SPANKED!

I thought spanked sounded better than spent, which in my case either word works for me. I finished up the 2008 cyclocross season Dec 7 at Reston VA for the Capital Cross. Needles to say I didn't end the season quite the way I wanted to, but the way I've been feeling two weeks before the last race. I'm not surprised how it ended. I was hoping to finish the season racing the C race and getting one more chance to race against many of my cross buddies and try to get in the top 10, but faith had other plans or at least me not thinking too clearly about what time I needed to be there. I arrived 10 minutes before the start of my races, as you can guess I didn't get to race in the C race. I ended up signing up for the B race and expected to get my ass kicked by everyone.

The last 3 weeks of the season I was burnt out. Placing 4th & 2 upgrade points and at Wonderland & 13 at Tacchino Ciclocross I should been on top of the world but I wasn't. I knew at Tacchino I was getting sick, I should had gone home after the race and take care of myself so I wouldn't get sick but hung out watched the races drank plenty of beer. Every time I finished a beer some else would hand me another, I did have a great time. But two days later they post results on crossresults.com and I'm listed as a DNF! WTF! about two weeks later contacting the race officials everything was straighten out and I got my 2 up grade points. It is still listed on crossresult.com as dnf and it wrecked my average which still bums me but at least it's correct with USCF were it really matters.

I was sick for about week and was feeling better but I didn't race the MABRA Championship only because it was pouring rain and cold, I would had just gotten sicker. I would had love to race but I have to think of my health too.

By the time Capital Cross came up I was done, it wasn't even a big deal that I missed my race. Yea I did get excited at first but in about five seconds later I could careless. I was planning to try some B races for the 2009 season. The way I look at is I got a head start for next season.

On top of being burnt out, work has been very stressful and they change the schedule and mix up the classes making hard to grade anything letting alone have some sense of order. I had a new furnace put in and contactors have been in my house for 4 weeks ripping holes in the wall and floors and putting in new air ducts. Heavy dust every where, I'm sick again because of the dust. I have to mop every day. They flooded the toilet, just not cool. They should be out of here by friday, so guess what type of fun I'm going to have this weekend. I should have a cleaning party. At least thing should get back to normal after this week and get to relax. But beside the stress of everything in my life, meet someone new and be seeing her last couple of weeks now and enjoy spending time with her. I feel stress free and relax when she around. If you say that I miss my race because my mind was somewhere else (translate: meaning her) I wouldn't say you're wrong.

Time to relax and focus on something other than cross

Hey no pressure!

This morning I got email from Mark telling me that my name is in RED for this weekend Wonderland Cyclocross Race. Some of you out there might be saying what? But if you race cylocross most likely you know that means on the race predictor on CyclocrossResults that I'm listed to come in 1st place or I'm going to be a big loser. I doubled check most of the riders' stats and there really only two riders who will give me a run for my money. I'm not expecting to come in 1st but I do see a top 5 spot and get an upgrade point. But hey like Mark said no pressure.



The midnight edit: I'm dissappointent by the end of registration tonight 10 more riders sign up for my race and one person who's results are slightly better than mine has bump me from the 1St place in the prediction. I was hoping when I got home from work today (figures it was teacher/ parent night at work and I didn't get home until 9) to use my screen capture to capture the moment and now I've been rob of that. Ok, I'm not that upset but still pretty cool if you ask me. And by the way for Sunday race; Tacchino Ciclocross in Leesburg, VA, I'm predicted to come in 8th out of over 60 some riders.

WTF! No racing this weekend.

That's right, you heard it right no racing. I was planning to race both days at the US grand Prix of Cyclocross at the Mercer Cup. I missed the race last year for a wedding and as much as I want to do the Mercer Cup, it's not happening for me. I need a break and can't justify Spending two night in a hotel, driving over 3 hours one way for a race 8am and only for 30 minutes long. I'm sorry 30 minutes isn't be long enough to move through a large field unless I'm in the first 5 rows. The way I look at is I can spend over $300 for a short race in NJ or have my Chris King hubs laced up to some tubular rims for the same cost. You do the math.

