The Infamous Professor

Professor Chaos.



Which is what is about to happen. The next two days are going to be reasonably chill; but starting Monday: pure, utter, chaos is going consume my life. I'm trying to enjoy my next few days at the house before I leave for nationals. I just love the fact that my sister leaves all (well I will give her some credit, most but not all) responsibility of packing and making sure we have everything together up to me.


Anyway, I'm starting a new trend with my blog. I will not complain as much, hopefully. Most of my spare time is spent complaining so I'll stay off of it for a while. I'm trying.

So, there has been a ton of stuff happening during the past weeks, but at the same time there hasn't really been anything happening either. I've been trying to find something else to write about other than racing but most of the other stuff usually follows the lines of complaining so I'll skip that too.

I've written about three paragraphs already but I still haven't said anything yet. I guess I can start with the latest race report for the SERC in Chattanooga. Great course, a little long but still fun. The trails at the top of Raccoon Mtn. are great to ride, but maybe not the best to race. They are tight and twisty so the passing is not very good. We had a pretty good turnout and a very top heavy field. It all stayed together once we got in the woods. To make a long story short, I was second first lap and missed my feed so I ran out of food the next lap and pulled the plug on the start of the third. Although, I hate DNF'ing a race I thought this was the best circumstance. I was using this race as a tune up for nats and I wanted to get in about two hours of hard riding. When I packed it, I was right at two hours and I still had about 45 minuets to finish the race. That's a little long for a cross country race. Thomas Turner won with a time of two and a half hours and that's pushing it.


There I go again, complaining. Sorry folks.


I'll add a picture, that might make it better. Courtesy of Gone Riding, thanks guys.

This was one was on the first lap when I was still in contention.

So, what have I been doing other than racing?

Good question, let me think.

Sitting at house, stripping the stain off and then re staining a deck, riding my bike a lot, making some sick coffee from my new french press, and as usual wasting time on facebook.

The pen is not flowing the ink this morning so I think I'll pack it up and try again later.

T

dddddduuuuddddddeeeeee!!

Old people know what "pinned" means!
http://freecaster.com/live/1000006_1004965

Listen very carefully

Definition of "Pinned"

http://freecaster.tv/1000006_1005144

what's UP with the DATE?

Ha! How did you guys like that blog title? Pretty cool huh?

Get it, "up date". Hahaha. I'm smrt.

Well, blog posts are the epitome of procrastination. Once you skip out one time, then it's on. It's been quite a while since my last post. And there have been many things going on. However, I have not really been doing anything, just sitting at the house trying to find stuff to do.

I'll start with Bump and Grind. Tash and I drove over Friday night after she got off work and stayed at Momma and Poppa squirrels house. It was awesome, well except for the time that their next door neighbor woke me up, but she brought us cinnamon rolls so that made it all worth while. Big props go out to the squirrels for letting 6 people crash at their house for the week end.

The pre-ride went good, the trail might have even been drier than the year before and it seemed like Blood Rock was changed a little bit. Since the laps are 17 miles long each, it's kind of hard to remember stuff year to year. We had a great meal at Moe's before struggling down the street to Wal Mart where we could get some tooth paste. After two minuets we figured we couldn't make it to Wal Mart and swung by Books a Million. They had an awesome collection of cycling magazines so that kept us occupied for a bit. When we came back to the house, the squirrel family hooked us up with some watermelon and basket ball action.

The race went good, not great. I was a little late to the start but was able to sneak up to the front after the instructions. Had a good start and followed Robert Marion, Charlie Pendry, Travis Livermon and Ray Hall into the woods. I was trying to look around to see if Wes had a good start, but it was kind of hard trying to stay on the trail and look behind me at the same time. I got popped off the front group after I slid off a bridge but I almost caught back on at the base of the climb. I barely latched on and got popped again. I decided this time to just shut down and ride my own pace up the climb and try to make up time on the next lap. The idea seemed good at the time but once I started my last lap, I was in no-man's land and I didn't really know how far up the leaders were. I ended up passing three guys who had flatted and held on to take fourth. I was happy-sorry guys flats suck-to finally profit off someone else's trouble. Since that's been happening the past couple of races. But I was kind of bummed because I thought I hadn't raced the smartest race that I could have.

