summer is officially here...

Let me start off by apologizing for the time between posts. Its been a very hectic first week home. Since school let out for the summer I have....had one race (I'll discuss that later), lost a job, gotten that same job back, started working on my desk, the parents have left home for a week and a half for the Holy Land, I have been expected to take care of my little brother since the 'rents left, my computer screen decided to take a shit and on top of that find time to train. phew! Oh, and I went back to Purdue to get some things that I had forgotten on the move out and somehow forgot them while I was up there. ( next time I need to make a list ON PAPER)
Other than that things have been just peachy! The Giro is coming along quite nicely and I am thankful that universal sports have been able to provide us mortals with live video streaming of the race. Watching that has been motivation enough for me to get my sorry ass off the couch and on the bike, not to mention the landscape they have been going through has been absolutely beautiful.

The mountain bike is finished also and its about time! However, mother nature hasn't been so friendly lately and has blessed us with exorbitant amounts of rainfall. This, as you could imagine, has temporarily closed the trails. so for now I shall stick to my road bike.

Now to the exciting content! I had my first cat. 4 race two weekends ago. It was the eagle creek crit and man, was it fun!!! We averaged 24 mph for an hour long crit. It was balls to the wall. Now I know all you mighty cat 3,2,1 are sitting there thinking "hmmm...I can do better" but keep in mind this was my first cat 4 race of many to come. The course was intense. There were two major turns at the beginning of the loop that caused some mayhem, but the real killer was a deceptively sharp left hand turn that was slightly off-camber which you could take going about 30mph if you had the right line. I didnt do anything specatcular during the race, just hung around in the group getting my ass handed to me. Thankfully, I did not get dropped and managed to stay in the group the whole time. It was a blast and I am looking forward to the next race. whenever that is.

As far as work for the summer goes, I am relieved to say I have a job! It was in the air as to whether I would be working at the same place as last summer due to the fact the economy is in the shitter. I am an aircraft mechanic when I'm not racing bikes and if there arent any planes for me to work on, then I don't have a job. Seeing as general aviation is a luxury, its fair to say those have been going by the wayside recently. But alas, I got a position on line crew which is basically towing aircraft and refueling and getting planes into the hangar for maintenance. Its not what I would like to be doing right now, but its a job and I am thankful for that.

One more thing before I depart is a huge congratulations to Chris Uberti and Derek Laan in their performances at the collegit national road race and crit. You can read their versions of the race on their blogs.

Well, its coming up on the after-dinner-happy-hour, so I shall say goodbye for now and as always, thanks for reading.

thank goodness that's over with. Last week was finals week and I had four finals. That's below the norm being five. The first one went well and the last one went well. I wish I could say the same for Physics.....

So they figured out Manny Ramirez has been taking some sort of performance enhancing drug....big surprise there! Being a former baseball player I am somewhat embarrassed to have another one join the ranks of the filthy. All you cyclists reading this can relate. Remember last year when Saunier Duval's rider, oh gosh what was his name? Ricardo Ricco was caught for cheating it seemed that all faith that had been previously restored to the sport was gone forever in an instant. Sure it felt good to see someone get caught and justice be served, but man it was a hard blow. I remember going into work the next day, being a cyclist myself, and talking with a lot of people about it. What the pros do at that level quickly transcends down to the rest of us and a lot of people get a negative image about cyclists- as if we don't have it hard enough already. I guess it's an inevitable that there be someone who gets caught every year for cheating, or maybe im just on the hopeful side that there is finally a clean peloton. Any way time for me to get off the soap-box.

The weather is finally cooperating and I've been able to get out on the bike for a few consecutive days now that finals are finally done. Thank God!!! one more ride tomorrow before I head back home to Carmel and lots of riding!

That was a good weekend. Got about 90 miles in so I'm feeling pretty good right now. A little on the sore side just because I didn't get any riding in last week. Tomorrow marks the start of finals week and marks the beginning of a very tough round of finals for me. I've got a final on Tuesday, two on Wednesday and one on Thursday. The biggie is on Wednesday and its physics. The strange thing is that it doesn't really feel like its finals week next week. I guess because I had such a hellacious week last week that I didn't really have time to feel like the semester is getting close to being done. Normally dead week means exactly what it sounds like. dead. Apparently my professors didn't get the memo because they poured on the material and lab hours. I realize that there was a lot of work to be done in each of my labs, but pouring more work on us on top of what we are trying to finish up in lab isnt fun. My focus is slowly coming down to where it should be and I plan on hitting the books hard tomorrow seeing as I am kinda worn out tonite from the weekend's activites. Oh, good news. I found a good mountain bike frame for $600 dollars so I'll be looking forward to that arriving sometime in the next week. well, thats enough for now. thanks for reading!

before you go... a big congrats to all the seniors graduating this semester!

So i made it past dead week, somehow. we got the engine running yesterday which you might have read about earlier, and I somehow got all of my labs done.

While searching for a mountain bike i stumbled upon this quote which i think i shall adopt as my new life motto:

"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in one pretty and well-preserved piece, but instead to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, worn out, and screaming Woohoo!!!! What a ride!"
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