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!"
author unknown

wow what a week so far. its dead week, the week before finals, and it seems the professors are really laying it on thick. I've only had time for one ride thusfar due to a ton of work that needs to get done before tomorrow. Seeing as finals are next week, I really need to start studying. Which might be difficult seeing as i have spent the past 8 hours out here on campus. My group and I have been working all week to get our engine started from our overhaul class. We got it to kick over earlier today but somehow flooded it with about a gallon of fuel. that was interesting seeing it pour out of the intake manifold. So we let that dry out and I finally got it to run, it was rough though. I'll be out there again in about a half hour to try my luck again. so in order for that to happen, I must cut this one short.

first season finished

Today was the last race of the collegiate season and therefore the end of my first collegiate season racing. And what a blast its been. The race was hosted by Ohio State and wow, what a beautiful campus. Saturday was a very tough race through a very hilly course outside of Athens, Ohio. Being a D racer, which is the equivalent of a Cat. 5, we only did 20 miles. It may not seem like much, but when you throw in the elevation changes that we experienced, it was ridiculous. Its times like these that I am happy I only had to do that course once. The race was going along swimmingly up until the last 200 meters or so. During the race, I had managed to piece together a pretty decent ride, maintaining no more than seven wheels back from the lead. I had conserved my energy and drank lots of water in anticipation of a fast sprint. As the line got closer, our speed increased and I moved up to fourth wheel. That's when the carnage unfolded.... As I remember it (which isn't picture perfect) we were setting up for the sprint. I moved up to about fourth wheel which I felt would allow me to get a good jump on everyone who was in contention for the sprint. We increased the speed to about 30 mph which is a fairly decent lead-out speed and then all hell broke loose. The lead guy got his front wheel caught in who-knows-what and bit the dust taking about 7 other riders who were on his wheel with them...including me. All I remember is seeing a bike suspended in time and space heading right for me. I must have slammed on the brakes or swerved or something which caused me to run smack into someone on the ground (i think). I did a rather nice flip over the front of the bars and landed on my left shoulder. Thank God I was wearing a helmet because now I need a new one seeing as this one has a nice crack in it. I was able to walk..er..crawl to the side of the road after a few minutes of "what the hell just happened" and laid at the side of the road trying to get my bearings and feel if anything was broken. I am still thanking my lucky stars that all I got was some road rash on my left shoulder and a little on my back and left hamstring (don't ask me how it got there, I don't know). That was Saturday, now on to Sunday. Sunday went well as for the fact that I was able to stay in the main group for the 25 minute criterium. I jumped WWAAAYY too early though as I was trying to move up for better positioning on the last lap. Basically I led around the pack for the last lap and ended up getting 8th. lesson learned! Well, that's enough for tonight and the first post. thanks for reading!