Parkside Terrace Dumpster Fire-Durango, CO

The Dumpster Arsonist strikes again! This time I filmed it.

Yellowstone Bike Tour

The Bike tour route 337 miles in about 5 days with Bob trailers is doable?

I have been thinking about doing a bike tour for many years now. With school and racing and work it has been a non-realistic idea. Now that school is done with I have the opportunity to do a bike tour and I want to go back to Yellowstone. I lived in Yellowstone with my father and brother when I was a youngster during the summers. My father worked for the park service and we left after the fires of 88' and I haven't been back since. Even living in Jackson only a short trip away, I was just busy racing and riding around that area. Well I am ready to get back to my roots and see the place I once new pretty well.

The plan is to start from my fathers house in Victor, Idaho and travel up to West Yellowstone back to Mammoth Hot Springs were we lived. Cruise down to Gardiner, Montana, hit the boiling river, an incredible hot spring that we always went to, and then continue on through Yellowstone down through Grand Teton National park and to Jackson were I was born. From there we will finish with a climb up over Teton Pass much slower than the record pace that I set a few years ago (Bragging!) and finish at the house. Pretty freaking sweet!

We are going to do this a week or so after US Pro road nats in September unless my schedule and commitments change with the team. Still waiting on Tour of Missouri and don't know if we are doing that race or not. I am going to be riding with my brother and so far it is just the two of us and will probably stay that way to make good time and make it easy to travel. I will probably use a bob trailer, but panier's are not out of the question and a mountain bike with slicks.

It should be a blast. I have never done this before so any tips you have for me, throw them my way. I felt a little tired today after the past weekend. I took a little rest and am ready to get back to it. There is a Mountain Bike race here this weekend, an old classic that has been brought back and the course goes up the Hermosa Creek trail. I think I will give it a try and see how it goes. Will be good training for the crits coming up as it will be hard from the start. Off to pint night, $2 pints.. just a couple as the season is still underway.

Velo De Animas Century

Corey "Big time" Collier at the helm in the Westy!
The Sangre De Cristo Moutain range
The collegiate peaks from our campsite outside Salida @ 6 a.m.
We were looking for coffee and found this Synchro Westy, so sweet!
Pre race, Westy was a mess, slept awesome and she got us there and back

Mike Carrol and my bro Zach cruising. we lost Mike to a flat. 50 miles back solo, ouch!

My bro was so worked after the ride that he just left his skiddy on!

Not much to report about Salida race. The course was awesome, the field was stacked, and the legs actually felt o.k. for not doing any hard efforts since the Tour de Delta. I just didn't have the mental focus to suffer and wasn't really into the race. It was pretty negative all around, a break went, I attacked a bunch, RMCF covered every attack with a few guys, I blew myself up along with most of the fudge guys, then threw in the towel and rode back to town. I liked the course, and Salida was a cool town and nice area, just when you race all the time, it is tough to pin the numbers on anymore this late in the season.

The Camping in the Westfalia van was awesome. I slept like a baby and felt nice and refreshed. I could have done without the race and just did a sweet camp and fishing trip up there as the Arkansas river is supposed to be some really good fishing.

After not dong so well yesterday and getting the legs opened back up I decided to do another good day of training. My brother really wanted to do the Durango Century ride from Durango to Farmington. It started about 300 yards from my house so I rolled out of bed late, grabbed a quick bit and some coffee and just made it at 6:55 to registration. There was just enough time to have my bro pin on my number and we were off at 7:00.

I had a blast riding with all those people and they were stoked that I came out to attend. The entry goes to a good cause and it is a great training ride. Some people took it pretty serious and it was definitely a bit sketchy at times. There was more chopping going on before the dirt road than at a Ginsu Knife convention. Some guy with a sweet rat tail mullet chopped my brother and almost crashed him out! Karma got him as he soon flatted and was forced to abandon the ride but not without using every cussword known to man. Relax dude, it is a fun tour!

I had no plans of riding this tour as a race and considered it would be pretty lame for a pro to crush the weekend warriors. Well some people had other plans and as I just followed wheels soon it was a group of three and then my bro and I. We rode for about 30 miles swapping off to the finish. I waited for him at the end because I didn't want to be the first guy in. We ended up finishing within about 45 seconds of the record time from last year of 3:51:oo or something like that. Whatever, it was fun and awesome to be out with my brother.

Best part was after the ride my brother was so worked and starving he looked for the post ride feed put on by the tour. Well he went to the first picnic tables that he saw with food. It turned out not to be the actual tour feed, but a church party on Sunday afternoon. He jumped in the food line and filled his plate and stuffed his face. He said "people kept looking at me all funny, and I finally noticed that there were no other riders there". He finished his meal and came over to the real post race feed, ate some more. Awesome! Nice work Zach, it was good to ride with you.

Rest day tomorrow! Sweet, Contador won the Tour de France, whatever?

