.: To New Beginnings

Last night was the first annual ABRT/Latitude team party. We held at Sonoma Restaurant and Wine Bar in SE D.C., it's owned by Eli Hengst of the Rockville Harley team so if you're ever in DC near Capital Hill, stop in the food is great.

Even though this club is 20 years old, I say first annual because after all of those years of continued sponsorship from Snow Valley Water, our relationship ended at the end of '06 leaving us to find a new title sponsor. On the up side it has provided a new beginning for the club, really it as been more of a revitalization. Arch also saw it as an opportunity to step down as president after 14 years of service. It was nice to see everyone come out, I think this year will be special. The Rite Aid guys also joined us which was pretty cool, got to hangout and meet them. The Rite Aid pro team was born out of the Team Snow Valley elite program and this year I think they have the firepower to make some real noise on the NCR circuit.

Gina and I got the opportunity to host a couple of the guys for the night as everyone of the team stayed in town to do a ride with us at Davidsonville. We had Ian Ayers who came over from Colavita, Bill Elliston who rode for TargetTraining and Clayton Barrows who rode for an Italian/British continental team in Europe. All really cool guys, Ian's got alot of energy, oh what it would be like to be 24 again.

Although a much better weather day than yesterday, it was still a chilly morning, in the 20's. We got up early and hung out for a while chatting over coffee before they headed off to a team breakfast. I passed up the option of diner food and prepared my usual pre-ride stack of chocolate chip pancakes, I call them calorie cakes, especially after drenching them in Kings syrup.