaffrey, New Hampshire... neither of us had ever been to the mountain, and it was an awesome day!!! We did some scampering, some scrambling, some climbing, and some obtaining summits. There are lots of pictures starting here.

So, after spending some leisure time at the summit, we scampered back down and headed for home. Sunday was yet another cyclocross race, where we headed to the annual Sucker Brook "cupcake invitational" cyclocross race. Richie and I celebrated the highly-anticipated cupcake extravaganza with this mondo pastry...

Sadly, I was not allowed to eat my cupcake before my race... but I did eat it very shortly thereafter.

Wallace Girls in Vermont

After fetching Kaity from the Berkshires on Saturday night and saying a quick hi and goodbye to our brother Dan on his birthday, we headed north for a Vermont road trip en route to visit friends in Waitsfield. We hit up the Apple Barn in Bennington (they were selling pumpkins already!!), the Bennington Monument, outlet shopping in Manchester, a fun store in Killington with unusual clientele, a sweet waterfall on route 100, and then finally made it to Scrag Mountain Road for the night. We caught up with some old friends from Dartmouth bike team in town for the Green Mountain Stage Race, and then left early Monday morning for a journey homeward via a stop at Dartmouth for breakfast and a quick hike. And now, I get to keep Kaity for a whole month until she goes back to Chicago for school at the end of September!!

Home Again

Amy's awesome adventures took a journey north this weekend, to the far reaches of Aroostook County in Maine. Below is a typical view of the landscape and the roads I found for some biking on a few days there.

It was a bit hillier than I expected! But really, I didn't do that much biking. I did enough to make myself not feel lazy, and other than that I did some hardcore relaxing. This involved some boating, some swimming, some wedding attendance and dancing, more boating and swimming and camping, lots of campfiring, a bit more drinking, a bit of target practice at coffee cans and possible fowl nuisances on the lake, several viewings of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, plenty of good eating, sleeping, and sunning.

I think I'll have to return to the county soon

On Saturday I made my first trip out to Montague, Mass to see Darcy and Steve's new apartment. It's a great little place right on the Saw Mill River (great swimming hole), across the street from the Lady Killigrew (great cupcakes!!), and in the middle of the woods (great!). Here is a picture of Paul the Cat, holding down the window sill as we made dinner.

We were also joined by Matt White for our tasty dinner of skillet pizzas, and then all headed to the Lady K for dessert and a drink. This certainly outdid my wild friday night of laundry and working on my 1000-piece puzzle.

Today I dropped in on my grandparents for lunch, and then did some shopping with my grandmother. I realized today I have so many things I have in common with my grandmother... general love for dessert, general dislike of shopping, and a similar stories of her easy distractability leading to small disasters... in sharing one of these such stories, we ended up going east on route 2 instead of west when we were trying to go home. oops.

After I left their house, I was struck (thankfully) with a need to go ride my bike, and headed out for one loop of the Fitchburg road race course... yes, I even rode up Mt. Wachusett, which even I enjoyed on such a nice day.

Weekend at Home(ish)

After a brief visit to Portland on Friday for some motorcycling, eating, drinking, and general relaxation, I headed home to the Berkshires early Saturday morning to spend the second consecutive weekend with Kaity and Dad. From there we headed to a Wallace perennial favorite summer destination - The Great Escape in Lake George, New York.

I guess the Great Escape is one of those things in life that you remember as being one of the most wonderful fun amazing best times when you were a kid... when you go back years later and see it through slightly more grown-up eyes, you spend half the day looking for hand sanitizer. Nonetheless, The Comet is still hands-down my favorite roller coaster, as demonstrated below by my fellow Wallaces, a.k.a. Team Yellow.

We rode the Comet at least four times. Awesome.

In any case, the Great Escape was actually good fun, between the Comet and the pirate ship and the Raging River, and some wicked short lines due to passing rain showers throughout the day. We managed to stay dry until we hit up the Raging River on the way out, got reprimanded for running in front of the fantasy land parade, and then hit the road again to drive still further north to the Adirondacks.

Once arriving at Mandy's house in Keene Valley, we had a dinner that couldn't be beat, enjoyed a FIRE in the fireplace because the cool weather warranted it (August!!), watched a movie, and passed out. Dad and the dog and I opted for a camping experience in the lean-to and slept in sleeping bags on a bed of balsam boughs, listening to the rain pound overhead and the stream rush downhill through the woods.

