sitting in kc....

Sitting in my hotel in kc. snow is supposed to fall tonite. my pee is clear, i am ready. bring it on driscoll, and summerhill.

It's Rye Rye

sweetness...she does stuff with M.I.A. too, shes in her new song Paper Planes, and shes 16.

icky thump

I rode with AA today. It was cold as balls. We rode out clayton and after a little over an hour we stopped at the starbucks by mason/clayton intersection. We tried to buy stuff to drink but its more expensive out there, so it was only I, the moneybearer, who was able to savor a mocha latte. Our hands were so cold at this point that it hurt to sit there and let them thaw. We decided to head back to the k-wood webster area, as to stay closer to home base in the case of even more extreme coldness. We rode back in about 30 minutes, with a nice tailwind. Our actual ride time after a little winding through k-wood was arund 2+ hours. So just for good measure I sat around the house looking at my computer in my bibs. As Scotty Hill would say "Chamois time is ride time!!" so I rode for 3 hours. I ran the turkey day run on thursday, my legs hurt. I was lured in to a fast pase by Logie and Austin. They pulled away around 1.5 miles, but I was able to ruthlessly kick Logan down in the sprint. Sprinter on the bike means sprinter on the road?? Listning to a White Stripes cd that I stole from a friend, album is called "icky thump", it's quite good.

yo

So i raced this past weekend. did the b race. i raced super well for some reason. i had like 2 hours of sleep the night before, or really the morning of from 7-9. but i felt great, and i kept attacking/moving up. i started really far back and worked my way into 6th, where i finished. I went to the gym yesterday, felt good. it hurt a little. i was suprised how little weight actually made my legs burn. but im not worried, i should be up to speed soon. this might be the funniest video ever. its 1500 philipino inmates, all men (the one "girl" is in drag), doing thriller. if you havent seen it watch it, if you have watch it again.

CX recap

Hey,
So ive been racing cx. its awesome. i really like it. I did my first 3 races in the c race and then my 4th in the b. I started out with a 6th, then a 4th, then a 2nd. So then i thought it was time to move up. I kinda got by butt kicked but, i think the course and my over inflated tires had something to do with it. I'm also doing cx nats, in the u23 category so that should be interesting. i rode fopo the otherday. people need to get their shit together. walkers and joggers on the gravel, bikers and rollerbladers? on the paved part. I hate weaving through the people walking. Seriously, walk on the gravel. I might just ride my cx bike on the gravel trail if they are so keen on the pavement. fopo needs police to enforce this rule.
bye.

CX Bike

So i realllly dont feel like talking about state crit, gateway and the twilight crit. I raced well at sedalia, 4th in the 4's crit, 17th in the 3/4. I was 5th in the 4's road race the next day. gateway was disappointing as usual..

im racing cross. heres my bike. its pretty hot.

Covert Ops.

Hey so nothing has happened in life worth blogging. I think i posted about the tt? maybe maybe not. read mike t's blog if i didnt, it finally says something other than "SUMMER!!". heres whats been going on.

i built a wheel rack. in the shack. in the back.



i got a cool new sign.................CHECK IT OUT.





in other news i decided that i needed to investigate a better option for shaving my legs. i decided that i deserved a better, smoother longer lasting shave. I purchased myself a venus. I didnt get the vibrating one, i didnt really want anything electric in my shower, and i didnt get the one with the big ass lube strips. After conferring with my friend Libby last night, neither o us know what "model" it is but we both decided to call it the "bright blue" one, she likes it though, so i expect great things.

I have a list of movies that i want to see. I just saw bourne ultimatum last night. It was the shit. I loved the first two and this lived up to them. I was almost slightly dissappointed by the ending, then it got freaking awesome for the last like 20 seconds. If you saw it you know whats up. I wonder if there will be another. I think bourne and nikki, juila stiles character, dated before he was in the treadstone thing. I also want to see superbad. It looks realllly funny.
heres the unedited trailer.


i also want to see clerks 2. if anyone saw it please tell me how it was. logan and mike t are coming over and we're riding and then leaving for jeff city for the state crit. yaaay.

wattage cottage?

I rode the grants trail today, it was pretty nice. The only thing that sucked was that i had a cup of yogurt rite before i rode and i had cramp, i think caused by the yogurt, for the last 45 minutes of my ride. Another sketchy part of the trail was the kid practicing his bb-gunning skills, on the side of the trail shooting paralell to the trail, at coke cans. I thought he was gonna pop me.

