Back on the road

The past four days have been pretty cool. Watching the Tour of California, taking two really easy midterms, and putting 8 hours in the saddle... all good things. The Tour has been really cool to watch, it's great such a big race is taking off in the states (no offense Georgia). For some reason, likely the timing on the calendar, this event has had a much deeper international field, and has made things that much more interesting. Mike Friedman's race has been cool to track as well, he ripped it up in the time trial in the middle of the race... beating the reigning world time trial champion in the process.

I started riding real easy, doing an easy hour, then an hour and half, and over the weekend did the "mock race" which was fun. I hung with the "fast" (A/B) group for just half a lap, but still felt good about the effort I was able to put out. Unlike my other easier rides I put in a jump or two out of the saddle which resulted in minimal speed increase (that will come) but also no pain... which I was excited about.

So look out ECCC, a mediocre kid with big goals is coming back to race. Watch out kid who thinks he's going to get 15th in the B race in NYC... you're going to get 16th sucker.

New perspectives

I always used to be rather nonchalant about saying, "yea... I'm a cyclist. I shave my legs and eat gooey honey-like syrups and layerup with many lycra garments and ride into shitty weather". I never realized that being a cyclist is such a privilege... a privilege that I'm really having trouble with not having right now. And its not just injury that prevents people from taking advantage of cycling... I'm sure the number one is money. I'm really lucky in this respect. My brothers worked over my parents so they were ready for the hundred dollar nashbar orders to build up my first bike, and the registration fees and the like. Sure I've worked during the summers and have earned a good chunk of my race money in the last few years, but without being lucky enough to have parents that first have, and secondly give the money necessary to enter our sport... I'd be a different person. (I certainly wouldn't be freaking out about how hairy my legs are at this point...)

I've also been wondering about my mental state when I start to race again. I know going into my first few races I'll be satisifed just to be there. I can't wait to be on a start line again. But I think it's going to be really hard to not expect results too soon. I know the first time I don't stack up on a TT I'm going to be really pissed.... I've come to take those for granted. I guess I'll just have to stay positive, I'm sure I'll be happy to be out there. I think it's really important to wait before I start to race, so I'm at least able to finish... I'd like to put a good month of riding relatively hard before I line up. I've DNF'ed some races when I've been training, but I just don't want to deal with it once I'm starting it back up again.

But on a more pleasant note, the Tour of California starts tonight (or rather eariler today). ESPN2 is showing an hour of coverage for each stage from 1AM-2AM. The time sucks, I don't know why they can't show it eariler.... but at this point I'm glad that it's on TV in the states, and that there is coverage for each stage. That is more than I can say about the Giro, but I'll rant about OLN much more later on.... Not really sure who I'm pulling for, but I think it'd be good to have an American on the podium somewhere when it's all said and done. It would help the sport grow in the US a bit in the vaccum of post-lance. I think Levi has good shot, and from what I've read he's pretty fit. So... go (American) German water boy! But seriously, we all know that Mike Friedman is going to take the prologue... it's made for his massive quads and large butt.

Chocolate cake

What's better than chocolate cake?

surprise chocolate cake.

Thanks for helping me push the 190 barrier. I'm officially fat now.

Officially Official

On Saturday Dave Matlin, the highly qualified CTS administrative executive Alyssa Gaebel and I traveled to Emmanus, Pa to partake in a USA Cycling Official's Clinic. It was an easy day... I learned the most on the structure of how the officials work, and how they get paid. Basically there are chief Referees and Judges, and Assistant Referees and Judges. I am now a "C" official, so I can, in most cases, only be one of the assistants, which means all I do is watch and write crap down- I'll almost never be called upon to make any sort of judgment or snap decision. We ate lots of bagels, went over some slides, and then got a rulebook and took an open-book exam. The questions were relatively entertaining:

A Cyclocross course is defined as:
a. completely unreadable
b. composed of varying terrain
c. having at least 2.5" of mud around the entire course
d. being full of snow

In many cases all of those options may be applicable...

Now I'm officially official:

We also had the honor of being enlightened as to the coming of Christ. Thank you central Pennsylvania.

Swap Products and a cross bike

Yesterday, on Superswap Sunday myself, and at least 10 other members of PennState Cycling, took to the road at 5AM to get to a swap down in Maryland. (For you non-cycling people a bikeswap is a large garage sale with 99.9% of the merchandise being cycling parts/bikes/clothing/junk). We ended up getting there about an hour earlier than we needed to which sucked, but at least we were first in line. Waiting to get in was made more stressful than necessary by the people behind us who must have thought we looked like savvy enough swappers to buy up all the good deals before they had time to get into the 10,000 square foot space. Seriously now people. As Chris Thompson stated, it felt like we were staging for a race.

