Friday, November 21, 2008

Racing, Cape May, Racing, and Coffee

So I (Scott) haven't posted in a while since I've been a little busy. I have played with making the blog prettier, and am still going to work on this more. You'll see changes, eventually.

So the weekend of Bec's birthday, my cycling team put on bike races. Really fun courses, yet the one day it was brutal. Lots of roots, rocks, trees, drainages, steep hills, mud pits, etc to race through. I managed decent races for my abilities and finished 10 of 16 and 11 of 18. Not nearly last, so that is good. I have been working hard doing a lot of near max efforts to get stronger. We have some video we will post to give an idea of what cyclocross is all about.


The night before I left, we celebrated Bec's birthday with dinner and presents. It was a lame attempt on my part since I had so much to get done and couldn't do everything (like pack needed stuff for the week), but that's the way it goes.
The week in Cape May was great other than the rain and fog most days. I saw ~20 hawks in hand and learned how to sucker in hawks to bait birds. Bait birds were not injured in the trapping of these hawks. It's a two edged sword though: sun and wind is good for hawk migration and catching hawks, but I'm not out birding and taking pictures. Clouds, rain, and fog is bad for hawk flights, so we don't catch much or anything, nor can we go birding and see much. Oh well. Had a great time.

See picts from NJ here:

Aunt Judy, Bob and Jane were incredibly generous and lent me a vehicle for the week so I didn't have to rent a car! Thanks guys!! They all met me at the airport and I went on my way to NJ, stopping to get exact change and $ for the stupid tolls everywhere. Cost me $10 or something to get to Cape May and back. Anyway, I got to visit my folks for a night and eat like a king, then I ate like a king the next day with Judy, Bob, and Jane before I went back to the airport. Something happened on a runway in PHL, so I sat in the airport for 5 hrs. We were supposed to leave at 4pm. Well the plane we were to get on left Detroit for PHL at 4:08. Lovely. It was a long wait. When I finally got to Nashville our bags were coming out, people claimed pretty much all bags, and they turned off the lights and the belt stopped. I was like, "I didn't even have a connection!!!" I wasn't the only one who's bags didn't come out. We were about to walk away and complain when the belt started again and our bags came out. I'd have been really mad if I didn't get my bag after all that.

This weekend I'm racing again in Fayetteville, TN (not far from Huntsville AL). Should be pretty cold on Saturday and probably a boring course. It'll be good to race though as racing makes you stronger. My goal is at least a respectable finish at races in January. Bec has a 15 page paper to write and a nasty virus to get over, so I'll race and she'll write and blow her nose a lot.

I just like coffee.
Stay tuned for blog modifications.

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