obscure cycling gossip

2008-05-09T21:51:00.002-07:00

I just finished grading the last of my labs. Whew, what a semester!

Now it's time to think about the old thesis. I head into the woods for a tour of the "Belt Supergroup" on May 20th with my advisor. I will stay in the mountains of east-central Idaho until August 22nd-ish. The Belt Supergroup is an 18 kilometer thick package of rocks 1.47 billion years old. Pretty cool. I will be mostly working by myself mapping the bedrock geology in some pretty rugged country. Some folks think there's a big fault running through the quadrangle I'll map, but nobody has really gone in because there aren't any roads nearby. When the snow melts in the high country (7,000 ft. to 9,000 ft.) sometime in July I will start backpacking into the northern part of the field area for a week and half at a time or so (or however much food I can carry). It's going to be a good summer. All the work I've put into school over the last 8 months translates into 3 months of fun and adventure in the southern Bitteroot Mountains. Sometimes I can't believe how lucky I was to stumble into the geology field.

And I don't think there are any grizzly bears in the area, so that's an added bonus too.

ed

2008-04-13T08:55:00.002-07:00

2 items

I lost my cell phone and I don't plan on replacing it. So if anyone needs to contact me it should be through e-mail (steweric@isu.edu or stew0205@umn.edu).

We (the geology department) defeated the biology department in the annual keg-off. We finished our full sized keg in 36 minutes. It was a good night. Our two departments have competed in the keg-off for somewhere around 15 years and geology has never lost despite always being heavily outnumbered (there are around 100 graduate students in biology versus 15 in geology). We also brought in a bunch of valuable undergrads and a couple of profs to help. One of our profs hushed the crowd and gave a rousing speech at the conclusion of the contest congradulating biology on their excellent effort, reminding us to respect our interdepartmental collegues, and at the end to "let the taunting begin!" It was great.

2008-04-07T14:12:00.002-07:00

things are looking good out here in Poky. One of the first things i learned about grad school is the need for money. it's all about money. To get money you have to apply for a lot of grants. I think I applied for 7 student grants. My advisor got a 15,000 dollar grant to cover most of the field expenses for my thesis work this summer, but we needed more money to get mineral age dates (from zircons). We're starting to hear back and so far I'm 3 for 3 on student grants, for a grand total of around $3,400. Together with about the same amount allotted for dating in my advisor's grant, it looks like we'll be able to do the analytical work we were hoping to do. This also will involve a nice 3 week trip to Canberra, Australia next spring, which I am particularly excited about. It looks like we'll get to do some field work too in South Australia. Should be fun! Definately getting excited!

ed

2008-02-23T20:30:00.002-07:00

well, I started riding my bike again about a week ago. the plan is to do a few races this spring. i also upgraded to cat. 3 on the road, so i won't have to race with as many sketchballs. we'll see what happens.

There's lots of good riding out here. too many 1 to 2 mile climbs to count, and several 5 to 10 mile climbs. hopefully i'll get into shape one way or another.

2008-02-15T10:16:00.002-07:00

As a joke, a couple of us got our advisor, Paul Link, a barbershop quartet for Valentine's Day. They came and sang in the middle of class, and gave him a rose and a box of chocolates. Pretty funny stuff.

2008-02-04T16:04:00.000-07:00

Well, I just got back from the Roundup in Vancouver. It was an experience, to say the least. In only 5 days we (myself and two other grad students at ISU) managed to do the following:
-Arrive at our hotel in Vancouver by getting lost in a suburb far to the south and magically driving straight to the hotel
-Have my own bed in a fancy hotel that I paid $0 for (thank you NovaGold)
-Eat free food and have free beer served to us by a waiter on a yacht in Vancouver harbor
-Witness ~27 kegs of free beer be consumed each night at the conference
-Turn in 4 research grants in three days
-Get tickled on the chest - twice - by a 60 year-old gay guy on the dance floor during B.C. night (Each night a different state/province sponsored the festivities - Yukon night, British Columbia night, Alaska night)
-Pay for only 2 or 3 meals the entire time I was in Vancouver (thank you NovaGold)
-Realize that mineral exploration is not the thing for me - though I might try to work a season after I graduate for a company that does work in New Guinea, South America, Pakistan, and elsewhere)

Now I'm back to reality and school.

Except we might build a snowcave outside the department tonight and crash there. You know, cause it's so hard to get up early for those 8am classes.

Ed

2008-01-20T12:33:00.000-07:00

A lot has been going on. A couple weeks ago a few of us decided to try going caving at the Crystal Ice Caves out in the middle of the Snake River Plain. It was a great idea, but none of the roads were plowed so it was a pretty epic day. We ended up getting within about 2 miles of the place. There were 7 of us jammed into a Suburban. We would get stuck in snow drifts every few minutes, get out, dig out the truck, then go again. Then our tire chains would fall off. We spent about 4 straight hours in four-wheel-drive-low gunning it. Anyway, it was an experience.

Then I ended up going to Tucson at the last second to run the LaserChron Zircon dating apparatus. The machine is pretty ingenious. You have a laser which zaps, vaporizes, and ionizes a hole in a zircon mineral grain, and then you have a voltage which accelerates the ions down a mass spectrometer. The machine costs about a million dollars. Anyway, I worked the graveyard shift with one of the undergrads, and we broke the laser at about 1 am on the last day we were scheduled to work. Oops. It actually wasn't our fault, the laser firing mechanism was just old and it wore out when we were working.

I also hit up the Meet Rack when we were down there. We got the tour, and later in the night we even saw one of the locals get branded. He was pretty stoked to get 50 cents off drinks lifetime and 2 dollars off t-shirts. It was hilarious. It was the 1,338th branding done at the Meet Rack.

Then on Friday the geology club crew at ISU had an expedition into the Portneuf Range to one of the yurts the school operates in the winter. I snowshoed in and out. On the way out we were socked in by clouds and we couldn't see a thing. We ended up going down the wrong drainage and came out way too far north. Luckily our GPS was working because by the time we made it out of the mountains it was dark and finding the unplowed road that led back to the trucks would have been nearly impossible (the GPS units the department rents out weren't working on the way up, and never seem to work for me). Everything is new to me out here. We were told to carry a shovel and an avalanche transceiver in the event you get buried in an avalanche. If you get buried, your buddy can locate you with his transceiver and dig you out with his shovel. It really makes you evaluate your hiking path a little bit more.

ed

2007-12-17T10:57:00.001-07:00

looks like i'm going to the roundup (mining geologists' annual get-together) in vancouver in january. i'm gonna look for work in new guinea. south america and centra asia would work too.

i saw brokeback mountain the other day.

i have to say the culture displayed in the movie is spot on to what it's like out here. even the way the actors spoke in the movie is exactly how folks from rural wyoming speak. it makes me feel bad for the gay people in Idaho and Wyoming today, because I bet they find themselves in the same position as the characters in the movie.

oh well,

ed

2007-12-11T21:59:00.000-07:00

This photo pretty well sums up my semester. I've gotten by, but it's taken some pretty clever, last second inspirations to make it (note the ziplock bag around my sock to prevent my foot from getting wet in the deep snow).

I teach a Thursday night Geology 101 lab. There are something like 11 girls and 3 guys in the class, so it has an interesting dynamic. Anyway, for about the 10th time this semester, I locked myself out of my office. The problem was it was 7:00 pm at night, I was on my way down to the lab room to open the door and begin class, and nobody was left in the department to let me into my office. So I get down to the lab room, and all the students are standing around the door, waiting to get in. I check the door and sure enough it's locked. "Ok" I thought. "Stay calm." The smartest thing I could think of was to mill around with the students for a minute or so, making dumb jokes and pretending to act like I had the situation under control. Then suddenly inspiration strikes and I decide to hold class in the graduate student computer lab. After a few minutes it seemed to be working out well enough, but then I realized that we needed calculators and rulers. This forced me to dig into my bag of magic tricks for a second time that night, and I decided to log myself into the computers so they could use the windows calculator. Rulers turned out to be a bit trickier, but after some searching I found a few protracters and told the students to use them. After about 45 minutes of this organized chaos, Caleb walks in, and is pretty surprised to see 14 people in the lab. I stride over confidently and say, "Caleb, boy am I glad to see you. As you can see I locked myself out of my office again."

Anyway, long story short, I've been awarded the department's travelling award, the "Brunetto Award" which is given to the individual who displays the most brilliance in the department (ok, actually the person who does something really stupid). The actual trophy is the gravestone of a guy named Brunetto. Photos will come when I actually get my hands on the trophy. And one more thing, I won the award for a completely different incident. Sweet huh. I love it here in Idaho.

Ed

2007-11-04T20:13:00.000-07:00

well, there's been some pretty good adventures lately. a couple weeks ago caleb calls me up and asks if i want to go help him haul his dead deer out of the mountains. i naturally was way into it. so he comes into the department at about 7:30 pm and gave me the old severed deer-balls baseball toss. he thought it was funny. anyway, we headed out into the darkness and found the deer. no sign of any lions around too which was good. then we put the deer on a sled and dragged it 3/4 of a mile back to the road, nearly getting lost on the way. The deer is pictured below with caleb, (notice the tongue sticking out).

then we had to stuff it into his honda element, which was kind of interesting to say the least.

then i went to GSA in Denver, saw Cara about 5 times, but never actually managed to hang out. and 4 of us got a free pedicab ride with joe, mikey's buddy, which was fun.

then tonight i was out on a walk in the mountains south of Poky with Esther. we were walking on a four-wheel drive backcountry road. we were idling a while too long at the top of a ridge and it was starting to get dark. on the way back i think we took a wrong turn. we ended up being several miles from where her truck was parked. luckily, two middle-aged guys show up in their SUV and offer a ride back to the bottom. we agree. the passenger gets out of the car with a beer in his hand, and grabs his scoped rifle in the back seat, placing it next to himself in the front seat. meanwhile Esther's dog is growling and barking at them. So we're kind of wondering where this is all headed, but go along with it anyway. in the end, after a couple of beers consumed by both of our rescuers, we make it back unharmed to her truck. they turned out to be pretty good guys. it also turns out you can trust beer drinking, gun carrying strangers when you're alone in the mountains. never would have guessed it before tonight.

