Ouch. i'm in some hotwater over some stuff that happened this weekend... not going into it.

I've decided to race opus again tomorrow. skreech borrowed me his wheel to use, so i can ride the giant again. i'm not really excited anymore, so that kind of sucks. I am excited for black dog on wednesday. as long as my old man is in town we're going to do black dog on the bike friday tandem. i've officiated it but never raced there, so it should be interesting. hopefully we'll get that thing moving pretty good, it's only 34 lbs. so it's pretty light. then track on thursday, as long as it doesn't rain. too bad mikey and skreech are out of town, so no flameburger. i wish i could have made it last week, i bet it was awesome as always.

good luck to skreech and mikey on their trip to washington,

ed

yeah, yesterday didn't go so sweet for me. i got taken out just before the second sprint. it's funny, there was so much slowing/braking, then accelerating on the hill that i got tired of it and moved to the left a little to make my own line. joe dubay (i think) hit his brakes (which caused a wheel overlap with mine) and swerved to his left and took out my front wheel. i guess it wasn't really his fault, because someone in front of him braked. i blame the entire 4s field because they don't know how to ride an entire race at race speed. i've heard good things about joe though, i guess he's one hell of a cross-country skier. he appologized after and i was probably a little short with him, but it was nice of him. In my opinion, the 4s field should all be riding close to full out on a sprint lap, at least that's how it is in the collegiate races. A lot of people were real nice to me yesterday but I wasn't in a very good mood, what with a destroyed rear wheel and all. however i appreciate it. with that in mind...

a big skreech-volume shout out to:
mikey and skreech, sorry I was pissed off all day and congrats to mikey for winning the 4s race
denny appleman, for helping with my bike
the photographer guy who was showing me pictures of the crash and was making jokes about it - it was actually pretty funny
my parents, who happened to be there luckily


In other news, my phone ran out of batteries yesterday so if anyone tries calling me they won't get me for a while, as i'm at my parents house for a few days helping them with yard work. The only other thing that I can complain about is the (fairly) new Dune book, The Butlarian Jihad. I don't know if any of you guys are into those books, but the new authors just don't cut it in my opinion. Their characters are shallow, near-sighted, and bland. Frank Herbert's characters always blew me away, that's what i like about Science Fiction. It's people and ideas that can blow your mind away, but these new guys aren't cutting it for me. But don't get me wrong, i'll still read all their books and probably enjoy them, but man, there is so much more potential in the story line.

Brain, i know you love sci-fi too, so don't pretend like you don't. And i also heard brain has been watching movies on the WE network, or was that me?

ed

it looks like i'm heading out to idaho for a month in a few weeks. I'm pretty excited, it'll be work on a geologic map in the salmon river area. It'll be great, at least three weeks away from cars, traffic, and civilization. Apparently it's pretty remote, we might have to raft in, or hike in on an abandoned road. I can't wait to take shits and then cover them up with medium sized rocks, and get scared of bears and stuff. Anyway, from the look of things, I won't touch a bike from about mid-June through August 9th, so I don't know if collegiate nats is going to happen this year. maybe, we'll see. i do want to see ben win a national title, and see slutes'n'boots act, well, like slutes'n'boots.

I was thinking for our gopher track invitational we should maybe run an open uscf points race too. we could do it the full nationals distance, 120 laps, and if we get the other cat. 1,2s and maybe 3s it could be a decent simulation of the racing and distance we'd have to do at nats. just a thought, since a bunch of local people wanted to do longer races anyway, and nobody will realistically show up for the invitational from other schools without prize money or help with travel costs. i don't know. i guess it wouldn't be an invitational anymore though.

ok, opus tomorrow, track thursday, sit around in between. looks like another busy week. whew! i'd better go take a nap while i still have the time.

ed

there's been a lot of crazy stuff going on, most of it i don't like. it seems i've gained a reputation for not drinking beer, i can't think of a reason how that could have started...

in other matters, my car broke its timing belt, so just after it was repaired it died again. this time there is no hope for its return, so it is going to be put to pasture in a couple of days. i sort of wish it would be cubed or something, but i am a donor so it will be scrapped for parts. i was driving down to Simpson when the stupid car turned off and i had to get the hell over to the side of the road in my quickly de-accelerating car. it was a nice maneuver i must say - i only pissed off one car. now i only have bikes to get around, so it looks like i'm riding to the track tomorrow night.

opus was rough. Due to the car malfunction, i ended up riding close to fifty miles before the race even started. Mikey was all over the first few sprints so I was happy that we were still represented, but i decided to go for the last sprint and with skreech's help took second. Somehow that ended up as third overall, which seemed kind of cheap, but i'll take it. I've decided i want to be a cat. 3 on the road more than a cat. 2 on the track, at least for the time being. i'm getting close now, a couple more good races and i'll have it. I think its funny - me racing on the road - i have no idea why i'm enjoying it, but i am. I bet after tomorrow night at the track the love for the velodrome will take over and i'll decide road racing is stupid. i mean seriously, is it even worth racing a bike without a disk on it? ha!

