School's out for [Winter]; its cold here, im leaving..."It's prolly just a deer screaming", "Shit, that ain't no deer..."

Fall semester is finally over. So far, so good. Nothing spectacular in terms of academics, just pluggin through it. I'm pleased to announce that with the ending of school comes the beginning of a vacation. Tomorrow couldn't come soon enough. Heading south to the sunshine state of Florida with Jen for a week, then for a week by myself. The one and only Matt Miller is still debating on making an appearance. Matt, if your reading this, you should come. It will be saweet!!

I got a couple more responses from sponsorship proposals this week. Ergon, Fox Shox, and Smith have been kind enough to ease some of the costs of the upcoming race season. Also got notice that my CrankBrothers 4Ti Candy pedals shipped yesterday so I'll be looking for them in the mail in the next week or so. These pedals are pimp. 198g and mostly Ti, they should lighten up the bike for next year. This past weekend was yet another failed edition of dual Shenandoah 100 rides. Either way, we had some sweet riding. Saturday we rode parts of the Shen. course, then ventured into West Virginia to check out Seneca Rocks. The map of the park showed over 40 miles of trail so we decided to give it a go. Turns out the trails are mostly designed for hiking so the initial climb to the top of the ridge was mostly hike-a-bike. Once to the top we popped out to a vista that, had it not been total fog, would have let us seen for miles and miles. The bright white fog that surrounded us still had a pretty cool, "really, really high-up" feeling. Once on the top of the ridge we found some fun flowy singletrack that was made extremely treacherous due to the rain the night before.

The sleeping arrangements for the weekend were undoubtedly the most interesting part. Saturday was spent sleeping on cots under the stars, surrounding an open fire pit. It was really cool, that is, until the scariest noise I've ever heard woke me up. Some sort of animal, approximately 100 yards or so directly behind me, was screaming. Like tires on pavement. Actually, that's what I first thought it was, someone just down the road was doing doughnuts, but it didn't take long to realize that it was a live creature. I shook Brandon awake and told him what I heard and that I was scared out of my mind. He and Matt both assured me that it was a deer. Somewhat skeptical, yet partially satisfied, I quickly went back to sleep. Wouldn't you know it, about two hours later, I'm woken up by Brandon and Matt who, after hearing the same noise, were trying to restart the fire for protection. We haven't figured out what it was yet. Our best guess was an owl, but it was loud, and it was close, and I've never been so scared since the time I thought my brother was a burglar breaking into our house late at night...

The white abyss...

And there was fire jumping. Evil Knievel may be dead, but his spirit lives on. And Matt approves.

There were also several pictures documenting human defecation, but in an attempt to keep this blog somewhat professional, I'll spare the disgusting details.