Roster: Cliff, Jake, Katie, Allie, Smitty, Sid, Steve, and special alumni guest, terMite. Big shout-outs to Ariel for lending her car, Dr. G for lending his car rack, and Brancheau for helping us make the rack work.

Monday:
The drive out to Morgantown proved to be a bit tough for Ariel's '92 Chevy Tahoe getting over the WV mountains, but we eventually landed without incident at our cabin site tucked deep in the quiet hillsides. To our surprise, we also discovered that the gracious owners of Mountain Creek Cabins, Sheila and Mark, run a cougar preserve on the side. This was luckily never an issue for us. Our two cabins were a real luxury: each was nicely equipped with a full kitchen, Jacuzzi, fireplace, campfire site, with a beautiful mountain stream that ran alongside. The riding for this first day was a long recovery ride to let our legs rest after the Philly Phlyer races. The weather was friendly enough, fairly cloudy and about 45 degrees with no wind. We headed to Cooper's Rock National Park, a nice area closed to traffic and nearby our cabins, and rode about 2:30 at Z2 with a good deal of paceline drills.

Tuesday:
Today we met up with Brian Talbot from WVU's team at Wamsley Cycles, though nearby vacationing riders from Navy were unable to come ride too. Talbot took the group out on a 2:30 loop up through some beautiful, hilly country in Preston County, one highlight being the Snake Hill Rd climb, about 12-15 mins, and the toughest climb of the day. The weather conditions were incredible, mostly sunny and warm enough to ride without sleeves: most of us got our first jersey tanlines of '07. We stopped back at Wamsley for a quick lunch break, then went out for another 1:30 of riding. One group of us set out riding along the railtrail by the river, while the rest of us joined up for a local loop with fresh WVU riders, Steve, Rob, and Geff. Total riding for the day was over 4:00 of ride time, z2-z4. Thanks to Wamsley Cycles for the water and bathrooms. [http://www.wamsleycycles.com/]

Wednesday:
Today we went out to the classic WVU RR course (located in PA, right outside of Core, WV), which has been an ACCC favorite for some years. Regardless of whether this course will be the conference championship RR for '07, we wanted to go out and ride it again this week. The loop is 18 miles featuring two major climbs, the first about 12:00 in three parts (riding hard), while the second is about 7:00 but much steeper. We broke up into groups and rode until sunset, about 4:00 total riding time with long LT intervals, not including our very enjoyable lunch break. The temperature today was very agreeable and the air very humid, though the roads were wet from the previous night's rain and our bikes and bodies were covered in mud by the end of the day's riding. Much later that night back at the cabins, there was an incident involving one cabin being mysteriously locked outside. Later, the other cabin's bikes got covered in slices of ham. Sometimes these things happen in the quiet hillsides of West Virginia.

Thursday:
We decided the most valuable use of our time for our last 4:00 ride of the week would be to get back on our own RR course in Hampstead, MD, since the race itself was rapidly approaching in 3 days. Unfortunately, the Tahoe ran out of gas before we could even get out of the WV hillside, and we were delayed about an hour as we waited for Jake's car to bring us gas. Once we finally reached Hampstead, a major thunderstorm began and kept most of us from riding. Steve and Smitty, however, had arrived early and went ahead to hammer through one lap in the torrential rain, only then to arrive back at the parking lot to find out that their ride back to Baltimore with "Panic Attack" Koenig had already departed. The rest of us had the wisdom to pack it up, go home, and finish the ride on trainers.

Friday:
The same winter storm system that ruined our ride yesterday continued on today and forced us to cancel the Hostetter-Hampstead RR, our team's major race that we were hosting this year. There was much grieving amongst us all, and to add insult to injury, we also had to ride trainers for another day. Big thanks to Mr. Hostetter for his continued support of our team even despite this unfortunate setback. At our team party tonight, we toasted to you.