Oh well, racing's racing. A week later I drove Tash up to the GSC race at Carter's Lake. I've been on a long five week training block and I was pretty tired, both mentally and physically. So, I rode a lap before the sis's race and fed her during her race. It's been a year since I've ridden at Carter's Lake and I was impressed at the course. They haven't made major changes but it runs neck to neck with Fort Mountain for the closest "World Cup" style course in the south east.

They have also expanded their downhill course. They still have the "advanced" course but they have added a tamer version which has some pretty fun lines. I rode it on my xc bike so it's not that bad (insert comment from Pinnett).

I finished up training yesterday in 90 degree weather. I'm from Georgia so that automatically makes it possible to complain about hot weather. Despite the very uncomfortable rides, I am getting a nice tan.

I guess I should say something about the titles. Since not that many people understood the "Rush Limbaugh.....blah, blah." I'm changing the title to something that really describes me. Not sure what, I'm still working it so check back once in a while to see what changes I've made.

Now for the question. The first person that answers the question correctly will get a free Kenda Small Block Eight mountain bike tire with an autographed certificate for being an American from me. (Non-Americans are invited to compete in the contest as well).

I'm adding some pictures from the Bump Pre-ride and some others ones I might have floting around.

During the pre-ride.

I'm sorry pre riding the coruse is not as exciting as racing it boys. Don't fall asleep now.

Batons, Brothers, Bikes, Bakery, Breakfast, Bummer

I was trying to think of one word that would represent the entire weekend. I couldn't think of just one so I used a bunch.

Batons. Batons represent the 12 Hours of Tsali. Sycamore Cycles put together no less than four teams to throw down in their respective classes. The team with the most amount of laps won the race, but you were not allowed to go out until your team mate had come in and handed you the baton.


Brothers. The best part about the weekend was hanging with all my pals from Brevard. Less than a week had gone by and I already started missing everybody, so it was nice to get a solid 12 hours of hang out time in. Pretty happy about that.


Bikes. Ah, if we had all been runners instead of bikers. There are soo many less things to go wrong when you run. Although we had a few more mechanical problems than the winning team, I don't think we would have been able to come out on top.


Bakery. Besides the fact that I had a ton of friends to hang out with, the Braken Mountain Bakery had stocked us with more cinnamon rolls than I could eat (that's alot of good food if you've never seen me eat), Jimy (with one m) brought a grocery bag full of candy, Jockey came packing with some Red Bulls, I brewed some awful coffee but everybody seemed to like it at least a little bit, and of course there were plenty of Dr. Peppers around.



Breakfast. After the race, we had two meals. First we drove to Silva and ate at a jam packed Huddle House (mind you it was 1:00 in the morning). Then the Tash and I drove back to Brevard and stayed at the Squirrel house with Jenna and Thad (don't mess with Thad or Jenna, they will fight you) . Jenna also made some AWESOME waffles. We got in that night at 3:30 and went straight to sleep. Tash and I woke up at 12 noon and by the time we had breakfast and rode a little bit it was time to leave Brevard again. That brings us to the last word.


Bummer. Despite all the awesome things during the trip the end result didn't happen quite right. Sycamore brought four teams and two got second place (in the open money and all women classes). Close, but not close enough. My team had a very close race with the KHS/Kenda team. It was nail biting time as we held a four to six minuet gap the entire race. In a race as long as 12 hours, six minuets is nothing. There was a little bit of pressure on everybody because I was on the winning KHS team last year and we were there to pull off the upset. I was super impressed with the rest of the guys on my team, even though we couldn't pull back any time they kept on going out and pushing to the limit to close it down. I'm pretty sure all of our times were within a minuet of the our fastest laps.


In the end; I had an awesome time, got in some good training, filled out my hang out time, ate some really good food, almost pulled off the upset, set the fastest time, and got shown up by the determined bros on my team as well as everybody else in the Sycamore camp.