Westy Trip to Salida

I am heading over to Salida, Colorado today to do the Colorado State Championship road race tomorrow. I decided to go at the last minute because I am not motivated enough to go out and make myself suffer on my own. It is supposed to be a tough race with a three mile climb per lap.

I am traveling over there with Corey Collier from Durango and we are taking his Westfalia van. It is always a gamble going over mountain passes in a Westy. Who knows if we will make it to the race? At least we can just pull over and camp where ever if the thing dies on us. I have faith in the westy. Check out www.gowesty.com for some cool Westy's.

Wish me luck and be on the lookout for a new Matt Shriver.com soon!

Le Tour de Dope!

A cool old tree with Ute Mountain in the Background
Mesa Verde: Balcony House
The Clif Palace Panorama, Mesa Verde National Park

What can I say about the state of cycling? It is awesome to see the dopers getting caught. I can't say I was a bit surprised about Alexander Vinokourof. He always seemed a bit shady. As for Rasmusen being let go from Rabobank for missing tests and lying saying he was in Mexico, well, that is pretty shady. I think there is a deeper issue that isn't being talked about and I think it will come out sooner or later that he failed a test. Although it is killing our sport now, it will be much better for the future of cycling. Cleaning house of the big names that are on the gear is a good start. It is just a shame that cycling gets only the bad press when other sports like football and baseball have much worse doping problems that get overlooked. Things have to be bad before they can get better i guess.

I returned from Canada on Monday back to Durango. The flights were very bumpy because of the storms and monsoon season. I left Seattle at 12:00 and got home at 10:00. It could be worse, I made it home!

My mother has come down to Durango for a bit of a visit. We went over to Mesa Verde National Park, just a short 35 miles from Durango. I have lived here for seven years and never been there. It is incredible and was well worth the trip over. The ruins were super cool. It is also an awesome ride from Durango, over a hundred miles with good climbing. Anyway, I need to take a nap. I am still in recovery mode from BC. More later........

Tour de Delta Warped up: 3rd in Road Race!

The break with the peleton 3 minutes behind us.
Rotating ont the flats for ever!
It was close but I was out gunned in the sprint and tired from working, that is me in the back.
A funny looking podium!

Photos :Greg Descantes

Quick update before I have to hit the road. I had an awesome ride today. Got in a break at 5k into the 140K race and it stuck! Four of us rotated and I ended up getting 3rd. It was so hard at the end and staying away for 135k was insane! Anyway, I am super stoked and so are the rest of the guys. It was close. At one point we had 4 minutes, then by the last lap it was down to under one minute. With all the cat and mouseing at the end you could see the mainfield bearing down on us, it made me nervous and I hit out a bit to early and got gunned by Andrew Pinfold and Doug Olerenshal from Healthnet. The field crossed the line about 10 seconds behind us. It was awesome! Back to Durango tomorrow. More later.

Coming back around: Delta hillclimb

Matched up with Kyle Wamsley from Navigators, The last 10% pitch of the climb hurt, badly!

Photos: Greg Descantes www.descantes.com

My teammate Austin and I got held up at the start of Gastown by this hack!

The racing has been flying by here in B.C. I have two races and after tomorrow I head out to Durango on Monday morning. I have raced three times since my last update and I am no longer in the city thankfully. I couldn't do it for much longer. It reminded me of being in New York City were you are constantly dodging people on the sidewalk.

The Giro de Burnaby went much better for me. My legs felt a bit better. David has been keeping the team together with some good finishes. He ended up getting into the early break that ended up being the winning move. We were a bit surprised to see it go so early and could have used one more guy in there. He came in fourth which is awesome after being out numbered.

The hill climb last night marked the beginning of the Tour de Delta. The weather is pretty much the same each day, cold and rainy. I am getting a bit tired of it. The climb last night was short and not really steep enough to be called a hill climb. I gave it all I had but started out a bit slow and by the finish I was coming apart. I think I may have snuck in the top 10 but they still don't have the results posted. I hope that one of us got in the points last night. The hill climbs are fun, but it is allot of build up for a 69 second drag race effort.

My teammate Austin King and I are in a nice host house with a fully finished basement apartment all to ourselves. The couple we are staying with have two kids, aged 5 and 15 months. The kids are a blast and I have already played Legos, NHL hockey, and Battleship a few times. If I win at any of the games there is hell to pay and somehow the actual rules to the games get lost and the 5 year old makes up the rules as he goes so that he always wins. Hmmmm! That sounds fair. It actually reminds me of when I was a kid, bending the rules. He even whines like I used to and procrastinates doing his chores all day. It is pretty funny.

Not much else to write about. It has started raining again and we have a crit later tonight for the second stage of the Tour de Delta. We are going for stage wins now and primes, not so much the overall. I look foreword to heading back home soon to the dry mountains in Colorado.