As you can see from the picture from above, I got plenty to do. I have nice long list of things to fix on both bikes. Maybe I'll update my blog this weekend too. For all those at there planning to race, have a fun & safe race this weekend.

Granogue & Wissahichkon Cross Pics!

Ok I know I've been slacking on the whole blogging thing, I'll try to keep update. Until I actually write something this week here a link to the pictures I took last week at the Granogue & Wissahichkon Cross races.

Pretty cool to see the pros and getting a chance to talk to Richard Sachs about tubular tires.

Elwood at the vet for Surgery

I drop Elwood off this afternoon to the vet’s for surgery on his rear right knee, tomorrow morning they’re going to prep him to repair his ACL. I was hoping that over time and taking easy his ACL would repair it’s self but anyone that knows anything about a lab is that they’re full of energy and hard to keep them calm. He juried his knee twice over a month and half, the first time it wasn’t that bad and started to walk on his leg after 3 days and the anti-flammatory pills were helping but 2 weeks later Elwood reinjuried his knee jumping up the steps, so back to vet. Some x-rays later and higher dose meds the vet wanted to see if his knee would improve in about a month.

He’s starting to spend as much time as my parents’ dog Lucca does at the vets. She’s accident prone and dumbass but I still love her.

Well a week past from his last visit and Elwood was still carrying his leg but I noticed when he would walked on it, his knee was making a popping sound and getting louder. Not good. Call the vet up and talked to him about it and we both agreed that he’s going to need surgery. Good thing is Elwood’s vet knows him pretty well not because of the visit to the office but the Doc is my parents’ neighbor and on our walks we past his house all the time. So he knows Elwood more on the personal side than work.

It’s seems strange that Elwood isn’t home right now, funny how I feel a little lost. It’s not like I haven’t been away from him before but I knew that when I was away he was been taking care by family members or friends. I just worrying about how the surgery is going to go and at least he’ll be home by Wednesday.

My wake up call from Homeland Security

My phone rings at 8 in the morning on a Saturday, waking me up. I’m thinking my parents need something since most of my friends would still be in bed too, but what I do hear is the guy introduced himself as Homeland Security Agent. Ok! I’m awake now!

I ask him what I can I help you with (needles to say I’ve never been ask for help from a government department before). Well he tells me he can’t find a buddy of mine and my name was used as a reference and he figured to call me to locate him. I’ve been used as references before and talked to other government agencies, but never ask to locate someone. As sarcastic as I am, I had a hell of a time not to make a sarcastic remark but again I don’t want my buddy to lose out on a job because of smart remark I made. But I was thinking it. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN’T FIND HIM, YOU’RE HOMELAND SECURITY! But I didn’t say it. I gave him the phone number and told the agent if you still can’t reach him, call me back and I’ll see what I can do for you.

It gets better; I talked to my buddy later in the day to tell that Homeland Security is looking for him. He starts to laugh and tells me that 3 different agents before have try to interview him. I ask what’s the problem then, he tell me before you can even get interview you need to get a medical evaluation which he said he fail, something minor but still disqualify him for the job. Apparently no one in the agency talks to each other and he has told every person that called him that he was disqualify and none of the information hasn’t been pass on the subject. Make one wonder about the government in this day in age of technology with the lack of communication.

Oh dear!

I'm moving some my older blogs from my MySpace page to over this page I figure it would be easier to use Blogger. This is from December 22, 2008

Oh deer! Is exactly what I thought on Wednesday night while walking Elwood up to the school for his run. I kept him on his leash a little longer than I normally do and I'm glad I did. I was just about ready to let him off his leash I looked up in shadow about 40 feet away there was a doe staring right out us.

