4th of July

I was in Hailey this morning.  Now I am in my hammock.  I can see the occasional firework through the tree in front of me, but I just don't really feel the need to get up and move.  My hammock is awesome.  Bike people out there: get a hammock.  They're awesome to nap in, you can travel with it and it gets your feet up.  But anyway, back to Hailey.  For those of you who don't know, the Hailey 4th of July crit is held every year after the parade and what appears to be a cowboy fighting a bunch of Indians.  With that as the prelude, the race has to be a good time.  It is too.  The citizens of the Wood River Valley put up a ton of money so there's a prime lap for at least $100 about every other lap.  I thought I saw a firework doing something crazy, but it was just an airplane.  It's got to be nerve wracking to be a pilot taking off at 2230 on the 4th of July.  There's a lot going on there.   Back to the crit.  They announced at the start line that there wouldn't be a prime on lap 1.  Oooh...the top quarter of a green circle!  After lap 1, it was game on.  Sure enough, laps two and three had big money in them.  I wasn't quite ready to be racing at that point so I drifted to the back pretty quickly.  It appears that the plane is just making laps around the fireworks.  I bet he feels like a WWI fighter pilot right now.  According to Ben Monahan, the fighter jets from that era had some sort of timer to keep the machine gun from shooting off the propeller.  So I fought my way back up to the front of the race where I would actually be useful.  The race was a lot easier from the front, but I still had to work pretty hard to stay there since they were constantly giving away money to whoever was at the very front as we crossed the S/F line.  Fireworks are over.  There was a lot of noise for the Grand Finale, but I couldn't see it.  BrianFact: the 5th of July is the busiest day for animal shelters because all the dogs freak out at fireworks.  So after a while I tried getting up the road in a move, and I succeeded.  Remi from Exergy and I contested a prime (more accurately, I sprinted and Remi sped up a little to take it).  I looked back and we had a two corner lead.  Remi sat up shortly after he won his money, and I had to try to figure out what he was thinking as quickly as I could.  My conclusion was that he wasn't going to pull because he is a pro and I am a 3 which makes me an idiot that will work my brains out so he can jump me later and win more money and be off the front and I'd just be left really tired.  But I wanted that break to work, so I was torn between being an idiot and hoping that wasn't what was going on or sitting up and making him do some work.  I decided to take a medium pull for a half a lap then see how he reacted.  When I looked back at him, he said "are you going to work?"  Then I swore at him and said no.  So we got caught pretty quickly.  I still don't really understand Remi's thinking on this one.  We could have just gone, taken a bunch of money, and he would have blown by me at the line.  He's a professional sprinter.  Even if he is out of shape, he should be able to crush me in a sprint.  So we got caught.  A few laps later, there was another prime.  Remi and Josh Berry from RealCyclist.com (the non-Exergy pro in the race) took off.  A corner later I went off after them.  I saw them as I rounded corner 4.  I could tell that they had no idea that I was there and were playing games with each other.  I had another choice to make: do I get on there wheel and hope that they'll work with me to get up the road or do I blow by them and take the money.  At this point I was a little wary of trusting Remi to work with me, and I've got bills to pay.  If they wanted to work with me, they could get on my wheel.  Somebody else is shooting fireworks now, and the road's really busy.  I'm guessing people went up on the Governor's Hill to watch.  So I went flying by Remi and Berry while they were focused on each other.  I won $100!  I was up the road by myself now.  I knew I couldn't hold the field off solo with that many prime laps.  I made up another on the spot plan: I would go hard enough to stay ahead on the peloton for a few laps, but stay within sight of them.  With a little luck somebody would bridge across and we'd be gone.  Nobody came across, and I went back into the field.  A few laps later, 3 Bob's riders got up the road with 1 of the Exergy gingers.  That made me happy, but it also meant that I had work to do.  If anybody tried bridging, I had to ride their wheel up there.  I wasn't going to do any work, but I couldn't let the Bob's to others ratio change.  So I covered moves, then apparently the ginger wouldn't work, and the move came back.  Then Remi, Berry, Hoene and some others went up the road.  Not ideal to have Berry and Remi up there, but we'll take it.  I covered more moves, Berry jumped everybody on a $500 prime and went on to nearly lap the field.  Remi stayed away too, and everybody else got caught.  The neighbors appear to be lighting off fireworks directly under their deck.  This should be fun.  I finished about 10th in the field sprint, and I think 2nd in the 3's behind my teammate Charles, so that's pretty awesome.  They might owe us money for that, but they didn't have results posted when I left.  Hopefully they'll be online.  They weren't last year, but I can hope.  I might have to email the promoter for them.  I don't really care too much about the money since I made back my entry fee and then some for riding fast for a lap, but I need the upgrade points so that I can stop racing for upgrade points for a little while.  I really hate racing for points.  My preferred style is to either win or come in dead last because I did something to try and win and it backfired.  Unfortunately, I now have to race to get a top 5 in a large field so that I'll get a couple points.  There are no points awarded for being in a break for 100 miles only to get caught or for sneaking past two pros for a prime or for covering moves for your teammates in the break.  I don't really know what a better solution would be, but I just really hate racing for points.  I just previewed this and "prime lap" came up as an Ad-Word.  What could that be an ad for?  There's still people driving down the road!  What is going on?  My feet are going numb.  I'm going to bed.