Last Day in Chicago

On our way to run some errands this afternoon, Kaity and I stumbled upon what is easily the coolest advertisement i've ever seen on a bus in my entire life:

Turns out the program behind this advertisement, www.drivelesslivemore.com, is exclusively a northeastern Illinois thing, but I still thought it was neat.

Chicago!

Dear Mom,

...here is the view of downtown Chicago outside of Kaity's balcony!

More pictures from chicago day one are here.

In all my years at the Yarmouth Clamfest, I have never run into their mascot, the Steamer! Well, this year we found him and I got a photo with him. awesome!! and of course, congrats to teammate Justin Spinelli for winning the men's race in spectacular fashion last Sunday.

I'm currently wrapping up a short (but long!) work week, and waiting for my flight to depart from Manchester to visit Kaity for a long weekend in Chicago!!

I Go Away for a Week...

... and a huge turkey takes up residence on my car at the office!!

Apparently it was very feisty, and didn't like being shooed off the roof.

Cape Cod

Last weekend I checked off a Wallace family tradition from the summer to-do list - a visit to Cape Cod!

After picking up Grammy and Grampy in Leominster on Thursday, we met up with my dad and headed south for Eastham, Massachusetts. Upon arrival, dad and I set up camp at Nickerson State Park and then made the second-most important stop... to the liquor store! We were just about to head to the beach when i realized twenty minutes later that I had left my wallet on the roof of the car before driving away from the liquor store. ugh!! we raced back to the scene of the crime, and of course the wallet was nowhere in sight in the parking lot, the street, or in the store. while dad checked neighboring stores, i took a jog along Route 6 to see if it had blown off the roof there. Sure enough, 200 yards later, I find my wallet flapping in the wind, with all its cards scattered along in the grass. Amazingly, I found every last piece.

Back on track, we headed to the beach on that fine Thursday afternoon. We did a little swimming, but didn't lay out in the sand for too long due to all the freaking biting flies that wouldn't leave us alone. After leaving the beach, Dad and I continued to check off all the Cape Cod must-do's of a good Wallace family vacation by heading to Arnold's for dinner. After doing the obligatory coloring sheet, I actually ordered my very first lobster. yes - my first!! wallaces don't stop with just a huge dinner, so we got huge ice cream cones for dessert too. Arnold's is the best because they have the real fine shaved real chocolate jimmies instead of the normal ones. SO tasty.

After wrapping up a late Thursday night at the drive-in theater in Wellfleet, we woke up Friday morning after a good night's camping out and played some cribbage. and of course, I lost. The rest of amy-and-dad day included bike riding and fishing.

We hit the ocean on the bay side of Eastham at Sunken Meadow beach - the famous scene of Dad's July 2007 "the bluefish were just JUMPING into my boat!!" bluefish massacre. Sadly, it was not a repeat performance, and we came up empty that day. After a pizza dinner with the family, we wrapped up the night with Red Sox viewing, popcorn eating, beer drinking, and four-way cribbage playing with Uncle Mike and Aunt Ricki at their house.

Saturday was more of the same - literally. Bike riding, blue fishin', food eating, and cribbage playing. However, today was a group bike ride to a sweet destination - to see a real life shipwreck washed up at Newcomb Hollow Beach!! After that, I raced back home to head out with dad and catch no fish, again.

Sadly, the weekend in the Cape was quickly drawing to a close. Saturday night was the whole family get-together at Mark and Diane's house for a month-belated celebration of Brad's birthday. Hamburgers, hot dogs, Narragansett Ale, ice cream cake, and engineer-modified tiki torch burning made for a fun night there.

After soaking one up last hour of sun at the beach on Sunday morning, I headed home to Andover, did some biking, some hiking, some dinner cooking, and some sweating in my perpetually hot apartment.

In other news, bike-trainin' has officially begun. I'm aiming to be fit at some point prior to mid-December this year!!

okay okay okay - so I finally have an update. to quote the great e-RICHIE, "if there are no pictures, it never happened."

so, here are some pictures from the James Taylor show at Tanglewood on friday night. more to come later!