glad to see sideburnz is alive and kicking on the internet. and i'm coming back for a week on the 16th i think.

ed

2007-10-01T15:58:00.000-07:00

the oregon high cascades

ok. i've finally done it. I'd like to apoligize to everyone i've let down. I had successfully avoided mooning another person for so many years that I thought I might go the distance. Nope, didn't happen. so the story goes, Cody and I were scrambling around on an obsidian flow at Newberry volcano in the middle of a snowstorm, when Cody got hit in the jaw with a snowball from about 50 meters away. Turns out if was one of our professors who threw the snowball. Cody and I looked at each other and knew in our hearts what needed to be done. So we unbuckled our pants and mooned our prof, thus initiating an hour long snowball fight in the middle of newberry caldera. oh all the wasted opportunities these last years. it was all for naught.

anyhow, the cascades were beautiful. oh, and the next day four of us climbed the south sister volcano. and now that i think about it, i may have let some more people down on the ascent. i was getting really sweaty, and it was pretty cold out so i knew i had to shed some layers to prevent my cloths from becoming damp. of course, after stopping damp sweaty cloths quickly become cold, so i knew i had to keep removing clothing until i stopped sweating. this finally occured when i was down to only my boxers and boots. in hindsight, it was a little awkward passing all those bundled up hikers wearing next to nothing. not one person even commented on my attire. anyway, i didn't summit in my underwear, as it was starting to get pretty chilly near the top (my shoelaces and pant cuffs were frozen stiff). oh well, maybe next year.

here's a photo of cody crossing the summit crater of south sister in the cascades.

2007-09-22T19:55:00.000-07:00

so, i'm going to be coming home for 8 days over thanksgiving, from the 16th through the 24th. we really should make sure a breakfast at the dinkytowner happens.

nothing really exciting has happened lately, except when three of us grad students just about got the department's truck stuck on a mountain the other day. i've been working outside on mapping projects and going on field trips close to every other day, which is pretty awesome. people told me Idaho State was a field school, the kind of place where you learned geology walking around outside, and it is certainly true. on wednesday we leave for the cascades and central oregon on the departmental seminar trip. it'll last five days. it should be fun. oh, and i almost ended up going to tucson to a mining conference. caleb, a grad student here that i worked in alaska with, is going and i almost managed to weasel my way in too. anyway, i told him he should check out the meet rack while he's there. sounds like he will, and hopefully he'll take advantage of the meet rack's generous lifetime discount by getting branded with jim's face.

i also noticed i haven't been rubbing my stomach when i'm lecturing to my labs. and i even lectured my intro lab for close to 45 mintues the other day, a new record. pretty amazing...

2007-09-02T15:22:00.000-07:00

i need to get a mountain bike.

grad school is going to be fun.

i bought season one of stargate.

sorry.

2007-08-15T23:08:00.000-07:00

Two more days up here in Alaska and then I'm heading to Idaho. The summer has flown by. Some of the leaves up here are starting to change colors, and we've had frost on the ground a couple of mornings. Fall is coming soon.

I moved up to the high camp, "Camp Omar" about a week ago. The lower, larger camp is called "Camp Swamp." It's really beautiful here. The swimming hole on the Omar River 200 meters from camp has to be one of the finest in the world. I'm now realizing how much I'm going to miss the good life here in Alaska. Walking jagged, misty ridges in the morning, watching the seasons change and the birds come and go, meeting new friends and hearing new stories. It doesn't get much better than this.

Though of course there are things I will not miss. Mosquitos, 5+ hours of swimming through alder brush, and working 26 straight days are kind of difficult.

Right now, our camp is planning on igniting a huge bonfire on the 17th to celebrate the end (almost) of the field season in the Baird Mountains. The geotecs stacked together an enourmous pile of dead trees. It should be quite a show.

Finally, I've officially graduated. Absolutely amazing. Seven years for two undergraduate degrees, how long for a graduate degree?

2007-08-02T21:04:00.000-07:00

Continuing to work in the Baird Mountains of Northwestern Alaska. I've really become attached to them. They have such a barren, arctic feel to them. There isn't as much wildlife here as down near Aniak, though there are Dall Sheep here which is very cool. I'm still searching for the elusive wolverine. Three guys in our group have seen them, a fact I am very jealous of.

Doing mineral exploration has been an interesting experience this summer. How does it feel to work towards exploiting the land? I'm not sure how I feel actually. It's occured to me that the larger problem of destroying pristine country has little to do with mining, oil and logging companies exploiting the land but rather the demand for oil, lumber, gold, silver, zinc, and copper in the modern world. Computers, medical devices, and electronics all use gold. For Americans to continue purchasing their computers, and living the lifestyle we've become accustomed to, these industries must continue. It's actually kind of sad really, how attached the western world is to Hummers, fancy cars, and personal image. But it really is all of us who are at fault for driving the changes in our world. Driving a fuel efficient car does little to help the environment if you're also purchasing solid wood furniture at Ikea, buying a new computer, running your air conditioner (all things I have done this summer), and doing all the other things that Americans take for granted. It all adds up when 280 million people do it. Last night our camp maintenance guy, Vince, took us on the "Kobuk River Tour" on his fishing boat. We pretty much just visited Rose's fishing cabin, upriver from our camp a few miles. Rose is 78 years old and spends the summer along the Kobuk River doing subsistence fishing, as she has all her life. Simple, hard, rewarding life with no computers, no facebook, and no blogging. I think someday I will get tired of the American lifestyle and move away. Hopefully anyway...

We'll see how Idaho goes.

2007-07-28T21:00:00.001-07:00

Hey, the last few days have been a blur. We spent the afternoon on the last field day out of Aniak fishing and lounging along the virtually inaccessible (except by helicopter) Kipchuck River. Built a fire and cooked a king salmon over it for lunch. The next night, Steve L, the owner of the "hotel" we're staying at, had our crew over for steaks, halibut, horseshoes, and one hundred cans of Budwieser and Miller Lite in an ice chest. It was awesome. The real kicker was when 56 year old Steve P. came over. He was already hammered when he showed up with an unopened bottle of Crown Royal. By the end of the night, he was drooling all over his chin, couldn't speak properly, and was giving people the "evil eye." He eventually passed out in Steve L's backyard. Oh, I forgot to mention he was also the fixed wing pilot who was going to take half our crew and gear up to the Baird Mountains the next day. The other kicker was he had to be in Anchorage by six the next day for a physical with one of only a couple of doctors who are willing to clear him to fly. I guess he has poor vision and hearing. Absolutely hilarious. Welcome to the bush.

Anyway, the Brooks Range is amazing and incredible. I love it. I also saw my first Dall Sheep yesterday, which was cool (they are close cousins to Bighorn sheep).

ed

ps, i miss you mikey

2007-07-22T21:46:00.000-07:00

Hey,

You heard it here first. Eric Thompson is a national champion. Junior 17-18 Short-track Mtn. Bike National Champion. Yay!!!

Well, I'm in Anchorage at the moment, heading back out to Aniak in the morning. I got a message today telling me to cancel my flight to Kotzebue and go back to Aniak instead. I'll be working out of Aniak for a few days, then heading north for the next three weeks or so. The northern camp works in the Baird Mountains, a western spur of the Brooks Range. It's well above the Arctic Circle, and it's really quite beautiful up there, though I only spent parts of two days in the area in early June. It should be nice to go back. The big goal for August is to see the Aurora Borealis in all its splendor. Here's a couple pictures of the land around the camp I'll be working out of. Not too bad.

Saw Mikey and Sickboy in Denver. Had some good times, and lots of good naps. I also met his parents. The best part was I somehow managed to avoid riding a bicycle the whole time. For a while I even thought I was going to be racing the Mt. Evans Hillclimb. Now that would have been funny.

2007-07-16T16:30:00.000-07:00

Ok. Real funny guys. i swear i am the only person this sort of thing happens to.

Take a look at the writeup for me in the velodrome "Program and Racing Guide." Not only does it say that I have no jump, and that I only recently have gotten to the point of "challenging" my dad in races, but it insinuates I am suffering from E.D. (do I need to spell it out for you?). This insinuation is open to interpretation to some degree, but my dad sure seemed to pick up on it. For some reason I did not find it particularly funny. For those of you who are wondering where the name came from, I will clarify before any more snickering occurs. 3 years ago, in Tucson Arizona, Skreech, F. Steve, and myself were preparing to go to dinner. The other two were waiting on me, and Skreech in a hurry said my name real fast. Steve, who wasn't listening closely asked, "Who's Ed?" From that point on I have always been Ed. Not ED. Skreech can verify. brain can too, hehehe... hehehe.

I suspected that my dad was involved, but now I'm not so sure. It also could have been Bob, who finally got fed up with me always asking him for race entry money. I have a super-secret list of other suspects that I will be investigating in the coming days and weeks from my secret base in Alaska. Any tips are appreciated.

Also, I haven't graduated yet. Apparently I didn't apply for graduation. Except that I did. About three years ago I was starting to think I would never leave the university. it hasn't changed.

2007-07-11T21:28:00.000-07:00

Finished another day in Kipchuck today. It rained all day. Kevin, in both the photos below, and I were slipping all over the place. We followed a stream down from the plateau to the Kipchuck River. And yes, that is a garbage bag I'm wearing in the photo below. Don't ask.

2007-07-08T23:48:00.001-07:00

Beautiful Alaska near Aniak

The mark of the bear.

My ride.

The mountains just to the south of Cone

2007-07-06T20:45:00.001-07:00

today i saw one of the coolest things i have ever seen. we were flying into Cone on the "wherrly bird," about a mile from our dropoff point (and south of where i got attacked by 3 or 4 miles) when we saw a mother grizzly bear fighting an enourmous male grizzly bear. both bears were standing on their hind legs in fighting stance. But when we got close they both scattered. the female was protecting her two cubs that were just behind her.

