Good day! Last week was the end of my season with the Portsmouth Criterium. Robbie and I had the hometown crowd going nuts for us, which was awesome. Therefore, not to disappoint, I won the thing. Read about it here. Here’s a sweet shot during the action by Ken Stejback of me in the foreground and Robbie over my shoulder. The plan was to work for Robbie, but during my ferociously powerful lead-out, I rode everyone off my wheel, so I took home the glory. And the loot.

I’m now watching Regis and Kelly. You could say I’m full of free time. I moved to Rochester, NY last week to be with Mayo. She works full time, so that leaves me with full time of free time.In a few days, my 2 weeks of no riding (i.e. an off-season) will come to an end and I can start training for 2007. Ludacris is going to be on Regis and Kelly in a few minutes, and he’s a badass, so that’ll be a good watch.

It’s now fall, as of 3 days ago, so that means good food. Turkey, pumpkin pie, pumpkin cake, pumpkin bread, apples, baked apples, apple pie, apple streudel… just kidding. Stuffing, potatoes, apples, yams, beans. Yeah. Therefore, in time for the season, I’ve added a picture of me manning our TURKEY FRY-A-LATOR from Thanksgiving 3 years ago. (Be sure to note the moose-head slippers.) I received this propane fueled fryer three years ago because I cordially asked my friend A$ if I could have hers. Her family had one sitting around unused, so I took it off their hands. I highly recommend getting a fryer if you can. The turkey ends up delicious, it takes only about 45 minutes, and it’s fun as heck. Plus the next day, you can fry doughnuts or Twinkies. I’ve done both.

Here’s an artful shot at my grandmother’s lake house in NH. I’m pretty much a professional photographer, as you can tell. Notice the serenity of the lake, complimented by the mightiness of the mountains, accompanied by the peaceful canoe, enhanced by the translucency of the water in the foreground. Dang, that’s talent.

Here’s a cool picture of the team at the US Pro championship in Greenville, SC. From left to right we have: Mark Olson, the king of comebacks Eddy Hilger, Robbie, Tom Zirbel, co-DS for the weekend Rich England, Brian Sheedy, Jake Rytlewski, and me. Additionally, we have a random guy in the background who’s clearly very pumped about being in the picture. High fives!

So once home, Robbie and I find ourselves constantly doing odd jobs around the house. Mowing lawns is Robbie’s specialty. Our lawn, however, has been suffering from a very weird ailment. This spring there was flooding across much of New Hampshire. Our house survived just fine, but our lawn became a lake for a few weeks. That’s normally just fine, because under normal circumstances, one would expect the water to flow away and/or evaporate come summertime. Not this time, Bubba. Our lawn has been subject to flowing water for the entire summer and is pretty much a mud pit! There are still spots that are dry and able to be mowed, but as seen in this picture, Robbie is taking the Kubota tractor through the muddiest section of the lawn. In fact, Robbie’s Jeep seen in the background was just used about 3 minutes prior to this shot to extract the tractor from axle-deep mud! Horrah for muddin’.

In other news, I’m making room in the bike garage for new bikes by selling off two bikes that I no longer use. Check out my stuff on ebay. Bid now and bid often!

Also, Robbie and I have our last two races of the season here in the NH seacoast area. Friday night we’re at York Beach, ME and Sunday is in downtown Portsmouth, NH. Robbie’s the defending champ for Sunday’s race, so look for the King brother combo to race ferociously fast.

Here’s a picture of what looks like me putting down a mean time trial at the US Pro Time Trial and Road Race Championships in Greenville, SC over Labor Day weekend. I’ve got my serious game face on, a respectably fast position, and stupid-fast bike and wheels. You might think that given these factors that I slayed the time trial… that would be a lie. In truth, my time trial was crappy. I’m not at all used to a TT of that length (32km), so after about 25-30 minutes, I was just slowing down like I was riding through fresh laid tar! Frig, man! My halfway split was a very respectable 22:05, but beyond that I just crept to the finish. I guess I have a good idea of what I should be working on for the next 364 days: long time trials.

Next, after the championship road race on Sunday afternoon, we packed up shop and drove to Roswell, GA for Monday’s Atlanta 100k and stayed at Tommy’s girlfriend’s house. The Atlanta 100k is a very cool race that exists because of the Atlanta 10k running race that occurs at the same time - which supposedly has tens of thousands of runners and is one of the biggest 10ks in the country! So lap after lap, we’d race by the enormous throng of runners going in the opposite 3 lanes. That might be a bit confusing, so you can see this picture for a better idea. I should also point out that this race started at 7:15am. Yeah, STARTED at 7:15. I think it was to beat the Atlanta heat found mid-day, but this was a crazy early start considering we didn’t get to Roswell until about 11:30pm the previous night.

Blah blah blah, chopping out details, after the 100k I flew from Atlanta to Rochester, NY where I am now. This week I’ve been checking out Mayo and my new digs and riding the greater-Rochester country side. (I’ll be honest, it’s almost entirely Mayo’s digs right now. I’ll try to move in over the next month as the off-season sets in.)

I had the privilege of reading a nearby town’s inadvertently hilarious welcome sign while on my first ride in Rochester. You know the type: “Welcome to ____! Where Everyone is Happy!” or some crap like that. I nearly fell off my bike in disbelief of what this sign said; I then proceeded to crack jokes to myself for the next 75 minutes on my ride, based solely on this town’s motto.

Here’s the motto (to save the town from embarrassment, the town’s name has been omitted):

I mean, puhh-leeeeease! The first joke I thought of was, What if someone - heaven forbid - commits suicide? I guess the town’s planners would feel like a bunch of fools for creating that motto. Here at iamtedking.blogspot, we like to have some interactive fun, so if you can think of more jokes, please post them so we can laugh.

As you’ve probably noticed, there’s nothing about Big Gulps in this blog, despite what the title says. That was just a ploy to get you to read. The power of persuasion… muhaha.