I found this picture of logie up in canada, getting put in the hurt bucket by team japan.

20 inch blades, on the impala!

Check out this new bling. You don't even know how much I love things that are banned for mass start events because they can cut off peoples appendiges. Allthough, frozen chickens have proved that wrong. Just ask.

Colorado...

So im in colorado rite now as most of you know. I drove out with my mom on monday, the 2nd, and im staying with dan while she stays at a friends house in breckenridge. I'll recap the rides. The first day we started off on a cool bike path that ran along a creek then we did a cool dirt road climb that was pretty hard. Then we finished riding through the U at boulder campus. The next day we hit the mountains and did a 3:40 min, 60 mile ride with 3000ish feet of climbing. We rode up a long climb and then down a switch back road then a slight uphill to nederland, where we got some hippie cookies and water, and cruised downhill for about 18 miles to boulder. I rode the climb that this segment of American Flyers ends on. Its pretty difficult actually.

Yesterday we rode some more dirt roads and some singletrack trails that, considering how they handled the dirt roads last year, would make keaton and austin poop their chamois. It was really fun, and the only part that i couldnt ride was a technical descent that would give most people trouble on a mountain bike. Tommorrow we are riding up Mt. Evans, the highest paved road in north america, at 14,000-something feet. It is like 24 miles to the top and it should be pretty interesting. I also visited CU, CSU and Regis. I'll report on those later.

Some Races

So, I'll start back at webster and work my way up...I raced webster juniors. It was pretty easy. We basically rode around at a fair pace and chased any attack that was made. I was kind of working with ben pholman because neither of us had a real teammate in the race. We both knew that zach and daniel would work together and rory and zach are both on the same team. Coming into the last corner i was sitting 3rd wheel with rory on front and zach right in front of me, on rorys wheel, and daniel just to my right. He pushed into my spot because he chose a stupid time to move up on the inside, considering there were 2 youger juniors right there. I knew that at third wheel i could at least get 2nd. I could either come around zach and rory would have a big gap through the corner, or zach would stay just a tad infront of me and rory would blow up, or, more realistically i would just outsprint both of them. Anyway, we werent going very fast, 23 maybe, and i just jumped right around the group on the left side of everyone and took the corner first. I sprinted and put about 20-25 feet into zach/rory who went 2/3, and apparantly i was opening a gap. Then there was the 4/5 race. I rode at the front for the first few laps and nearly had a 50$ prime, which some MACK guy ganked from me. He took the corner like i did in the jrs race and i almost caught him at the line. I ended up finishing in the pack. Rory offered me a pull to the front with 2 to go but the 2 crashes in the last 2 laps put a damper on our ambition. I finished top 20 somewhere. This past weekend i raced proctor, which i'd never raced before. The road race was pretty stupid. It was flat and narrow. You couldnt move up because the group of about 60 never really got strung out or separated. We just rode as a solid pack. The climbs werent big enough to do anything to the pack. I can usually make the front group on a climb in a road race, ala hells kitchen, joe martin and dogwood, which ends up benefitting me. About 4 miles in we came across the sight of a crash which ended up killing a cat 4 woman from xXx racing in chicago. It was pretty humbling to see that and i was kind of in my own thoughts, not really wanting to continue racing after seeing that. I finished just off the back of the pack. The crit was the next day and mike convinced us all, me keaton and mike t, to ride in support of logan to try and get him the illinois state champ jersey. The race was really fun, not quite quad cities quick but not stupid lame like most stl jr races. Mike t lasted like 10 minutes with the group which was constantly attacking. Keaton and i reeled in breaks and took fliers of our own to make the others, who, for the most part, didnt have any teammates, chase us back. Logie ended up attacking with a half a lap to go and holding on to win. It was hella tight. The 4's was pretty fast and not too fun. It was windy and people seemed not to know how to ride through the 4 lane wide corners w/o hitting their brakes, but we accomplished our goal for the day.

heres logan with 1st and 2nd loser on his left and right.

