Jay Richards

US MTB Nats trip Day 2. Still stuck in Fargo. Yesterday leave and chance going through construction near Hitterdal. No problems so that was good. Get to Fargo and find out flight delayed one hour but ends up being 2. Finally board plane. Not more then 5 minutes, we are grounded. Sit there for 3 hrs, go stir crazy, listen to some guy get all mad and yell at the pilot likes its his fault and he can control the weather. Flight ends up being cancelled. Go home. Wake up, plunge some toilets, fix a sink, change some light bulbs, answer some e-mails, and make a few rezes. Go for a ride. Almost t-bone a black bear on the goat ranch road. Go another mile, pedal spins off crank. Try to thread it back on but some of the threads are cheezed out. Do the one pedal thing for a while until neighbor comes by and borrow a vice grip and get going again. Neighbore says be careful, there are a lot of bear around now, not knowing I saw one. Jonell makes super duper lunch and then get back up to Fargo and find out flight is delayed again. So here we sit.

This was the view for 3 hours. Beautiful sunset. Nice of the pilot to position the plane so we could watch the grass grow and sun go down. If we don't get out today, might have to pull a Eric Tonkin and arrive 8 hrs before the race. I called the hotel at MT Snow and they said a bunch of people had trouble coming in, including the USADA folks. I ask about athletes staying in same hotel as USADA. They said, you won't even know who they are. Hmmmm.