Summer's over

Not much went on this weekend, I wisely chose to take a day off while the hurricane soaked the Massachusetts coast, spent four hours making a lasagne, and rollerskied with CSU. Peter Breu sent me a pair of wooden rollerskis to test out, I'll put up a product review once I've skied on them, since today was a classic day. Oh, and I start working Monday. Summer vacation is over. It sure was good while it lasted... now its back to the real world, lets see if I can handle the stress. I'd better take a nap while I still have time!

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I love being home. Its a mix of naps with my beagle, crazy training (although not too crazy) with Jess, and wegmans. The real world is calling, but I think I'll stay another day... or three...

Working on the cx bike, with a tray full of peaches. Thank god for toothpicks, those are some dirty fingers. Really I should have been working on the mountain bike, that poor beast is a wreck right now...

I went riding at Dryer with Jess, Graham, a guy named Sean, and Eric Metzler. I tried to take a picture of Eric in the parking lot, and only managed half my head and the bottom of his face... for a guy with a six month old kid, hes in damn good shape.

Jess and Graham - you can tell by Jess' face how sweaty Graham's back probably is...

We got caught on camera during a warmup run. Wheeee!

Attempt at a race report

You can read this two ways, either its an attempt at writing a race report, or its a report about an attempt at a race. Anyway, I showed up to Bikes for Bovines, since it was in Keene, which is pretty close to Weston (the site of the festivities for Virginia's wedding), and I was working the sports psychology. I hear that your subconscious is super gullible, in other words you can tell it lies and it just doesn't know the difference. So driving to the race, I was telling myself how I felt great, and was going to have a great race, and I was feeling pretty chipper on the start line. The course started with a six-mile uphill, so I figured I wouldn't see Cathy much, I was just going to ride my own race. But by the time we got off the dirt road and onto a slightly muddier dirt road, I had caught back up to Cathy, telling myself non-stop, "I love hills! I'm good at hills! I love hills!" This is a blatant lie, but I guess I don't know the difference, because I was almost enjoying myself.

Then there got to be a couple more rocks in the road, and on one of them I just sort of whacked into it, since I was tired and and kind of zigzagging and just not paying attention, since I'm on a road, after all. It was a sharp rock, and shortly thereafter things were feeling a little squishier than I like... I tried to keep riding for a while, knowing that all I had was one tube and one CO2, but eventually I just had to change it. Everything was mud-covered, and I think I got more mud in there, because a few miles of uphill later and the new tube was feeling a little squishy. I don't know if this was just my head making things up, it probably was, but luckily that debate ended quickly when I hit a hidden rock on an innocent-looking grassy downhill. This one notched my rim, the wheel is definitely not round right now. The good news is that I was almost at the aid station, so it wasn't too long a walk to get back. The bad news is that now I have a dented rim, and I rode 6 miles of uphill and didn't get to enjoy any of the sweet singletrack downhill. Grr.

Whoops.

Anyway, the shortened race meant I got to come back to Rochester sooner, to see my dog. I walked in the door, and Tira was standing there wagging her tail, and she saw me and started making the little whimpering noises that the dogs have always made when they're just so happy they can't contain themselves, finally somebody is HOME! What can I say, I slumped against a wall and burst into tears, and Tira just came over and buried her nose in my lap, making those happy snuffing noises, wagging her tail, trying to cheer me up. How do dogs get so close to our hearts so quickly?

She has perked up significantly since I got home, we went sniffercizing through three different fields yesterday morning, hunting those rabbits and chipmunks and fieldmice until they'd fled the county. She doesn't move too fast these days, so you can just sort of stand there as she hunts the same trail in circles for a while, until she has ranged far enough to catch another track. Its beautiful to see, especially in the tall grasses, all you see is the white tail wagging excitedly in time to the bugling voice.







But that was too much excitement, after a while reality cuts through even a beagle's thick skull, and she walked back over to me slowly, panting, tail down. Its hard for her to breathe, and hard for me to watch. She sat down, still panting hard, and hung her head. It was like she wanted to apologize for not catching me anything today. At this point, you have to carry her home, because just slowly walking the couple hundred feet up the hill back to the house is just too much, but she was still breathing so heavily that we just sat there in the grass for a while. Its terrifying, the transformation between energetic little rabbit-hunter to a sick old dog who can't breathe.







Eventually the panting died down a little, and she sat up when I stood up. You have to be careful when you carry her home, because she'll yelp if you pick her up wrong, her back has something wrong with it. We got inside, and then she just sleeps for many hours, occasionally waking up to wheeze. Oh Tira.

Festivities!

Virginia and Kristen got married last weekend, and Ed was their local contact, since they're in Ohio and hes closest to Vermont. I did my best to not really get involved at all, meaning Ed did all the heavy lifting and I was quality control. It was a beautiful ceremony and a great party, complete with a Lightspace LED floor that Ed brought up from Boston, a band from Cincinnati (I've already forgotten their name, but they were really good), and Bullitts from all over. Poor Kristen's family...

