Call it Heinz

So I stopped going to Psychology class, thus eliminating my quality blogging time. My test grades have seemed to follow an interesting trend of going up the less I go to class though, so I think I'm going to stick with this plan of attack for the last couple weeks of the semester.

I had planned to make this post about spring break, the two races I've done since the last post, and some other stuff, but that is way too much to talk about with any level of detail... So umm, here's the quick and dirty version with pictures instead of words whenever possible:

Comfort Race: racing a mountain bike with my finger in it's cast thingy was interesting. I wasted a lot of energy because my hand position was different and it made me keep over braking. Still had an ok race though, finished somewhere around 15th.

Spring break: road trip to Missouri to see Rachel! and do fun things!

I look like a fish!


We went here!



I brought my bike and got to ride the one day it wasn't raining. Found some sweet dirt roads. Also, central Missouri is hillier than I thought it would be.

School: normal.

Baylor Road Weekend: Had an okay road race and TTT. I felt pretty strong but am still lacking at short high intensity bursts. Getting better though. Crit was FAST. I hung in the group until halfway through 2 to go, and rolled in for a solid 7th.

Look! People on road bikes!


Rachel comes to visit: We did fun things! Like go to dinner at Uchiko, which was amazing, and hike and have a picnic at the Greenbelt, and go to the School of Architecture Formal!

I think I picked a pretty nice picnic location


Other News: we took a family portrait last night!

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Bike Racing and Tacos

Normally this post would be all about the A+M race weekend that just happened, but nothing too exciting went down, so it will be about other things. Well okay, a little about the race first:
Saturday was the traditional Tunis Rubaix, only this time on a much tamed down course.
I don't feel like finding pictures if the actual courses, so here are some Google Image representations:
Old course


New course


Note that I have absolutely no problem with this. I like not having three wheel changes to finish a 60 mile race. It was cold and windy and rainy though, so don't be thinking I'm a total pussy over here.
I didn't ride all week because I wasn't sure what was going on with my finger and couldn't get in to see the doctor till Friday. Turns out I just have a torn ligament though, so as long as I leave this brace thingy on I can do whatever I want. Anyway, because of said not riding I was expecting a not so great race. And yeah, pretty much. I got dropped right at the end of the fourth out of five laps and rode the last one in with a guy from MSU.
The time trial that afternoon went about as well.

Sunday is crit day. About 3 laps in I saw what appeared to be the move for the day going up the road, and with a couple other guys that felt the same way, worked my way up to it. We caught them, then lapped the pack about half way through the race. The race went MSU attacks, S.Haga or Cody (A+M) chases down the attack, we ride a tad slower for a minute or two, repeat all day. I sat at the back of the leaders and called out attacks so that the A+M boys would be ready for them.
Two laps to go, lead out trains start organized. Baker (an A+M guy we had lapped), Cody, and S.Haga were on the front, followed by five MSU riders, then me. Baker pulled all of two to go, then was done. I know I have no chance in a sprint against those guys, so I moved up and pulled for about half a lap to help out Cody and Shane. Shane ended up getting the win. And rather convincingly. Over a bike length ahead of second!
There are a bunch of pictures by JToka photography here

Hrm. That ended up being longer than I thought it would be. I think there's still time for one other thing though. AND WHAT BETTER THAN TACOS!?
I'd heard of this taco place called Rosita's Al Pastor. I've known where it is. I finally convinced Joseph and Parker to go. We pull up to the truck in the parking lot of a bingo hall, get out, and discover that the menu is in Spanish, and the lady working the truck doesn't know enough English to explain what things are. Perfect!


We know about a third of the menu from other taco places and stick with that. I don't know if it was the meat in the tacos, the homemade flour tortillas, or the fact that I felt like I was in the middle of a drug deal half the time I was there (it was probably a combination), but those were easily the best tacos I've ever had.

UT Weekend 2011

I finished our road race for the first time ever. With the pack. It felt good. Crashing at the start of the last lap did not feel good. Despite the weather forecast of "sunny and in the 80s" we had overcast with occasional light rain in the 60s. Still not bad, until one of the rain cells hit right before a corner and made the road slick. For the only time all day. Not expecting the road to be slick, or to be sliding when I went into the corner, I instinctively tapped my brakes. Which sent me right down onto the road.
Two other guys did the same thing, so I felt slightly less like an idiot. And the pack slowed down for us to catch back up, so everything was good. We cruised for a bit and were really cautious in the next few corners, but eventually the pace picked up again. There were some attacks. My left hand was pretty sore from hitting the ground and I couldn't put pressure on it to follow the pack surges, but riding at a steady pace I was able to catch up every time the attacker was caught and everyone slowed down and waited for the next one to go off.