New Bike?

yeah, not quite. i'm still working on actually purchasing a track bike, and still working on replacing those chain rings on my mountain bike that are missing a few teeth... oops. But I did go for another new sort of bike ride this weekend with my dad, when we went out for a father's day motorcycle ride!! no, i did not drive...

It was 92 degrees INSIDE my apartment today when I got home from work... so, I opted out of track racing this evening, having learned my lesson from playing too hard in the heat on Sunday. I realized only when I woke up on Monday morning and still had a headache that i'd probably given myself heat exhaustion after two hours of unicycle practice on Sunday afternoon. oops.

Tonight's activities instead included the following preparation for next week's track racing:

Celtic Cowboy Thursday!

I've declared the last several Thursdays at work to be Cowboy Thursdays. It almost goes without declaration at this point, because... why not? Who doesn't like to wear a cowboy hat?

Yesterday was a special Cowboy Thursday because it was also the first day of the NBA finals. We couldn't ignore the Celtics, so we had to show our support for them too!

It was also a good excuse to eat Lucky Charms and Boston cream pie all day.

As if that wasn't exciting enough, Pete and I received a surprise gift at the office yesterday... this was a gift from our dentist because we have recommended so many new coworkers to see our dentist! Thanks!

Happy Birthday and Graduation!

Another fine weekend of playing outside was wrapped today up with yet another Wallace mini-reunion for Brad's graduation party... In this photo, Grammy demonstrates her "I love taking pictures" face:

Congrats to Brad on high school graduation yesterday, and his old man Mark who turned 50 this week. More pictures are at the end of this album here.

Anything But The Road Bike...

My name is Amy, and I am a cyclist. It's been six days since my last road ride.

After a weekend of hiking and beating myself up on foot, I decided to continue the alterna-training with a mountain bike ride on Monday. I didn't stop there, and headed up to the New England Velodrome for opening day at the track yesterday after work. Unfortunately, the nasty weather forecast kept a lot of people away and the turnout was low... they missed out on a great sunny (and windy) evening though! The low turnout meant only one other girl, so the twelve total people got lumped together into one big race group instead of Cat A and Cat B's. Too bad for me since I have untrained sprinting legs under me at this point, but it was fun all the same, and I got to ride a yellow bike. Three Cambridge Bicycle teammates were also in attendance - Jeremy Dunn, Craig Roth, and Michael McKittrick were dominant in most all of the races run last night, and we'll likely have more in coming weeks. Oh yeah, so I was dropped out off all the races save for the points race in the end, which I actually finished. good stuff!

Today was the fun training day:

yup, it was unicycle day.

Being so close to Andover High School, I walked the uni up the hill and took to the parking lots. Today's goal was to master the unassisted mount... easier said than done. After several frustrated attempts, I decided to start with just plain riding instead. About 30 minutes later, this was getting exhausting, and I found a quiet driveway area behind the school to practice the mounts. The goal was to do 10 unassisted mounts.

Twenty minutes later mount #10 still seemed very far away after a sketchy dismount and leg injury from the right pedal. But, I kept plugging away. After mount #17, I decided to take a break, because once things got going I changed my goal to 30 mounts. Well, it was a good call, because I GOT IT at mount #25. I just got it and it felt right. From then on, things just started falling in place... on mount #31, I did my first hop in place and kept riding. On mount #46, I hopped in place several times and kept riding between hops too. On mount #50, I decided I needed to learn how to mount on uphills and downhills too, so I did ten of those too. Over the course of the uphill mounts, I also realized that I didn't need to sit on the saddle to pedal. amazing!

As it started to get dark, I decided it had been a good training day, and I rode the uni home.

Green Key Weekend

With my sister Kaity in town from Chicago this weekend, we decided to visit Dartmouth along with many other alumni who wanted to see old friends at school. So we went! The weather was supposed to be bad, but it turned out to be pretty fantastic after all:

On Friday while Kaity went out for a run, I headed out on my bike and pedaled around in Vermont a bit. Once we were done with that, we headed to campus to find some friends. We found some, and of course, found some drinks too... at Molly's, then at the block party, then at Ramunto's, then at 5 Olde Nugget, and then at some frat which I can't even tell you for sure at this point which one it was.

