In bike racing, as in all things, in order to look back we must move forward - so forward I will move and look back I will. Dairyland was a lot of fun. The races were all well attended by both fans and racers, everything was on time, everything went smoothly. I wanted to provide my faithful readers with daily reports, but I spent a bulk of the week in an internet-lacking hotel, so no such luck. Instead you get this nice short overview (but, in the future, you can follow me on twitter for more timely updates). There were some notables: the Road America and Greenbush road race courses were a ton of fun. If those races happen again, I'd definitely recommend them. Both courses were directionally, all over the place (up, down, up, left, right, down, up...), super fast, and just challenging enough to make things hard. I also had a lot of fun at Downer Avenue, which definitely lived up to its "party atmosphere" reputation. I finished stages one, three, five, and ten. I crashed out of stage two. I didn't start stage four. I got sick after stage six and never really recovered from it, hence the large gap of unfinished races. All in all, a positive experience. And now, without further ado, a brief list of things I learned at Dairyland:

-Eat, even when you aren't hungry, because being hungry during a race really sucks
-Sleep, even when you aren't tired, because being tired during a race really sucks
-Drink, even when you aren't thirsty... you get the idea
-When you have crappy wheels and sram neutral, flatting is awesome because you get to ride 404's
-Beer feeds and high fives make even the worst of races suddenly not so bad

The spain - portugal game is starting now, so I'm done writing. Pretty sure I'll be sticking around le midwest for the first half of superweek, then heading back south for some down home racin'. I'll get some pictures up when I can.