From San Marcos to Kellogg: My life is diverse, for sure

Sometimes, keeping up with the blog is more chore than genuinely felt pleasure. I know, that sounds a bit disenchanted, a little jaded, a bit tired. Let me put it into terms that some of you married, or formerly married, folks can relate to: We know our roles, and we're happy to live the life that allows us to excel in whatever it is we've signed up for, and then there are those sudden flat moments. And that's putting it nicely (the formerly folks will know, for sure). We love it, but we also drag. Right now, I'm dragging.

Here I sit with fewer than 13 hours until Sandy and I are leaving for Cancun, and I want to meet my "marital" duty to the blog (which, let's not forget, contains the word Chronicles), because it's the right thing to do. You know, the marriage thing. This is not about Sandy and me, mind you, this is about my feeling an obligation to chronicle these past three weeks since my last blog post.

These past two paragraphs took a long time to write, and suddenly, whew, things started to click. From here it's going to be easy rolling, once again. Like in marriage. 😉

Barely a week after coming home from Englewood and that fulfilling time with the Agnew family, it was time for more family time, this one down in San Marcos. Sandy has four grandchildren, two of whom live with her elder son, Roy, and his wife, Melanie, in SM. On occasion I have mentioned them and especially Zane, Sandy's cherished grandson, who had been part of our NICA community for the past two years. Long story short: Zane graduated from San Marcos High, and there was the usual graduation family get-together that involved more folks than I can remember. Sandy had rented an Airbnb for the clan, the huge graduation ceremony (by my count, 510 students received their diplomas) came off without a hitch, and the extended family loved whatever food and drink was served. Done!

Two weeks later, I was on a plane to Spokane, WA, airport code GEG. Go figure. Traveling once again involved a flight delay, as seems to be standard nowadays, meaning that what should have been a five-hour routine quickie became a full-day ordeal. The reason for my flying to GEG, via hotter'n'hell Phoenix, was my appointment as Chief Commissaire (as USA Cycling now likes to call us referees) for the 2026 USA Cycling National Enduro Championships in close-by Kellogg, ID. Memory-sharp blognoscenti will remember that I had the same assignment last year (albeit two weeks later in the year). The organizing crew was the same, with Tony and Melina as the organizers, Josh and Sean as the "officials" who are Tony's amazing go-to-guys, Cam and Andrew in reg and timing, and the indefatigable Sarah as the volunteer coordinator. And let's not forget the dog....

Tony regaling the participants with the event's dos and don'ts

Melania with hubby Josh contemplating something important

Cam trying to sound intelligent whilst explaining chip placement and activation

USA Cycling had decided that no other officials were needed for this race, especially with my young/old friend Justin serving as the USAC backstop in the form of an independent contractor. Quite frankly, our actual contributions to the race were rather minuscule as Tony and Melina and their minions know what they are doing. My greatest contribution was spotting with just minutes before the start the two current ME and WE 2025 national champions wearing their Stars & Stripes insignia (a big no-no at any championship event that will select the next year's champ) and having to call them out. Thanks to their incredibly laid-back attitude we started the race without a major rule violation—a violation that, quite likely, I was the only one to be aware of but that would have called for a disqualification.

You know it's an easy race when that's your biggest call as the Chief. Oh man. Please don't get me wrong: I absolutely love coming out to this event, because it is so amazingly pure in how the contestants approach it, reminding me of the early days of my mountain bike career as a racer. Still, I feel a bit like an impostor, getting paid for something that I'm not really doing, kinda. Yes, I am there to enforce the few rules that govern Enduro as a discipline (from a USAC standpoint), and I am also on-site to give USAC a presence—an approachable, friendly face, who is not the rule-Nazi starring in all those stories that the gravity crowd has collected over the years.

And so we had a good time. New National Champions were crowned, with medals that Justin and I had assembled the night before over beer, pizza, and the second NHL finals meeting between Justin's beloved Hurricanes (he hails from Asheville, NC) and whatever that other team was. He and I shared a few deep moments in various brewpubs, only fitting given our long friendship and my knowing his family. Speaking of friendships: I was totally tickled to get to see, hug, and speak to my longtime friends Ginger and Danny who used to live in Lubbock but then moved to Utah and now are rooted in Idaho. They volunteered as timing assistants, and we got a chance to talk for a while.

Ginger and Danny receiving instructions from Cam

Cooks is being rebranded

The weather was what Idaho seems to produce for this race, year after year: despite the occasional morning and evening spells of sunshine, it was crappy to shitty to worse. Enduro weather, I suppose. On our second race day, Sunday, Melina received this pic from the top:

Still, about 500 racers were happy and nobody had any ill words. That's pretty big, and it speaks for the organizers' approach to the race. I am really glad that USAC gave me the opportunity to once again be part of this National Championship, and with a hot-off-the-press contract tying Tony and Melina to USAC for another two years, I have big hopes to score a three-peat.