bear

So, winghaven kinda sucked. It was really wet and was pretty much like an ice rink. It was actually kinda funny watching all of the crashes in each corner because no one was seriously hurt and we were riding at like 15mph so it was ridiculous how many people went down. I got gapped off of the pack on a huge crash in the roundabout just before the finish line on the first lap. After watching keaton go down on the roundabout after the finish, i found myself in a chase group with mike heff. Our group didnt seem to be compelled to catch back on, instead they just wanted to ride the same pace as the pack, about 30 seconds back. I tried to jump a few times but i couldnt quite make it more than halfway each time. We caught them on our 3rd lap right before the downhill. Then after the downhill going through the roundabout before the finishline, some idiot decides to try and pass me on the inside. He slid out and the guy on my outside slid out too, but it was the moron on the inside who clipped my wheel and took me down. It wasnt my tires at all or my braking. I didint skid or slide once the whole race, and my courchevels worked perfectly. Today and wednesday I rode around dusk when its not so hot, and i rode my super close to home "lap" rides, where I ride various laps as many times as I want to. Sugar creek has gotten reallly nice now, because of the daugherty ferry bridge bieng knocked down there is no traffic on daugherty ferry and about half of the traffic that was on sugar creek. Right now I am watching the NEW EPISODE OF MAN VS. WILD!!!!. Bear is a pimp and he just parasailed to the top of everest, if you dont believe me, read his blog, I believe its linked. Riding long this weekend, high ridge/covered bridge, and out to ellisville. Austin says 4 hours but....

dog.

some of you know my dog, echo. this is what he looked like:

This is what he looked like when i came home yesterday:

doob

So I raced Iowa, and Tulsa Tough. They were both good races that were well organized. I like the races up in Iowa, specifically the snake cause its awesome and badass.

That photo is from ethan, the kid behind me, but I find it particularly badass. The before, and during, our race up the snake and down the backside made it even more tricky and epic as usual. I raced jrs everyday and 4s the last 2 days, I think that I shouldhave done 4s at the snake also but I didnt for some reason. I was pretty tired on the way home and collapsed for a while when I got home, but hey, its summer. I drove down to Tulsa with my dad and watched the crashfest of a 3s race on friday and then watched the rest of the races. In the rain, pretty epic. I raced 4's on sat and finished in the middle of the group. I raced 4's on sunday, one of the toughest crit courses I've ever done, and I pulled out cause I didnt make the front group, my fault because I wasnt riding in the front and I didnt wanna hit the corner first on the first lap, and mentally I only wanted to do the jrs race. Judging from the front group of about 8 that was leading, I feel like I couldve and shouldve been there, and that I couldve done well in the sprint. I did jrs too, and ended up 9th. It was a tough race. It was fun, on friday before I left I rode with perry, the girl from nerinx, and had a good time. I might end up riding the ms150 with a group of nerinx girls and some guys from my school but we'll see where that goes. One thing I didnt like about the races this weekend and in Iowa is how they run them, by laps instead of time plus laps. On the snake its understandable. In tulsa they would start with 60 minutes, for example, as our racing time and then take our average lap time and then tell us how many laps we would do, so it seems to me like a lot of calculating for not really any purpose. On saturday we wernt even told about the laps and I didnt really know where we were until 1 to go when my computor said 53 minutes and we were supposed to do 60. oh well.

title.