I didn't really need anything. Except maybe a chain tool. I wanted a whole lot of other things, but didn't bother to make a list or anything this time around. There was no reason for me to come with $150. There was no reason for me to leave with $2. Oh well. I got a Thomson stem for my cross bike for $25, a used tubular-clincher cross tyre for $10, ugly Ti-railed old style (that doesn't eat my ass) selle italia saddle for $15, wireless computer for the TT rig, chamois cream, arm+leg warmers, mudflap for a commuter or cross bike....oh yea, and the thing I needed, a chain tool for $2. The chain tool doesn't work. oh well.

One of the best purchases must have been these green "crocs". Me and Matlin went in and got a pair each for $20 a pop:
After getting back to State College I watched the first half of the Superbowl while building up my Redline Conquest Pro cross bike. Featuring red housing, and blue peace sign brake cable anchor things (what are those called?), and when racing... some reddish Tufo tubular-clincher tires... should look cool. I'll look good getting lapped this fall...

More Food Please

I did my longest ride in a long time yesterday. Had plans of doing Penn's Cave, went out and did the finishing climb for our race in April, and then just did the Sprint Ride (out to Centre Hall and back). All and all it was about 40 miles in 2 1/2 hours. Nothing crazy, but I was still pretty drained after getting back. Hoping to put in a good hour and a half today to keep the riding up.

When I stopped riding in August my food bill went from about $50 dollars a week to about $30 dollars a week. But I think the 10 or so hours I put in this past week is revving the engine back up... I had two dinners and a snack before going to bed last night. So here's to forking over 50 bucks every week. It's well worth it if I can ride though.

I'm excited about this weekend. Going to the bike swap in Md and watching the SuperBowl on Sunday... Go Seahawks! The last time I was at a swap I didn't react quick enough in grabbing the full DuraAce 9speed groupo for $100. I was using some of Stephan's visualizing last night to ensure that such a mental blunder does not repeat itself. I've been grabbing at shifters and cranksets in my sleep....different than what I usually grab for in my sleep.

Kreitler Rollers

Got my new Kreitler Rollers today:


The Poly-Myte edition.They are pretty sweet. Retail for about $350 I believe, but the club has a pretty good discount. Also coming with the rollers are 8 of the logo stickers with the rockin' Kreitler dog on it:Or maybe that is a charachter from star wars.... a wookie? In any event I tried them out and they are super smooth... much better than the Performance brand ones I bought (and returned) for the same price. My knee was a bit under the weather, so I just did a short spin on them to try them out... maybe three days in a row is a bit much yet. Take a a day off again and see if I can't ride on Thursday.

Also noticed that Mercyhurst's ECCC race weekend(pdf) (April 15 and 16) features a 7.5 mile ITT. I hope I can get a good amount of time in on the Nova TT machine to rock that thing out. I'm hoping for a headwind alllll day long.

20-something cyclist is reminded of prepubescent days of decreased muscle mass

I took advantage of the 50 degree weather and snuck a ride to Boalsburg and back in today. I never knew that the loop had a number of categorized climbs. I have felt more tired after training rides, but during it I was dying... I think I just need to get my lungs back. It did feel a lot better than the last time I rode the loop about a week ago. Riding in the saddle is almost the same, the only issue is when I get out of the saddle I can still feel that the lateral side of my right knee is swollen. There is still a noticeable difference in the size and strengths of my two quads... hope that levels out soon.

One scare during the ride was for about 10 minutes in the middle of the ride I thought my knee was feeling really weird. At the top of the stroke I could feel pressure on the outside top side of the joint. Took me a few minutes to figure out, but it ended up just being my knee warmers. It had shifted a bit and were tight enough that the swollen part of my knee was rubbing up on it. Felt pretty good once I realized that.

Next mission: Lower Lime


Can you guess which knee below was surgically altered?

Late drop is the shiznit.

Late drop is a very cool thing, granted you have the credits left. I was taking a semi-conductor class... and once I realized that I didn't like it I wondered to myself why I was taking another class with EE undertones, and dropped it like a fat kid drops a carrot. Then I picked up the book and threw it on half.com, and within a few hours had sold it for $60.00. Rock on right? Now I have more time during the day to do my work so that means more Mario Kart in the next week or so, and then more Erik Kart after that when I start venturing outside again on my bicycle.

For those of you who have not yet late-dropped a class, I would reccomend it. I feel like a new man, and it's all because I don't have to go learn about electron configurations tomorrow. So if you have an elective that you don't like, drop it and sell the book on half.com and blow the money on bike parts, you'll be better off for it.

That and, this will be my new helmet come March... I might have a larger left quad and be off the back on lap 2, but damn, I'll look good.

Maybe I'll give this another whirl.