Needless to say, it was a long night of good times, but I found just what I needed in the morning to get me going. Kaity and Margi on the other hand were feeling ready for a good run, so they headed out and left me with my bike. I chose the Granite State on Saturday and headed around Lake Mascoma and Goose Pond in Enfield NH... definitely one of my favorite rides, and a good way to wake up too! Saturday was a much more low key night for us thankfully, and was probably low key for everyone since Hanover unexpectedly lost power around 9:30 that night.

Today Kaity and I left Dartmouth and headed to Framingham for an impromptu Wallace family mini-reunion, planned just a few days ago since Kaity was in town! Sadly I had to pass off Kaity to my dad so she could visit the western Mass contingent before heading back to Chicago on Wednesday :(

Bike to Work - OR ELSE!!!

Today marked the first day of a semi-national annual tradition that I like to take part in, because... well, it makes sense! It's Bike to Work Week May 12-16, and of course I got off to a stellar start by driving my car this morning. I'm sorry! I had a long day of field work planned in Somerville, so I couldn't exactly ride my bike there, but I did drop off my bike at the office so I could ride home.

I wouldn't consider myself directionally challenged, but today was a difficult day. After getting off the highway at what I thought was my exit, I could see my job site up ahead, but couldn't for the life of me get on a street that would bring me there. After turning around a few times and luckily not sitting in much traffic because it was early, I made it. The way home was a different story...

I got on 93 North heading out of Boston at 5:00, just like everyone else in Boston. I was headed for 95 South to drop off a meter before returning to the office. Well, I may or may not have been on my phone at the time, but I accidentally got on 95 North instead. WTF. I exit 95 at the first chance, and of course find myself on a smaller divided highway. After finally turning back around, I get back to the highway and onto 95 South. Glad to be back on track, I prepare to exit, and realize halfway around the off-ramp that instead of taking the first exit after the 93 junction, I have instead taken the exit to get back on 93 South... going back toward Boston. WTF again, as if I weren't angry before, now i'm on the wrong road again. I turn around on the second exit down 93, because the first exit would've been 95 North, and I flip it back onto 93 North... again. I finally take the correct exit for 95 South, and the correct exit to my destination.

Glad to be back to the office, I decide that I'm being spited by the gods of Bike to Work Week for driving today and putting myself in mileage debt for getting lost so much. So of course i'm going to bike home. I go to get changed at 6:15 and discover the day's final small mishap - I've forgotten to pack bike shorts. Not to be deterred, I biked home with the only option I had... in Carhartts.

track day

Today was opening day for track practice at the New England Velodrome in Londonderry, New Hampshire. The track was looking pretty good, and has come a long way since the first work party day I went to a month ago. Tony and the crew have been putting in a lot of hours to clean the place up!

I headed up after work hoping to find some other Cambridge Bicycle team kids there, and found one teammate among another two dozen people ready to ride in 300-meter circles. I'm pretty excited to race track this summer! I'll eventually need to purchase my own bike so that I don't have to keep renting bikes from the track like the one pictured above... not that it didn't serve its purpose, but, my own machine would be nice.

Time For a New Blog

After documenting the winter adventures at ATMO-licious, I've moved on to a new solo blog... which will probably be much less exciting, But, here it is nonetheless!

Saturday was my first road race of the year... the old New England classic, the Jiminy Peak Road Race! To make things even more fun, none other than Mr. Dave Wallace was driving the pace vehicle for the women's race. The weather held out for most of the day, but a warmup on the trainer was in order with the wet roads in the morning. While I sat on the trainer, my giant butt apparently got in the way of my dad putting a bike in the car and a hole was ripped in the back of my shorts ten minutes before race time :(  Luckily, I had a sewing kit in the car, and the picture above is my dad doing some last-minute sewing before the race start!

The race itself was fun, and I even made stayed with the front pack after the first lap up the hill. I guess I have Alie to thank for making me a better hill climber this winter! One lap later I ended up with a pack finish, and then stayed to watch the rest of the men's races finish. After that I went with some new Cambridge Bicycle teammates to the Old Forge Restaurant in Lanesborough, and then home to visit with Dad some more.

In other news, my apartment has had some furniture in it for a few weeks now, and it's great!