Things i'm excited about:
1. Madisons with the old man
2. A complete UofM sweep of every race in every category at the track
3. Flying past the old man just before the finish to prevent him from winning his first cat. 3 track race in probably close to a decade... and then rubbing it in after the race
4. Post-race Flameburger stop

Things i'm not excited about:
1. Old man is out of town for tomorrow's race
2. Skreech is a cat. 2 so we won't race together tomorrow
3. not having grips on my track bars

looks like there's some pretty good riders coming to minnesota for the Nature Valley Grand Prix. Gord Fraser's coming this year so that'll be sweet. Jason Knight, the dude from Kansas we raced this spring and the one at track nats last year who pulled a 4:04 3K is racing it too. Ostrow Banning is making his return to Minnesota racing also it looks like.

anyway, i spent about 3 hours last night melding my little brother's face to a bust of Alexander the Great. I put it on my mom's mothers day card. I think it turned out ok. Then, this morning my little brother comes in and asks my mom if she wants him to go to church, and that makes mom real happy, so now i probably have to go to church too...

went to walgreens yesterday and picked up some razors. thus, i finally figured out why shaving my face has always been so painful. the homemade axe i've always used is way too dull to get a good shave, it just pulls and scratches. man, not using that again...





i sure hope not many people read this...

Yup, got fifth in the Cat 4 race at opus. I think I'm kind of slow. whatever, i just want to win a race for once in my life (not kidding, i've never once won a race on the road). Ann Hansgate led me out on the final points sprint in the race, it was one of the coolest things i have ever seen, we're going pretty fast, and she's slowly bringing me towards the front. Then the guys on the front start their sprint from way out, so Ann gets out of the saddle and is really hauling now, I was pretty impressed, then I was like, "oh, i gotta sprint now", and proceeded to get 5th in the last sprint. oh well. oh, then she immediatly lined up for the next race, the women's, and won it. Wow. I wish she wasn't moving away in a couple months, she's amazing.

In other news, I haven't shaved in probably a couple of weeks (actually, i shaved my legs today, but not my face). It's now so long I'm scared of the pain that will accompany the shave. I don't like pain, you see, "I'm not a fighter, I'm a lover" - quote also said by Roberto Gaggioli (Monex), to another rider who wanted to fight. Here's his brief account, I'm putting it in because he's one of the sweetest cyclists ever.

"That's when I lost my temper, and I regret it. I waited for him after at the finish line, to ask him why he did that. And I could see him coming towards me to fight again. At that moment I don't know if it was for defending myself or what, I just grabbed a two-by-four; everyone knows about it, I'm not lying - when we did the hearing with the USCF, I admitted it. And I apologized, I lost my temper. I grabbed it to scare him. I hit the bike. I didn't try to hurt him. If I wanted to hurt him I would hurt in him the race, you know? That's the easy way."

YEAH! two-by-four, Robbie McWho?

ed

i'm excited to race opus tomorrow night. i felt good today. it's fun racing with the cat 4s instead of the Collegiate As because it's possible to actually win. in the last two opus races i did i kept waiting for someone to attack or pick the pace up, but everyone just sits - that's my kind of race.

had a near miss with the ticket cop today. i drove my newly fixed car to campus to drop off a couple papers and an assignment. i parked it at a meter and put 45 minutes worth of quarters in. i was just a little late getting back, by like 3 minutes, when i noticed the traffic cop's SUV was parked behind mine. i was like, "ahh, come on!" but when i got to my car there wasn't a ticket there, instead the cop was across the street writing one out for the car across the street from me. the meter had expired by the time i got there, but the cop must have arrived just before it expired, then decided to wait it out by checking the cars on the other side of the road, but I arrived just in time. HA! even so i booked it out of there, in the rain, with windshield wipers that no longer work.

List of things currently wrong with my car:
1. Windshield wipers don't move
2. Rear light out
3. Smashed rear driver's side door
4. Wheelwell scrapes the tire of smashed door discussed above when there's more than two people in the car or when I go over a big bump
5. Broken exterior door handle on front passenger side door
6. Passenger side window falls down and must be duct taped up
7. Chain grease all over the back seat
8. Emergency brake doesn't do anything anymore
9. Emergency brake light is always lit up
10. Hood pop up lever doesn't work how it should
11. Oil leaks after I drive the car
12. Garbage and cloths in the trunk

my car is alive again. it had emergency surgery to repair some electrical problem so it shouldn't conk out in a busy intersection again (at least not for a while). I wonder what the mechanics thought of my car...

i can't seem to get motivated to work on my next set of stuff due tomorrow. maybe it'll be another all nighter, probably not though.

last night was fun, i wish i hadn't had to drive. the guns we were playing with were crazy. i was thinking about the duels we were having and how i assumed i was hardly hitting mikey at all. i thought i was a terrible shot (which i basically am) but whenever i hit him he wouldn't say anything, but when i got shot i'd scream and run (that's my combat training kicking in). It was also funny when we were running and hiding behind trees and cars with handguns which looked pretty real.
i wonder what all happened with the tonk after i left? man, it looked like he was just having a blast. he's really into those pod-casts too. i guess parts of them were pretty funny, like when those poor otters swam into the earth and got eaten by the mean whale and got spewed out of the blowhole. but i don't think they were that funny. maybe i just need to watch more of them. personally, i thought his food-in-the-microwave podcast was funnier. oh well, i'm off to the track with mikey, should be fun, we're gonna do butt-licks.

ed

its 2:30 am, and I haven't started writing my paleontology paper due tomorrow. what a week.

you know how people joke around about college being the best seven years of their life, well i've officially petitioned for another major so it'll be the big seven for me next year... as an undergrad. ouch.

rudy sunglasses come in on wednesday, but unfortunatley the free visor cap that comes with the order is actually backordered, so we won't get that right away. i know there's going to be a fight over the visor cap.

well i'm off to hang out with my little brother, probably watch some new hope too, it's already in the VCR.

ed