You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April, 2008.
Radioshead’s Idioteque is stuck in my head. Great song.
Obadiah Parker does a great cover of it as well as an awesome cover of Outkast’s “hey ya”
Be sure to check ‘em out.
It’s a nice wet, cold, cloudy, coffee drinking, book reading, library kind of day here in RI. I’m just going to assume that everywhere else in the world has the same weather so that I don’t feel bad about taking a day off so that I can grind out some work and begin my prep for next weeks brutal beating of final exams. I’m ready for summer. I’m ready for 40+ hours a week. I’m ready to make money. I’m ready to spend money on bike related things. It should be a good summer.
I’ve been biking out in the woods a lot lately. Friday I rode for 3.5 hours a Lincoln Woods. I never get bored of those trails. Nice and technical, windy single track, tricky descents, hard rocky climbs, super fast descents, and plenty of places where it would be super easy to injure yourself. It’s fun to do intervals in there because they usually end up with a little tumble.
Ive been putting time into the woods because it’s fun. On the road I tend to day dream a lot (esp when riding solo)… when you’re Mt biking you gotta pay attention, grind into the dirt, float over the rocks, dodge the trees, soar over the logs, jump off things, and be graceful. Being graceful on a Mt bike is hard. It takes work… Im getting better though. But no matter how graceful you get you’re not on a MTB ride until you crash. Doesn’t matter if your were barreling down a steep rocky face and ate shizz or if you were just goofing off and tipped over at 2 mph. Both are legit crashes and add to the fun and thrill of mt biking… at least for me.
That’s one of my favorite climbs. Super steep, although it doesn’t really look like it, it’s nice and rooty, and rides right along side a nice little ledge. Good times.
Yes this is inappropriate. Steve W. you prob shouldn’t watch this.
So after my night class Tuesday I ventured home for the night so that on Wednesday I could pick up Clifford, my car. What a pain. I called over in the morning to make sure that it would be done before I went over and the dude said it was… and that they only take cash or credit. Oh joy. I don’t have a credit card, for fear that I will use it and go into debt, and I was hoping I could just write a check. A check would be easy.
So off to the bank I went so suck $1200 straight out of my account. Eh, I was really hoping to use that money for a new Mt bike. I guess that’s going to have to wait…
Oh well, my car works. And then I spent $40 on gas which got me just over half a tank. Oh joy. Now because my car works doesn’t mean that I am planning on driving it a ton. In fact, I am creating a challenge for myself: Bike more miles than I drive. It’s going to be tough, especially with some of the races which are far away. So, basically I need to ride my bike a lot. My car will only be used when I have to carry a bunch of big heavy things around.
So then Wednesday afternoon I went over to the Stow ride at 4 and met up with Scott and Micki (a new MRC’er). We went on a quick little 25ish mile ride and then I met up with the rest of the 5:30 crew. It’s great to ride with people. I ride solo down here in RI way too much. I can’t wait to be back in MA for the summer. I rode with the 5:30 group up to Harvard center and then decided to break off and head back. I had to get back to school because I had a date with the library. I got 51 miles in though. I’ll take it.
Blah blah blah. This is boring to read.
Check out some pics yo…
CARS BACK!
Fat kids gotta eat.
The famous electrolyte jersey… equiped with bib short lines!
Ok, Harpoon time!
Step 1:
Step 2:
Shaving your legs is easy. Stopping the blood from spouting out of your ankle after you hacked it apart is the hard part.
Yesterday I woke up later than expected for my 8 am class. I had to give a presentation and then was planning to immediately ride back home from school. My legs had some serious stubble on them and I wanted it off. Ok, shower time and I’ve got 15 minutes to get to class.
I immediately start lathering up and sliding my Mach 3 razor ferociously over my legs. Ok, left leg done. During the transition between legs I took my Irish Spring soap and rubbed it into my hair (yea it’s not shampoo, but it works).
Now onto the right leg and boy I am really cutting it close to making class on time. The top half went well so I kept moving down and took care of my knee and then began the long fast streaks up my shin and calves. Awww WTF!!! I freaking sliced open my ankle … like I cut into my ankles jugular. Blood was everywhere and was not stopping. CRAP. Class started in 7 minutes and my ankle was spewing blood.
