New team, new year

So ive been back from Peru for about 6 days now. That was the most amazing trip i have ever been on. I saw so many incredible things while on the trip. The culture there is really cool. Almost everyone is poor there, but they seem to be genuinely happy with the lives they live. It like going back into time before the industrial revolution or something. They dont have factories, they dont have many tractors. They use mules to farm there land, and farming is all they do.

Some parts of the trip were a little crazy, when i took a bus up to Huaraz which is north of the capital we were driving on this windy road that was about 500 ft above the sea, but it was a sheer cliff with no guardrail that separated us from falling into the ocean. it was intense, especially when our bus driver was passing potato trucks on the left side of the road with oncoming traffic. I guess they have no road rules down there.

We stayed in some awesome hostels, including this place where this is what my view in the morning was:

the only difference in the real thing is, i could usually see the white cap mountains that surrounded the entire town.

There were a lot of other cool things that happened, i will tell you a few since it would take me forever to write it all.

Went sandboarding. one of the highlights of my trip:

There was almost a small riot in cusco about water:

I visited this cool town that was made of ancient incan ruins. the people still live in the dwelling of the incans. pretty cool

and on the last day that i was there, i tried a dish called "cebiche". Its basically raw fish. Except its cooked in the acidic juices of lemon and limes. It was actually really good, even though i have never tried sushi or other raw fish in the US. so i was a little nervous that this "raw fish" stuff was going to give me amazing travelers diarrhea, but luckily it did no

So my trip was amazing, and i saw a lot of things. I also picked up a little Spanish which was really cool. I really hope i can go back down to south america some other time, its truly an amazing place.

So besides my trip to peru, i am now back on the bike. And since i missed team camp while i was gone I got my new bike and team stuff when i got back.

The bikes that the "wheelhouse / NCC" team will be riding this year are the carbon fiber BH connects. They are really cool and the only carbon fiber bike i have ever riden, and also the first new bike i have owned!! We got Rudy Glasses and helmets. And the kits are really cool as well!

So i went down the Johnny cake in NY with the team this past Saturday instead of going down to Princeton to race collegiate. The team did well, we had 2 guys in the break and San greenfield came away with 4th place, tremble in 7'th. Nathaniel took the field sprint and that was that. It was fun to race with the team.

I am just really siked to be on an actual team this year. I am very grateful that they gave me a spot on the team. I am really excited to race with the coolest team in the northeast.

Now that i took 11 days off, its time to start re-basing and getting the miles in so i can race well at Battenkill and hopefully i will be going to collegiate Nat's.

But besides that, i am back to school. I dont really care about my classes anymore. I do what i can to get a descent grade. I am more worried about the business that i am trying to start. Its also an independent study, so i will be graded on my business model. Its basically a real estate investement company that i am trying to start. Would be cool if it was profitable in 2 years. We will see. right now im working on meeting the right people and also trying to find investors for the business since i dont have $500K to start it!!!

but that all for now, time to get back to the grind.

o and here is a picture of my dog. His name is Boston, yeah thats right. He is the coolest dog ever.

later

High Altitudes

Wow, peru has been absolutely amazing so far. Im sitting in the Lima airport after an overnight 8 hour bus ride (which i slept for most of) and getting ready to leave for cuzco which is only an hour flight. I hope the race weekend for all collegiate riders went well. I did a 7-8 hour hike 2 days ago at about 15,000 feet altitude. So my blood is as thick as magma, which means i can basically climb mountain one legged on my bike, so watch out!!!

I have seen so many things that fast few days and Peru is truly amazing. I had Guinee* pig yesterday for the first time, it wasnt all that bad. Not a lot of meat on it so i just had to pick it up and gnaw on the bones to get the meat off. They literally serve you a guinee* pig chopped in half and then fried up with head and paws and everything. a little weird, but the locals love it and its not to bad.



The coffee and juice here in peru is absolutely amazing. The coffee is very bold and extremely cheap. I sat in a cafe for about 2-3 hours yesterday in down town Huaraz and drank 4 espresso and it cost around 4 dollars or 12 soles. and i drank fresh squeezed papaya juice and also a banana papaya and pineapple juice, it is a large glass it usually only cost about a dollar. its amazing!!!

We still have so much to do on this trip and i cant wait to see what other parts of the country has to show. I have met so many cool travelers from all over the world, its really cool. Im picking up a little spanish, but im definetly not at the level where i can communicate. But being able to understand what people are saying is a big help.

Liz and I also met up with her friend who is serving in the peace corps right outside of Huaraz and hes in the most poor area of the town and is picking potatoes and living with a peruvian family for 2 years. His stories are amazing.

But we are about to board our flight so i will just post a quick pic of our hike in the andes mountain 2 days ago.

i will keep posting when i have interweb access. but for now we are headed to beautiful cuzco!!

later

IM IN PERU!

hello everyone, So i never updated my blog with a good race report because i have been really busy getting for my Peru trip. Well i am here now and its amazing.