So i raced joe martin but i dont feel like explaining 3 races in depth. In short, i more or less finished the road race with the pack, like 5 seconds off but they gave me pack time. The tt was ok, i got 25th. So i was in 25th overall. I wasnt feelin it in the crit and after the first crash on the first lap i was almost gapped off, 2 crashes later i was pretty much dropped and i got pulled with like 5 minutes left. So then i ended up 35th overall. My friend brice, who i met at hells kitchen, had a good weekend and ended up 5th overall i think. Long drive home and i got home at 1 am. This past weekend was the state rr on sunday. I did jrs cause i didnt reeally wanna ride 70 miles and i wanted a decent shot at a jersey, where on such a hilly course if i did 2 laps i would proly get dropped on the second lap. Anyway Luke, John, Jan, Ben, some other mesa kid, and I were in the 17-18 jrs race. Ben and I are both cat 4's and John, Jan and Luke are cat 3's so I figured it'd still be a good race. We rode slow for the first 7 miles then we started a fairly easy paceline at like 19 mph, and then the attacks started. First Ben, then Jan, then John then Jan then Me. We dropped Ben and the other Mesa kid, and john looked to be hurting. Jan attacked up the next hill and luke and I were the only ones able to hold on. We pulled hard for like 4 miles until John finally caught back on. we rode fairly easy till the main climb, where Jan hit it hard seeing that John was hurting again. Initially luke and I sat on his wheel but i felt like i was jsut churning a huge gear and wasnt able to hangon. I thought i tried to shift down and i was in my easiest gear but i got to the top and looked down at my cassette and i saw 2 gears left? whatever. Luke almost hung on to jan but then jan hit it hard up the next climb and shelled us both. I caught luke and then he dropped me on the next climb. John eventually caught me and seeing as we were around 5 minutes down on jan and 3 on luke, john said to ride in slow and sprint at the end. I was fine wiht that cause i was pretty sure i could outsprint him, and i knew i wasnt gonna pull luke or jan in. We rode slow, so slow in fact that ben and the other mesa caught us. We rode moderatly in and sprinted, i won the sprint really easily, and took 3rd. Yesterday I had 2 10 minute intervals. I decided to ride solo, and headed out towards high ridge after warming up around the webster crit course for like 20 minutes. I rode my intervals on marshall after the downhill and before it hits 141. I was able to ride for about 6 or 7 minutes before i had to turn around quickly and go the other way. All in all one of the best training rides ive had all year. I think it was nice to ride solo and actually do my workout well and exactly like i was supposed to. Riding with austin usually works cause he has something similar and he knows what to do, but riding with keaton or mike t i always talk too much. I had 5 sprints today. I headed out and warmed up in webster again and then went to adams by the golf course leading into k-wood. I thought for some reason that i had 10 sprints and after the first 5 i was cooked. It was pretty windy and the road was bumpy. I headed home after the 5 cause i was really hurting. I came upstairs and checked my plan, turns out i was only supposed to do 5, so im all good. I have it easy for the rest of the week and then snake alley this weekend. Im riding with a girl from nerinx, Perry, tomoro so that should be fun.

"drip drip drip...goes the water"

Quoted from chumbawumba.

So the tour of stl was this past weekend. It was a pretty good weekend that got me siked for summer, where we all just go to the races and hangout when were not racing. Its been a while since weve done that. I did the 4's races all weekend. carondelet was hella sketchy. There were 3 major crashes. The first was like on the second lap, some guy hit the curb and a dogfish guy went into him, I skidded and was able to stop, on an endo, pretty much hitting him lightly. so I took a free lap, which I wasnt going to be given because I didnt really crash, but I said I fell into the grass, cause Im sure as hell not paying 25 bux to race 2 laps not even crash and quit. So then a ghishallo guy crashed himself out. Then mikey b comes back to me, cause I havent really been able to move up too much after getting stuck smack on the end, and starts to pull me up to the front to lead me out. With 3 to go, another bigger crash, which took out the same dogfish guy and some more. Anyway Mike and I shoot to the right side of the road to go around it, we were around 25th at this point, and he makes it through before i get cut off by some momentum guy ridng sideways, and I have to unclip and kick my way through, in the meantime the pack has put about 10 seconds into me. I chased solo for about a lap then pulled out to watch the sprint. keaton finished 5th and mike finished 7th, not too bad. The dissappointing thing is that I know I could've been top 3 because Mike was 2nd or 1st wheel at the place that austin said to start my sprint, and had I only been on his wheel. The tt was next, all the way out in hell. It was a waste of time. Sketchy course, lonnie broke his collarbone, waste of gas gettting out there and bad roads. I think i could've gone a lot faster. I kept seeing old guys come up after me, dying. Gasping for breath, and I wasnt really worn out at all. I think mentally going into it I thought it was maybe a 20k tt, so I needed to save something but I dono. Fopo was next on sunday. I love the forest park crit, cause mainly I like racing in Fopo. The only thing that made sunday kinda suck was that it was pretty hott, Fopo is usually either cold, cool or rainy. Id like it to have been a little cooler. Anyway, I raced decent and was able to move up into the strung out top 15 but then the first guys would slow down in the corners and right before them and we would get swarmed and I'd be on the back. So after doing that a few times I desided to sit at the back and chill. I was getting set to move up at 30 minutes in, with 5 minutes and 5 laps to go, when they rang the 5 lap bell. So I guess they shortened it to compensate for the classic, big shark race = late to start. I moved up and was on mikey b's wheel but I kept getting it ganked and kept getting swarmed in the corners again. I moved up solo to about 15th coming thru with 1 to go, and I finished 13th or 14th, but I didnt go to the "i think i was in the top 15 meeting" afterwards so I dono for sure if I was put in there or not. Im sorry, but this race had one major flaw. They didnt have a working video camera. The jrs race at carondelet had to be solved by a coin toss, and every race from there on had to have a meeting where everyone in the top 10-15 voted. Stupid. How cant you get a video camera over night, everyone at that race prolly had one theyd be willing to lend.