Earlier this week, Monday around midnight, I got back to Lubbock. Five days later I have unpacked, laundered, worked on my Ritchey for my upcoming trip to Missouri (not until after I return from Utah, after Cancun), assembled and used my new mega-shop vac and the new battery-operated 14" mower, ridden 71 miles in the current high-humidity environment thanks to mosquito-producing T-storms, and had dinner with Ms. Sandy twice.

Tomorrow at 6:30 am we will get up to catch an Uber to the airport for a four-night getaway. Getting this post online had an obligatory whiff about it, but going to Cancun is pure and simple fun!

Jürgen

Visiting America's Dairyland

Back in 2018, I had visited Wisconsin for an anti-doping assignment, and quite frankly, I pretty much had forgotten about it. Crazy, isn't it? I should have looked through the Chronicles before my recent trip to the Madison area so that I would not have told my hosts that this was my first time to visit the state. Pretty embarrassing, especially when, in retrospect, I had lots of fun back then in this beautiful corner of America. 

Oh well, I suppose one can chalk it all up to travel overload. I am sure that my trip to Englewood Grass Farm just outside of Fall River will stay with me for a long, long time as it was a truly memorable race, quite different from pretty much all UCI races that I have worked over the years. At the center of it all is the Agnew family who not only own the many acres of pasture land and wooded hills but who have created a mountain bike paradise for themselves and others.

The Agnews have lived for generations in this part of Wisconsin, a little more than half an hour north-east of Madison. I spent the first two nights at the patriarch's family home, surrounded by fields that old man Tom still works on a daily basis. His gregarious (and IPA-loving) wife, Megs, had come to the MSN airport to pick up me and my old friend Jared, who hails from the D.C. area; he was the USAC-appointed race secretary, and I was the second-in-command to our Canadian UCI chief, Geordie. Two regional commissaires, Marla and Alan, rounded out our officiating team, while my Turkish friend Ugur, who lives in Minneapolis, served as the technical director and close confidant of race director Ben, Tom and Megs' son and operator of Englewood Grass Farm.

Megs simply had to take Jared and me to The Dump

Pint and Pounder at Karben4. Thanks, Megs!

Ben used to race motocross, but an accident stopped some of his motorized aspirations instead he started to ride mountain bikes on the land on which he raises grass-fed cattle. Over time he developed trails, and his now 17-year-old-son, Tommy, took to the sport with a vengeance. As it turned out, Tommy was able to use his homecourt advantage in the race weekend's UCI Junior XCO event, beating the current Canadian Junior Champion and UCI's top-ranked 17-18 Junior. Both grandparents and parents were proud and elated!

Young Tommy after the short-track, a day before winning the XCO

Ugur and Jared massaging the call-ups

On Friday and Saturday, UCI-inscribed short-track and cross-country races were the marquee events, with numerous USAC categories also on the schedule, attracting around 300 racers altogether. On Sunday, even more riders (many of them truly grassroots) showed up for the WORS portion of the weekend—the Trek-sponsored Wisconsin Off-Road Series. Sunday's officiating was in Alan's hands, and I had time to observe the race from several different vantage points on the course while also lending my hand to various race-related volunteer chores. In return, there were as many delicious grass-fed beef burgers as I wanted!

No, even I know that this is not a Black Angus

After my first two nights in Tom and Megs' house I had moved to a camper trailer that I shared with Jared. It was parked just steps from Ben and his wife, Kristi's, house that overlooks Englewood Grass Farm. The housing arrangements may not have been optimal, but the family connections and the communal meals were truly something special, and I hope to return next year for another edition of this UCI-calendar event. To top it all, for Sunday night's dinner, four generations of the Agnews were in the dining room.

My flight home on Monday showed once again the fragility of our aviation system where one delay can easily cascade into an extra night on the road. Instead of a simple hop from Madison to Dallas and then onward to Lubbock, I was rerouted halfway across the country to Phoenix where I spent the night in a Holiday Inn Express near the airport. On Tuesday morning I backtracked to DFW from where I finally left in the early evening hours to make it back to Lubbock, 24 hours behind schedule. So much for that glorious life on the road.

For the sake of completeness, I should also mention that the weekend before my trip to Wisconsin I had driven to Austin for our Texas Criterium State Championships. It was a typical road race—first day at Walnut Creek, the second day at the iconic Driveway—with little emotional involvement or interaction between riders and commissaires. (I do have to say that a few old racing friends made a special effort to say hi, which made the otherwise very work-intensive and matter-of-fact weekend so much more fun.)

Overall, it all came off fine, thanks to a good crew of officials who made my CR job easy, and I even had a chance to make a new friend, Jay, who works in the marketing department of Meanwhile Brewing, one of several new-for-me establishments that I have added to my list over the past few weeks. In all likelihood, this car trip to Austin will be my last long drive (816 miles!) to an event until the fall as the remainder of my upcoming assignments call for plane travel. Spring is officially over, and now the summer beckons. Stay tuned!

Jürgen