I'm still alive

I survived this week. Working crazy hours, cleaning my storage unit out, and getting slammed in my race yesterday. The work threw me off my routine, the storage unit wore me out, and the race spanked me hard. I just woke up, and it's noon. Granted, I lost an hour, but still...

In an interesting turn of events, I have decided to donate everything of value to the Anne Hebard School of Ballet for their fundraising yard sale. They need to raise thousands to just break even for last year. Long story. Anyway, I figure that my stuff is now out of my hair, it's going to help a good cause, and we all come out ahead. Simple. Except that carrying massive air conditioners by yourself isn't exactly the easiest thing to do, and it definitely hinders race performance.

Cool little seguai (sp?) there. So Sat I went to Coxsackie for the third and final race of the Johnny Cake Series. This time they added a decent hill to the course. Not a wall, but enough to make it interesting. The wind was part of the many factors that came into play.

The race started off sunny and about 73 degress. The wind was from the Southwest and was warm. About 14 miles into the race, some rain started falling here and there. 10 minutes later we rode into a wall of ice cold rain, and the air temp went down to about 40. The roads were grimy, my sunglasses were fogging up, and I was freezing. Visibility was so bad I was looking for race numbers on guys and trying not to hit them. Fun times. At some point my computer got soaked through and was reading 0mph. So I was screwing around with it not paying attention to the race when a gap opened up in front of me. I figured someone would go around me and close it, as I was only halfway back in the field. Wrong.

I was last! Most people bailed on the race and were heading for the warm showers. So I chased like crazy and began catching the group at the base of the climb. I'm a better climber than I have been in years this year, but this wasn't good. I gritted my chattering teeth and worked back to relative safety on the tail end of the field. I was thinking of bagging it, too, but since I caught back on I figured I'd just ride with the pack until we went by the finish line. Of course we got to the finish and it was only one more lap, so I decided to tough it out. As the pics show, it was very dirty. The socks were originally white at the top, and the glasses were basically only keeping grime from getting into my contacts, as well as all light in the universe...

I worked back up to the front of the group and rode the rest of the race in to the finish, and put in another good sprint to probably get a top 15, since we were sprinting for 8th place, I believe. I immediately headed for the showers and comfort. Then it was off to my brother's house to sort my junk, which I did.

25 more days until the other half of my heart arrives!!!!!

As for the pics, I use the pic uploader and it won't effin' work!!!! Argh!!!