My priorities after the race:
1) Get some people to look over my bike and make sure nothing was broken (nothing was)
2)Take pictures of the blood and guts* (not too spectacular, but still...)
3)Get the medic to clean up said blood and guts
*

There was a TTT in the afternoon. I sat it out, figuring the team wouldn't benefit so much from someone who wasn't able to ride in the drops. Instead I got corner marshal duty. I stood here. It was super fun.


Sunday was crit time. I was a little worried about my hand, but I bothered the medic for something to use as padding in my glove, and she had some sticky rubber stuff that was absolutely perfect.
It was a typical Men A crit - S. Haga and some MSU guys got in a break that lapped the field, with some occasional other attacks that MSU covered. When the break caught up MSU continued to attack Shane, but he was riding strong enough to cover all of them himself and still win the field sprint...
I would've liked to help him out some, buuuut I was doing just fine sitting in. Maybe next week.

Right now my hand is pretty much one giant bruise and I think my ring finger might be broken. Awesome.

Getting Ready to Race

The first collegiate road race of the year is this weekend. One of the things I had to do in getting ready to race was glue some new tires onto my Zipps.
Living in an apartment I didn't exactly have too many options for where to do this, and the floor in my room looked like a pretty good option. I found some scraps of poster board to lay down, got my truing stand out and set up, got ready to go and found out I needed a different type of valve extender than what I already had... A trip to Mellow Johnny's fixed this problem and I got back to it.

Somewhere around this point in time I had the thought that it was too bad I wasn't back in a dorm room doing this. I imagine it would've been ever better than the time I was sitting on the floor with the cranks pulled off my mountain bike to put some new chain rings on. My room mate hadn't been home, but he came in, looked at me, and looking really confused, turned around and walked back out of the room.

The actual gluing of the tires, though:
The first one was absolutely perfect. I didn't even get glue on my hands.
The second one turned out something like this

I was pulling the last section of the tire on when a quarter of it slipped back off. Of course that meant pulling it up the rim again, but this time with glue all over it...

I would like to thank Goo Gone for making a good product.
I'd also like to point out that living somewhere with operable windows is very nice if this task is going to be done inside. ie As much fun as it would be to confuse a dorm room mate, you do not want to glue tires there. Your room would never smell the same again.

Dating Advice

The problem with writing for this during psychology class is that talking about anything except the stupid professor is really difficult. In an attempt to spare everyone from more of that, here are some lessons to be learned from a first date me and Andrew witnessed while we were at dinner last night:

When on a first date, there are certain things you should say. They do not include:
"I'm really bad at flirting."

"I don't drink a lot. Actually, yeah I do. I just don't get drunk a lot. Actually, yeah I do. [proceed to tell stories about times you've been drunk for 15 minutes]"

"Wait, I wasn't done with that story yet."

"One time I was at a bar with a really really hot girl, and she came with me when I got kicked out..."

There are signs you can look for to see if your date is going well. Again, these do not include:
Your date sitting with [her] arms crossed any time you start talking.

Your date staring at the wall or ceiling after you have been talking for any extended period of time.

Your date communicating in monosyllable grunts or unintelligible sounds any time you ask a direct question.

Your date saying things like "can we leave and get to that other place we were going to go yet?"

Stupid Weather

The worst thing about being in a freshman class is that the majority of the 300 kids in here use their laptops to take notes. Or, like me, to surf the internet while the professor talks about irrelevant things. What this means is that the server gets all clogged up and the internet either gets really slow or doesn't work at all. There should be a way to call seniority on the on campus internet. Just sayin'.

I was half expecting the class to only be about half full today because the temperature dropped into the 20s again today (read: about 40 degrees colder than Texas has any business being) and there was "ice" last night. But no, the class is about as full as it normally is.
Do these people really find Professor [I'm fat and I can eat 25 chicken wings and I'm going to spend half the class telling you about it because it makes me feel special and possibly less bad about myself because I remember the 80s when I ran a 5k in 30 minutes but when I tell the class about that I'm going to assume no one knows how to convert kilometers to miles and say that that gave me an average rate of 5:25 minutes/miles because that will sound more impressive than what I really did] that interesting?
I know I wouldn't be here except for the fact that I would have to actually study for tests if I did that.