So, I finally got the pictures off my camera from my last weekend at Brevard. There's nothing too exciting, just a bunch of nature stuff for the chicks. I've got much less important things to do but they still have to get done.



T


P. S.
You can check out some good pictures of the race taken by none other than, Punky Brewster.
If you would check out the other links I have posted and prop me if none of them work. I hate going to websites and nothing works. It's hard for me because I'm usually signed into facebook and stuff so I can't see . Much appreciated bras.

Here's some pictures of the dorm too. Since our suite mates left before I did, Timmy and I had some fun taking showers with my bike.

Back to Business

Ok, I'm back.
It took a little longer than I expected but whatever.

I left you with some promises that I would tell what happened in Maryland and Ducktown. I don't really want to talk about either but I did promise. I will keep it short.

In MD everything was great. Had a good pre-ride, had some good food for breakfast, and stayed with some really nice people (props to Tim's parents for letting us stay). But everything started on the first day, the second lap of my pre-ride I ripped my rear tire on the very last decent. I walked back to the van and we packed up and drove back to the house. Later that night, I put on a new tire but I had some trouble sealing it. Since we didn't race until 3 the next day, I worked on it the whole day. Went out for my warm up and it went pretty much flat. Awesome. I went back to the van pumped it up and rode to the start line. We had to sit on the start for a while because we had to get a ton of instructions. About 30 seconds before the start I lean over to Squirrel and said: "Dude, my tire is completely flat." I turned back to the start and we were off. As you can probably guess I had to put a tube in the tire about 5 minuets into the lap. So, after I got passed by the entire Semi-Pro field I had to chase for the rest of the race. I still ended up 8th out of 15 (and only one or two dnfs) so I was pretty stoked about that.


Ducktown turned out even worse. I didn't have the best week before for the race. So, over the weekend I had to play catch up. I met up with long lost sister and we drove up the in-laws place. Hers, not mine. (I mean I guess that's what you would call them, sister's boyfriend's parents).

Anyway, thanks to the Padgett's for putting up with the Cowie clan for a few nights. We had some AWESOME waffles at their house and it was fun to chill and talk with them for a while.

It seems like whenever you get a flat or mechanical it's when you don't really want it. But whenever you want a mechanical, you never get it. During the warm up and such I felt terrible. I got a good start but got popped on the first climb. Andy caught up to me and I rode with him to the top of the decent when my rear tire felt flat. I stopped and put in a CO2 and rode down the trail. When I got to the bottom of the decent the tire was just about as flat. Since I used one of my CO2 on the decent I didn't have enough air to make the tube hard. Since it was on the first lap I pulled the plug. The Saint was also not having a good day and he caught up to me on the pavement. We both rode together for a lap and I practiced doing whips and tables.
Sucks.

Now, I'm hanging out at the house getting ready for the 12 Hrs of Tsali. And unpacking from school and finding a job and doing projects around the house and trying to get out of my parents hair. I did take some pictures of my last ride in Pisgah but I'm not sure where my camera is so those will have to wait a bit. I also haven't been able to find my parent's pictures of Ducktown. I'm going to find those right now so I'm outta here.

Blah

Got a nasty taste in my mouth. Most likely it came from the beer and milk combo I just drank.
Ah! Just kidding.

This will be another short one.

The bad taste comes from my result today, flatted on the first lap and after using both my CO2s to fill up the tire I couldn't get it hard enough (that's what she said-Ed.) I eventually pulled out of the race. Blah.

I promise that I will give you the whole story from Greenbrier and Ducktown. Right now I have to finish some home work for school. Actually there is a ton of stuff to do and not very much time to do it. I have a week left of school and in that time I need to study, eat, sleep, have fun, accept aid, write papers, study some more, and most important ride.

Anyway, I'm signing off.
Late


P. S. Sorry but my camera did darn run out of batteries, so no pictures from the race. My parentals were there so maybe they got some good ones.

P. P. S. Thanks to everybody who offered to give me tools and stuff during the race, you guys are real bros. I'll remember that.