Baby Steps

So alots gone on in the last 118 days since we've talked last. I don't know where to start. Thats where the baby steps come in.

I got a new car. A new car. 2010 Mazda 3 hatchback. Its so new, its from the future. I already love it.

Pictures. I've been taking alot of them, and I am finally learning how they work and how to have them come out. I just started messing around with HDR images. They're pretty neat too. I don't know that much about them, but they're composite images of between 3-5 images of different levels of under/over exposure that are combined so that the whole image has proper exposure. Its just barely starting to make sense to me, but the images look pretty cool. I will have examples.

Sitting on top of a mountain, taking pics of the sunset.

My first HDR of our living room

Training is 100% in swing for next year too. I jumped right back into it again starting off with 18 and 20 hour weeks. The legs feel great, like they haven't lost much fitness since October. I like riding long miles in the winter and getting to spin around different areas. I've already found a ton of roads I've never been on that aren't even that far from my house.

I've already had my first epic ride of the year last Saturday in Stroudsburg. The day we got like a foot of the white stuff, I thought I'd try and get in a good 4 hours along the Water Gap up into New York. We weren't supposed to get much snow up that way so I hoped that I would make it without trouble. Within an hour of me leaving town, unbeknownst to me, it starting snowing in Stroudsburg. I was riding north, directly away from the storm. I felt awesome and thought I had pulled on over on mother nature. On the way back, about 15 miles from home, the roads were covered about an inch deep. It got to be too sketchy to ride up or down most of the hills so I was off the bike hoofing it on foot. I ran about 3 of the last 15 miles of the ride in the dark.

I will be back soon.

Point; Counterpoint

A subtly packaged shipment showed up on the doorstep this afternoon. It was like christmas, and I got excited. Oh gooshies! Let me get some scissors...

Inside was the new Tesla 5 by Lupine Lighting Systems, plus a bunch of extras.
I could hear my old delapidated Niterider already sulking in its drawer. I felt almost guilty. How could I move on so quickly to something newer and better, pretending that it had never even existed. For years we had been nocturnal buddies. He would provide me with enough light to ride my bike through the gnarliest terrain and in return I would provide him with a steady but still adequate flow of ventalation to keep his delicate little internals from overheating. It was the perfect relationship. I needed some justification, so I sat down with each to hear their arguments.

The Niterider was up first, (it's got seniority)

"Hey Moab, how's it goin?"

"Not too bad, chief. We should hang out sometime, it's been a while."
"Alright, will do. Down to business now. This new Lupine just showed up, but we've had so many good rides together, I don't know if I want to give you up. Any thoughts?"

"Well, to be honest with you, I'm just a big, dumb, heavy, outdated peice of crap."

"Wow, your kinda hard on yourself, don't you think?"

"Yeah, maybe I am. I mean I do put out a solid 500 lumens and my burn times are pretty awesome."

"Yeah but, now that you mention it, you do break all the time. Your cables break, and your connections go bad on a regular basis. In fact, I've sent you back so many times, nothing about you is original. Come to think of it, you pretty much suck."

Then it was the Lupine's turn.

"Yo Tesla, how was the trip?"

"Not bad buddy, so you wanna here about how awesome-"

"Actually, you don't have to, the last guy just dug himself a pretty big hole. You got the job."

"Oh, so you don't want to hear about my 700 lumen output and 3, 9, and 24 hour burn times?"

"Nah, it's cool."

"Well what about how I weigh less than half as much as that other guy, and I'm only about half the size too, but I'm still brighter than he is?"

"No seriously, now your just embarrasing him."

The proof is in the pudding. The selling point is in this little guy. Up to 1.5 hours of light on this little helmet-mountable gem.

A sincere thank you to Todd and Bill at Gretna Bikes and everyone at Lupine.

I'll get the hang of it one of these days

Cycling Videos on CyclingDirt

Never look at the camera

Except during a real interveiw. Yeah, I know now.

From the Windham XC on Saturday.

