Larry Perera Cycling Diary
Fiordifrutta Cycling Team

Wow here I am in the picturesque mountains of beautiful mid atlantic regions finest Altoona Pa. I met Svatek early on sometime Sunday morning and packed up the car with more than his share of crap. We hooked up with our guest star rider for the week petie hult somewhere on the mass pike. Thanks to svateks swift driving and his heavy size 14 foot we made it to Pa in decent time. We got a room in el centro Altoona just in time to get some backwards directions from the chamber maids who were still piecing the place together at 5:45 pm. Apparently there had been a party of epic proportions like the mid atlantic region has never seen. We ate a late meal at the olive garden and then went back to our place to watch lance lose 15 seconds on the champs elysee.

We woke up early on Monday morning to pre-ride the TT course and go visit dunkin donuts. Actually pete was the only one who went and never asked us if we wanted any. Well get him back one of these days. Our Pro Team Director Bill Laudien met up with us in the afternoon and we headed to the TT to get it on. My favorite for the “W” was Saturn though I put a beer on the line with my money on 7-up…..Svatek took navigators. Svatek is now one beer richer. So Baldwin nailed it and got the jersey. 4 of us got within 8 seconds of each other….one of us made the front page – whew!

We took the long way home up to blue knob resort (where we are staying for the week) and poured some more miles on my car to check out Wednesdays major climb. When we got home Bill prepared a fine authentic Italian feast. Our Pro mechanic Brent serviced and finely tuned our racing machines, and our rookie soigneur Nathan rubbed us down.

We rose early this morning and got lost at least once till the Saturn caravan blew by us on some back road. We followed them to the race and them chopped them through the last intersection to take the win. Todays stage was 3 laps of a 24 ish mile circuit through historic Johnstown Pa. I did some practicing with my boy tommy d. – he still remembers me from my days at Ft. Lewis – and his teammate Tim “im ready lets go!” whats his name. I flipped it after 45 seconds and headed to the startin line. I got in an early move that looked better than Yingling lager at 7:00 am. Horner was in it driving, navigos had louder, smelly valley, 7 up and sierra bob were all there. I thought it was my lucky day but the move was doomed within minutes. The winning move went on the second lap through the feed zone. I missed it cause I was picking up Svateks drive thru order. I made sure to keep bill company in the caravan and went back for bottles and made sure he was wearing sun screen on his left arm. 2 guys ended up staying away. Snow valleys chris hedges won in a photo phinish.

Tomorrows stage is a killer its 96 miles of fun. Last year it proved to be my demon so I came back to revisit them. Baldwin still has the jersey barely. Saturn I promise will light it up on the one of the climbs and either ride away from us all…..or crack our legs and take the sprint win from a group of 20. In my opinion they can pretty much do whatever they want to. The good news is that Saturn is staying on the floor above us….so the way I see it by the end of the week the will be tired of climbing that Xtra flight of stairs….so maybe then we can put something together.

Wednesdays 50 cent draft night up here at blue knob so maybe we will have a ride to be happy about…..ill bet Saturn will be there.

See you tomorrow,
lp