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...

Bay Model

Since Tuesday I put almost 100 hours and $300 into the most intense model I'm going to have to build the entire time I'm in school. Maybe in my entire architecture career.

Between Saturday morning and today the only times I went outside* were to walk to the art store, places to get food, or if I was going home to take a nap and change clothes**. I had no concept of what day it was, or even what time it was. I pretty much based my schedule around going home for a nap while it was still dark outside, and going back whenever 3 hours later was. The result was worth it though, if I do say so myself.

*Save an hour break for the Girl Talk concert ON CAMPUS!


**Yeah, I didn't take a shower between Friday night and Tuesday morning. Yeah, that's gross, I'm quite aware, thanks.

First pieces

Starting to go together

Doesn't count until you bleed on it

Wood floor

Hallway

...

I got columns, yo.

Comin' together

More beams

For the suspended walkway

Finished!



And a song to finish off the day:
'There are Some Remedies Worse Than the Disease' This Will Destroy You

Oh yeah, I have this thing, don't I...

I'll make the "I've been busy ...for the last month..." excuse. But as much as blogs are falling out of fashion, I really do need to be better about keeping on top of this.

Before I delve into every facet of my life for the last quite a while, here's a summary as a list of things that seemed to dominate everything that went on:
-Bikes
-Architecture
-ROAD TRIP
Well, that wasn't quite as helpful as I imagined it would be...
(Hey, at least I included something besides bikes and architecture, I almost didn't, but then I would've been lying or something, so, yeah.)

I'll also throw in the first Google Image result for "everything that's happened in the last month." To, you know, help clarify some more.

Right.

Moving right along...
In the world of architecture everything is coming along pretty good. My project completely changed three times before spring break, but now it's settled into a good steady position. We're starting on our 'Bay Model' this week - a giant section cut through our building. Mine is on the smaller side, at 12" x 30" x 14". So that is pretty much going to be dominating my life until Monday. There will be pictures! For seriously!

The bike part of life has seen my first two races with the Pro/Elite class. And that is a whole new world for sure.
Comfort was a stage race again, and my goal going in was a top 10 overall. I was close after Saturday with a 12 in the short track and 11th in the time trial, but Sunday was a different story... 17th in cross country... I was only 9 minutes off the winning time though, so I was still alright with that.


Two weeks ago was a new race - the Pace Bend mountain bike trail. I couldn't tell how the race would go just riding the course, so I went into it without much of a game plan.
The start was really short, so pretty much the entire group rode together for the first 4 miles or so before we hit a technical section and it got split up. I was still with around 6 people for the rest of the first lap, but eventually I followed an attack and got away from that group. The rest of the race wasn't anything special, just pass someone here, try not to get passed there, you know how it goes. I ended up 9th though! Got some sweet money! AND A RIBBON OMG!!!


There was a race in Oklahoma I was going to do as part of my spring break road trip - first place singlespeed payed $500 and I was already going to be in that general direction. It ended up getting cancelled because of snow though...

But yeah, that road trip!
Since, umm, June, I think, I had been planning on using my spring break to drive up to Missouri to hang out with my BFF Jill Rachel. We did all sorts of awesome things! Like, watch a guy punch a cop in the face, then quickly get tazed, all while we were eating ice cream. And I went to a class at a school that I'm not even a student at. And we hung out in a tree.
And we went to her friends parents house where there was a cave. I don't know about anyone else, but I was expecting something along the lines of a big entry room, then maybe a 20 foot tunnel to another room that we would have to kinda crawl through.
Nope.
We're talkin' straight up hands and knees for an hour and a half each way, without actually getting to the end. We only turned around there because one of the girls had a dance to go to that evening and we were going to be pushing getting her back in time as it was...



Whew, this is getting long. (That's what she said.)

Anyway, continuing in not at all chronological order, last weekend was Rachel's spring break, so she returned the awesome and came down to the ATX for a couple days!
And we did more awesome things! Like take a good chunk out of the list of awesome places to eat here.
And go to a concert (Copeland's last tour ever).


And hang out at the Cathedral of Junk!





And at Mt. Bonnell.


And we did a lot of other cool stuff too, and we're officially dating now, and we... Sorry, kinda lost my train of thought there on that last one... Anyone that's known us for the past, like, eight months will probably be saying "well finally." But you know what, deal with it. We do what we waaant. That's a reference to something. I think. Don't worry about it, I don't.
Sooo yeah, theres that.

Umm, a song or two. Lets see...
'Lazy Eye' Silversun Pickups
'I Remember' Deadmau5 and Kaskade