Did I mention that Cone is absolutely filled with grizzly bears? it is rare that we go a day without someone seeing one. Generally it is fine because most of Cone is pretty high (except where i got attacked), so we have few trees, little brush, and excellent visibility. But when we start taking stream sediment samples at another place called Kipchuck in a couple days, it could get bad. It is all forested and brushy, which means danger. In response, we bought some air horns to scare the bears away. But when Pete, our lead geologist, was trying to scare a mother bear away yesterday on a hillslope with the air horn, the bear just stared at him and didn't move. It took winding up the helicopter to get the bear to go away. Thus I'm kind of wondering how well the air horns will work at Kipchuck. hmmm..... at least there's no lack of excitement. i can't say my job is boring.

I'm thinking about putting up a photo of my side and part of my ass that shows the claw punctures from where the grizzly bear stood on me, but it might be too revealing (remember, I've never mooned anybody in my life). maybe i'll try taking one from a different angle, cause they're pretty sweet.

finally, i'll be in minnesota from july 13th to july 18th, then out to denver to visit mikey from the 18th through probably the 22nd, though i haven't made a reservation yet on the departure. mikey, i sure hope this is okay with you cause i just went ahead and did it. i hear andy kruse will be out there too. that should be fun.

oh, and the mosquitos are still horrific. they don't even go away in the rain.

ed

2007-07-02T17:00:00.000-07:00

ok, where to begin. i was having a really good day yesterday, mapping some rhyolite domes and some glacial morains. It was going well and I was covering a lot of ground. It was starting to get late, and I wanted to check out another potential rhyolite or rhyodacite dome to the west of where I was by about a mile. However, there was a sea of alder brush between me and the hill. I decided to give it a go because I wanted to do a good job on my map. It's not all fun and games up here you know.

So alder brush is probably the scariest stuff to go through in Alaska because it is so thick. You have about 3 feet of visibility in every direction. The obvious worry is coming upon sleeping bears. That's the other thing I should mention. The new area we began mapping in, called Cone, is absolutely thick with bears. We'd already seen a bunch, Jasper had seen a bear den, and the hillslopes were all dug up (from bears digging for ground squirrals). Thus the area was sort of dangerous. As a consequence, I was periodicly shouting HEY! and OUT OF MY WAY! to make sure I didn't startle one. Unfortunatley, that is exactly what I did. In the middle of the alder ocean, alders began to shake violiently in front of me, and in a matter of about 3 seconds an enormous grizzley bear head emerges in front of me. During the previous two seconds I had taken the shotgun off my shoulder and started to load the slug into the chamber, but when I saw the bear about 4 feet in front of me, coming at me really, really fast I realized the futitlity in the action and just turned around. Wham! The bear knocked me to the ground, stood on me for about 2 or 3 seconds then climbed off me and ran away. I got up with blood dripping all over the ground, coming from my face. I felt around with my tongue and realized part of my cheek was drooping out. Loaded the shotgun, called for a helicopter pickup, and got the hell out of there.

Brain's prediction of me getting eaten by bears has not yet turned out to be true, but it was close. I think the slice in my cheeck was from the bear walking over my face. If his claw was 4 inches higher it would have taken out my eye, and if I hadn't been wearing a backpack, I probably would have been killed. Pretty close call actually. Apparently I should get a pretty sweet scar from the deal, which could be a good thing or could be a bad thing. Only time will tell.

I'm staying out of the field for two days to let the sweeling in my cheek go down, then it'll be back out there. Six stitches to sew me up. Next time though, I will be carrying the shotgun with a slug in the chamber when I wade through the brush. He learns!

If you have not been to Alaska, you should. It's absolutely wild up here - at least the Alaskan bush, away from the cities. It's the real deal. Nature governs the world up here, not man. You end up with an appreciation for the grizzely bear too.

ed

2007-06-29T00:24:00.000-07:00

back to the old work grind again. well, sort of.

i'm in aniak alaska now, which is sort of in the south-west. there are trees and mountains here, so that's nice. the king salmon have begun their trek through aniak. the neighbors are brining in 75 pounders. it's pretty cool. i showed up in town with tiny hooks, 4 pound fishing line, and a plan to nab the best piece of alder on the Kuskokwim river - you know, fishing huck finn style. apparently this will not work, cause up here they recommend 80 pound line, and some pretty beefy fishing poles. i suppose i could just charge a pole and reel to the company like my coworkers did. or not.

so the moisquitos have arrived. that's the main issue. if there isn't any wind, it means big trouble. if I stripped off my cloths i would be sucked dry immediatly. i can't think of a worse way to die. kevin, one of the geologists working up here, got this sweet picture of me being swarmed by the little bastards. at least it does feel kind of good to swat your back and know you just killed 8 mosquitos. sort of anyway.

the real big news here is that we have a TV. We had a weather day the other day and sat around watching a marathon of this stupid show on VH1 called the "White Rappers Show". It was awesome. It's my new favorite show. it's even better than "stargate" and "beauty and the geek." the dudes are just so stupid. there's a guy called the "King of the Burbs", and he won't stop talking about the "Ghetto Revival". What? Huh? you gotta see it i guess.

i wish i could report some awesome adventures, but the bears haven't attacked anyone yet. if they do i'll be ready, cause my aim is quickly improving with the shotgun, and i'm going to spend some time in the next few days learning to throw my rock hammer like a tomahawk. this is actually what we spend our time doing up here. sweet, huh?

ed

2007-06-18T12:32:00.001-07:00

From the Seward Peninsula in Alaska. It's fantastic country. Not many trees though.

I'm back now in Minnesota. Raced the track on saturday and got smoked. My old man took third in the combined 1/2/3 80 lap unknown points race. It was pretty cool. He lapped the field with Mulroony, Regester and Super Rookie.

When last I wrote in, I forgot to mention a couple very important nuggets of information that I think nobody will be glad to know about. well, at least the second nugget anyway.

First, the helicopter I rode in during the first four days or so up in Alaska was in fact the very same helicopter used in the O.J. Simpson car chase. This will always be my claim to fame, and I don't expect to ever be a part of anything more important.

Secondly, I feel obligated to mention that before I left for Alaska in May I made a return foray to the Gay 90s. I am sorry if this lets anyone down. However, this time I was able to control myself a little better. Kavi and Matt on the other hand were not able to. Kavi payed for a kiss from a dude chick he was really digging at the drag show. Matt didn't seem to care about the drag show, he was too busy downing mixed drinks. By the time we ended up downstairs in the main dance hall he was starting to get very aggresive with me. He would sneak up on me, put me in a tight bear hug, and proceed to violenty dry hump me. It was pretty awkward, especially when he caught me when we were all dancing on-stage, and was thrusting so hard my feet were flying off the ground. Seriously, what am I supposed to do? Pretend that I like it or pretend that I have no idea who this guy is and get security on him. I, in all my wisdom, pretended that I liked it. Thus Matt did not get kicked out, and I lost what dignity I had left.

I'm sure you're all glad to know this.

2007-06-11T22:11:00.000-07:00

stardate 061107. arctic explorer's log:

today i met a legend of the alaskan bush. his name is wild bill. nobody knows his last name. he flew his little plane into our camp today to hang out. He didn't know any of us, but he still hung out for close to an hour. but our pilot and our cook had heard of him. I guess the FAA is after him because he's always equipping little planes with huge engines, and he also makes equipment runs illegally on the same enourmous plane that was featured in the epic hollywood film Con Air - a fact he made sure we were aware of during our conversation.

so i'm having a blast up here. i commute to work on a helicopter in the morning, explore the tundra for about 8 hours, then take the helicopter back to camp. its pretty sweet. we saw a grizzly bear the other day too, and since then we've stopped "accidentally" forgetting to bring the shotgun into the field. incidentily, i'm currently the gunman in my two-person group (the other geologist is a girl), a fact i personally find hilarious. we were target shooting the other night with the slugs and i couldn't hit the blamed board from 15 feet away. Also, I have a bad history of hightailing it when I see bears. Like when that black bear in Colorado jumped out of a bush in front of me while I was peeing, and I took off running mid-stream, urinating all over my leg.

the wildlife here is amazing. we see moose just about every day. also porcupine, caribou and fox. wild bill told us there were some musk oxen a few miles from camp too. i'm really hoping to spot a wolverine, but that might be too much to ask for. anyway, it turns out the company pays for plane trips home during vacation so I'm heading back to Minnesota for a week starting on Saturday. I should make it for Smither's track race Saturday night. hope to see some of you there.

Ed

2007-05-22T09:43:00.000-07:00

yesterday i was on a ride with steph thompson and we were checking out the fossils at the brickyards down by lillydale. the trail out of the brickyards is gravel, and on the trail i ended up getting a little stick stuck in my front wheel. it was kind of annoying because it was making a lot of noise, so i decided i needed to remove it - while riding. i was on my fixed gear commuter bike at the time. so i unclipped and began trying to kick out the stick with my right foot while peddling with my left. after a first failed attempt where i nearly got my foot caught in the spokes, i brillianty decided to give it another go. the second time i didn't actually try to remove the stick, instead i just threw my foot straight into the moving wheel, flipped over the bars, and broke a spoke.

If the mental image of me getting my right foot caught in the front wheel of my bike is not funny to you, imagine a retarded kid with a huge grin on his face throwing his leg into the front wheel of his moving bicycle and getting thrown from his bike. that was me yesterday. i am brilliant. and i may lose another toenail.

track racing this thursday night.

2007-05-14T17:36:00.000-07:00

ok, we were planning on bringing home the national title, but it ended up slipping through our fingers. we finished 24th...

even though we pretty much got smoked, it was a really fun time. brain finished the crit on sunday taking 42nd. cook and i got dropped about mid-way through the race, and jameson broke the all-time record for earliest cramping in a race by getting a cramp twinge on his first peddle stroke. he was pretty toasted from the road race the day before, where he really gutted it out and ended up being our only finisher. kari and steph both finished in the field in the women's criterium. andy and i were probably the happiest because we realized we made it through the collegiate season without crashing at all. andy came close yesterday when he ran sideways into a haybale, but somehow he managed to stay upright.

so i've finally graduated too. that's pretty sweet. it only took me seven years. looking back, there were a bunch of things i really should have gotten around to doing, like applying for that astrophysics minor, which i had more than enough credits for. oops.

anyway, i think i'm going to have a little going away party after the track race this saturday night. it would be sweet to see everyone one more time before i leave in two weeks.