Short race recap. Brought 14 brand new cyclists to the race for UMBRC and they all had a blast and want to come back. Jeff cronin who races C's crashed and shattered his Specialized Tarmac frame and had to go to the hospital to see if his knee was ok. Hes fine. I raced the A's. The race wasnt that fast until about a half hour into the race when attacks started flying and then countered. I got into a move with about 8 guys, we were not riding well together and 3-4 riders got up the road.
After they got up the road, me and Lee Peters of UVM were not having any of that and Lee atacked and i followed closely. We made the break and finished in a 4 man group. i wasnt feeling strong about my sprint so i made an effort to get away before the sprint. didnt work, and then i had to tow the rest of the group to the line because Chris Hamlin was about to catch the break, and theres nothing worse than 2 strong UVM guys in a sprint finish. So i came in 4'th and im very happy with the way i raced.

But enough about bike racing, IM IN PERU!! we landed in Lima Peru last night at 10'ish. Immediately getting into the airport it was like nothing i have ever seen. People yelling at you for taxi services, and following you trying to get some type of business from you. We had to walk in this "ring" of taxi people and crazy screaming Peruvians, i was very frightened but we it to our driver who was waiting to pick us up and bring us to the Hostel where we are right now.

The hostel we are staying in, is in Miraflores a sub-section of Lima, and one of the nicer ones. When we got to the Hostel everyone was way nicer than we could have expected, it was amazing. The building itself is 3 stories and the way its set up is very strange. we walk out our door and down the hall and then we are litterally outside..... but still kinda in the building. its weird but i wil post pictures when i get a chance. There is a rooftop bar at the hostel and we were really tired after our flight but we said, what the heck, and went up and got a few beers. These beers by the way were giant! like 40's! it was very cool. So we drank our large beers and sat out on the rooftop in the 80 degree weather overlooking part of the city.

I have only been here for 3 hours when i was awake and im already having an amazing time, seeing new and weird things and just relaxing. So i cant wait to see where the next 10 days takes us.

Today we are going to get breakfast, then maybe walk to the beach. Then we are catching a bus north to Huarez, (http://images.google.com.pe/imgres?imgurl=http://www.peru-tours.com.pe/huaraz/huaraz.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.peru-tours.com.pe/huaraz/huaraz_tour_5dias.htm&usg=__FLI5EpFFpB6AhtsKMOBjY7qD1_8=&h=340&w=452&sz=22&hl=es&start=16&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=ajRqyvQ45zES9M:&tbnh=96&tbnw=127&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dhuaraz%2Bperu,%2Bcity%26um%3D1%26hl%3Des%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26tbs%3Disch:1)

All i know is i cant wait to see whats out there. I will write about the food i eat as soon as we have some good. food.

later

Mid race post for Rutgers

Hello. So we are here in New Brunswick, NJ in the awesome Howard Johnson hanging around after a sweet day of racing. Just thought i would do a quick update on how the race is going so far.

We had about 10 new riders here from UMass so getting them all set up for the time trial was a bit hectic. But everyone but one rider got off on time and the one who didnt forgot his shoes at the hotel.... real nice... But most of our guys enjoyed there first TT and had a good time, we had some people in the top 10 in the D and intro fields so that was good.

as far as the A race went during the Crit. it went really well. I was the only UMass rider in the pack so covering attacks is sometimes pretty difficult, but i did a good job at getting in the right moves even though they went nowhere. The race was pretty hard but not as hard as last years crit for me. I was feeling really well going into the last lap and was on the guy from NYU's wheel going into the last turn as the second wheel looking for a big W or a top 3 but a crash had happened right before the last lap and changed the lines taken into the last turn, making NYU take it a little sharp and me the opposite. So i came very close to NYU guys wheel and tapped it slightly going through the corner and went down unfortunately... It sucks and im frustrated about it.. but thats bike racing and i had a good time and got a good feel for where im at in the pack.. and im feeling good about it.

i hope to do better tomorrow, so we will have to wait and see. We have the hour and twenty minute circuit race in store for us, so that should be fun.

Jersey is a dirty place, i dont reccomend visiting it soon

i will have a full update tomorrow in the circuit race.

later

the start of a blog

So im jeremy. Im not a good writer, i like to ride bikes fast, and im working on starting a business when i graduate that will give me the flexibility to keep riding bikes for a long time.

Ive been training a lot for the upcoming ECCC road season and im looking forward to the Rutgers season opener. This week has been very stressful as the prez of the UMass team. Trying to organize 18 riders for a weekend of racing is annoyingly hard.

I cant wait to see what the race will be like this year. I will be racing the A category, and last year it was pretty tough for me, but Ive been training a bunch so hopefully it will be a little bit easier. We will see this weekend.

as i said in my description of myself, i want to become a pro cyclist some day. I know everyone says this and i know how hard it will be. But just to race on a pro team for one season will be my goal in my cycling career. i think it would be fun stuff.

I am also working on becoming a cycling coach. I have a few clients right now, and i train under Alec Donahue the coach for UMass bike racing. ive been learning a lot from him and hopefully within a year and a half i will have many clients and will be working on my own.

So ive rambled about different things. i guess this is what you do with a blog, im not really sure, i like to keep sentences going by adding a comma, its kinda fun to see how long you can keep them going.

next update will be after the Rutgers race to post about how it went with some pics hopefully

peace