I looked like a deer in headlights so did the deer, he wasn't moving which I thought was very odd for wildlife. I decided to walk further down the road hoping the deer would go away but NOPE! It followed us down the road and got within 15 feet of us. All I could think about was that Elwood and I were going to be on the 11 o'clock news telling our story how we were mauled by a deer. The deer was finally spooked by a pasting car and slowly left the area. Today I did find out why the deer didn't run, it's someone pet.

Here's the news article my dad sent me today about it:

I swear the doe was twice the size when I ran into her!

Shippensburg man lassos deer
By Dale Heberlig, Sentinel Reporter, December 22, 2007
A Neff Avenue resident captured a deer Wednesday night, using a rope lasso to collar the wayward doe just a block from where a buck caused an uproar Nov. 5 when it burst through the front door of a house, slammed into a plate glass window at a convenience store and hurdled a 6-foot-high fence into the playground at McDonald's.The deer that wandered into Wayland Stouffer's back yard in the 400 block of East Neff Avenue Wednesday was an unusual-looking critter with a different temperament than the panicked buck from six weeks ago.Judy, a piebald deer — marked with a white face, lower body and legs and blue eyes — resembles an enormous goat at first glance and is as close to a family pet as a wild animal can get.Judy walked away from her pen at a deer farm south of Shippensburg 11 days earlier. The doe is pregnant, having been artificially inseminated Nov. 7.

Bill Noll says he raised the 9-year-old doe from birth, housing her in a playpen in his house when she was a fawn."She's like a member of the family," Noll says of the remarkable recovery of his animal. "Thank God she didn't get run over by a car or get shot."Noll says he saw Judy walk out of her pen Dec. 8 — the last Saturday of Pennsylvania's deer season — when the gate was inadvertently left open."She walked out into the field, and we thought we could go out and just walk her back, but she took off," Noll recalls.

He says he spent three-and-half hours following the deer and searching for her after she mingled with a herd of wild deer.Judy walked south along Route 11, Noll says, then crossed the highway and trekked east across fields to the vicinity of Interstate 81, where his "pet" mingled with wild deer.That's the last he saw her — until Wednesday night, when she materialized out the gloom near Stouffer's home more than three miles away."I'd kind of given up on ever getting her back," Noll says. "I'd left the gate to her pen open in case she came back and went out every morning and evening with a spotlight to see if I could see her."Noll says he even contacted taxidermists to see if any hunter had killed the deer and brought her to be mounted."I just thank God she's back," he says. "I don't need any other gift for Christmas."Stouffer says he spotted the deer about 8 p.m., when his mother and son returned home from a trip to get a Christmas tree."Mom was yelling 'There's a deer out here!' and I went out to take a look," Stouffer says. "Sure enough, it was a deer. I went back inside to get shoes and the kids were asking me, 'What are you going to do?' I said I didn't know yet."Stouffer grabbed a length of heavy rope, fashioned a lasso and got the upper hand when Judy walked between two rows of cars parked in a church parking lot."The cars had tinted windows and she couldn't see me, but I could see her," Stouffer says. "I waited at the end of a car and when she poked her head out, I threw the rope over her head."

Judy resisted furiously, "jumping up in the air six or seven feet," but he was able to hang on, and the deer calmed down a little as he talked to her.A bag of carrots hastened Judy's cooling off, and things were under control when wildlife officer Eric Horsh arrived and helped figure out where Judy belonged.In hindsight, Stouffer says, he may have been a little careless in his capture of the deer, "but once I got a look at her, I just had a feeling that she belonged to someone, and I didn't want her to get hit by a car."Noll couldn't be happier, and he says Judy is obviously content, too.He's been feeding Judy sweet treats — a blend of deer feed and molasses — to restore any weight she may have lost during her 11-day adventure."She's happy to be home," Noll says. "She's licking my neck and pulling at my shirt and beard, and there's not on a mark on her that I can find."If all goes well, Judy should deliver her fawn by Memorial Day.