2007-05-12T20:12:00.000-07:00

hey. day 2 of nats is done. today was a great day. things started out at 6:00 am goinmg to woman race. team members present - ed, brain, cornbread (andy cook), jameson, steph, kari, maria. we are currently in 18th place overall i think after the team time trial and road race. crit is tomorrow. we are planning on coming from behind to win it all tomorrow.

highlights
kari = 27th, steph = 35th
pushing two beds together to make one super bed
freaking the girls out with high speed stripping
jizz-bees
the brain
that crazy coach from penn state with the ridiculous questions
we beat KU (pronounced KOO) and Army in the TTT

lowlights
- i was 30 minutes away from brain and crew with the trailer keys when they arrived at the trailer preparing to unload bikes and warmup - needless to say they didn't get a warmup)
- i probably broke my pinky finger when a trainer closed on it (that is why my spelling is bad)
- brain broke a chain at the feed and dropped out 30 miles later
- 3 miles of gravel on course
- andy cook flatted twice and dropped out after about 70 miles
- brain smacked my balls real hard and my stomach hurt a long time
- finn from olaf crashed and has a partially collapsed lung and concussion
- brandon fm olaf had a super fast heartrate problem
- jake from olaf flatted twice
- somebody shaved in the shower and now the water pools up in the tub
- 18 cent razors are not worth the bleeding they cause

right now we are really hoping that mark smelser rides out to the start line tomorrow on his magna glacier point,which is equipped with a fire extinguisher that is filled with flour, and rigged to two exhaust ports connected to the seat stays to shoot out flour at high velocity and possibly to be lit on fire. it should be an amazing show. we are all crossing our fingers down here.

no thinks-hes-pro sightings yet either.

ed signing off.

2007-04-29T21:40:00.000-07:00

yo.

just back from kansas and the completion of the NCCCCCCCC collegiate season. we won all the team stuff again this year; that's five in a row now for the overall conference championships. brain was second in the conference overall, second in the RR this weekend, and second in the crit. i guess he's making it a habit. i was tenth in the crit today, and dropped out of the road race yesterday cause my knee is all messed up. we won the conference team time trial this weekend too. it was super fun, andy cook is turning into one incrediblely strong rider. we averaged almost 29 mph over the 15 miles mostly because of him. it was fast. and yes, for some reason i'm excited about TTTs.

anyhoo, highlights from the weekend include both the "early" van and "late" deciding to moon each other at the same time, mark smelser playing a joke on us by locking us in his house and leaving for the crit course, rocking out to the top gun soundtrack, and of course the staple of manhattan kansas dining - gumby's.

it looks like we going to go to nationals this year, which should be pretty fun. i think both the men and women could turn in decent team time trial rides. i think our women could podium perhaps.

2007-04-11T20:44:00.000-07:00

over easter, my mom was telling me how i really needed to open one of the Wells Fargo bank statements they had been sending me. i closed out my savings account with them about two years ago, and apparently they'd been sending my parents monthly statements for the past two years. anyway, i never bothered to open a single statement from them, and quite honestly, i didn't even know they were sending me anything until my mom told me a couple days ago. so i was starting to really wonder what was going on. anyway, i open up the envelope, and low and behold, i still have $329 in my savings account. I can almost pay April rent!!! that's very good news, because it's getting harder and harder to hide from the landlord when he comes over.

it's times like these that make me super happy i have no idea how to manage money.

and while i'm on the topic of money, the dreaded tax filing deadline is fast approaching and i still have not filled out the forms. i'm a little worried, because i really need to fill them out correctly this year. I don't want a repeat of my 2005 performance (audited), or my 2006 performance (will be getting a letter soon).

so on to bike racing. this weekend is our home races. should be sweet. men A start at Opus at 10:00 on sunday, and i've heard a rumor that super rookie and spencer may show up. that would be sweet. i also went over the to mcf forum the other day, and apparently hollywood henderson has a contest going to see who the first person is to spot him waving a Hollywood Cycles banner at the spring classics in europe. i laughed super hard at the video, its hillarious.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkxy2P9s61U
http://www.cyclingnews.com/photos/2007/apr07/wevelgem07/index.php?id=/photos/2007/apr07/wevelgem07/LC002

ed

2007-04-03T21:12:00.000-07:00

hey hey,

is it normal to eat a two-pound family sized pre-made pasta meal and still feel hungary? is it normal to top off the pasta with some greasy taquitos and a couple hunks of cheese? is it normal to wish you were washing it all down with some coffee? is it normal to hide your food from your roommates because you fear they may eat some of it?

it is true. i am a fat kid stuck in a skinny kids body.

Your midi-chlorian count is so low that in the Battle of Hoth, when you heard the chicken walkers were coming, you came out with a knife and a fork...

(that joke is not actually mine, instead it comes courtesy of Darth Dork himself, my brother Peter "Nerdwalker" Stewart)

here's a photo of him, in his essence.

2007-03-26T19:28:00.000-07:00

hey, so we had our first race weekend down in kansas last weekend. we absolutely killed the other teams in total points. Brain was second in the RR losing by a half a bike length to defending collegiate national crit champion mark smelser. we had three in the top seven overall. brad johnson won the crit the next day, and we had 4 in the top ten (me=10th, Brain=9th, Cook=5th, brad=win). Yeah, sweet. I'm really excited.

I heard sean noonen from carleton wants to hold our home RR in conjunction with that Oxbo race. This is the most retarded idea i have heard of. i think the race sounds like fun, but not if you don't have the right equipment for it (such as myself and 2/3 of the collegiate field). i would not do that race with my giant.

so kari and megan made a facebook account for me, complete with all sorts of fake info, such as being a bisexual, and being engaged to andy cook. there's also a great picture of me humping brain. it was funny until people started to find it, like friends from high school and a guy who I will be working with this summer. eventually i managed to get the password so the info has been changed. HA! take that! Then just after I just got all the gay stuff off mikey asks me to marry him. of course i say yes. oh well, i tried. anyway, i don't know if i want to keep it or delete it. i guess i'll keep it for the time being. i've been thinking I could probably use it to post all sorts of embarassing pictures of my little brother and then be-friend all his friends and let them see them. i think that sounds fun. not sure what else i would do with it though.

2007-03-19T15:50:00.000-07:00

hey. back from spring break in arkansas. it was pretty fun. good roads, did a crit and a road race too. worked for the brain in the crit, which he won, and got worked in the road race.

we start the collegiate season next weekend in lawrence, kansas. should be a riot. i love kansas.

ed

2007-02-25T10:03:00.000-07:00

hey,

wish i had made it to snowballs chance. however, mixing Brothers and the Gay 90s together friday night was a recipe for trouble. i should have seen it coming.

you know, i've heard a lot of my buddies talk about how much fun the 90s is, and it turns out they were right. that place is wild. It even comes complete with a gay porno bar and male strippers. it kind of makes the Meet Rack look like a huge poser. yikes. anyway, we spent most of our time in the main dance hall, and i remember being very intoxicated and dancing shirtless with kavi onstage. yikes again. There were definately some awkward moments, being a straight guy in a gay bar and all. The first good surprise was when i was peeing at the urinal and i realized the guy washing his hands next to me was not actually washing his hands, but was leaning over the divider staring at my dick. I tried to play it cool of course, but when he followed me out of the bathroom and across the dance hall i had to play my last card and went straight into the arms of my buddy matt. one lesbian told matt that, me and him were, "just the cutest couple." matt also danced shirtless onstage with a gay guy for a while, he seemed to enjoy it. his girlfriend did too. after the 90s shut down at 2:00, i think we went to some guys apartment for awhile. not sure. then we had to fit 8 people into a pontiac grand prix. matt and i, being the drunkest, volunteered for the trunk. let me tell you, if you are in the mafia and looking for a car with enough trunk room to fit more than a couple of bodies, the pontiac grand prix is not the car for you. i nearly passed out on the trip back from asphyxiation. got home around 3:30 am, vomitted into a grocery bag, fell asleep, woke up, vomitted two more times into a plastic bag. got up for good at 6:30 pm saturday. missed snowballs chance by a bunch of hours.

ed

2007-02-20T19:02:00.000-07:00

I love my neighborhood. Someone seems to be siphoning gas around here. I'm not even kidding. Also, either a pack of hobos have invaded or someone really enjoys leaving shopping carts in the ally. Every day another is deposited in the alley, just like the daily piles of shit being deposited by one of our neighbors dogs. Sheesh.

In other news, we finally took down our christmas tree, and Kavi got clothslined by a cab driver after he tried to make a run for it instead of paying. After Kavi got decked, the cabby tried to drag him back to the cab. Kavi did what anyone would do in his situation - he spred his arms and legs as wide as possible to make himself hard to drag. Good thinking.

Homework time.

Ed

2007-02-05T21:38:00.000-07:00

i don't live in the ghetto but...

our house has been robbed twice, my car has been robbed once, and we just heard 4 gunshots followed by a car peeling out...

anyway, as some of you know i have a new car after my old trustworthy camry died in the middle of a busy intersection last spring. now i drive an old acura integra of unknown age. List of current problems with the new car:

1. The brakes shudder occasionally
2. There are a series of cracks in the windshield propagating across the width of the car
3. The car gets stuck in park. Sometimes the wait is 15 seconds, sometimes 3 minutes
4. When the gas tank gets low on fuel, the pressure builds in the tank and the car refuses to start unless you depressurize the tank by unscrewing the gas cap.
5. There is a short circuit in the engine and a fan turns on in the middle of winter to cool down the car, while the car is off, until the battery runs out.
6. Sometimes the automatic seat belt doesn't release tension and just tries to strangle you.
7. The back seat is covered in chain grease.
8. Rust.
9. The vents spit out fine to medium sized particles at passengers.
10. Sometimes the front driver's side tire goes flat.
11. The driver's side door lock doesn't work from the outside.
12. The headlights are so dim I only feel comfortable driving at night when there's a full moon.
13. The key pretty much always refuses to come out of the ignition when the car is cold. Sometimes the wait is two minutes, sometimes 20. Sometimes I don't know how long the wait is because I just leave the car with the key stuck in the ignition, doors unlocked, hoping someone will steal it.

