Monroe, Louisiana. That was the site of last weekends opening race for
my season. I got a late start, not leaving until 8:00pm or so on
Saturday evening. On the way down Ryan  Johnson and I needed a solid
pre-race meal for dinner so we saw the glow of  the bell. Once we got to Taco Bell
we knew we had to get inside and see what the 30+ high schoolers were
up to. I reckon that is the new hang out. The best part was when six
guys with this haircut walked in and tried to run the place.
They quickly retreated.

Ryan and I rolled into Super 8 around midnight and hit the sack with
Wade and Wes who had arrived an hour earlier. The next day was a 20k
TT, followed by a 40 minute crit in the afternoon. I had a solid warm-
up for the first time ever and rode what I considered a good
first race of the year. My new TT bike has 8 miles on it but we felt
like a match made in heaven. I did a 27:41 which was 5 seconds behind
Wade and good enough to be the 1st looser. Yep, 2nd place.

After taking a nap at Starbucks it was off to the next event, the 40
minute crit. Twenty minutes in Wade attacked (for the 2nd time) and
this time got away. His brother Wes and I just sat back and chased
down all of the attempts to catch him. At 25 minutes in the rain began
and it was reminiscent of figure skating without the grace. Wes crash
immediately after saying “I run 90 psi so I can nail the corners”. I
kept it upright and continued blocking for Wade while he  rode to victory.
I won the field sprint for 2nd overall. My second 1st looser moment of the weekend.

Wade is a fellow teammate so we got the 1,2 punch in both races for the weekend.
On the way out of town we noticed the water tower said “Welcome to Panther Country,”  how fitting.

-Noah Singer