Our team had a good weekend:
Mike Heffernan won the 5's at Carondelet got 3rd(ish) in the TT, got 2nd at FOPO and maybe won overall.
Austin got freaking 2nd in the 1/2 race at carondelet.
luke was in the money both days I think.
And keaton and mike 5th and 7th respectively at carondelet.

Rite now I should be getting in my car after tuesday nights but its pouring and it has been for the last 2ish hours. trainier ride tonite

My friend, and head mechanic at Trekstl, Katie Arehart-Rose had a really bad mountian biking accident on sunday. She was riding at castlewood and ran into a guy going around a corner, and fractured 3 bones in her face. It was her first mtb ride of the season and the first ride on her procaliber. She has some kind of surgery next week but apparently is in quite good spirits, I recieved a jovial text message the day of the crash telling me what she had done. I wish her the speediest of recoverys and that all of the surgery goes well.

peace.

Band-Aid

I crashed yesterday. just riding along with keaton thru webster. it sucked. i think i was going from the hoods to the drops, and i hit a bump and went straight on by the drops to the ground. the chip'n;seal in webster sucks. they put down tar and then rough gravel, so its like shards of rock stuck to the ground. im pretty banged up, but the bike seems fine. both the levers got pretty scraped up and the left rubber hood needs to be replaced. even the bartape was fine, which im gonna replace anyway, so its pretty good overall. here are some pics from today.

my hand, my knuckles got it pretty bad, mainly the two bandaged.


my arm: kinda deep on the elbow but mainly just scraped.


everything else is pretty standard. some pusspacks are allover my body just starting to ooze out there pungent healing goodness.

these are my new mtb shoes which i still plan on breaking in this weekend racing...yeah get jealous logan.



yeah thats a lot of carbon.

oh and my crash prolly looked something like this (the second one is truly heartwrenching)

Gus Chiggins

So not much as gone on. the weather sucked for a while. it was like winter again. breaking out knee warmers and warm gloves. thankfully its warmed up for good i think. its been around 60-80 the past 3 days, it was 82 on my back porch yesterday. tonite there was a tuesday night, finally after 2 personal rainouts and one official rainout. I didnt feel too good, but Kurt came around and gave me a killer pull. he signaled me to get on his wheel with one to go and pulled me to the top of the hill, where i sprinted and won. yayyy 7 pts. 13 to go. im racing mtb's this weekend, should be interesting. i havent mtb'd in a while, but supposedly klondike is pretty easy. im especially excited for the short track, kinda like a crit on mtb's. i'll report on that later.

uh

so its stupid cold outside rite now. i heard that it might be setting a record low for april? really dumb. those two weeks of 70-80 weather were so nice, and this is pure hell. it made the team ride on thursday suck. it made riding yesterday suck. and it made riding today suck cause i rode inside on the trainier, but the only plus was that i saw that us open thing on tv. it was kinda cool. they had gnarly weather too. i felt bad for the mexican national team, they said that they were going around from room to room the night before trying to borrow cold weather clothing cause they didnt have any. but yea. at the team ride we were supposed to do some time trial tryout stuff. but then mike was like well you can do 2 or 3 laps whatever you want, and that dosent really guage how well people do against eachother. then he said that you would do 2 or 3 based on how you feel rite now in the season, which dosent make sense either cause i feel good, good legs, but it was like 30 degrees and it sucked out. so we all did 2. i was like 4th to go which made my legs completely cool down after the warmup. so i hurt and was super tight for the first lap. then i caught keaton, hand over that jersey, and then i finished second. i think logan is a better tt'r than i am but i think taking off first had some perks for his legs. soo...weather sucks butt.

CHYEA

so i really dont feel like talking about any of the road races the past 3 weekends cause ive explained them already to everyone. hells kitchen was tight and dank, dogwood was hard as shit and not that cool, hillsboro was hard but kinda cool and really bumpy/gravely. Best of the 3 was def hells kitchen, most fun course and best result 18th, and i felt good. Now its crit season, which is good for me cause thats where i do best. also theres a mtb stage race coming up that i think ima do. it should be cool. i dono. so, now i'll keep this thang up to date more.



thats me and the a-man at the base of the hells kitchen climb the day before.

heres a sweet new paul wall song that i heard and i think its rull tight, i dono about the radio stations, maybe too underground for them.. its tight tho.