That's pretty much it. As long as I bring along my portable charger, I can feel reasonably sure that I'll make it home. If not I can always walk, as long as it's not further than uptown of course.

Ed

2007-01-25T20:38:00.000-07:00

Guatemalan Style Shitter (hole in the ground)
WHAT???

Well, two weeks into the new semester and things are still quiet. I only have classes three days a week, so I've been sitting around watching Segal movies alot.

Anyhow, the job in Alaska has been finalized, so it appears I won't be racing at the velodrome this summer at all, which is kind of a bummer. I've been assigned to one project in the northern Seward Pennisula and another somewhere in central Alaska. I've been wondering if they'll give me a gun for the grizzly bears. I'm not sure. If I got a choice, I think I'd choose a Glock or something big like that. BANG?

2007-01-16T21:14:00.000-07:00

my brother peter singing

2007-01-15T21:07:00.000-07:00

Big Guatemalan Spiders. As big as my hand.

Yeah, so I'm back from Guatemala. Crazy stuff happened down there. it was a really nice trip, a great experience. brief highlights.

6 days and 150 kilometers hiking in the Peten jungle. We saw the unrestored Mayan ruins of El Mirador, Nakbe and Tintal. They were very impressive. I also learned alot about jungles. For one, if you try to wash cloths, they will not dry out no matter how long you air them out. They just turn musty. Also, it is very difficult to stay clean. I believe by the third day my crotch was rotting. Perhaps my smartest decisions was to not bring shorts to the jungle. I ended up ditching my pants by the second day and just went around in my underwear for the rest of the trip (and yes, I changed them, once).

Went to Tikal for two days, then took the bus to Guatemala City, then from Guatemala City to Hueheutanango, then to Todos Santos, my uncle's village. About twenty minutes into the bus ride to Heuheutanango, four guys in the back of the bus ran forward. One was waving a gun around, yelling "assulto" or something. They robbed everyone on the bus and searched everyone's bags. It's my first armed robbery. I know the first question you're probably asking is if I soiled myself. The answer is no. Seriously though, I came out pretty good. The guy who searched me didn't find my stash of money that I slid up to my belly, so I only lost a swiss army knife and 10 Quetzales (~$1.20). My uncle lost about 300 Quetzales (~$40). The best part about the story is that after the robbery, the bus just kept going to Heuheutanango. We never went to the police station or anything. Only in Guatemala.

Todos Santos was fantastic. It's an indiginous village, and one of only a couple villages in Guatemala where the men have retained their traditional dress. My uncle lives there as a subsistance farmer, and speaks the local Mayan language Mam. So it was a fun time. We helped tare down the local hotel.

Bathwater, Peten style.

On a side note, we would go down to swamps like these at dusk to look for boa constrictors. It was fun.

2006-12-10T14:58:00.000-07:00

A lot of shit is being thrown around these days within the MCF community. I threw some at the fan and it hurled gold back at me. So I figure I should go looking for gold next summer. Got an e-mail from the guy I worked for last summer, and a friend of his from Spokane Washington is looking for geologists to map, core-log, and soil sample up in the Brooks Range and Seward Penninsula next summer. I sent him my resume. They're pretty desperate for field geologists I guess. It may or may not happen, cause I have some time constraints if I go to grad school, but wow, working north of the Arctic Circle in some of the last remaining pristine country on Earth would be pretty sweet. It's helicopter supplied. Sweet too. This is actually the kind of work I would like to do for a career, which is sort of funny because I have tried very hard so far to never end up with a career.
There may be some hippies out there who are opposed to mineral and fossil fuel exploration. I agree with them, but I have no problem doing the work to exploit and destroy the land. Why? Cause this brings up an important problem with society and environmental groups. Now, I'm a firm believer in environmentalism, but the problem is not the oil exploration it's demand. Demand must be lowered first. For example, the Sierra Club (which does plenty of good things too) started a policy of suing the national forests every time the NF tried to have a lumber sale. The Sierra Club wouldn't generally win, but the price for the court fees detered the national forests a great deal and far less timber sales go on today. But the demand for lumber is just as high if not higher than before the policy was in place, so now more of our lumber comes from Brazil, SE Asia and elsewhere where there is no controlled cutting and replanting going on. And of course many Sierra Club members reside in ritzy houses far larger than what they really need. Something to consider anyway.

Good luck with finals. The battle is about to begin...

2006-11-29T20:38:00.000-07:00

this is probably the funniest site i've seen in a long time.

2006-11-26T23:13:00.000-07:00

when do you know you're broke? when you have to borrow $200 from your younger brother to pay tuition, and give him your over-21 driver's license for a weekend of fun in Mankato. ouch. this sucks. peter has the upper hand in this situation and there's nothing i can do about it.

if you are an idiot and voted for tim palenty and his tuition increases you can borrow me money next, cause I'll be needing it for rent in a few days, and then for my cycling tab when scottie-2-hottie gets fed up enough. it'll be fun to see if he ends up muscling me into paying like nick did last year.

So i got a new job it sounds like. no more TA for next semester. i'll be doing numerical modeling of mantle convection. I suspect I'm in over my head, since I'm a terrible programmer. Whatever, I'll learn alot, and i'll get to work with supercomputers i think. i've also been trying to appy to grad schools but the paperwork is almost as bad as filing for taxes. They call the tax forms "EZ forms", but no way are they easy - more like hellishly complicated. At least, they're hard when you lose all your pay stubs and whatnot. last year the IRS busted me, and i think they're going to get me again next year.

yeah, so life has been hard. at least sci-fi had some great movie marathons this last weekend to help me get through. Dino-croc and Basilisk Serpent King= quality.

ed

2006-11-16T21:55:00.000-07:00

I've learned alot lately. Yesterday I found out what a pyramid scheme was - I'm not impressed. I also realized that I'm 23 years old and I've never made a resume, nor do I have the slightest clue how to do it. These may seem like big deals to you, and it's true they really rocked my world, but not compared to the realization that I have three weeks left with Mikey. First screech, now mikey. Seriously, what am I going to do? Probably study more, stay home on Friday nights, and rarely drink. Ok, so things won't change much.

I got an invitation to a physics party at some girls house tomorrow night. i would normally consider going just to see how ridiculous it probably will be, but I think I'll just stay in...

Golden Gopher Cycling '07 will dominate the conference again for the 5th straight year, that's my prediction. Kansas and Nebraska have no chance. Also, i've started my annual tab with the team early this year.

Ed's Current Outstanding Debts to UofM Cycling team:
Cycling Vest ~$50 July
Team Dues $85 September
Sweatshirt and t-shirts $30 tonight

Total ~$165 that I don't have.

Last year, I don't recall how high I got my tab up to, but I think it was close to $500 (Tucson, dues, jerseys stuff)

Scott if you read this, you probably didn't know about the vest. ahaha ha ha.

but now you do. damn. does that mean i have to pay?

ed

2006-11-04T17:20:00.000-07:00

I am brilliant. I'm probably the smartest person on the globe. I've only made about four mistakes in my life, unfortunately they all culminated this morning into near disaster.

Mistake #1 - This summer at field camp in Colorado I noticed as I was walking across a hydrothermal deposit a piece of asbestos lying on the ground. And this wasn't your run-of-the-mill asbestos either, it's a mineral called tremolite, which of course is highly carcinogenic. Most industrial asbestos is made from a more common mineral called chrisotile, which is not carcinogenic. Naturally I took the asbestos back to camp.

Mistake #2 - I took the asbestos back to Minnesota, wrapped in a shirt.

Mistake #3 - I threw the asbestos-in-a-shirt into the same corner of my room as my dirty cloths, and left it there. When I was unpacking my bag, I was scared to unwrap the shirt, since the asbestos was probably mashed around alot on the trip and would probably send up all sorts of particles into the air. Hence my solution.

Fast forward ahead 3 months

Mistake #4 - I put the asbestos in the washing machine. I was doing wash this morning and I totally forgot about the asbestos shirt and threw it in the washing machine. As I was unloading everything, I found the piece of asbestos at the bottom of the wash.

Ok, so I'm pretty sure alot of the asbesots got on my cloths. The real problem is the nature of this asbestos. It's not that hard to get this stuff to circulate in the air. Tremolite is made of micron-ish diameter fibers packed together which can splay off very easily. These little fellows can pierce your cells and cause all sorts of problems. Why do I think they got on my cloths? Well the cement keeping the tremolite rods in place is probably carbonate, which is prone to dissolution in water. And I can't imagine the spinning and whirlling the washer did helped much either. Plus, the shirt origainlly holding the asbesots contributed its load of asbestos to the wash. I know I'm probably overreacting, but I'm still a little nervous to wear those cloths again.

On a completley different topic, if anyone is looking for a really sweet paper weight I have one I'm trying to get rid of. It's very clean...

Ed

2006-10-29T12:16:00.000-07:00

this was one of those kinds of weekends we used to have back in dinkytown a few years ago. i'm not really sure where to start. we had a halloween party here last night and it went pretty well. had a good time. i was a wookie again. then i got talked into going to maplewood or something. while there i called my buddy matt up who was in madison for the big party and he told me, "hey i just got my face smashed in but i won the fight." so that made me feel good inside. i hadn't heard anymore about it until this morning, when it turns out it all started when he was arguing with someone, and this other guy jumped him from the side and punched him in the head. in the large, 10-man brawl that ensued he got pretty bloodied up and eventually took off for the hospital. but the cops wouldn't let him across state street to get to the hospital so he tried the next intersection with the same result. he was pissed and he apparently needed to get to the hospital so he called 911 and then the second cop ran him down as he was walking away and tackled him and cuffed him, for bleeding on the cop car or something. matt then continued to bleed all over the back of the squad car. he got nailed for disorderly conduct.

i guess we've all seen this one coming. i mean, once he nearly got in a fight with 300 lb. mark setterstrom of the gophers football team (now with the st. louis rams). it funny cause he's the smartest person i've ever known at math and physics. he can solve anything i have in any class. and he's now a grad student in hypersonics or something in aerospace engineering. just don't know why he's not smart enough to not get into a fight or piss off cops.

whatever, good times

ed

2006-10-10T17:09:00.000-07:00

It all started last Wednesday night, when I got real hungary and decided to make some food. I made some rice, threw on some cheese and heated up 3 pre-cooked cod fillets, mixed it together and ate it up. When I was eating the cod I noticed its texture was a little strange, but I just shrugged it off and added more salt.

