Wednesday, April 25, 2007

How bout the Family?

Anybody watching these final Sopranos episodes?
I thought Pauley and Tony heading to Florida to avoid the heat was a bit of a used up theme but Pauley packing 3 pairs of white shoes for the trip was worth it and he really dodged the bullet, or bait knife, however you want to put it.

Also, the renaissance of Corrado was a kick, i loved it.

Beware the Colombian TGV

Sebas...that's the story from last night's windy training race. Don't know if you've seen him lately, here's a recent photo.

It was windy, not gusty, just constant and the turnout was all you could ask for. Lots of fast folk, lots of hard riding all the way around.

When we made the left hand turn, we finally got a nice tailwind which was being wasted by idle chatter and comfortable 22 mph 2x2 riding. Norm wasn't having it and pumped the pace back up.

Adrenalin remnants and the favorable winds made for a fast moving group of about 6 of us who were rotating at 29. We didn't stay off for long, then Sebas pulled through and i thought, "you know, i should grab that wheel."

Carnage ensued, quickly we were off, he's pulling and i'm watching the speedo go 30,31,32,33,34,35. Yep that was a steady 35 through the first s-turn, ok. I looked under my arm and there's nobody, the group is quickly becoming a dot on the vanishing horizon.

In my head i'm thinking, "i sure hope somebody is filming this" then "don't flick your arm dude, i'm not going to match this" then a small gap opened. I'm doing 33, and holding it steady, i start wondering "am i about to be dropped while riding at 33?" It was impressive.

Luckily, he finally backed off, the pack came back and all was well. Sebas pulled off at Gardere, thankfully. If he had done that again, i think i would have had an aneurysm on the spot.

The rest was good fun, hard pulls into the wind in the final miles made the pack much smaller. Brian and i tried a 2 man break with about 2k to go but got pulled back by tri-power. It was fun and it hurt, good stuff.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

current events and such

So today i caught up with Sega via meebo.com and instantly became a fan. It truly is a wicked gimmick app 2.0. Check it out, now i'm running my other IM through it. SLICK

The Vineman countdown continues on the page, but i'm out. I put it together this way, if that countdown = X, then X + 14 = the arrival of our new addition, so X - any quantity would probably be better spent preparing for the latter as opposed to the former, if you catch my drift. Well maybe that's too algebraic.

In other tri news, the Black Pearl, no, not Johnny Depp's ship, is bad to the bone. With this thing on, i actually understand what buoyancy is. I've swam twice now in an unheated pool and it is incredible. I've always been somewhere between bad and pathetic as a swimmer, and my first time in it, i swam for 60 minutes nonstop no problems. I'm sure i'm still slow, but i'm faster. It's incredible, i actually enjoy swimming in it. I think i'll focus strictly on wetsuit legal tri's from now on.

Did another great training race this past Tuesday. Amazing what a new chain, cassette and pulleys will do for your bike. My old pulleys were looking more like perfect circles than cogs. Add in new ones and voila, no more griding sensation. We had a great turnout, lots of suffering, then a TCF leadout train for the finish. In the end i could only get near the back wheel of Seabass, so like a scolded Leif Hoste, i had to settle for 2nd, but it was lots of fun and pain none the less.

peace out

Would you put this on your car?



This showed up in the Advocate today.

Leading to this discussion on BRTri.

Here's the new protest site, i hadn't seen it before.

Monday, April 16, 2007

Raising Cane's Individual Timetrial Race Report

I've decided to focus on the positive events of the race.

I bought a 12 pack of toilet paper for the port-a-let.

A cyclist thanked me.

I hung out with friends.

I didn't have to ride in the wind.

I had a short drive home.

Thursday, April 05, 2007

Rethought

Pat is much more than a witty reference to an early-90's hip-hop duo.

He swam this far.

Pat is friggin Aquaman and probably a few other super heroes too.

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

breaking news

I love my wife, this piece is awesome.

Pat is both daddy mack and mack daddy, he swam 32 frickin miles!

