Belated comments on a rad weekend.

Wacky weekend. Totally devoid of bike racing, but still pretty radical. (yes, I said radical)

Uh, so, Friday was Nevada Day! Oddly enough Nevada Day falls on Halloween. I'm sure they weren't thinking of that when they admitted Nevada to the Union in 18whatever-year-that-was but it works out pretty conveniently, wouldn'tcha say? People who grew up here all say that they thought Halloween was a federal holiday 'cause they didn't have to go to school. Anyway, no school, but sadly Sinclair Imports doesn't place the importance on Nevada Day that UNR does, so I still had to work. Got home and got all dressed up in my Dorothy costume. Cody was the Scarecrow. It was pretty cute. Went to a couple of parties and then took a cab home (hell, it's pretty much a once-a-year sort of event that we both drink too much to drive). A friend of ours put on a pretty radical (there it is again!) haunted house.

Awww . . . Toto's licking himself . . .

Anyway, next day Cody had to work so I cleaned up the hay (Scarecrow tracked hay everywhere he went) and went for a ride in some lousy weather. It was kinda wet (not pourint, but the roads were wet and it was raining off and on) and suuuper windy - I almost got taken out by a tumble weed, and was engulfed in blowing leaves and debris a number of times. I only saw 3 other people out and about - 2 pros and one of my favorite local old guys. :) I think most people were sitting Saturday out. Anyway, we had a couple of friends from Bend and my pops coming over on Saturday night 'cause I had bought us all tickets to Neil Young and Death Cab for Cutie! Wooeey! Long story short, Death Cab was great, and then Neil came on, and I pretty much forgot about DeathCab. He played for 2 1/2 hrs and, with such a repertoire as he has it's pretty much impossible to not play something great. So, yeah, totally amazing. Best. Concert. Ever.

Tried, and failed, to capture just how windy it was on Saturday.

On Sunday we were pretty pooped, and it had poured all night on Saturday, but we dragged our butts out of bed and drove down to ride Thomas Creek Trail. This is pretty much the best ride in Reno w/out driving to Tahoe. It was in killer shape after all the rain. Suuuper tacky and fun and gorgeous up there, too. Ran the dog (and ourselves) for 3 hours - it suuure was nice to be on the mountain bike again.

Pretty fall colors, pretty fall puppy.

Yeah, anyway, I guess that's it. Next weekend's a full weekend of 'cross! Hopefully it isn't snowing!!!

Weekend Adventures

Okay, well, I've been meaning to write a Surf City report, and I haven't gotten to it 'cause I'm lame like that. What can I say, it's been a busy week. Between school, work, Outlaw 'Cross, Halloween, and early voting it's been one hell of a week. So I think that if I put it off any longer in the hopes of writing the most badassest report ever I'll never get to it, so . . . abridged version!

Last saturday I picked up my friend Harry and drove down to Genoa, NV for the second race in the Sagebrush Cyclocross series. It's an awesome little town and the locals come out and build a mud pit with a couple barriers in it every year. There was only one other Women's A, Joan Gregg, who I routinely watch ride away from me, and a couple of B's who were racing at the same time as us, and we were all racing with the men's B's. Anyway, long story short, Joan kicked my butt again. I had a pretty good start, and felt decent for the first 2 laps, and then started fading. I backed off a little, but it still just kept getting worse. By the last lap I was having a hard time just turning over the pedals on the little climbs. Ouch. I attributed my disfunction to a hard week of riding and weight training (uhh, taper???). Joan beat me by like, 5 minutes, and I was just glad she didn't lap me. My one small dignity was in still finishing ahead of the women's B's, and beating a couple of the dudes, too. Still, it was not pretty.

I drove Harry (who had gotten a flat on the line, fixed it, and then flatted with one lap to go!) back to Reno and headed over the hill to my pop's house in Grass Valley. Got a good, if brief night's sleep, and headed down to Santa Cruz at the painful hour of 4:30 AM. Again, long story short, I had a blast down at Surf City. I saw lots of Bellas I haven't had the pleasure of seeing since Kern (seems like an eternity ago!) or, in the case of the Kitty People, Mt. Hamilton. I dressed up as Dorothy for the costume race, and led out the Kiddie 'Cross race, which was by far the highlight of my weekend! Sabine, I mean, uh, Stevil, :), told the kids to, "Follow Dorothy!" It was adorable. Anyway, then I raced the costume race, accompanied by none other than Jesus Christ, and a large gang of Mexican wrestlers. That was hilarious!!! Jesus kept blessing people as he rode by - I think I'm saved! Anyway, yeah, it was great.