Skip ahead 24 hours. It's 9:00 pm and I'm getting ready to start my homework due the next day. I start feeling real queazy and then the next thing I know I'm vomiting into a plastic burnable CD case cover. I kept vomitting every 45 minutes or so until 4:30 am. It turned out the fish was not pre-cooked and in fact was raw.

oh, one more thing that I think screech will like. at some point in the night i came down with the shits, and as I was bending over the toilet puking some shit squirted out into my boxers. I was pretty pissed about it, but not for long because i was quickly back vomitting into the toilet. it was a fun night.

Fiesta Mexicana (or whatever that place is called) finally cured me on Sunday when I started eating right again. Anyway, the whole experience really sucked but i figure it's just training for Guatemala this winter.

ed

2006-09-30T09:50:00.000-07:00

i've noticed some disturbing trends since classes have started. i have classes in three departments right now: mechanical engineering, geology, and physics. the ME guys seem like frat boys and gear heads who are interested in getting a real job and making money. the geology guys are a lot of fun, they aren't really into math or science but just like drinking beer and being outside. the physics guys however are another story. i've never seen people get so excited about draining batteries or filtering out low frequency electrical signals. this is not it though. many of them seem to think that tucking your shirt into your pants is cool, and that nobody will notice if you wear one blue sock and one black sock and that the male ponytail is and always has been in style. this is nothing new - i have been aware of this for some time. so as a tribute to my collegues i took some data in my classes and plotted it up.

this graph is accurate because there are only like two girls who are physics majors, and they have ponytails anyway. also, notice the nearly exponential increase in ponytails from freshman year through junior years. by senior year there are very few holdouts. thus i have little hope for brain. it's just a matter of time before he succumbs to the pressure.

2006-09-24T20:51:00.000-07:00

6 men of genius under fire

we've come upon crazy times indeed. i guess reports are coming out of washington that the war in iraq has actually increased terrorism. wow, i never saw that one coming. seriously, what a bunch of dumbasses in washington. invading a secular arab country to stop conservative religous fanatics who also hate the secular arab country and have no affiliation whatsoever? what? huh? the best part is the republicans scrambling around trying to act like it was a good idea to invade iraq and kill 100,000 innocent people. how can they even pretend to be christians? jeez. i'm not really religous or anything, but i doubt jesus would agree that this war was a good idea, or any war for that matter. whatever. at least in november we'll get democrats in office who'll screw up a little less.

did the headwaters 100 this weekend. i was going to do about 70 miles because it was raining but i ran into kari edvenson at the emmaville stop and ended up riding the remaining 35 miles or so with her. had a pretty good time too...

oh, kari and i saw the race go through emmaville so then we decided to try and chase them down and hang out in the pack, you know cause it wasn't uscf or anything. we were gaining for a while and then we see two (actually 3) people in front of us, and by shear luck we caught jim cullen on a tandem with his son and skibby just after they popped off the back on a hill. i tried to lay it on skibby, especially since two tourers caught him. but he had been racing for 75 miles or something so i suspose he is excused.

congrats to mikey for 6th in the points, that's pretty impressive. also to ben and brain and elena, i wish i was out there, oh well. next year maybe, we'll see.

2006-09-15T02:47:00.000-07:00

2006-09-15T01:39:00.000-07:00

It's about 3:30 am now and i just smoked my thermo homework so now i just have to finish my mechanics homework before 9:00 am class. probably shouldn't have gone to the track tonight...

speaking of the track, it went well, i got second in the 3s omnium and second in the madison with skibby. i thought we rode pretty well all things considered, especially since we'd never ridden together before. the madison was pretty slow though, without brain or ben to preside over the suffering of the rest of the field, but whatever. oh, i finally got to race adam bergman. he's pretty fast i have to say. i wish i had jumped on his wheel during the win and out, but i missed the move and had to settle for second. nothing really funny happened during the racing. i guess i took it more seriously tonight. kind of a bummer in hindsight, though the combination of fireworks, matt anderson's band, and hollywood yelling and cheering made it a pretty sweet night overall.

homework updates to follow soon.

2006-09-10T16:21:00.000-07:00

Huzzaaa!

friday night was odd. somehow i was the only very intoxicated person at a mikey gathering. how did this happen? who put me up to this and how did you do it? who got me to go mountain biking? who got me to skip my homework till Sunday afternoon? very odd weekend. anyhow, i want it to be known that i was a real team player this weekend. you know, getting drunk and going mountain biking. what is going on with me? whatever.

this morning kavi was over and he was telling me about last night. i guess he was at the Gay 90s and the Saloon, "getting out the vote... and having a hell of a time!." in his own words. the gay bars sound like an experience. drunk gay guys groping everyone, some sort of a shower thing for dancing, lots of free drinks from older gay guys. matt and he went to the 90s a couple weeks ago with a gay co-worker of Kavi's with Becky's campagne. i guess it was a wild night, and somehow by the end of the night all three of them ended up very intoxicated in a bed together at a hotel. there wasn't any gay action going on (kavi and matt are very straight), they just all ended up on the bed together. pretty funny actually. so kavi -go eat a dick, and i'll tell priti about it after.

I want to make a quick comment on last thursday's racing at the velodrome. i was under the impression that it was kind of lame all night, with the exception of the very exciting cat. 1/2 keirin. the madison was boring, the cat. 3s rode really unaggresively all night, the women's races were boring, and the 4/5s were just kind of dominated by mulroony and the other road guy on hollywood. i'm glad i didn't do the madison too, seriously, guys were riding terrible. nobody was riding relief correctly, and people were making all sorts of sketchy moves. this is the first time in probably a year and a half that i didn't race a madison in Blaine and watched instead, so maybe it's always like that, but i hope not. whatever.

ed

2006-09-01T11:40:00.000-07:00

all the stars alligned last night at the track - into the shape of a delicious bacon and cheese flameburger. yeah, even without the regular crew a new batch of volunteers were shnookered into going there. ben, brain, chris ferris, bob and dave thimpson went, as well as myself. it was sweet. oh there were some races too, ben and brain mopped up in the state points race, taking 1st and second. my highlight was when i was at the line for the start of the chariot race finals. i was trying to psych out andy kruse so i told him i just glued my tire on that morning. but it backfired because brain, who was holding me, threatened to goose me and i started to laugh then the race started. i had by far the worst start of the bunch. it was funny.

i rode a 91.8 inch gear last night, a little higher than normal, but my spin is so bad after not riding for 2 months that i felt undergeared. so next week i think i'm going to go all out, maybe strap on a 96 inch gear for kicks. that should hurt pretty good. ha!

2006-08-26T08:33:00.000-07:00

whenever we're in the mountains, pete my dad and i always try to rig danger pictures to scare my mom. usually we'll orient the camera a certain way to make it look like there's a cliff below. here's a couple from the wind rivers. and if, "you're just so stupid!" means my mom likes a picture, then the second one was probably the best. they're both of the old man.

2006-08-23T10:48:00.000-07:00

i'm depressed. i miss the woods. Soon i'm going to finally realize skreech is gone too...

2006-08-22T22:45:00.000-07:00

alot has happened since i got in to colorado springs. masters nationals was really disapointing in general. it's hard to put a finger on what bothered me the most. it may have had something to do with all the older guys who try to be fashonable and cool like they were when they were sixteen, or how all the people there seemed to be so damn serious about the stupid bike races. jeez, it makes me appreciate the good times we had in pennsylvania and chicago where it was a circus and we had a blast losing. but i'm happy for tainter and degolier, they deserve their wins. Degolier's behavior was probably the lone bright spot. he climbed pikes peak (26 miles roundtrip, 1.5 miles verticle) the day before the team sprint where their starter was flying in from pennsylvania just for the one lap. it rained on him the entire way down and he met a guy who twisted his ankle so he fashioned a walking stick for him and helped him limp the rest of the way down. that's class! and the right attitude. oh and my dad crashed in the madison and got a concussion. the guiness guy who he crashed into was telling everyone, "he tried passing me on the inside" which pissed me off because the idiot started to drift uptrack. my dad had a millisecond to choose which side to go over and he chose wrong, since the guiness guy heard him coming or something and went back down. i saw it happen from corner 3/4 and the crash was between 1-2, and it was obviously a sketchy move, so the asshole shouldn't have tried to give all the blame to the guy who was blacked out on the cement. his story changed too, he even told people the pack's slipstream pulled him uptrack, later degolier said this dude had heard my dad coming so he went back down. right, so i argued with him some... he was one of the 4o somethings who thought he was 16. when i'm that age i want to be like my dad who cares absolutely nothing for image. nothing, he just wants to compete and have fun. i think i'm going to work exclusively for him when he returns to racing whenever that may be.

the wind river mountains cleared my mind some, incredibly beautiful peaks in the most rugged range in the lower 48. the old man recovered enough to go in, and we almost summitted a good sized mountain (got cliffed out).

finally, not that anyone who reads this will know her, but the girl who was struck and killed by a car while riding her bike near campus the other day was in my field geolgy class in colorado. i barely knew her, but i know she certainly had one of those kindly dispositions that are hard to find these days. at least she's in a better place, wherever that might be.

ed

2006-08-08T17:55:00.000-07:00

Hi ho, hi ho. I'm in colorado springs getting stoked for masters nats tomorrow. the old man is doing his 200m and kilo tomorrow. skibby and tainter are here i hear, but i haven't seen them yet. my field geology class was the best class i have ever taken. we hiked around and mapped above 12,000 feet during the day and fooled around at camp at night. super fun. one night we built an enourmous fire taller than 10 feet and then guys started jumping through it. good times anyway. i like it how when you're in the woods little things like huge fires are super fun, while in the city it seems like you need to spend lots of money or do something really stupid to have really memorable moments... i think i fell in love with the forest this summer, and i don't know what that means.
anyway last night we finished our mapping exam and then the teach and the TA started making everyone margaritas and gin and tonics. it was a fun night. oh, and it rained pretty much every afternoon and in the last week I think it hailed something like three times. that wasn't so cool.

so that's what i've been up to, but i hear skreech has moved to milwakee. skreech if you read this i miss you already. seriously, you're already missed. you'd better show up to visit often. On Sunday after the mad mad madison with skibby and old man my little nemisis, old man and my uncle are heading to the Wind River Mountains in search of craziness. we'll see what happens, hopefully I'll kill peter on the hills since i'm in good hiking shape and acclamated to 12,000 ft. elevations. haha .

ed

2006-07-18T22:28:00.000-07:00

so, just for steve, I'll update my blog one more time before heading out to colorado. and also I hope steve you appreciated the hot water story, cause you wouldn't have heard it from me. Matt seems to like telling it, cause he told it to my older brother the other night and made sure to leave out no details for him. apparently i seemed uncomfortable.

had fun tonight. i'm glad we got to hang out before i had to go. i'm kind of glad things didn't get out of hand, especially after the beer bong was brought out. the bong usually equals a ridiculous amount of fun for a couple of hours followed by about 18 hours of pain. but not this time! darth workweek conquered the bar and thus will allow me to function tomorrow.

goals for the next month:
-see a bear and/or moose, elk, cougar.
-not get lost in the woods
-talk to another grizzled old guy that says, "god damn" every few words and is on his way to the bar

anyway, after seeing skreech and sideburnz again made me remember about the old times. i found this picture of the three of us racing our freshman year in the Bs at Nebraska. i think someone from k-state took the picture. note, sideburnz ended up winning the race.

