Wednesday, April 30, 2008

What I Hate

I really hate it when I start telling a story, and then it turns out to just sound really stupid and/or not really have a point or serve a purpose in the current conversation.

I also hate it when people decide to shave whatever body part with long black hair while in the shower and then leave all the hair in piles all over the place. But I suppose I don't have so much control over that one...

No Classes

I didn't have any classes this morning, so with nothing else to do, I decided to give names to all of my bikes:

Road: Shadazia
Mountain: Tra'Miyah
Track: Ja'Kwavis
Time Trial: Ebonise

Just kidding. But, according to URBAN Style Baby Names, all of those are real names...

I wasn't kidding about actually naming the bikes though... Here are the real ones:

Road: Rhea
Mountian: Gabrielle
Track: Lucille
Time Trial: Freya

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Monday, April 28, 2008

Sunday, Part 2

Here is the pile of stuff I won:

The envelopes are free entries to the Hotter 'n Hell, so I guess I'll be doing that this year.

Here is what you get to do with the ponies when your team wins:

they were still there when we got back to Austin.

I was going to steal some other pictures from Chris, but his blog has been down all day, so you'll have to check them out sometime later. (use the link over there -->)

Also, go check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pFJpawptJ4

Sorry for not having it links on those last two things, but Blogger isn't letting me do them tofay for some reason. I'll edit it later of I can get it working.

Sunday, Part 1

Saturday night we decided that the plan for the crit on sunday was to attack out of all the corners to keep the pace up, and hopefully get at least one break started. Then it rained all night and up to about ten minutes before our race started...

The last two corners (3 and 4) had bricks right before and after them, but close enough that normally you would be turning on them, and they were uber slick. During warm up, I noticed that I was able to take the corners faster than most people due to my apparently "wierd" cornering style. SO\o I decided that during the race I would attack into the corners instead of the normal plan.

An MSU guy attacked right off the start and we chased him down by the third side of the first lap. There was a crash around the last corner on that lap, and it split the pack up a little bit. Right before the third corner on the second lap, everyone had just about caught back on, so I decided that would be a good time to start attacking. I took off and an MSU guy caught me fairly quickly. I expected the rest of the pack to come up pretty soon, but the two of us started working together fast and managed to not only put 30 seconds on the pack, but to keep at least that gap for the entire race. He ended up outsprinting me, so I got second, but still, I'll take that.

Sean got away from the pack with a few laps to go and almost caught us, actually, but still finished third, about ten seconds behind. Somehow his attack along with something Tony did managed to drop the rest of the MSU riders from the field (MSU was our only competition for the team overall competition for the season), so besides the first, their hghest finish was 9th. This helped alot in the team standings, and UT is once again the conference champions!!!

Oh yeah, during the race, there were also four primes that went four places deep. Me and the MSU guy both took two, and second in the other two, so I got a nice pile of stuff from the race too.

And since it was were this entry was supposed to end, I'll repeat what was supposed to be the last line:

standings, and UT is once again the conference champions!!!



Part 2 will be here later today when I go get my camera cable and can upload pictures.

Saturday, April 26, 2008

MSU Day One

Meh. Field sprint with people deciding to sit up right in front of me and stuff... yeah. I still pulled off like, 11th-ish though, so I guess it isn't all bad... yeah...


There was also a TTT, but I didn't partake in that fun since there are enough better TT-ers than me. They did decent.

Friday, April 25, 2008

Stuff

So I finished my final project in architecture like, super early thanks to many long days in studio... fun stuff... and I am now in Wichita Falls (pronounce Wich-ee-ta please) for the conference championships.

I am really looking forward to whenever I realize that I'm basically done with school. I'm guessing it will happen at about 2:46 tomorrow afternoon. Yeah...

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Yeah

So this is a couple days overdue, but here is a list of things I am really looking forward to that will come along with not living in the dorms next year:

-Having my own parkng spot. I really get tired of waiting 30 minutes for the ONE loading zone spot for a dorm of roughly THREE THOUSAND people. Then someone will always try to race me to it even though they just showed up as it was opening up...