Which brings us to the "serious" race of the day. I was lined up in the second row before the start of the Women's A race. Barb showed up after everyone had lined up and we scooted over for her (second row for Barbarella? that doesn't seem right . . .) but ended up squished in there like sardines. When we took off the girl to my right bumped me, and I bumped the girl on my left, and after a considerable amount of jostling, a couple of people went down. I barely managed to stay up, but I had to put a foot down and come to a complete halt. When all was said and done I was, uh, pretty much in last. Poor Barb was just a couple of people in front of me, but because of all our second row antics she was pretty far away from the front of the race. We got to the rideable run-up, and you know how it is when one person gets off so the rest have to??? Well, yeah, it was a total pile-up as everyone tried to funnel up the hill. I was pretty much just standing holding my bike and waiting for people go get moving when I saw Barb running around people in a crazy outside line. I was pretty much expecting to have a lousy race based on how I'd felt the preceeding day, so I didn't see much point in following her. As things got sorted out, tho, I felt pretty good. I kept catching and passing people! Unfortunately after I'd put in a supreme effort to pass a couple of girls I took a slight wrong turn and had to stop and get back on course. D'oh! They got back in front of me, and I had to get around again. Ah well, stupidity must be punished, right? Anyway, ultimately I ended up with a girl named Kelly (that's what all the people who were cheering for her kept yelling, anyway) and stayed with her for the rest of the race. I was sitting on her wheel feeling pretty decent, but I saw a couple of girls ahead of us who I thought I might be able to catch so I took the lead. That was probably a mistake. She was pretty comfortable on my wheel, so with a lap and a half to go I let her take the lead, hoping I could rest up and maybe win a sprint. Well, it didn't work out that way, when she got a little gap on me and I couldn't bridge back up as we rode through the swirly of mayhem (I loooooved the swirly!!!). So she beat me, but it was a damn good race, and I was happy that I felt better than the day before.

I had to get going right after my race to get home and finish some homework I had due that night. Lame. And it's a looong drive. But the race was totally worth it, which isn't always how I feel after such drives.

Uhh, no more typing. Off to ride the bike . . .

Funny sh*t.

Some folks, including my significant other, are in North Carolina at Collegiate MTB nationals. One of the guys who went has started a UNR cycling team blog - and he just happens to be one of the funniest people I've ever had the pleasure to drink with. He's got some hilarious posts going on as a narrative to their adventure, and I highly encourage anyone to read them. Here is nationals post no. 1:
http://nevadacycling.blogspot.com/2008/10/north-carolina-slightly-thinner-and.html

Cheers!

The view from up here.

Legs - need to shave one of these days.

Ginormous pile of laundry - really ought to put away.

Rear wheel - desperately out of true, really need to rebuild it as my rim has a flat spot.

In other news, I've eaten an entire 24" loaf of french bread in the last 24 hours. Hmm, I guess that's 1"/hr. That's not so bad, but I've been generously topping each bite with butter or olive oil, and occasinally both. At least my coat will be nice and shiny.

Who says we don't have fall colors in Reno???

I had lovely long ride today, by myself, but lovely nonetheless. We're having the nicest fall weather!!! Cool enough that you can wear a sweater (not while riding, of course) but warm enough that your face doesn't go numb on descents. And the colors!!! As the photos will demonstrate, we DO get pretty fall colors in Reno. Sure, maybe it's not as spectacular as in Vermont or NH or wherever, but it's really nice anyway. The pictures don't do it justice. Mostly cause you can see the stupid sign for the stupid gated community. Hmph.

Anyway, back to my ride! I had an equally enjoyable solo ride yesterday, too, with some fun TT intervals and some exploring out in Lemon Valley and Stead. Now, Lemon Valley and Stead are a little shady in places (think Meth Lab shady) but it has a totally different feel from all the ritzy planned communities I was riding through today - different in a good way. Anyway, both days I was listening to an oddly thought provoking mix of Coldplay, Moby, Bad Religion and Steve Earle, and generally feeling very existential. I'm sitting at home eating leftover spanakopita (I have a slight obsession with all things phyllo dough right now) and feeling major Bike Love. Maybe a nap . . .

Rookie move?

^^^ Clearly my sunglasses run under my helmet straps.^^^

Is this photographic evidence of my rookie-ness???

So - I've recently heard people talking about what a fred you are if you wear your sunglasses under your helmet straps. Is this true? Why has no one told me about this until now? Is it because they've been giggling about what a lame-oh I am behind my back? Or are they just elitest snobs with no idea what they're talking about? Well I started looking around the interweb for pictures of "pros" - you know, since I'm so P-R-O and all that. (insert hysterical laughter here)

Pictures of Katie Compton, Georgia Gould and Gunn Rita all appeared to have their sunglasses over their helmet straps. Proman ladies Shelley Olds and Rachel Lloyd appeared to have them under their helmet straps. Now I'm really confused. Basically that's like, if Ghandi and the Dalai Lama gave me conflicting notions of how to build a peaceful society. Does that analogy make sense????

Perhaps a better question is: Do I even give a good god damn if people think I'm lame because of how I wear my sunglasses??? I think we both know the answer to that.

Randomness.

So, out on my ride on Saturday I saw this really cool bird by the side of the road. I'm pretty sure it's a blue heron. It was enourmous!!! So I was standing there with my bike taking a picture of it and some old dude almost ran me over. I have poor impulse control, so I yelled at him, and the bird took off. It was pretty neat, really. Okay, that's all I got.