Friday night was the pig roast, courtesy of Rob (a cousin), and the wedding was Saturday. And I did a bike race Sunday, but thats a different post.

Rob pulling the pig during the pig roast Friday night. Later, Ed tried eating the brain, and was very proud of this fact. I tried a kidney, but that was as exotic as I'd go.

Ed and his father puzzling over their beer-chilling-thing. The beer ran from the keg, through tubes that were kept in ice, out a spout.

This is what the freezer looked like - Elise made the wedding cake, and also a gazillion petit fours, which she was being a little anal about protecting... Luckily, there was one cake that was a casualty of the drive up to VT, and labeled as damaged goods, so Jackie and I took full advantage of that.

The wedding cake itself, next to the beer for special people - a three liter bottle of Chimay! And other good beer.

The girls looked gorgeous, and the ceremony finished just as the thunder started rolling and the rain drops started coming down. Luckily we had a covered veranda and a big tent over the dance floor, so it was all good.



Somebody gave Ed a silly hat to wear during the photos...



Shortly after the band started playing my camera died, otherwise I would have had some actual good shots of the floor with people dancing on it.

Raw emotions

The parental units called yesterday with news about Tira. Her heart started to slowly fail a while ago, so we put her on medicine, but shes been laboring more and more to breathe and yesterday she had a back spasm, or something like that. She can't really walk anymore, isn't all that interested in food, and can't breathe too well. Its kind of rough news, so I'll be heading home to hopefully catch her in time to say goodbye after Virginia's wedding this weekend. Tira is my dog, we got her when I was in 7th grade and I trained her and walked her and came home in between school and cross country to make sure we could go sniff rabbits in the cemetery. She is also far more adept at reading emotions than most dogs - she knows what is going on in your head, whether or not you tell her, although she sure is a good listener.


Anyway, maybe it was because of the bad news about Tira, or maybe I'm just having a bad day, but it was sort of one thing after another today. First, my binding broke in half off of my classic rollerski. That was a relatively short walk home, since it happened early on. Then my heart rate monitor died. Then I had to bike in to the city and naturally got a flat on the conti's, which I can't change alone, so busted up one tube before walking two miles to a bike shop, where I paid $17.44 to fix a flat. God damn, thats how they make their money, isn't it. Somebody call the waahmbulance. Given my rate of equipment failure, I'm a little worried about driving back to VT this afternoon... hopefully the car holds it together. I've been on these big emotional swings all day, from feeling great to just sobbing, I guess maybe feeling great actually means maniacally laughing at something that isn't funny, I kind of feel like a bundle of jangling nerves. Don't cross me today, you don't know what you'll get...

NENSA Gaining Ground Coaches Clinic

This weekend was one of those super-invigorating clinics (I guess work-type people call them workshops, but its all the same), where you leave so full of ideas you think you'll burst. At least, thats how I feel. It was also great to see how many things CSU does right, even if we've arrived at these things by different routes. We had Nina from Gunstock (I can't spell her last name), who was a multi-time olympian and I think had at least one medal, and Andy Newell, from the USST, come talk to us. It was really interesting to see the difference between their skiing styles - not only was it the male/female skiing differences, but the sprinting/distance differences. Fred Griffin (another presenter, but not quite an olympian) described some of his skiers as "hungry, and ready to eat raw meat". Well, Andy's skiing was the raw-meat-eating style of skiing, and Nina was a ballerina. Really interesting to compare.

Nina floating up the hill.

Andy showing us how NOT to classic ski. It was pretty amusing watching him try to ski incorrectly, he couldn't really do it.

Fred pointing out something Andy is doing while skating.

Now that I'm full of ideas, its time to see what the people actually in charge think of these ideas... step 1, acquire some wicked slow rollerskis for Frank so the kids can keep up in L1!

[Northern] Vermont

This weekend I'm attending the Gaining Ground clinic with NENSA - its a coaching certification thing, and CSU thinks its a good idea I learn how to coach before I inflict any permanent damage to our juniors. Anyway, its up in Craftsbury, and it doesn't start until 2pm on Friday, which meant one thing to me - Kingdom Trails Friday morning! I don't really have anything to add about that except that there was not one moment during three hours where I ever thought anything different than "holy crap I am having so much fun right now!". Well, there was one moment when I was thinking "I wonder what that squeaking is?", but I generally don't worry too much about that sort of thing. Thom fixes my bike when it breaks, its all good.

The next two days should be fun, we have Janice Sibilia (NENSA head of competitive programs) directing the thing, Nina (the superfast Russian olympian from Gunstock) and Andy Newell are helping out, and Pepa Miloucheva and the Craftsbury Green Team are giving us talks and stuff in the evening. Action packed!