Thursday, April 30, 2009

New path to Butter

I just finished another long ride in the beautiful mountains of North Kack. Life is rough ain't it? (Wow, even though I'm southern it took me five tries to spell that right-must be the Canadian in me). Anyway, I rode up to Butter Gap today and hung out a bit. Found that new trail that P. Ennis told me about and rode it, a bit steep and sketchy but I made it down.

Last weekend was fun and very um...interesting. After driving down to Yargo and pre-riding the course (which I didn't like very much) we drove over to Athens to experience what the Athens Twilight weekend is. The race was pretty cool but it was a pretty boring race for the most part so I spent the evening standing and hanging out the usual.

Stayed in Commerce that night and got up at 6 after going to bed at 2 to drive down to Yargo. I figured the race would either go really good or really bad. After the typical shennagans at the start, we stayed together for the first lap before Robert and Ryan attacked on the main climb. We still had a huge group half way around that first lap, so I hopped on the front and drove it for bit and that seemed to pop some guys off.

Robert got back on the front and slowed it down a bit for the second lap and I was needing it badly. On the last lap Thomas and Ryan attacked again and got a gap while Seth, Robert, and myself. Robert got popped and it was down to Seth and myself. I pulled out a pass on the very last climb but he defended it very well and shut me down. I backed off and let him take the last spot on the podium.

Big props to Seth for hanging with the front on Sunday. He just keeps on getting fast every time I race him. It's funny, I'm 19 but I'm worrying about the young guys coming up and racing me. It's a hard life at the top, haha.

It's been pretty pinned for the last week, trying to get everything switched before I leave for Germany. Yeah, I'm pretty excited but it's not really going to set in until I get everything finished for school. Wheew. It's been a long week and it's going to be a even longer next few days.

I'm sure I should be studying for something so I'm going to check out. But I'll leave you with a freaking AWESOME movie about Bubba. Everybody need to tune into Speed tonight at 10 (ET) for the final supercross race in Vegas. If you want to hang out with cool people and such come on over and chill. Room 17.

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Hundreth

Wow this will be number one hundred. Kind of cool, definitely not something to write home about which is why I'm writing these some what non-existent people who read my blog.

Anyway, it's taken me a while to write all those posts but I figured that it would take me longer than what it has. Weird.

So I almost forgot to tell everyone about my trip. Yeah I said that I was going to Germany in May. Well, I have to go now because we bought the tickets last night. I'm going to be flying into Frankfurt Germany on May 6th. We're driving down to Kirchzarten, Germany after we get there. Kirchzarten is in the Alps right here. Supa sick. The weather looks decent for the moment, not as nice as back home but close. I'll be there for about three weeks coming back on the 25th. We're doing three races there, two "Swiss Biker Cups" and one smaller race on the last weekend. I'm pretty stoked about it and I just need to finish some projects for school and I'll be ready to peace out and head on.

Right now, I'm chilling in GA waiting for the time to slip by. I'm meeting some people in Winder where we are riding and then heading over to Athens to watch the the Twilight Crit race downtown. Sunday, the gang is racing the SERC race in Winder at Fort Yargo and coming back to Brevard that night. Everything's awesome and yeah....not much else going on. I figured that I might use this weekend to get caught up with everything because next week is going to be straight pinned. Anyway, later nerds.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Sun, Rain, Tornados and Fightin Words

Yo, I'm back. For the moment.

Let's see where I did I leave off. Oh yeah, it was just before the conference champs in B-Town. They went good, bad and ok depending on who you ask. In the road race we manged to continue the season long theme of missing the break and chasing. We missed it and then soft pedaled for like the rest of the race. Interesting points during the three hours we rode around the land of the water falls included St. Marie and I goofing off in front of Talent (who was driving the wheel truck) and then getting ridden into the gutter in the next cross wind. I imagine that Talent was laughing extremely hard at this point as we pretty much were performing Bike Racing 101 rule of what not. I tried to set up Marshal on the run into town but the legs said no I got popped off my group rolling in at 24th.

The crit went a little better but not by much. I missed the break again and spent the rest of the race chasing. This is where I have to go on my little rant.

I'm not going to mention any names because the people I'm talking about know who they are. Let me just say, that you: **** ***** and you: *********** and you: ******* are just making life harder for yourselves. I consider you guys all my friends but after this weekend I'm reconsidering. As for you: ******* I'm not really sure what I think of you. I left the door open for you and I still have a little bit of respect but not much anymore. All of you folks better wish that you are graduating this spring because mountain bike season is going to suck. For you that is, not for me. I don't like it when people don't cooperate with me. And you must be satisfied with second place because that's all your going to get this fall.

Sorry about that, I just had to bring the rain down on some poor souls. After the break lapped us I figured what the hell, might as well put on a good show for the home crowd. I attacked with one to go and soloed to an 8th with the Saint right behind me in a very impressive 9th in his first true crit.