My favorite part of the weather being like this is that it scares away all of the people who normally stand around on the West Mall and try to hand me flyers for clubs that I have no interest in or tell me about Jesus or whatever. Whenever they come back out I feel like I should be weird to them.
"What day does [uninteresting club] meet?"
"Oh Tuesday evenings aren't good for me, that's when I go around and give homeless guys handjobs. I just try to do my part to help out, you know..."
I probably won't though, because someone might think I'm serious (I'm not) and judge me. I need to get over myself because that would be really funny.

My least favorite part of cold weather is listening to everyone complain all the time. This one annoying girl posted on the facebook last week
"Umm, UT, why aren't classes cancelled yet? It's below freezing outside. I don't want to walk to class in this."
BELOW FREEZING!!! OH NO! No one has EVER experienced so much agony before!
Put a coat on and shut the f*ck up.

I do kinda wish I had a scarf though. I could wear it, like, twice a year with a coat and my neck would be warm.


Or I could wear it every day from December to March with a North Face vest and people would think I'm in a frat.


Or I could wear it in the summer with a v-neck shirt and everyone would think I'm a hipster.


How versatile!

Dirty Du

Another psychology class, another blog post. I see this making me actually keep up with this thing this semester.

The only question, then, is what to write about.
I guess I could do a quick recap of the Dirty Du(athlon) from way back in November.

My dad talked me into racing against him in it, and seeing it as a rematch for the triathlon we did over the summer
(did I ever write about that? I don't remember. Long story short, I double flatted which led to him beating me by one minute...)
I said "why not" and had my mom sign me up.

The format of the race was:
mass start into a 5k off road run*
20k mountain bike race
repeat of the 5k run

The run course was out and back, and pretty much all either uphill or downhill. I knew there were going to be a lot of people that could run faster than me, and there were. I finished to first run in 50th place.
Then we got to get on our bikes. It took me a couple minutes to get my legs warmed up after the run, but it didn't even take that long to start passing all the people who weren't faking the ability to run like I was. 20k later I had posted the 4th fastest bike time of the day and moved into the top 10 in the race.

Too bad I had to run again...
And I had kinda killed my legs riding...

My second run was more of an alternating walk/run/cramp... thing. Luckily I had gotten far enough up front on the bike that not too many people were able to catch up. Even though my second run time was only 63rd overall, I still finished in 18th, or 12th in the men under 40 division.

My goal going into the race had been to finish in under two hours. I came really close at 2:02.
More importantly though, I beat my dad by about 20 minutes!
Ha! What now old man?!

Things that Really Bother Me

I was at the grocery store a couple days ago and the guy in line in front of me had three young girls. What looked like twins and a third that was born no more than 9 months after them. Of course I found out they were with him when they ran up and threw a bunch of random things on top of all my stuff on the conveyor belt. Then ran off again. Then came back carrying more things and ran out the front of the store with them and waited for their dad who continued to pretend they didn't exist.

This semester I'm in a freshman psychology class. I thought it would be interesting. The professor just spent ten minutes explaining how even though ice cream sales and murder are higher in the summer, there is no correlation between the two. Are freshman really this stupid? Can we actually learn something, please.

Why are old people, when they try to use the internet, incapable of typing a URL into the address bar, and instead have to use the Internet Explorer Google Search Bar to type in 'aol' so they can then go to the website. My psychology professor does this.
Also, chain emails about how horrible Muslims and Obama are.

Fat people think that the way the world works is that everyone gets fat eventually. My psychology professor does this too.

Grad students think the two best places to have a conversation are halfway up staircases and in doorways. Sorry, but no.

Bike Stuffs

Yester-two days ago was the Cameron Park race. It happens to be one of my favorites and since I was feeling pretty good at the end of the collegiate season, I figured I would give it a go.
I hadn't raced with the pros since, what, March? Something like that. Those guys are still fast. But anyway, I started out around 10th aaaaaand pretty much stayed there... When the pack started to break up I got left in a group of four and it wasn't long before two others caught up to us. We took turns passing each other for the first lap, but more or less stayed together.
On the second lap it split up a little, but I'd say there couldn't've been more than 30 seconds between any of us. I also heard from someone watching that Fawley (who was leading at the time) was less than two minutes ahead! Throughout the rest of the race the gaps opened a little wider, some of the guys behind me got dropped, etc etc. At the finish though, I could see all the way up to 7th place in front of me (I was in 10th, since I only kinda made that clear earlier).

The scoring got messed up so I never got to see actual time gaps, which is a little disappointing - it would be nice to know if I really was that close to the leaders or not...

I planned on talking about the collegiate season some too, but I don't really feel like it now.

The Hugel is on Saturday.

Halloween 2010

Oh the irony...