-Having my own bathroom. Someone has taken to putting toilet paper all over the place and then peeing all over it... And the dorm is going to fine everyone on the 7th floor $75 if it doesn't stop...

-Not living with the gross/fat/weird asian guy is a given.

-Eating things besides chicken strips with partially solidified gravy. Like, vegatables maybe...

Yeah...

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Then I bought some ice cream

I was walking across the street to CVS earlier, and some guy in a car thought it would be really cool to just not look if there was anyone crossing the street and floor it around the corner. I saw him in just enough time to run out of the way, then he stopped and was like "oh, sorry man..." Then I bought some ice cream.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Tx State Weekend

TT:
Reduced to .7 miles, 90% of which was at an 18% grade. Good fun.
Umm... not really much to say about this one, it hurt really bad for about 3 minutes and 39 seconds, then I couldn't breath fpr about an hour, but neithr could anyone else, so it's all good. That time was good for a tie for 5th place, and only 11 seconds off of 1st.

Crit:
More of a circuit race, seeing as how we only did nine laps. No corners, a small climb and downhill. I didn't really feel too good before the race, but by time I was done warming up, I was a little better. Our plan was to just keep attacking and hope something would stick, but no one else was too hot on following our breaks, so it ended in a field sprint. I got 10th. Nothing too notable happened, though appearantly some guy crashed from throwing his water bottle too hard or something...

RR:
After a good night of sleep, I was feeling pretty good for todays race. At our team meeting we decided o pretty much the same plan as the crit, and for the first two out of four laps we got just about the same results. About half way into the third lap, I somehow ended up in a fairly large break, there were nine of us, and after about four miles of tearing it up we slowed down to around 25-26mph. By the end of the race we had put about 5 minutes on the pack (yay finally being in a breakaway that didn't get caught!!) and I sprinted in for 6th.

Overall, I don't think I can really complain about the weekend at all, well, except maybe about the bike shop in San Marcos that charged me $13 to tighten my rear hub when they didn't even have the proper tools for the job... but I guess it had to be done... But, yeah, three top tens. I'm happy with that.

Friday, April 18, 2008

Ketchup.

Scratch that...
Try "Catch Up."

So Wednesday I didn't get lost again. Yay riding with people who know where they're going better than I do.
Then later me, Chris, and Litespeed Chris, Litespeed, AND I went on a well good adventure to go look at the hill climb TT for the Texas State race this weekend tomorrow.

Yesterday at the crit I had an awesome three laps. Then I blew my tire off of my rim, clipped my pedal (the order of those two still has yet to be decided, though I feel it is the order I typed it in, and I can't really see how much of a differance it makes anyway...) resulting in my back end flying pretty high followed by my tube exploding when I landed. I suprised everyone by not crashing, then changed my tube and skipped the open race to go to studio.

Sweet.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Trying Again

There is a group going out to the Greenbelt today, so hopefully I won't get lost this time or anything...

In other news, I don't have to order at Starbucks any more. Well, unless I want something besides a grande mocha...

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Epic Ride of Epic Epicness

There is only one word that can describe my ride this afternoon. I'm just going to let you guess it...

I got out of class, and knowing I wouldn't have tome to do the 'nighter with studio stuffage, I decided toho do some sort of ride before it got too late. Walnut Creek was out since I'm doing that tomorrow, and I really did not feel like riding my road bike for whatever reason. Anyway, I ended up deciding to ride the mountain bike to the Greenbelt and get some sweet action there.

*Note: I have only ridden to the Greenbelt once, about 4 months ago*

I was on my way down there, and after only making one wrong turn (which I realized after about ten feet) I could see Zilker Park, which meant I had basically successfully navihated myself to the trail head. Blah, blah, blah... I'm riding to the park down the bike path and there is this group of people stopped under a bridge blocking the trail. Randomly it turns out to be Andrew, Tyler, Tristan, and Carlos. Tristan says something about me just missing Tyler and Carlos crach into each other and go down. Dang it!!