Now it's time for the props and thanks. Props go out to Joh and Jami for their first and seconds over the weekend, Parker for "parking" that road race with a 2nd, Wells for staying in the road race and team time trial, Mrs. Punky for holding out against 100s of little Lee's McRae racers, St. Maire for the impressive crit racing, the Manimal for cracking the whip on the hollow, and Batman and Robin for some great results in the sticky C Men field.

A super big thanks goes out all those people who helped out this weekend. The Saint Mariesss, the Wellszszszs, the Tellmans, the Hartleys, KB for handing us water, Coach Walker for doing WORK, the sister, DE and DC for setting up signs and the course, Chris J for driving the van, Talent for driving, Eddie for driving and standing, and everybody else for helping us ride in circles for multiple hours.

James Stewart wants to thank you too, so he threw a massive whip to show his appreciation.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Gagets

Yo, so it's been a little bit since my last post. Once again, I figured I might slow down a bit and make each post a little bit more interesting. This hasn't really happened yet, but I have had more stuff to write about.

If you happened to see my last post you know that I have posted a blog from my phone. I was a little worried that I might have to switch to Twitter for instant posts but now I don't have too. I am very content. I'll probably use it mostly for updating race results on the fly with having to jump on the computer which will be nice. So you can stop making fun of me now.

Um...what else, the past weekend was Easter which I forgot about. Not the easter part but the whole bit about not having school on Monday. Would have been a good weekend to go home if I was prepared. Whoops. Yeah this shows the quality of Brevard College students. Instead of having Good Friday off like everybody else, we have our Good Friday on Monday not like everyone else. Dumb. But whatever, I'm not complaining too much because I got out of school for a day. It was real nice.

Wow, I just wasted most of that paragraph talking about school, not good. Instead of going to school I rode, big surprise right?

Did some testing on Saturday, found out how slow I was; practiced some skillz in the afternoon. Rode on Sunday with the Tamer, and that Punky kid as well as my better half, no not my wife duh. The sister. And Monday was raining all day so I went for a ride anyway and slid around a lot. I need some spikes if it continues to rain this much. I built some new super scary, super sketchy lines on Upper Sycamore. You probably won't be able to find them because I totally sprinkled leaves over them. Haha.

...Um...schools coming to a close soon, well like four?? weeks. And I have a ton of stuff to do before that happens. I did get selected for this whole like U23 development camp in Germany that starts the first week in May and goes until the end of May. And with that means I have to do more work to get everything ready to go before the end of the semester.

That's all that's been really happening. We have the collegiate road race conference champs this weekend in the local 828. If your in the area and don't know about the race you should totally come by and check it out. It's awesome. Sunday we are having the crit race downtown. We will hopefully represent and do lots of work.

I leave you with some inspiring movies about the people who know how to do work. Way better than anyone else does.

One and Two.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Dude im writting a blog from my phone its awesome. I love living in the 21st century.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Free Thoughts

So I've been taking the last couple of days off from writing. I need a break from doing blogs every other day. I've just been working on projects that deal with school and not with school at the same time. I've been thinking a lot too. Pretty much about everything. I'm trying to think of a way to make this blog more interesting. That's part of the reason that I might be cutting back on the number of posts. Instead of doing a post for every race, I might switch it up so that more races are grouped together and there's other less boring stuff in there.

We'll see. Blogging is a very interesting, very unique way of communication in this century. If any one ever is interested you can go back and read my old, old posts and see the changes I've had to make in my writing style. It's not easy writing these posts as I realize more and more that anyone can read it.

Some interesting notes, just some of what has been going through my head in the past few weeks.

Tsali went well, not great again, but just right. I ended up 4th out of a huge 30+ plus field. I forgot to take pictures because I was running around trying to hand out flyer's for Mrs. Squirrel so sorry about that but I'm sure that the able can find some on facebook. I might have played my tactics a little off but with every race I learn something new.

Someone once told me that eventually I will hit a plateau and stop improving. I don't think that will ever happen. I have so many goals that I will never, ever run out of things to do. That's the beauty of our sport isn't it? You can always go faster, always improve, always ride a little farther in the same time. That's what I've been learning to enjoy lately, I figure that this time I'm in college is the only time in my life that I will have time to do the things I want to do...so why waste it? It doesn't matter what the weather, the problems, the success, the frustrations; I'm doing what I love and I couldn't be happier.

Keep it pinned
T

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Shout Out

I just finished reading K-bombs blog and I'm pretty sure that if he ever came down to the 828 to hang out he would "fit" right in.

So I'm sending a shout out out. Dear Geoff if you ever need a place to stay and hang out you can come hang out in my dorm room or my shed. Both are super comfortable (although I haven't actually slept in the shed yet) and only 15min away from the trails. So come on down from that cold, wet place they call BC and chilax.

Also, let me say that there's one more spot at the Red House Inn in B-Town, great place to stay for the Collegiate Conference Race. Hint, hint...
T