Saturday was another really nice day with the weather. After being lazy in the morning, I finally got up and got out for a nice fall ride. Did some shorter climbs, on some of the quiet canyon roads. It was a bummer I couldn't just keep going. But JP had offered up a chance to practice some more with bike tubing. So I assembled another aluminum cross bike for him, this time a geared one, and no, not for me. I had a lot more freedom, doing more of this one on my own. And it "seems" to have come out well. Luckily JP was there to impart his wisdom when I had questions about doing the best way to do things, or solve issues. It all "looked" right anyway!
Friday Stephen Hawking unveiled this $1.83 million clock at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge. Call me a nerd, but man, this thing is very, very cool! Watch the video to see it in action, and to get an explanation, but I'm just fascinated by how it works. And just as much by how visually captivating it is while it works. I could just sit and stare, literally wasting away time as it is eaten by the grasshopper. I can't wait until someone copies it and starts making realistically-sized (and priced!) ones for home use!
Sunday it was time to ride the bike in anger again. The cross race on schedule was down at the detention center for juveniles or something like that - it had a big fence that didn't look terribly easy to scale. I was excited that the race had been moved from it's venue at the FedCenter. Though leery since the the new course tends to have countless goatheads, and a retarded man-made mud pit that they always insisted on running us through. It's usually a fun course, that's a bit closer to a mountain bike course, with some sweepy fast sections and off-camber dusty turns.
Yesterday's course though went over the line into mountain bike territory. There was no pavement at all, it was by far the bounciest, roughest course I have ever ridden, and even after 8 full-on race laps, the course really never developed any sort of flow. You just seemed to be floundering about the whole time. At least it had a grassy hairpin, with a fast barrier section. That was good at least. The course definitely would have been more fun with mountain bike, and 1.5" Jet tires. Instead, I decided to race the single speed, in the Open race. I felt pretty good, and beat plenty of guys with way more gears than me. I would have been pretty happy with my result, had Travis and Matt not been further up the course than me, and on their own single speeds. No worries, it was a fun, yet very hard race. I just eased up a bit too much at the end, but should have snuck in right around top-20 still. D-Strong took some great pictures at the race, but I'll have to harass him to make sure he mails them to me.
After the race, I took a bath behind my car, and was off to the Boulder Dinner Theater to catch Mid-Life The Crisis Musical. It was a good show, but Sunday evening shows, especially straight after a bike race, are always a tough way to end the weekend. Now we're back to Monday, and all I can think of is the next weekend...
2 comments:
Even though the course had no rhythm to it you looked smooth on the Hulk bike
Thanks man! Hope I didn't sound too harsh on the course, I mean I like a "mountain-bikey" course, but I think the bumps on this one made it tough... and waiting in line to go through that chicane on the first lap...
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