2006-07-17T13:47:00.000-07:00

This is a view from the top of He Devil in the Seven Devils Mountains. It was a nice little climb.

Anyway, back from Idaho, and preparing to go to Colorado. Indeed crazy stuff happened in Idaho, I guess that happens when your in the woods for a month straight. I didn't see any large predators in the woods, only on the greyhound, so that was a bummer. mikey didn't call me this weekend so now I only have three nights left before i'm outta here again.

2006-06-16T12:27:00.000-07:00

Goodbye everyone. I'm off to Idaho in a couple of hours, taking the old grayhound. It's been fun, some fun racing and some good times, especially at a certain burger joint in Hilltop. I hope some crazy stuff happens in Idaho to report on, I may have internet access every once in a while, I'm not sure. I'll be back for a day or two in July around the 20th, so until then good luck racing.

2006-06-10T14:10:00.000-07:00

teammates

2006-06-09T12:41:00.000-07:00

Track last night was fun. Mikey won two races and got second in the 50 lap scratch. I have to say congradulations to the Urthel guys. Chris Smith did a terrific leadout helping Pederson win. And it made me regret I was not there for Mikey as I should have been. its nice to see another team there duking it out with us of the U of M, especially since they know what they are doing. anyway, I missed every single winning break in all the 3s races last night and even got nipped at the line for fourth place by my dad in the win and out. ouch. i'm not going to hear the end of it soon. the funny part was he appologized as we were leaving, saying he felt bad about doing that, I responded by making it clear it would make my day if i could do a similar thing to him (see May 17th post below, #3 on things I'm excited about). I guess it was just as well cause i really only cared about the madison, which went well. My dad and I teamed up as usual. we work great together, zero missed exchanges and some very well timed hard throws on sprint laps helped us take third out of eight teams. We couldn't stay with Crosby/Winger or Ferris/Register, who were on a different level. Sweet overall though.

After the racing the real action began. Saw Brain's parents house and his room. I'm beginning to understand why brain has his shit together so well. Thus, things finally have begun to fall into place on the "Having your shit together scale" as it seems to be called, or the togetherness rating. Mikey, skreech, brain and i discussed this at great length, and rankings were given to many people, though there is some disagreement on a number of individuals. I myself have been categorized as a four (a middle of the pack four mind you). I used to be a cat. 5 but my improved togetherness this spring, such as 2 new bikes, getting the kids safely to Tucson and Kansas, Rudy project order, etc.) was enough for the upgrade. The listing and explanations are below:

Ben Richter - Europro - Wow, nobody is as efficient or as commanding a presence. everything he does is pro quality, though he still isn't a Tom Boonen or anything. He is closest to Erik Zabel. there, that is the perfect match. zabel has his shit together very well.
Brain (Brian Crosby) Cat. 1 - Only a freshmen and has his stuff together so much more than me, bikes, computers, nerd stuff/physics, he is almost a pro and is only like 19.
Mikey - Mid-pack Cat. 3 - Kind of unorganized and is usually late for everything, but he gets it done.
Skreech - Cat. 3 who should be a cat. 2 but wants to be a cat. 4 - Nobody wants to downgrade in togetherness more than skreech, but he is way too organized to compete with me.
Sideburnz - sideburnz seems to be drifting towards uncategorization, sort of citizen class. difficult to determine, because sideburnz has cat. 2 potential but doesn't seem to want to go there. weather channel, couches, coffee, bathrobes, and early bedtimes seem to keep sideburnz happy so he doesn't need to purchase a liscense and try to turn pro and all in togetherness.
Fucking Steve - similar to sideburnz, high potential but doesn't seem to want to compete in the big togetherness race. for example, he never blogs anymore, i never see him anymore, doesn't race bikes anymore, heck for all i know steve doesn't even drink anymore.
Ann Hansgate - cat. 1 - yeah, she has her shit together. she was the person who essentially organized our race weekend even though i was the official promoter. she was super organized, very nearly pro.
Maria - cat. 1 - same as ann, and was the real power behind getting the kids to kansas safely, though most people think it was me and I usually take full credit for it.

anyway, just want to say welcome back douchbag (skreech) good to see you again.

ed

2006-06-06T21:48:00.000-07:00

it's been busy. capitol crit went well with mikey winning and brain taking third. i tried to help some, guess i did the pre-leadout.

went on a morning ride with mikey today, wow i felt slow. i don't know why, i guess it's time i take a break. then i went to the track this evening, and didn't ride much, just hung out.

the big news now is the packet i got from the IRS the other day, apparently my 2004 taxes were not done correctly, and now i owe money. i don't know how i could owe money being well under the minimum yearly income, but whatever. i'm going to go see dave hogan tomorrow. he does my parents taxes, and he's the old Minnesota Cycling Federation rep. Does this mean i've been audited? wow, i always thought it would be fun to be audited but this is a real pain in the neck.

what else? heard some stories about the early days at the track. the name crystal came up. she was the track director eons ago, before the Tom Lee days (who was before Bob). Crystal ran the track when i was young, so i don't remember it well, just that she wasn't a cyclist, but worked for the NSC. she wouldn't allow families in the infield either. it was wierd. then tom lee came, those were the crazy days, but fun. tom lee was a super sprinter, one of the best in the country. he was like lindstrom fast. the races never started on time, people would trickle in at about 7 and racing would start 30 to 45 minutes later. at some point my dad raced a points race on a track tandem with keith penrod. they were required to stay in the sprinters lane for safety. it must have been fun in those days, but also not very pro. oh, and in keirins the motorcycle would just accellerate away from the riders rather than pull off into the infield (which is how it is supposed to be done). so with two and a half laps to go the pack of riders could be going 40 miles per hour down the backstretch. everyone of course would go for the motorcycles wheel. man that was sweet. it totally changes the tactics of a keirin. that's all i've got.

ed

2006-06-02T13:03:00.000-07:00

hmmm, a lot of racing lately. the old man and i did a fairly unimpressive 16:03 at black dog on wednesday. the bike friday tandem, which is about half steel and half titanium, was really flexing alot. it turns out we were both nervous about the bike flying apart but only mentioned it to each other after the race.

last night was the track. i won the 15 lap scratch race and the omnium, so it was a good night. i was second to chris smith in both the miss and out and the points race. We lapped the field together in the points race, so that was cool, but he beat me in the last points sprint to take the win 29 points to 27. then bob let the top finishers in the cat. 3 points race race with the 1/2s for their last event, a 60 lap scratch race. That was a really fun race. the first 15 laps were a fast paceline then the attacks started right and left. brain was in all of them, i'm not kidding, probably about 15 of them. one time i attacked and was like, "man i need to give brain a rest and make the other guys chase," but then i look behind and brain is on my wheel. the pack soon caught us. with about 2 and 1/2 laps to go i was on the front of the field with brain on my wheel, so i gave it all i had for the leadout. it went ok, but it needed to be a little faster. luke jumped first at the bell and ended up winning it.

of note, ben richter dropped out, satoshi raced, and track racing is way more fun than road racing.

ed

2006-05-29T19:52:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-24T17:00:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-22T18:24:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-17T21:12:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-14T06:19:00.000-07:00

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...

2006-05-10T16:10:00.000-07:00

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...

2006-05-09T20:12:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-08T19:15:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-07T14:22:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-05T00:31:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-01T13:53:00.000-07:00

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

2006-04-28T18:29:00.000-07:00

Today has been great so far. I went with Professor Kirkby on the river bluffs hike to preview it for next week, and he was talking about how all the surveys the students were taking were going. I didn't want to ask how my student's evaluated me but he just told me on his own I got good marks. I'm kind of surprised and super relieved, not that those things matter at all, but I did put alot of effort into teaching that lab. Seriously though, I skrewed up so many times this semester. My favorite was the first day when I couldn't decide what to say so pretty much just stood at the front of the class and rubbed my stomach.
After the hike, we talked about the evolution of primates in paleontology and then the prof took out some fossil skulls, and it was super fun. Then I got some work done on a term paper, went to a review session, and found out I probably won a scholarship for next year from the department. I was pretty stoked, but also at the same time crashing from having drunk coffee a couple hours earlier. It was wierd.
Kansas State is coming tonight, they'll probably get in at 1 in the morning like last year. Those guys are cool though - Smelser, Brady, and Dallas are all good guys and know how to race bikes.
One final thing, my roomate Matt got two wisdom teeth removed this afternoon, and is currently on his way to Madison for the Mifflin Block Party. He has assured me he isn't drinking tonight, but will wait until tomorrow. I guess he's in the car with two cups of ice pressed against his mouth, and in considerable pain. However, I'm 95% sure he will be compeltely hammered tomorrow night. I have no idea how he does it. We used to call him the living legend, after he took that train home from a party. His 21st birthday was pretty impressive too, when he took 16 drinks in an hour and fourty five minutes (drinks like the three wise men and such). Anyway, a rainy Ken Woods race is in store for tomorrow, should be fun.

ed

2006-04-26T19:31:00.000-07:00

I start staying at my parents house tomorrow night to make sure my little brother doesn't have any parties while they are out of town. Staying with Peter is always interesting, one moment I want to punch him in the face or hit him with a homemade sword and the next I'll be rolling on the ground laughing about some stupid star wars anecdote about astromech droids or something. He knows those movies way better than I do. Before episode III came out, he was on starwars.com every day waiting for the newest trailer to come out and checking to see if they updated the character database to include episode III characters. Yeah, a little over a week of just me and pete... Anyway, I'm going to make him help out at opus on sunday because we need the help. If anyone of the three or so people who read this wants to help out or knows someone we could use another couple people to corner marshal and stuff.

