Tour of San Luis, 2 & 3

That lovely pic is inside the particularly petite, mirrored hotel elevators.The first steps out of the hotel lobby present a near overload to ones senses. People everywhere, alarms going off, dogs scurrying about seeking shade, and every other person asking for a water bottle or autograph. Here is a brief snippet of how it goes down:One of the most abrupt things is the sound of the police sirens. Hear that car alarm going off? Yeah, that's the police.T'was a hot one today. And yesterday. So thankfully the threatening morning lightning storm of two days ago (translation: "threatening" = terrifying) has made way for heat and wind. It's akin to riding into a hair dryer set on wicked warm.Not a whole ton to report on yesterday's stage dos, but I'll tell a story anyway. Tons of wind and the corresponding nervous energy at the start. South American racing is quite lively... for all the wrong reasons. For example, all the distance markers are generally incorrect. So the published 3km neutral roll out is more like 900 meters, which we take full gas anyway into a ripping start of the race. And then with the blasting crosswind, we were guttered out, whereupon we encounter "rumble strips" in the shoulder of the road. You're familiar with rumble strips, yes? Those indents along the side of major highways to jar your attention and make you put your cell phone down or wake up as you nod off behind the wheel. Rumble strips here, however, are 10 inch tall cement blocks. They won't wake you up if you nudge them with your vehicle; they'll shred the bottom of your car off, tear your axle apart, and flip your car over (...which, coincidentally should wake you up if you had nodded off). In a similar fashion, they don't work too well in a bike race, so just as we experienced on day one, we were once again it was dodging crash after crash after crash as the peloton is strung out 150 guys long. Mind you, this is merely minute zero through fifteen of a 4.5 hour race.The river crossing and errant dogs are a curious touch as well.We rolled along up and down all day ticking off 2000m of vertical, all anticipating the final 15km of the race. From 15km out we basically do a circuit race/criterium through some sort of industrial district. And that's about 10km long and into the final 7%, 5km climb. The Cannondale Garmin team has done fantastic job of riding together. The vibe is truly ONE unit here and we are all going to bat for each other. This typically takes weeks of racing to find this sort of cohesion, but impressively we have this on day one. This is truly something remarkable. Anyway, we have some guys with good form and are climbers, namely Dombrowski and Danielson, so Kristoph, Nate, Ben, and I chop off on the front and in the wind a great day of the day saving Tom and Joe, and then we went into full Spring Classics training in the final 15km-to-10km to go protecting those two. Lots of gutter all day and especially there at the end. But that was fun. Great training. Superb camaraderie. Plus we stayed up again despite the plethora of crashes. Then Colombians and Argentinians went nuts on the climb and I think basically went one-through-twenty. Another day in the books!Today's stage three was a long one.To begin, we hop into the van at the tender hour of 11am. Side note to preface the drive: everything takes place late here. We typically start stages at 2pm, finish around 7pm, by the time we sit down for dinner after transferring, showering, and a massage, it's about 9pm. In bed by midnight with the typical pecking away at a phone or checking of the insta-feed, and asleep by 1am'ish.I digress. And I will continue to digress.Each team is issued a Sprinter van with an Argentinian driver. Ours is Eduardo (our driver is Eduardo. Our bus is number 28). We drove in one direction for two and a half hours this morning, complete with a motorcycle entourage with that annoying siren blaring the entire way, directly northeast. At which point we disembark from the van, kit up, and race directly back on the exact same road.Fascinating stuff.Similarly fascinating is this article in the Times about self fulfillment and enrichment by writing. I've never thought about iamtedking.com being a method of self-help, but maybe it is.Hmm. I'm tired now and don't really feel like summarizing today more than I have already. So suffice it to say that it was fast, windy, hot, and had a lot of crashes in the end so that sucked.