Thursday – Travel Day
Boy this morning came fast. I had to be up by at the crack of dawn for my Mom to pick me up at 5 a.m and once again be my taxi to LAX. I swear I owe her a pimp vacation for the amount of times she taken me to and from the airport.
I was actually on time this morning and made it the airport no problem and even a bit early. I checked my “camping equipment” for free…gotta love it and off I went. So far the day had started off just right. I bought a few magazines for the flight. I think it was a guys’ magazine, but it has an interview with Roger Federer and I really wanted to read it. The other was SURF, which I find sort of funny because I don’t surf….at all!! But I like the mags. I was all set and went to chill by my gate.
The past couple days required A LOT of running around. Neither my jerseys or my helmet were done and they were supposed to be weeks ago. So I had to make some calls and do some legwork. First I had to drive all the way out to Murrieta, which is about an hour and a half drive from my house, to pick up my logo’s from Jim at ImagineIt Graphics. He always does a sweet job and fast too. As soon as I picked those up I headed straight to Troy Lee’s so that Redding could put them on my new 2008 TLD Air Jersey’s. That only took about 20 minutes. Just before I headed out knowing that my helmet wouldn’t be done I bumped into Paul the guy that paints all my helmets. He said the delay was getting all the logos, but he said that somehow there were able to get all, but two of them and that he could bust it out and have it done by the next day. I was stoked!! He worked on it and called me the next day (Wednesday) to come pick it up.
It’s funny when you design a helmet with Troy because when you go to pick it up a couple months later your thinking, “Am I on crack, cuz’ I don’t remember this design.” or “Was I even in that meeting??” But no matter what it doesn’t really matter because the helmets even if different from what was in your head, look SICK! Anyway, so I drove back to pick it up and it was almost exactly what we had worked on. I wanted my helmet to look different than the past few years and it does. It’s not completely done yet though. Paul didn’t have time to put all the color in it and some of the logo’s were missing, but I’ll use stickers for now till’ I take it back after Sainte-Anne. Which brings me back to chillin’ at the gate. I just hung out and started working on putting the Treo sticker on my helmet.
Once on the plane it was a quick flight from L.A to Vancouver. About two and a half hours to be exact. We land and head to customs. I see my Troy Lee bag and head over to excess baggage for my “camping gear”. I was using a sweet black Giant bike bag Frank (my mechanic) gave me last year, but it doesn’t say bike on it anywhere so I see what I can get away with. Well, clearly karma bit me in the ass with the whole, “it’s camping gear” explanation because my freakin’ bike didn’t make it. I mean come one!! I got to my first flight two hours ahead of time and it was only a two and a half hour flight, but someway somehow my damn bike didn’t make it to freakin’ Vancouver!! Arrrrgggghhh!
So now I’m on a plane from Vancouver to Toronto on the second leg of my epic journey to Sainte-Anne. Crossed fingers my bike took a short cut to Toronto and when I get to Quebec we can reunite. ☺ I’m supposed to land in Quebec at midnight so I want to give a shout out to either Rando or Frank and say thanks for picking me up.
Tomorrow there is no practice as far as I know so hopefully if my bike doesn’t show it’ll be okay. I’ll keep you posted. ☺
I was actually on time this morning and made it the airport no problem and even a bit early. I checked my “camping equipment” for free…gotta love it and off I went. So far the day had started off just right. I bought a few magazines for the flight. I think it was a guys’ magazine, but it has an interview with Roger Federer and I really wanted to read it. The other was SURF, which I find sort of funny because I don’t surf….at all!! But I like the mags. I was all set and went to chill by my gate.
The past couple days required A LOT of running around. Neither my jerseys or my helmet were done and they were supposed to be weeks ago. So I had to make some calls and do some legwork. First I had to drive all the way out to Murrieta, which is about an hour and a half drive from my house, to pick up my logo’s from Jim at ImagineIt Graphics. He always does a sweet job and fast too. As soon as I picked those up I headed straight to Troy Lee’s so that Redding could put them on my new 2008 TLD Air Jersey’s. That only took about 20 minutes. Just before I headed out knowing that my helmet wouldn’t be done I bumped into Paul the guy that paints all my helmets. He said the delay was getting all the logos, but he said that somehow there were able to get all, but two of them and that he could bust it out and have it done by the next day. I was stoked!! He worked on it and called me the next day (Wednesday) to come pick it up.
It’s funny when you design a helmet with Troy because when you go to pick it up a couple months later your thinking, “Am I on crack, cuz’ I don’t remember this design.” or “Was I even in that meeting??” But no matter what it doesn’t really matter because the helmets even if different from what was in your head, look SICK! Anyway, so I drove back to pick it up and it was almost exactly what we had worked on. I wanted my helmet to look different than the past few years and it does. It’s not completely done yet though. Paul didn’t have time to put all the color in it and some of the logo’s were missing, but I’ll use stickers for now till’ I take it back after Sainte-Anne. Which brings me back to chillin’ at the gate. I just hung out and started working on putting the Treo sticker on my helmet.
Once on the plane it was a quick flight from L.A to Vancouver. About two and a half hours to be exact. We land and head to customs. I see my Troy Lee bag and head over to excess baggage for my “camping gear”. I was using a sweet black Giant bike bag Frank (my mechanic) gave me last year, but it doesn’t say bike on it anywhere so I see what I can get away with. Well, clearly karma bit me in the ass with the whole, “it’s camping gear” explanation because my freakin’ bike didn’t make it. I mean come one!! I got to my first flight two hours ahead of time and it was only a two and a half hour flight, but someway somehow my damn bike didn’t make it to freakin’ Vancouver!! Arrrrgggghhh!
So now I’m on a plane from Vancouver to Toronto on the second leg of my epic journey to Sainte-Anne. Crossed fingers my bike took a short cut to Toronto and when I get to Quebec we can reunite. ☺ I’m supposed to land in Quebec at midnight so I want to give a shout out to either Rando or Frank and say thanks for picking me up.
Tomorrow there is no practice as far as I know so hopefully if my bike doesn’t show it’ll be okay. I’ll keep you posted. ☺
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