I get to the trail, check the time, and decide to make my ride about 2 hours total, meaning about 30 minutes out on the trail, then back. After a little while, I'm having such a good ride, I decided to go ahead and bump it up to about 2.5 hours.

Thats all fine and dandy until on my way back I accidentally took one of the side trails and eventually ended up out in the river bed (thankfully it was completely dry) hiking for about 15 minutes to find the next place the trail crossed it. At one point I was pretty sure I was in the wrong river and would end up having to ditch my bike and go find some road or something and hitch-hike back to campus. That thought made me sad ) :

Turns out it was the right creek though, and wherever I got back on the trail ended up taking me to the famed chain-in-the-cliff section. Then I took some other side trail again and ended up on the road in some neighborhood. I could have easily gone back to the trail and left the way I know, but that didn't seem very fitting for this ride, so I just rode until I found some major-ish looking road that went towards downtown and followed it. Several other roads,bike paths, and sidewalks later I made it to streets I regocnized as downtown and headed back to campus with a short stop at the 9th street jumps thrown in, since I was in that part of the city.

(a la the Racing Chronicles - R.I.P.)
Total Ride Time: more or less 2 hours 45 minutes
Total Hiking Time: 20 minutes
Hydration: I stopped to pee once?
Rating on Scale of Epicness (from 1-14): 10.3

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Reimer's

Well, I guess I got feeling better - I got a 5th at the race ($25 woo!) only +/-30 seconds behind 4th!! Results aren't up yet to know how far off of Bennett I was, but I don't think it was really to much of a gap. Updates later.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

blergh

I don't know what was up with me at the crits tonight... They felt like they should have been really easy, but i felt really bad... Hopefully I'm better by this weekend for Reimer's...

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

"Mayo, mustard, and hot peppers?"

"Yeah, all four." -Justin

Monday, April 7, 2008

Crit

Yay, team!

I did a solo break away off the start line to set up a break that somehow stuck for the last 43 minutes of a 45 minute crit. Sean (U.T.) was in it but got owned by the two St. Ed's guys and finished third. Later another group got off the front with Tony (another U.T. guy) in it. They stuck that break too and Tony got a 6th. Blah blah blah racing stuff. Last lap comes and I do a lead out for Kyler, but Matt Sauls jumps in between us... Kyler still outsprinted him though, giving us an 8th, also! Woo.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Sitting In A Field

Last night someone set of the fire alarm in Jester at like freakin one in the morning... Then my alarm clock didn't go off, so I ended up missing the carpool and just diving myself out to the race. And I was really tired.

It was uber cold when we got there, but warmed up nicely by the end of the road race. Said road race was pretty easy, with basically no wind. I got 10th. Not too bad for a race finishing with a long downhill sprint (which is not something I'm too good at...)

Then we sat around in a field all day while the officials went and got lunch for 2.5 hours, and were an hour late for the time trial starts...

Time trial went decent, I didn't know the course and thusly didn't go quite as hard as I could have, but considering, it wasn't bad.

Then we sat around in a field and waited for TT results, which we won't get until tomorrow...

Then I got back to campus and sat around in a field to see The Roots! (FOR FREE!!) As good as they are, I left before they finished to go to bed, but ended up writing this instead.

So, I'm going to go to bed now. Crit tomorrow.

Friday, April 4, 2008

Stupid

Earlier today I finished the most pointless architecture project ever: making a model out of soap. With normal materials it could have been done for 1/8 the price and in about 1/4 the time. And it would have looked better. Then Jose tells us that there is no reason to ever have to do this in the real world, and it is a pointless project.

At least I have a sweet mothers day gift now... "Here mom, I got you a (5 pound) block of soap! In the shape of my model!!"

Thursday, April 3, 2008

In my roomates world...

It seems that when you run out of soap the correct solution is not to buy more, but rather to just stop using it. The last 5 weeks of school are going to smell really lovely...