Cycling Videos on CyclingDirt

I was happy with my race but not so much with my finish. I had feeling pretty beat down after the last few weeks so per my coach (ok, my best friend), I took the entire week leading up to Windham off, and it seemed to pay off. My legs were alot better than they had been the previous week and they were able to put inside the top 25, right where I know I am capable of being. That felt good. With so much traveling in the last few months, my body's got a weird vibe. Most years, around this time, I've done so much riding and racing that I'm ready for the season to be done. But with so many high-key races lately, I haven't been doing a whole lot of riding, let alone training, during the week at all. Come to think of it, the last time I really "trained" was clear back in the begining of July and not much then either. So my mind is still ready to go; but my body is sabatoging that. Lets move on the Sunday.

As per my sweet interview, Matt and I drove home to hit French Creek the next morning. (That should actually read, 'I drove Matt home, whilst he SLEPT in the passanger seat', but that's neither here nor there) I was in my bed by a very respectable 11:30 that night considering a 2pm start time that afternoon. Long story short; I got 2nd, again, for the third year in a row. That stings a little, but at least it was to my other bff, who I hadn't seen since April. So it was cool.

The only race picture from the last two weekends. Towards the end of the lap at Bromont. I had just made a handful of nice moves around the guys right behind me.

Canada

In a grocery store parking lot-
I'm finally home, at least for a few days, until I leave again for Mt Snow on Thursday. The Canadian World Cups went well, well at least one did. Mount Saint Anne was a disaster. I made it up to Quebec in time to get in two pratice laps on Saturday afternoon. The course was just about what I expected from a World Cup venue. Fast, steep, and technical. It rained most of the day on Friday so everything had a nice coating of grease on it too. After dialing most of the lines, I cruised down the road to the national team condo and layed low for the afternoon.

It only took me a few minutes Sunday morning after I woke up to realize that my mind was a mess. My head felt sort of foggy or cloudy, and I wasn't feeling very focused, but most telling was the lack of nerves. I did my normal pre-race thing, but the switch inside my head never flipped into race mode. Fast forward to 10 minutes after the gun goes off. We've all walked single file into the singletrack, and the inital adrenaline is fading into real pain. I feel ok. I look back. The sweep moto is 20 feet off my wheel. I'm last. Dead f'ing last, and I'm going as hard as I can. How about some karma. My bib number was 125. Besides being 3 digits and getting me a last row starting spot, that was the first number I ever pinned on my bike 9 years ago as a first timer. Seems like it bestowed the same phsyical ability I had back then too. I never got into a rhythm all day. My tire choice didn't help. A set of worn out Crossmarks were less than ideal for the slopfest the course had turned into. Frustration just kept piling on. I stayed off the back, and was pulled after 3 of 6 laps. Welcome to the World Cup.

How about something positive and optimistic. Bromont.

I always race better later in a big block of racing. I think it's a mental thing. Bromont was race number 3 in a 5 week block of national and international events, so I was starting to expect some better results. That combined with week void of anything but recovery was mentally stimulating. I like being alone and being able to do my own thing. I took Friday to go into Montreal for the afternoon and walk the city, watch street performers, and eat ice cream.

I took a bit more liking to the Bromont course. It was a little more traditional for a ski resort course with a climb/descend profile. In response to the awful time I had keeping my bike upright the week prior, I swapped tires and got some real rim meat that hooked up great in the super chunk peanut butter. The course started drying out quickly during the week but the weather forecast was looking ify for the weekend with rain possible during race time. It would be one extreme or the other. I was doing my rain dance all week.

Around 12 noon, just as I jumped on the bike for the one hour spin over to the venue, I got my wish. It started raining hard. By the time I made it to the USA pit, I was soaked and my shoes were heavy with water. Then it started raining harder, and it stayed that way for the entire duration of the race. The start felt like deja vu. Dead last as we all started walking up the narrow double track switchbacks to the top of the mountain until the course started heading down. The descent was where I made it happen. Railing all the technical shortcut lines, I cruised past 5 or 6 guys each lap followed by one or two each time up the climb. Hung in there for 4 of the 6 laps before getting pulled in 74th place with a huge smile on my face. I had managed to make up about 30 or 40 spots from the start.

So for now its back at home until Thursday. Then up to Mt Snow with the experience and a quick transfer back home for the Neshaminy xc on Sunday. Then repeat the following week with Windham and French Creek for the ultimate double double weekends. I finally got a new battery for my computer, which means its a laptop again. Not a desktop.