Bike Racks

Yep, pretty much.

This morning I realized classes start tomorrow...

Blah

The drive from Dallas to Austin isn't much fun the day after century.
Especially when the semis insist on doing this... At 10 below the speed limit:

(No, contrary to popular belief, the one on the left isn't even passing. He actually ended up letting the other guy in front...)

Though I must say I've always been a fan of Blue#1. You know that's a natural color:


Me and Jeff built some bike racks today. Pictures tomorrow.

HHH

The Hotter'n Hell 100 was today. It went alright - would have been mucho better if I had shown up to the start on time, rather than a minute late...

I tried to catch the pack for about 10-15 minutes, but gave up and decided to make it a "time trial" and see how fast I could do the 100 miles by myself.
At about mile 25, I decided that was a really stupid idea too, and jumped in one of the fast rally packs that had a few people I knew in it.

At about mile 70, we caught up to the Cat 4s (I actually started in front of them, but they passed me after I stopped chasing. There is a picture somewhere that looks like I'm pulling the pack around, but it's actually them catching me.) Since the majority of the people in the pack I was in at this point were not racing, we couldn't pass them, but they did provide good entertainment (like, 3 crashes before the finish... Hey! Thats like a crash every 10 miles!) They didn't ride too terribly slow either, so it wasn't too bad.

Overall though, it wasn't a bad ride - I finished without having to stop, and I beat people - so, it technically qualifies as a success! Yay!

RANDOM QUOTES OF THE WEEKEND!!

"Did you watch any of the olympic track racing? It was crazy when they would slam on the brakes and come to almost a complete stop!"

(During the crit) "I heard they're doing five thousand laps!"

Just Chillin'

It's kind of strange how little there is to do when I don't have class, or work, or furniture to build, or anything else to do.

Yesterday I went with a few people and did a four hour ride to pretty much Bastrop and back. Turns out we got nearly 70 miles in!
Then I went to Target to take back the coffee maker it turns out I didn't need to buy, and got a toaster insead. Chris and Joseph came with me to make a few purchases too. Let's just say I've never seen anyone else take quite so long to pick out which floor cleaner they want...

Then me and Joseph went back to his penthouse to chill and met one of his roomates. The guy is so hardcore from China that he has been in the US a total of less than a week!

Today I slept in and have yet to do anything really. Awesome.

Movin' In

Thursday I drove back down to Austin with the familia. Pictures can be found here.

Since then it's been building furniture, unpacking bags, buying more furniture, building it, unpacking more stuff... You get the idea.

I'm suprised how tiring moving in turned out to be. This morning I half-conciously decided to skip the ride I was supposed to go on (sorry Chris)to sleep in some.

But now I'm done with all that, and in dire need of doing something else. Like riding. Too bad the forecast says rain all day tomorrow... Oh well, I think it was worth it:

Looking in from the doorway


Sitting at my desk


Sitting on my couch/bed

Laptop

I got my new laptop a little while ago. It seems to be a bit larger than my old one.

State Crit

Andrew told me I should race the age-based state crit today. For whatever reason the U23 class only had four people in it. Me, Andrew, Noah Williams, and some other GST junior.

The race was originally 20 laps, but it was approximatly 483920y3722248483.887 degrees outside, so we talked them into dropping the race down to 10 laps.

We rode around for 9, then me and Andrew dropped the juniors and sprinted the finish. I got second, go figure.

It isn't really the cool way to get second, but hey, that's everyone elses fault for not showing up.

Vermont

We started this trip out really good.



We went to Walmart to get it fixed. The mechanic must get payed by the hour. It took him nearly three hours to change two tires.

But he did have some interesting stories to make the time pass quicker. Something about getting the first telephone when it was invented in 1952.

We made it to Birmingham, Alabmama that night, got up and rode at Oak Mountain State, and a few days (and 1800 miles) later finally made it to Mt. Snow.

The trail is pretty nice:


This is one of the easier sections of the decent. The picture makes it look easier than it really is too:


No elevation at all:


Basically it's 5 mile loop. Straight up for 3, and straight down for 2. Somewhere around 1200 feet of climbing per lap.

For the first time in like 5 years there wasn't any rain before the race. Well, until the night before anyway. It rained for just under an hour, which really beats last years three days straight.

The first lap of the race was muddy, but not enough to make the course unridable or anything, and by time we finished the race the trail was almost perfect.

My first lap was 34 minutes and my second and third were both 43s, giving me a total time of 1:53. Adam Craig won the four lap pro race with a time of 1:43. Luckily I'm not in that class.

I got 19th. A result I am quite happy with. I'll do better next year though.

That night was the naked crit, which I chose not to participate in as my legs were quite sore for some reason...

The next morning we got some Dunkin' Donuts in Troy, New York and drove to Chattanooga, Tennessee. Yesterday we got back to Dallas.

Sweet ride.

Home

Race report and pictures tomorrow.

Vermont

I finally found some interwebs to update this with.

Not much has happened so far.
The race is saturday morning.
I'll try to get some pictures up tomorrow.