Favorite Orlando t-shirt: Fat People are Harder to Kidnap
Why anyone would buy this shirt, i can't say, but it made me laugh a lot.

And another thing, who the hell is Hollister of California? Ok, well now i know, but after 2 or 3 days at the Disney parks, i finally decided that it was "Wear clothes with the word Hollister on it and get in free Week" Geez, not since the Coca Cola Shirt fad of the mid-80's have i seen such lemming like behavior. I'm not overstating the fact that i probably saw a thousand of these things.

That's about all from here.

toothless two-man ttt

I like to classify flatland tt's into three types, type A is the preferred, headwind out, tailwind back. Type C is characterized by the maelstrom of crosswinds that you usually find out on River Road, so it's never really bad and never really good either. Then lastly, there is type B, the dreaded tailwind out, headwind back.

Type B is the devourer of souls
Type B makes you want to step off your bike at the turn around and go home
Type B looks at you naked and calls others to watch
Type B causes your shaven leg hair to turn gray or fall out in patches
Type B sucks
Last Saturday's NOBC Two Man Time Trial was Type B

Keepin it real, or in this case real-ler. We got into Baton Rouge around midnight after driving all day long from Orlando. Somewhere in Alabama, i bit into a piece of gum and voila, my glued-in front tooth popped out... Nice Trick.

Now i'm in Alabama minus a front tooth, wait a sec, i look like one of the locals! badum bum. In my head, i rationalize, no front tooth might mean i can breath easier in the TT, yeah right. After unloading the car, getting Ryan back to sleep, yada yada yada, i probably got to bed around 1:30 am, enough time to get the mean 3.5 hours of sleep then head down to LaPlace with Norm to race. Luckily he was driving, so i could veg a bit.

When we got there, there was no wind, nothing zip zero, i wanted to be the first team off. But, racing in the huge 1,2 field (of 3) meant we'd go off last. We probably chilled for 30 minutes shooting the bull with folks, before we started riding. At that point the course rapidly began becoming type B.

The wind was gusting a bit and you could feel it on the highway. After 20 minutes of that i had enough, and rode Corey's rollers for maybe 10 minutes. I got off of those, got back on the road and the wind had gotten much stronger, i rode there for maybe 5 minutes then got back on the rollers, sick of the wind already.

We got to the line and i could see this flag just blowing straight out down the highway. Oh yeah, this will be good. My lack of a smile here was part game-face, part "I don't want to look like Michael Spinks".

Norm took the first pull, and we did the first few miles at 30-31, after that i don't think it ever dropped below 28. We hit the cone in a little over 26 minutes (28.6 avg) which was cool and then BAM turned around into the headwind. We had Tim and Realdo 2 minutes behind us, then Frank and McBain 2 minutes behind them. At this point, i thought we had a good shot at holding them off. The headwind felt otherwise.

I was afraid, we'd only do 22 all the way back, but it got better. Lots of 22-24-26-22-24-26. In the end, we averaged 24 to get back in about 31 minutes. In the last few miles, the McBain Train of Pain rolled by us, and i thought, "well at least we held off Realdo and Tim." That lasted for about 40 seconds and they came swooping by. At that point we really "coasted" in to do 57:09.

All in all i was satisfied, i couldn't have gone much harder and unlike the last time Norm and i rode this course, i wasn't a complete mess just trying to hold his wheel. Lots of fast times out there though, Bo obviously got his revenge on me, 55:36!

Do they come in threes? or three hundreds?

1) Two weeks ago, the parking area at the split was covered with nails, causing cyclists who park their cars there to get flats.

2) Last Thursday, an oncoming truck swerved into the B-race's lane on a perfectly straight part of the road, reportedly coming 4 feet over the line.

3) Last night, Tom reports that riders waiting at the base of the levee were threatened before the training race.

I'm sick of writing letters to the editor, the assumption there is that people can actually read. I'll be damned if i ride my bike to work any more. This chick had a point.

This town sucks.

Elect me mayor.