Hollaback

So, its been a while. Im gonna recap sylvan springs and todays ride, but i'll post about Hell's Kitchen when i get my camera back...AUSTIN!! Sooo...Sylvan springs was pretty fun. I was wooed in by the sirenous calls from Logan, John and everyone else to do the Junior race. It was stacked and i havent raced against the columbia, now mesa, guys in a while. It was pretty fast, and Nolan went off maybe 3 laps in with Logan on his wheel. there were three other mesa guys, Zach Jan and Ben, John, Me, Zach Stein and Daniel Williams, and some kid from Stl CC. So I was content to let Logan and Nolan go, as were the Mesa guys. I wasnt about to chase them down, and i figured with 2 vs. 4, second place would almost definatly be the best that we could do. So then John and Jan went off and stayed off about 20ish seconds ahead of us. I tried to bridge/weed down our main group, and ended up dropping daniel and the stlcc kid off for good. I pretty much pulled out rite after that, with maybe 4 laps to go. I wasnt really keen on busting ass to stay in and then having nothing left for the real reason that I came, the 4/5 race. Logan ended up 2nd with Nolan taking 1st. The 4/5 race went pretty well. I was sitting rite around 20-30th position for the whole race till 5 laps to go where i started to move up. With 1.5 laps left, on the top of the climb, the pack really slowed down and i moved up to 4th wheel. I came thru with 1 to go at 2nd wheel. And then i was 1st wheel with 1 lap to go. Just a little too early. I may have been able to stay top 5 going into the final corner had i had some real gears on, but the downhill into the corner caused me to drift back. I ended up 12th, passing two or three people in the sprint. So now jump up about 2 weeks to today. Today i had a nice ride. Austin, Like and I rode out to high ridge. It was nice, relaxed and fun. Good scenery both on the ride out, and in the outdoor seating at starbucks. total time was around 3 hours and 40 something miles. Tomoro we ride from lukes house, at 11, out to Herculanium. VERY NICE!!

chill.

hey everyone. i have been on retreat for the last 3 odd days. i am not at all religiuos and took the retreat as a break from the usual life. I learned some stuff about myself from my small group and had a great time. But the one thing that i found myself needing the whole time was some good music to vibe to. we were reflecting to the likes of israel kamikawole and jack johnson, both whom ive liked at times, jack johnson more so. but what i really wanted was some Bob Marley. My personal favorite chillout music that i think produces good thoughts and helps me get thru life. if you dont have "legend" then you havent lived. ask me if you want it.

no more politics.

so what has been going on in the wide wild world of martin? well, i have been training pretty well on schedule. its been hard with this hellish weather. This week im going on a retreat with school, we leave monday afternoon rite after school and get back wed around 3. its gonna be nice break because that means i go to school 2 days this coming week, mon and thurs, and then i have a 4 day weekend. its kind of a pre spring break break. last thursday i ordered some handlebars and a stem for my fisher mtb. http://www.raceface.com/components/bars/nextxc-flat-bar.htm thats the sweet bar i got. 135 grams of p.i.m.p. i would have got the nicer sl but it was out of stock..damn. oh well whats 10 grams difference. that staff of glory will be secured to my ride with this bad boy. http://www.lhthomson.com/elite_x4.htm Holla!! its been a while since ive bought, ridden or been really pumped about mountain bikes. i think the last time i was excited about them was like in 7th grade when that was all i rode. since these damn road bikes, jk, have taken over my life i havent given my fisher the riding that it deserves. the bar/stem combo will now make my bike fit me better, my old bars were hellllla wide. so hopefully i'll get out on the trails a little more, no alot more, and make a few races. all i need now are some new shoes that fit, cause my old shoes are 7-8th grade era when my feet were a little smaller. if anyone has any nice shoes that they dont want, size 43-43.5, or wants to go to castlewood or chubb or even make a berryman trip holla at me. peace.