I had a towel and a t-shirt at hand. I threw the t-shirt on the ground, because I knew that as soon as I shut off the water my wound was going to leak all over the floor, so I needed something which I could use to wrap it up in! Water went off, I stepped on the t-shirt, and wrapped my towel around my waist. I stumbled back to my room and immediately went to the sock drawer since I didn’t have any bandages. The sock worked like a charm though and I felt like Curt Schilling. Sweet. I also made it to class with a minute to spare. Sweeter. And I also biked 81.23 miles yesterday. Sweeterer.
Doing the ride home again today. Although, I may or may not make it home. The reason for this voyage is because I will hopefully be picking up my car from the transmission repair place. I just called them and they arn’t sure if it will be ready today. So they told me to call back around 1. At that point I should be at 50 miles in. If he says the car is going to be done, I’ll keep biking to the place. If he says eff you, your car isn’t done yet, then I will turn around and get in a solid 100.
Sounds like a plan. Plus it’s gonna be superr nice out. Basically, warm enough to bike around naked. I love riding my bike naked. These people do to.
I stumbled upon this the other day. It combines three great things: grapes, naked women, and bikes.
This weekend was long… but also a lot of fun.
On Friday, a biking friend from school and I headed down to his home in CT which is like 30 min from the Hop Brook Dam race. When we got to his house we sat around a bit, ate some P&J, and then eventually went out to the local BMX track where I soon realized that I want to race BMX. Holy crap BMX is a blast. Boy did I suck at it but flying into berms super fast, attempting to get air and clear gaps, and riding whoopdie doops on a ridiculously small bike was the most fun I had in a while. It’s something I’m going to have to look into a bit more.
We then returned back to his house, ate pasta, drank wine with his parents, ate more pasta, drank more wine, and then eventually we stopped eating and just drank wine. We killed a few bottles end ended up heading to bed a bit tipsier than expected. Unfortunately, we had to get up early because my friend was helping out the race promoter today.
At 6:00 am it was pouring out. The huge wind gusts and lightning didn’t make me want to get out of bed. So I slept for another half an hour, looked out the window, and saw blue skies. WTF? Whatever, I’ll take a nice day instead of a wash out any day.
We get to the race site at 7:30… and I’m bored. Since my race was at 2 I had a ton of time to kill. After sitting around for a bit, I threw on my bathing suit, hopped on my bike, and pre road the course. Before I raced I ended up pre riding the course three times. Which I think was a bit too much because that was about an extra 17 ish miles of riding. By the time I had to race all I wanted to do was curl up into a little ball and go to bed.
It was also pretty hot out and being in the sun all day just drains you. But the great thing about the sun is that it provided me with a great amount of time to get burnt and work on my tan lines. The funny thing is that now I have white speckles on my arm from where mud was. It’s pretty badass if you ask me…
So my race starts, I kinda got boxed into the field, and ended up riding right around 8th wheel when entering the short singletrack windy climb. I made a few passes and worked my way up to 4th or 5th but by the time I got to the longish steep climb thing I was out of juice and the dudes I passed ended up passing me. Frustrating. Oh well, that’s racing. After the bottom of the big decent Colin was calling me a sissy because I was only in 8th and in response I attempted to utter out some BS excuse as to why I was doing so bad.
But yea. Fun day. I did end up getting 8th and even won some sweet new socks which I will be sporting today. Prizes go 10 deep!??!! That was rad. You’ll never see that in road races.
I got back to school late last night and imidiately crashed into bed. I was gonna go out and rage but my bed just kept on calling my name. Sorry to disapoint all of you ragers.
I couldn’t fall asleep last night so I turned on some light music that I could relax to. While tunes from The Knife, Dylan, The Lemonheads, and Slackstring among manywafted through the air I lay there thinking about life. Basically, life equals cycling… so I though about riding my bikes.
For this season I never really made goals. I haven’t picked out my race schedule. I figure that I’m just going to race every weekend. If there is a Mt Bike race relatively close I will do that. If not, I’ll pick a road race to do. I think its a plan.
As for goals… I just want to get some killer tan lines. If I get killer tan lines I will be riding a lot. If I’m riding a lot I will be racing well. If Im racing well I will get some killer huge awesome legs. If I have some killer huge awesome legs I will get the ladies. If I get the ladies I will have a fun summer…
So basically if I get some awesome tanlines everything else will fall into place.
