It ended up raining torrentially this week. On top of that, the few times that it let up, my allergies knocked me out cold. With all the wet, I was pretty well dead from the mold and pollen in the air. That stuff seems to thrive on the dampness. The net of it is that I didn't do any biking this week, although I got a lot of work done. I was planning on maybe doing a hard day on Monday or, weather requiring, Tuesday, then taking easy rides for the rest of the week so my legs would be fresh. Instead my legs got a complete reprieve. Does that make them fresh or decomposing? The day will see.

I was talking to Travis (not the Aussie triathlete from the Hash, but the high school gym teacher/stock broker from Java Joe's) about his weekend of partying in Guam early in the week. He mentioned he had gone to a really great restaurant called Firefly out of the tourist path. In the process he mentioned a restaurant here in Saipan that he considers the best on the island. It's a Japanese fusion restaurant call Casa Ureshima.

Since I passed out from allergies on Tuesday, we didn't go as we had planned, but we went on Wednesday. The entree menu was pretty normal, although it's the only place I've seen Maine lobster on island, but the appetizers were amazing. We ended up just sharing several of those with a couple of glasses of wine. We had thin wedges of Camembert cheese on crostini with local honey, beef sashimi prepared Chamorro-style, avocado and marinated raw tuna with a light mustard cream, escargot in a well-done fairly standard preparation, and another one that I can't recall right now. Very delicious. Expensive by Saipan standards, but for what we got, very reasonable by mainland standards.

Thursday I got a call from Travis (now it's the Aussie triathlete) telling me he was asked to be the token white boy in a Korean commercial that was filming. Actually, there were several token white folk, but you know what I mean. That meant that he had to choose between paying to torture himself on a bike or get paid to be photogenic in the sun, all on a Saipan teacher's salary. Guess which he chose? It really didn't matter to me. I was going to ride the same course either way. The only difference is when I start.

Last night, we went for an Italian pasta dinner with Dave and the kids. Tita still has class, so they were meeting in a Chinese restaurant just up the road. I saw two other riders that I knew who had had the same carbo-loading idea I did for the night before the race. Otherwise, I rescheduled my China lodgings (turns out timing prevents me from going straight to Shenzhen when I get to Hong Kong, so I'm spending the night in Kowloon, but the Starwood/Sheraton web site is incredibly frustrating) and prepared for the race.

This morning we got up at 4:30. I have to be at the 50k start at the radar tower for a 6:30 start. I'll let you know how things go.