I ran out of useless things to say last semester, but now that I have two assignments due tomorrow, I have plenty of useless information to bestow on none of the people who read this.

School has been hot and heavy the first few weeks. I'm taking 17.5 credits (1.5 of which is the Century class though). Still 16 credits is a heavy load for ME... I'm taking STAT418 which I've been warned is hard, but doesn't see too crazy yet; ESci 314: Semiconductor Materials because I might want to do some stuff with solar panels down the line; ME440 because I have to; ME 434 Compressible Gas Flow because I wanted to; IE312-this class blows, and ME84 Heat Transfer Lab because I liked ME412.

On more interesting fronts I've been doing PT for my knee which I got surgery on over the break. For those not in the know I got arthroscopic and an open lateral release. The former you probably know is looking and cleaning out the interior of the joint while the latter is the cutting of tendons on the lateral (outside) side of my knee. This will help my kneecap track correctly. I plan to slowly get back to riding outside in the next few weeks, though I still don't know when I'll be able to train for real... it's still a bit tender when I really put some torque through the pedals.

Also look at the pretenders who wish they were as cool as me: Spohn and Munas.

ESPN sucks these days...

I'm really dissapointed with televesion in general the past, ummm 15 years or so. That's a pretty big chunk of change there, though, so I'll keep the bashing narrowed down to Sports Center.

I always used to watch SportsCenter in high school, and it showed clips of the games with commentary given in english and without a soundtrack provided by Linkin Park and Jay-Z. They even showed daily highlights from the Tour, but I'll keep cycling out of this for the most part. Today if you turn on SportsCenter you might not even see a real press confrence. That's because ever since baseball season has ended, ESPN thought we needed some simulated baseball action, and decided a fake news confrence for individual teams would be a good idea. This might be the stupidest thing I've ever seen on TV (including Laguna Beach).
But after the press confrence is over, all SportsCenter is these days is arguments and clips of thugs playing basketball or football players smacking eachother to the tune of cheesy rap music. The Budweiser hotseat and The Coors Action play of the game team up with the Honda Highlight... what the hell? Doesn't SportsCenter make enough money without whoring itself out? It's bad enough that there are 14 Pepsi Arenas and 4 Verizon Stadiums. Do we need highlights named after companies too?
Before Monday Night Football I think I might have witnessed one of the low points of televsion. Four grown men were hooting and hollering at players getting "jacked up" during Sunday's game. Now, the stupid tribalesque banter dosed out during the clips was pretty bad, but the fact that before moving on to the next clip they'd all chant in harmony "Whomever got JACKED UP" was a bit much to swallow.
ESPN needs to get back to its roots... take the rap music and the internal commericals out of SportsCenter, and while you're at it take poker and rodeo off too... what the hell? Put poker on the gameshow network and just make rodeo illegal.

Country music still blows, but Napster is fun.

I've been trying to branch out a bit musically recently. Not quite digging country yet... I still don't understand how I can hate all country while I still like most bluegrass. I know most country has deviated quite a bit, and is full of twang and muscular "cowboys" with spray-on tans in front of F-16s telling me why I should send my first born to Iraq... but I would still think that I would find SOME country I'd enjoy if I appreciate bluegrass. Am I wrong that country did, albeit loosely, grow out of bluegrass?

In any event, I've been perusing Napster's library a bit more recently, and have found quite a lot of good music that I've heard before, but never really got the name of. The tab entitled "recommendations", which I believe is new to the present version, is pretty cool as it lists a bunch of bands that are somewhat similar to the band you're looking at. The band I found tonight is Goldfinger. I've listened to Reel Big Fish since high school, but only tonight did I download more than "Here in your bedroom" and "Red Balloons" by Goldfinger-which was listed under the recommendation tab of Reel Big Fish. If you like "ska", their greatest hits album is quite tasty.

And... when the original artist who sings 99 Red Balloons breaks into German, that it hot... foreign languages are sexy.

Facebook is nuts.

Well I'm not sure how far I'll take this blog thing... but I do know one thing after seeing a weird headline on today's Collegian. I won't be bringing up all the illegal shit I do on here... that's for sure, take a look at how the University Police are using facebook to find people who rushed the field after the OSU game.

I agree that beacuse facebook is public domain that the police can access the information, and use it to find people who have commited crimes. Especially the students who assaulted police officers on the field - find those pricks at any cost. But looking over pictures to find people who ran onto the field? Why don't we use the Beaver Canyon cameras to catch jaywalkers who thought they slipped one by big brother?

Anyway. The moral of the story here is, I'm not going to talk about all the weed I grow in my room if none of you post back on here about the teenage girls I usually have over for dinner.

Testing out the waters.

I'm testing stuff out here.