Giro Di Jersey Road Trip

Travis Burandt and I took the plunge and drove to Burlington, NJ to race the Giro Di Jersey last week. The race was a 5 day stage race: Crit, Road Race, Time Trial, Road Race, & Circuit/Crit.

We left last Monday around 6am, I think it was more like 6:30 or 7 by the time we left. We were trying to get the bike racks working properly. As you read, we had problems down the road...

After a few arguments on which way we were going, when I say arguments, I mean with the Garmin Nuvi...Travis always insisted the Garmin was ALWAYS right...lol

Travis took the first drive shift. We traded off each gas tank, which is pretty difficult considering the VW got an average of 350-450 miles per tank and 30-35mpg...Lots of time before you stop again. Also, Travis and I were dehydrating ourselves to cancel out all the unnecessary stops =) Definitely not recommended.

Our first stop was somewhere near border of Louisiana and Mississippi. It was time for lunch, so we chowed down on some delicious tortellini pasta salad that Travis' mom made us...It was amazing! Thank you Travis' Mom!

As we started to eat our pasta, we had the sunroof open and I look up to see my Cervelo P3 time trial bike sliding off the bike rack on the roof of the car!! We pull over to fix the problem...Thule has this crappy design that wouldn't tighten enough to hold the bike rails on. We grabbed a bunji cord from the trunk and strapped it down. The journey continued, but with eyes up on the bikes the whole time...

The first day of driving we made it to Knoxville, TN. We make a phone call to KB to book a hotel for the night. Thanks KB!

Just as we arrive outside of Knoxville, we hit a parking lot of traffic at 10:30 at night!! Apparently they like to work on the freeways at night in TN.

The next morning, we woke up to get a easy hour ride in before we hit the road again. We didn't want the legs to stiffen up before a 5 day stage race. We went on a nice ride along some river, it was beautiful out there! We came across a pack of Labrador retrievers, which were definitely sprinters and not climbers...they were chasing us up a hill. We managed to get away with no injuries. We took a few photos along the way to keep the fans updated back home.

We made the return back to the hotel, only to come across the same pack of labs...they were on the hunt this time! This time we were going downhill, so we had them beat from the gun! Nice try Doggies!

We were on our way! Next stop, Burlington, NJ! We still had about 10-11hrs in today's drive.

We were drafting behind a trucker in Virginia somewhere, only to find him swerving to try and shake us off his tail...So as we're passing him, he flipped us the bird, and gave us some words of wisdom...haha...At that point, I thought he was for sure going to murder us at the next rest stop...I saw it in a movie once!

The day was narrowing down, so we made a nice stop at Macaroni Grill to fuel up with Carbs. We drew some nice photos and posted them for our twitter fans. It was us driving along...then a Dinosaur came out of no where!....then he ate us....the end

We finally made it to Burlington, NJ at the Promoters house, Tom and Erin Licker, with Red and Teddy the dogs. We survived the journey there!

Next up...Giro Di Jersey!