I gave my last class their lab finals today, I think they went pretty well. When I went to copy the final, not only did I get the copier to collate, but staple as well. It was great, i was pretty excited. Hey, so I'm leading my river bluffs tour next week, if any of you want to come along you probably can (if you behave yourself). It'll be a big group cause the other instructor can't do it so she asked me to take her kids who wanted to do it. They get extra credit for going. I want it to be fun, and festive. Maybe we'll even find some trilobites or something, and I suspect I'll end up doing something stupid, like sliding down a ledge or something, we'll see. Hurray!

Ed

2006-04-25T19:02:00.000-07:00

back from opus, i felt really tired. todd was there, on the first sprint i was on like 5th wheel and took off but had nothing in the tank and all of a sudden someone comes around me and its todd. he took third, it was cool. he'll be a really good bike racer if he sticks with it. he doesn't train at all, and he raced that race without a warmup (he drove to the race, registered, rolled around for 5 minutes and raced). on the third sprint todd, me and two other guys got a gap somehow at the base of the hill and i figured todd was feeling good so i went to the front and started hauling, to make sure the pack wouldn't catch us and to lead him out, but i ended up dropping todd and one of the other dudes and the last one who stuck to me didn't try coming around, so i actually won a sprint, that was cool i guess.

i have to grade a zillion things for tomorrow, and i skipped class today, so i feel kind of miserable. oh well, i could always make some homemade tacos from the maseca mix...

2006-04-23T18:50:00.001-07:00

Back from Nebraska. what a weekend. actually it was pretty rutine, except for the camping. I think the racing was good, everyone was fast pretty much, so we didn't have to worry about people gapping others off. Field sprints in both again. It was sweet seeing ben win the road race. i got an 11th and 10th place, so i guess that's ok. It was cool having skreech work for me at the end of the circuit race, except it blew apart before we could do our thing, oh well. I'm going to make some tortillas out of the mix i bought in nebraska in a few minutes, its going to be great.
Things skreech and mikey missed out on in van ride:
1. Scott Roberts and Brain ripped on my grading scheme for my labs for probably close to an hour. I invited them to the rip-on-ed-all-night party there's talk of having.
2. Scott Roberts told stories about having Ben Richter for a TA, he said whenever they went to him during office hours for questions he just give them vague hints and sent them on their way. When we asked ben if he graded hard, he just said "I grade Fair." we figured nick is an easy grader, like me. it was funny. then we hypothesized who would win between Ben Richter and Nick in a battle of wills, you know, who would get their way first. the consensus was ben. All this comedy is really a TA thing, most of you wouldn't get it. Brain does, cause he was helping me grade my papers (the TA has a TA).

Also i want to know if it was the Iowa state guy who was ripping on me during the race, saying don't order people around when your about to get dropped or something. I don't know if it was him, but i do know i kicked his ass in both races this weekend... yeah, that's not like me. i just really wanted to catch those three guys and i suck at closing gaps, for the record i gave a half hearted attempt to pick up the pace, and did succeed in getting nebraska to do the work i was supposed to do for a while.

ed

2006-04-18T19:06:00.000-07:00

just got back from opus. some good things and some bad things happened. Good - i took a second and a third in sprints, so hopefully i got fourth, maybe fifth overall. Ann Hansgate won the womens race, which had 23 riders, it was cool. Bad - the race was canceled after the women finished because the police were pissed at the riders. people riding the wrong way on one-ways, and not letting traffic through on the course. i'm not sure what i think about it. there was hardly any traffic first of all, so not many cars were being affected. i did see a number of people going the wrong way on a number of roads, which was stupid. at least there didn't seem to be anyone pissing in the woods across from the finish line. whatever.

i locked myself out of the house on sunday after a ride. i had to take a nap and go for another ride. then i stayed up all night working on my paleontology term paper. that's why i was so tired on monday and fell asleep - while watch Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkabeckthst - and missed the meeting. i'm hungary. i have to go.

2006-04-15T16:56:00.000-07:00

Nebraska!! fun race weekend coming up.
this picture is from nebraska last year of skreech wearing some old lady's glasses at the host house. it was one of the funniest moments of my life i think, especially since we were trying to be quiet so as to not wake up valerie? and her parents.
also, i'm going to start the campagne now. I'm not racing the team time trial. remember this. the bad news is that i just counted the A's going to nebraska and the initial count is 8, which is not a good number if i want to get out of the TTT. maybe we can upgrade meat or something.

in other news...
a bunch of idiots were over last night destroying out house. it was this girl tova's 21st birthday. i like tova, she's nice, but some of the other guys, (pretty much all from my high school) i'm not such fans of. anyway, they broke our plexiglase window covering on our front door, they destoryed half of my buns and the muffins my mom had just given me. i'm not sure why, but when people destory my food i get really angery. other things don't bother me as much, but my food just infuriates me. I think it's because my mom had just hours earlier taken the time to put the muffins in a ziplock bag and give them to me, because she knew i'd want them. now no one enjoys them. they also ate most of the brownies my mom gave me, and woke me up. then they leave behind a huge mess, come over a couple weekends later, act like gorillas and destory more stuff. why do my roomates invite them?

2006-04-14T21:48:00.000-07:00

ok, big news from the track!! not really but i did hear some great cycling stories about a junior aged bob. so he learns about track racing from a bike shop, ended up getting a bike at some point and gets set to race his first race. he eats carnation instant breakfast before the race and hurls in the middle of the 5 mile race (or 10 mile, he wasn't sure). he also talked about going to the elite nationals at encino around 1971. He said he didn't do too great but the real specticle was the tandem races. The tandems weren't able to control themselves on the track and kept hurteling up track and breaking through the surrounding wall. eventually, they had to hold the race in the frontage road next to the Rose Bowl. must have been fun.

also learned a few other things while i was up there,
1. Dave Gray has purchased earplugs in the event a certain someone is present at the track with him (courtesy of Brain).
2. The Van Dessel rides nice
3. Bob has seen everything on bikes that can be seen.
4. Bob remembers names and times better than me - just ask him about the 1966 junior state track championships. i dare you.

2006-04-14T12:59:00.000-07:00

I had a lot of fun last night. skreech's air guitars were out of control, and the comedy show was really funny. so this morning came as a shock to me. i've been kind of dehydrated for the past couple weeks because i'm always drinking coffee and never water or juice or anything. Last night i had three beers and this morning i woke up with a terrible headache. i still have a little one. i've been kind of miserable all day. anyway, i'm going to ride up to my parents place and put together the dessel, possibly ride it at the track tonight. i'm pretty excited. i'll bring the bennotto back to st. paul too, but mikey i doubt i'll be back before eight. oh, and i mentioned i wanted to get hammered tonight, i don't think i want to anymore, big surprise. i don't know why my body can't handle the slightest bit of dehydration without screaming at me to fix it. whatever. if i'm up at the track i'll chat with bob about who has the state pursuit record and if it is indeed a 4:48.

ed

2006-04-12T14:08:00.000-07:00

ok, today was a good day. my class went well, i even lectured them for about ten minutes about stuff, and my paleontology class got an extension on our term paper rough draft. this morning for my sed/strat lab we went to the minnesota geologic survey to look at some drilling cores. it was fun. there's only four of us in the lab, along with our TA. he's a cool guy, he was the one that told us about that old Fox tv show called Man Vs. Beast that i've been trying to download for a while. i guess they pit man vs. different kinds of animals in contests of various sorts, like a hot dog eating champion versus a bear in a hot dog eating contest (bear smokes man). or a foot race sprinter vs. a giraffe in a sprint (giraffe smokes man), and finally my favorite, 50 migets vs. an elephant in pulling a jet along a road. it sounds like a really cool show to me, but i guess every animal rights group in the country disagreed. if brian crosby ever reads this he should try to find that show on that network thing he was talking about that they have at the dorms.

stargate's on at 5, so it looks like i'll be having a pretty exciting night.

ed

2006-04-11T20:53:00.000-07:00

ok, i don't know if this is going to work.

i just got back from rolf's team bonding/strategy meeting. he didn't show up.
highlights from the meeting include me getting chewed out pretty good for not promoting a team time trial for conference, so i promised to look into it. also seeing andy cook ride up on his motorcycle was pretty cool and funny too - it's big. mmm, that's about it.

ok, so to finish up, i'll just tell one short cycling story. it harkens back to the early days of the velodrome, it was 1992, so i must have been eight. dad hauled me and my older brother out there for the olympic trials. this local flanders rider named bjorn carlson was racing, boy we were excited because he smoked everyone in the qualifier and won it. i thought he had the olympic team made. i didn't understand that the qualifier was pretty pointless. anyway in the final john fry (shaklee) and robbie ventura (future postal service) got in a break and fry was doing all the work so the crowd was totally into him, but ventura would come around every time for the points. i think ventura won but i'm not sure. i don't think i really cared that much at the time. bjorn took 8th or something, i don't remember exactly. incedently, I think he might have the track record in the pursuit - not sure, might be like a 4:48 or something.

finally, like every year, i think that this year we should all be fast at the track, that should be our goal.

now i need to grade some papers,

ed

2006-04-10T11:36:00.000-07:00

welcome to ed's new blog. surely you will find his delineations of mid-nineties bike racing gossip spellbinding. we love our little ed...