Turtle Pond Recap, or Why Chicks Just Don't Dig Bike Racers

Matt and I headed up to New Hampshire Saturday afternoon to race the Turtle Pond Circuit Race in Loudon NH on Sunday. My brother goes to college in Nashua, so we were going to stay with him, and then drive the last 45 miles north to Loudon in the morning. I thought this was a pretty good idea, since the venue was 4.5 hours from Albany, but only 45 minutes from my brother's place. Oh, about my brother's place - its a dorm room.

Matt and I are in the car rolling through Vermont, and after seeing what was likely the hottest chic in Vermont walking her dog in Bennington, somehow, found ourselves on the topic of why girls hate bike racers.

Maybe you've noticed this phenomenon - you roll up to a red light, look over at the car next to you and discover its full of girls. You smile. You're a fit dude. You're likely more attractive then most of the guys who hit on them. Yet for some reason, rather than smiling and waiving, the girls scowl and then speed off.

Matt concluded that this was likely due to jealousy- as most bike racers have nicer legs then women do.

We eventually arrived at my brother's place, and after checking out his room and the campus we went to dinner in the downtown area. Nashua's a pretty blatant college town as there are three different colleges there. There was a good number of establishments in the downtown area, but since we where there to race, we got dinner and decided to get back to the dorm room and get to bed asap.

Along the way, we decided to look for a place to get breakfast in the morning. There was a diner right across the street from where we had dinner, but fearing that its 6:30am opening time would be too late, we went in search of another place to eat.

Now this is where we realized why girls don't want to talk to bike racers. We where three dudes in a madhouse college town on a Saturday night at 10pm. Instead of hitting up one of the various bars, parties, or front lawn ragers, we where driving around, looking for a diner that opened early then 6:30 am on Sundays.

This seems like a completely normal way to spend a Saturday night to me, and notably, I am single.

After driving around for about half an hour, finding one other shady place, we concluded that the first place we had seen would be fine. We headed back to the dorms. Now, my brother is lucky enough to have a single room, but this was in no way a large space. His bike, my bike and Matt's bike commingled, while I grabbed the top bunk (not sure why he's got a bunk bed). Matt rocked out on the floor, and my brother fired up some wild first person shooter video game. After about 5 minutes of battle, I noted again, that there where certainly no chicks playing this game....

To make the sleeping situation even more awesome, at about 11:00pm Erik Marckevich from Windham Mountain Outfitters, calls me. I had offered him a spot on the floor in the dorm early last week, before I knew what the space was like. He says "I'll be in Nashua in 30 minutes, how do I get to your brothers place."

So I give Erik directions, and eventually he gets there. Walking into the room, having never met Matt or my brother, the first thing he says is, "I Left a Colombian chick in New Paltz to drive up here and met you guys to race." So now, we've got 4 guys, four bikes, 2 beds, and about 12 square feet of floor space. Time to go to sleep - and we're wondering why girls don't dig bike racers?

Oh yeah, we went to the bike race too. Matt got 3rd in the Cat 5 race, I was dropped from the winning break and then attacked the peloton multiple times with a fury reserved only for a guy who got dropped from the winning move that he himself initiated.

After the race I learned that Matt hadn't brought any water with him, and instead mixed accelerade, and 2 different types of vitamin water in his bottles for his race. What?