....yea and.

so mr bush is giving his speach rite now. he is saying how we have found these great things that will prevent terrorism in the US. not that i dont think that it is good that we have stopped terror plots, but he completely neglected to mention the fact that we didnt find any weapons of mass destruction, which is ...what ....why we went to war? "to get the weapons of mass destruction out of those damn terrorists hands"?. well...that didnt work and look where we are now. there werent any weapons, and we're in a war that we shouldnt be in, all to get oil. we're in somebody else's country and messing with their stuff. but we're america and we have to right to go out and stir up your shit if we want to.

here is a poem that i got in history class this year on september 11th. i think it puts the world into a good perspective. its not just us that endured something bad. there are other countries, places and people who have had equal and far worse things happen to them, but they go un noticed.

http://www.intraa.org/blog/lorisir/911remembered

ps. i also find it strange, yet very cliche not suprising, that to look better and more people friendly, that laura bush is sitting next to an injured us soldier.

hey

Yea, so long time no post. What have I been up to lately? I've been building a bike for my friend George with Keaton. Its a steel lugged Trek that Keaton got from his grandpa. We've got some nice parts from b-works. The green powdercoating is sick and its turning into quite a sweet bike. Its gonna be a singlespeed with moustache bars. I've been really motivated lately to finish my specialized jumping bike, which means a lot of money and parts that I dont have. Namely disc brakes, disc compat wheels a ss crank and a new tensioner. Today we rode outside, it was 30 on my back porch when I left at 8:55. My fingers were pretty much numb from the start and then the numbness moved into my palms and then into my wrists. We stopped at a gas station about 15 miles in and I turned around. It was pretty dissapointing because I havent ridden outside in like 2 or 3 weeks and my legs felt great. We had a few good sprints. I took the two that were actually contested and one that wasnt. We had a full lane sprint with I think everyone but Rok going. Mike T pulled off, then Austin and then I edged Keaton out by about a foot. It was interesting riding because it was my first time riding my 52x14 outside and also my first time riding in jr gears since before gateway. Usually in regular gears I can get up to 33+ mph fairly easy in a sprint, but today most of our sprints stayed under 30, more around 26-28. I think that I used to be able to get up to 31 at least in a sprint. I think the excess clothing, cold weather, and cold joints had a lot to do with the slow sprint speeds all around. Hopefully everyone had a good ride after I left. Going to the city museum tonite. Oh, the other day I was watching tv and I stumbled across that tv-movie on Lifetime that Austin, Keaton, the Fick and I watched in Iowa. The one where the girls infect like a whole school with syphillis, or the "big s". Pretty humerous movie.

heres an interesting "reply" to the song "vans" by The Pack.
WARNING!! this is a pretty profane song, If you regularly listen to unedited rap then its not bad but if not than listen at your own discretion. give it like 30 seconds to hear the song start.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=BEw5wT45sPY

happy new year...i guess.

So it's new years day. I honestly think that new years is the biggest bs of a holiday. Its not really anything to celebrate but everyone takes it as an excuse to party, which is cool with me. I went down to a friend's house in the CWE. We chilled out and played some "Scene-it TV" which I sucked at. I didnt answer a question rite after my first question. We drank some sparkling cider at midnight and watched the worst display of hosting a tv show we'd all ever seen on FOX. It was bad. If you saw then you know what im spittin. I went to the gym today and got in a better workout than I expected. It was like an open house thing today at the y from 11-3, their only hours today, and i went at about 2:15. It was real crowded, probly due to new years resolutions and free t-shirts. The old people dont like when you do 6 sets on the leg extensions when the "legal" limit of the y is one set of 20. Needless to say I was able to get all my work done at the gym. I came home and made a good grilled cheese on the panini maker and zoned out on the couch for about 2 hours watching the discovery channel. I am going over to a family friends house for ribs tonite with my brother and his kids. should be nice. In other news I was let go yesterday by the trek store. Not a huge suprise to me as I hadn't really worked in around 5 months, and even when I did work in the summer it was a sparse few hours here and there. It was just time to cut back employees and I understand, I was already about to start the search for a new job. Chris was really sympathetic and sorry that he had to let me go as I was one of the first people there, even offering to write any letters of recommendation I may need. I think the thing that I'll miss the most is not really like selling people stuff, cause I liked bieng in the mechanic area anyway, but hanging out with the people at the shop and the sweet discounts. I truly enjoyed spending hours on a dead day at the shop when I didnt have school and going in and just shooting the breeze with katie, derek, steven, jess greg, gary and chris about any random topic. But as tightly knit as the st louis biking community is, I dont think I'll be too out of touch with everybody, and it should still be comfortable, and not akward going into the shop. I thank everyone at trek for not only paying me to have fun for the last two-odd years but for bieng cool people, and I think I've learned alot about the biking industry and the working life from working there. peace.