Monday

If you want a better recap of my ride yesterday, check out Joseph's blog.

I had my final first class of the semester this evening, ARCHITECTURE OF MODERN ITALY. It was hard to tell, since all we did was get a syllabus and look at some slides of buildings leading up to the time period we're studying, but I think it'll be another good class. Other than that, I had studio today, where we played with blocks... My group was also told that while we did do a good job making them, there needed to be more. So after class I headed down to the wood shop with a couple other guys, and we cut another 3240 of them. Hopefully that will be enough for Wednesday.

Out of curiosity, I went back to Google, and asked again what a good picture for my blog today would be. I'm pleased with the results:

Sunday

I don't feel like putting a lot of thought into what to blog about tonight. However, that doesn't make for very good content. Thus, a solution:
Go to Google Images, type in "Good picture to put on my blog today," post whatever the first image in the results is.

Thats exciting.

In other news (and since I still don't feel like putting thought into my content for the day), here is some copypasta from an email I sent about what I did today:
Today after I finished my work I went with Joseph to the Greenbelt on the singlespeed. We rode down there, rode the trail from one end to the other, then ended gong to far and getting on some goofy side trail that we ended up having to walk alot of. For whatever reason we kept following it, and eventually ended up behind a bunch of houses. Some guy was in his backyard, and he let us cut through to the street, and we rode back to campus from there. It was a good 2.5 hour or more ride total, not counting the time we spent walking.

In studio we're doing this big class project where we're representing a city using a bunch of pieces that can be moved around to show different conditions and what changes and stuff...
Anyway, my group was in charge of making houses and offices, which were basically inch thick peices of 2x4 for houses, and inch thick 2x4s cut in half for offices.
Remember we're making a city. There are a lot of houses and offices in a city. We started with 60 2x4s and ended up with somewhere around 5,000 peices!
Thats exciting too.

If you said "OH NOES ITALICS IT'S LONG I'M GONNA SKIP THAT PART!!" Here is a shorter version (warning: may not contain as much excitement):
I went riding.
In studio, we cut wood into lots of pieces.

Hugel Photos!

Sometime way back in November, I did this crazy ride called the Tour Das Hugel that you may remember me talking about. You may also remember that I said I would post some pictures from it whenever the photographers who were out on the road put them up. Well, I finally found some!
(They get bigger if you click on them...)

This is on Courtyard, about 60 miles into the ride. Notice how me and the other guy are going different directions while weaving up the hill because of how steep it is...


This is on Jester, the last major climb of the ride, at about the 97 mile mark.


Close up at the top of Jester. Notice the look of relief...

Thanks to AustinSkater for being out there to take these!

Greenbelt + 9th Street

After class yesterday, I decided the 80 degree temperatures merited a nice ride, and given I had gone out on the road bike on Thursday, I opted for riding the singlespeed down to the greenbelt. The way down there was pretty uneventful, and I had to turn around a little over half way into the trail to be sure I would get home before dark. I was tempted to go further, so next time I might stick some lights on my bike for the ride back home.
On the way back home, I decided I had enough time to stop by the 9th street jumps for a few minutes. It was a good decision, because I definitely got to see a sweet crash for he first time when one of the guys overshot a jump and landed right on his shoulder from about eight feet up. He didn't get hurt and everyone laughed at him, so it was all good. For anyone who hasn't been able to experience 9th street in person, I proudly present the next best thing:

CRAPPY AWESOME CELL PHONE VIDEO!!

Yeah

So I had my first real class day today. Well, half of one anyway... My first class was the one that got canceled for inauguration, so it was still just intro stuff, but my second one was a full blown lecture. And it was actually pretty cool. I think I'm going to like the class.

In other news, I just moved all of my stuff back to studio. I didn't feel like dealing with it anymore after I got it there, so I'll have to go up before class tomorrow... Whatever.

More other news: A bookstore right by campus is closing (go figure college students wouldn't read...) so everything there is 30% off. I stopped by today and stocked up on ~$200 of cool architecture books! And all for ~$130! Good deal!

First Day of Class

So I had class for 30 minutes today...

My 9:30-11:00 got canceled for the inauguration, which I chose to not watch in favor of sleeping in. My other Tuesday class was supposed to be 12:30-2:00, but since it was the first day, we just had a little course intro thing and the professor let us out a little after 1:00. First studio class of the semester is tomorrow!

So much for that...

Well, my plans of doing nothing started out good, but the afternoon ended up getting a little out of hand. Joseph called and talked me into going on a short easy ride down by town lake. We met up with Bennett (who actually remembered how to ride a bike!) and Logan and set off. The ride started out good, and we were all having a good time, but somewhere along the way Logan decided to put it in the big ring and pick up the pace. A lot. And I'm sitting back there on my singlespeed spinning away and getting dropped...
I asked him to slow it down once, but that didn't do very much so the second time I asked also involved me almost pulling him off of his bike. That time the message got across.
All in all it ended up being a 2.5 hour, pretty aerobically challenging ride, and my legs are toast after the last three days. Time for some El Chilito.

Not too much on the Agenda for Today

This weekend saw a lot of riding - 4 (pretty fast) hours of Cameron Park on Saturday, and a shorter recovery ride at Walnut Creek yesterday. Cameron Park was awesome as always, and remains the only reason I could understand anyone wanting to live in Waco. Go check out Josephs blog for a Walnut Creek report.

Since we're honoring MLK today by not having class and I've been planning on this being an off day riding wise, I really don't have anything to do. Maybe I'll make a trip to IKEA or something. I could use a shoe rack / shelf in my closet.

Back in the ATX

I got back yesterday afternoon, and commenced the doing of nothing.
I needed to go to the store later, and luckily Joseph called, and we went together.
A little while after he left my place though, I got a call from him that his car had been towed, and had to take him to pick it up on the other side of the world. $193 later he had his car back, and I went home again.

This morning I slept in, and never really accomplished anything, well, except for finally hanging my shelf on the wall:


Here are some pictures from Leakey:

Taken whilst riding:


Our cabins:


Joseph jumping across the dam (the good one) on the river:


It's nice to be back, but I think I'm going to take a trip again tomorrow and go ride at Cameron Park in Waco.

Countdown to classes starting: 4 days

More Leakey

Two more days of training camp down. One more to go.
The last two days were ~55 mile rides with a good bit of climbing. The only bad thing is the middle of nowhere chip seal. Oh well, its worth it.

Maybe I'll catch up with the times sometime soon and post a top 5 women of 2008.
Training camp pictures tomorrow night.

Leakey

Today was the first day of UTs training camp. We rode really slow. And still dropped people. Like, we were going 7, and people were falling off the back of the pack. No joke. Luckily tomorrow we're splitting up into different groups!

I took pictures, but I don't have my camera cable. Thus, they will be posted later. In the mean time, here is proof that I did, indeed, turn my old hardtail into a singlespeed:

Title goes Here

My old mountain bike has successfully been taken apart and reassembled as a single speed. It is pretty nifty if I do say so myself.

I'm going to test it out at Cedar Hill in the morning. I'll try to get some pictures while I'm at it.