Skinny #1 Racing

Having a week off of school was great, and in only three more weeks I get a whole month off. I know it's gonna be so much fun...it's pretty much like a vacation, a very long vacation. Sunday, my season officially ended after an extremely disappointing race in which I couldn't do anything right if my life depended on it. Out of the maybe 5 laps that I completed I made this little hill after a set of barriers only once. It was absolutely pathetic. Oh well, there's always next year.

Me and Ed went and saw the new Harry Potter movie, and it was great. It was by far the best movie they've made. Almost everything was the same as in the book, except for the Gillyweed part. In case you didn't know, Dobby made the Gillyweed for Harry, not Neville.

Jeremy didn't bring his Gamecube back, so there won't be much video game playing going on around here. Oh well, I have to finish a math mod in the next two weeks, so that will take a little bit of time out of my schedule. I plan on playing a lot of basketball in the next three weeks. After all, I got my new b-ball kicks so I might make some use out of them. I'm working on my shot, and so far it seems to be going all right. Amazing how it works when you actually hold the ball right when you shoot.

After these three weeks, I begin a month of skiing and other miscellaneous cross training. That should be a lot of fun, but being off the bike for that long is gonna be tough for me. Hopefully I'll get my new Ironhorse Azure World Cup before I leave to begin the second semester so I can get my BB7 disc brakes on it (and maybe a Sid, I haven't decided yet). I plan on doing most of my base training on the new rig because 1) Mid January is probably gonna be pretty cold, and I'll be going slower with knobby tires and 2) It wouldn't hurt to get used to the position and the feel of the bike. I would show you all what my schedule and plans for next year look like, but this blogger format isn't that friendly with spreadsheets. I'll try to update a little sooner next time, for all of you who actually read this.

So if any of you out there like video games, then I would reccomend Resident Evil 4. I've been addicted for the past day. There are like 10 people now that are playing that game. It's so much fun. Some are still on Zelda. The master (me) already beat it because I guess I just have an uncanny ability to play video games!

I went for my first ride in four days today, in the snow (more like a light flurry actually). It was fun, but pretty cold. I saw that T O double D raced in New England this past weekend and took second both days. I can't wait to race all these guys in another two weeks.

I finally got sick again. I haven't been sick since the week before Arizona last year, so it's been quite a while. It probably has something to do with living in a college dorm environment and getting hair in my food every once in a while. Because I have a cold, I haven't been eating ice cream, which I miss quite a bit. I also didn't ride yesterday and probably won't ride until I'm back to 100% health. I got some Airborne and I've been using that so hopefully I'll be over this real quick.

I just took a Chemistry Exam and I'm pretty sure I did really well on it. There were some trick questions though, typical of Michael Elliot. I hope all the other kids in my class fail so that my grade is even better.

If I could major in video games, I'd be doing pretty well right now. I started a trend in my hall with Tony Hawk's Underground, but everyone decided it was no fun once they realized they couldn't beat me. Then we all started playing Super Smash Brothers Melee, and after a while we needed to search for a new game to play. Well why not go back to our roots and play a little Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, a true classic. Remember, this was game of the year back in 1998, and it's currently game of the week in Newsom 2SW. I've been putting in some big hours on it lately. However, I do have the discipline to tell myself when I have to stop to do school work.

It's almost time to go back home for Thanksgiving and I can't wait. I ended up riding with Tim Doud today, it was a lot of fun. We went easy for almost an hour and a half, he showed me a nice fun route to ride. I hope he has a good collegiate season next year and gets picked up by a good team. As for me, I'm not gonna race on the road at all next year. I'm gonna focus on mountain biking racing, especially those two NORBAs in my area in early June. Looks like I'm gonna be on a U23 Ironhorse Northeast team for next year, which should work out pretty well. More details to work out...

Well CSU ended up getting third at mountain bike nationals...no thanks to our "endurance" team. Two of our four riders that we sent DNF'ed in the cross countr. One was because his "CO2 didn't work" and the other because apparently, he broke his chain, and then broke his chain tool. I don't know about you guys but I ALWAYS carry two CO2s with me, for that exact reason. As Salem Mazzaway would say, "How much does a CO2 cartridge weigh?" As for breaking a chain tool, I don't even know how one would go about doing that. Oh well, third is pretty good either way...even if we did send a less than stellar team. I still don't know whether I'm going to race collegiate next year or not. First of all it's so expensive...our team nickel and dimed us the whole year. They charged $35 for travel to each race, and then we had to pay $40 for race entry fees each week, not to mention the money we had to spend on food. That puts us up to about $100 just to race each weekend. Oh well, maybe next year things will be run a little better and people will realize that buying $15,000 worth of clothing isn't the primary need of the team.

On a lighter note, I have a couple new favorite songs. The first one really isn't a favorite, I just like it. It's "My Humps" by the Black Eyed Peas, it's such a catchy song. My real favorite song though, is "Freewill" by Rush. It's just so good.