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!!